The end of this fifth series of The Great Humbling finds us looking back over the loose ends from earlier episodes, exploring the wider field of “Humility Studies” and asking who exactly we think we’re talking to, anyway?
It seems the more familiar one wishes to become with who they are speaking to, the closer it becomes to the work of problem solving, or worse. The Celan-Mandelstam vision of poetic speech (is there any more appropriate type of speech in ruin) as the message of the shipwrecked sent to bottle sent to sea and, by unstudiable paths, hopefully washing upon on some shore of some heart is maybe a glimpse of catching-up at world’s end.
I think the usual populisms tends to seek to make the crowd familiar, so that it can command the stage. I feel like this art you here are about is a counter-weight to that, where the one you are speaking to is best kept as friends still strange and unfathomed as possible, even after this humbling about together for years. I know for me those moments between you reach heartland often enough to drink to the muzzling of strategy. Celan’s counterword to the call to Enlarge Art! was to rather to go into “your most innermost narrows” and, there, by word, come free. Maybe this is a thing we can do at the table together with our familiar(s)-kept-strange as long as we fill the night with quotes, keep all the others coming in to the empty place set for them like Elijah at the pesach table. Quote marks, Celan also said, were hare’s ears in the sense that something not completely fearless listens beyond itself and those words. That Hare is the god summoned by being caught up, in speech as net or arms or simply moment. I think you guys do well leaving the door open for Her.
I guess I could have just said thanks for the podcast. We are all ears. Ha!
I started reading George Prochnik's Stranger in a Strange Land last week and there's a bit early on where he talks about Scholem's relationship with Benjamin, how he was haunted by his friend's work all his life, and Prochnik frames the difference between the two as Benjamin seeking to go wide and universal, while Scholem chooses to go deep within his cultural inheritance. I can't help mistrusting that binary because, without wanting to make this sound simple, I believe pretty deeply that the most trustworthy route to the universal goes through the particular, rather than turning away from it.
Alan Garner said that he worried he had gone so particular as to leave his readers behind, when he wrote The Stone Book Quartet, four stories about four generations in his own family. But then he got a letter from a teacher in Nunavut who had been reading the book with her Inuit pupils, and it had turned into a project where the whole class went out to talk to their grandparents and write down their stories. That was when he knew he had done right.
It's back to Alastair at the start of Soil and Soul, the first chapter called Digging Where We Stand, where he writes: "As children, we used to be told that if you dug a really deep hole, you'd come out in Australia. I think in some ways this is very true. If any of us dig deep enough where we stand, we will find ourselves connected to all other parts of the world."
I wonder if either of you is familiar with the works of the American author Peter Block? Two in particular seen to be relevant to this conversation on leadership: _Community: The Structure of Belonging_, and _Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. He posits that the role of a leader is mainly to serve as a convener (bringing those interested in a shared purpose together) and a steward (ensuring that all voices are heard).
Ah, thanks for this, Arlyn! I wasn't familiar with Peter's work, although Ed may be. But just from what you say here, I can feel the resonance and will explore further. This also made me think about Alastair McIntosh and Matt Carmichael's book, Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service, which had a huge impact on me.
As a US resident, what has stuck with me most from this conversation is Ed's discussion of the "Hollywood idea of leadership," and especially his comment that "the success they achieve is all down to them." That's what I see as the most undiscussed element of US politics: that we praise or blame our leaders for everything and don't acknowledge that they emerge in response to us, taking advantage of the psychological and moral environment we create. It's 1 Samuel 8 over and over again. Until...? Will we ever really become able to steward the gift that this planet is and that we are to one another without a king?
Who are you talking to?
It seems the more familiar one wishes to become with who they are speaking to, the closer it becomes to the work of problem solving, or worse. The Celan-Mandelstam vision of poetic speech (is there any more appropriate type of speech in ruin) as the message of the shipwrecked sent to bottle sent to sea and, by unstudiable paths, hopefully washing upon on some shore of some heart is maybe a glimpse of catching-up at world’s end.
I think the usual populisms tends to seek to make the crowd familiar, so that it can command the stage. I feel like this art you here are about is a counter-weight to that, where the one you are speaking to is best kept as friends still strange and unfathomed as possible, even after this humbling about together for years. I know for me those moments between you reach heartland often enough to drink to the muzzling of strategy. Celan’s counterword to the call to Enlarge Art! was to rather to go into “your most innermost narrows” and, there, by word, come free. Maybe this is a thing we can do at the table together with our familiar(s)-kept-strange as long as we fill the night with quotes, keep all the others coming in to the empty place set for them like Elijah at the pesach table. Quote marks, Celan also said, were hare’s ears in the sense that something not completely fearless listens beyond itself and those words. That Hare is the god summoned by being caught up, in speech as net or arms or simply moment. I think you guys do well leaving the door open for Her.
I guess I could have just said thanks for the podcast. We are all ears. Ha!
Yeah...I should get some sleep.
Beautifully said, Andrew.
I started reading George Prochnik's Stranger in a Strange Land last week and there's a bit early on where he talks about Scholem's relationship with Benjamin, how he was haunted by his friend's work all his life, and Prochnik frames the difference between the two as Benjamin seeking to go wide and universal, while Scholem chooses to go deep within his cultural inheritance. I can't help mistrusting that binary because, without wanting to make this sound simple, I believe pretty deeply that the most trustworthy route to the universal goes through the particular, rather than turning away from it.
Alan Garner said that he worried he had gone so particular as to leave his readers behind, when he wrote The Stone Book Quartet, four stories about four generations in his own family. But then he got a letter from a teacher in Nunavut who had been reading the book with her Inuit pupils, and it had turned into a project where the whole class went out to talk to their grandparents and write down their stories. That was when he knew he had done right.
It's back to Alastair at the start of Soil and Soul, the first chapter called Digging Where We Stand, where he writes: "As children, we used to be told that if you dug a really deep hole, you'd come out in Australia. I think in some ways this is very true. If any of us dig deep enough where we stand, we will find ourselves connected to all other parts of the world."
I wonder if either of you is familiar with the works of the American author Peter Block? Two in particular seen to be relevant to this conversation on leadership: _Community: The Structure of Belonging_, and _Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. He posits that the role of a leader is mainly to serve as a convener (bringing those interested in a shared purpose together) and a steward (ensuring that all voices are heard).
Ah, thanks for this, Arlyn! I wasn't familiar with Peter's work, although Ed may be. But just from what you say here, I can feel the resonance and will explore further. This also made me think about Alastair McIntosh and Matt Carmichael's book, Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service, which had a huge impact on me.
As a US resident, what has stuck with me most from this conversation is Ed's discussion of the "Hollywood idea of leadership," and especially his comment that "the success they achieve is all down to them." That's what I see as the most undiscussed element of US politics: that we praise or blame our leaders for everything and don't acknowledge that they emerge in response to us, taking advantage of the psychological and moral environment we create. It's 1 Samuel 8 over and over again. Until...? Will we ever really become able to steward the gift that this planet is and that we are to one another without a king?