November 27, 2010
What is missing?
We are destroying our planet, our world,
our home. And yet, we are not reacting,
or at least not reacting at all to the extent
needed to save it and ourselves. Why is this
happening? What is missing inside of us?
We, in the West, are not lost, violent souls,
said T. S. Eliot, in 1925. Rather, we whisper
in vacuous conformity:
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.” 1
Something happened to the mind
of England, said Eliot, between the
time of John Donne (1572-1631) and
that of Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892):
“(Let us look at) the poets of the 17th century [up to the Revolution (1688)], . . . and . . . consider whether their virtue was not something permanently valuable, which subsequently disappeared, but ought not to have disappeared . . . The poets of the 17th century . . . possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience . . . In the 17th century, a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered . . . While the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude.” 2
Committing violence corrodes the soul of
the perpetrator. When, in 1603, Queen
Elizabeth having died childless, King James VI
of Scotland ascended the English throne, the
only colony England had was Ireland. By
1625, when the King died, England had
colonial footholds in India, the Caribbean
and North America. The British Empire
was beginning to shape the world. 3
The people of England paid dearly.
The gaiety, spontaneous joie de vivre
which had prevailed was now inimical
to the prosaic concerns of Empire. 4
In 1618, English poet Richard Corbett
(1582-1635), then Royal Chaplain, later
Bishop of Oxford, and then of Norwich,
wrote about the disappearance of fairies:
“Witness those rings and roundelays,
Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary’s days
On many a grassy plain.
But since of late Elizabeth
And later James came in,
They never danced on any heath
As when the time had been.” 5
Fairies are a metaphor for the imagination.
They are the inner source of art, myth, poetry
and music. They stand for ways of seeing
and being which cross inner thresholds, and
thereby expand consciousness. They are the
expression of spirit. They open the eye of
the heart to a world which is personified,
animated, alive, and, therefore, magical –
a world whose intrinsic value engenders
awe and respect. They align our lives with
the Tao – that unfathomable river of nature. 6
The enchantment of life is like a sea whose
ever-changing hues scintillate as it plays
with the shores of infinite
possibility. 7
If, around this pivotal time of early
modernity in the West, history eviscerated
something wondrous inside us, then surely
capitalism must be a prime suspect.
Capitalism drove Empire. The Reformation,
the rise of nationalism and the increasing
application of common law added to the mix.
Private production for profit, in England,
started around 1150, when the moneyed
class began both “enclosing” (privatizing) village
commons, and expropriating small farmers,
to convert the land into highly profitable
large-scale sheep farms. The process peaked
around 1675, and continued until around
1845, at which time essentially no more
land was held in common, and small farmers
had been forced into the swelling ranks of
landless employed labor in urban factories. 8
In 1694, the creation of the Bank of England,
privately owned, established capitalism as
an economic system on a large scale. 8
It surely takes an enormous contraction of the
spirit to be able to take orders from another
throughout all of one’s working life, and a
similarly heroic contraction to adapt to being
alienated from nature for one’s whole life.
In 1751, walking among the graves of the poor,
English poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771) observed:
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble
strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.” 9
In 1838, Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
published Oliver Twist. 10
In 1906, Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
published The Jungle. 11
In 2010, torture is making a come-back.
. . .
Back in 1790, William Blake (1757-1827)
had penned:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed,
Everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” 12
And, in 1624, John Donne had written:
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” 13
That is what is missing.
Notes
1. Eliot, T. S., 1925. “The hollow Men.” (Poem), p. 1.
2. Eliot, T. S., 1921. “The metaphysical Poets,” pp. 6 and 8. The “Glorious” Revolution of 1688, consisted of the overthrow of King James II of England by English Parliamentarians allied with William of Orange of Holland. William ascended the English throne as William III of England together with his wife, Mary II of England.
3. McIntosh, Alastair. 2008. Hell and high water – climate change, hope and the human condition. Edinburgh, UK: Birlinn, p. 144.
4. McIntosh, Alastair. 2008. Hell and high water – climate change, hope and the human condition. Edinburgh, UK: Birlinn, p. 152.
5. Corbett (or Corbet), Richard, 1618. “A proper new Ballad entitled The Fairies’ Farewell.”
[Queen Mary I of England (1516-1558) reigned from 1553 to 1558. Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) reigned from 1558 to 1603. King James I of England (1566-1625) reigned from 1603 to 1625].
6. McIntosh, Alastair. 2008. Hell and high water – climate change, hope and the human condition. Edinburgh, UK: Birlinn, p. 152.
7. McIntosh, Alastair. 2008. Hell and high water – climate change, hope and the human condition. Edinburgh, UK: Birlinn, p. 156.
8. McMurtry, John. 1998. Unequal freedoms – the global market as an ethical system. Toronto,
ON, Canada: Garamond.
Summarized in Francoise Hall, 2009. “The
Ethics of global Capitalism.” May 4 (76 pages, unpublished), p. 68.
9. Gray, Thomas, 1751. “Elegy written in a
Country Churchyard.” (Written in the graveyard of the Church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire),
pp. 2-3. (“Madding” means frenzied, not
maddening. See Grammar Tip of the Day, 2009).
10. Wikipedia, 2010. “Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist.”
11. Wikipedia, 2010. “Upton Sinclair, Jr.”
12. Blake, William, 1790. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Illuminated Book), pp. 9-10.
13. Donne, John, 1624. Devotions upon emergent Occasions and several Steps in my Sickness. Mediation XVII, pp. 1-2.
References
Principal Reference:
McIntosh, Alastair. 2008. Hell and high water – climate change, hope and the human condition. Edinburgh, UK: Birlinn.
Other References:
Blake, William, 1790. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Illuminated Book).
http://www.gailgastfield.com.mhh/mhh.html. Accessed November 28, 2010.
Corbett (or Corbet), Richard, 1618. “A proper new Ballad entitled The Fairies’ Farewell.” (Poem).
http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367. Accessed November 26, 2010.
Donne, John, 1624, “Devotions upon emergent Occasions and several Steps in my Sickness.” Mediation XVII, pp. 1-2.
http://www.online-literature.com/donne/409. Accessed November 26, 2010.
Eliot, T. S.,
1921. “The metaphysical Poets.”
http://personal.centenary.edu/~dhavird/TSEMetaPoets.html. accessed November 26, 2010.
1925. “The hollow Men.” (Poem).
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784. Accessed November 27, 2010.
Grammar
Tip of the Day, 2009.
“Madding Crowd v. maddening Crowd.” January.
http://gtotd.blogspot.com/2009/01. Accessed
November 28, 2010.
“Unlike ‘maddening,’ which describes the
effect on the observer, ‘madding’ (= frenzied) describes the crowd itself. Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’
helped establish the idiom.”
Gray, Thomas, 1751. “Elegy written in a
Country Churchyard.” (Written in the graveyard of the Church in Stoke Poges,
Buckinghamshire). (Poem). The Thomas Gray Archive.
http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc. Accessed November 26, 2010.
Hall, Francoise, 2009. “The Ethics of global
Capitalism.” May 4 (76 pages, unpublished), p. 68. (See McMurtry 1998).
Hoerrner, Mark, 2006. “Donne’s Mediation XVII emphasizes universal Connection.” Buzzle.com. July 28, p. 1.
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-28-2006-100712.asp. Accessed November 26, 2010.
Indiana State University, undated. “John Donne – Mediation XVII.”
http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND. Accessed November 26, 2010.
Lucid Café, 1995. “Elizabeth I, Queen of England.”
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95sep/elizabeth.html. Accessed November 29, 2010.
McMurtry, John. 1998. Unequal freedoms – the global market as an ethical system. Toronto,
ON, Canada: Garamond.
Summarized in Francoise Hall, 2009. “The
Ethics of global Capitalism.” May 4 (76 pages, unpublished), p. 68.
Wikipedia, 2010.
“Bank of England.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 28, 2010.
“William Blake.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 28, 2010.
“Richard Corbett (or Corbet).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 26, 2010.
“Charles
Dickens.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 28, 2010.
“Charles
Dickens – Oliver Twist.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 28, 2010.
“John Donne.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 26, 2010.
“T. S. Eliot.” (1888-1965).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 26, 2010.
“English Reformation.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 28, 2010.
“Glorious Revolution.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 29, 2010.
“Thomas
Gray.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 26, 2010.
“James I of England.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 29, 2010.
“Mary I of England.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 28, 2010.
“Metaphysical Poets.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 27, 2010.
“Upton Sinclair, Jr.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 28, 2010.
“Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Accessed November 28, 2010.
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