Posted by LDF on November 18, 2008 at 11:11:55:
In Reply to: A political manifesto by Percy Bysshe Shelly posted by David Searles on November 15, 2008 at 11:22:28:
Thank you Dave. Connections tell us so much...In England, Shelley, born the same year as the Paris Commune (1792), would write this poem which remains a song for all the ages. His young wife Mary, who wrote 'Frankenstein' as a warning for the future,was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft who that same year -1792- had written "The Vindication of the Rights of Women" as a corrollary to Thomas Paine's 1792 tract, "The Rights of Man, pt.2". Mary Shelley was also the daughter of William Godwin, a utopian thinker associated with the Arts&Crafts movement of the era which railed against the brutality of the industrial processes that chained men to machines.
The era of Percy & Mary Shelly included Jane Austen, Hegel, Saint-Simon & Malthus.. who carried on the ideas which later informed men like Walt Whitmen, Abraham Lincoln, Engels & Marx, who helped shape our own thinking. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.
It seems impossible that generations have read these sentiments...in our day maybe in less beautiful prose or even on protest signs or blogs... while we still seem so far from realizing what they tell us. Yet, the ideas and values do persist and gain more & more adherents with each passing generation. Slowly and small in number, yet they remain.Nothing is inevitable,
except change.
So the question is Can we control any of that change? The corrupters of language & thought, the invisible masters of the culture that dominate us and our schooling from k thru PhD, tell us NO!!! But, always, eventually, reality comes bursting thru and truth is laid bare. Baudelaire said "When all else fails, logic prevails". Survival wins out.
As with Shelley and the rest who followed, including ourselves, I do believe a new zietgeist, a new paradigm is still forming. We are part of a long historical tradition -- a large yet largely unseen
transformational movement that keeps altering the way people see, think and believe. The founders of this nation couldn't foresee a revolution only months before it happened. Yet it did. So hopefully, some of our movement's lessons will guide those who follow us.....thru the culture & politically. But ultimately, it will be they who must do the changing when the time comes. Our role now is to actively engage wherever & whenever we can; keep the language & vision clean, clear & true. If only a small number of clear-thinkers can survive in each generation, which so far has been true, then our efforts will be worth whatever we have contributed.
LDF, member, Editorial Committee