It is time to be old?

This blog has been running a series about the life and writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson for a good while now. As the series draws to a close I'm looking at some of his poems. Today's feature is "Terminus," named after the Roman god of boundaries.

It's interesting because it is about aging and yielding gracefully to it. You can compare and contrast that sentiment with Tennyson's poem Ulysses, in which the hero closes by saying

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Emerson, by contrast, aims to trim himself to the storm of time. As it turned out, the poem was prophetic. In his last years, he developed dementia and the man of words developed aphasia, forgetting his own name at times.

As someone who isn't getting a whole lot younger at the moment, I kind of like both poems but at the moment I'm leaning to Tennyson. This weekend I plan on dragging my creaking bones to a half marathon trail run on very hilly ground and I hope not to yield before crossing the finish line. Anyhow, here's one to think about:

Terminus

 It is time to be old,

To take in sail:--

The gods of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: 'No more!

No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There's not enough for this and that,

Make thy option which of two;

Economize the failing river,

Not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.

Timely wise accept the terms,

Soften the fall with wary foot;

A little while

Still plan and smile,

And,--fault of novel germs,--

Mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,

Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,

The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins,

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,--

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,

Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.'

As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

'Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

And every wave is charmed.'

DO IT. Here's a link to a publication by AFSC on why WV should expand Medicaid coverage.

WHAT WAS FOR SUPPER? According to the earliest known cookware, it was fish soup.

BACK TO THE AGING THING. It looks like today's adults live longer but are less healthy than recent but older generations.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Damp as the dew

The psychologist Erik Erikson once observed that people often try to recreate the first fight in which they felt at home. The first big fight--in terms of economic and social justice--I was able to get involved in at more than a superficial level was the Pittston coal strike of 1989-1990 in support of the United Mine Workers of America.

I didn't have much of an impact on it, but it had a big one on me.

It had very little moral ambiguity, which is a good thing in a major struggle. We should thank the gods for such times.

People usually do better in a struggle that is morally clear. Pittston was basically miners and their families striking against the same coal company that gave us the Buffalo Creek Disaster of 1972, which killed around 125 people, left thousands homeless and wiped out several communities. The main issues in the strike were health care-imagine that--and retiree benefits.

One thing that is sometimes sadly different about current coal controversies is that these often divide people who were once allies. And, given the union busting success of certain coal companies which shall remain nameless, the UMWA is not as strong as it once was at a time when workers need an independent voice.

More on that to come.

BUT WHILE WE'RE AT IT, minimal training by Massey Energy and a related contractor was cited as contributing to the death of coal miner Steven Cain last fall.

HEALTH CARE. WV health care advocates, including yours truly, held a press conference yesterday and released a report on how West Virginia would benefit from health care refom.

A GERIATRIC CRIME WAVE? Maybe.

NO PRESSURE. Meanwhile, the struggle over health care may be reaching a critical point.

MINIMUM WAGE. Here's a new issue guide on the wage increase from the Economic Policy Institute.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The uses of adversity?

Wu prefers to sleep through hard times, which may not be a bad idea.

It is an article of faith in some circles that going through hard times brings out the best in people. In many myths, books and films, the hero or heroine must undergo an ordeal to achieve greatness. There are all kinds of popular sayings to the same effect, as in "no guts, no glory" and "no pain, no gain."

I do not entirely agree. Misery, as they also say, loves company. The world is full of unnecessary or preventable suffering, which usually only leads to more of the same. Given the choice, I'd rather get rid of it.

Then there are those who seek for some deep and perhaps cosmic purpose in human suffering and insist that it is all somehow for the best. Voltaire did a great job of skewering that viewpoint in his hilarious little novel Candide, and far be it from me to try to improve on that masterpiece.

I find that kind of cosmic optimism to be a real downer. For the record, I can't imagine a more depressing thought than the idea that this is "the best of all possible worlds."

Still there are some bullets that can't be dodged. In such cases, tenacity can be a virtue. And it really is sometimes true that going through tough periods can build a kind of endurance. Nietzsche famously said "What does not destroy me makes me stronger" (although the evidence often leans in the other direction). Sometimes telling yourself that can help a bit.

So can having some kind of goal or purpose, as Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl argued in Man's Search for Meaning (search the Goat Rope archives in the upper left hand corner for an earlier series here on his ideas). To quote Nietzsche again,

He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.

WORKS FOR ME. In the wake of the financial bailout, the union SEIU has proposed organizing bank workers.

HARD TIMES have sparked a boost of interest in WV's historic New Deal sites.

I COULD HAVE TOLD THEM THIS. Scientists have discovered that dogs have what seems to be a sense of fairness and are capable of envy. Perhaps they might have discovered this sooner if they'd have tried the novel experiment of giving food or treats to more than one at a time. My theory is that they can even do a kind of canine arithmetic in which they quantify the goodies and express disappointment if the balance doesn't add up.

I COULD HAVE TOLD THEM THIS ONE TOO. Research indicates that aging brains may be easily distracted. What was their first clue? And what were we talking about, anyway?

IN OTHER URGENT NEWS, vampires are cool again (or still).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: DISTRACTED

FEELING SYMBOLIC

Rembrandt's "The Philosopher in Meditation," courtesy of wikipedia.

When El Cabero was in high school and as yet innocent of the ways of goats and the world, I stumbled onto Man and His Symbols by C.G. Jung et al, which at the time seemed to be The Coolest Thing Ever.

Jung (1875-1961) was the founder of analytical psychology and was for a brief time the "crown prince" of psychoanalysis and the heir apparent of Sigmund Freud, although the two had a rather unpleasant split.

The book was the last effort of his life, one intended to bring his ideas to a wide popular audience. Fittingly he, received the inspiration for it in a dream. According to BBC journalist John Freeman, writing in the book's introduction,

He dreamed that, instead of sitting in his study and talking to the great doctors and psychiatrists who used to call on him from all over the world, he was standing in a public place and addressing a multitude of people who were listening to him with rapt attention and understanding what he said....

The book, which includes an essay by Jung as well as sections by Joseph L. Henderson, Marie-Louise von Franz, Aniela Jaffe, and Jolanda Jacobi, was quite a hit and struck a chord in me at the time. Aside from text, it was full of cartoons and illustrations from the realms of art, religion, mythology, politics and popular culture. It promised to tie together and provide insights into all those fields. To sympathetic readers, it promised to be a key that could unlock many doors.

That was then, this is now.

I learned as I got older that despite occasional flirtations with empirical research, Jung's system was about as scientific as astrology or alchemy, both of which he studied for years. Along a continuum of disciplines, it was closer to philosophy or a religion (some would say cult) than social science.

Worse, Jung had some unfortunate associations with "Aryan" ideology and his reputation was permanently damaged by allegations of early sympathy with the Nazi movement. Debate still rages about the subject in some circles, but the official Goat Rope verdict is that his record at the time is enough for disqualification from the status of oracle.

Still, I have to confess that every so often I go back to browse in Jungian literature. I consider it a bad habit, like listening to "guilty pleasure" music or reading trash fiction. I've even found a few things there worth keeping, about which more this week.

MISTAKES WERE MADE. The National Institute for Strategic Studies, which is connected with the National Defense University and the Department of Defense, published a pretty scathing paper on the Iraq war written by Joseph J. Collins. Here's the newspaper version and here's the full report. Although the author is hardly a peace activist, he doesn't pull any punches. Here's the first two paragraphs:

Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the
status of a major war and a major debacle. As of fall 2007, this conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead and over 28,000 wounded. Allied casualties accounted for another 300 dead. Iraqi civilian deaths—mostly at the hands of other Iraqis—may number as high as 82,000. Over 7,500 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have also been killed. Fifteen percent of the Iraqi population has become refugees or displaced persons. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the United States now spends over $10 billion per month on the war, and that the total, direct U.S. costs from March 2003 to July 2007 have exceeded $450 billion, all of which has been covered by deficit spending... No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total impact on Service personnel and materiel.

The war’s political impact also has been great. Globally, U.S. standing among friends and allies has fallen... Our status as a moral leader has been damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and various issues concerning the treatment of detainees. At the same time, operations in Iraq have had a negative impact on all other efforts in the war on terror, which must bow to the priority of Iraq when it comes to manpower, materiel, and the attention of decisionmakers. Our Armed Forces—especially the Army and Marine Corps—have been severely strained by the war in Iraq. Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.

GOING GREEN. Here's Michael Pollan in the NY Times Magazine about going green. As Candide said, "Let us cultivate our garden"--even though it is a pain in the knees, back, and rear.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS for everyone who isn't getting any younger is that older people tend to be more happy. That may be true, but El Cabrero would be happier if his knees were younger.

SPEAKING OF HAPPINESS, this article from Foreign Policy concludes that democracy may not make people happy but happy people may make democracies.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MYTHING OUT

Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

The theme at Goat Rope this week is myth and what it means. If this is your first visit, please click on yesterday's post. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

My working definition of myth is a story that conveys deep meaning.

Throughout history, narrative has been the most common means of making sense of the world. We're all caught up in stories, even when we sleep. Myths in the sense of BIG STORIES were especially important in non literate societies where there weren't a lot of other ways of recording and storing information, but they are alive and well today, although ours probably aren't as cool as the old ones.

One reason why we may be mythologically challenged today is that we've inherited the relatively modern Western idea of the distinction between fact and fiction, with fiction have the connotation of falsity. The problem with that is that we can only make use of facts when they're part of a cognitive, emotive, and socio-linguistic process which organizes and interprets them.

In overvaluing "facts" at the expense of narrative, we've kind of become like Dickens' character Gradgrind in the novel Hard Times, who wanted to create “a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact.”

Stories, on the other hand, can convey truths that no shopping list of facts can do, which is why people like Jesus frequently conveyed teachings in parables.

Another fairly modern tendency that gets in the way of our understanding of myths and narrative is literalism. You can't really get a lot out of stories or myths if you take them all literally, which is one reason why fundamentalisms tend to be legalistic and spiritually impoverished.

My advice is to respect the world of facts but also to lighten up every so often and appreciate the truths in humanity's BIG STORIES. Don't myth out.

THE COST of the unnecessary war in Iraq is the theme of three items from The Nation. Here are articles on the war and the recession; war and the working class, and the economics of war and peace.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOCIAL CHANGE is the theme of this item by Bill McKibben.

DO PEOPLE BECOME MORE CONSERVATIVE AS THEY AGE? Maybe not.

RECESSION HITS THE STATES. Here's the NY Times on how many states are slashing services in the wake of the deepening economic downturn.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DEEP DREAMS

Image courtesy of fromoldbooks.org.

The theme for this week's Goat Rope is dreams and what they may mean. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

Carl Gustav Jung is something of a cult figure these days, which might not altogether be a good thing. He had a tendency to take dips into what Freud considered the "black tide of...occultism." Still he had some interesting ideas about dreams and it would be hard to leave him out of a discussion of them.

Jung is remembered today for several of his ideas, but one of the main ones is that of the collective unconscious. Freud admitted the existence of a personal unconscious, but Jung argued that there was a deeper layer of instincts and archetypes, which are inborn images and motifs which we inherit.

Fittingly enough, Jung claimed that a dream helped him develop this concept. As described in Memories, Dreams and Reflections, he dreamed of a house he recognized as his own. It was a little old fashioned, but OK otherwise. But when he went down a flight of stairs, the rooms were much older, darker and medieval. A stone stairway led to a cellar dating from ancient Roman times. When he lifted a slab on this floor, it led to an ancient cave with scattered bones, broken pottery and two human skulls.

Here's his interpretation:

The ground floor stood for the first level of the unconscious. The deeper I went, the more alien and the darker the scene became. In the cave, I discovered the remains of a primitive culture, that is the world of the primitive man within myself--a world which can scarcely be reached or illuminated by consciousness. The primitive psyche of man borders on the life of the animal soul, just as the caves of prehistoric times were usually inhabited by animals before men laid claim to them.

Elsewhere, he wrote that

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend... All consciousness separates, but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. Out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral.

El Cabrero is no Jungian, but sometimes dreams are too deep and weird to fit any reductive scheme. I remember one I had as a young adult that stuck with me. I stood on a hill watching my home town being devastated by a horrible flood. We got flooded a lot for real, but this was way worse and way different. It was a disaster of biblical proportions.

I remember looking in the water and seeing a drowned woman floating upside down. Suddenly she turned face up and I was horrified to see that she was clutching a drowned baby to her breast. That was bad enough, but then I heard a voice say, "Alas, poor baby. We could give you everything but peace."

I'm still trying to shake that one off.

STRESS AND TRAUMA. A new study suggests that stress may be more of a factor in the problems of some veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan than brain injury. If that proves to be the case in light of further research, that would be good news. Stress-related problems are easier to treat than neurological ones.

WE'RE AN INSPIRATION! The WV Supreme Court goat rope just keeps getting better and better. The latest twist is novelist John Grisham's latest effort was inspired by the (largely Don Blankenship-funded) election of Brent Benjamin to the state supreme court in 2004. Here's an extract from a conversation between Grisham and Matt Lauer about his new book on the Today Show:

"Basically, it involves a chemical company,” Lauer said. “They contaminate the water in the community. There’s a cancer outbreak. People die. And there’s a $41 million jury award against this company. And the head of the company says, I’m not gonna pay it. What I’m gonna do is avoid paying it by stacking the court that’s eventually gonna hear the appeal on this case. Far fetched?”

“It’s already happened,” Grisham said. “It’s already happened.”

“It’s a long term calculation,” Lauer said. “You have to be pretty sure about the money you’re investing in this.”

“Well, it’s happened,” Grisham said. “It happened a few years ago in West Virginia. A guy who owned a coal company, got tired of getting sued. He elected his guy to the Supreme Court, it switched 5-4 back his way. Now he doesn’t worry about getting sued. So it happens. It’s already happened.”

And here's more from WV Public Radio.

CRUMBLING ECONOMY, CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE. There's a connection.

HIT THE ROAD, JACK. If you want to stay strong as you age, that is.

UNEMPLOYMENT. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute illustrates why a boost in unemployment benefits is good for workers and the economy.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED