Cultural Mythology: American Notions of Self and Country

Introduction to Poetry

I asked them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with a rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

---Billy Collins

In 2001, Collins was named US Poet Laureate. This poem appeared in Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2001).


The image is detail from a painting of mine titled "Mandala."

Mercy, mercy

In my post titled "Fate of the Titans," I told the story of Tantalus, a Titan punished with eternal hunger and thirst because he tried to trick his guests into eating his son, a cannibalism I suggest, currently forced upon many of the animals that we eat to our mutual detriment. In another post, "The Dollar Tree," I noted the American need for cheap goods and the way that price, as value, deforms both our calculations about the cost of things and the moral decisions implicit in any transaction.

Economics, for better or worse, is an important model of relationship that involves all of our values. It's not just about price. It's about fairness, sustainability, beauty, respect, and mercy too. One crucial intersection of value and values, is food. We all need to eat, and we need to consider the safety, politics, and morality of food, what is consumed, how it is raised, who eats it, and at what price.

The vast majority of farm animals in this country are treated with the kind of cruelty that only the cheap could stomach. Voters in California can assert a better set of values by supporting Proposition 2.

"Proposition 2, co-sponsored by the Humane Society and Farm Sanctuary, the biggest farm-animal-rights group in the United States, focuses on what are considered the worst animal-confinement systems in factory farms. The ballot initiative, which voters will decide on Nov. 4, requires that by 2015 farm animals be able to stand up, lie down, turn around and fully extend their limbs. In effect that translates into a ban on the two-foot-wide crates that tightly confine pregnant pigs and calves raised for veal — a space so small that they can’t turn around. And it would eliminate so-called battery cages where four or more hens share a space about the size of a file drawer.

Pete Singer a professor of bioethics at Princeton University and a leading figure in the animal rights movement, compares Proposition 2 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, calling Proposition 2 the “other historic ballot this November.” If it passes, it would affect more animals — almost 20 million — than any ballot measure has in U.S. history.

Because California is the largest agriculture state in the country, and often a trend-setter on social issues, the ballot is a bellwether for farm-animal-welfare reform nationwide. Many experts predict that if Proposition 2 becomes law it will create a ripple effect, putting pressure on other states to pass similar reforms and pushing major food corporations to go crate-free and cage-free."

(excerpted from "The Barnyard Strategist" by Maggie Jones, New York Times Magazine October 24, 2008).  Read the whole article

It's great to have a ballot initiative and I hope the success of this one in California provides support for many others like it. But all of us make decisions, daily, about what we eat, and we decide what we will learn more about and what we can afford to ignore. Mercy, mercy-- what is raised with a little tenderness is easier to chew, and kindness makes it easier to swallow.

Location, location, location

Last week I shared Nina Simons's definition of a "bioneer," in contrast to a "pioneer," and I focused on the implicit violence in the image of pioneer as foot soldier and pawn, in contrast to the "bios" of life in bioneer. There are many ways to think about this contrast and its more than a matter of words. If we all get much more specific with our terms, and familiar with the multiple meanings buried in our words, the unconscious mythology becomes something to interact with and even change. Change is coming, but what form will it take?

I've been thinking about where a pioneer or a bioneer is located in literal and imaginative space. The pioneer is on the frontier, which is often felt as big and open, and also the cutting edge, or the edge of civilization and culture. Frontier means "front," and a pioneer clears the way and moves this edge further. No surprise then, that pioneers and pioneering and frontiers are common metaphors for innovation. Innovation as moving forward is connected to a linear image of progress, and growth (which is always good?) is expansion, covering more ground, using more, producing more, getting bigger and broader and less dense at the edges, like suburban sprawl around a city center.

Bioneers are for innovation (as indicated in my post about biomimicry) but can a bioneer be on the frontier? Maybe we need another word for the space, literal and figurative, occupied by the bioneer. How about concentier, "together" (com) in the "center" (centre). No doubt we could find a more elegant word, but what intrigues me is the effect a move from the frontier---as front, or cutting edge--- to the center---as middle, or in the mix--- might have on our image of innovation. To return to the metaphor of the city, urban renewal is often about deepening and density, about efficiencies and multiple use. For a city center to function well, as a viable commercial district and a neighborhood, space must be vertical as well as horizontal, and the complex relationships between populations have to be negotiated. One can't just move further along down the track.

Innovation in the concentier?

Tools and technology

The natural world is the starting point for human ideas, and for some eons, the rocks and streams and sticks and other materials of the world suggested tools. Find something sharp, consider cutting. But as we moved from tools to technology, the natural origins of our tools faded (how many people today know that aspirin first came from willow trees?) and people developed new materials that gave birth to new needs and uses. We have plastic for example, a material that requires its own technology to produce and cannot be assimilated by nature (it's not biodegradable), that is used to make a lot of doodads that nobody needs, or satisfy a fantasy of convenience that is anything but convenient. Mostly, we all have more stuff to stash someplace or throw away, another landfill to site, stream to choke, bird or fish to kill.

There is a movement called biomimicry, that reunites nature and nature's technologies with human tools and needs. One champion is Janine Benyus, and her book Biomimicry:Innovation Inspired by Nature, looks interesting. The purpose behind biomimicry is the creation of sustainable technologies, things that work better and cost less, in terms of our collective health and resources. Did you know that Phelps won all of his gold medals in a swimsuit designed to mimic sharkskin? Not bad.

Biomimicry makes so much sense. Let nature provide the models. I think this notion could be very vauable in terms of our communities and social contracts as well. If we set up our political and economic and social systems following an ecological model, what would it look like? These would be our laws:

All things are interconnected.
Everything goes somewhere.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Nature bats last.

I think we are witnessing the end, as REM put it, of the world as we know it. What comes next will be a matter of story (mythology) and as Naomi Klein says (ironically, quoting Milton Friendman), the ideas that are lying around. Bioneer or pioneer? Hierarchy or web? I vote for nature's model. As it turns out, there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out 

for some new delight.

the dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent 

as a guide from beyond.

--Rumi (The Essential Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks)

Bioneers, pioneers, and pawns

Words, names, are important. Sometimes they suggest more than we consciously intend, because like a myth, they contain the past in the present. So looking at the etymology, the history or family tree, of a word can be revealing. In the days leading up to the Bioneers Conference last weekend, which I attended, I thought about the word "bioneer."

"Bioneer" is a deliberately created term and it obviously refers to "pioneer," a central image of the West and the American mythology of the individual. We've heard a lot lately about pioneers and mavericks, about today's down to earth, hardy individuals (soccer moms and Joe six-packs) and elites (Eastern carpetbaggers). We've seen pictures from the moose hunt. Frankly, the titanic energy of our Western mythology, the genocide and rapacious use of the land in the name of "freedom," and the fantasy of self-reliance, is a problem.

So I was gratified when Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons addressed the significance of the word in her opening comments. Simons outlined three crucial differences between a "bioneer" and a "pioneer." A pioneer she said, moves into new territory as if it were empty and kills others off. In the pioneer mind (something I experience here in the Mojave Desert with some regularity), history begins with his arrival. The frontier is a blank slate, a "no place"  that he puts on the map by virtue of his discovery. A bioneer on the other hand, recognizes that the earth is already fully peopled. 

A pioneer has no respect for limits; a bioneer knows that limits are the first law of nature. A pioneer sees hierarchy in diversity---this one is superior to that one, more valuable or important, that one less so. A bioneer is non-hierarchical and respects the role that each being plays in the creation of the whole.

Given the mission of the Bioneers --- the promotion of sustainable technologies and ecological ways of living---this seems kind of obvious once you've heard it, a marriage between innovation and the interconnected "web" imagery of ecology. But I think the differences Simons highlights are very insightful, especially her emphasis on violence, an aspect of pioneer life and the settling of the West that is often omitted, downplayed, or romanticized. Fittingly, the word "pioneer" comes from peon, or foot soldier. "Bioneer," like biology, is derived from the Greek bios, meaning life.

But there is another angle worth consideration. The etymology of pioneer or peon includes the Medieval Latin pedon, or pawn. A pawn is the piece in the chess game with the least amount of power, something or someone used by others, a hostage,or something exchanged for money. The courageous, self-sufficient, self-made pioneer as pawn. What can be made of this contradiction? 

I think of the many Western settlers bamboozled into moving into harsh dry lands by lying speculators (with the active complicity of the federal government), the machinations of the railroad tycoons who plotted towns and lives along with the tracks, the dustbowl refugees with no place else to turn, the Mormons, and many other pioneers who were refugees of one sort or another. Certainly there were and are exceptions. But other side of this tale of golden opportunity is hardship and necessity. Which raises the question of who or what drives it.

Link to the Bioneers website

Yes We Can

Just back from the Bioneers Conference, nourished by a belief in the need for change and the real possibility that positive change can be realized. More on that later, and in the meantime, I hope you draw some joy and inspiration from this:

Blackeyed peas video Yes We Can

As someone says in this video, "We are not as divided as our politics suggests."

Baby finches

Phillip took this photo last spring, when we were living at a place we call "Coyote." These are baby finches, hatched in a nest built under the eaves on the south side of our cabin. Bird watching friends tell us that house finches build their nests to last and often pass them on, generation after generation. Our cabin was not used much for many years, and we were gratified when the pair we'd seen and heard on previous visits didn't vacate when we moved in full time. Their daily activities blended with our own and created much excitement much for our cats, Harry and Wilt, who spent hours glued to the picture window.

I gather a deep sense of community from the presence of other creatures, who go about their business without concern for me. The animals, plants, the rocks, the rising sun. I know it sounds outlandish but I find the modern idea that I am the only sentient being in a world of dumb objects a very lonely way to live. What is gained by the insistence on human specialness and the inevitability of human domination by virtue of our "unique" consciousness?  

Sunrise

You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies by bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all if us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

--Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems

"Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread."---Pablo Neruda, Confieso Que He Vivido: Memorias, 1974

The Dollar Tree

I went to State Brothers for groceries the other day and noticed a new tenant in the strip of commercial storefronts next door, a discount store called the Dollar Tree. The name caught my attention. As every responsible, hardworking, thrifty American knows, money does not grow on trees.

But the Dollar Tree is a place where money does, figuratively speaking, "grow on trees," because everything is such a good value. Every item in the store is a dollar. In fact, based on my perusal of the merchandise, the Dollar Tree may offer the maximum bang for the buck, stuff-wise. Frankly, I was amazed. A pedometer? For a dollar? Understanding the value of money is an essential life skill, common sense, and a sign of good character. It's dumb to throw money away.

I am honestly kind of a minimalist, and I skated through the aisles of Halloween decorations, past the Styrofoam tombstones and plastic plug-in pumpkins. I also passed on the plastic flowers and baskets, the glass figurines of shepherd girls and lambs, the picture frames that said "World's Best Dog" or "For Grand Mom," and the party paraphernalia. But when I hit house wares and the related drugstore offerings, I started noting things I could really use.

I was beguiled by the wide range of products and by the organization and atmosphere of the store. This was not a somewhat chaotic assortment of odds and ends, and I had the distinct impression that I could come to this Dollar Tree, week after week, month after month, and routinely purchase my favorite necessities at the satisfying price of one dollar. That seems like smart shopping with a capital "S."

But how does the Dollar Tree do it? They import almost all of their products from China. As I retraced my steps, checking labels, I imagined Chinese child laborers churning out the plastic doodads someone here needs for a smashing Halloween. Trick or treat.

Last Christmas, I decided to stop purchasing things made in China. I knew the reasons to kick the cheap Chinese import habit but lacked the will until I heard Sara Bongiorni talk about her book, A Year Without"Made in China:" One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy. Bongiorni spent hours, days, weeks, trying to find tennis shoes for her kids that were not manufactured in China. We're that intertwined. No wonder the Chinese own half of this country, or close to it.

I boycott these products to protest sweatshops, child labor, slave wages, and the disregard for environmental sustainability and consumer protections. Important reasons and principles dear to my heart and instrumental to my sanity. But despite the fact that I was nine months into a surprisingly difficult experiment, I was way too curious about the possibilities to avoid the Dollar Tree altogether.

My inner struggle when I confirmed the China connection, and realized that my choice was to honor my private commitment or spend $7, was intense, physical, in my gut. I even held out the prospect to myself of coming back next week, to test my ardor for the inexpensive dish towels, cotton balls, psuedo-Tupperware, and eyeglass holders. Was it a big deal, my personal boycott? Didn't I really need the stuff? These items are useful.

Well, I walked out without my bargains. I said "no" to the American in me that wants to believe in the money tree and is tempted to spend my dollar on whatever is for sale, simply because I have the dollar and the item seems cheap. Who made that pedometer I wonder, and under what circumstances? "We are one leaf," writes Pablo Neruda, "on the great human tree,"

Discount shopping. We call it thrift, a wholesome, sturdy American virtue. But that's because we haven't stopped to consider what it really costs.

New York Times article on Chinese Factories