Living at moral peace with the universe. "Arctic Dreams" by Barry Lopez. This is a fascinating work.

© 2013 Christine Clifton-Thornton

"At the heart of this narrative, then, are three themes: The influence of the arctic landscape on the human imagination. How a desire to put a landscape to use shapes our evaluation of it.  And confronted by an unknown landscape, what happens to our sense of wealth.

"What does it mean to grow rich?  Is it to have red-blooded adventures and to make a fortune, which is what brought the whalers and other entrepreneurs north?  Or is it, rather, to have a good family life and to be imbued with a far-reaching and intimate knowledge of one's homeland, which is what the Tununirmiut told the whalers at Pond's Bay wealth was?  Is it to retain a capacity for awe and astonishment in our lives, to continue to hunger after what is genuine and worthy?  Is it to live at moral peace with the universe?

"...It is possible to imagine afresh the way to a lasting security of the soul and heart, and toward an accommodation in the flow of time we call history....  That dream is the dream of great and common people alike."   [from Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez, pp. 13-14]

"A Yup'ik hunter on St. Lawrence Island once told me that what traditional Eskimos fear most about us is the extent of our power to alter the land, the scale of that power, and the fact that we can easily effect some of these changes electronically, from a distant city.  

 

"Eskimos, who sometimes see themselves as still not quite separate from the animal world, regard us as a kind of people whose separation may have become too complete.  They call us, with a mixture of incredulity and apprehension, "the people who change nature.""  [from Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez, p. 39]

The poor read to know that they are not condemned.

Without a doubt, I'm becoming a big fan of Joe Queenan.  This is from his memoir:

Even in his worst moments, my father never resembled the simpletons who masquerade as blue-collar heroes on television; in the darkest of times he never talked like Archie Bunker, the malignant sow dreamed up by West Coast millionaires as a mechanism for sneering at people who have to work for a living. 

Unlike TV’s prefab proletariat, self-congratulatory buffoons all, my father could tell you why Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, why Richard III killed the little princes, why Hannibal dragged his elephants over the Alps, and why one should think twice before venturing out onto the English moors at night.  Hemmed in by ignorant men, he was not himself ignorant.

He was...the best the working class had to offer.  He was ceaselessly in the process of educating himself, not because he thought it might advance his career--he had no career--but because reading was a way to escape to a better world.  ...While some people, to borrow an insight from C.S. Lewis, read to know they are not alone, the poor read to know that they are not condemned.  ...Books are a guiding light out of the underworld, a secret passageway, an escape hatch.  To the affluent, books are ornaments.  To the poor, books are siege weapons.

Joe Queenan. Closing Time, New York: Viking Press, 2009, pp. 14-15.