Guarding from evil things folk that are heedless

The theme at Goat Rope lately is things from The Lord of the Rings that are totally realistic and relevant to working for social justice. This is installment #3. I have often thought about how much misery has been prevented by uncelebrated and unknown people who without fanfare do a lot of good and/or keep a lot of bad things from happening. They may be this schoolteacher or that old lady who sits on her porch and keeps an eye on the neighborhood or any number of people who work behind the scenes and away from the cameras. Every time I read the trilogy, things jump out at me that I missed before. I was particularly struck this time by the mostly unnamed Rangers of the North (Aragorn was their chief). These are looked down upon as discreditable vagrants by respectable people in the books, yet as the old and wise Tom Bombadil tells the hobbits,

"Few now remember them...yet some go wandering, sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless."

The great writer George Eliot, aka Mary Anne Evans, expressed the same idea at the end of Middlemarch:

"...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

So here's to the unknown Rangers of our world, walking in loneliness and faithfully living a hidden life. Without them, we'd be a whole lot worse off.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING STANDARD OF LIVING discussed here. RIGHT WING DEMOCRACY CORRUPTING BILLIONAIRE SELF PITY discussed here. A BOGEY-WOMAN OF THE RIGHT, poverty advocate and frequent Glenn Beck Target Frances Fox Piven, speaks here. GOOD DOG! Here's a survival story from Japan about how a 12 year old Shih Tzu saved its 83 year old owner from the tsunami. GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Makes me think

Somebody throw this guy a bone. This is Poseidon, the Greek god in charge of earthquakes and things like tsunamis.

A few years ago, I listened to an unabridged recording of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. It was a "Holy ****!" moment for me. I had been focused for a long time on basic economic justice issues to the extent that I hadn't really paid enough attention to environmental and ecological issues and how they can impact human life.

Recently, I went back and read the book in print form, something which made even my pal Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo raise his eyebrows. I particularly enjoyed the parts about the Vikings this time around, if "enjoyed" is the right word to use in reading about societies that fall apart (this may or may not have anything to do with the ongoing series here on Beowulf). I was really struck, again, by so many examples of societies that seemed to thrive for a time only to decline.

The recent disasters in Japan are a reminder to me of just how vulnerable complex societies are from unexpected (not to mention expected but ignored) threats. If anything, Japan is much more prepared, both technically and socially, to deal with disasters than the US, and the dangers there are huge.

It makes me think.

THIS on that.

THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING. Glenn Beck has suggested that God may have sent the disaster to Japan and that this could have something to do with the Ten Commandments. It occurs to me, however, that crime statistics and cultural factors suggest that the Japanese are doing better than the US these days in terms of not killing, not stealing, and honoring thy father and mother.

AFGHANISTAN. According to a new poll, nearly two thirds of Americans think the war there isn't worth the cost.

LIBYA is the theme of the latest edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree from the Rev. Jim Lewis.

GET THE TO A DOGGERY. Here's yet another article on the health benefits of having a dog. If you walk them, that is.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Deep in their hearts they remembered hell

An illustration from the 1830s of early efforts to convert Swedes to Christianity a thousand years before.

I've been blogging about Beowulf lately, although you will also find links and comments about current events below. Another thing I find interesting about the poem is the issue of religion. It seems to me that there is a thin veneer of Christianity spread sparsely over a big pagan poem.

The narrator and some of the characters talk about God and an afterlife. There are references to the Bible, but mostly to the book of Genesis, with the monster Grendel and his ilk seen as children of Cain and with references to the Flood and to the "giants in the earth" who flourished before the deluge. But there is no explicit mention of Jesus or any New Testament theme that I could find.

The poem begins and ends with two stories of kingly burial which show more kinship to pagan funeral customs than Christian burial. Beowulf himself was right there with the boys from the Iliad in longing for fame in battle as a kind of immortality. There is little that is Christian in the overall ambiance of the epic.

It may reflect a time when the conversion process, whether of the Anglo-Saxons or the North Sea warrior societies like the Danes and Geats was early and tentative. In the poem, the Danes plagued by Grendel's predations seek help from pagan gods after all else fails:

Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed
offering to idols, swore oaths
the the killer of souls might come to their aid
and save the people. That was their way,
their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts
they remembered hell.

In nature, estuaries are those interesting places where salt and fresh water meet and all kinds of interesting biological things can be found. Beowulf is a sort of spiritual estuary where the pagan mingles with the Christian in an interesting way.

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, 1798 style.

I THINK WE KNEW THAT. A panel charged with investigating the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession thinks it was preventable. I think they left out the part about stagnant incomes and growing inequality however.

MORE BUZZ ON MODERNIZING WV'S UNEMPLOYMENT SYSTEM here.

IMAGINING EUROPE, but getting it wrong. Not in a good way.

REFUDIATED. Four hundred rabbis have signed a letter protesting FOX "News" icon Glenn Beck for inappropriate use of Holocaust imagery.

OUT OF AFRICA. Ancient tools found in the United Arab Emirates suggests that some early humans made the trip earlier than previously believed.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Too optimistic to be happy

According to Buddhist tradition, being born as a human is a rare privilege. Other states of being may be more or less pleasant but the human state is said to be the only one in which one can attain enlightenment. It is even rarer and more fortunate to be a human and be exposed however briefly to the Buddha and his teaching.

By those standards, I guess I'm pretty lucky. Due to a traveling grandfather who died before I was born, I don't remember a time when I didn't know about Buddha or at least recognize his image, thanks to a statue and a prayer wheel he brought back from China in the 1920s. Learning about Buddhist teachings came later, partially through my study of martial arts.

For the record, I'm not a card-carrying Buddhist but more like a Buddhist sympathizer. Seated meditation drives me nuts and I'm way too fond of wine to sign on to the Fifth Precept. But I've been struck over and over again by the practicality of some Buddhist teachings to working for social justice--and not going crazy in the process.

Here's one to start with: life is suffering. Some people seem to have this magical idea that if only this or that could be made to happen or stopped from happening then everything would be just peachy. If the desired state does not come about, they can make themselves pretty miserable. Paradoxically, they are too optimistic--in the sense of thinking everything can be fixed--to be happy.

Buddhism isn't pessimistic but it is realistic. Things aren't all bad all the time but living and suffering are intertwined. Such a view is entirely compatible with happiness, strange as that may seem. We can do things to increase or decrease the amount of suffering in the world but not eliminate it. That insight makes me grateful for little victories and for all the things that aren't terrible at any given moment.

Here's a suggestion: try to make it a practice to notice it when you don't have a toothache.

DEJA VU. This New Yorker piece by Sean Wilentz traces Glenn Beck's outlook to old, hard right groups like the John Birch Society.

JUST SAY NO to more foreclosures. Dean Baker calls for a moratorium here.

YOU CAN READ THIS LATER. It's another New Yorker item about procrastination.

DROP EVERYTHING and watch this video clip from Stephen Colbert about how goats are stealing American jobs.

SPEAKING OF SUFFERING, elite athletes train to push past pain and other people can learn to do this too.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED