The historian who handles history as if it were mere drama is in a state of deadly sin, but unless he is enough of an artist to see the dramatic force of it, unless he is cunning in the use of words, a clear and an eloquent writer, easily moved by pity and sympathy, unless the deeds of the past speak with a trumpet tongue to his heart and kindle within him a poet’s ardour—without all this, he will never be an historian.
In his assessment of Black Monday [the American stock market collapse of October 1987], Michael Rosen writes: That which appears objective—the naturalness of organizations, the structuring of hierarchies, the immutability of economic laws, the stability of order—is illusory, where fronts are maintained through the management of common backstages of meaning. Nevertheless, at times disorder raises its head, the mask of everydayness fades, we peer over the edge into the abyss of uncharted terror.
The great task of a life-sustaining culture, then, is to keep the invisibles attached, the gods smiling and pleased: to invite them to remain by propitiations and rituals; by singing and dancing, smudging and chanting; by anniversaries and remembrances; by great doctrines such as the Incarnation and by little intuitive gestures—such as touching wood or by fingering beads, a rabbit’s foot, a shark’s tooth; or by putting a mezuzah on the doorpost, dice on the dashboard; or by quietly laying a flower on a polished stone.
All this has nothing to do with belief, and so it also has nothing to do with superstition. It’s merely a matter of not forgetting that the invisibles can go away, leaving you with nothing but human relationships to cover your back. As the old Greeks said of their gods: They ask for little, just that they not be forgotten. Myths keep their daimonic realm invisibly present. So do folktales, like that of the woodsman who dropped his ax and its cutting edge, going deeper and deeper to keep close to that smiling.
Another piece of this modern creation story is the Anthropocene dialogue that has been taking form ever since George Perkins Marsh wrote Man and Nature in the 19th century. It tells us (1) that we are indeed Earth’s gardeners, (2) that the gardening didn’t just get started with industrial civilization, and (3) that we have pretty well trashed the garden, particularly in the recent centuries when we no longer had the excuse that we didn’t know the effects of our actions.
I find this metaphor--that we are the gardeners--and trustees--of Planet Earth to provide the best guide to how we should conduct ourselves as individuals and as a species.
Worst of all, the release of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal had demonstrated that a cynical mentality of advertising and public relations—so central in persuading Americans to desire more and more in a nightmarish pattern of meaningless consumerism—had invaded the realm of politics like some lethal disease.
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