The Illuminati!

I don't usually get political but this is a true enigma.

When I was little, I read Donald Duck comic books. There was an inventor duck named Gyro Gearloose who came up with wonderful ideas in the company of his little helper. Little Helper never said anything. He was just sort of there, scampering around Gyro's feet, catching things he dropped and quietly saving things from going very very wrong. He was quiet because he had no mouth --his head was a light bulb, an incandescent light bulb.

Little Helper only had two fingers on each hand. This is where the Peace Sign came from. More importantly, Little Helper defined for me the anatomy of the Illuminati. I started thinking about the Illuminati after writing a poem about a baby last week.

As one gains in experience, one learns written history. Historically, Illuminati is most connected to Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded by Adam Weishaupt and a few friends in 1776. They opposed superstition, prejudice, religious influence over public life and abuses of state power, and supported women's education and gender equality. They held meetings, advertised, published tracts, lobbied the political system and were of course outlawed by state and church in 1785.

We learn two things. If you're going to have a secret society to enlighten the world and make it a fairer place, don't tell anybody. Just do it. Don't overthink it, just let the universe pour through your head like Little Helper or a baby does. No kidding, in hierocratic theocracies humanism is considered subversive, just as democracy is discouraged by oil-rich countries or any contentious tontine surrounding a donkey-engine chugging in a hole. Under such misrules, the Illuminati --or any proponents of egalitarianism-- are among the first folk lined up and shot.

With the more recent mystification of Illuminati came some important questions. If you could nudge reality around with your mind, even just a little, to make things better, would you tell anybody? Me neither. Babies have the unimpeachable protection of being adorable, but what about Little Helper? Sure, he's kind of cute but what happens when his bulb burns out? Already, nations around the world are banning incandescent bulb replacements in favor of less ecologically friendly ones. Could it have to do with most of the world's tungsten coming from China and Russia and, until recently, bought by America? I don't know, do you?