I leave the lands of Alpha and Beta with mixed emotions. Both Alpha and Beta offered stability (or at least predictability). Yet, I found both lands to be disturbing. They both challenged my sense of what life should be and how we should engage other members of our society. Perhaps I will find a bit more peace-of-mind in the land of Gamma.
Gamma: Land of Eternal-Rebels [Irony of Darkness]
As I enter this third land, I am immediately immerged in a third “P” – it is the “P” of protest. As with the land of Alpha, I find myself in a park. However, this park is filled with many demonstrators—and they don’t all agree with one another. Folks are shouting at each other. They are waving placards in the faces of those who hold quite different opinions.
Exploring Gamma
Many issues are represented in the park. There are even disagreements and protests about which issue should get the most attention. Who has the biggest placards and the loudest bull horns? How high are the soap boxes on which individual orators are standing and how big of a following has each orator attracted to their plot of land in the park? The one thing about which they all agree is that authority can’t be trusted and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The problem is: they can’t agree on who is actually an authority and who has the “real” power.
I soon escape from the noise and mayhem of the Gamma park and find my way to a side street where several “art houses” are located. One of these small theaters is featuring a retrospective on American and European horror movies – beginning with the 1920 version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Another of the theaters is offering a festival (yes, another festival) that surveys the Film Noir of the 1940s and 1950s in the United States. Sounds of a heavy metal band pierce the silence of the street on which I am walking. These sounds seem to be coming from a warehouse located at the end of this street – quite a contract to the boulevard, palace and grand pavilion theater of Beta. The harsh sounds of hard metal convey in words and sounds a profound sense of despair and alienation: everything is “fucked up” and “we don’t know where we are going!”.
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