The Fellowship of the Ring

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and some practical insights it offers about working for social justice. As I've argued here before, one mark of a good story is that it is one you can find as well as lose yourself in.

I remember reading somewhere that at least some leaders and participants in the Civil Rights movement--including the great Robert Moses--drew inspiration from Tolkien's trilogy for their work in the Deep South.

It makes perfect sense to me. Whatever Tolkien's shortcomings might or might not be, The Lord of the Rings makes perfect sense when you're engaged in a struggle against the odds for social justice. Over the next few days, I'm going to talk about some examples of this.

The first on is all too obvious. If you're going up against the latest version of the Dark Lord or Saruman, you need some strong and diverse coalitions.

Getting there isn't easy. In the trilogy, the good guys don't have much use for each other in the beginning. The humans from Gondor and Rohan, once allies, mistrust each other. Elves and dwarves have issues from way back. And nobody important cared about hobbits. It makes getting coal miners and environmentalists to work together on issues seem pretty simple. But it can be done, at least sometimes.

Sometimes things get so bad you have to either form coalitions or just give up. But coalitions, which tend to be at the organizational level, are only held together by relationships at the personal level, as exemplified in the story by the small band that sets out to try to destroy the ring.

In a small place like El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, where nothing is ever forgotten, relationships are everything. One state politician once quipped "In West Virginia, everything's political except politics and that's personal."

If I had to choose between winning a big one and damaging coalitions and relationships versus losing a big one and maintaining them (and I have been there), I'd probably prefer the latter. Struggles come and go, and victory or defeat often depends on conditions you don't completely control. Relationships take a long time to build and are hard to repair when damaged.

Winning and keeping them would be my first choice though.

AFTER THE FALL. This NY Times article discusses Obama's post-recession (assuming we get there) vision for capitalism.

LOCAL FOOD makes sense in lots of ways, but it can be a pretty complex issue.

TAXES. Here's economist Dean Baker's contribution to a debate on the merits of progressive taxation.

WASTED. Bill McKibben discusses our wasteful habits and the possibility of changing them.

DOWN TO THE WIRE. For addicts of the late lamented HBO series The Wire, here's a lengthy interview between Bill Moyers and Wire creator David Simon.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PUBLIC DREAMS?

Heracles, courtesy of wikipedia.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) is probably the most popular interpreter of myths today. Campbell was the author of The Masks of God, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and many other works. His works also inspired Star Wars creator George Lucas.

Campbell's public following grew by leaps and bounds with PBS's broadcast of The Power of Myth, a series of interviews between Campbell and Bill Moyers. Strongly influenced by Jung, he believed that all myths worldwide shared similar themes and spiritual insights. He sometimes spoke of a "monomyth," such as that of the quest of a hero, as if all humanity was basically watching the same psychic movie.

One problem with that approach is that it selectively picks from many diverse myths and imposes a general interpretation on widely diverse traditions with widely different systems of meaning.

He had a knack for catchy phrases such as this one:

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

Sounds good but doesn't hold up too well. Myths are enduring stories repeated over time, whereas dreams are physiological events, most of which are not remembered or retold. Myths provide a world of meaning for those who accept them, whereas most dreams are mental static that have little influence on daily life (although we arguably should pay more attention to them than we do).

The problem with overgeneralizing about myths is that in doing so one creates a more or less artificial construct that loses a lot of particularity. As one of El Cabrero's teachers used to say, you can't unscramble an egg. Instead of lumping all myths together into some gigantic stew, it might be more interesting to look at different traditions in their own terms.

THE SURGE IS WORKING? You decide.

THE TREE ARMY. Here's Bill McKibben on the relevance of New Deal era programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps today.

COAL AND/OR HEALTH. A new study by a WVU researcher finds that residents of the state's coalfields are more likely than other West Virginians to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney disease.

SOME DAYS YOU EAT THE BEAR... Here's Dean Baker on the credit crisis and corporate bailouts.

THE WIRE. Here's a critical view of El Cabrero's favorite TV show that talks about all the positive things in Baltimore and other cities that the show ignores.
Point well taken, but can somebody tell the folks at HBO to get that season 5 DVD out soon?

SPIDERS AND SNAKES. New research is studying the question of whether the common fear of snakes and spiders is an evolutionary inheritance or something learned.

LOOK TO THE ANT, THOU SLUGGARD! They invented farming 50 million years ago when we were just a twinkle in a primate's eye.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WHO WAS DANTE ANYWAY?

The man himself, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme lately at Goat Rope is Dante's Divine Comedy and how to enjoy it. And, yes, you really can. You will also find links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

To understand the Divine Comedy, you need to know something about its author and protagonist, Dante Alighieri. The whole thing is in a sense autobiographical. I don't mean that Dante literally went to hell, purgatory and heaven (although most of us have made at least part of that journey at some point in our lives), but rather that Dante is the main character and much of the story refers to his real life.

Dante was born in Florence in 1265 to a respectable family. His father was a member of a guild. We don't know much about his education but he obviously had a good one. We also know that from childhood, he had a major crush on Beatrice Portinari, who was the subject of much of his poetry.

As a relationship, this one never went anywhere, but Beatrice was The One That Got Away (maybe a little like Charlie Brown's red headed girl). She was for him the essence of beauty. In the Divine Comedy, she came to represent spiritual grace. Dante wedded Gemma di Manetto Donati in a marriage that was probably arranged in childhood. They had several children together.

He was a poet, diplomat, soldier and politician. If you think our times are politically polarized, check out Italy in the late medieval period. There were huge tensions between Guelphs and Ghibellines. Guelphs tended to favor the papacy, while Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman emperor (Voltaire once pointed out that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.)

In Florence, the Guelphs won decisively but then split into two opposing camps, the Black and White Guelphs. Dante was a member of the latter party. He fell afoul of political intrigues around 1301 and was exiled from Florence on pain of death for the rest of his life. He died in 1321.

Thus the Divine Comedy is a poem of exile, written after his banishment. He sets it the year before, on Holy Week in the year 1300. The journey related there helps prepare him for the exile to come and the work itself may have been his way of working through the trauma.

But here's the kicker. While Dante is definitely Dante, he is also us. His story is ours as he makes the trip. So don't just read it; put yourself in it.

OH GREAT. Employers in Britain are trying to take a leaf from US union busters.

BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. Here's a snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute on the murder of trade unionists in Colombia.

TALKING SENSE. Here's a good blog post from Create West Virginia about moving to a high road economy. The Gov. and Legislature in El Cabrero's beloved state are hooked on corporate tax cuts, but a lot of good data cries out for public investment in education.

WORKER FREEDOM BILL. A bill that would prohibit employers from requiring workers to attend meetings to listen to views on politics, religion and unions passed the WV House of Delegates earlier this week. Here are several links courtesy of Lincoln Walks at Midnight. The WV Public Radio story is worth a listen if you're wired for sound. It faces a tougher fight in the senate.

FUN ITEM. Writer Beth Lisick spent a year reading self help books and lived to tell the tale. Here's a diverting interview. Apparently some of them were pretty good.

OK, SO I'M ADDICTED. To The Wire that is. But living without cable in the sticks, we're still on season two.

SINCE WE'RE BEING KIND OF RANDOM TODAY, here's an item on C.G. Jung.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED