Politics – Page 22 – Robert Bettmann

How Sweet it is to Die for One’s Homeland

I remember when I first read the following poem, by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918.) Owen spent the entirety of his ‘adult’ life fighting in World War I, and died in the final days.

This poem describes being in a gas attack, and watching a friend die in front of him. The phrase Dulce Et Decorum Est, Pro Patria Mori translates roughly as, ‘How sweet and just it is to die for the motherland.’

Dulce Et Decorum Est

By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro Patria Mori.

image of Owen and his regiment

No Such Thing as a Winnable War

I’ve been talking with some fellow artists about how to approach my next choreographic project… I’m trying to figure out how to tackle the subject of non-violence. I don’t want to make a cute little suite of dances. I know I could do that. But I want something more whole. I want the message to be in each dance, in each part, not to have the audience have to read the whole in order to get the message.

I find in non-violence a very personal means of relating to the world. But I don’t want to do, like, ‘the autobiography of gandhi’ in dance. I don’t want to use text to make the meaning apparent, or song lyrics. So I know what I won’t be doing…. Possibly un-relatedly, I watched the Presidential debate between Obama and McCain.

I noticed that Obama has capitulated to McCain’s sense that ‘security’ is something that can be bought with war. One of the things that is so brilliant about Obama’s ‘refusal to support the war’ speech is that it expresses the understanding of a need to protect through through avenues other than the military. Including the military, but not limited to it. Obama is now just fighting about who he’d talk to, instead of fighting the bigger point – how do we make our country safe? He would win that one. I know a lot of people are waiting for him to lead us there.

Today was listening to Sting in the car on the way back from getting my oil changed…. I always liked this song, and believe that this war – in iraq, and ‘on terror’ are not winnable wars. We cannot protect ourselves by fighting them. I wish Obama would get back on message. I think he could do good, good things, but not if he becomes like Kerry, and Gore.

A lot of people have noticed that democratic candidates when they go to the general get soft. Gore, Kerry — they seem to think that to win the middle, they have to act like the middle. They’re wrong, as the Republicans have shown. The Republicans have been very effective about staying Republicans but being the better choice for the middle. They don’t pretend not to have faith. Democrats need to not pretend not to have ideals.

We need to ignore them more. Not affirm their judgement when they act like they’re mature, and we’re silly children – unrealistic.

What is the ideology that sets us apart? Or, what is the ideology that sets us apart that we can win on? Off the top of my head:
1. Security is about more than military
2. The future requires us to invest not in bailouts, but in development – energy independence by all means necessary
3. Don’t give money to people who don’t need it – no taxbreaks for wealthy
4. Country needs all of us – tolerance is what makes america great, what we are founded on

No-one is really prepared for the job of president. But I trust Obama to make more right decisions than the 78 yr old crab-apple tree and his town idiot sidekick. And I trust him because of his ethical/moral sense. Obama is powerfully intelligent, moral, and idealistic. Would some democratic staffers PLEASE figure out how to let him let people know that?

Somatic Ecology

I just found out that an idea that I had in 1996 will now be a book. My Masters thesis, which had been my undergraduate thesis, is being published. Here is a brief summary of the idea:

The fight to protect our natural environment can be usefully connected to a reconsideration of the human body. The body is more than corpse, and more than adjunct to the mind. Somatic Ecology states that there is a parallel between the way that we relate to our bodies, and the ways that we interact with the natural world. In fact, how we relate to our bodies is representative of how we relate to the natural world.

Somatic Ecology states that if we want to influence how we relate to the natural world, the most direct means to do so is not to take long walks in the woods, but to invite ourselves to encounter our own human nature – our bodies. Finally, Somatic Ecology argues that the environmental crisis is caused not by too much knowledge, but by too little, and that dance can be used to increase our human knowledge.

We are taught today that the only way to “know anything is through the use of the mind. The complete devaluation of empathic, embodied, sensual knowledge in polite society has sealed over the natural in our selves. What some have called the mechanization of the body (see: modern medicine) is part and parcel of the development of modern society (see: skyscrapers and airports.) Challenging the domination of science over true reason requires challenging the domination of mind over body. The first step is to validate, seek, and encourage somatic knowledge.

Empathy is at the core of somatic understanding, and encompasses the feelings by which we know life. We usually think of empathy as somehow a shared feeling – that one feels empathy for another. Empathy is actually a solitary experience. Its importance to the study of the body, and the natural world, is that empathy is the core of knowing. Empathy preceeds understanding, and follows awareness. These feelings and understandings are not predicated upon study, research, or science, but they do form the foundation for religion, culture, and even technology. Our exclusion of “feelings” from “rational” debate is not a symbol of the environmental problem, but a root cause.

Though we act as if we live in a rational world, we actually live in an empathic, lively world that simply appears to be dominated by “reason.” As we come to fully grasp the terrors caused by un-mitigated reason it will serve us to explore what steps we might take to reverse them.

Environmentalism at its core is not motivated by statistics, but by empathy. It is more similar to religion than science. In tracing a history of Thoreau, Pinchot, Muir, Leopold, McKibben (a history of thinking about environment) we discover this. As long as environmentalists place statistics between their argument and the audience, they weaken the ability to create change. To fight this battle with limited humanity is to fight a losing battle.

In this modern world of freeways and cubicles, it will be very difficult to move from an understanding of the need for body knowledge, to a place of greater somatic awareness. For this journey one needs guides and one needs pathways. Dance may be that pathway. In silence, without words, we can find where we exist with the rest of the world, human and non-human. In dance, without words, we can both develop and communicate our understanding of that connection.