I had intended to write more about Bedard's account of William Blake, and will do so below in a truncated form (more later), because everything everywhere right now is about The Bombers. Apparently they WERE Muslim fanatics, not a hard guess, and were (and one still is) armed to the teeth. As everyone must know, Boston has been locked down and a staggering amount of law enforcement personnel have been deployed. From watching the coverage, it seems like America is under attack, and it might seem that this would be an appropriate time to talk about the Apocalypse. But this is not the Apocalypse. This is one event, not separate from many others since 9/11. We have known this sort of thing was possible and even probable since 9/11, and have been fortunate that several others were stopped or botched by would-be terrorist killers. This time they got through, and it is a horror, but not a great turning point or further evidence that the horsemen of the Apocalypse have stepped up their stride.
It reminds me of my time in Venezuela. At one point, I had spent 6 months in the field without TV, radio, newspapers, without any news of the Outside. Coming back to Caracas for supplies, the first thing I did besides getting a good cup of cafe con leche was to buy a newspaper. OMG! It was the end of the world! Markets were crumbling, nations were rattling sabers, we were all doomed, doomed! It took a few days before I realized that nothing really had changed; this was the way newspapers and other media were sold. The NOW was made the only point in time that mattered, by which I mean, all else in the past was NOTHING compared to the calamity of the present. Yes, we were on the edge - yes, we were now at the pinnacle of history, unlike any other - yes, we must worry, worry, worry and, above all, keep informed!
That was over 20 years ago. The world did not end. And while it is true that we are living in unprecedented times, we have not yet re-faced the horrors of the early and mid 20th century, of great wars and ideological murder on a scale of tens of millions. Bad things have happened and undoubtedly will happen, but the Apocalypse - no one, not even Christ (as he said himself), knows the time, and, the horrible symbolic visions of John's Revelations aside, no one really knows how it will happen. I do maintain that the world system as we now have it cannot continue indefinitely - and I hope that great horrors will not accompany his change. But it is not here, not yet.
This does lead me back to Blake. Living at the time of the Industrial Revolution, from the late 1700's to the early 1800's, Blake was appalled at the hideous effect it had on the working people - of the shipping of orphans to work and die in the mills, of the 100's of thousands condemned to live in misery and starvation because the Lords threw the people off their farms to raise sheep and cattle for profit, the wool and imported cotton being worked for pennies by the very people who were dispossessed. The inhumanity, the destruction of skilled crafts, and the sheer ugliness drove much of Blake's poetry and engravings. He was, then, naturally allied with those who despised the new system, but he could not become an ally of their "cure" - that is, to end religion and rationalize government and society. To quote Bedard: "It was always his view that the gospel preached by Jesus was "a perfect law of Liberty, " that to reject state religion and enshrine reason was simply to replace one form of tyranny with another."
We have in that light come a long way from the early days of the Industrial Revolution,although much of that inhumanity has merely been exported. Still, it is better than it was. But I believe Blake was right: we have replaced one form of tyranny with another. While material well- being has been gained, much psychic and social well-being has been lost. We are further and further fragmented while we cry out for wholeness, for unity, both of individual being and of place - that is, for community and ecological sanity.
In Blake's time, he witnessed the French Revolution, a reaction to the changing times, and then the aptly named Terror. In America, we had to die by the thousands to rid ourselves of another evil of mass production - the re-institution of slavery. Later came the Russian Revolution, Mao, Cambodia...and none of them, with all their deaths, solved the fundamental problem of lives torn from the holistic meaning that Tradition had once, if imperfectly, given to us.
The Muslim Terrorists are of the same cloth. They kill and die for something they see slipping away. We know it's not the way. I think we know the way, and it as close as our skins - within us all. It just needs prodding, some help, and hopefully not with the violent end of the world, but rather with a transformation that will mean the end of the old as we know it and the beginning of something much better - all with a simple but sublime change of vision.
It reminds me of my time in Venezuela. At one point, I had spent 6 months in the field without TV, radio, newspapers, without any news of the Outside. Coming back to Caracas for supplies, the first thing I did besides getting a good cup of cafe con leche was to buy a newspaper. OMG! It was the end of the world! Markets were crumbling, nations were rattling sabers, we were all doomed, doomed! It took a few days before I realized that nothing really had changed; this was the way newspapers and other media were sold. The NOW was made the only point in time that mattered, by which I mean, all else in the past was NOTHING compared to the calamity of the present. Yes, we were on the edge - yes, we were now at the pinnacle of history, unlike any other - yes, we must worry, worry, worry and, above all, keep informed!
That was over 20 years ago. The world did not end. And while it is true that we are living in unprecedented times, we have not yet re-faced the horrors of the early and mid 20th century, of great wars and ideological murder on a scale of tens of millions. Bad things have happened and undoubtedly will happen, but the Apocalypse - no one, not even Christ (as he said himself), knows the time, and, the horrible symbolic visions of John's Revelations aside, no one really knows how it will happen. I do maintain that the world system as we now have it cannot continue indefinitely - and I hope that great horrors will not accompany his change. But it is not here, not yet.
This does lead me back to Blake. Living at the time of the Industrial Revolution, from the late 1700's to the early 1800's, Blake was appalled at the hideous effect it had on the working people - of the shipping of orphans to work and die in the mills, of the 100's of thousands condemned to live in misery and starvation because the Lords threw the people off their farms to raise sheep and cattle for profit, the wool and imported cotton being worked for pennies by the very people who were dispossessed. The inhumanity, the destruction of skilled crafts, and the sheer ugliness drove much of Blake's poetry and engravings. He was, then, naturally allied with those who despised the new system, but he could not become an ally of their "cure" - that is, to end religion and rationalize government and society. To quote Bedard: "It was always his view that the gospel preached by Jesus was "a perfect law of Liberty, " that to reject state religion and enshrine reason was simply to replace one form of tyranny with another."
We have in that light come a long way from the early days of the Industrial Revolution,although much of that inhumanity has merely been exported. Still, it is better than it was. But I believe Blake was right: we have replaced one form of tyranny with another. While material well- being has been gained, much psychic and social well-being has been lost. We are further and further fragmented while we cry out for wholeness, for unity, both of individual being and of place - that is, for community and ecological sanity.
In Blake's time, he witnessed the French Revolution, a reaction to the changing times, and then the aptly named Terror. In America, we had to die by the thousands to rid ourselves of another evil of mass production - the re-institution of slavery. Later came the Russian Revolution, Mao, Cambodia...and none of them, with all their deaths, solved the fundamental problem of lives torn from the holistic meaning that Tradition had once, if imperfectly, given to us.
The Muslim Terrorists are of the same cloth. They kill and die for something they see slipping away. We know it's not the way. I think we know the way, and it as close as our skins - within us all. It just needs prodding, some help, and hopefully not with the violent end of the world, but rather with a transformation that will mean the end of the old as we know it and the beginning of something much better - all with a simple but sublime change of vision.
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