Before we go on with the third of the operas in Wagner’s vast tetralogy The Nibelung’s Ring, I’d like to take a moment to talk a little about my trolls. Yes, this sequence of posts has gotten a fair amount of trolling, and I’m sorry to say that none of it has been interesting enough to put through. Nearly all of it, to be precise, is obsessed with the notion that Wagner can’t possibly have intended the economic and political subtexts that I’ve discussed here.
I note with some amusement that when George Bernard Shaw discussed these same subtexts more than a century ago in The Perfect Wagnerite, his acclaimed commentary on The Ring, he got exactly the same ignorant arguments flung at him by the trolls of his day. (I’ve wondered now and then, in fact, if any of my trolls might be descendants of one or more of Shaw’s.) Be that as it may, Wagner himself laid out this interpretation in detail in his letters, and every serious student of Wagner’s ideas accepts that he had these things in mind when he wrote The Ring. Doubtless that won’t have any influence on those who can’t be bothered to do their own research, or even read the earlier posts in this sequence, but that can hardly be helped.
For those who take seriously the world of ideas that Wagner described in his letters and Shaw set out imperfectly in his commentary, on the other hand, the action of The Ring is moving toward a tremendous crisis as the orchestra warms up for the opening bars of Siegfried. In the world of myth and folktale, in the interval between The Valkyrie and Siegfried, Wotan’s hapless daughter Sieglinde made her escape to the depths of a trackless forest, where she met Mime the Nibelung, Alberich’s weak brother. There she gave birth to the child she conceived with her brother Siegmund, and died.
Mime—remember that his name is pronounced “Meemeh,” he’s not one of those silent performers in white facepaint—takes care of the child, Siegfried, and raises him to young manhood. This isn’t an act of ordinary mercy, for Mime is far from alone in the forest. In a cave in the forest’s depths dwells Fafner, the giant we met back in The Rhinegold. Fafner has used magic to turn himself into a dragon, and guards the golden hoard he won from the gods, including the Ring. He doesn’t do anything with any of it. “Ich lieg und besitz—lasst mich schlafen” is his motto: very roughly, “I keep what I have—let me sleep.”
Mime has no intention of letting him sleep. He wants the treasure of the Nibelungs for himself, but he doesn’t have anything like the courage and strength he would need to confront a dragon. That’s Siegfried’s job. Mime has raised him for the sole purpose of killing the dragon, after which Mime intends to take everything for himself. As we’ll see, the Nibelung is not planning on letting Siegfried survive the fight with the dragon for one minute longer than necessary. He has no love to spare for his fosterling; to him, Siegfried is an instrument, to be used for a single purpose and then discarded.
Nor does Siegfried have any love for Mime. When we first see Wotan’s grandson, he is driving a bear ahead of him as a practical joke, to terrify Mime. He loathes the little Nibelung, and in the first scene he extracts by raw force the secret of his origin and the names of his parents from Mime, who had hidden these things from him until that moment. Learning that he is unrelated to Mime is a source of immense joy to Siegfried; all he wants from Mime thereafter is a repair job on his father’s broken sword, and then he plans on leaving Mime and the forest behind forever.
That is to say, Siegfried has had a ghastly childhood. His only exposure to love has come at a distance, from watching mother animals tending their offspring; such parenting as he received from Mime was aimed entirely toward preparing him to be exploited for Mime’s own purposes—and anyone who thinks a child will not pick up on this has never spent time around children. Our golden-haired hero is thus as loveless as he is fearless, and very nearly brainless into the bargain. He is guided wholly by his passions, and as we will see, he can be manipulated with perfect ease by those who know how to use those passions as levers.
It’s a harrowing portrait. What makes it all the more fascinating is that when Wagner wrote it, the study of child psychology was itself in its infancy, and only a few people had really begun to grasp the kind of damage that can be inflicted on a child who receives no affection at all in its early years. The staff in orphanages in his time were still baffled by the way that infants warehoused in their facilities would literally waste away and die for want of affectionate touch. The less immediately lethal phenomenon we may as well call “Siegfried syndrome,” the process by which emotional starvation in childhood can produce adults who are outwardly active, even robust, but have no inner life aside from passions and a few clichés picked up from their society, is still not as well understood by social psychologists as it was by Wagner.
It’s interesting to note in this context that Siegfried was evidently the inspiration for an entire industry of wild-children stories, generally featuring a child raised by animals. Mowgli, the hero of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and Tarzan of the Apes, the most famous creation of pulp writer Edgar Ruce Burroughs, are only the most famous nowadays of an ample crowd of such figures, and a glance at chronology shows that they began to appear in modern Western literature only after The Nibelung’s Ring became an iconic cultural phenomenon.
Nearly all these stories, however, went the opposite direction from Wagner. They glorified the experience of the wild child, using it to critique the society of their time by contrasting it with a supposedly more robust and healthy life in nature. The irony here is that this same period saw the first scientific studies of children who were raised by animals—it does happen now and again in isolated regions—which consistently found drastic developmental retardation in such children due to the lack of normal human socialization. The contrast here echoes a theme we’ve already discussed in this sequence of posts: the relationship between the dreams and the realities of Romantic politics.
The Romantic movement, as my readers will remember, embraced the notion that the steaming mess we call modern society is hopelessly unnatural, a breach in the normal and healthy order of things. Only the oppressive structures of politics, economics, and society, in this way of thinking, keeps the unnatural modern system in place. Break the grip of the system, the logic proceeds, and people will naturally revert to the better system that nature intends for them. That was the great vision of the Romantics, and of course it’s still a popular set of beliefs today—listen to any of the current neoprimitivists talking about the joys of hunter-gatherer society and you’ll get as fine an example of Romantic ideology as you could find in anything from Wagner’s day.
That’s what lies behind all those feral-child stories. Mowgli and Tarzan are Romantic heroes, raised wild and free in the world of nature rather than being forced into the dismal machinery of civilized childraising and schooling, and that’s why they’re portrayed as stronger, wiser, and better than other people. Tarzan in particular has become an archetypal presence in modern Western society, the apotheosis of Natural Man. He’s very nearly the only reason anybody remembers Edgar Rice Burroughs these days—Burroughs was a dreadful writer even by pulp standards, but he had a knack for catching culturally potent imagery and splashing it around with gusto, and those forms have outlived the clumsy prose in which they were first embodied.
The distance between Mowgli and Tarzan, on the one hand, and those unfortunate children who were actually raised by animals and thus never picked up such basic human skills as spoken language, on the other, is one measure of the yawning gap between Romantic fantasy and the sadly unromantic reality in which we find ourselves. Another can be spotted easily enough by seeing what happens in those cases—they are tolerably common—where some would-be educational reformer lets children run wild on the assumption that they will somehow get around to educating themselves.
As it happens, I spent most of four years in an elementary school run along those lines, one of many such experiments to pop up during the Sixties. I learned essentially nothing during those years other than how to hide from bullies. It was a profound relief for me to get back to an ordinary classroom in which a teacher maintained discipline and expected pupils to pay attention to lessons and learn from them. Mind you, there are plenty of problems with the standard model of education in America, and plenty of alternatives that do a better job of teaching children than that standard model does; some of these were influenced in one way or another by movements that spun off from the Romantic movement; but none of them give students a Siegfried education of the kind I briefly endured.
Wagner’s portrayal of Siegfried is thus edgy in one way when it’s taken literally, as a portrayal of the way a fairy tale situation would play out in the real world. It becomes even more edgy when Wagner’s philosophical and political subtext is kept in mind. Remember that in the Feuerbachian system Wagner constructed, the gods, giants, and Nibelungs all have a social meaning, and the process that gives rise to Siegfried can be mapped out in the social world of Wagner’s own time.
We traced the first steps in that process in the last two posts in this sequence. Wotan, who stands for the privileged intellectual classes of Wagner’s time, set in motion a project to seize the Ring for his own purposes, using poor Siegmund and Sieglinde for his cat’s-paws. That project failed, and an important part of that failure resulted from the blatantly transparent nature of Wotan’s manipulations. That played out, as we’ve seen, in the French Revolution and its aftermath, as intellectuals—Wagner among them—found that they could be called to account by the ruling classes for their attempts to incite revolution.
It’s what happened thereafter that guided Wagner in his precise and uncompromising portrayal of Siegfried. After the failure of the attempted European revolutions of 1848-1849, the spread of socialist ideas among a subculture of working-class agitators became the new hope of radical intellectuals across Europe. Some intellectuals dabbled, or more than dabbled, in the emerging socialist underground of the time—William Morris, whose role as one of the grand old men of English socialism has been mentioned already, is a good example here. Others simply watched and hoped. They dreamed that, while the ideal of liberty had been set aside for pragmatic reasons by the intellectual classes, it would be seized by working class radicals who would overthrow the system all by themselves.
That notion was a significant cultural force during the period from the 1850s through the First World War, and it left remarkably clear tracks through society and the arts. Consider one of the most popular poems in America during those years, Edwin Markham’s “The Man with the Hoe,” which appeared to instant acclaim in 1898 and made its author’s reputation as a serious poet back when that still counted for something. It was inspired by Millet’s then-famous painting of a blank-faced, slack-jawed rural laborer leaning on his hoe. You can read it here.
It’s a very strange poem, which combines apparent compassion and dehumanizing contempt for its subject in equal measure:
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Anyone who’s actually spent time around rural working class people knows just how utterly false Markham’s portrayal is. Rapture, despair, grief, hope, and all the other dimensions of the normal human condition were just as common among rural farmers, urban factory workers, and other members of the nineteenth century’s underclass as they were among privileged intellectuals of Markham’s own class. Eugene Genovese’s fine 1975 study Roll Jordan Roll: The World The Slaves Made is among other things a good counterweight to Markham’s fantasy, showing that even under actual slavery, people are capable of creating and transmitting culture, not to mention experiencing everything Markham insists they cannot experience.
Yet notions of Markham’s type pervaded intellectual culture during the years when Wagner’s operas dominated the musical scene—you can see it just as clearly in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, where the upper and lower classes appear as the beautiful and ineffectual Eloi and the brutal troglodytic Morlocks respectively. It fed the conviction, by turns horrified and ecstatic, that someday the dread Morlocks would surge up out of their subterranean crawlspaces and devour the beautiful Eloi once and for all. That’s in Markham’s poem too:
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God
After the silence of the centuries?
Keep in mind that Markham’s poem wasn’t read and celebrated in working class circles. It was among the intellectuals and the upper classes generally that this poem, and this kind of rhetoric more generally, was wildly popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Listen carefully and you can hear Wotan’s voice behind it all, and behind the conviction on the part of privileged radicals all through the same period that the coming social revolution would inevitably be followed by a transfer of power from “kingdoms and kings” to privileged radicals—after all, how could those brothers of the ox possibly govern themselves? Of course they would have to turn to the smartest people in the room to do it for them.
Those of my readers familiar with more recent forms of privileged radicalism can doubtless think of comparable attitudes, but we can leave that for now. The point I want to make here is that Wagner’s original version of The Ring, embodied in his early essay “The Nibelungen-Myth,” echoed that same vision in symbolic form. In the climactic scene of that sketch, Siegfried’s death and Brunnhilde’s self-sacrifice are followed by a vision in which she leads him to Valhalla, while the ring goes back to the Rhine. Siegfried’s death atones for the sins of the gods, and so Wotan’s castle in the air remains undimmed in its splendor as the curtain comes down.
At that stage of the composition, and for some time thereafter, Wagner still intended to call the climactic opera of the sequence The Death of Siegfried. It was only at a later stage that he retitled the final opera The Twilight of the Gods. That change was anything but arbitrary. It signaled his realization that the gods of his Feuerbachian pantheon, the ideals of nineteenth-century polite society and the intellectual classes that upheld them, were not going to be able to atone for their sins vicariously by offering up proletarian revolutionaries. They themselves were going to pay the price—and the proletariat was going to exact it.
JMG, Do you have any guesses as to what motivates the trolls to spend their time and limited intellectual horsepower trying to debunk the intellectual underpinnings of Wagners work?
Before I read this essay, I will predict that Siegfried represents un-High-Cultured barbarians. The commoners (Nibelungs) are not capable of deposing the ruling classes (giants) so they hope that barbarian warlords will depose them. But they actually look down on barbarous customs.
Wotan (the intelligentsia) has given up on using the working classes as his tools to gain control over the political-economic system, and sees tricking Siegfried into giving him the Ring after he slays Fafner as his last hope to build even grander sky castles than Valhala. If that fails, he wants Western civilization (including Valhala) to be destroyed. Better there should be no civilization than one that cannot ever be persuaded to adopt his vision.
Off to read the essay!
JMG, would these be real trolls or rent-a trolls? Have you reached such a level of influence that anyone might think it necessary to deploy rent-a-trolls against you?
I don’t know if you’ve read any of the Tarzan books (I read 21 of the 24 as a schoolboy) but the story is even dafter than Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.” Tarzan teaches himself to read in the jungle, having stumbled upon the lodgings of his murdered parents and discovered some books. When Jane appears he writes upon a piece of paper, “Me Tarzan.” Oh, and of course, he turns out to be a peer of the realm — Viscount Greystoke. The Africa portrayed is a complete figment of Burrough’s imagination. At least Kipling’s “Jungle Book” had some tenuous connection with India.
Hello JMG, excellent piece as always. I have been thinking about getting into that pulp fiction that you mention but do not know where to start. Any suggestions about where to find the good stuff? Authors I mean. Thanks and Merry Christmas.
For my previous comment, I shouldn’t have said Wotan’s hope was for the working classes (who would be Nibelungs) to slay Fafner, but rather violent radicals.
In today’s society, it’s good that our radicals fantasize about widespread violence in the future (Trump’s administration supposedly planning to go full Nazi or the Second Civil War that is always in the near future)
instead of commiting violence themselves.
I’m wondering if the goal of leftists praising the murderer Luigi Mangione is to inspire more fools into commiting similar crimes that they are not willing to do themselves (an intelligentsia agitation cycle like in your last post on The Valkyrie, that has already failed in its purpose but could provoke a crackdown on the far left’s internet venting priveleges).
Thanks for these essays. We do seem to be moving into Wagnerian times when the gods (America’s Oligarchs) face the consequences of their actions and inactions in a twilight they thought they could avoid.
I’ve got three college degrees and I work a blue collar job in a warehouse. I think you wrote about people like me in your “The King in Orange”. I do not anticipate any intellectuals working for my benefit. Not when they can schmooze for big money donations.
Still a great fan of Tarzan and The Jungle Book—I’m part wolf, after all :)—and got to admit that much of my life was spent in thrall to the “noble savage” fantasy that such portrayals draw from. But it ain’t no way to live.
Interesting to note that they perhaps derive from Wagner.
Axé
This week’s post is as good an explanation as any I have ever seen proferred on the Internet of the origins of the Marxist-Leninist notion of vanguardism. I would also go so far as to say that this whole series goes a long way towards illuminating why college-campus radicals more often than not turn out to be some very silly people who end up finding no social support for their faux idealism once they have to start dealing with the real world of post-college life.
Fixed the formatting mistake.
That was an unexpected take on Siegfried, who (so far) comes out more as a victim than a hero!
I suppose stories like Mowgli’s only work out when the non-human adoptive parents can speak and express human emotions… Another example of the kind from the period when Wagner was a household name would be Frank Baum’s Santa Claus novel. And a more recent one, though not so optimistic, occurs in Little, Big…
Lord of the Flies is a magisterial fiction imagining the most extreme form of cruelty applied by children to children. I also remembered the opening chapter of C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, which is not a particularly strong book, but describes an Experimental School with a lot of realism.
The novel written by middle class intellectuals and set among workers is a whole tradition of its own and has not (as far as I can tell) ever been enjoyed by members of the class it supposedly portrays. I am thinking e.g. of Gerhart Hauptmann’s Die Weber (The Weavers), which earned the author a Nobel Prize in literature and sympathy from the occupying Soviet forces in 1945, even though he had been a rather enthusiastic Nazi collaborator.
Was recently noticing that virtually all media portrayals of rural dwellers are some type of colorful dumbbells — the Clampetts, the “squeal like a pig” types, even Larry, Darryl & Darryl from Newhart comedy series. I understand there must be conflict in all theater, or you don’t have a plot, but these false portrayals have colored media since it’s been around. Rather like the man with the hoe painting affected its era.
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
May Kyle’s friend Amanda, who though in her early thirties just passed away from brain cancer, make her transition through the afterlife process with grace and peace.
May Daedalus/ARS receive guidance and finish his kundalini awakening, and overcome the neurological and qi and blood circulation problems that have kept him largely immobilised for several years; may the path toward achieving his life’s work be cleared of obstacles.
May David/Trubrujah’s 5 year old nephew Jayce, who is starting chemotherapy for leukemia on Monday 12/9, be healed quickly and fully, and may he, and mother Amanda, and their family find be aided with physical, mental, and emotional strength while they deal with this new life altering situation.
May baby Gigi, continue to gain weight and strength, and continue to heal from a possible medication overdose which her mother Elena received during pregnancy, and may Elena be blessed and healed from the continuing random tremors which ensued; may Gigi’s big brother Francis continue to be in excellent health and be blessed.
May Jennifer, whose pregnancy has entered its third trimester, have a safe and healthy pregnancy, may the delivery go smoothly, and may her baby be born healthy and blessed.
May Charlie the cat, who has been extremely sick and vomiting but whose owners can’t afford an expensive vet visit, be blessed, protected, and healed.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
May Annette have a successful resolution for her kidney stones, and a safe and easy surgery to remove the big one blocking her left kidney.
May Peter Evans in California, who has been diagnosed with colon cancer, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
May Jennifer and Josiah, their daughter Joanna, and their unborn daughter be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
May Ram, who is facing major challenges both legal and emotional with a divorce and child custody dispute, be blessed with the clarity of thought, positive energy, and the inner strength to continue to improve the situation.
May FJay peacefully birth a healthy baby at home with her loved ones. May her postpartum period be restful and full of love and support. May her older child feel surrounded by her love as he adapts to life as a big brother and may her marriage be strengthened during this time.
May all living things who have suffered as a consequence of Hurricanes Helene and Milton be blessed, comforted, and healed.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery to treat it.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, be healed of throat cancer.
Lp9’s hometown, East Palestine, Ohio, for the safety and welfare of their people, animals and all living beings in and around East Palestine, and to improve the natural environment there to the benefit of all.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Clay, I have no idea. It really seems like a silly way to spend one’s life.
Mary, I’ve had a few rent-a-trolls here from time to time, but they’re always focused on issues that matter to big corporations — I get pro-nuclear trolls from time to time, for example, trying to put lipstick on that particular glow-in-the-dark pig. I’m pretty sure these are common or garden variety trolls roaming out from beneath their bridges to yap and snarl at the rest of us.
AA. I could never stomach Burroughs’s writing. Even as pulp fiction, it’s pretty daft.
James, depends on what you want to read. These days Project Gutenberg has a fantastic amount of SF pulp, just for starters:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/68
As for The Jungle Book and the Tarzan books, those are all out of copyright and can also be downloaded free of charge:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/236
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=tarzan&submit_search=Go%21
Moonwolf8, yes, people like you are exactly who I had in mind when I wrote that book. The only reason I didn’t end up the same way is that (largely due to my late wife’s willingness to support us singlehandedly for a decade) I was able to launch a writing career and claw my way out. As for Wagnerian times — why, yes. I think you’ll recognize the events of the final opera.
Fra’ Lupo, oh, granted! I’m not a Tarzan fan but I’ve loved The Jungle Book since childhood. I just don’t mistake it for nonfiction.
Mister N, trust me, that has occurred to me as well!
Aldarion, so you’ve read The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus! I’m convinced that JRR Tolkien must have read it in boyhood — some of its themes run all through his fiction, starting with the theme of elf-human relations. As for the Experimental School in The Silver Chair, it was indeed realistic — I wished many a time that some armored Narnian warriors would come running through the playground, whacking brats right and left with the flat of their swords.
Elkriver, yep. I’ve said more than once that if you want to hear real, over-the-top hate speech, don’t waste your time with Klansmen and Nazis — get a bunch of upper middle class American liberals talking about rural working class white Americans.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Hi JMG and Fellow Readers,
As a farmer myself, on a small-scale farm where mechanization is not possible, I recognize the posture of the man in the painting. That is what we call a heart-attack break. The artists were very uneducated to call the implement a hoe as it is clearly a mattock, a heavy tool for the hardest sort of work.
As a farmer, I can only feel the deepest pity for office fauna as they will never know true joy or a true feeling of accomplishment. I can clearly see that farmer in the painting taking a moment to do the sophisticated calculations on how he will spend his energy to get the best results. I can see too the pride he takes in his work and the deep love he has for the land.
Maxine
Excellent post, JMG! I’ve greatly enjoyed this sequence so far.
When I watched Siegfried the first time, I thought it would be more dramatic if Siegfried did love Mime, or at least a false projection of Mime until he discovered Mime’s betrayal. That he picks up on the lack of love I get, but having seen this dynamic a few times in life, it seems more common for the child to internalize the idea that there is something wrong within themselves than to just hate their parent.
That wouldn’t necessarily comport with the Fuerbachian analysis, though, I’ll admit, but I have seen a raft of media from now-adult artists trying to work out their neuroses centering around perfectionism/narcissism/lack of relationship security stemming from having divorced, career-oriented parents who viewed their children as products or luxury goods instead of people.
Sorry about your school time, JMG! I remember reading C.S. Lewis’ description of Experiment House, Eustace Scrubb’s ‘bad’ school run by Lewis’ rhetorical strawmen. All the negative features about it were absolutely standard for public education in my experience, as well.
Hi JMG,
And here we come to some of the most puzzling characters in the cycle. Mime is the lower working class, the one who got driven by Alberich in the first part, the one Loge sympathised with. I will assume, he got the same treatment before the Ring was forged that Alberich did, then he gets enslaved by his brother, worked and beaten. He lives in Fafner’s shadow and dread and is looked down by everyone, when he is not downright ignored.
Then he gets Sigfried and raises him. Does Wagner ever say why Siglinde died? And Sigfried is loathsome. In his whole interaction with Mime he is just abusive. Mime is no innocent, he is trying to manipulate Sigfried the whole time, but Sigfried is not the one getting threatened with being beaten, slashed and mauled.
Did Wagner ever say what happened to Siglinde? How she died?
And rereading Sigfried; does Mime plan to kill Sigfried from the get go, or is he being manipulated by Wotan? He starts brewing the poison after Wotan said that Sigfried would kill him.
Best regards,
Marko
🐍Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!🎼
I wasn’t famiiar with the painting Man with a Hoe, so I looked it up at wikipedia. You can magnify it to a nice size to look at details.
In my younger years I worked in agriculture. I have spent days toiling under the blazing summer sun with a hoe. All the man in the painting is displaying is sheer exhaustion. He is leaning heavily on his implement and gasping for breath. I have done that very thing myself. The sweat runs down you while you take a moment to get your blood oxygen into your muscles that are screaming for it. While you are doing that you aren’t thinking about much of anything except breathing. The artist captured that moment quite well.
The odd interpretations of the image are only possible if the interpreter has never experienced exertion-induced muscle oxygen starvation [commonly known as work].
Hello JMG and kommentariat.
I’d like to repeat a question I asked you some weeks ago: What was the real relationship between Schopenhauer and Wagner? I mean if Richard Wagner read some Schopenhauer books in his youth, so Wokepedia…Wikipedia is right, or Wagner didn’t read anything of Mr,. Schopenhauer. I have this doubt. Thanks on advance for your answers.
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In this week post, you’ve written about feral childs in the Romantic fiction and sad reality. Well, in my country we’ve had a feral child real case, I don’t know if you knew it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcos_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Pantoja
AA #3 regarding the Tarzan books: Robertson Davies has a comment on these in his essay collection “One Half of Robertson Davies” – while he doesn’t claim that they have any particular literary merit, he says that the Tarzan books “have been the solace of many a poor brute whose family were apes in all but name.” That made sense to me and helps to explain why those stories resonate with people.
Hi John Michael,
Hmm. Usually within a larger narrative there is at least one protagonist worthy of the readers care and interest, but here with this lot, I’m struggling. They might all be bad apples!
Curiously, this raises an awful question – when the various groups involved in the ring narrative were single mindedly pursuing self interest, what were they all neglecting? Kind of makes you wonder about the current crop of elites, doesn’t it? 😉 Tolkien sort of addresses this notable lack and offers it as a sort of cloak of nobility for those who could do so.
I’d not heard of your experience at that school before (or had somehow forgotten). Hmm. Yes, it’s one of those episodes where the ideology all seems like a good idea at the time. I may have mentioned to you that I went to a similar school in years seven and eight? It was for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, and honestly I got the impression they were happy if you just turned up. Presumably the idea there was that kids would take in learning by some sort of weird osmosis methodology? A very strange time in my life… I got to experience the bullies when my grandfather stepped in and stumped the cash to go to a more English than the English grammar school. The transition from one culture to another was quite mind bending, but I was born with a flexible disposition having had to sort out things on my own from an early age. Also a good lesson to head to the local Dojo! 😉 A bit of middle ground wouldn’t have hurt, and at the time I was observing the adults and how they were acting, and wondered whether they could put self interest behind them. The expectation was perhaps a step too far. I’m sure you know the feeling?
Cheers
Chris
I will venture to say that “Rapture, despair, grief, hope, and all the other dimensions of the normal human condition were just as common among…” hunter gatherers, pastoralists, barbarians, tribal folk, and other such “wild” “feral” and “primitive” people as are fantasised about in such extravagant terms – as they are among urban workers, rural peasants and other underclass types that are also more fantasised about than “seen”.
And yet, it is also true to say that there are important things that can be learned from people of every different class and ethnicity of normal humans as have ever existed on earth.
None of us are born knowing everything, and yet we all (tolerably often) have some specific, local, insight that others might deem to be worth knowing, if they could only be bothered to notice, or ask.
The beauty and sheer power of the Ring Cycle will be appreciated, sometimes unwillingly, by humans as long as civilization persists….
Your comments about Mowgly and Tarzan remind me of a time in my life, when my daughter was, maybe, 3 years old , we hanged around some people who intended to raise their children with this sort of “non-interventionist, natural way”. In their view, their children were already perfect, pure and connected with “the source”. Their only task as parents was to keep them safe from harmful, “limiting” influences , and to “learn” from their children.
Everything their offspring did was by definition un-objectable, because it was “natural”, while on the other hand any attempt at teaching and educating was a catastrophic intervention, that will surely damage the child self-esteem and creativity forever. This last category included manners, respect for others and even basic cautionary advice, such as “be careful with the bike, dear”. No, they had no need for safety: those were the “fears” that adults project onto their children!
As the years rolled by, we watched the outcome of this policy among those same children and their parents, since we have plenty of common acquaintances. Many of them abandoned the method completely, once it became painfully clear to them that it produces children who don’t know how to behave, create problems wherever they go (as in, being thrown out of a restaurant…) and suffer nasty , easily preventable accidents. They also forgot that family life is, in the end, a matter of learning to live together, and it’s not that easy to be happy if you can’t go anywhere with your children without having them draw everyone attention. It strains the relationship. Not a very happy prospect…
For a more balanced portrayal of rural life, I recommend watching Clarkson’s Farm. British rednecks are weird but you could drop them into the middle of the average rural county here in Murica and they’d fit right in.
Oh, I think I understand the other side’s distaste for rednecks in general. But in this era, they happen to be one of the few sane groups of people left. They didn’t freak out over the v**cine, they generally say there’s only two genders, they have practical skills, etc. Much to be said for them in a world that’s falling apart.
Rock and roll is dead but country music is still alive. I go where I see the future going, shrug.
“the ideals of nineteenth-century polite society and the intellectual classes that upheld them, were not going to be able to atone for their sins vicariously by offering up proletarian revolutionaries. They themselves were going to pay the price—and the proletariat was going to exact it.”
I can’t help but think that the First World War was a way for the upper classes to cull the working classes to ensure they could be kept under control. Granted it did result in the Kaiser losing his throne and the Romanovs were toppled too but it was hardly a victory for the working classes. There was a brief break and then they were used as cannon fodder yet again in another World War. The people at the top changed but the inequalities remained the same.
Do you think Wagner modelled Siegfried from his revolutionary experiences? It seems plausible that a large number of disaffected youth would be produced by loveless childhoods; is there anything in Wagner’s writing to support that?
Also, I’m sorry about your school years. That seems like a horrible thing to do to a quiet autistic kid.
Fascinating John. Wagner is a deep critic of the modern world, using the world of myth to make the most effective criticism. As for the trolls, some people clearly have too much time on their hands.
‘…“Siegfried syndrome,” the process by which emotional starvation in childhood can produce adults who are outwardly active, even robust, but have no inner life aside from passions and a few clichés picked up from their society…’
Finally, a name for that phenomenon that I often find among the very-educated, upper-middle-class professional class and those who aspire to them. It’s shocking how many, even outwardly smart and accomplished ones, don’t seem to have inner lives at all. Often they are very “opinionated”, but it would be very generous to call what they have opinions. What they have, are just talking points fed to them by the media and their education system, and their respective reactions to the aforementioned talking points.
The Man with the Hoe is just tired as Mother Balance pointed out. I’ve been there myself, hoeing, shoveling snow, and splitting wood to name three events.
As for Hollywood and its rural stereotypes, the Clampetts at least started out as fish out of water types, except maybe Jethro. Jed though cleaned up on the city slickers at pool (just like ricochet shooting) and horse races.
Petticoat Junction had a fairly normal cast of characters. Green Acres on the other hand did not, but the big city lawyer rarely ended up looking competent.
I have no idea how the Woke are portraying the country side now. Certainly Seattle thinks little of the East Side. The movie “Tucker and Dale vs Evil” did flip the college kids meet murderous hillbillies trope on its head though, so maybe it’s not completely hopeless.
Poor zeek-lin-da. Mother dying in childbirth seems to be an unfortunate trope, and all too real at the time. Even Downton Abbey did that one.
Also, I think I’ve found Wagner’s position on revolutions in comic format:
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGes0lMJXcAAApYu.jpg
Maxine, exactly. The guy’s catching his breath after a round of hard work breaking up clods with a mattock. I’ve done exactly that when double-digging garden beds.
Sirustalcelion, oh, I had plenty of bad experiences with ordinary schooling. It’s just that the open concept experimental school was much worse. As for Siegfried and Mime, granted, but that wouldn’t have produced someone fearless enough to slaughter a dragon without a second thought…
Marko, according to the libretto Sieglinde died just after giving birth to Siegfried; Mime doesn’t mention the fine details but there are plenty of complications of childbirth that can kill a first-time mother, especially if the only person attending the birth lacks medical skills. As for Mime’s plans, that’s a good point; I assume that Mime had bad intentions all along, given the relationship between him and Siegfried.
Your Kittenship, I get the impression that most of three or four generations of Americans got introduced to Wagner by that cartoon…
Mother B, no argument there; as I mention in response to Maxine, I’ve had that experience. Too many intellectuals never have.
Chuaquin, I answered that in an earlier post:
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-nibelungs-ring-the-later-philosophy/
We’ll be returning to this theme in an upcoming post.
Yavanna, hmm! That makes sense. I read Robertson Davies for the first time a few months ago, btw, and was mightily impressed.
Chris, none of them are particularly impressive, though Brunnhilde rises to a certain degree of nobility by the end of the last opera. As for the elites, in and out of the opera, I think that’s part of Wagner’s point — and a central reason why everything comes crashing down in the final scenes.
Scotlyn, no argument there. It’s precisely the lack of willingness to listen to those outside their own bubble that dooms Wotan and the gods, not to mention certain other groups I could name.
Peter, I wish I could believe that. Once the living tradition of grand opera is broken — something I expect to happen within a few centuries at most — the Ring will be a dead letter. I imagine archeologists from a future civilization finding a miraculously preserved copy of the Georg Solti/Decca recording on vinyl, laboriously figuring out how to extract sound from it, and staring blankly at the incomprehensible noises coming out of the speakers. Grand opera is perhaps the most splendid flower of our civilization’s creative era, but it’s also one of the most fragile.
Guillem, you’ll be amused to learn that American occult teacher Manly P. Hall talks wryly about the same thing, which was quite popular in the New Thought scene in California between the two world wars.
Other Owen, I’m far from sure rock is dead; I met two of the musicians from the band Wicked the other day and listened to some of their music — released on vinyl, no less! — and it’s good solid rock. That said, I know a lot of rednecks, too, and they’re good people. (Even though I’m no fan of country music.)
Bridge, not true at all. The great crisis of European civilization between 1914 and 1954 brought down every government on the continent, bankrupted most of the wealthy classes, and allowed labor movements to force through reforms that were literally unthinkable in 1900. Granted, a lot of that ground has been lost since 1954, but liberty is never a static condition — it’s always either increasing or decreasing.
Kfish, that’s an interesting question to which I don’t know the answer, but it’s plausible enough. As for the school, thank you — yes, it was. Mind you, at that time nobody realized that there was such a thing as high functioning autism.
Raymond, oh, granted!
Carlos, that struck me as I was writing this post. I hope the term gets some use.
Siliconguy, last I heard the woke were still hyperventilating about Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, personally spanking each and every one of them. I hope she shows up one of these days or they’ll be very disappointed. As for death in childbirth, it was very common — about 2.5% of all births ended that way in the 19th century, and first-time mothers were far and away the most frequent victims.
Kfish, funny:
JMG: you wrote “Eugene Genovese’s fine 1975 study Roll Jordan Roll: The World The Slaves Made is among other things a good counterweight to Markham’s fantasy, showing that even under actual slavery, people are capable of creating and transmitting culture, …”.
Another interesting book that discusses many aspects of slavery is, ‘Down by the riverside : a South Carolina slave community’ by Charles Joyner (1984, University of Illinois Press; ISBN: 9780252013058 (ISBN10: 0252013050)). The book, drawing on multiple sources (including narratives from former slaves) makes note of various artistic and cultural activities and influences on society at large. While at times the book seems to be an apology for the institution of slavery, the final chapter makes clear that this in not the case.
JMG,
I’m amused indeed, and it supports my view that, starting from the 60’s,a lot of American social phenomena has been transfered to Spain, even if a lot of time has passed between the original phenomena and these second-hand rehashings. Guess they produced similar outcomes back on Manly.P. Hall times, right?
It’s also the part that Tolkien never touched, there was no working class revolution in Middle Earth, the Valar never got their comuppence (although they did fade from view), and I expect the world had to remain ordered according to class.
Of course, the new romantics loved it, and so do I, even though it’s so unrealistic.
John, I am sorry you had such a bad experience. Am I wrong is assuming that you recovered from it and survived?
I think the disdain that the cultured have for the uncultured has existed throughout the existence of both. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, there’s the character Enkidu, who was described as a ‘wild man’ or ‘man as he once was.’ Whereas Gilgamesh was descended from gods, Enkidu was made out of clay. He amuses himself by invading villages and tearing down their field boundaries and filling in their wells. He’s the original chaos bringer. He is finally ‘tamed’ by a temple priestess (prostitute, though it did not mean quite the same thing as it does today.) After the obvious appeal of sex, she introduces Enkidu to the cultured things of city life. She’s the girl who is attracted to tough guys but then expects to civilize them; introduce them to opera, for instance. Maybe even Wagner!
And the Latin word pagan originally just meant rural but became synonymous with primitive and uncivilized. Hilary Clinton insulting her detractors as deplorables comes to mind. I think that was even before woke became popular.
CS Lewis in the Screwtape Letters says the worst evil is done by “…quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.” A board room, faculty lounge, or political think tank in other words.
Hunter gatherers were far from primitive. They had the stories, traditions, and morality that made civilization possible. And of course, even today as in Mike Rowe’s ‘Dirty Jobs,’ it’s those deplorables who do all the dirty work that makes the cities, and our opera, etc., possible.
I would guess that it would do the shelled out remains of the Democratic Party some good to put down the Lattes, turn off “The View” and watch some reruns of the “Waltons”. For those not familiar, it depicted a large extended rural family, getting by, during the depression by small scale substance farming and wood cutting. Unlike the parodies of rural folk popular in urban areas they were depicted as hardworking, resourceful, loyal, contemplative and moral.
It does show us that during the intervening years how American society has changed because this was a popular show in the 1970’s to be replaced 40 years later by the Kardashians in the hearts of too many Americans.
PatriciaT, Genovese got the same kind of pushback. In point of fact, what he did was anything but an apology for slavery — rather, it was a testament to the power of the human spirit even under so brutally dehumanizing an institution.
Guillem, yes, indeed they did.
Peter, Tolkien was a passionate arch-conservative in politics and religion alike, so of course there was no social revolution in Middle-earth; au contraire, the “gatherers” and “sharers” under Lotho Sackville_Baggins’s regime were his way of talking about anything left of center. Note also that what puts Middle-earth back in order is the return of the rightful king. It’s quite remarkable that so many people on the left embraced Tolkien’s cosmos so uncritically!
Joni, oh, I survived, but I still have scars. (Literally — some of the beatings I suffered left physical traces I still have today.) As for Lewis’s vision, he was as usual channeling Chesterton:
“They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.”
(That’s from “The Secret People,” which you can read here.
Clay, oh, it happened much more quickly than that. The transition took place over a few years in the early 1980s, when John-Boy Walton was replaced by “material girl” Madonna, and most Americans cashed in their future for the sake of a few years of squalid prosperity. I’ve written about that at length here —
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2011/04/alternatives-to-nihilism-part-one-dog.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2011/04/alternatives-to-nihilism-part-two-lead.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2011/04/alternatives-to-nihilism-part-three.html
— but it deserves repetition. We still live in the shadow of the catastrophic failure of nerve that took place in those years.
Maxine Rogers, I enjoyed your response very much and agree with it. I just wanted to add that I was born on a farm, but was never a farmer and never really enjoyed digging in the dirt. (My chores were all taking care of the animals, which I loved.). But I get a wonderful sense of accomplishment every time I finish knitting a sweater, especially if I spun the yarn, or finish a sewing project. I can’t imagine working in an office and feeling no joy!
Also, just wanted to add that one of my grandsons, he’s 17 now, is totally devoted to Wagnerian opera and wants to go to Germany or Austria and watch the entire Ring cycle! He’s saving his money and is studying German. He’s very serious. He’ s very slightly on the spectrum and got interested in Wagner when he was 12 or 13. I am very proud of him.
Bridge–Don’t forget that WW I also killed off a large percentage of the elite–at the beginning of the war only gentlemen were considered suitable as officers and in trench warfare enough of those gentlemen died that the standards of commissions had to be lowered. In Great Britain one of the results of the war was the Old Age Pension. Suddenly people could actually retire rather than dying in harness. Then WW II was followed by the National Health.
The feral child fantasy seems to rely on the notion of animals, at least certain animals, having an actual language–thereby preparing the child to eventually learn human languages. The books that the young Tarzan taught himself from were children’s primers–illustrated alphabet books and stories. His parents had brought them on the doomed voyage because Lady Greystroke was pregnant. So, Tarzan reads English but does not speak it. When the Belgian expedition that includes Jane appears Tarzan learns French by eavesdropping, so he speaks but does not read Franch. The fictional great grey apes (not gorillas) who raise Tarzan not only have language but also other symbolic communication such as making music and dancing. Mowgli learns what seems to be a universal language of the animals, as the wolves who adopt him are able to speak to the tiger who wishes to eat him and later Mowgli is able to speak with the bear and other creatures–but I think he has to learn human speech by eavesdropping on the village of his birth.
There are many cultures that have legends of a time when humans could communicate with animals and of some crucial event that severs the ties.
Rita
JMG,
When you commented that you can “imagine archeologists from a future civilization finding a miraculously preserved copy of the Georg Solti/Decca recording on vinyl, laboriously figuring out how to extract sound from it, and staring blankly at the incomprehensible noises coming out of the speakers”, did you mean that the music itself, the Western chromatic scale/tonality will make no sense to them? I can imagine them recognizing it as music per se, but as to what it expresses, its supporting ideology, the emotions and passions it’s intended to evoke …. that could very well be lost of them in the same way that much of the meaning of Ancient Greek or Roman music or even Medieval music would be lost on me.
Thanks,
Will M
@ JMG
What Western music do you think could survive the Long Descent? Cover versions of pop songs? Piano music? Chamber music?
“the conviction on the part of privileged radicals all through the same period that the coming social revolution would inevitably be followed by a transfer of power from “kingdoms and kings” to privileged radicals—after all, how could those brothers of the ox possibly govern themselves? Of course they would have to turn to the smartest people in the room to do it for them.”
And indeed, on the off chance that they won’t and will instead rampage like the mad beasts that they are, it is the duty of the revolutionary intelligentsia to take charge and guide them towards higher ideals. That was a common refrain in certain circles in Russia in the long 19th century, one that echoed for a while afterwards. Even in the 21st, I’ve seen intellectuals propose that 1) intellectuals who fell in with the Bolsheviks (or sometimes the Bolsheviks themselves; whether they count as intellectuals or not has been much debated in those circles) had to do everything they could to seize and hold some level of power, as otherwise unthinking peasant barbarity would destroy everything and 2) we have to do that again, as another chaotic and destructive people’s revolution is going to happen any moment now, and we need to preempt it through either our own revolution or forcing the elites to listen to us on everything. The latter strain was prominent in the liberal protest movement for much of Putin’s rule. Unfortunately for them, or perhaps not, no revolution actually occurred.
Having brought that up, it’s worth adding that while members of the lower classes fighting on any of the sides in the Russian Civil War committed plenty of spontaneous, opportunistic atrocities, the worst systematic atrocities were organised by well-educated and ideologically motivated revolutionaries, who often reproached their lower-class underlings for not being harsh enough on their enemies. The leaders of all sides also proved almost totally incapable of restraining such spontaneous brutality as did come from lower ranks, not always for the lack of trying. Indeed the Whites, having a traditional military structure and old-fashioned principles re: gratuitous murder, actually appear to have been the least bad at preventing anti-Jewish pogroms in territories they controlled, despite being noticeably more anti-Semitic than their sincerely internationalist enemies. The Whites being mostly military, intellectuals played a much smaller part in their leadership than they did among the Reds or the Ukrainian nationalists. So much for the “civilising influence”, but the myth lives on.
Are you familiar with Alex Alice’s graphic novel trilogy on Siegfried? It hones in particularly on the relationship between Siegfried and Mime. It was originally meant to be an animated movie (hence the somewhat Disneyfied look to it) but due to development hell became a graphic novel instead. You can still see the trailer for it on YouTube.
And while on the topic of Siegfried, I’ve noticed that he also seems to occupy this liminal space between both being a wild child and being a technically-proficient craftsman. Beyond the well-known occult symbolism the blacksmith carries around with him (see Mircea Eliade), sword-smiths were the cream of the crop when it came to craftsmen in the Middle Ages. Sword-smithing was a particularly intricate art, which carried over into the mythical trope of magical swords (especially when the best sword-smiths had to have practical knowledge in what made the best swords to use in battle). So you basically have this kid slumming it out in the woods who basically has the equivalent knowledge of making his own guns from scratch.
“Siegfried’s death atones for the sins of the gods, and so Wotan’s castle in the air remains undimmed in its splendor as the curtain comes down.”
I really wonder how that was supposed to work, by the way. As drama, “Wotan gets away with it and everything works out for him” seems really unsatisfying, especially given the things he has done up to that point. It’s what you’d expect in a cynical political thriller, not in opera… I’d think, not knowing much about opera.
JMG #32:
I’m sorry John, I’m a very absent-minded sometimes; so I’ll read your link paying attention. Thank you for the link!
Guillem # 34:
“starting from the 60’s,a lot of American social phenomena has been transfered to Spain, even if a lot of time has passed between the original phenomena and these second-hand rehashings.”
Yeah, last American fashion in American social phenomena is IMO the woke “leftism”. Even the name of certain spanish political party is a raw translation of Obama slogan “Yes we can”…By the way, there’s also wokism in France for instance, but a lot of intellectual and common people are reacting against it, even liberals (in the American sense, leftists), defending the “republican” tradition (in the French sense). This reaction lacks in the Spanish case. And I ask myself and to you. Why?
JMG, you’re being too pessimistic about grand opera. It most likely will have the same fate that naumachia did – future historians and archeologists will know what it was, and how it was, but it won’t be performed to entertain live audiences anymore.
Hi JMG,
Regarding Mines intentions, I went back and reread the Libretto (I admit, in English);
Oh, he loathes Sigfried, and he admits it.
Mime first mentions that the Ring must be got by trickery after he sees Sigfried forging the sword, a conformation of Wotan’s words.
As for Wotan’s words, we see that he is manipulating the dwarves, when he tells that Mime tells Sigfried about the Ring. In fact Mime does no such thing, at lest not willingly, he has Sigfried come to learn fear.
In the conversation with Alberich it is hinted, that Mime expects to get the ring as part of a reward for raising Sigfried. And he is prepared to share with Alberich, if he be treated as brother. Both Brothers think Sigfried will not recognize the worth of the Ring and Tarnhelm.
Then in the final conversation between Mime and Sigfried he outright said (his houghts):
“I have always loathed thee and all that are like thee. It was not from love that I reared thee with care: The gold hid in Fafner’s cave I worked for as my reward.”
“If thou wilt not yeald it up to me, Sigfried, my son, thou plainly must see I have no choice but to slay the!”
There is some flimsy argument that could be made, what he means is that he hates a bully, which Sigfried is, but it is a flimsy argument.
My interpretation is, that Mime wanted to have the dragon slayed by Sigfried, and then either get the Ring unopposed, because Sigfried does not know what it is, or to have Sigfried give him the Ring as thanks for rearing him. Initially he never thought Sigfried would figure it out.
This time there are no fingerprints, Wotan expressly goes to warn Fafner, but he did sow distrust amongst the dwarves.
Best regards,
Marko
Siegfried’s death atones for the sins of the gods, and so Wotan’s castle in the air remains undimmed in its splendor as the curtain comes down.
So in the original ‘good’ vision, the working class bleeds so that the intellectuals can keep the prize they never built? Who exactly was supposed to want this future, outside the intellectual class? I can’t imagine why they didn’t get the numbers in 1848.
Your description of Siegfried makes me think of Anna Russell’s: “He’s very strong and he’s very brave and he’s very handsome and he’s very stupid – a regular “L’il Abner” type.” Though that (and the original strip to which it refers) does also reveal the attitudes of the intelligentsia toward the common folk!
I’m struck by the exact parallel between the way Mime treats Siegfried and the way Wotan treated his father: as an instrument to be used and then destroyed. I wonder if Wagner isn’t saying something about the universality of the results of the lust for power.
Sorry to hear about the trolling problem. Cruising around the mighty interwebs, I’ve run into Eurotrad throne-and-altar conservatives who built their politics around a reverence for the Greatness of Western Civilization that mashes together everything old, from Classical Greece to the Italian Renaissance to Victorian London, and who can’t bear the thought that one of the acknowledged geniuses of grand opera had politics completely opposite to theirs and worked to pull down the structure of traditional authority that they revere. I’d be surprised if you didn’t hear from some of them.
wrt _Lord of the Flies_, it’s all too often taught as an exposé of the viciousness at the root of human nature, but Golding had something less ambitious in mind when he wrote it. The child characters are all part of the student body of an elite British boarding school of the sort where Golding taught. He wrote it in response to _The Coral Island_, an earlier novel in which three boys from the same demographic were shipwrecked together and formed a perfect model of co-operation and heroism. Golding wanted to show what he probably considered a more likely outcome, based on the behavior he’d observed as a teacher.
What do elite British boarding schools, with their rigid rules and corporal punishment, have in common with open-concept schools, which would seem to be their exact opposite in many respects? How about a student body made up mostly of the children of affluent parents who think their class ought to run the world?
It seems that at least some times the leftward side of the bird brain has taken up the cause of the working people and not been so alienated from them / with them. I’m thinking of the Battle of Matewan and similar struggles from the era. The likes of the United Mine Workers or America sided with the Democrats. Recently, just last night actually, I was reading about “indirect action” on the part of intellectuals. This seems in line with what you suggested recently that intellectuals should not aspire to rule as Pythagoras did, but get ideas into circulation and from the side.
I am troubled by the turn to the material girl you mentioned, this aversion to the working class that has happened on the left over many past decades. I guess it started with the ascendancy of the universities and all these useless degrees, and them taking their place in the managerial elite to get out of slinging lattes to the same.
As for Tolkien, much as I love it, I am a lot more critical of his treatment of Orcs these days. Since they were bred from Elves by Morgoth, maybe it was Tolkien’s sly way of introducing the concept of eugenics into his novel. But even a person bred through eugenics programs wouldn’t be wholly evil just because. There is little compassion shown for orcs by anyone throughout. I know the word racist gets thrown about quite often to cancel otherwise great things, and I don’t know that Tolkien could be canceled anyway, nor would I want to… but it does rather seem, oh, this one race of beings is pretty much evil. Let’s just slaughter them whole hog. That of course ties in with some things you’ve written about the likes of Sauron and Voldemort and these caricatures of evil.
These are stories the leftward claiming PMC has accepted whole hog into their consciousness. Along with Marvel-DC depictions of good and evil and the superheroes who alone can save the day. But “Joy is not in things; it is in us.” as Richard Wagner said. I’d also say its not in circumstances as Viktor Frankl noted with force.
Anyway, Wagner seems to have nailed it. Still contemplating how to get intellectuals to empathize better with the working class. In The Razor’s Edge the main character Larry broke up his intense bouts of reading with going to work in a mine and then on a farm. People like Wendell Berry actually work on the land, which gives their words weight and gravitas when they write about the land. Gary Snyder talks about Right Livelihood and uses the Zen saying or koan “chop wood, carry water” in writing about his life. He wasn’t afraid of that kind of work, and often praised the different lumber men he knew up in the PNW. There’s something to be said for slogging through a day job while continuing on in the life of mind, spirit, writing, music, whatever.
Another thing I’d recommend as part of the cure for this on the leftward side of the birdbrain in the US is getting back to American philosophy. I’m thinking of the transcendentalists. The PMC has certainly forgotten their Thoreau if they ever had it to begin with. They’ve also forgotten their Emerson, if they ever read him. In his essay Politics he writes, “From neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in science, art or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation.” Yet it also seems that Emerson shares a view in common with the commies, that the sate can be abolished when humans mature enough to do so… This view of history I reject and it is part of the problem with thinking of history as a straight line from point Alpha to point Omega. Some heavy doses of William James would not be amiss either, especially for those taken to the pulpit.
Dear JMG, I want to thank you for this Wagner series of posts. Fascinating stuff!
Regarding the transition in the early 80s: I remember it well. And yeah, it was fast. A great example is the word “McMansion” and all that it stood for. Superficial appearance, oversized, and low quality. Wikipedia says the term “…appears to have been coined in the early 80s.” Yeah.
Here are some other schools you all might be interested… some stuff I’ve been studying on and off:
https://lathroplybrook.com/troubled-teen-industry/
Seems to have a lot in common with the boarding schools in England but more culty.
Do the Experimental Schools share the same philosophy as so called Democratic Schools?
I take no issue with your elaboration of Wagner’s themes (I’m more ignorant of Wagner than I am even of Shaw, which is to say wildly ignorant), but an esoteric aside: to what extent, if any, does Wagner’s opus correspond with the subsequent resurgence (if it can be called that) of the Northern gods, or at least their interest among certain folk in German national socialism? Any correspondences there, or adjacent lessons to be learned?
Axé
“Burroughs was a dreadful writer even by pulp standards, but he had a knack for catching culturally potent imagery and splashing it around with gusto, and those forms have outlived the clumsy prose in which they were first embodied” – You were discussing the Tarzan books and I concede that I find some of them a bit boring, but to make a general statement that ERB was a dreadful writer is to ignore the wonderful prose-rhythm of the Barsoom series at its best – i.e. in the last five books. Granted that the plots rely far too much on princess-kidnapping, yet the tale is told musically, without the clunky-jerky prose one gets so much of in writers of “thrillers”.
@ 45 Daniil Adamov
Since Wagner was Wotan (an intelletual funded by the ruling classes), he’d probably have wanted a happy ending for Wotan.
@54 Eagle Fang Warrior
I thought the point of orcs in the LOTR universe was to provide enemies that the heroes could mow down without staining their moral character. Contrast with Smeagol who was portrayed almost sympathetically, as a victim of the Ring who nevertheless had a degree of moral agency.
Heather, I got into Wagner around the same age. Your grandson has marvelous experiences waiting for him.
Rita, that’s part of the Feral Child mythology, yes. I recall medieval stories in which one of the gimmicks was that back in ancient times, all the animals spoke Latin!
Will, exactly. Tonality and the chromatic harmonies that dominate late classical music, such as Wagner’s, are culturally specific; like other cultural traits, they can be transmitted — witness the current flowering of Western classical music in China — but they survive only as long as a living tradition survives. As the decline of our civilization picks up, I expect economic factors to squeeze grand opera, and classical music generally, until the living tradition breaks. Then, centuries later, whatever simple diatonic or pentatonic music is practiced during the deindustrial dark ages will become the seed from which some new musical sensibility will develop, as different from ours as ours is from the classical music of India. Then, in my fantasy, those records surface; without any of the culturally specific framing and the living tradition of Western tonality to give them meaning, they’ll be weird, alien sounds, recognizable as music but incomprehensible in terms of the meanings and passions that they once evoked.
Patrick, depends on where you are. Here in North America, country music’s the most likely to get through, because it can be played on simple instruments that sound good even when made by hand. A handmade fiddle, banjo, or mountain dulcimer can strike up a tune that people can enjoy and dance to, or accompany the choral singing of hymns. During the deindustrial dark ages to come, that’ll be an important part of local cultures, and give rise to new musical forms that will differ from our music the way ours differs from Roman music.
Daniil, exactly. In Jung’s terms, the intelligentsia project their own barbarity onto the proletariat.
Ben, no, I haven’t seen that one yet. Interesting. As for Siegfried, that’s another aspect of the Romantic cult of the natural human — it’s typical that Siegfried, who doesn’t know a thing about bladesmithing, gets it right on the first try and reforges his father’s sword. Complete balderdash!
Daniil, in that earliest draft, Wotan wasn’t anything like so much of a slimeball. Wagner’s insight into his own class deepened as he worked.
Bruno, we have a very rough knowledge of naumachia, but the fine points are lost forever. Those may not be very important when we’re talking about staged naval combats, but grand opera is all about fine points. Sure, historians two thousand years from now will know that there was this thing called opera, a form of drama in which all the lines were sung and accompanied by lots of musicians — but that doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to reconstruct or understand the experience.
Marko, and there you have it.
Kfish, the same attitude is just as clearly on display in certain much more recent contexts…
Roldy, funny! Li’l Abner was good-hearted and basically moral, though, and Siegfried was neither. As for the parallel between Wotan and Mime, yep — that’s exactly what Wagner is saying here.
Joan, if somebody comes by to argue about that, provided they keep a civil tongue in their heads and read the whole series of posts, they’re welcome to discuss it. Yes, even Euroboos are welcome here. 😉 As for Lord of the Flies, interesting; I’d read it as an exploration of what happens with children when all authority figures are out of the picture.
Eagle Fang, oh, granted. At intervals, usually after losing a lot of elections, one of our parties realizes that it can win again by giving the working classes some of what they want. The parties alternate in doing this, and now it seems to be the GOP’s turn again. As for what will get the Democrats to pay attention to the working classes again, defeat is what usually does it, and a good solid collapse of the bureaucratic and academic systems would also help.
Cyclone, yep. I remember it well, having been there at the time, and having watched any number of people abandon the ideals they’d praised to the skies in order to cash in on the new consumerism. It was a sickening spectacle.
Eagle Fang, the one I experienced was different, but there are many variations.
Fra’ Lupo, I see it as a parallel process. Interest in the old Germanic gods surged beginning in the late 18th century; Wagner’s operas were one product of that, and the emergence of a new Germanic paganism was another product.
Robert G, I’d wondered if I’d hear from you about that! Fair enough; I should have specified that I was talking about the Tarzan books, and especially the first one, which combines awkward prose with some of the most absurdly improbable plot gimmicks in print.
John, sorry for piling the comments on, but since you are familiar with the history of ideas, did that twerp Hegel bake in the idea of the “End of History” from Christianity and Thomas More into his own philosophy that has since infected the west? It doesn’t seem like other cultures view history as this straight line. Where else does this “linear perspective” come from? Just part of Faustian culture?
@JMG
” I remember it well, having been there at the time, and having watched any number of people abandon the ideals they’d praised to the skies in order to cash in on the new consumerism. It was a sickening spectacle.”
That is exactly my recollection. I was not only sickened and saddened, but somewhat confused. Seems like it happened very quickly
I also agree with your assessment that there was a societal loss of nerve. We came to an edge, we were thinking about what to do, and KNEW a lot of what had to be done, and it was scary to a lot of people. Then Reagan came along with ‘Morning in America’ and it was all forgotten. Whew! That was close! So sad.
I think we are still in the Reagan Years.
@JMG #59 “In Jung’s terms, the intelligentsia project their own barbarity onto the proletariat.”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but yes, you’re right! There is a certain tradition of romantic revolutionary art, both in Russia and in Europe, that depicts the ruthless and bloodthirsty masses who aren’t going to take it anymore in a light that sways between horror and admiration. The masses thus depicted have far less to do with the actual population than they do with the more or less overt wishes of the artists and their audience.
The Russian Silver Age in particular was full of that sort of thing: titillating tales of scary, relentless, protean peasants and workers coming for the masters’ throats. One other slightly odd example I know of is “Wir sind des Geyers schwarzer Haufen”, which depicts the rebelling 16th German peasants as a wild band of murderers, arsonists and rapists boasting of their crimes. (In actuality, they seem to have been fairly well-behaved by the standards of peasant revolts.) From what I understand, its early 20th century author was a conservative who wanted to show the rebels in a bad light. Then a wide spectrum of intellectual and intellectual-influenced radicals, including both National Socialists and Communists, seized upon that song as a heroic, inspirational rebel hymn. Somehow I doubt that there were many peasants among those who first embraced it, though.
” I recall medieval stories in which one of the gimmicks was that back in ancient times, all the animals spoke Latin!”
And this sparked the thought that the city of Rome itself was said to be founded by the wolfishly feral twin children, Romulus and Remus…
I read The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus! on your recommendation! I might have enjoyed it more if I had read it as a child, but it was certainly interesting.
Your reposted essays at #38 reminded me that some of what you wrote back in 2011 doesn’t sound like what you write now! You seem less sanguine about government grants and regulations now than “Government subsidies for nuclear power and other nonrenewable energy sources would have been phased out, and the money – along with savings from a less gargantuan military – shifted into grants for conservation, renewable energy retrofits, and research programs aimed at repositioning American industry to lead the world in green energy technologies. Changes in tax policy, zoning regulations and building codes would reshape the built environment to decrease energy use, while funds formerly wasted on highways would go instead to build high-speed rail between urban cores and rapid transit systems that would make commuting by car all but obsolete… Myself, I think that it could have been done, or that there was at least a very real chance of doing it. ”
Do you consider the present moment too late for such policies, or have you changed their mind about their feasibility back in the 1970s? To connect this back to Wotan and Siegfried, such grants and regulations would require a lot of input from university graduates, while the steps you have suggested in recent years can either be enacted by anybody on their own, or take the form of rather simple laws and decrees that reduce the number of jobs for university graduates.
“an exploration of what happens with children when all authority figures are out of the picture.”
I have a kind of a bee in my bonnet about this: drawing conclusions about human nature when the only humans in the sample are members of the observer’s own culture.
There was a real life situation where six Tongan Catholic school students, all teenage boys, stole a boat to try to get to Fiji and were shipwrecked on some little Pacific island. They were out there by themselves for over a year and, well, the results were much more like _The Coral Island_ than like _The Lord of the Flies_. They were rescued in 1966.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongan_castaways
They were all ethnically Tongan, so maybe they started with more of a culture of co-operation. In our society, well, it hasn’t been that long since Mark Twain observed that, when two boys of roughly the same size met for the first time with no adult supervision present, the first words one of them spoke to the other would typically be “I can lick you,” a statement that would be immediately followed by fisticuffs.
Hi John Michael,
I read Lord of the Flies and likewise gleaned your perspective about unsupervised children. To say the conclusion of the book was implausible and mildly irritating is an understatement. Talk about sweeping vast unpleasantness under the carpet… Stiff upper lip young chaps, we’re British, such things don’t happen was pretty much how the story ended. The present incarnation of this country having began as an off shore penal colony for England, I can well believe that such things did happen. Despite it all, it’s hard to account for how warmly I feel towards them, the cheeky rascals.
Thanks for confirming my hunch. Following events over the past decade or so, you get the distinct impression that the elites have taken their eye off the ball. Strategy should never be confused for vision and direction, but strategy is what they get taught, and maybe it’s all they know? Hard to tell really, but it looks that way to me. It’s worthwhile noting that The Lord of the Flies kids were only ever focused on the next problem in front of their noses. Wotan sadly is no different. You’d expect better of a purported God. Maybe the expectation is to great?
Did you see the Aussie dollar dropped, but has weirdly gained against the Yen? The local pundits were blaming US interest rates, and not talking about the big spending ol’ goobermunt. That lot released a mini budget the day beforehand saying they’d spent $22bn more than anticipated. The stupid thing about it all is, that when you’re a big importer of stuff and oil (although we export a lot of gas, coal and iron ore) a currency crisis can also send you into the realms of poverty. Man, there’s a world of hurt building up out there. A gut feeling tells me we’re getting closer to an inflexion point, but I don’t really know.
Cheers
Chris
JMG–re _Lord of the Flies_. Part of the inherent irony of the story is that the boys were being evacuated from a war zone (presumably an atomic war given the era) when their plane crashes. Then they are rescued by a military ship–their actions on the island are a smaller scale enactment of the insanity of their elders. As for the culture of the elite British schools, Kipling gives an idealized version in _Stalky and Company, whereas both George Orwell and Robert Graves gave more negative accounts of the experience. One might note that one element of these environments is the unnatural absence of women and girls. Whatever one may believe about the influence of women on male society there is little doubt that there is an influence.
Does the absence of females among Wagner’s dwarves have a deeper meaning? Terry Pratchett made humorous use of the lack of obvious females in the dwarf world in his Discworld series, but does their lack in German myth and in Wagner’s work have more significance?
_Summerhill_ is a book popular in the 60s about an experimental school in England in which students were given no assignments and allowed to follow their own interests. I suspect that some of the other free form schools were based on that model. Waldorf schools, based on Rudolf Steiner’s theories of childhood development deliberately do not teach reading in the K-2 but do introduce various literatures and folklore as read by the teachers. Reading skills are supposed to be introduced in 3rd grade. One of my grandsons had a Waldorf teacher who apparently expected him to just absorb reading in 3rd grade. He really wanted to learn but was not taught. He switched to public school for 4th grade and was reading at grade level by the end of the year. That particular Waldorf school seemed to have a number of problems in meeting the actual needs of their students vs. carrying out dogma..
On one of his trips to view the working classes of England George Orwell saw a woman outside a tenement house in cold, miserable weather, poking a blocked drain with a stick. I don’t recall if he mentioned “Man with a Hoe” but unlike the painter or the poet, Orwell recognized that this woman had as much in the way of hopes and despair as he did. It has been several years since I read it, so details may be a bit off. He also despised the sort of middle-class reformer who expected the poor to forego beer and tobacco, margarine and white bread.
Rita
Eagle Fang, it’s always a mistake to think that Hegel actually put anything but word salad into his philosophy. Imagine Kamala Harris writing philosophy and you’ve got Hegel, except that he liked bigger words. There’s been an entire industry of Hegelians ever since his time arranging Hegel’s babblings into something that pretends to be coherent philosophy; some of them adopted the Christian notion of the end of history and read that into Hegel, others adopted cyclic theories or what have you. No matter what you want to find, if you work hard enough, you can find it in Hegel!
Sgage, we’re still in the shadow of that colossal failure, to be sure.
Daniil, exactly! There’s plenty of that in Anglophone literature from the period, too.
Scotlyn, a valid point.
Aldarion, I still think it could have been done in the 1970s, but I don’t think it can be done now. The decline of the academic industry into ideological onanism is a large part of the reason why. In the 1970s you still had a lot of university graduates well supplied with practical skills — during my first stint at college in the early 1980s, before the tide ebbed, I was in a class that built a wind turbine, and I also took good practical classes in ecology and ecosystems botany. Today the equivalent classes would spend all their time discussing how to assign the right pronouns to lichens and liverworts.
Joan, if you want to rewrite my comment as “what happens with children of a Western industrial culture when authority figures are out of the picture,” I won’t object. None of my classmates were Tongan.
Chris, I’m really starting to think that the elite classes have lost the script entirely — they’re so deeply mired in abstractions that they’ve stopped paying attention to what’s actually happening in the real world. The possibility of a serious inflection point seems very plausible to me, not least because our stock market here in the US may just be on the brink of an epic crash.
Rita, I’m not sure what Wagner had in mind by making all his Nibelungs male; I don’t recall anything on the subject in his writings. As for Orwell, that’s one of the things I love about him — he was always acutely attentive to the human realities of the situation.
Okay – and I came to this with a head full of ideas about Sigfried syndrome and also about real-life feral children, and a midcentury s/f author’s unsentimental treatment of his central character, an urban feral child in his early adulthood (and further development.)
I just came from a showing of the Patrick Stewart version of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Stewart played him as a bitter old recluse in the grip of an obsession, but also as the small boy abandoned to a lonely holiday at school, the very seeds of a Sigfried personality, I believe you mentioned earlier in this blog. And personally, I ran the timeline of his youth, and it was right in the middle of the post-Napoleonic Wars depression. There were older folks around during my own childhood who were lonely, poor, and hard-bitten in old age.
About real-life feral children: I’m thinking some of them actually began as retarded, autistic, or whatever, and in Handel & Gretel style were sent out into the woods and abandoned. Throwaway children in hard times. There were probably similar throwaway children on the streets during the 1930s, and Theodore Sturgeon made an extreme case thereof into the central character of “More Than Human.” I read if as pure s/f the first time around, but a reread around the turn on the millennium told a different story.
We start with an overgrown young man functioning on a purely animal level, without a name, language, or any sense of identity, and characterized by a puzzled author as “an idiot, but…. for a page and a half.” Who when he runs across a little girl raised in near-isolation by an insane father, who treats him like a fellow human being, awakens something in him even as it tells her there are other people in the world besides her sister and her father. As Sturgeon puts it, “the idiot stopped being an idiot and the innocent stopped being an innocent” by a simple touch of hands.
Of course, the insane father beats the daylights out of him and leaves him for dead, to be found by a farmer who thinks he’s a mugging victim and takes him home and treats him as such. No language or name? Head injury; talk to him, treat him like one of the family (a crash course in civilized behavior, in fact, by simple example) and get him to’ remember’. And it works. He comes out of it with a sense of self, an identity, language, and a name, and (this being a working farm) a mechanical genius nobody could have predicted, seeing his former feral self. It’s not a complete miracle. As he himself says, he’s gone from idiot to moron – and ends up fostering other throwaways.
And sometimes behaves very badly, but the trajectory is very clear indeed.
I’ve noticed – A lot of times Sturgeon has no explanation for what he sees but a semi-mystical one, but what he sees, he reports accurately. And often as tragedy.
Anyway, end of digression….
Eagle Fang, I think you’re absolutely correct about the value of a day job to an intellectual. All those grand mental theories have to actually be applied to something to make any sense! How can you talk about abstractions like balance, cause and effect or cycles without concrete examples? The ‘day job’ world is also a great testing ground for whether any of the theories work – which explains why a certain class of intellectual would avoid it.
“Following events over the past decade or so, you get the distinct impression that the elites have taken their eye off the ball. Strategy should never be confused for vision and direction, but strategy is what they get taught, and maybe it’s all they know?”
I always took strategy as the vision and direction part. Tactics are the series of actions needed at a small scale to accomplish the strategy.
Strategy, tactics, and logistics are distinct fields of expertise. Of the three logistics is the unglamorous one. No hot blooded officer wants to be in Supply even though it’s rather important. As Hitler drove into Russia his supply lines got untenably long. The Japanese called Guadalcanal Starvation Island. New Guinea was even worse.
The top picture here shows a part of one logistics base the US had in late 1944.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Base_Ulithi
I forget the exact time, but Patton called up Eisenhower and asked for 400,000 gallons of gas to be delivered to eastern France.
The elites have a consistent flaw in thinking things just show up. We need copper for EVs, but no we can’t open a nasty mine to get it. We need electricity for heat pumps and those EVs but we will also breach the hydroelectric dams for the glory of the fish. And the Netherlands will close down farms to prevent “nitrogen pollution” without worrying where the food will come from.
To Mr. Greer and assorted commenter’s.. off topic : Here’s wishing you’all a pleasant winter solstice.
polecat – over and out!
Patricia M, thank you for this. It’s been much too long since I read More Than Human…
Polecat, and likewise.
Blessed winter solstice to everyone, and/or whatever midwinter holiday you celebrate.
@Siliconguy #72 – Yes. Thanks for that distinction between strategy (think Eisenhower), tactics (think Patton) and logistics – the latter,in civilian life, having crashed during the Lockdown on 2020 and is still not what it used to be. Or, for a concrete example, why my grocery list always makes allowances for whatever Publix is out of at the moment. And I really don’t think our elite have any real strategy, just blind, rote repetition of catch phrases and slogans. Who was it that said “if your professors are above practical matters and your plumbers are beneath consideration, neither your theories nor your pipes will hold water.”
Well salad! I mean well said…
: ) : ) : ) That’s laughter by the way!
I can see how the idea of the straight line of history might have been appealing to people who’d been dealing with the eternal return for so long. I believe in a cyclical vision of history but not exactly the eternal return either.
I hope everyone who frequents this blog and who celebrates it has a wonderful winter solstice or summer solstice and holiday season.
Ah, the “open classroom” (as the local version of the self education venue full of “resources” and “materials” but no organized lessons was called). Latter elementary school years, around 4-6th grade.
Mine didn’t have the bullying problem to the extent others have described (that is, no more or less than any other grades I’d been in), likely because the space was still highly supervised. But I learned quickly that any sign of interest in some specific topic was seized upon by the supervising educator eager for a success story and became a de facto extra assignment. I adapted to avoid that trap, while the other students already seemed to know it instinctively. Which of course was the precise opposite result to what the open classroom concept supposedly intended.
In any case, I mostly did the uselessly easy sequenced self-teaching cards/pages for a few minutes and then went back to reading my SF novels (from which I was actually learning stuff at least). That, and the one indispensable feature of the school classroom remaining fully intact (to wit, you’re not allowed to leave), meant that I didn’t find the differences all that notable. Compared to what others are describing this one was clearly a “half-fast” version of the open classroom concept, making a pretense of student autonomy without giving up control (hence e.g. the sequenced cards).
Of course, off topic but necessary: JMG and kommentariat, have a happy and pleasant Winter Solstice! 🙂
@Kfish… for sure…
I’ve worked in an intellectual adjacent field my whole adult life. But I’ve also earned side money by cutting peoples grass, and helping out on other jobs, hauling stuff, washing dishes. My parents were working class to middle class and came from the same, as is my wife’s family. So even though I would consider myself an intellectual, I never felt far from the working and middle class. It’s good to get your hands dirty.
I was reading various Neo-Pagan blogs about political magic and the Magic Resistance gearing up again. Then a chance remark by one of the usual suspects about how people felt better about burning Trump’s picture as they cursed the man got me to thinking about deities in general.
The Deities as presented by Wagner seem petty, cruel, and human. What I realized was the difference between his Deities and modern ones is what one sociologist named “Moralist Therapeutic Deism.” It has been defined as ” But what exactly is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD)? Picture this: a belief system that’s like a comfy sweater for the soul, warm and fuzzy, without the itchy bits of traditional dogma. It’s a spiritual buffet where you can pick and choose the most palatable morsels of faith, leaving behind the parts that don’t quite suit your taste.” https://neurolaunch.com/moralistic-therapeutic-deism/
The website continues with” The Five-Course Meal of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
So, what’s on the menu of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism? Let’s break it down into five delectable morsels:
1. A benevolent creator god exists. Think of this deity as a cosmic grandparent – kind, loving, and always ready with a spiritual cookie when you need one.
2. Being good and nice is the main course of life. It’s not about complex theological doctrines or rigorous rituals. Just be a decent human being, and you’re golden.
3. The ultimate goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself. It’s like spiritual self-care on steroids!
4. God doesn’t need to be particularly involved in your life unless you’ve got a problem that needs solving. Think of the Almighty as a divine IT support – there when you need troubleshooting, but otherwise letting you run your own show.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die. No fire and brimstone here, folks. Just a cozy afterlife for those who’ve played nice during their earthly sojourn.”
Pondering that, I wonder how modern Neo-Pagans would see Wagner’s Gods. Also, their world view is the modern one that the comfortable classes seem to hold to. My husband’s United Methodist Church engages in feel-good religion as well. I wonder if it is the comfortable classes being unwilling to face the music. (No pun intended)
……..
The term “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” was coined by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in their 2005 book “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.”
I was folding laundry at a laundromat for pocket money when I was 15, and worked at the Post Office, sorting mail, to earn college money. After my divorce, I held a number of temp jobs, and did better at the grunt work like data entry than at the more corporate ones, which went badly. At school, we had hands-on home ec classes in cooking and sewing., apart from the skills my mother taught me. That was nothing unusual back in my day.
I can tell you one of the things that went wrong, especially the over-protection of my grandchildren: my daughter told me flatly “It’s a dangerous world out there, a lot more dangerous than when you were a kid.” That was during the Reagan years, I think. And a lot of her contemporaries had the attitude, more or less, of feeling “you’re on your own, kid,” during their own growing-up years. For what that’s worth.
I will be inadvertently gasing myself toasting dried hot chilis in a pan, as part of my solsticing endeavors. Pepper-spray like.. Even opening up the place does little good: I still find myself coughing n choking, with tears galore streaming down my cheeks! But, as they say, no pain – no gain. Solstice Chili Colorado* here we come.
*plenty of ionizingly hot goodness! .. for Christmas also.. enough in fact, probably to last thru to the new year.
Patricia M, thank you, and a happy solstice to you and yours!
Eagle Fang, as a Discordian I believe that history is just sort of strolling around at random, which irritates the bejesus out of both the progress-believers and the eternal return-believers! 😉
Walt, oh, that was standard in the open concept school I went to as well, but I had an advantage going into it. I’d already learned that, since I’d been tarred and feathered with the label “gifted,” anything I achieved automatically became the very least that was acceptable from then on. That taught me that failure was the best policy, since my successes instantly became burdens, while my failures kept the bar comfortably low. It took me years of hard work to unlearn that later on.
Chuaquin, and you and yours also!
Neptunesdolphins, thanks for this. MTD is a useful label for treating gods the way children treat their stuffed toys — a very common habit these days, paired with the modern passion for avoiding any contact with the divine.
Patricia M, I worked as a dishwasher, a certified nurses aide, a microfilmer, and counter help at a copy shop and a dry cleaner, and learned a great deal from all of those — more, certainly, than I ever learned from five years at university. (Though the latter did teach me how to evade clueless bureaucracies.)
Polecat, yum!
The Romantics were at least right about schooling. A new book illustrates how the original purpose of mass primary education in Western countries was indoctrination and social control in response to revolts not really reading, writing, and arithmetic.
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Raised_to_Obey.html?id=acMOEQAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
>The elites have a consistent flaw in thinking things just show up. We need copper for EVs, but no we can’t open a nasty mine to get it. We need electricity for heat pumps and those EVs but we will also breach the hydroelectric dams for the glory of the fish
Reminds me of Hemingway’s The Age Demanded
The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.
The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.
The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of s**t that it demanded.
Thinking about the second of your quotes from “The Man with the Hoe,” it sounds like a pre-echo of Yeats’ “The Second Coming.” The feeling of something implacable and less than human coming to destroy civilization is common to both.
David, the Romantics — like so many others — had a good understanding of some of the problems. What they lacked was the slightest scrap of even one viable solution.
Other Owen, I somehow got to the age of 62 without encountering that bit of Hemingway. Thank you!
Roldy, good. Yes, and in a way both poets were right — they were just wrong about the nature of the implacable and inhuman presence they sensed. It wasn’t proletarian revolution. It was the self-immolation of the European imperial world order.
Have you heard of this new book by (ironically) a Columbia sociologist in wokeness?:
https://books.google.ca/books/about/We_Have_Never_Been_Woke.html?id=K6kBEQAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
As to polecat, grinding my own horseradish has the same effect.
Grind grind grind, retreat gasping for breath, nose and eyes running. Then once more into the breach for the next batch. I always do it outside too.
Hi John Michael,
Clueless, but at the same time also remarkably dangerous, are the words which keep popping into my mind whenever I consider the elites. Heavy handed responses tend to suggest to me that the folks in that power train, aren’t giving unfolding events the attention the circumstances warrant. On that basis alone, yup, an inflection point is definitely in the offering. Give that, what do you reckon would be the official reaction be to a serious crisis?
The ending of the ring epic sure will be interesting.
Happy solstice to you!
There’s a large fire burning to the west south west of here. Hmm. Have to watch how the winds blow over the next few days. Makes for a nervous experience. Shame for all the dead forest critters and their destroyed habitat that the elites demand obeisance to forest ecology practices – which kind of amounts to ‘do nothing’. I’ve remarked to you before that it’s a truly impressive achievement to be proven wrong time and time again during the past 190 years, and still want to take the same approach to forest management. Got rocks in their heads.
Cheers
Chris
On the real purpose of mass primary education being obedience-training, not independent thought or work:
My wife’s great-great-great grandfather, Benjamin Randal Jordan, grew up on a farm in rural Western Maine (in Newfield) in the days before mass primary education. Both his parents died when he was quite young, and it was he who happened to find his mother’s dead body lying on the floor of the family kitchen. As soon as he became old enough for farm work he was indentured to a neighboring farmer. The terms of his indenture included three years of schooling in the local school. Of those three years he actually received only 10 months, which turned out to be enough to ground him in the 3Rs. By the time of his death he had amassed a small library of books (which has come down intact in the family), which show the traces of his extensive reading. They included Butler’s Hudibras, poetical works by John Milton and by Alexander Pope, a textbook of astronomy and its accompaning star atlas, a fairly high-level survey of all the world’s major religions, and other equally demanding volumes. He became a Swedenborgian in his later life, and ran the library for his local rural Swedenborgian society. He wrote a very readable and interesting chronicle of his life, which has also come down to us as a volume in his own handwriting, along with a much thicker volume of his original poetry.
All of these books of his, which he read and reread in the early 1800s, would be tough going nowadays for almost all the undergraduates at my Ivy League university. But 10 months of formal schooling in a rural one-room schoolhouse was all that great-great-grandfather needed to get started on his life of self-education.
As for obedience, or rather good citizenship, he was taught that by the village in which he grew up and by the farmer to whom he was indentured, not by formal lessons in any school. A much better way of education, IMHO.
A blessed Solstice to all!
Six months hence, I will be hosting the 8th Annual Ecosphia Midsummer ( for the Northern Hemeisphere) Potluck! Mark your calenders for June 21, 2025! Sign up here. I look forward to your presence, and once again, whomever comes from furthest is welcome to stay in our guest room.
Someday, I hope to welcome Chris at Fernglade Farm to be our guest.
In Markham’s day, another poem on the same painting, with the exact same title as Markham, “The Man with the Hoe,” by Cora E. Chase, appeared in print in 1893, a few years before Markham’s poem (1899), in a journal (The Californian Illustrated Magazine) that Markham also contributed to. There were people at the time who thought Markham had plagarized Chase’s poem. In his own defense, Markham noted that his poem differed greatly from Chase’s in that her poem expressed sympathy for the man with the hoe, while his poem in contrast burned with indignation against the people who had exploited the man and made him a brute.
Yes Happy Solstice to everyone. And not in an MTD way! And Merry Christmas too (since George c Scott is in in the background, among other reasons).
Just be serendipity, it’s the time of year I follow Professor Tom Lehrer’s sarcastic advice and “drag out the Dickens.” A Christmas Carol to be specific, whose 1843 publication predates our 1848-49 benchmark by just a few years. A passage therein, if I’m interpreting it correctly, appears to anticipate the final stanza of “The Man with the Hoe” by half a century. It comes at the end of the visitation of the Ghost of Christmas Present, when the spirit reveals the figures of two “wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable” children hiding under his robe (which is to say, I gather, unseen but pervasive in the world of the story’s present).
“‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.'”
Though it’s not even included in many recorded retellings (of which there are hundreds), this brief vision stands out in the story. I could be wrong, but the Doom threatened in the passage seems to be on the broad or even apocalyptic side, like Markham’s. That would make it the only warning from the Spirits that’s not focused on the Cratchits or more generally, on Scrooge’s own legacy and his afterlife. And it’s one of two references in the story to an urgent need to erase baleful writing, the other of course being the carvings on Scrooge’s grave at the culmination of the visitations.
Reluctant as I am to gainsay a seasonal Spirit so close to his own day, history seems to suggest that Want is actually the more dangerous of the tots.
Hello, Archdruid, and greetings to the community.
I have been thinking about the allegorical representation in literature for some time now, and I began to discover some peculiar similarities between the events portrayed in Star Wars, and the events of American history in the years following the American boom of the 1950’s. I am beginning to wonder if Star Wars is a deliberate allegory of the latter. I would like to share some of my thoughts on how this allegory tells us its tale.
First, the Jedi and Sith. They represent the Jachim and Boaz of American culture – Christianity and Consumerism. The Jedi are in control of the country in 1950, but the insatiable greed of consumer capitalism that led to the depression of 1928-32 (among other factors) has not entirely been defeated. It still gathers allies among the merchant class, amidst the “trade confederacy”. This is the phantom menace.
Second, the Skywalkers. My understanding is that the Skywalkers are the Walsungs of America, representing the rebellious elements of each generation. Anakin is the Boomer, Luke is the Generation X (the baby boomer), and Ray is the Millennial (Generation Y).
Anakin is born in abject poverty in the deserts of Tattoine, fatherless, born to the Force itself. He finds himself dragged, before he can catch his breath, into the urban jungle of Coruscant. We see this also amongst the boomers – dragged out of the tranquil culture of their parents by the legacy of the war that haunted their fathers, by the threat of nuclear annihilation, and by the sudden prosperity of their nation, they were more a children of the boom itself than a continuation of their predecessor generation. And like Anakin, boomers found themselves confused by the abnegation and pussy-footery of the Protestant Christian gentry order of their day. We see this confusion best in the writings of Anton LaVey, where he points to the hypocrisy of people who clearly want sex and tasty food, but are too cowardly to seek these things openly and confide their actions with guilt from behind the filigree of the confession chamber. Boomers clearly do not think that the old time religion is good enough for them.
The Protestant Christian gentry, in turn, can see this “darkness” in the boomers – just as Yoda and the Jedi see it in Anakin – and refuse to completely accept and assimilate these masses. And just like Anakin, the boomers know it in their bones that their classless roots and impoverished origins are the real basis of the discrimination. It infuriates them, building fertile ground for the consumerist capitalist complex to plant their ideas in. flies in the flies in the flies in the
Third, Padme Amidala. I believe she represents not a class, but an idea – similar to Brunnhilde. What she represents is the art and literature of America that was – the quickly disappearing America of the 1950’s. This is the culture of the effete upper class from before the second world war, the culture of piano music and stories like Peter Pan, of gentlemen smoking pipes and discussing stocks. The newly risen boomer masses see this culture, and are awed by it and drawn to it. But their love for the Queen of the Naboo (i.e., the respected culture of the well-off) changes the culture itself. The elegant culture that produced songs like “Hard Times Come Again no More” becomes the culture of hard rock music, Mary Jane, and other plebeian upstarts.
We see this clearly, when we contrast the scenes of their first meeting with that of their last rendezvous. The first time, Queen Amidala looks gorgeous, her face made up, her hair done up, and her elegant clothes more expensive than all the real estate Anakin has ever laid eyes on. Anakin, by comparison, is a runt of a boy from a desert, admiring Amidala with wide eyes and a little bit of fear. He is shorter than her by a good margin, looking for all the world like a helpless boy before a powerful aristocrat. In their final meeting, she is undone – tears in her eyes, a head shorter than him, looking simple in light tunic and simple cosmetic (or as simple as Hollywood can afford). Anakin, by contrast, stands tall and powerful before her, her protector and guardian.
Anakin, of course, eventually becomes a Sith. His rebellion against the oppressive dogmatic order of the Jedi turns to nothing when they are unable to protect his love, or to even respect his love and the changes he has brought upon her. In the end, his hatred for the Jedi drives him to extremes. Of course, you have written about the squaring of the hippies – the way hippies embraced Satananism first, then turned into ordinary nine-to-five workers. In some cases, like Steve Jobs, former hippies became the new poster-children of consumerism. So it was, that after corrupting the youth – killing the younglings in the temple – boomer Satanists faced the wrath of the Church. Against the deeply rooted establishment, their leaf-and-shroom culture had no high ground. They lost everything they had, and what little remained had been neatly put into a tie, and suit, and all the apparel that left barely any room for struggling respiration. Anakin became Vader.
The idea of the high-tech future, of course, was this generation’s own creation. As was the culture of reliance on technology. These, I believe, are C3PIO and R2D2. Both, of course, are estranged from Anakin, and fall into the hands of Luke and Leia. These are the new generation of Skywalkers, representing the Generation X.
At this point I should admit that I hadn’t thought through one aspect of the task of describing these parallels -if I had to flesh out the entire comparison, it shall take an entire blog post of its own. Hence, I should probably skip most of the comparison now.
Rey, of course, is the modern soi distant rebel community of college-educated children from families with safe, salaried jobs. Of course, they think they are rebels, but they aren’t really. They carry the blood of a Palpatine, because they are actually from a privileged section of American society.
Kylo Ren is the modern advocate of capitalism – born into the heart of the first order, but his own heart is shaky. He shouts about the benefits of Sith Power, but he is skeptic enough to lend his ear to Rey. And so, thanks to the internet, for the first time, the advocates of the military-industrial complex and the rebels who stand against him can communicate and argue their perspectives. This, I suppose, is the Force Communication of Rey and Kylo.
I may be completely wrong, but I think this is the gist of the story. Star Wars is probably an extended allegorical telling of recent American history in this way. I am sorry for the length of this comment, I was hoping to keep it shorter but I lack the skill of brevity.
A blessed and happy solstice to everyone celebrating!
@JMG,
Many thanks for another thought-provoking post.
Some thoughts, in more-or-less random order. First, there’s a part of me that sympathizes with the “trolls.” While I believe you when you claim (based on Wagner’s letters) that he intended Der Ring as an economic and political allegory, the thing about artists with big egos is that they quite frequently imagine that they’ve put loads and loads of esoteric meaning into works of art that, in and of themselves, are much simpler. (I am thinking, for instance, of how when George Lucas was making the first Star Wars trilogy he was convinced he was telling the story of the Nixon Administration, when for most of the rest of us it was a much more generic space fairytale.)
So while I’m fully aware that all the political stuff was a big inspiration to Wagner (and I also share Wagner’s pessimism about how it would all turn out!) I think that, at the end of the day, the main reason that (for instance) Brunhilde rebels against her father and then gets punished for it is that that’s how it happened in the Icelandic sagas, and all that stuff about the Ideal of Liberty escaping from the control of the Intelligentsia is secondary. And so forth with most of the other plot details – the Sagas and the Nibelungenleid are the main reason the plot is the way it is; Wagner’s grand allegorical ambitions are a very distant second.
I’ve also thought, quite a few times by now, about how odd it is that Wagner quite clearly believed that all his operas (including these) were about redemption through love, and yet it’s very, very rare for us to see any character show any actual love for any other character! The Rheinmaidens spurning and mocking Alberich, Alberich’s awful treatment of his brother Mime, Wotan’s double-dealing with Fricka, and his nearly selling his sister-in-law to the Giants, Fafner killing Fasolt, Wotan abandoning Siegmund and Sieglinde, Hunding making Sieglinde his wife by force, Sieglinde cheating on Hunding…. And I know that Wagner intended the Siegmund/Sieglinde relationship to be about true love, and yet, swiving your sister even though you both know you’re brother and sister isn’t the sort of thing you usually do when you actually, well, care about each other. And Brunhilde is capable of sacrificing herself for the twins, and Wotan’s wrath does calm down to the point where he no longer wants to leave his sleeping daughter defenseless to be raped by any man who comes by… but c’mon, this is still kinda weak! And then of course the Mime/Siegfried relationship isn’t any better. On and on and on it goes. Maybe this is meant as some sort of big cautionary tale, about what happens when everyone tries everything except just being forthright with people taking their desires as seriously as you take your own.
OK, one last point. You seem to criticize “the conviction on the part of privileged radicals all through the same period that the coming social revolution would inevitably be followed by a transfer of power from “kingdoms and kings” to privileged radicals—after all, how could those brothers of the ox possibly govern themselves? Of course they would have to turn to the smartest people in the room to do it for them.”
But isn’t this exactly what happened with most of the proletarian revolutions? After all when Lenin and Trotsky took power in Russia on a promise to convene a Constituent Assembly so that everyone could be represented in government, as soon as it turned out that a party other than the Bolsheviks had gotten the most votes (not even a right-wing party, just a different variety of socialists) they immediately dissolved the Assembly and fought a long, bloody, and ultimately successful war to establish totalitarian rule instead. And then of course the NSDAP in Germany (also a mostly lower-class phenomenon to start with) didn’t end up producing a regime where the “brothers of the ox… govern themselves,” either. And ditto with the communist revolutions in China and Vietnam, and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (which started out as a class warfare thing too). It seems that whenever there’s an actual proletarian revolution, one that begins with the working poor violently overthrowing the old order in the hopes of getting a bigger share of the country’s power and wealth, then the privileged intellectuals end up having the last laugh. Four legs good, two legs better, and all that.
>the real purpose of mass primary education being obedience-training
I’d say it’s more about conformity and doing what everyone else is doing, being mediocre, not standing out. With very harsh punishments if you do not. The populace has literally been trained to move in herds. Makes them easier to control, I guess.
But even that’s not the main point of it all. It’s welfare for people who can show up. It’s vote buying. Those “teachers” are almost guaranteed to show up and vote. The kids are just stage props in that theater. You could probably be more efficient about it and just give them welfare checks and let them stay home but that would destroy the theater part of it all.
Want to wish a Happy Solstice as well…….I find this analysis of this series very informative. Being one tries to connect with the spirit of music is not easy for any of us who works within these arts. Especially an epic, And I mean it feels like the parade never stops, curse and a blessing. Maybe one day the same discussion will be happening some of the work I am doing because sometimes sure do feel like i do not know what the heck I,m doing. But you can’t fight these energy once you star to have a relationship. Thank you so much John.
@JMG #88: Yes. Another casualty of Gallipolli, the trenches of the Western Front, and The Somme. And the carcass hauled off with the end of WW2.
@Rajarshi #97: Your own description of Anakin sounds like the quintessential Xer biography to me. Though you’re right about the Boomers being reared under the shadow of Nuclear War. I see Obi Wan Kenobi as the idealist mentor of Luke, the farm boy from the desert, a total Millennial – it’s a classic pairing found in many a fairy tale. Leia is another, while Han Solo is a classic Xer Bad Boy. Any takers, anyone?
And yes, the end of most populist revolutions has an end we’re all well aware of: “Meet the new boss…..same as the old boss…..”
Oh, and when I dig out the original…. I wrote a filk song back in the day called “Wotan’s Children, beginning
“Come and listen to my story ’bout a German boy;
raised in the woods with neither book nor toy.
Worked with swords ’til he cut real clean, and kilt him a dragon, when he was seventeen…”
Of course, as JMG’s theater producer character Mark Tanabe observed “It’s opera! A lot of singing, a lot of emoting, then everybody dies.”
Dear JMG and commentariat:
It strikes me that the idea of a “more robust and healthy life in nature“ seems to be a recurring or persistent idea, at least in Western thought. The Eighteenth Century saw the elites embracing the idea of the “noble savage”, and obviously, the idea of children being natural and better left unfettered and free is still present today (anyone who thinks children are just naturally honest and truthful is obviously not a parent).
As a side topic, until sometime after World War 2, elites were expected to also justify their position. The public and cultural works of a Carnegie or a Vanderbilt, the fact that elite’s sons went to war and often died there, the idea that scientific discoveries and the acts of businesses were supposed to be of benefit to society, all seem to have died lately. A successful businessman created a strong business that created something useful, not made a pile of money by asset-stripping other businesses, sucking up more government subsidies than the next guy, or whatever. Obviously, there were exceptions in the past (and now), but the whole expectation has shifted.
When did this attitude or mindset change, and why?
Finally, Merry Christmas, Blessed Solstice, and a joyful holiday of whatever you celebrate for all!
Cugel
David, no, I hadn’t. Thank you for the heads up! I’ll see if my local library has a copy.
Chris, and a happy solstice to you and yours! Yeah, “clueless and dangerous” is a good summary. I expect as the economy tips into hard deflation and the post-Soviet collapse world order goes to bits, officials will insist at the top of their lungs that making sure everyone uses the right pronouns and takes the latest vaccines will surely fix it all.
Robert M, thanks for this. I’d also bring up the old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse, where kids spent eight years and came out of it with an education most college graduates don’t have today; it worked as well as it did because it focused on learning, not indoctrination and obedience training, and because older kids helped younger kids learn.
Peter, thanks for this! It’s on my calendar in ink.
Robert M, that is to say, both of them were ringing changes on a common stock of clichés. Got it.
Celadon, and likewise.
Walt, fascinating. I dislike Dickens so haven’t read that story in many decades; thanks for this.
Rajarshi, hmm. Interesting.
Robert K, thank you and likewise.
Sandwiches, as an author who has a very good idea what motivates me to put things into my books, I tend to think that Wagner did in fact know what he was talking about when he discusses his intentions in his essays and letters. The fact that lots of people miss the Nixonian references in Star Wars doesn’t mean that they’re not in there, just that a lot of people missed Lucas’s point. As for revolutions, yes, it’s happened a few times, but it’s more common for the intellectuals to be a passing phase — they get shoved out of power by some more effective tyrant, as in the French revolution.
Hawk, you’re welcome and thank you. A happy solstice to you and yours!
Patricia M, that’s the one. Not many people these days realize what a wrenching transformation that was.
Cugel, oh, granted, the Noble Savage has been a recurrent fantasy in our culture from way back. As for the decadence of our current elite, that’s a common transformation as a society begins its decline. I’m not sure why it happens, but it’s quite common, and it plays a large role in the process by which decline gives way to fall.
Hi John Michael,
As a bit of an update, the fire authority have thrown a lot of resources at the nearby fire over the past few days, and you can barely see any smoke today – this does in no way mean that the fire has been put out. I can see and hear the helicopters flying back and forth collecting water from a nearby reservoir. At night the staging area looks like a little sea of lights. There’s a bit of rain in the forecast for tonight, and fingers crossed the fire doesn’t take off again next Thursday when the forecast suggests temperatures in the shade of 38’C / 100’F with a bit of wind. Things aren’t going so well in other parts of the state with an epic fire burning in the Grampians national park – 35,000 hectares / 86,500 acres burnt so far, with little chance of extinguishing the fire. Candidly it would be far better to manage the forests well in advance of the fire season, but this is an unpopular view.
It’s been a good growing season and the fresh raspberries are arriving at the rate of a small bucket each day. Yum! Shame about the fires, but a person must take the good with the bad. Anywhoo, that’s the summer solstice update from down here. How are you going? At a wild guess, I’m thinking a proper clam chowder accompanied by a pint of most excellent dark ale is in your future? Probably do salad here it being a bit warmer and stuff… 🙂
Speaking of related topics, the Wotan-gang are doing their very best to produce a currency crisis down here. The exchange rates with the worlds reserve currency are probably going to send us broke for a nation of importers… Turns out the neoliberal concept of importing everything is a really dumb idea. Clueless and dangerous, that’s what is/was at the helm – the future, well it’s not lost on me that inflation and the ever expanding money supply problem can be sorted by sacking a whole bunch of people and reducing immigration. It’s not a complicated strategy. I’d be sure in some circles, this outcome is known.
Cheers
Chris
“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” John W. Gardner who was President of the Carnegie Foundation and HEW Sect. under LBJ.
This has long been one of my favorite quotations.
My own grandmother didn’t enter school until 4th grade. Between a late start and frequent illness, she probably had about 4 years of formal school, ending in 8th grade. She worked many jobs: store clerk, soda fountain waitress, aircraft riveter, etc. Told me that all the staff at Northrup were given exams for aptitude in engineering. She scored high, but of course only men were being chosen for training. I still have her souvenir necklace given the staff who worked on the Flying Wing prototype. In any case, she was able to teach me to read and speculate with me on evolution vs. the Bible and other topics.
If you want to know the probable reaction of NeoPagans to the old German gods look at their reaction to some of the reconstructionist Pagans and Heathens who talk of gods who expect actual regular devotional service, proper behavior and other practices. A look at Gangleri’s Grove will give an idea of some of the controversies.
Rita
A Happy Solstice, Glad Yule, and Blessed Alban Arthuan to our good host and all who celebrate the Longest Night!
@Walt 96, yes a powerful scene. Dickens can be a bit sappy, but he certainly wasn’t overly thrilled with the modern system. I found the George c Scott version well done after forty years, and still fresh. Dickens somehow paganized Christmas without much reference to Christ, but brought it in the back door, with the three spirits who were, are, and to come. That was a famous saying of Simon Magus, about the Standing Man. It’s almost a gnostic remythologizing of Christmas, while Christ presides over it all in traditional English overtones.
@JMG (#104):
Spot on, JMG! The one-room schoolhouse worked very well, at least in the 1700s-1800s, and indeed the older kids used to help teach the younger kids. Also, schooling was a privilege, not a mandate, in those days — and easier than hard farm labor.
Chris, for a change we’ve got something approximating a genuine winter here — 19°F and half an inch of snow on the ground. Chowder will doubtless feature on the menu sometime soon, though it’ll probably be codfish rather than clam — the Portuguese stores locally sell first-rate salt cod, which makes a heavenly chowder. As for too many imports, we’ll see whether the Orange Julius changes that here — it’s certainly on his stated agenda. The possibility of a serious economic contraction in the new year, with plunging markets and the rest of it, is on my mind.
Rita, Sara had a plexiglass cross her mother got after spending four years at the Bell aircraft plant in Buffalo, NY during the Second World War, making plexiglass canopies for Bell P-39 fighter planes. I didn’t know that was a common habit!
Sister Crow, thank you and likewise!
Robert M, that’s a good point — schooling would be a lot more appealing if it was a break from, say, shoveling manure in the cow barn…
By contrast to the “solutions” for social injustice often proposed by those whom Al-Gharbi describes, Walter Scheidel has relatively recently written a book on the more effective means throughout human history that inequalities have been reduced on a large scale. They are not exactly comforting for the privileged classes but unfortunately they tend not to be too comfortable for anyone else either:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/the-great-leveler?srsltid=AfmBOopFOQlL00F9hrzgbWBtY_YjzXWuf9DqAZlhcHWlofPy7u7EInDV
https://aeon.co/essays/are-plagues-and-wars-the-only-ways-to-reduce-inequality
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/violence-history%E2%80%99s-great-economic-leveler-188974
As someone who has written about the coming “Dark Age America” (https://books.google.ca/books/about/Dark_Age_America.html?id=mrbLDAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y), can you see some equivalent of the Eastern Roman Empire (which lasted in some form almost 1000 years after the fall of the WRE) or the Holy Roman Empire emerging?
As an archdruid, I also thought you might be interested in a book on a year of greatly overlooked historical significance, the year ancient faiths became officially heretical.
https://www.logos.com/product/322835/ad-381-heretics-pagans-and-the-dawn-of-the-monotheistic-state
I am in education and even now the math, literacy and writing skills, tech skills, science and history knowledge that a quite large majority of the population will ever need can be mastered by the end of a second year of high school or even earlier. Actually 8th grade is enough to supply a foundation that would be sufficient for the more mature motivated students to continue learning on their own. Kids are infantilized by popular culture and the youth culture they live in while incarcerated in mass education. Yes, American children are born with 13 year prison sentences they begin serving in kindergarten.
Greetings all!
JMG said: “The possibility of a serious economic contraction in the new year, with plunging markets and the rest of it, is on my mind.”
Could you elaborate a bit on the above?
Many thanks and regards.
Re: Lord of the Flies
There was a real incident with some parallels to the novel which went much more peacefully and is overall quite touching to read about, the case of the Tongan Castaways:
„ Stephen, Mano, Sione, Kolo, David and Luke—all between the ages of 13 and 16—had been students at a Catholic boarding school in Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga. They made plans to sail to Fiji, 500 miles away, and provisioned themselves with two sacks of bananas, coconuts and a small gas burner before stealing the boat of a local fisherman they disliked. That night they encountered high seas and whipping winds, which tore apart their sail and snapped their rudder. After drifting for eight days and collecting rainwater in coconut shells, they landed on ‘Ata“ – a then uninhabited island, where they organized an overall decent life for 15 months, keeping themselves fed and entertained, until they were rescued by an Australian fisherman.
Now, I‘m sure kids from Tonga in the 60s probably had more practical skills than the children in the novel, the real boys were older, and they were traveling together by choice, but still, it’s nice to see reality draw a friendlier picture of humanity than fiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongan_castaways?wprov=sfti1#
Great analysis, and comments. I’ve been sporadically following this series and the subject avers me, but whenever I do read it it’s really engaging. I have not read all the comments so forgive me if I missed it, but just wanted to add my three pennies, about rural people whether it’s intentional or not, there is an actual thing that perhaps the romantics were aspiring towards that tends to just happen when your surroundings as a human are more the “natural” world vs a city, suburb etc. Maybe the deschoolers were *sort of* on to this also, as well as the new thought types who theorized some essence was to be found in natural /inherent/ immanent forms, or in order to be found required some cultural backtracking and hoped some essential holy human template would spring forth from the earth on its own.
Traditions are ultimately a bigger tent than we typically realize. On the tangent of the wild child, from simple affection to language, to preventing injury, or preventing being ostracized by lack of empathy for others from where they actually are and what they actually think.
The nihilist reaction is much like the atheistic reaction, where(imho) a valenced negative straw man imposter for tradition, culture, or God is ravaged as proof of its falseness.
The caricature of the rural people or any people always comes from the same curddled source, fear of difference and assumptions of homogeneity for groups, and it’s reliably an intellectual downgrade.
My father went to a one room schoolhouse at least through the eighth grade. That would have been 1940s to early ’50s. As he often pointed out, it was uphill both ways.
The part he left out was that it was also downhill both ways. From home downhill, across the creek, uphill to school. Then the reverse to get home. He was not making up the part about having to do it at -20 F.
The school was closed, and then sold and converted to a house. It’s still there, I just found it on the map.
David R, Scheidel is of course quite correct. It’s an interesting detail of history that, judging by the traces of health and nutrition found in skeletons, the condition of the lower classes in the western Roman empire improved significantly as Rome fell and the Dark Ages arrived. War, plague, economic collapse, and the fall of empires very often benefit the people at the bottom of the ladder — but of course they don’t write histories.
As for a Byzantine Empire-equivalent, Europe was the most likely site for that, but at this point I’d put the chance of that happening entirely in imaginary numbers; as things stand, given demographic, political, and military realities, western Europe will be overrun by immigrants/invaders from the Middle East and Africa within the next century or so, putting a full stop to the history of Europe’s current cultures and nations. (History is full of comparable examples.) A Holy Roman Empire-equivalent? That’s all but guaranteed. In my deindustrial-sf novel Star’s Reach, which is set in the 2480s of our calendar, the hereditary monarch who rules the Ohio and Mississippi river basins is called the Presden of Meriga — and yes, they still spell it “President of America” on official documents. (The feudal magnates of the kingdom are called jennels and cunnels — consider the fate of the Roman military titles dux and comes, “duke” and “count” in modern English.)
Thank you for the book suggestion — a very bitter year for some of us.
BeardTree, I certainly experienced schooling as a prison sentence. Getting out of school the summer I turned 18 was one of the happiest times of my life — not because I felt I’d achieved anything in school, purely because I could finally draw a line under that utterly miserable experience, and walk away.
Karim, I’ll be doing a post on it once the Wagner sequence is over. The short form is that the divergence between the productive side of the global economy (the part that actually produces consumer goods and nonfinancial services) and the speculative, financial, and administrative sides of it has become so vast that the latter can no longer be supported by the former. It’s as though we built the Great Pyramid this way:
Eike, I just wish I’d had some Tongan schoolmates…
MacKenzie, oh, you’ll hear no argument for me about the spiritual advantages of a less artificial environment! The point that has to be kept in mind is that culture also varies from more to less natural, and culture is an essential part of what makes us human. I suspect that the “wild child” motif was among other things a way of hiding from the fact that 19th century culture didn’t have to be as hideously unnatural and inhuman as it so generally was.
Siliconguy, was your father a well-educated man?
On your comments about Islam in Europe, it is worth noting that “Europeans” didn’t start being used as a way to describe those who live there until after the Battle of Tours in 732 of various forces against the Umayyad Caliphate.
https://www.amazon.ca/Path-Martyrs-Charles-Martel-Battle/dp/1795052147
In the Classical World, there was a “Mediterranean -centred” worldview whereby the further one got from the Mediterranean coast in any direction, the less civilized it became. The Rise of Islam brought an end to Antiquity by permanently dividing the Mediterranean world politically and psychologically.
https://x.com/ByzRomanLevant/status/1706703952475988059
If I were a Muslim and wanted to point to what I would see as divinely-ordained evidence as to the truth of my faith, I would point to the highly contingent circumstances under which this new force emerging out of the Arabian peninsula came about at exactly the right place in exactly the right time. The two traditional empires of the region, Constantinople and Persia (which was then Zoroastrian in its leadership) had just exhausted themselves in one particularly long and devastating war, the Byzantine-Sassanian War of 602 to 628.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Sasanian_War_of_602%E2%80%93628
For a while, it looked like Persia would be the new power in the near east.
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Sasanian_Empire.html?id=I-xtAAAAMAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/14wccpg/620_ad_the_persian_empire_is_the_largest_in_the/?rdt=44707
Then thanks to the seemingly miraculous efforts of the Roman Emperor Heraclius, they achieve a victory…just in time for the forces of the Islamic Caliphate to emerge out of the desert sands of Arabia to conquer all of Persia and the Levant, Egypt, and Africa from Constantinople…and these regions were considered the wealthiest and most sophisticated in Classical times. North Gallia and Britannia were considered the buck private provinces of the Roman Empire! Just imagine telling a Roman that these areas would be progenitors for two of the biggest empires and languages in history!
https://www.amazon.ca/Great-Arab-Conquests-Hugh-Kennedy/dp/0753823896
Yes, the decline of polytheism was a far more gradual process than many realize. Some anti-pagan laws were allegedly enacted by Constantine II, son of Constantine, but the sources dispute each other and it may have not gone further than some forms of divination. Under Emperor Gratian, the Altar of Victory was removed from the Roman Senate and he cut funding for various traditional pagan structures. Still most Christian emperors (which after Constantine was every emperor except Julian (at least openly)) were fairly tolerant of paganism.
The persecution and shutting of temples and gatherings didn’t really begin in full force until Emperor Theodosius and later his two infamous sons Honorius and Arcadius, who ruled the West and East respectively. Even so, Dalmatia was a stronghold of paganism as late as the 460s and there was one prominent general Marcellinus who was openly pagan even then. There was also a pagan revolt from the Southwest of Anatolia as late as the 480s! As late as Justinian, there must have been a significant number of pagan holdouts based on the laws that he passed against them. As late as the 9th Century, there was still a pagan holdout in the Mani Peninsula, close to the Ancient Spartans.
Chris, this article about controlled burning in the Willamette Valley in the state of Oregon might interest you:
https://www.wildgardenseed.com/articles/chepenafa
David Kaiser on the reality of Trump’s new order – he thinks Trump has grown into the sort of president this era needs, with some caveats. Let me know if this is too far OT:
http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-turning-point.html
@BeardTree #113: I second that about education. I’ve thought for some years now that it would be much better to have schooling only up to the age of 16 or so (and make it much less bureaucratic), then have everybody learn some trade and work in it for at least a few years, with those who feel a serious calling for higher learning then being able to go to university in their mid-twenties or so. I don’t think it would hurt those who have real intellectual talents but it would ground them more in reality. Maybe it would even produce a less Wotanish intelligentsia …
@JMG, in re: “I expect as the economy tips into hard deflation and the post-Soviet collapse world order goes to bits, officials will insist at the top of their lungs that making sure everyone uses the right pronouns and takes the latest vaccines will surely fix it all.”
Get a load of this one.
Why do Kiwis fall down the rabbit hole? The surprising things researchers just learned
https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/why-do-kiwis-fall-down-the-rabbit-hole-the-surprising-things-researchers-just-learned/JXYASINA5VHFTOSWXEM4OFH2OI/
Here is what a team of psychologists has concluded:
“Psychology researchers have long theorised it’s those who feel undervalued, disempowered, or disconnected from society who are most likely to be attracted to conspiracy theories. …
“The researchers focused on four core psychological needs: control, belonging, self-esteem and having meaning in life.
“ ‘When people feel devalued, that they don’t belong, that they don’t have a say, or that life is lacking meaning, they’re more likely to see gaps in the official story that can be filled by other explanations for important events’ ..”
Now, of course, the fact that the previous Labour Government paid the legacy (MSM) media to spout their propaganda, or that PM Ardern said “We are the single source of truth” had nothing to do with it! Nor did the fact that young people started “suddenly dying” influence anyone!
Na-a-a-aw! No way!
Poor little dears! They just needed some cuddles to convince them that “they didn’t see what they saw!” Gas-lighting and “Love bombing”, anyone?
The lack of insight here is mind-blowing!
Hi John Michael,
Your spam filter add on is having a melt down. Now it’s telling me that I’ve ‘You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.’ Sure, but I don’t think so. 🙂 Updates, huh!
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
The snow sounds quite lovely, and cod is a pretty tasty fish. It’d work nicely in a traditional New England chowder. Yum!
Today the cold winds originating from Antarctic waters are dominating the climate. It’s only 50’F around lunchtime which is not bad for two days on from the summer solstice. In some more elevated mountainous areas far to the east of here, there was even snow this morning. Brr! Got the wood heater going, and are dreaming of a warming chowder.
But not to worry, on Thursday the winds will shift and then blow in from the centre of the arid continent. Talk about hot air, it’ll reach beyond 100’F. The climate here provides a unique insight into what a highly variable environment feels like, and that makes it difficult to grow edible produce. Oh well. I’d suggest a stable climate is a valuable thing and worth protecting. Weirdly, over the next week, rain is forecast to fall over almost every inch of the continent at some point. The oceans surrounding the continent have warmed and are some of the hottest on the planet right now. And nope, the nearby fire is not yet out although it is intermittently raining.
The recent currency crash down here (blamed on US interest rates, but bizarrely followed directly on from a federal government announcement of serious over spending), will create waves of pain and inflation. Hmm. Went to buy some petrol (gas in the US) this morning and paid $2.09 / litre which is $7.94 / gallon. My preference for small and very economical to run vehicles is what I learned growing up in the shadow of the 1970’s oil crisis. My preference in this matter it should be noted, is unfashionable given what I see driving around the landscape. When oil prices go up, and they will, things are gonna hurt even more economically. It’s a bit of a circular economic death by a thousand cuts don’t you reckon? But I agree, there may be a sudden downwards lurch sooner or later, maybe sooner. Circumstances as they are today, are not sustainable and something will have to give.
On a different but related story. For about three years I volunteered with the local fire brigade. The state government (who appear to be in enormous amounts of debt) coordinate the brigades across the state. They intend to increase the fire services levy all households and businesses pay via their rates (the equivalent of property taxes). It was of interest to me that the fire services volunteers themselves are now questioning in the media why they provide free services (of 12 hour shifts and regular attendance – no small thing) and yet still have to pay the levy. What I observed about my time with that lot was that the social element was stomped out, and it ended up looking like an unpaid job, which actually cost to be a part of (fuel, time and other resources given are not free). It was discouraging to say the least. CFA volunteers failing to see better equipment despite paying larger levies.
Crazy stuff, it is of little wonder to me that across the board I hear anecdotal stories of the difficulties groups are having attracting volunteers.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Mary,
Thanks for the article, and the climate here is quite similar to Oregon, maybe even with a bit more summer rain. Yes, absolutely, that’s how it rolled with fires and the indigenous folks. The more I read about the activities, the more impressed I am by the scale and sheer care of the land.
The large fires nowadays, and even the controlled burn offs that the state government does, are not the same at all. Firstly scale is way off the charts in that the ones these days are too large in scope. Plus they burn too hot and that kills everything, even sterilising the soil. It’s no good.
Cheers
Chris
As JMG probably knows, opera originated as an attempt to revive an art form of an earlier civilization. Quoting Wikipedia,
“Opera was born at the end of the 16th century, as an initiative of a circle of scholars (the Florentine Camerata) who, discovering that Ancient Greek theater was sung, had the idea of setting dramatic texts to music. Thus, Jacopo Peri created Dafne (1597), followed by Euridice (1600), by the same author. In 1607, Claudio Monteverdi composed La favola d’Orfeo, where he added a musical introduction that he called sinfonia, and divided the sung parts into arias, giving structure to the modern opera. ”
Baroque opera was courtly entertainment. The composers and musicians and constumers were professionals, but If I understand correctly, the roles were often taken by nobility and the king himself, for an audience of themselves and other courtiers. This was a natural development out of a previous courtly entertainment, the masque, in which the high-born dressed as allegorical figures and recited bits of poetry.
Although the various modes (scales) of ancient Greek music were written down and discussed in philosophical works which shad urvived in the Eastern Church and the Muslim world, and came back to western Europe during the Renaissance, the notation did not. It’s my impression that to this day, we have only a few scraps of melody from the Hellenistic period. European opera had complete scripts of Greek and Roman plays and myths and some idea of how they were staged, but they had to make up their own music.
Speaking of abandoned art forms, I could have gone to (but didn’t) what was probably a very good approximation of a Baroque art form that isn’t done oftene I don’t remember the proper name of it. I’m going to call it a Baroque horse ballet. Not with toe shoes instead of horse shoes. As described in the article, this was dozens of riders in period costume on dressage horses of a particular breed (something like the Lippzaner horses) doing very close order drill and intersecting patterns to live acoustic Baroque music. In this case, most of the skills survived as separate pursuits. It took historical specialists and people with money who thought it was a cool idea to put it all back together.
Patricia Mathewa #70 writes,
“About real-life feral children: I’m thinking some of them actually began as retarded, autistic, or whatever, and in Handel & Gretel style were sent out into the woods and abandoned. Throwaway children in hard times. ”
J. M. Barrie wrote more than once about children who disappear. In the musical Peter Pan the Lost Boys are a jolly crew who miss their mothers dreadfully and draft Wendy to be a mother-substitute. The musical is based on a play, which is based on a novel, Peter and Wendy. The novel has a subtext which to adult eyes is not hidden.
Mr. Darling has a job in the City, meaning he has to keep up appearances. Wendy is the oldest of three children., desperately wanted by Mrs. Darling but not so much by her husband. The pair are living beyond their means and clinging to gentility by their fingernails.
The narrator on page two of the first chapter: “For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed.”
Mr. Darling runs through the regular household expenditures with his wife, and then gets on the subject of childhood diseases. ” ‘Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings–don’t speak–measles one five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six–don’t waggle your finger–whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings’ –and so on it went, and it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated as one.”
From page three on this book is a fantasy, but rather dark.
Daniil: speaking of projection onto “Geyers schwarzer Haufen”, what, if anything, do you think about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGhdSeKr4TM (one can go straight to the description containing the lyrics)?
>David Kaiser on the reality of Trump’s new order
When I cared more about the public part of gubmint, I would wonder whether Trump was going to be FDR or Yeltsin or Gorbachev or Andropov. That guy seems to think FDR, but I am not at all certain that’s going to be the case. I honestly don’t know, we’ll have some idea by 2026 though.
In any case, he’s got the controls of the plane now, even though he’s not even president yet. He did demonstrate a certain amount of competence at flying the plane last time around. He’s going to need it. I’m still keeping my parachute on and staying close to the door.
>Went to buy some petrol (gas in the US) this morning and paid $2.09 / litre which is $7.94 / gallon.
You should watch some old episodes of Breaking Bad. Not for the antics of the characters in the story but they did manage to capture some gas prices on film from 10+ years ago. I’d say gasoline is undervalued and could increase in price, if it is allowed to, that is. Or the way these things usually go when being manipulated and suppressed is you wake up one day and it has shot up 100+% and you’re going WTF?! Ah, the manipulation has broken down and price discovery is happening again. Nobody wants to discover prices anymore.
Seems like I remember some country back in the 80s that was all state directed. I wonder what happened to them?
John, scars? Ugh! The worst I got from catechism was guilt. I was bullied in school, being a nerdy, weird kid. One day a bully had me in a headlock from behind with his two lackeys looking on and gawking. I had had it and elbowed him in the rib cage. I was surprised when he let go. Just then a teacher came and broke it all up. He told me I should fight back more often. Instead, I relented. I thought that doing so would only make me like them and why would I want that? There’s a fine line between bullied and bully.
I always looked at Tolkien’s orcs as his catholic belief that evil was not created but it is a perversion of good. As Lucifer became Satan and Melchor became Morgoth, so did some of the elves become orcs. Tolkien did say that the elves were unfallen men. In that case if they did fall it would be irredeemable. That leaves his human beings, as well as hobbits, in the middle between good and evil, which is maybe why Gollum should be pitied.
As far as Lord of the Flies goes, I think that is an examination of the phrase, “Only nine meals away from anarchy.” Though during the nineteenth century in England, there was a trope of the angelic child. Dickens’ Tiny Tim is the most famous of these, but Macdonald used this as well, such as in his, “At the Back of the North Wind.”
Which one is right? Well, that depends…
Re: Robert K,
Don’t expect me to argue. I started college at age 27 after 8 years in the Navy. The difference between the way the other veterans and I approached education and the way the kids did was quite notable. We veterans self-selected into one dorm and our dorm ended up with the highest average GPA and the nickname of the cemetery due to the lack of partying.
@Chuaquin:
In my opinión wokism is not fading in Spain because is a fashion shared by a reduced group of population, althought the frantic intents for imposing It by the media and the políticians, following the indications of Rockefeller’s and Democrat Party. But wokism needs to be based in protestant irrationalism, and the Spanish population is culturaly catholic.
@Deborah Frankel #129: When Albuquerque’s Musical Theater Southwest did Peter Pan, they cast Tiger Lily and her Indians as Lost Girls in cheap Hallowe’en Indian costumes. They’re the same ones who put on “Cabaret” and in the last act showed Sally, grown up from flapper cabaret singer to mature torch singer; and finally, The MC, haggard-looking, in a striped concentration camp uniform with a yellow star and a pink whatever. Their “Evita” ran actual film strips and newspaper headlines from her reign. (Yeah. he was the official President, but she was running the country, as his record without her shows pitifully.)
(They’re not around any more; something to do with their building, in the same year a bookstore of long-standing also went out of business. I can’t rememebr the year, but 2008 would be a good guess. )
So, yes, someone knew the backstory to Peter Pan as well. Thanks for the data; I need to get a copy and reread it as an adult.
Ah–schooling. When I was in school in the 1950s, teachers didn’t hesitate to rap knuckles with a ruler. In the rough and tumble northern Ontario town we lived in, the open concept (or whatever it was) would never have worked. But still, my older daughter, who’s an aspie and is a few years younger than you, JMG, was bullied through most of her school life and her younger sister suffered some blow-back also. But we all had a better education than what’s available these days where the only concern is how many genders there are.
When I went from the farm to university, I still had straw stuck behind my ears. Most of the other students snubbed me for being backward? Primitive? Whatever. My husband quit school when he was 16 out of necessity. He was the second oldest of a large family. Still, he was smarter than most of the guys I knew in university. Most of the university males I knew seemed ??? Not real?? Fake??
At the homeschooling based Charter school I work at high school students are encouraged to get a part time job during the school year. We issue a work permit unless it is a family owned business We then if they work at least five hours a week give five units of elective credit per semester that counts toward graduation requirements. Junior and senior students because they have fulfilled a good amount of required courses can up their hours of work to 13-15 hours and receive ten units of per semester. We also encourage concurrent enrollment in our local junior colleges to earn early college units or get enrolled in the extensive blue collar trades programs that are available. at our junior colleges. The homeschooling model provides the flexibility for this. Students can do their academic high school classes at home through various curriculums we provide. Parents can also buy curriculums of their choice to use. Many take advantage of our two days a week on campus high school program taught by credentialed teachers where they can do their Science, English, Math, and Social Sciences., completing work at home. They also have access to PE, drama, art, music, woodshop, crafts, agriculture classes, 4H, chess, gardening and landscaping classes on those days – We even have a fun student run Dungeons and Dragons class. All on a seven acre campus in the country. We are accredited so students can get what they need to immediately go to 4 year universities upon graduation. By diligently racking up units, taking college classes that give more units to graduation per semester and doing course work over the summer a student can graduate a semester or even a year early. And finally at the end of their sophomore year a student may take a state high school proficiency exam and with parental approval end their educational imprisonment and move on to something else with a document legally equivalent to a high school diploma. Let freedom ring!
“”As for Hollywood and its rural stereotypes, the Clampetts at least started out as fish out of water types, except maybe Jethro. Jed though cleaned up on the city slickers at pool (just like ricochet shooting) and horse races.”
But also, I always thought that one of the points of this programme and, for example, The Addams Family and The Munsters, was that the oddballs, the outsiders, were the good, sensible, thoughtful people, and that the “normal” people (the stereotypical 50s US fantasy) were the horrible people. (and the “stupid” outsiders usually got the last laugh).
See also any 80s High School romcom, Clueless being my favourite (based on Jane Austen, which kind of helps) where all the cool people are horrible (at least to begin with) and all the misfits are a little more thoughtful.
Also played out in one of the first reality shows, with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie (not the brightest star in the sky, so let’s give her the benefit of being “easily led”) went to live with a “midwestern” evangelical, right wing (pre-Trump meaning), farming family. Now, as a gay, metropolitan, white collar, progressive guy, one might think that I would identify with Paris. Absolutely not! While the family and I would disagree about almost everything to do with everything (except our Christian beliefs, although they wouldn’t recognise my flavour of Christianity 🙂 ), they were utterly charming, hospitable, thoughtful, intelligent, and Paris was just horrific (I know, it’s a television programme, but we’ve seen her antics since). It’s REALLY stuck with me!!
I think this has something vaguely to do with the issues that are being discussed, but maybe I’ve got a little lost! 🙂
Maybe offtopic, but necessary: Merry Christmas for you all, dear kommentariat!
@Michael X (#139):
The Addams Family cartoons in the New Yorker were almost literally life-savers for me as a boy. The message they had for me was, “Oh, hey, maybe my own family, with all my weird relatives, living or dead, and all the stories about them, is actually not the only weird family in the country, nor the weirdest family of them all.” And then, somewhat later, there were Addams Family movies and weekly TV shows, which I still enjoy watching on occasion.
[And yes, we were truly a weird family. Great-grandmother owned a real human skull, which I have now. She used to use to communicate with her own ancestors at Hallows. She also had a large store of ancestral photographs, scrap-books, and other heirlooms, each with its own story. Her and her husband’s ancestors were descendants of Separatists, Swedenborgians, Spiritualists, early New-Thought practitioners, Christian Scientists, open rebels–and one outright traitor–against the British Crown, both in the United States and in Canada, and so forth. Growing up, my mother would say to me, “Mathiesens are different,” meaning not just different from other families, but within the family different from one another. We have been strongly allergic to mainstream conformity for generations.]
Thank you, JMG! And in that vein, a very Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah to all of you who celebrate them. Blessings upon the light kindled in the darkness!
A few things jumped out at me from this…
Feral children: I’ve read about them, and while they’re physically human, something is just not there. They vocalize but can’t speak, they don’t express normal emotions, and seem to not recognize themselves in the mirror (an important test of cognition). They’re a case study in what makes us human. While I don’t believe in the Marxist blank slate, it’s clear that nurture has a substantial role to play in human development.
Experimental education: I realize you’re not a fan of CS Lewis’ Narnia, but the beginning of the fourth book, the Silver Chair, is relevant here. It’s only mentioned in the intro and epilogue, but the protagonists attend “Experiment House”, a fictional school run on similar principles of “open concept” and egalitarian reform; and of course it devolves into cliques and bullying (until eventual comeuppance). It’s much to CS Lewis’ credit that he so accurately satirized this way of thinking all the way back in the 50’s.
Peasants: I particularly remember reading some book that quoted the “brother to the ox” line in order to refute it, pointing out that agriculture required a great deal of knowledge and skills, and that the snooty nobles would be completely out of their depth if they tried to till the soil. Which is true, but I never knew what they were referencing until now, so it’s good to tie up that loose end. It may have been the same book or a different one (I forget, I read alot), but it went on to say that aristocrats and peasants have their different roles to play, the necessary work of keeping things running versus higher culture, and ideally these should complement each other, instead of being at variance, as they sometimes are.
Merry xmas!