There’s not much sunlight in the interior of Alaska these days. Today is the winter solstice, and we have just about three and a half hours of daylight to work with. At this latitude the sun barely climbs above the horizon at mid-day, and it has virtually no warmth. Bit still, it’s reassuring to see it parked out there on the southern horizon, knowing that eventually we’ll swing back around for a better angle on it.
News from the outside world never stops, though, and thanks to the internet I can now read about the big Climate Summit in Copenhagen where nothing changed, and the watered-down health care legislation that nobody really wants, the contractor “surge” in Afghanistan, and the good-for-nothing shock doctrine education reforms, all of which seem to fit my solstice-inspired musings. It’s like what digby said:
One thing the old political hands may not realize is that in this era of 24/7 cable and the internet this is the first time most people have watched a big piece of legislation enacted in such close-up detail. And what they are seeing is shocking and disturbing — the obvious corruption of the process by wealthy corporate interests. There’s a lot of populist resentment out here and it’s coming down on the heads of the Democrats who are now ironically seen to be funneling taxpayer dollars to rapacious corporations which have been making people’s lives miserable, insurance companies being among the worst of them. This health care debate has reinforced that perception.
I’m thinking about the importance of maintaining optimism as we work to compensate for chronic neglect and institutional abuses, looking for sustainable ways of living. Teachers who see the standards and accountability movement in education as a toxic substitute for real democratic reforms can take a lesson from activists in Copenhagen. They gave Monsanto an award. When criticism doesn’t work, we can always give ridicule and mockery a try.
The Angry Mermaid Award has been set up to recognise the perverse role of corporate lobbyists, and highlight those business groups and companies that have made the greatest effort to sabotage the climate talks, and other climate measures, while promoting, often profitable, false solutions.
Hey, I’m thinking, we could use an award like that to give away, too! We could call it….
The Happy Stripy Leech Award
Nominations are open. Deserving contenders would include test-making companies, neoliberal think tanks, corporate charter school management organizations, Eli Broad and Bill Gates, and anyone who feels inspired listening to Arne Duncan.
It is becoming very clear that education reform – the official version – has never been about teaching or learning. Without addressing education specifically, Glenn Greenwald explains why the Obama administration policies look so much like the Bush administration’s:
Whether you call it “a government takeover of the private sector” or a “private sector takeover of government,” it’s the same thing: a merger of government power and corporate interests which benefits both of the merged entities (the party in power and the corporations) at everyone else’s expense.
But there are rays of hope. Climate activists announce, “We’re not finished yet,” and they point out that the reform model is, itself, a failure:
Klein, meanwhile, highlighted what she saw as the “successes” of the last two weeks. “The rich world can no longer claim not to know (what) failing to act (entails). The voices of the South, the cost of millions of lives, the disappearance of countries and cultures – all that has landed on the agenda,” she said.
Paul Rosenberg did a post featuring many formerly unheard voices from the global South that he gathered from various sources over the past couple of weeks. And he ended with a Gary Snyder poem that I want to leave here, too.
Revolution in the Revolution in the Revolution
by Gary SnyderThe country surrounds the city
The back country surrounds the country“From the masses to the masses” the most
Revolutionary consciousness is to be found
Among the most ruthlessly exploited classes:
Animals, trees, water, air, grassesWe must pass through the stage of the
“Dictatorship of the Unconscious” before we can
Hope for the withering-away of the states
And finally arrive at true Communionism.If the capitalists and imperialists
are the exploiters, the masses are the workers.
and the party
is the communist.If civilization
is the exploiter, the masses is nature.
and the party
is the poets.If the abstract rational intellect
is the exploiter, the masses is the unconscious.
and the party
is the yogins.& POWER
comes out of the seed-syllables of mantras.(from Regarding Wave. New Directions. New York. 1970.)
While I’m thinking about Gary Snyder, here’s a little story he shared in an article called Writers and the War Against Nature:
One time in Alaska a young Koyukon Indian college student asked me, “If we humans have made such good use of animals, eating them, singing about them, drawing them, riding them, and dreaming about them, what do they get back from us?” I thought it an excellent question, directly on the point of etiquette and propriety, and putting it from the animals’ side. I told her, “The Ainu say that the deer, salmon, and bear like our music and are fascinated by our languages. So we sing to the fish or the game, speak words to them, say grace. We do ceremonies and rituals. Performance is currency in the deep world’s gift economy.” The “deep world” is of course the thousand million-year-old world of rock, soil, water, air, and all living beings, all acting through their roles. “Currency” is what you pay your debt with. We all receive, every day, the gifts of the Deep World, from the air we breathe to the food we eat. How do we repay that gift? Performance. “A song for your supper.”
I went on to tell her that I felt that non-human nature is basically well-inclined toward humanity and only wishes modern people were more reciprocal, not so bloody. The animals are drawn to us, they see us as good musicians, and they think we have cute ears. The human contribution to the planetary ecology might be our entertaining eccentricity, our skills as musicians and performers, our awe-inspiring dignity as ritualists and solemn ceremonialists—because that is what seems to delight the watching wild world.
Happy solstice. And singing, too.
Photo: by Laurie Pink
4 Comments
I just wanted to let you know I enjoyed this post. This time of year, my thoughts turn to the Deep World too. When the nights are long and cold, it seems natural to think of how small and vulnerable we are in the big universe, and to cross our fingers and hope the light returns again. Happy solstice and thanks for shining a bit of light on the current state of education.
Thanks, Russell. My fingers are crossed, too – with a glass in the other hand. Cheers!
Hi Doug,
Been a while since I’ve visited your Borderlands… Don’t know why, since there is always so much interesting stuff to read. Your solstice musings hit a chord, and I enjoyed reading the Gary Snyder bits. I like his world view. This fall, when I was bumming out because of the requirement that we recite the pledge of allegiance to the United States in the classroom, which I feel falls very short in teaching our students a responsible world ethos, I wrote a new pledge that I like, and maybe Gary Snyder would like it, too, and maybe you would, too. It is shaped like a triangle:
I
pledge
allegiance
to the earth,
our only home.
I will do my best
to respect and care for
the air, lands, and waters,
the plants, animals, and people,
for this and future generations,
cherishing freedom and peace for all.
We say it every day, after the nationalistic pledge, turning from the flag to the windows. I hope that saying it last will help stick it to the kids’ brains.
For what it’s worth,
Mary
Hey, Mary, good to hear from you again.
I like your pledge, and this was a good place to share it, considering the need some of us feel to advocate for beings that are too often taken for granted by humans.
The idea of sticking things to kids’ brains reminds me of a little story: I was reading a book to my sixth graders a few years back – The Year of Impossible Goodbyes – it’s a good book, and enjoyable even for older people to read. It told about the Communist Chinese invasion of Korea, and in it, signs with slogans began appearing all around. I can’t remember what they said, now, but it was a big enough deal in the book that the kids and I got to talking about it. From that, we got onto the subject of propaganda, which they called “brainwashing,” and then one of the kids observed that it was kind of like having to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Oh, I thought, this is going to be interesting! But then, someone else spoke up and said, “Yeah, but we don’t *have* to say it.” End of discussion.
What sticks to their brains has less to do with what I intend than I’d like, most of the time. It’s a strange business that keeps people working hard to do something that is so uncertain. That makes it interesting, though, doesn’t it?
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