Two Books.

Of all the things that frighten me about the modern world, the worst to my eyes might be this: I think we're forgetting how to be human. We're forgetting what it means to be human. I think we're normalizing that it's ok not to be human, and not to treat others as if they are human.

There are two books I'm thinking of right now. Both were written in the aftermath of World War II, when half the world had decreed that another half of the world was not, in fact, human. 

You know, something like today.

The first was written by the great German philologist Viktor Klemperer. He was captive as a Jew in Germany (he wasn't murdered because he was married to a non-Jew and somehow got dispensation, though his rations were limited and he was sentenced to live in "Jew house".) Klemperer wrote a book called "Lingua Tertii Imperium," in English, "The Language of the Third Reich."

Not too many years from now, someone will write for amerika and for the marketing industry, a book similar to Klemperer's. 

Maybe it will be called "The Language of the Plutocrats," or "The Language of Surveillance Capitalism," or trumplishIn any event, it's there for us to see. People today are targets. Or users. We have to accept terms and conditions--often thousands of words of dense legalese--before we order take-out. We have to accept self-violation (identity-theft and tracking) in order to buy something online. 

If you think I'm being hyperbolic, read a stern timesheet email from your company. Or listen to an inflight announcement. Or think how seven commercials are piped in over a plane's loud-speaker and you have no way of opting out. You've paid for your seat, and a charged once more for your captivity, against any will you have left. Because someone believes selling you another credit card is more important to your right to be left un-sold-to. 

This is inhuman treatment.

And the list is nearly endless.

The second book is called "The Parnas," and it's by the great Italian psychiatrist and one of the world's foremost authorities on schizophrenia, Silvano Arieti.

Arieti was a Jew in Pisa, Italy, about to be murdered by a Nazi lieutenant. Like me, Arieti believes in the ancient idea of "Lycanthropy." That is a delusion or a reality that a human can transform into a wild animal, usually a wolf. 

I'm fine with you thinking I'm crazy. But lycanthropy has been around for almost as long as human history. Arieti saw that Nazi turn into a wolf before his eyes, snarling and feral. I've seen it too. Up-close and lupine.

And not for nothing have we all seen about 22,008 movies called "The Wolf Man."

I think when politicians say people are eating dogs, or are carrying bacilli, or are from shithole countries, or are a somewhat lesser species, it's evidence of real-life lycanthropy. I think when people are fired by fax after working for a company for twenty years, that too is evidence of lycanthropy. I think when 5,000 people are fired so one person can be granted a $49,000,000 pay package, that is also lycanthropy.

I know lycanthropy is weird to believe in. Just as my ersatz-Klemperer-like linguistic mania are also hard to take.

That's ok.

I'm just being human.