Moving Jewels

New Attitude to Nature

 

 

For about a century and half before Wordsworth Thomas Traherne had a tremendous passage he said, wrongly, that I would remember, from “The Corn was Orient and Immortal Wheat”:

 

 “The corn was orient

And the mortal wheat which never should be reaped

nor was ever sown.

I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.

The dust and stones from the street was as precious as gold.

The gates were at firs the end of the world

The green trees when I first saw them first through one of the gates

Transported and ravished me.

Their sweetness and unusual beauty made my breast leap

And almost mad with ecstasy they were such strange and wonderful things.

Oh he men such strange and venerable creatures to the aged had seen

Immortal cherubins and young men and glittering and sparling angels

And made strange and cervavic pieces of life and beauty.

Boys and girls tumbling in the streets and playing

and were moving jewels and knew not that they were born or should ever die

but all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places

eternity was manifest in the light of day

and something infinite behind everything appeared

which talked with my expectation and moved my desire.

The city seemed to stand in Eden or to be built in heaven

But the streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine.

Their clothes of gold and silver were mine

As much as their sparkling eyes, their skins and ruddy faces.

The skies were mine over the sun and moon and stars

And all the world was mine

And I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.

I knew not churlish proprieties

Not bounds not divisions

But all proprieties and divisions were mine

All treasures and possessions of them.

So that without much ado I was corrupted

 and made to learn the dirty devices of the world

which I now unlearn and become again

 as it were a little child again

 that I may enter into the kingdom of God.”

 

This story is of course not unlike the Ojibwa story of the origin of agriculture. What we all must do is unlearn what we have learned from corrupt or dirty devices and become once more the child who can enter the kingdom of God. It is also not unlike the Wordsworth poem Intimations of mortality or even the Navajo cradle song.  All of these  teach us, according to Moriarty, how to walk beautifully upon the earth.

Intimations of Immortality

Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Professor John Moriarty was more than a a keener for Indigenous spirituality. After all he was also a long time professor of English literature and a poet.

The English poet Wordsworth put this well in his poem, “Ode and the Intimations of Immortality”:

“In the beginning like trailing clouds of glory do we come. This is from the poem

“Our birth is but a sleeping and a forgetting

The soul that rises with us,

Our life star hath had elsewhere setting

And cometh from afar

Not an entire forgetfulness and not another nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From god who is our home.

Heaven lies above us in our infancy,

Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy

But he behold the light and whence it flows he sees it in his joy

The youth who daily farther from the east must travel,

Is still his nature’s priest

And by the vision splendid is on his way attended.

At length the man perceives it die away

And fade into the light of common day.”

 

 

This story is of course not unlike the Ojibwa story of the origin of agriculture. What we all must do is unlearn what we have learned from corrupt or dirty devices and become once more the child who can enter the kingdom of god. The prison of ordinary life can be a prison for a young boy if it squeezes out nature and can lose the “vision splendid.”  The old man must learn to walk beautifully on the earth to regain that vision and escape the prison of the ordinary day. I think that is what Professor Moriarty wanted to do. It was part of his religious quest.  I hope he managed to do that. Most of us never do.

 

A Sacred Navajo Cradle

Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, New Attitude to Nature

Professor Moriarty in his YouTube lecture, imagines the original great people who settled in Ireland and they brought with them sacred objects.  Then he imagines a new settler coming to Ireland and bringing a sacred Navajo cradle. He said, “A Navajo cradle is different from our cradle but it is still a cradle.”

Three is a Navajo Cradle song about a man making a cradle for his child.

“A Navajo Cradle

I have made a cradle board for you my child

May you grow to a great old age,

Of the sun’s rays I made the back

Of black clouds I have made a blanket

Of rainbow I have made the bow,

Of sunbeams I have made the side lopes,

Of lightning I have made the lacings

Of river mirrorings I have made the footboard,

Of dawn I have made the covering,

Of light on high horizons have I made the bed.”

 

Like Professor Moriarty, my wife Christiane and I have experienced stories from Navajo story tellers. I think in particular of one who gave us a spectacular jeep ride through Canyon de Chelly in northern Arizona. We learned a lot from him.  Professor Moriarty also learned a lot from the Navajo.

As Moriarty concluded about that Cradle Song:

“This is a cradle that all of us need. No matter what age we are, where young or old, male or female, it is a cradle we should all be willing to lie down into. We would be lying down to great creative nature. We would be lying down into the creative genius of the universe. In this cradle we can experience ecological second birth. We Europeans who think of ourselves as belonging to the first world and look upon the Navajo as belonging to the third world. It sometimes appears to me that we are living in a spiritual third world. Instead of having potbellies we have pot-bellied hearts and minds because we aren’t being nourished any longer by our culture. We aren’t being spiritually nourished and our seals breathing holes have closed over. Think of this whole evening [he was talking to adults listening to his lecture] as a journey to this Navajo cradle. A cradle in which we might all lie down in and be born again…God bless the first peoples of the world if we are willing to listen to them. Then we might listen and learn to stand and walk beautifully on the earth.”

 

You can see from Moriarty’s words that he is as much a poet as a teacher or professor. We learn a lot: We can be born again. We can walk beautifully on the earth again.We can make America and Canada great again, but just not the way some politicians claim

 

 

Big Medicine

Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, New Attitude to Nature

 

Professor John Moriarty talked about a North American indigenous story about a small mouse that learned from a buffalo and a wolf that the world was a world was of medicine. The buffalo and the wolf led the mouse to the edge of a river that was the medicine river. It was filled with Big Medicine and it saved and healed a sick mouse. Some indigenous people have learned this, he says, during a vision quest.

He contrasts this with average Europeans. As Moriarty says,

“when the average European stands up in the morning he sees an economic opportunity. When the average native American stands up he sees Big Medicine. The Earth is Big Medicine. Everything in it is medicine. Isn’t it a wonderful way to see the world and get in touch with it as medicine? We are destroying the medicines that would heal us.”

 

 

Again, Moriarty contrasts the European vision and the Native American vision:

“The European vision is to see God as transcendent. God is above us. God is out there.”  The Greek vision is to see the earth as divine. If you see the world that way you will be reluctant to put a scythe to it. And he says, “I am on the side of the Divine. I won’t abuse it in the way I won’t abuse a chalice. God is transcendent but God is also imminent.”

 

Such an attitude makes all of nature sacred.

Fuelling a Racial Rage

Hate, racism, Right-wing Extremism

 

When you look at the right-wing hysteria it is very difficult to avoid reaching the conclusion that race plays a vital role in the anger stoked up by right-wing media.

Rush Limbaugh, a dedicated purveyor of hate and vitriol on American talk radio, had a very different reaction to flooding in Iowa and other largely white Mid-west states a couple of years after Katrina, than the right wing did about mainly blacks in New Orleans. There were no verbal assaults on the lazy whites. This is what he said,

“I look at Iowa, I look at Illinois. I want to see the murders. I want to see the looting. I want to see all the stuff that happened in New Orleans. I see devastation in Iowa and it dwarfs what happened in New Orleans. I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property and save their reputations. I don’t see a bunch of people running around waiving guns at helicopters. I don’t see a bunch of people shooting cops. I don’t see a bunch of people raping people on the street.”

 

As Justin Ling reported on the CBC radio podcasts said about the right wing reaction to blacks in harm’s way during Hurricane Katrina:

“As aid workers tried to help, right-wing radio told stories of snipers on rooftops. As the media tried to bring the reality of the situation home to other Americans they were called liars. And as the poorest people in the world had suffered, right-wing radio painted them as lazy and dishonest at best, and murderers and rapists at worst. They have given listeners plenty to be angry about.”

 

The rage machine was fuelled and ready to go. Owners of right-wing radio and their employees were ready to reap the profits of rage. And they knew who to blame—lazy good for nothing blacks and their liberal facilitators.

 

The Rage Machine

Hate, Right-wing Extremism

 

In many respects right-wing radio is based on resentment and the fury that it can fuel.  We resent them. We have been victimized the others. They are taking our country. And we want our country back. And we are going to get it. It really is us against them! That is still a big part of right-wing ideology.

 

As Justin Ling said, “Right-wing radio is most effective when there is a focus for all of that rage. What it comes down to is these guys are in the rage business.”

 

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit US shores near New Orleans, setting in motion another hateful attack by America’s right-wing. Many people were stuck under water and badly needed help. The George W. Bush administration was strongly criticized for being slow to get aid to the people in Louisiana devastated by the storm. Local political leaders were begging for help from the federal government.

 

But then something astonishing happened. Many right-wing pundits across America began to criticize the New Orleans and Louisiana politicians for ‘sitting on their asses.’  One right-wing pundit said the problem was that New Orleans police were too busy getting in on the looting to stop the looting. It was their point of view that the police did not want to confront the looters and thugs that had taken over the city.

 

In the weeks following the hurricane strike, right-wing radio was filled with stories suggesting that New Orleans was overrun with looters, murderers and rapists. They claimed people were shooting people with assault rifles that were coming to rescue them. These pundits asked if liberals would be upset with this, or would side with the looters. As CBC reporter Justin Ling said, “Many of these reports were overblown, some were outright lies. And all that misinformation—it has a real impact. These false reports actually hindered efforts to get aid to the hardest hit areas of New Orleans.”

 

One of the right-wing pundits, Neil Boortz, said, “That’s not the voice of the downtrodden. That’s the voice of the useless, the worthless.” Right-wing radio hosts were arguing that the suffering that was plain and clear was not actually real. Some hinted they must be faking it. Some suggested people had created their own misfortune. Or that they did not deserve help! One such pundit said,

 

New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who could not or had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them.

 

The racial tropes of people sitting on their asses and doing nothing, of being welfare bums and doing nothing are of course part of the racial ideology of the right-wing.  Black people are lazy. Those who are poor deserve to be poor because they are not willing to work.

 

The real problem, the right-wing pundits insisted was “big government.”  Not incompetent government of Bush cronies being appointed to positions of power for which they were uniquely unqualified. Government was the problem. Rush Limbaugh said liberal democrats had run the city for 60 years so they were to blame. It could not be the fault of George W. Bush and his crony appointees. He said, “What was on display here was the utter total failure of liberalism!”

 

Justin Ling described the situation this way:

 

“To some degree this was about protecting George W. Bush. But in many ways it was irrelevant who occupied the White House. When these hosts went after the victims of Hurricane Katrina they weren’t worried about winning elections. They were worried about winning the air war. Winning new listeners. Winning ad dollars. And the way to do that was by ginning up controversy and outrage. These hosts are not in the Republican business; they are in the rage business.”

 

 

That is what the right-wing in America is all about–stimulating rage and pointing the angry in the direction of the liberal enemies! Right-wing talk radio learned quickly that rage sells. And they  have never forgotten that lesson.

Rich and Righteous Victims

Right-wing Extremism

 

In the early 2000s right-wing radio took off and started to control the air waves. As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast, “These broadcasters decide what wars are good; they decide what countries are bad. They decide who’s a patriot and who’s not. It is a thriving and profitable ecosystem.”

 

The left lost its grip on media, at least on the radio airwaves. But that was not enough for the right-wing.  As Ling said,

 

“And yet they are still able to convince millions of people that it’s the conservatives who are the victims. The marginalized. The downtrodden. But now that they control the narrative this rage machine just needs the right target and they are about to get it.”

 

 So the right wing became a collection of righteous victims.  The left were the perpetrators. The right were the victims and justice demanded reparations for the right-wing stalwarts.  I keep wondering though how the white and privileged can be the victims. This is still a common complaint among the right. How is that possible?

 

Air America

Right-wing Extremism

 

Right wing talk radio was immensely successful; in America.  Left Wing talk radio was a bust. Why is that?

Air America launched in 2004. It was intended to be the Left’s answer to right wing talk radio. Rush Limbaugh mocked this group as being about him. They thought they could pluck some liberal, put him on the air and instantly he would have a platform on 600 radio stations in the country like him. Air America was built over night. Limbaugh had built his network over years from a small radio platform. As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast series, “Air America tried to go full national right out of the gates.”

Air America assembled a line-up of liberal comics. Many of them were funny but none had experience in radio. They bombed! Al Franken had been a star on Saturday Night Live and he was smart and understood politics, but as Ling said, “On air Franken can’t match the ‘us’ against ‘them’ outrage of rightwing talk radio.”

Franken just could not operate in a binary universe like Limbaugh could where it was a matter of pure evil against pure good. Talk radio was the home of bombast, not nuance or careful thinking or argument. To right wing radio the truth is clear and the enemies are simple and stick out like rotten cabbage. And right-wing radio knew we are at war with the liberals. Leave the nuance in the bag. Liberals like Franken could not understand this. Who of us can?

Bill O’Reilly said “this whole liberal network thing is just plain stupid. NPR fills that prescription and they do it very well. These pinheads backing the venture will lose millions of dollars because the propaganda network is simply tedious and tedious doesn’t sell.”  He was right!