What I'm Reading...
I decided to reread a book I found over a decade ago to search for clues to the madness.
When I entered the Strand on Broadway, I was looking to find a new book. Not only someone I hadn’t read, but a book I had never heard of…and I wanted fiction. I grabbed a coffee and walked the store for over an hour. I got a refill and walked some more. Nothing caught my eye.
I looked up another store in walking distance and started to leave the Strand when I noticed a blue book on the bottom of a bookshelf, sticking out like a sore thumb. The book was indeed fiction, but it had been placed among the M’s, an error that had discovered me in a literary episode of lost at sea.
The book was what' I’m reading, ‘The Cabala,’ by Thornton Wilder.
The plot: A young American man (an academic) travels to Rome where he intends to write and finish a play. Once he arrives, an acquaintance tells him of a powerful group he’s discovered in Rome called the Cabala. This group lives in secretary, are rich and powerful and they can change the course of society with their connections. Our young American is introduced to the Cabala and begins to chronicle the group’s individual makeup, relevance and their very eccentric day-to-day lives. Are they gods? Are they rich brats who have grown into adults. Or are they literally, mad?
Now more than ever, it’s evident that the world we live in is ran by cabalas.
From the workplace to geopolitics, groups form and work in concert to establish power, influence and sometimes chaos.
With technology, it has become easier for the public to connect the dots on these groups. With greed and hubris, these groups have somewhat abandoned the secrecy and dared anyone to standup to their wealth and power.
So what can one learn about the real world through fiction? More than you think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.’ Albert Camus once said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
In 2025, reality seems to be obscured by addictive rectangular screens while lies are being thrown around like rice at a wedding.
Wilder’s novel, published in 1928, shows that not much has changed in regard to cabalas.
They form, they have peaks and valleys, they meet in secret and they always become infatuated with their own sense of reality. A reality that is so far from the truth that it reads like bad fiction.
Lastly and most concerning, the cabalas have no idea how to interact with the people they hold influence over, which in fiction and in the real world leads to crescendo of madness and violence.