Category Archives: history

Carl Sandburg and Greta Thunburg

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I forgot to append a Carl Sandburg poem yesterday to my musings about Greta Thunburg.  And I admit I am a bit sheepish as the poem likens her unto a weed, but I have a hunch she will readily identify and appreciate the “likening unto” a weed.  She is used to it.  She has always been different and has become accustomed to it  She and I have that in common…and I don’t think her “diagnosis” is far removed from mine.  Perhaps more on that later.

Greta is accustomed to being “out there.”  And the awareness of being “out there” can be so terrifying that one is driven into a pathological orientation to life. It can drive one into such a radical estrangement that one feels the world is “out to get me” and thus something to be fearful of; this is paranoia.  This paranoia can find expression so readily in political and religious orientations, always pitting one view of the world against the rest of the world.  This profound distrust fails to realize that we can never escape the reality that we are in and of the same world and the attempt to escape this realization is at our own peril.  The “them” that we loathe is “us.”

Please read this beautiful wisdom from Carl Sandburg:

There is a desperate loveliness to be seen
In certain flowers and bright weeds on certain planets.
With the weeds I have held long conversations
And I found them intelligent
Even though desperate and lovely.
The flowers however met me with short spoken.
“Yes” and “No” and “Why” were their favorite words,
And they had other slow monosyllables.
They seemed to find it more difficult
Than the gaudy garrulous bright weeds
To be intelligent, desperate, and lovely.
Take a far journey now, my friend, to certain planets.
Meet then certain flowers and bright weeds and ask them
What are the dark winding roots of their desperate loveliness.
See whether you bring back the same report as mine.
See whether certain long conversations
And certain slow practices monosyllables
Haunt you and keep coming back to haunt you.
For myself, my friend, I have come to believe on certain planets anything can happen.

(“Bright Conversations with Saint Ex” by Carl Sandburg)

 

 

Autocracy Can Resolve Political Conflict!!!

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The political divide in my country is greater than I’ve ever seen, the result of long-standing tensions that found expression in the election of Trump to the presidency.  There are many dimensions of this division but in my estimation the key issue is perspective on life itself.  Some conservatives are rigidly sure that there is only one way to view the world, the “right way,” and it “just happens” to be their way.  On the other hand, progressives are more open-minded, seeing the world as fluid and less rigidly defined.  This viewpoint also is often held very rigidly in spite of announced beliefs of open-mindedness, failing to appreciate the value of a conservative approach to life.  The conservative resistance to change and the progressive insistence on change are contrasting approaches to life, both of which are necessary for any group, i.e. “tribe”, to function.  When the tension between these two social impulses becomes to great violence can erupt if wise and astute leadership is not available in the tribe.

Perspective is merely a view of the world, best illustrated with the old image of, “Do you see the glass half empty or half full?”  This question is a simple illustration that what is going on in the depths of one’s heart can influence how he interprets even a simple thing like the fullness or a glass of water not to mention more weightier issues such as immigration or abortion.  The problem arises only when those who are “half fullers” become adamant in their position while “half-emptiers” are equally adamantine. In gridlock such as this, perspective has become a tyrant and it is tyranny of this sort that led to the Civil War in 1861.

A philosopher once noted, “You cannot have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it.”  Implicit in this wisdom is the understanding that regardless of how certain one might be about his view of the world, it is possible to stand back a bit and mull over the possibility that someone might see things differently.  This involves respect for other people, for “the Other,” and if this respect is lacking conflict will emerge.  Sometimes the solution that arises to alleviate this conflict is tyranny as one side of the issue is able to manage political and social power to the point that the alternative viewpoint is squashed.  For this reason an autocratic regime systematically attempts to repress dissent.

A caveat is here in order.  I have here presented a perspective on a complicated matter, a perspective on perspective itself.  I bring the same “skewed” view of the world to everything I post here and to everything I think and say in my day-to-day life.  There are many good and wise people who do not have this view of the world.  The problem arises only when one “skewed” view of the world usurps power and attempts to squash other “skewed” views of the world.  If this power grab is successful, the result will be the aforementioned autocratic state.

Thomas Mann Offered Prophetic Word to the U.S. in 1947

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Literature can be a portal into the human soul.  As the current political and cultural drama continues to unfold in my country, it has been so interesting to stumble across observations from ancient…and not so ancient…cultures whose insights were so relevant to what is unfolding now in the American psyche.  The human soul is constant.  It never changes.  Oh yes, the historical moment changes but the human response to circumstances of any moment always reveal common themes.  Here I wish to share a lengthy excerpt from Thomas Mann’s 1947 novel, “Dr. Faustus,” which is very relevant to present day America:

We are lost…the war is lost; but that means more than a lost campaign, it means that in very truth WE are lost: our character, our cause, our hope, our history.  It is all up with Germany, it will be all up with her.  She is marked down for collapse, economic, moral, political, spiritual, in short all-embracing, unparalleled, final collapse.  I suppose I have not wished for it, this that threatens, for it is madness and despair.  I suppose I have not wished for it because my pity is too deep, my grief and sympathy are with this unhappy nation, when I think of the exaltation and blind ardour of its uprising, the breaking out, the breaking up, the breaking down, the purifying and fresh start, the national new birth of ten years ago, that seemingly religious intoxication—which then betrayed itself to any intelligent person for what it was by its crudity, vulgarity, gangsterism, sadism, degradation, filthiness, ah how unmistakably it bore within itself the seeds of this whole war!  My heart contracts painfully at the thought of that enormous investment of faith, zeal, lofty historic emotion; all this we made, all this is now puffed away in a bankruptcy without compare.  No, I surely did not want it, and yet—I have been driven to want it, I wish for it today and will welcome it, out of hatred for the outrageous contempt of reason, the vicious violation of truth, the cheap, filthy backstairs mythology, the criminal degradation and confusion of standards, the abuse, corruption, and blackmail of all that was good, genuine, trusting, and trustworthy in our old Germany.  For liars and lickspittles mixed us a poisonous draft and took away our senses.  We drank—for we Germans perennially yearn for intoxication—and under its spell, through years of deluded high living, we committed a superfluity of shameful deeds, which now must be paid for…with with despair.  (Thomas Mann, “Dr. Faustus”)

The Commies are Coming, the Commies are Coming!!!

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I had a scary dream last night in which the communists were in an adjoining room…to my left (symbolizing the unconsciousness).  I was horrified that they had “infiltrated” and aroused “penetration phobia” that was so frightening that I cried out in my sleep and my wife had to rouse me.  This is clearly a dream that draws on fears from my early youth when the Communist menace was the “fear de jour” in my American culture.  I listened to horrifying sermons lamenting the “Communist menace” and warnings that even a next door neighbor might be part of a “sleeper cell.”  And, yes, this fear was augmented by warnings that those “damn liberals” (‘dang liberals’, back then) were seeking to destroy our faith and facilitate the onslaught of “Godless communism.”

This culture of fear shaped my life and this dream reflects that the fear core in my heart has not yet by been eased by the promise of Jesus that “perfect love casteth out fear.”  Fear is an elemental dimension of life, an expression of our realization on some primitive level of just our vulnerable we are.  But instead recognizing and confronting the fear-base that drives us it is so much easier to see the embodiment of our fear “out there” in some person or group of persons.  This blindness to our unconsciousness succeeds in helping us avoid our fears but the price tag is that our judgment is horribly impaired.  Oh, sure, Communism was antithetical to our American way of life but now in hindsight historians tell us that the “threat” was gravely exaggerated, costing billions of dollars and untold loss of life.

So, what am I afraid of?  I don’t know for sure what it is but it will be some expression of vulnerability…perhaps even the grim reaper himself!  But if I keep listening to my dreams, having curiosity about life, and paying attention I will eventually have some inkling of what it is.  And whatever “it” is, once resolved there will be another fear to take its place which will tyrannize me less as I continue to discover that these fears are alleviated when I have the courage to face them boldly.