Reflections: Steal This Post

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Below are two more excerpts from Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World which I found to be particularly thought-provoking. Hyde’s topic here is the Greek god Hermes in his role as trickster, but also as mediator between the world of mortality and change and the Eternity above. I have inserted various bracketed keywords to flag contexts and/or analogies—perfect or imperfect, ancient or contemporary—that came to mind as I was reading:

"For a human community to make its world shapely [orthodox] is one thing; to preserve the shape is quite another, especially if, as is always the case, the shape is to some degree arbitrary [ideological, dogmatic, doctrinal] and if the shaping requires exclusion [xenophobia, sectarianism] and the excluded are hungry [ecumenically inclined]. So along with shapeliness comes a set of rules meant to preserve the design. “Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not blaspheme. Do not gamble. Do not pick up things in the street. Behave yourself. You should be ashamed….” Whoever has the wit to break these rules, whoever puts the guards to sleep, slips across the threshold and floods the sacred meadows with contingency, whoever steals the boundary stones [between the Greco-Roman world and Israel] of clean distinction, that person strips design of its protective glamour. Hermes [Jesus] does all this and by it he disenchants the world into which he was born."

But wait—there’s a catch:

... "To have the lying [blaspheming], thieving [Sabbath violating] Hermes [Jesus] spring from Zeus’ loins is to figure Zeus as the ultimate author of hermetic inventions, as if Hermes had never really been an outsider…. To have Zeus [Yahweh] father Hermes [Jesus] is to claim that the changes he brings are a part of the eternal and not contingent, relative, or dependent on historical situations. It draws history back into myth.
XX"Such may be the frequent fate of radical change-agents, to be co-opted, outflanked, and contained by the larger culture [Rome, the Church, Madison Avenue], to be brought up short of a full apocalyptic reallotment. But what exactly are the options? A remark by Claude Lévi-Strauss offers a way to imagine the possible fates of those who threaten a group with fundamental change. Lévi-Strauss contrasts two types of societies: “those which practice cannibalism—that is, which regard the absorption of certain individuals possessing dangerous powers as the only means of neutralizing these powers [Eucharist] and even of turning them to advantage [Constantine]—and those which, like our own…adopt what might be called the practice of anthropemy (from the Greek emein, to vomit).” The latter eject dangerous individuals [Crucifixion]; they leave them in the woods [Gulag], or build special jails [Gitmo] to cut them off from the group and keep them isolated. In short, groups can either expel or ingest their troublemakers. The most successful change-agent avoids either fate and manages to stay on the threshold [Lenny Bruce, Ralph Nader, Bob Dylan, Ayn Rand], neither in nor out, but short of that difficult balance the next best fate may be to be eaten, to be incorporated into the local myth."

Maybe the concept of the internet "troll" needs to be given a second look?

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Quote(s) du Jour

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Below, without editorial comment, are a few pithy excerpts from Trickster Makes This World:

"More conservative minds deprive coincidence of meaning by treating it as background noise or garbage, but the shape-shifting mind pesters the distinction between accident and essence and remakes this world out of whatever happens. " [p.100]

"...in the economy of categories, whenever the value of accident changes, so, too, does the value of essence." [p.100]

"...accidents happen in time, essences reside in eternity." [p.100]

"In the thirteenth century, the prose Edda was a work of modern art that allowed the 'noise' of Christianity into its frame." [p.105]
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Reflections: Truckin' and Scroogin'

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Bah. Humbug. I was planning to put up a rant today about how little I am able to get into the Christmas spirit as chaos reigns and the situation careens from bad to worse--with the global economy spearheading the rush. But I have decided against it. I’ll save that for a New Year’s summary of some kind. For the time being, I will just keep on keepin’ on. You won’t, however, be seeing any faux yuletide cheer on Rodak Riffs this year.

Yesterday I started reading a book that I saw mentioned in an article about its author as a title has been widely read among a group of writers whom I admire, and consequently borrowed from the library: Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde.

Trickster is a mythological archetype that plays a role in the story-telling of virtually all polytheistic cultures from the dawn of time. In Greek mythology, for instance, that role is played by the god Hermes. In Native American culture, the trickster is variously called Coyote, or Raven. In some cultures trickster is a god, in others a wily animal, or a tiny human-like character; but in all he plays a similar role.

In his introduction to Trickster Makes This World, Hyde states his central thesis as being the idea that “the origins, liveliness, and durability of cultures require that there be space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on.” Hyde states that he will essay “to give some sense of how this can be, how social life can depend on treating antisocial characters as part of the sacred.” I find this to be an interesting concept to explore and Hyde’s many supporting examples from world folklore and myth are a delight to anyone interested in the contemplation of those things which are essentially and universally human.

Hyde quotes anthropologist Paul Radin, who provides the following characterization of trickster:

Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes and who is always duped himself…. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social…yet through his actions all values come into being.

Bugs Bunny comes immediately to mind as a contemporary American trickster.

Trickster Makes This World was published in 1998. But working with Radin’s definition, Hyde makes the following observation on possible manifestations of trickster in the modern world which might well have been inspired by current events:

XX "In America, one likely candidate for the protagonist of a reborn trickster myth is the confidence man, especially as he appears in literature and film (most actual confidence men don’t have the range of imaginary ones, and come to sadder ends). Some have even argued that the confidence man is a covert American hero. We enjoy it when he comes to town, even if a few people get their bank accounts drained, because he embodies things that are actually true about America but cannot be openly declared (as, for example, the degree to which capitalism lets us steal from our neighbors, or the degree to which institutions like the stock market require the same kind of confidence that criminal con men need).
XX "If the confidence man is one of America’s unacknowledged founding fathers, then instead of saying that there are no modern tricksters one could argue the opposite: trickster is everywhere."

Did I hear somebody say “Enron”? Do de name “Bernard Madoff” ring a bell?

Yo! Merry Christmas, suckers!

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