Friday, January 27, 2012
More on RWE and us
".....Wise and virtuous, loving, sincere, honorable, self-reliant, self-disciplined, generous, and nonviolent. Such a person acts responsibly and reasonably, and does what needs to be done. He or she is capable of governing himself or herself, not only morally but also politically.
That conclusion was taken for granted by the Founding Father of the United States, and it underlay all of Emerson's philosophy. Only self-governing (i.e., self-reliant, self-disciplined) people are able to be self- governing in the political sense. A democracy ignores that absolutely basic and eternal truth at peril to its very existence. Now, when so much of American culture is based on greed, self-indulgence, ignorance, and viciously destructive passion, we must understand that a nation in which a majority of the people is enslaved and degraded by such a culture will automatically lose its ability to govern itself democratically."
-from the introduction to "SELF-RELIANCE, the Wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson as inspiration for daily living" by Richard Whelan. published by Bell Tower, 1991.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
From "Nature" VIII
 |
| An essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published 1836. |
"Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then that the world exists for you........Build therefore your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in all things will attend the influx of the spirit........As when the summer comes from the south, the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its own ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, and warm hearts, and wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Monday, January 16, 2012
From "Nature" I-IV
"To go into solitude man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me."
"The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth become part of his daily food."
"Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result."
"Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors seem ridiculous."
"The wind and the waves", said Gibbon, "are always on the side of the ablest navigator" So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven.
"Nothing Divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive."
"il piu nel uno." Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace."
"The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.....new imagery is created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed when there is no currency in the vaults"
"The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. "Thus the whole is greater than it's part"; reaction is equal to action"; "The smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time"
"A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text."
"Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they are to be executed."
"In like manner, what good heed, nature forms in us! She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea and her nay, nay."
"Nothing in nature is exhausted in it's first use. When a thing has served and end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior motive."
"Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is absolute truth. They break, chop, impoverish it. An action is the perfection and publication of a thought"
Where's Waldo (R.W.E.)
Nature in the common sense, refers to the essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.
-from the introduction to "Nature", Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836.
So then what is the "art of man"?
Have the essences of nature been affected? Emerson thought this not possible, and in fact many people today stand in this same attitude, even while they are unable to swim in polluted waters or breathe the air of their city or eat the fruit from the trees with out fear of cancers. Many of those same people who would say that we are meant to use the earth are the support of those who poison it, disfigure it, and mine it to the point that we no longer know what to expect from it, other than catastrophe, cataclysm and disease.
Where is Emerson to stop the oceans rise, and the temperatures increase, and to make the stronger hurricanes and droughts go back to the way they were by speaking aloud his words that man can only make art and not affect the rest of nature?
Maybe the essence if these things is still there, maybe he was right. Maybe part of the essence of "space, the air, the river, the leaf" was always with potential to destroy us. Maybe we are just exposing another dimension of Nature by the way we interact with it, make use of it, experience it, define it.
If nature refers to those "essences unchanged by man" and art refers to the mixing of man's will with nature then it seems that art is self destruction, slow and steady, not just for the individual, for that is in the domain of nature, but for the entirety of the race.
Making a fortune by tearing of the top of a mountain to mine coal does not elevate the mine owner, it just lowers the mountain top.
making a fortune by providing energies to people that causes their ill health and death does not elevate the CEO or the board members, or the share holders, it just puts the dead beneath their feet.
Amassing great territories by marching armies into other lands does not elevate the country, it just puts the indigenous on their knees or in the ground.
A good farmer is not measured by the amount of weeds he can kill or cut down, but by the abundance of fruit he can nurture from the earth, not once but over a lifetime.
Industrial agriculture is no great invention. It's measure can be equalled to that of a bird that eats a seed and leaves it as part of it's eliminations. From that grows a tree. But the bird is no farmer.
The amount of time that industrial agriculture has been successful is but a moment and by definition it is not sustainable. This is not farming. It will not last, it is not lasting. The only crop industrial agriculture grows is profit for the corporations.
The same can be said of fossil fuel and our current definitions of energy. A person could sit on the edge of a volcano and wait for the eruption to catapult him thru space to his destination. Our use of petroleum and coal and uranium and gas is just as explosive, destructive, self destructive and resultant in corruption of the rest of our environment.
We look for "answers" in technology and innovation. We need only look back and in the mirror to see a sustainable, harmonious, and sane alternative. We gave up an amazing gift and relationship with the rest of the earth when we let go the reins of the horse, mule, ox, and dog. We set ourselves on a course of solitude and degeneration when we traded the calories of energy in our body for that in buried deep in the earth. We fail to see the sun for all it's brightness and warming and feeding of the plant world. We fail to see the rest of living creation as an on going story that is ours to be a part of and instead burn it up, blow it up, pile it up and go searching for more as the supplies grow short.
When one lives in the woods it makes sense to burn wood from the fallen trees. When one lives near the sea or a lake it seems reasonable to be a fisherman. When one lives in the desert it seems sensible to seek shade in the heat of day. How have we lost or ability to make sense of our world, or situations?
Man's will being put upon nature seems to be more hubris than art. Art, as I see it, is man finding his path in, and as part of nature, and the expression of his appreciation of that journey and place.
-from the introduction to "Nature", Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836.
So then what is the "art of man"?
Have the essences of nature been affected? Emerson thought this not possible, and in fact many people today stand in this same attitude, even while they are unable to swim in polluted waters or breathe the air of their city or eat the fruit from the trees with out fear of cancers. Many of those same people who would say that we are meant to use the earth are the support of those who poison it, disfigure it, and mine it to the point that we no longer know what to expect from it, other than catastrophe, cataclysm and disease.
Where is Emerson to stop the oceans rise, and the temperatures increase, and to make the stronger hurricanes and droughts go back to the way they were by speaking aloud his words that man can only make art and not affect the rest of nature?
Maybe the essence if these things is still there, maybe he was right. Maybe part of the essence of "space, the air, the river, the leaf" was always with potential to destroy us. Maybe we are just exposing another dimension of Nature by the way we interact with it, make use of it, experience it, define it.
If nature refers to those "essences unchanged by man" and art refers to the mixing of man's will with nature then it seems that art is self destruction, slow and steady, not just for the individual, for that is in the domain of nature, but for the entirety of the race.
Making a fortune by tearing of the top of a mountain to mine coal does not elevate the mine owner, it just lowers the mountain top.
making a fortune by providing energies to people that causes their ill health and death does not elevate the CEO or the board members, or the share holders, it just puts the dead beneath their feet.
Amassing great territories by marching armies into other lands does not elevate the country, it just puts the indigenous on their knees or in the ground.
A good farmer is not measured by the amount of weeds he can kill or cut down, but by the abundance of fruit he can nurture from the earth, not once but over a lifetime.
Industrial agriculture is no great invention. It's measure can be equalled to that of a bird that eats a seed and leaves it as part of it's eliminations. From that grows a tree. But the bird is no farmer.
The amount of time that industrial agriculture has been successful is but a moment and by definition it is not sustainable. This is not farming. It will not last, it is not lasting. The only crop industrial agriculture grows is profit for the corporations.
The same can be said of fossil fuel and our current definitions of energy. A person could sit on the edge of a volcano and wait for the eruption to catapult him thru space to his destination. Our use of petroleum and coal and uranium and gas is just as explosive, destructive, self destructive and resultant in corruption of the rest of our environment.
We look for "answers" in technology and innovation. We need only look back and in the mirror to see a sustainable, harmonious, and sane alternative. We gave up an amazing gift and relationship with the rest of the earth when we let go the reins of the horse, mule, ox, and dog. We set ourselves on a course of solitude and degeneration when we traded the calories of energy in our body for that in buried deep in the earth. We fail to see the sun for all it's brightness and warming and feeding of the plant world. We fail to see the rest of living creation as an on going story that is ours to be a part of and instead burn it up, blow it up, pile it up and go searching for more as the supplies grow short.
When one lives in the woods it makes sense to burn wood from the fallen trees. When one lives near the sea or a lake it seems reasonable to be a fisherman. When one lives in the desert it seems sensible to seek shade in the heat of day. How have we lost or ability to make sense of our world, or situations?
Man's will being put upon nature seems to be more hubris than art. Art, as I see it, is man finding his path in, and as part of nature, and the expression of his appreciation of that journey and place.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Sauntering
Thoreau had Walden and I have my woods and my pond too. I have cleared a path to get to the edge of the pond. The storms of the past year have taken down many trees and laid them about like piles of twigs.
At the waters edge there are stumps of small trees where they were all taken down, about a foot and a half above the ground. This was not the work of an early freak snow, or the strong winds that took the large trees. The chips on the ground and the pointy tops of the stumps tell the story, and if that isn't enough a walk to the south end of the pond reveals the lodge of the beaver who fell all those trees and took them there to build his home
.
Some creature jumps in the water just ahead of me, always just before I can see who it is. The ice that is covering most of the pond pops and booms as the sun and the changing level of the pond have there affect on it. The ground around the pond is muddy in the middle of the day but frozen in the mornings and I often cross small feeds into the pond as the water works it's way down from the hills around us.
I have seen ducks and geese, hawks and eagles. Of course there are also the deer and I am told that there are otters and mink in our little world here, though I never seen them. I haven't seen the beaver yet either, but I know he is there.
For some, long walks, never retracing steps but ever taking new ones are the only worthy walks. I think that each moment is new and thus we can never really repeat a step, or take the same walk twice. I also believe that there are some who don't even have the ability to stand or maybe don't even have two feet to stand upon, who take great voyages, new steps, walks to the holy land of the spirit and mind. They go where most of us fear to tread and turn back from when faced with some mysterious fork in a road.
I understand Stephen Hawking just turned 70 years old. He has travelled to places most of us will never dare to go, and all from the chair that anchors his body to the ground. Some very large distances can be travelled in short walks, and even from not walking at all.
As the cold gets deeper and the ice thicker and snow covers the ground I hope to continue on "a la sainte terre". All around us is holy land and to tread upon it, reverent and joyful both, is an act of gratitude, or at least it can be, and should be.
At the waters edge there are stumps of small trees where they were all taken down, about a foot and a half above the ground. This was not the work of an early freak snow, or the strong winds that took the large trees. The chips on the ground and the pointy tops of the stumps tell the story, and if that isn't enough a walk to the south end of the pond reveals the lodge of the beaver who fell all those trees and took them there to build his home
.
Some creature jumps in the water just ahead of me, always just before I can see who it is. The ice that is covering most of the pond pops and booms as the sun and the changing level of the pond have there affect on it. The ground around the pond is muddy in the middle of the day but frozen in the mornings and I often cross small feeds into the pond as the water works it's way down from the hills around us.
I have seen ducks and geese, hawks and eagles. Of course there are also the deer and I am told that there are otters and mink in our little world here, though I never seen them. I haven't seen the beaver yet either, but I know he is there.
For some, long walks, never retracing steps but ever taking new ones are the only worthy walks. I think that each moment is new and thus we can never really repeat a step, or take the same walk twice. I also believe that there are some who don't even have the ability to stand or maybe don't even have two feet to stand upon, who take great voyages, new steps, walks to the holy land of the spirit and mind. They go where most of us fear to tread and turn back from when faced with some mysterious fork in a road.
I understand Stephen Hawking just turned 70 years old. He has travelled to places most of us will never dare to go, and all from the chair that anchors his body to the ground. Some very large distances can be travelled in short walks, and even from not walking at all.
As the cold gets deeper and the ice thicker and snow covers the ground I hope to continue on "a la sainte terre". All around us is holy land and to tread upon it, reverent and joyful both, is an act of gratitude, or at least it can be, and should be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)