From Zora Neale Hurston’s impressive autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road:
“There is no diffused light on anything international so that a comparatively whole scene may be observed. Light is sharply directed on one spot, leaving not only the greater part in darkness but also denying by implication that the great unlighted field exists. It is no longer profitable, with few exceptions, to ask people what they think, for you will be told what they wish, instead. Perhaps at no other period in the history of the world have people lived in such a dreamy state. People even waste time denouncing their enemies in open warfare for shooting back too hard, or too accurately. There is no attempt to be accurate as to truth, however. The whole isea is to be complimentary to one’s self and keep alive the dream. The other man’s side commits gross butcheries. One’s own side wins smashing victories.
Being human and a part of humanity, I like to think that my own nation is more just than any other in spite of the facts on hand. It makes me feel prouder and bigger to think that way. But now and then the embroidered hangings blow aside, and I am less exalted. I see that the high principles enunciated so throatedly are like the flowers in spring–they have nothing o do with the case. If my conclusions are in error, then the orators and copy-books were wrong to start off with. I should have been told in the very beginning that those were words to copy, but not to go by. But they didn’t tell me that. They swore by jeppers and by joe that there were certain unshakable truths that no man nor nation could make out without.
There was the dignity of man. His inalienable rights were sacred. Man, noble man, had risen in his might and glory and had stamped out the vile institution of slavery. That is just what they said. But I know that the principle of human bondage has not yet vanished from the earth. I know that great nations are standing on it. I would not go so far as to deny that there has been no progress toward the cocept of liberty. Already it has been agreed that the name of slavery is very bad. No civilized nation will use such a term anymore. Neither will they keep the business around the home. Life will be on a loftier level by operating at a distance and calling it acquiring sources of raw material, and keeping the market open. It has been decided also, that it is not cricket to enslave one’s own kind. That is unspeakable tyranny.
But must a nation suffer from lack of prosperity and expansion by lofty concepts? Not at all! If a ruler can find a place way off where the people do not look like him, kill enough of them to convince the rest that they ought to support with their lives and labor, that ruler is hailed as a great conqueror, and people build monuments to him. The very weapons he used are also honored. They picture him in unforgetting stone with the sacred tool of his conquest in his hand. Democracy, like religion, never was designed to make our profits less. (258-259)
Ol’ Zora came to these conclusions back in 1942. Perhaps she’s right about we here human folk, since her words still remain so relevant and the picture she paints still looks all too familiar…
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We’ll be back to the original content soon, kids. I’ve been reading a lot of Ol’ Zora lately. A complicated woman and born story teller, she speaks to me in a way I need right now. As for us, the story teller’s vocation seems saner and more fruitful than unadorned rabbit hole diving at the moment. Not that we won’t be rabbit hole diving, just doing it in a way that speaks to the parts of us that can sing–and what’s more, hold a more uplifting tune, despite the occasional gravel in the throat.
> There is no diffused light on anything international so that a comparatively whole scene may be observed.
This sounds like a kind of pre-echo of McLuhan (who, writing in the 60’s, seemed to think the pendulum was swinging the other way). Or going further back, it makes me think of the poetry of Wilfred Owen, from the Great War. Interesting, thanks.