The devil, the details, and the leopard's spots - part 2

Anecdote of the Jar

Anecdote of the Jar
by Wallace Stevens

I placed a jar in Tennessee,   
And round it was, upon a hill.   
It made the slovenly wilderness   
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.   
The jar was round upon the ground   
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.   
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,   
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

It’s a strange little poem. One day I shall like to study this poem in the context of the author’s other poetry and life. But for the moment it sort of stands alone here, rather ambiguously, like a jar atop a hill. I remember it because it was included in the poetry anthologies I read in college literature classes. If I remember right, my professors would speak of explicating poetry, but not subjecting it to hermeneutics, per se. I’ve been pondering hermeneutics, anyhow.

Wikipedia says about hermeneutics that it is “the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate comprehension fails and includes the art of understanding and communication.”

I wonder when the Dominion company, manufacturer of mason jars, was established. And I wonder if the jar pictured above is part of the inspiration for this poem, which was published roughly a hundred years ago in 1923.

The poem has long been regarded as ambiguous and enigmatic. No doubt this ambiguity and enigma has contributed to its enduring popularity. In any case I cannot help thinking of the Book of Genesis here.

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." —Genesis 1:26 (KJV)

Naturally, scholars and preachers have differing views on what was meant by the word ‘dominion’. One source I found preferred to translate the Hebrew word as “rule” or “rule over”.

As a nontheist, I do not believe in the story which has it that some immaterial, all powerful sky ghost wrote or inspired the book of Genesis. So what can I make of this passage from this ancient book? I’m certainly not a scholar of the Bible or of the Tanakh, but my best guess would be that the book of Genisis is a mythical story which in part intends to found a culture in which human beings are not only at the center of all things, but they also hold all authority over “bird and bush” — the whole of the living world. In other words, Genesis serves as a cultural founding myth for a human culture which seeks to take dominion over all of life, to be, as Descartes put it, “masters and possessors of nature”.

From Wikipedia:

Western civilization traces its roots back to Europe and the Mediterranean. It is linked to ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and with medieval Western Christendom which emerged from the Middle Ages to experience such transformative episodes as scholasticism, the renaissance, the reformation, the enlightenment, the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution, and the development of liberal democracy. The civilizations of classical Greece and ancient Rome are considered seminal periods in Western history. Major cultural contributions also came from the Christianized Germanic peoples, such as the Franks, Goths, and Burgundians. Charlemagne founded the Carolingian empire and is referred to as the "Father of Europe." Contributions also emerged from pagan peoples of pre-Christian Europe, such as the Celts and Germanic pagans as well as some significant religious contributions derived from Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism stemming back to Second Temple Judea, Galilee, and the early Jewish diaspora; and some other Middle Eastern influences. Western Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western Civilization, which throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture. (My emphasis added) - from History of Western civilization - Wikipedia

Genesis is known as the first book of the Christian Bible. Thus Western Civilization was essentially founded on anthropocentrism, the belief that humanity is at the center of the universe and all meaning and value centers upon our own species. But it generally went further than “our own species” throughout Western civilizational history, because only after the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin did it begin (just barely) to become possible for a significant proportion of civilized people to contemplate their own existence as a member of one species among millions of others. Prior to this, civilized humans generally conceived themselves as altogether other from animal life, separate and above — and having dominion over all other lifeforms. This was particularly true of those belonging to Western civilization, but it likely applies to other civilized people in their own unique ways, by kind or degree.

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The leopard’s spots

Here, in part two of what will likely be a three or four part series by the same title, I want to temporarily conclude by mentioning that lately I’ve come to reference the idiom about the leopard’s spots to suggest that it is highly unlikely that the social, cultural and political transformation humanity must go through very quickly now can occur within an approach to “the political” which is rooted in what I will here call “the politics of the state.” The politics of the state, like all things, has a history. And the politics of the modern state has a particular and peculiar history which begins, more or less, with what is called The Peace of Westphalia, which “ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire, closing a calamitous period of European history that killed approximately eight million people.” (Wikipedia).

Modern nation states, as I understand it, were born with the Peace of Westphalia, and they have continued to perpetuate anthropocentrism as a principal attribute of their cultures. I will argue in the next one or two installments of this essay that our leopard must, indeed, change its spots, and that anthropocentrism (among other baggage) must be deliberately jettisoned from our cultural repertoire.

And I will argue that the political transformation we require will not be possible from within “the politics of the state.” In other words, I wish to argue that “the state” will not be changing its spots. Not until we transform our culture. And by no means is it clear that “the state” will continue to exist if we do.

See you then!