A Deeper Look at he Human Condition through the Lens of Dylan's "License to Kill"

Infidels was Bob Dylan's first album following his trilogy of Gospel infused albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love. "License to Kill was the fourth track on side one. It contains some meaty, thought-provoking content along with an ambiguous chorus and title.  

After his overt Gospel period, Bob Dylan didn’t abandon moral vision, he synthesized it, weaving its threads both visibly and discreetly through the albums that followed that period.  

Songs like "License to Kill" carry a quiet, probing ethical weight, where questions of power, conscience, and human responsibility echo with biblical depth beneath the surface.

The song depicts the consequences of human arrogance, which is itself an interesting word. Arrogance is the habit of overstepping our place—assuming authority, control, or wisdom we do not truly possess. When we “arrogate power,” we act as if we are ultimate judges or masters, forgetting our limits. It’s the illusion that we can dominate outcomes, people, or even nature, as though we were accountable to no higher order.  

The “license” is symbolic: humanity acting as if it has permission to dominate, exploit, and destroy.  For me, though, it was the fourth verse and its reference to Narcissus that stimulated my curiosity to dig deeper into this song when I first heard it nearly 44 years ago.

Verse 1 begins "Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please..." Dylan opens with a sweeping indictment: humanity assumes ownership of the Earth as if we are the ultimate authority. It's the illusion of dominion, and Dylan's song is a cautionary warning. Progress without wisdom is dangerous. Because of man's pride, the seeds of our own destruction are already planted.

For years I've always found the refrain a bit curious. "Now, there’s a woman on my block // She just sit there facin’ the hill // She say who gonna take away his license to kill?"

 

She's watching, waiting, and powerless. Perhaps she represents all of us who see the havoc generated by the narrative-spinners, bomb-slingers and power brokers. With each passing stanza her question is reiterated, and it remains unanswered. 

The second stanza addresses social conditioning. Dylan shifts from “man” in general to the conspiracy of systems that shape him—education, culture, media, institutions. 

"They take him and they teach him and they groom him for life // And they set him on a path where he’s bound to get ill // Then they bury him with stars // Sell his body like they do used cars 

  

The third goes further still, the aim of propaganda:

"Now, he’s hell-bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused // And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill // All he believes are his eyes // And his eyes, they just tell him lies"

How many times have we read and seen things online or in the media and honestly don't know what's true any more. As Mark Twain once said, "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear." [EdNote: Guess what? Mark Twain didn't actually say that. It was Edgar Allen Poe. Or was it Ben Franklin?]

People aren't just ignorant of the truth, they're actually products (victims) of engineered misunderstanding. "And his eyes, they just tell him lies." Our perceptions are being deliberately distorted. What we see and believe may be deeply and intentionally misleading.

Preceding the last verse is a bridge that reminds those who think they are powerful, impressive and influential that they may still be playing a shallow role in a larger, misguided system. As we look at today's global chaos, one has to ask what is the endgame here? Who's really running this crazy show?

Oh we think we're so hot. Here's how Dylan puts it:

"Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool

And when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled

Oh, man is opposed to fair play

He wants it all and he wants it his way"

The reference to Narcissus is so apt. Instead of striving for something higher, man becomes his own god. When he looks in the mirror he loves what he sees.

"But there’s a woman on my block

Sitting there in a cold chill

She say who gonna take away his license to kill?"

She sees. She still asks. We still don't hear an answer.

The Upside of Ignorance; the Downside of Knowledge

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
    the more knowledge, the more grief.
--Ecclesiastes 1:18

"Ignorance is bliss; 't is folly to be wise."
--Thomas Gray

* * * 

It's interesting. We live in what has been called the information age. We're completely inundated with information on nearly anything we want to learn more about. Has this made us happier?  

There are a variety of ways in which ignorance can be more satisfying than knowledge. Here are a few examples that I've observed.

In my article Data Analytics: The Three Most Important People in the Room, I show one way in which company decision makers can be happily self-deceived by ignoring the risk factors with regard to a desired decision. 

As has often been noted, "we don't know what we don't know." Sometimes this ignorance is simply a lack of experience. Sometimes, it is the result of our own efforts to block out what we don't want to hear. 

In the political realm two instances come to mind. When the governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976, some of his efforts to make a positive impact were thwarted because he brought his own team of people he trusted to Washington, people who didn't really understand how to get things done in the Federal realm. They were ignorant because of their lack of experience inside the Beltway.

According to Michael Lewis in The Fifth Risk, this ignorance of how things work at the Federal level was amplified more than ten-fold when Donald Trump was elected because it was a willful ignorance. The incoming president didn't understand the complexity involved in the transition process. When former governor Chris Christie saw this he stepped up to assist in what is generally one of the biggest challenges of a new administration. According to Lewis, the newly elected president chose to shut his ears.  

Lewis went on to cite Jared Kushner's surprise that when taking over the government the incoming leadership team has to appoint all new department heads to run everything. Kushner assumed that the people working there would still be at their posts, as would happen when a new CEO takes over a company. 

A reviewer of The Fifth Risk at Amazon.com wrote these thoughts, which were the impetus for today's blog post:

Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. There is upside to ignorance, and downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.

* * * 

It happens in boardrooms. It happens in government. It happens in life. There are no sure things when it comes to the future. Life involves risk. How to find the balance between worrying too much and too little about every little thing is just one problem we face. If we knew how many ways our little world could be upended in the next 24 hours, we might never be able to sleep. 

Some disasters are unavoidable. Others, however, are set in motion by willful ignorance. 

For example, an acquaintance of mine was hospitalized for eight days due to a health-related condition that he'd ignored. It almost cost him his life. When I spoke with him afterwards, his sage advice was this: "Don't ignore the signs."

Disasters (generally) don't just happen. Whether running a country or just taking care of your own day-to-day health--both physical and mental--you usually have clues when things need to be addressed.  

* * * 

All these things reminded me of the Rolling Stones hit single, "Mother's Little Helper".

     "Kids are different today, " I hear every mother say
     Mother needs something today to calm her down
     And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill
     She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper

And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day  

The song is about pill-popping as a way of escape. Of course there are other ways people self-medicate, choosing to avoid rather than face issues. The end result, whether it's a car, a business, your health or a relationship, is a breakdown.

* * * 

Life is hard, and knowledge can be painful. How we choose to address all the issues that we grapple with is up to us.  

One useful starting point might be what is known as The Serenity Prayer.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept   

the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can, 

And wisdom to know the difference.”