Daniel Feierstein, de la Red de Estudios sobre Genocidio de la Untref

Raphael Lemkin, el creador del concepto de genocidio, fue a su vez quien creó la definición más potente y precisa del término, calificándolo como "la destrucción de la identidad nacional de los oprimidos y el intento de imposición de la identidad nacional del opresor". Y agregaba que dicha imposición podía hacerse en sus cuerpos (transformando su identidad por medio del terror) o directamente en la tierra que ocupaban (eliminando a la población).

Desatada una de las ofensivas más duras del ejército israelí sobre Gaza, que ya ha superado el millar de víctimas y no parece detenerse, incluyendo entre los asesinados a civiles, mujeres, niños, incluso escuelas y hospitales, cabe volver al jurista judío polaco Lemkin para intentar aportar mayor claridad a las causas y características del conflicto palestino-israelí y a sus tremendas consecuencias.

Si se observa el conflicto no sólo en su ocurrencia actual sino en su historia (esto es, a partir de 1948) se notará que el elemento central que para Lemkin caracterizaba la posibilidad de un genocidio es el que se encuentra aquí en cuestión: que la dirigencia política israelí (de Ben Gurión a Golda Meir, de Begin o Netanyahu) han sistemáticamente negado la existencia de una identidad nacional palestina (esto es, la identidad nacional de los oprimidos en dicha región) y que han ido escalando en aquello que están dispuestos a hacer para impedir que exista.

De allí surgen los argumentos (no sólo esgrimidos por la derecha israelí sino en muchos casos también por la izquierda israelí o incluso diaspórica) de que Jordania, Egipto o Siria deberían haber acogido a los centenares de miles de refugiados de las expulsiones del 48 o del 67 o que el proyecto israelí era el de "una tierra sin nación para una nación sin tierra" (equivalente al mito argentino de la "conquista del desierto"), como si los centenares de miles de habitantes de esas tierras previo a 1948 fueran invisibles o no tuvieran identidad.

Esta histórica negación de la identidad del pueblo palestino ha producido la negación opuesta, que en parte agudiza el conflicto e impide el diálogo: el derecho del pueblo israelí a tener un Estado en la región, sea la más enriquecedora pero hoy inviable propuesta de un Estado binacional o la más posible y realista de dos Estados vecinos conviviendo en paz.

La gravedad de esta nueva ofensiva militar israelí por sobre las anteriores es que se lleva a cabo, como bien ha señalado Robert Fisk, para impedir un gobierno de unidad palestino. Esto es, que su único objetivo (porque no se observa otra racionalidad en este ataque feroz pero absurdo) parece ser la de impedir la conformación de un liderazgo político unificado entre Fatah y Hamas que pudiera (por primera vez desde la muerte o asesinato de Arafat) dar coherencia a un planteo político de recuperación y reclamo en nombre de la identidad nacional palestina.

Y es este intento de destruir la identidad nacional de un grupo (ya no sólo simbólicamente, sino ahora también a través de un ataque sistemático sobre los civiles de la franja de Gaza, sumado a una deshumanización de las víctimas palestinas que no había aparecido en ningún otro momento de la historia israelí) lo que le otorga a este momento del conflicto un cariz genocida.

El irresponsable apoyo de algunas instituciones judías de la diáspora a la ofensiva israelí (que en nada refleja la opinión mayoritaria de las comunidades judías diaspóricas, como demuestra la insignificante presencia de manifestantes en esos actos, como el realizado en Buenos Aires) ha terminado de confundir un panorama donde los antiguos y nuevos antisemitismos se han dado cita, utilizando las injusticias cometidas por el gobierno israelí como excusa para salir a quemar sinagogas en Europa o reflotar las consignas de "muerte a los judíos" o de destrucción del Estado de Israel, consignas que ningún judío puede observar con indiferencia, cuando no hay quien no tenga como mínimo un familiar lejano asesinado hace menos de un siglo en el proyecto genocida más sistemático jamás implementado.

Sólo en el reconocimiento del otro puede radicar alguna posibilidad de enfrentar esta escalada antes de que la tragedia se haga más y más grave, generando más muerte, más dolor y más irreversibilidad. Es indispensable que los israelíes puedan aceptar de una buena vez la legitimidad de la identidad nacional palestina y su derecho a un Estado viable, enfrentando los mitos de que los palestinos serían un pueblo "artificial".

Asimismo, la comunidad internacional debe ser mucho más firme y expeditiva en la exigencia al gobierno israelí del inmediato cese de las acciones militares, el desmantelamiento de las colonias y el inicio de negociaciones para el cumplimiento de las resoluciones de Naciones Unidas que puedan conducir al fin de la ocupación y a la creación de un Estado palestino.

Por otra parte, resulta necesario exigir a las organizaciones palestinas y a los Estados de la región el reconocimiento del derecho a la existencia del Estado de Israel, como modo de desmantelar el lógico terror de un pueblo de sobrevivientes de sufrir un nuevo aniquilamiento.

No es posible dialogar con quien postula la inexistencia del otro. La sociedad israelí no puede aspirar a un fin del conflicto si no acepta la existencia de un Estado palestino. Las organizaciones palestinas no pueden pretender avanzar en las negociaciones si no reconocen la legitimidad de la existencia de un Estado israelí.

En su determinación por negar la identidad palestina (aún al costo de producir un genocidio), la dirigencia israelí avanza sin pausa y cada vez de modo más acelerado hacia el suicidio del propio proyecto de Estado israelí y, en esa marcha al abismo, busca arrastrar a todos los judíos de la diáspora.

Es nuestra responsabilidad decirles basta. No sólo no será con nosotros ni en nuestro nombre, sino que tendrán que hacerlo CONTRA NOSOTROS, negando en ese camino lo poco del espíritu y la ética judíos que aún podría quedarles. No somos quienes criticamos esta política del gobierno israelí los traidores al pueblo judío. Lo son quienes están dispuestos a violar todos los preceptos judíos en aras de un proyecto suicida, inviable y que sólo podrá llevarnos a la tragedia.
Ojalá que seamos capaces de reaccionar a tiempo.

Marlon Brando / That Unfinished Oscar Speech

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., March the 27th, 1932.

For 200 years we have said to the Indian people who are fighting for their land, their life, their families and their right to be free: ''Lay down your arms, my friends, and then we will remain together. Only if you lay down your arms, my friends, can we then talk of peace and come to an agreement which will be good for you.''

When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.

But there is one thing which is beyond the reach of this perversity and that is the tremendous verdict of history. And history will surely judge us. But do we care? What kind of moral schizophrenia is it that allows us to shout at the top of our national voice for all the world to hear that we live up to our commitment when every page of history and when all the thirsty, starving, humiliating days and nights of the last 100 years in the lives of the American Indian contradict that voice?

It would seem that the respect for principle and the love of one's neighbor have become dysfunctional in this country of ours, and that all we have done, all that we have succeeded in accomplishing with our power is simply annihilating the hopes of the newborn countries in this world, as well as friends and enemies alike, that we're not humane, and that we do not live up to our agreements.

Perhaps at this moment you are saying to yourself what the hell has all this got to do with the Academy Awards? Why is this woman standing up here, ruining our evening, invading our lives with things that don't concern us, and that we don't care about? Wasting our time and money and intruding in our homes.

I think the answer to those unspoken questions is that the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It's hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know.

Recently there have been a few faltering steps to correct this situation, but too faltering and too few, so I, as a member in this profession, do not feel that I can as a citizen of the United States accept an award here tonight. I think awards in this country at this time are inappropriate to be received or given until the condition of the American Indian is drastically altered. If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.

I would have been here tonight to speak to you directly, but I felt that perhaps I could be of better use if I went to Wounded Knee to help forestall in whatever way I can the establishment of a peace which would be dishonorable as long as the rivers shall run and the grass shall grow.

I would hope that those who are listening would not look upon this as a rude intrusion, but as an earnest effort to focus attention on an issue that might very well determine whether or not this country has the right to say from this point forward we believe in the inalienable rights of all people to remain free and independent on lands that have supported their life beyond living memory.
Thank you for your kindness and your courtesy to Miss Littlefeather. Thank you and good night.

This statement was written by Marlon Brando for delivery at the Academy Awards ceremony where Mr. Brando refused an Oscar. The speaker, who read only a part of it, was Shasheen Littlefeather.

Los indios de Palestina, por Gilles Deleuze y Elias SanbarPaquidermo

Fragmento de una conversación entre el filósofo francés Gilles Deleuze y el historiador palestino (y traductor de Mahmud Darwix al francés) Elias Sanbar. Se publicó en el diario Libération el 8-9 de mayo de 1982.

Gilles Deleuze. [...] Los palestinos no están en la situación de otros pueblos colonizados, sino que han sido evacuados, desterrados. Tú insistes, en el libro que estás preparando [Palestine 1948, l’expulsion], en la comparación con los pieles rojas. En el capitalismo se dan dos movimientos muy diferentes. A veces se trata de mantener a un pueblo en su territorio, hacerle trabajar, explotarlo para acumular un excedente: lo que suele llamarse una colonia; otras veces se trata de lo contrario, de vaciar un territorio de su pueblo para dar un salto adelante, aunque tenga que importarse mano de obra del extranjero. La historia del sionismo y de Israel, como la de América, tiene que ver con esto último: ¿cómo crear un vacío, cómo evacuar a un pueblo? [...]

Elias Sanbar. Somos unos expulsados peculiares porque no nos han desplazado a tierra extranjera sino hacia la prolongación de nuestro hogar. Se nos ha desplazado a tierra árabe, donde no solamente nadie piensa en que nos disolvamos sino que esta mera idea les parece una aberración. Me refiero, en este punto, a la inmensa hipocresía de algunas afirmaciones de Israel que reprochan al resto de los árabes el no habernos “integrado”, cosa que en el lenguaje israelí significa “hecho desaparecer”… Quienes nos han expulsado han comenzado súbitamente a preocuparse por cierto racismo árabe contra nosotros. ¿Significa esto que no debemos afrontar las contradicciones de ciertos países árabes? Desde luego que no, pero estos enfrentamientos no procedían en absoluto del hecho de que fuéramos árabes, eran casi inevitables porque éramos y somos una revolución armada. Somos algo así como los pieles rojas de los colonos judíos de Palestina. A sus ojos, nuestra única función consistiría en desaparecer. En este sentido, es cierto que la historia del establecimiento de Israel es una repetición del proceso que dio lugar al nacimiento de los Estados Unidos de América. [...]

El movimiento sionista no movilizó a la comunidad judía de Palestina en torno a la idea de que los palestinos iban a marcharse en algún momento, sino en torno a la idea de que el país estaba “vacío”. Desde luego, hubo algunos que, al llegar, constataron lo contrario y así lo escribieron. Pero el grueso de esta comunidad funcionaba teniendo en frente a unas personas a quienes frecuentaba a diario físicamente, pero como si no estuviesen allí. Esta ceguera no era física, nadie podía engañarse en primera instancia, todo el mundo sabía que aquel pueblo allí presente estaba “en trance de desaparición”, todo el mundo se daba cuenta también de que, para que esa desaparición pudiera llevarse a cabo, hacía falta funcionar desde el principio como si ya hubiese ocurrido, es decir, “no viendo” nunca la existencia de los otros, que sin embargo estaban más que presentes. Para tener éxito, el vaciamiento del territorio debía partir de una aniquilación “del otro” en la propia mente de los colonos.

Para alcanzar ese resultado, el movimiento sionista apostó fuerte a una visión racista que hacía del judaísmo la base misma de la expulsión, del rechazo del otro. Recibió una ayuda decisiva de las persecuciones europeas que, emprendidas por otros racistas, le permitían encontrar una confirmación de su propio enfoque.

Creemos, además, que el sionismo ha aprisionado a los judíos y los mantiene cautivos de esta visión que acabo de describir. Digo intencionadamente que les mantiene cautivos y no que les ha mantenido cautivos en cierto momento. Digo esto porque, pasado el holocausto, su punto de vista ha evolucionado y se ha convertido en un seudoprincipio “eterno” que exige que los judíos sean en todo lugar y en todo tiempo el Otro de las sociedades en que viven.

Ahora bien, no hay ningún pueblo, ninguna comunidad que pueda aspirar ―afortunadamente para ellos― a ocupar inmutablemente esta posición del “Otro” rechazado y maldito.

Hoy día, el Otro del Oriente Próximo es el árabe, el palestino. Y es a este Otro constantemente amenazado con desaparecer al que las potencias occidentales, derrochando hipocresía y cinismo, piden garantías. Por el contrario, somos nosotros quienes necesitamos garantías contra la locura de las autoridades militares israelíes. [...]

—————

Gilles Deleuze, Dos regímenes de locos. Textos y entrevistas (1975-1995), traducción de José Luis Pardo, Valencia, Pre-Textos, 2007.

http://www.revistapaquidermo.com/archives/10755

Memorias de un revolucionario/Pedro Kropotkin

...he podido convencerme a mi mismo de que, en cuanto a sus efectos sobre el preso y sus resultados para la sociedad en general, las mejores prisiones reformadas -sean o no celulares- son tan malas, o aún peores, que las sucias cárceles antiguas. Ellas no mejoran al preso; por el contrario, en la inmensa y abrumadora mayoría de casos, ejercen sobre ellos los efectos más lamentables. El ladrón, el estafador y el granuja que han pasado algunos años en un penal, salen de él más dispuestos que nunca a continuar por el mismo camino, hallándose mejor preparados para ello, habiendo aprendido a hacerlo mejor, estando más enconados contra la sociedad y encontrando una justificación más sólida de su rebeldía contra sus leyes y costumbres, razón por la cual tienen, necesaria e inevitablemente, que caer cada vez más hondo en la sima de los actos antisociales que por primera vez le llevaron ante los jueces.

Vladímir Bukovski sobre el samizdat o distribución clandestina de textos contra los regímenes dictatoriales

 "Yo mismo lo creo, edito, censuro, publico, distribuyo, y resulto encarcelado por eso."

Hakim Bey resume la crítica de Fourier a lo que llamó despectivamente civilización:

Las miserias de la Civilización han desviado a la Tierra y a la humanidad de su propio destino en un sentido literalmente cósmico. La Pasión, la cual hemos aprendido a ver como “el mal”, es de hecho, virtualmente, el principio divino. Los seres humanos son estrellas microscópicas, y todas las pasiones y deseos (incluyendo los “fetiches” y las “perversiones”) son por naturaleza no solamente buenas, sino necesarias para la realización del destino de los humanos. En el sistema de Armonía de Fourier todas las actividades creativas incluyendo a la industria, la artesanía, la agricultura, etc. surgirán de la liberación de la pasión -ésta es la famosa teoría de la “labor atractiva”. Fourier sexualiza el mismo trabajo –- la vida del Falansterio es una continua orgía del sentimiento intenso, del pensamiento y de la actividad, una sociedad de amantes y salvajes entusiastas. Cuando la vida social de la Tierra es armonizada, nuestro planeta volverá a incorporarse al universo de Pasión y se experimentarán vastas transformaciones en la forma del cuerpo humano, en el tiempo atmosférico, en los animales y plantas, incluso en los océanos.





http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fourier

Pepe Mujica, presidente de Uruguay

 Yo no soy pobre, pobres son los que creen que yo soy pobre.Tengo pocas cosas, es cierto, las mínimas, pero sólo para poder ser rico.


Quiero tener tiempo para dedicarlo a las cosas que me motivan. Y si tuviera muchas cosas tendría que ocuparme de atenderlas y no podría hacer lo que realmente me gusta. Esa es la verdadera libertad, la austeridad, el consumir poco.La casa pequeña, para poder dedicar el tiempo a lo que verdaderamente disfruto. Si no, tendría que tener una empleada y ya tendría una interventora dentro de la casa. Y si tengo muchas cosas me tengo que dedicar a cuidarlas para que no me las lleven. No, con tres piecitas me alcanza. Les pasamos la escoba entre la vieja y yo; y ya, se acabó. Entonces sí tenemos tiempo para lo que realmente nos entusiasma. No somos pobres.

Refrán irlandés

Un desconocido, sólo es un amigo a quien hace falta presentarte.

Adhesión contra el golpe en Paraguay/Gerardo Halpern

Los abajo firmantes, repudiamos la maniobra golpista que realizan las fuerzas políticas tradicionales del Paraguay, llevando a cabo la destitución de un presidente elegido democráticamente por la voluntad popular en 2008 y cuyo mandato finalizaría tan sólo en nueve meses.

La vergonzosa elevación a juicio político y la carencia de fundamentos y pruebas para la destitución de Fernando Lugo configuran la más evidente muestra de la presión y capacidad destituyente de los sectores "tradicionales" del campo político del Paraguay.

La velocidad con la que ha decidido la elevación a juicio político, las precarias y lamentables exposiciones de los fiscales y la sordera ante las manifestaciones populares, tanto en Paraguay como fuera del Paraguay, forman parte de un golpe que se fue pergeñando desde la misma asunción de Lugo a la presidencia. 23 intentos de juicio político anteriores a este son la demostración de los intentos golpistas que sufrió el actual presidente.

La resistencia de la oligarquía terrateniente paraguaya, beneficiaria de la sojización del país y expulsora de miles de campesinos, a las políticas de Lugo fueron minando su gestión, impidiéndole el desarrollo de políticas sociales, inéditas en más de 60 años de hegemonía del Partido Colorado. 

Un país que carece de impuestos a las riquezas personales y posee una casta política que se resiste a la redistribución del producto social no puede sostener un gobierno progresista sin llegar a otro destino que la confrontación directa entre esa casta y los sectores excluidos. No es casual que en este momento sean las clases populares y medias las que salen a las calles a manifestar su solidaridad con el mandatario. Y no es casual que esa casta se refugie en la velocidad de trámites de dudosa legalidad para avanzar en su decidido golpe de estado.

La reducción de la desigualdad en el Paraguay, ubicado entre los países más desiguales del mundo, ha sido uno de los objetivos centrales de las políticas de Lugo. Ninguna medida en función de ello fue acompañada por un parlamento que se ha nutrido, precisamente, de esa desigualdad. 

Como han dicho sus defensores en el alegato: este golpe da rienda suelta a una persecución ideológica, puesto que se está destituyendo a Lugo por tener ideas diferentes a las de esa casta oligárquica.

Más de sesenta años de postración, desigualdad y persecuciones políticas encabezadas por el Partido Colorado -y secundado por sectores del Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico- han condenado a millones de paraguayos a vivir en la pobreza y en el exilio. Lugo, aun con sus errores, es la expresión de la voluntad popular por revertir tanta injusticia y desigualdad.

Lo que está ocurriendo en Paraguay es un claro retroceso en la emancipación del pueblo paraguayo. Se trata de un proceso destituyente y restaurador del stronismo, de las tradiciones golpistas y, por cierto, de las persecuciones contra quienes luchan por una sociedad más igualitaria.

Para firmas repudiando la maniobra golpista en Paraguay enviar a:gerardo.halpern@gmail.com

 Lo está organizando Gerardo Halpern, investigador de CONICET / UBA

Yo soy 132

Si yo no ardo
si tú no ardes
si nosotros no ardemos

¿Quién iluminará esta oscuridad?

La Sangre de nuestra madre Tierra/Cipactli Lophophora Williamsii

No son una novedad los síntomas relacionados con la menstruación. El "Síndrome Premenstrual" se manifiesta con una serie de síntomas físicos y de conducta. El dolor menstrual es una realidad nuestros días y en el mercado existen toda clase de medicamentos a tal efecto. Estos síntomas son el resultado de una creación de la consciencia colectiva que ha sido proyectada sobre las mujeres a lo largo de la historia. A nivel emocional los cambios de actitud son muy latentes, y hasta que la mujer no comprende sus ciclos no estará habilitada a vivir sus procesos menstruales en comunión con su naturaleza femenina.Todo esto es debido a una falta de comprensión de lo que realmente simboliza.

Cada mujer desde la pubertad hasta su madurez vive procesos de contracción y expansión cada 28 días. Estos 28 días coinciden con los ciclos lunares. Cada ciclo lunar esta asociado a un arquetipo dentro del ciclo de la creación. Así la luna llena representaría el ovario fecundo o el ovario no fecundo, que es devuelto a la tierra. La semilla de vida es retornada en forma de sangre o en la manifestación de un nuevo ser.

La mujer convive con 4 arquetipos distintos dentro de si misma, cuatro visiones distintas del mundo. Así podemos entender porque la ley del cambio opera dentro de nosotras de forma vertiginosa. Somos Diosas en acción. Entender nuestras fases menstruales en relación con las fases lunares nos abre una puerta al entendimiento universal de nuestra presencia en la tierra. Cuando estamos con nuestra regla tenemos una conexión directa con el creador y con la Madre Tierra. Esta fase correspondería a lo que es la Luna llena que esta directamente relacionada con el arquetipo de la Sacerdotisa del tarot. La sacerdotisa representa la conexión con el cielo y la tierra, manifestando dicha unión desde la naturaleza mas intima con el creador. Es el tiempo de mayor conexión. Por eso en ceremonias las mujeres que están en este ciclo lunar deben ejercer de sacerdotisas pues sostienen ambos planos (cielo y tierra) desde su útero. En este tiempo manifestamos nuestro poder de co-creación en comunión con la naturaleza.

Cuando la luna esta menguante entra en la fase de la Mujer Sabia, en este tiempo atravesamos estados de aislamiento para poder hacer aflorar el inconsciente. Es el tiempo de la visión interior. Estos son los días en los que no nos apetece hablar ni ver a nadie, esto es debido a que a un nivel inconsciente sentimos la perdida de esta sangre como una posibilidad perdida de haber creado una nueva vida. A nivel físico experimentamos una perdida de minerales, a un nivel inconsciente experimentamos la bajada a nuestro infra-mundo donde nos enfrentamos con nuestra sombra, permitiendo que aflore purificándose para dar la bienvenida al nuevo ciclo.

La luna nueva nos trae la energía de la Madre, en este tiempo es donde plantamos la semilla de los planes futuros. Es donde nutrimos estos planes para que se den de acuerdo con las leyes del creador. La reserva, el mimo y cuidado con el que nutrimos nuestros asuntos es de vital importancia durante este ciclo.

La Luna Creciente nos conecta con la energía de la Chamana, aquí sentimos la fuerza creadora, creciendo en el útero, una nueva posibilidad de engendrar una nueva vida. En este tiempo nos sentimos mas seductoras y nuestra energía se manifiesta con la fuerza de pura vida.

La causa de que la Regla haya sido un tema tabú hasta nuestros días no es otra que la de permanecer desconectadas de la Madre Tierra, desconectadas de nuestra naturaleza. Conectarnos con nuestra LUNA ROJA es volver a recuperar nuestra condición natural. Nuestra sangre tiene toda la información genética de nuestros ancestros. Somos el ultimo eslabón de esa cadena. Como mujeres además tenemos la conexión directa con el planeta Gaia. Establecer esa conexión es despertar a una consciencia mas universal.

Nuestra sangre es portadora de pura vida, su poder sanador es ilimitado. Ofrendarla a la tierra nos conecta con las memorias ancestrales del planeta, permitiendo que afloren en nosotros cualidades y capacidades que permanecían dormidas dentro de nosotras. Es conectarnos con la Madre con todo su potencial de vida. Cuando desechamos nuestra sangre a la basura estamos conectándonos con los desechos artificiales creados por el hombre. Cada mes ofrendarle a la Madre Tierra tu sangre, ella te devolverá tu ofrenda con creces. Esa relación con la madre es intima. Recoge tu sangre cada mes y busca un lugar en la naturaleza que tu sientas. Al principio puedes pedir ayuda para que los desechos energéticos que hay en tu sangre sean transmutados por la tierra. Cuando hacemos esto la Madre Tierra transmuta los bloqueos energéticos que estén afectándonos.

A través de una alimentación adecuada (basada en el consumo de grano integral) tu sangre se convierte en un reclamo de unidad con la madre que ella reconocerá, aumentando así el proceso de sanción del planeta. Cuando un mujer abre su consciencia la actitud de esta afecta a la consciencia femenina de todo el planeta. Cuando entregamos nuestra sangre en un lugar concreto tomamos la energía de ese lugar, creando así una red de vida a lo largo y ancho del planeta.

¡Siéntete libre de compartir esta información con todas las mujeres que conozcas y feliz regreso al hogar de la madre!

Sura

Decomisan cápsulas con carne de bebés en polvo

Autoridades de Corea del Sur decomisaron miles de píldoras que entraron de contrabando al país, las cuales estaban rellenas de carne en polvo de bebés.

Las píldoras se elaboraron en China, donde los bebés fueron cortados en pedazos y secados en estufas para convertir en polvo la carne, indicó el Servicio de Aduanas de Corea del Sur.

Los oficiales aduanales se negaron a comentar de dónde eran los bebés o quién elabora esas cápsulas, para evitar fricciones diplomáticas con Pekín.

En 2011, funcionarios del gobierno chino ordenaron una investigación sobre este producto, elaborado a partir de cadáveres de fetos o recién nacidos.

Desde el pasado agosto el personal de aduanas ha detectado y descubierto hasta 35 intentos de contrabando de estas cápsulas, lo que supone un total de 17 mil 450, que se venden debido a la creencia de que aumentan el vigor, toda vez que muchas personas creen que son un remedio infalible contra diversas enfermedades.

Desconocían ingredientes

Los contrabandistas aseguraron que pensaban que transportaban suplementos energéticos comunes y que no conocían los ingredientes ni su preparación.

Los coreanos del noreste de China que viven en Corea del Sur suelen consumir las píldoras.

Las autoridades sudcoreanas no han presentado cargos debido a que consideran que es una cantidad pequeña y que los poseedores desconocían qué transportaban.

Las píldoras eran trasladadas en valijas o enviadas por correo. En este caso fueron decomisadas, pero no se presentaron cargos contra nadie debido a que las autoridades consideraron que la cantidad era pequeña y los contrabandistas no tenían intención de venderlas, según el agente aduanal.

Declaración de la Conferencia Europea de Acción, Frankfurt, 26 de febrero de 2012

Los 400 participantes de la Conferencia de Acción celebrada en Frankfurt del 24 al 26 de febrero de 2012 han decidido llamar a una serie de días de protesta del 17 al 19 de mayo de 2012 contra la “dictadura de la crisis” de la Unión Europea. Resistimos el desastre que se está aplicando a Grecia y otros países, la pauperización y la negación de derechos de miles de personas y la práctica abolición de los procedimientos democráticos resultante de las decisiones de la Troika formada por el BCR, la UE y el FMI.

Los días de protesta en Frankfurt seguirán directamente al Día Internacional de Acción previsto para el 12 de mayo y el aniversario de la primera asamblea de Sol el día 15 de mayo. En consecuencia, estamos enviando una señal visible de solidaridad a todos los pueblos de Europa que han estado y continúan resistiendo a la debtocracia de la Troika y los ataques a sus medios de vida y su futuro. De forma simultánea, se están organizando protestas en los EEUU contra la cumbre del G8 en Chicago.
La elección de Frankfurt para las protestas resulta del papel que esa ciudad desempeña como sede el Banco Central Europeo y de los poderosos bancos y corporaciones alemanes e internacionales.

El día 17 de mayo ocuparemos los parques y plazas centrales para crear espacios de discusión e intercambio. El día 18 de mayo, bloquearemos el funcionamiento ordinario de los bancos en Frankfurt, convirtiendo en acción nuestra indignación por las políticas de la Troika. Nos reuniremos para una gran manifestación el día 19 de mayo, que visualizará la amplia base que tienen las protestas. Esperamos la participación de gente de muchos países y regiones, que vendrán a Frankfurt a sumarse a la protesta.

El éxito de las protestas requiere una movilización que es apoyada de forma activa por tantos como sea posible: el movimiento Occuppy, las iniciativas de parados y alianzas contra la crisis, los sindicalistas, Attac, el movimiento ecologista y pacifista, los grupos de izquierda, antifascistas y antirracistas, activistas de diversas luchas locales y el Partido Die Linke.

El periodo de movilizaciones incluye asimismo el Día de Acción Europeo convocado para el 31 de marzo, el Día Internacionales de los Trabajadores y las luchas de negociación colectiva que están teniendo lugar en Alemania y a las que expresamos nuestra solidaridad.

http://www.european-resistance.org/es/ak/resolution

Comunicado de casas de estudiantes de Michoacán ante asalto gubernamental a 3 casas, 200 detenidos, 300 desaparecidos y 1 estudiante asesinado

Morelia, Michoacán 28 de abril de 2012

A LOS MEDIOS DE COMUNICACIÓN
A LOS ORGANISMOS DEFENSORES DE DERECHOS HUMANOS
A LAS ORGANIZACIONES POPULARES E INDEPENDIENTES
A LOS MEDIOS DE COMUNICACIÓN ALTERNATIVOS
AL PUEBLO EN GENERAL

Las organizaciones estudiantiles y populares denunciamos que el día de hoy 28 de abril de 2012 en punto de las 3:30 de la madrugada entro el Grupo de Operaciones Especiales GOE, la Policía Estatal y la Policía Federal allanando con lujo de violencia en acción simultánea las casas del estudiante 2 de Octubre y casa de Estudiante Nicolaita en el centro histórico de Morelia, desalojando a todos los moradores, saquearon las casas, robando las pertenencias, computadoras, celulares, hurgando entre la ropa.

Acto seguido arrojaron gases lacrimógenos e hicieron disparos de armas de fuego, en tanto que arremetían, con sus toletes a los estudiantes inermes, posteriormente a las 10:53 de la mañana llegaron con lujo de violencia en 50 patrullas a la Casa Lucio Cabañas en la avenida Madero con la misma saña arremetieron contra todo el conjunto de integrantes de diversas organizaciones que estábamos ahí derribaron a patadas la puerta golpeando a todos los que se encontraban y llevándoselos detenidos, la policía estatal arremetió en contra de estudiantes y transeúntes, arrojando gases lacrimógenos y abriendo fuego con armas de alto poder, finalmente incendiaron la Casa de Estudiantes Lucio Cabañas.

Hasta ahora el saldo que arroja la represión de policías Federal y Estatal con mas de 200 presos y más de 300 desaparecidos, es de dominio público el asesinato de un estudiante de la casa Nicolaita, seis heridos de gravedad por la golpiza propinada por los granaderos, entre los detenidos hay miembros de organizaciones solidarias que estaban apoyando el movimiento Estudiantil-popular de los cuales se desconoce hasta el momento su paradero, por la negativa de las autoridades de informar a familiares, estudiantes y ciudadanos que solicitan información.

Esta es la forma de gobernar del gobierno “conciliador” de Fausto Vallejo, ni más ni menos que el dialogo de las balas y el tolete ante las demandas del movimiento popular estudiantil, la represión, la vejación, el desalojo, la desaparición forzada, el asesinato.

Exigimos la presentación con vida de todos los estudiantes de la CUL, entre ellos el Estudiante Carlos Cesar Cruz Huacuz miembro del Frente Nacional de Lucha por el Socialismo detenido desaparecido en estos hechos represivos.

Responsabilizamos al Gobierno estatal que encabeza el Lic. de Fausto Vallejo Figueroa y al Gobierno Federal encabezado por el ilegitimo Felipe Calderón Hinojosa de la integridad física y psicológica de los integrantes de las casas de Estudiantes de la Coordinadora de Universitarios en Lucha CUL, así como de diversos integrantes de las organizaciones populares solidarias.

En virtud de esta denuncia solicitamos a todas las organizaciones de derechos humanos, populares y políticas para que realicen acciones urgentes ante los gobiernos Federal y Estatal,para que cese la represión, se libere a los estudiantes encarcelados, se presente con vida a todos los detenidos desaparecidos, se garantice la integridad fisisca y psicológica de todos y se atienda y proteja a los estudiantes heridos.

FRATERNALMENTE

¡VIVOS LOS LLEVARON VIVOS LOS QUEREMOS!
¡ALTO A LA MILITARIZACIÓN Y PARAMILITARIZACIÓN!
¡ALTO AL TERRORISMO DE ESTADO!
¡LIBERTAD A TODOS LOS PRESOS POLÍTICOS Y DE CONCIENCIA DEL PAÍS!
¡PRESENTACIÓN CON VIDA DE LOS DETENIDOS DESAPARECIDOS!

CASA DE ESTUDIANTE RICARDO FLORES MAGÓN
FRENTE NACIONAL DE LUCHA POR EL SOCIALISMO FNLS
MOVIMIENTO DE IZQUIERDA REVOLUCIONARIA MIR
CASA DE ESTUDIANTE LUCIO CABAÑAS
CASA DE ESTUDIANTE NICOLAITA
CASA DE ESTUDIANTE ROSA LUXEMBURGO
CASA DE ESTUDIANTE AMÉRICA LIBRE
CASA DE ESTUDIANTE RESIDENTES UNIVERSITARIOS
CASA DE ESTUDIANTE 2 DE OCTUBRE
NORMAL RURAL “VASCO DE QUIROGA” DE TIRIPETIO
ESCUELA NORMAL SUPERIOR DE MICHOACÁN
ESCUELA NORMAL INDÍGENA DE MICHOACÁN

Las lenguas y la globalización/Miquel Siguan

Una serie de factores relacionados con el progreso técnico hacen que en la actualidad el tránsito de la información a cualquier lugar del mundo pueda ser casi instantáneo y que sea fácil y rápido el transporte tanto de mercaderías como de personas entre cualquier punto del globo. Así se produce una globalización de la economía al mismo tiempo que los contactos culturales son cada vez más abundantes y profundos y los desplazamientos de población cada vez más frecuentes todo lo cual puede englobarse con la denominación de globalización. Este proceso iniciado hace tiempo pero progresivamente acelerado en nuestros días tiene consecuencias de muchos tipos pero aquí me ocuparé concretamente de su repercusión sobre las lenguas.

Lenguas de comunicación internacional.

Una consecuencia muy clara del proceso de globalización  es que pone en contacto a muchas personas que hablan lenguas distintas. Para que la comunicación sea posible es necesario que una de las personas interlocutoras además de su primera lengua sea capaz de hablar la lengua de la otra o bien que ambas conozcan una segunda lengua que sirva así de medio de comunicación. Y si son muchas las personas que se encuentran en parecida situación hará falta un acuerdo implícito para decidir cuáles son las lenguas que se utilizarán como medio de comunicación.

En la Edad Media los europeos, y para ser mas exactos los europeos cultos que vivían en el ámbito de influencia de la Iglesia de Roma, de Irlanda hasta Polonia y del Mediterráneo al Ártico, tenían una lengua común que era el latín. En la época de la ilustración el francés se convirtió en la primera lengua de comunicación internacional.

En el siglo XIX se le unieron el alemán y el inglés. A mediados del siglo XX, y coincidiendo con el final de la gran guerra, el inglés se convirtió decididamente en la primera lengua de comunicación internacional. Consiguientemente, una proporción importante de la población mundial lo adquirió como segunda lengua. Dicha proporción sigue aumentando.

Lo acontecido no ha ocurrido por casualidad. Estados Unidos y el conjunto de países de lengua inglesa constituyen la mayor concentración de poder económico en el mundo. En esos países, y muy especialmente en Estados Unidos, se producen la mayoría de innovaciones científicas y técnicas que hacen posible la globalización. Todo ello tiene consecuencias lingüísticas, ya que todas esas novedades científicas y técnicas, sus aplicaciones y sus efectos tienen que ser nombrados y ello implica la aparición continua de nuevas palabras y de nuevas alianzas de palabras. Ello a su vez está facilitado por el hecho de que el inglés es una lengua muy flexible, que admite con facilidad las innovaciones a lo que puede añadirse que no tiene una Academia que la encorsete de modo que es sólo el uso el que sanciona el uso de las nuevas palabras.

Y como la característica principal de la globalización es que las nuevas iniciativas se extiendan por todo el mundo las palabras que las significan en inglés tienden a ser adoptadas por todas las demás lenguas que se llenan así de anglicismos. Es cierto que en algunas lenguas, especialmente en el caso del francés, se llevan a cabo esfuerzos por contener esta avalancha buscando sustitutos en las posibilidades del propio vocabulario
aunque los resultados son más bien moderados mientras en otras lenguas siquiera se intenta.

El hecho de que el inglés se haya convertido en la primera lengua de comunicación internacional tiene consecuencias para el propio inglés. De las comunicaciones verbales que en cada momento se establecen en inglés buena parte de las mismas se producen entre personas para las que el inglés no es su primera lengua y por tanto que en muchos casos utilizan un inglés simple o deficiente. Es cierto que el uso del inglés por parte de quienes empezaron a hablar en otra lengua puede tener a veces consecuencias positivas y así es sabido que hay una generación de escritores nacidos en la India o en el Caribe para los que el inglés no es su lengua nativa y que están contribuyendo poderosamente a la renovación de la literatura inglesa. Pero en conjunto los hablantes del inglés como segunda lengua utilizan un inglés más pobre y menos correcto que los que lo hablan
desde la primera infancia.

En otros tiempos cuando una lengua hegemónica se extendía mucho en el espacio y entraba en contacto con otras, la lengua principal empezaba a mostrar diferencias dialectales según los lugares y así fue como el latín dio origen a las lenguas neolatinas.

No parece que vaya a ocurrir esto con el inglés. Gracias al progreso técnico las conversaciones en inglés pueden mantenerse entre interlocutores que tienen otras lenguas como primeras lenguas pero que están situados en lugares muy alejados del globo por lo que la diferenciación en el interior de la lengua inglesa ya no se está produciendo por razones geográficas sino por especializaciones temáticas (el inglés de los hombres de negocios y de los financieros, el inglés de los científicos y de los técnicos, el de los informáticos, el del espectáculo y los entretenimientos, el de los deportistas…).

Presión sobre las lenguas menores. Amenazas de desaparición y condiciones de 
supervivencia

A lo largo de los siglos las distintas lenguas habladas por los seres humanos han evolucionado. Unas han desaparecido al mismo tiempo que surgían otras. La introducción de la escritura dio mayor estabilidad a las lenguas que la adoptaron pero no eliminó su temporalidad. En la actualidad la globalización está provocando la desaparición de lenguas menores en un proceso que se acelera con el paso del tiempo y que desde hace un tiempo ha sido denunciado como una pérdida similar a la que representa la desaparición de especies vivas, animales o vegetales. Aunque se trata de lenguas con muy pocos hablantes e intelectualmente muy alejados de nosotros, la realidad es que todas las lenguas del mundo, mayores y menores, tienen una complejidad similar y que cada una de ellas es reflejo de una cultura especifica.

Pero, ¿es posible salvar una lengua en peligro de extinción? En principio es perfectamente posible. Incluso es posible resucitar una lengua.

El córnico es una lengua celta, como el galés o el irlandés, que se hablaba en la región de Cornualles  (Reino Unido) y cuyo último hablante parece que murió en 1777 y solo algunos eruditos guardaban su recuerdo. A mediados del siglo XX algunos nostálgicos de la lengua decidieron iniciar su aprendizaje. Su ejemplo tuvo imitadores y al cabo de un tiempo había un grupo de personas capaces de hablar la lengua entre sí. El paso siguiente se dio con una pareja que había aprendido el córnico y que decidió no solo hablarlo habitualmente entre ellos sino también con los hijos que tuvieran. El ejemplo ha tenido imitadores y hoy existe un cierto número de personas, algo más de 200, que han tenido el córnico como primera lengua aunque hablen también el inglés que sigue siendo la única lengua de la mayoría de la población de Cornualles.


Más espectacular es el caso del hebreo. En tiempos de Jesucristo había dejado de ser la lengua usada por la población judía y había quedado reservada para los usos litúrgicos. A medidos del siglo XIX fue literalmente resucitado y se ha convertido en la lengua oficial del estado de Israel y cuenta hoy con millones de hablantes. Pero se trata de casos excepcionales y que poco tienen que ver con la mayoría de las lenguas que hoy se
encuentran amenazadas.

Se calcula que en el mundo existen alrededor de seis mil lenguas de las cuales más de la mitad tiene menos de 10.000 hablantes y de las cuales la mayoría se encuentra en la cuenca del Amazonas, en las estepas rusas, en Nueva Guinea y en ciertas regiones africanas. Se trata, en la mayoría de los casos, de lenguas habladas por poblaciones que han vivido en pleno aislamiento, es el caso por ejemplo de tribus indígenas que han vivido en la selva amazónica, aislamiento roto ahora por la creciente deforestación que convierte los árboles en pasta de papel e introduce en las tierras deforestadas el cultivo del café. En este nuevo contexto los hablantes de la lengua indígena se ven obligados a aprender, aunque sólo sean los rudimentos de las lenguas de sus nuevos vecinos, pues no hay ninguna esperanza de que los recién llegados se interesen por la lengua indígena y en general son los mas jóvenes los que en primer lugar reconocen esta necesidad si quieren subsistir. La sensación de la inutilidad de la antigua lengua para abrirse camino en la nueva situación lleva con facilidad a su devaluación y, más o menos pronto a su abandono.

¿Cómo podría salvarse esta lengua? La primera condición es evidentemente que los propios hablantes lo deseen, que deseen conservar la identidad de su grupo humano y la lengua como signo de identidad. Pero en nuestro mundo actual y desde la aparición de la escritura la perduración de una lengua exige un mínimo de uso escrito, la introducción de la escritura obliga previamente a codificar la lengua, a establecer, aunque sea mínimamente, su gramática y su vocabulario. Es esta codificación lo que a su vez hará posible la enseñanza de la lengua y la producción de documentos escritos que den testimonio de su utilidad. Por supuesto es muy difícil, por no decir imposible, que los hablantes de la lengua amenazada hagan este esfuerzo por si mismos y necesitan no solo la tolerancia sino la ayuda activa desde instancias sociales y políticas de nivel superior, una ayuda que no es nada seguro que se produzca. En lenguas habladas sólo por unos centenares de personas el esfuerzo puede parecer desproporcionado y el éxito no está de ningún modo asegurado. En el caso de lenguas con mayor número de hablantes no es nada seguro que las instancias políticas que podrían comprometerse con su protección consideren justificado un esfuerzo cuyos rendimientos políticos o económicos serían mínimos. Es cierto que existen ejemplos en sentido contrario. Las distintas lenguas esquimales estuvieron durante mucho tiempo abandonadas pero hoy, en cambio, están oficialmente protegidas tanto en Canadá como en Noruega y Finlandia. Pero precisamente la singularidad de estos casos, se trata de unas pocas lenguas que están apoyadas por países poderosos que han cambiado de opinión respecto a ellas y han puesto a su disposición medios considerables, demuestra la dificultad de que esto ocurra con los millares de lenguas que hoy están en peligro.

La informática y las lenguas


UNIVAC, el primer ordenador electrónico, se construyó en 1951 para analizar los datos del censo de población de los EEUU y evolucionó muy rápidamente aumentando su potencia, haciéndose capaz de efectuar otras operaciones administrativas y también de procesar textos con lo que cerró el paso a la difusión de las máquinas de escribir eléctricas e introduciéndose así en gran número de hogares. En 1969 se estableció la primera conexión entre ordenadores a partir de la cual se desarrolló Internet, la red de redes, un sistema que permite almacenar, consultar e intercambiar información prácticamente sin límites y que así se ha convertido en uno de los elementos principales de lo que he llamado el proceso de globalización.


Por supuesto que el ordenador, y los sistemas que se apoyan en él, y en primer lugar Internet, tienen consecuencias lingüísticas de las que voy a comentar algunas. El ordenador tiene unos programas básicos que regulan su actividad y que están constituidos por signos, lo que se llama el "lenguaje de la máquina", de los que algunos son palabras y por supuesto palabras inglesas. Con los programas dirigidos a controlar las distintas actividades de la máquina al servicio de las necesidades del cliente ocurre lo mismo. Pero además, el ordenador necesita dialogar con el usuario, darle instrucciones o proponerle que elija entre varias posibilidades, lo que se llama el dialogo "máquina-usuario". En una primera época los ordenadores sólo utilizaban el inglés pero a medida que aumentaba su demanda en países de lengua no inglesa hubo
que producir programas en otras lenguas. Así, por poner un ejemplo, el programa básico de Windows esta disponible en unas cuarenta lenguas, mientras algunos programas específicos del mismo productor sólo lo están en algunas y alguno muy especifico o de muy reciente creación sólo está en inglés. En el caso del software libre, como el Linux, la producción en las distintas lenguas no depende de razones comerciales sino de la existencia de personas voluntarias dispuestas a ampliar las posibilidades del sistema. Pero el resultado es el mismo, una amplia diferenciación de la oferta según las lenguas. Para poner algún ejemplo concreto se pueden tener en cuenta los programas de corrección ortográfica que recorren un texto para detectar errores y ofrecer soluciones alternativas. Windows ofrece actualmente programas de corrección automática en unas
sesenta lenguas.


Pero hay otro aspecto de la relación entre informática y lenguas que tiene especial relevancia. El inglés, la primera lengua usada en este campo, utiliza el alfabeto llamado latino que es común a la mayoría de las lenguas europeas; el griego, en cambio, utiliza el alfabeto griego; el ruso y otras lenguas eslavas el cirílico. Parecería, por tanto, evidente que la mayoría de los hablantes de Europa desde el principio habrían podido
utilizar máquinas con el mismo alfabeto y con los mismos programas en el orden lingüístico pero no es así, las diferentes lenguas que utilizan el alfabeto latino no utilizan exactamente los mismos signos. El español tiene signos propios como son la "ñ", el signo de interrogación y de admiración al comienzo o los acentos agudos. Otras lenguas tienen signos peculiares, la "ç", los acentos graves y circunflejos, la diéresis y otros todavía que no figuran en el teclado que manejo para redactar estas notas.


La primera codificación que se utilizó comprendía 128 signos (letras, números y otros signos gráficos) pero estaba pensada exclusivamente para el inglés. Posteriormente se duplicó a 256 y entonces ya figuraban la mayoría de signos utilizados por el español. En los años 90, y ante la creciente incorporación de lenguas orientales con sistemas de representación distintos, la Organización Internacional para la Estandarización (ISO) elaboró un nuevo código: Unicode, en el que se mantienen los primeros 128 signos de la primera codificación y los 128 siguientes se multiplican por 16 tablas distintas lo que permite representar prácticamente todas las lenguas con presencia en Internet. Otra cosa es que los sistemas de distribución de información de Internet o del correo electrónico o la máquina que manejamos estén preparados para utilizarlos.

En relación con la evolución que acabo de resumir vale la pena citar un hecho significativo. Los primeros desarrollos de la informática a nivel internacional hicieron caer en la cuenta que nuestros sistemas alfabéticos de escritura, nuestras ortografías, poseen bastantes elementos de irracionalidad y pareció que este desarrollo iba a dar nueva fuerza a las propuestas de racionalización de la ortografía de las lenguas europeas. Y no digamos del absurdo que representa que pueblos como el japonés y el chino, que están en primera línea del desarrollo mundial, se empeñen en mantener complicadísimos sistemas de escritura ideográficos en vez de adoptar un sistema alfabético. Y efectivamente en todos estos casos se iniciaron esfuerzos racionalizadores pero pronto surgieron en todas partes reacciones nacionalistas que consideran que las singularidades del sistema de escritura forman parte de la identidad nacional.


Repercusiones sobre la escritura y sobre la cultura


La aparición de la escritura representó un cambio importante en la existencia de las lenguas, la lengua oral sólo llega donde llega la potencia de la voz del orador y sólo se mantiene mientras éste la emite. El texto escrito, en cambio, puede llegar hasta los confines de la tierra y mantenerse indefinidamente mientras resista su soporte. Pero, además, para que el texto escrito en una lengua sea comprendido por todos sus posibles lectores es necesario haber codificado previamente la gramática de la lengua utilizada y haber establecido el inventario de todas las palabras que forman parte de ella. A lo que puede todavía añadirse que la escritura normalmente requiere una cierta premeditación previa mientras la oralidad es mucho más espontánea. A partir de aquí la lengua escrita se convierte en la forma correcta de la lengua a diferencia de la expresión oral que es
mucho más tolerante con las diferencias individuales o grupales. Desde la introducción de la escritura los productos literarios y científicos se han creado en forma escrita y, a partir de la imprenta recogidos en libros, se han convertido en los instrumentos por excelencia de la continuidad y del progreso de nuestra cultura occidental.

Las técnicas modernas que han conducido a la globalización están alterando profundamente este panorama. Desde la invención del teléfono y del disco la voz humana puede trasladarse a cualquier distancia y mantenerse indefinidamente en el tiempo y con ello el prestigio de la letra escrita disminuye. Muchos de nuestros contemporáneos reciben mas información oral, a través de la radio y de la TV, que escrita, a través de periódicos y libros. Como consecuencia de ello el prestigio de la lengua escrita disminuye y con ello la impresión de que la expresión escrita tiene un rango superior que debe tomarse como modelo.

Un ejemplo, significativo entre otros muchos, puede ser el de las palabras y expresiones vulgares u obscenas que antes eran toleradas en mayor o menor medida en el lenguaje oral pero proscritas en el lenguaje escrito, y más en general en el lenguaje culto, hasta el punto de que no figuraban en los catálogos de la lengua que son los diccionarios, empezando por el propio Diccionario de la Academia, y que hoy han pasado de la oralidad a la escritura, a los periódicos y a los libros.

A lo que acabo de decir se puede objetar que, a pesar de esta ampliación de los ámbitos del lenguaje oral, la informática ha abierto nuevas posibilidades a la escritura, lo cual es rigurosamente cierto. El ordenador en primer lugar y luego la introducción y la generalización de la red Internet, han permitido multiplicar tanto la posibilidad de producir y de intercambiar información en forma escrita como la posibilidad de tener acceso a múltiples fuentes de información, también en lengua escrita. Pero es cierto que el intercambio de información a través de los medios informáticos utiliza un lenguaje menos cuidado que cuando se hacía usando como soporte el papel escrito y basta un ejemplo para mostrarlo: la comparación entre los mensajes electrónicos y las cartas.

Para muchas personas, y a lo largo de generaciones, escribir cartas ha sido una actividad casi cotidiana y a la que se prestaba considerable atención. El estilo epistolar tenía sus propias normas y exigía un cierto planeamiento y un considerable cuidado en su redacción. A su vez el receptor las leía y releía con cuidado y a menudo las guardaba. Y en la vida de una pareja la correspondencia amorosa constituía un elemento importante de la relación y la rotura implicaba la devolución de las cartas recibidas. Los mensajes electrónicos son mucho más espontáneos, menos cuidados en su redacción, más cercanos por tanto al lenguaje oral y, por supuesto, más breves. A menudo reciben una respuesta casi inmediata lo que los acerca más al intercambio telefónico que a la carta.

Para muchas personas el mensaje electrónico es mas laxo en su corrección ortográfica que la carta, lo que puede relacionarse con esta espontaneidad e informalidad del mensaje y también con la despreocupación surgida de la existencia de correctores ortográficos a los que confiar esta tarea. La laxitud ortográfica alcanza su máximo en el caso de los mensajes escritos y enviados por teléfonos móviles. No sólo se simplifica la ortografía sino que se introducen abreviaciones y símbolos que acaban por constituir un código propio, aunque es un código flexible que cada usuario modifica a su manera. En realidad todas estas formas de abreviación del número de signos del mensaje tienen una razón económica evidente, pero ello no deja de implicar una actitud mas libre de las nuevas generaciones ante las normas no solo ortográficas sino sintácticas.

Pero la introducción y el rapidísimo desarrollo de Internet ha tenido otra consecuencia sobre el lenguaje escrito mucho mas importante que la espontaneidad o el descuido al que acabo de referirme, y es el desplazamiento del libro como fuente de información.

En la actualidad existe una fuerte controversia en torno a la posibilidad de reproducir en Internet textos publicados por medios tradicionales así como predicciones divergentes sobre si en el futuro la edición en Internet sustituirá o no a la edición en papel, pero a lo que ahora quiero referirme es a algo que en mi opinión es mucho mas significativo.

Desde la invención de la imprenta nuestra cultura se ha basado en la existencia de unos libros depositarios del conocimiento alcanzado en los que se basaba la enseñanza y en los que los individuos podían tanto ampliar su cultura general como profundizar en los temas de su especialidad o de sus aficiones. Internet, a través de cualquier buscador o por medios más sofisticados, hace innecesario acudir a los libros. Que ello tiene ventajas de cara a la especialización es evidente, pero es igualmente evidente que con ello se hace inútil la base común de cultura general en que se ha basado nuestra tradición cultural.

Las lenguas en el contexto español: catalán/valenciano, gallego y euskera

Aunque la lengua mas favorecida por el proceso de globalización sea, como hemos visto, el inglés, convertido en la lengua de comunicación por excelencia, el español también resulta en alguna medida beneficiado por el proceso pues en muchos países ve aumentar el número de los que lo aprenden como segunda lengua. En cuanto a las lenguas específicas de determinadas comunidades autónomas (catalán/valenciano, gallego y euskera) la situación puede, a mi juicio, resumirse así.

Frente a las numerosas lenguas cuyo futuro parece amenazado por el proceso de globalización, la supervivencia de éstas está claramente asegurada. Se trata en cada caso de un número de hablantes relativamente grande, que en una elevada proporción se solidarizan con el fututo de sus lenguas y la trasmiten a sus hijos y que disponen de estructuras políticas que les permiten asegurar su enseñanza y su uso público. Más todavía, lo que en nuestros días constituye un índice importante de la vitalidad de una lengua, todas ellas disponen de programas y de aplicaciones informáticas de muy diversos tipos y todas ellas tienen una presencia apreciable en Internet. Pero una vez afirmada su supervivencia hay que notar también que el proceso de globalización las somete a una doble presión, por un lado, la necesidad de conocer no sólo el español sino también el inglés como lengua de comunicación internacional y, por otra parte, la llegada a los distintos territorios de una inmigración abundante y que habla otras lenguas. Ambos hechos plantearán retos importantes a los respectivos sistemas educativos.

http://www.euskara.euskadi.net/ 

Umair Haque

Being human is never easy. But that's the point. Perhaps as an unintended consequence of our relentless quest for more, bigger, faster, cheaper, now, we've comfortably acceded to something akin to a minor-league contempt for the richness and grandeur of life unquenchably meaningfully well lived. Hence, call this post my tiny statement of rebellion. Hex me with all the bland management jargon in the world, zap me with all the perfect theories and models you like, but I'll never, ever accept the idea that triviality, mediocrity, and futility are appropriate goals for any human being, much less our grand, splintering systems of human organization. 

Walking/Henry David Thoreau

Part 1 of 3

"The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not write at all." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I WISH TO SPEAK a word for nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and Culture merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make a emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization; the minister, and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that.[2]    I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre" — to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a sainte-terrer", a saunterer — a holy-lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit (1) in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the Infidels.
[3]    It is true, we are but faint hearted crusaders, even the walkers, now-a-days, who undertake no persevering never ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearth side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts (2) only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends,(3) and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk.
[4]    To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order — not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders,(4) but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the rider seems now to reside in — or perchance to have subsided into the Walker — not the Knight but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate — outside to Church and State and People.
[5]    We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practised this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least, if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence, which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember, and have described to me some walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half an hour in the woods, but I know very well that they have confined themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may make to belong to this select class. No doubt, they were elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when even they were foresters and outlaws.

                  "When he came to grene wode,
                   In a mery mornynge,
                   There he herde the notes small,
                   Of byrdes mery syngynge.
                  "It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,
                   That I was last here,
                   Me lyste a lytell for to shote,
                   At the donne dere."(5)

[6]    I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least — and it is commonly more than that — sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absoutely free from all wordly engagements. You may safely say a penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shop-keepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them — as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon — I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
[7]    I who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o’clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the day-light — have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for, I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance — to say nothing of the moral insensibility of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of — sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning. Buonaparte (6) may talk of the three o’clock in the morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over against one’s self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about these times, or say between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an airing — and so the evil cure itself.
[8]    How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments — making haste past those houses with purely Doric (7) or Gothic (8) fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to bed! Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the slumberers.
[9]    No doubt temperament, and above all age, have a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older his ability to sit still and follow in-door occupations increases. He grows vespertinal (9) in his habits, as the evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
[10]    But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours — as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man’s swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far off pastures unsought by him.
[11]    Moreover, you must walk like a camel which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveller asked Wordsworth’s (10) servant to show him her master’s study, she answered "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."
[12]    Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character — will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the house on the other hand may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough — that the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.
[13]    When we walk we naturally go to the fields and woods; what would become of us if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves since they did not go to the woods, "They planted groves and walks of Platans" where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticoes open to the air. Of course, it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations, and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my body is; I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good works — for this may sometimes happen.
[14]    My vicinity affords many good walks, and though I have walked almost every day for so many years, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absoutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’ walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farm-house which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the king of Dahomey.(11) There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the three-score-years and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.
[15]    Now a days, almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses, and the cutting down of the forest, and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
[16]    A people who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of paradise. I looked again and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy Stygian (12) fen surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.
[17]    I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road except where the fox and the mink do. First along by the river, and then the brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see civilization and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and his affairs, church and state — and school, trade and commerce, and manufactuures and agriculture, — even politics, the most alarming of them all — I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveller thither. If you would go to the political world, follow the great road, — follow that market man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it — for it too has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth’s surface where a man does not stand from one year’s end to another and there consequently politics are not, for they are but as the cigar smoke of a man.
[18]    The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs; a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travellers. The word is from the Latin villa, which together with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro (13) derives from veho to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things are carried. They who got their living by teaming were saidvellaturam facere. Hence too apparently the Latin word vilis and our vile; also villain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are way-worn by the travel that goes by and over them, without travelling themselves.
[19]    Some do not walk at all, others walk in the high-ways; a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern, or grocery, or livery stable, or depot to which they lead. I am a good horse to travel but not from choice a roadster. The landscape painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure. I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu,(14)Moses, Homer,(15) Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius,(16) nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen.
[20]    However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as if they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There is the Old Marlboro Road, which does not go to Marlboro now methinks, unless that is Marlboro where it carries me. I am the bolder to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or two such roads in every town.

The Old Marlboro Road
Where they once dug for money
But never found any;
Where sometimes Martial Miles
Singly files,
And Elijah Wood,
I fear for no good.
No other man
Save Elisha Dugan —
O man of wild habits,
Partridges and rabbits,
Who hast no cares
Only to set snares,
Who liv’st all alone,
Close to the bone;
And where life is sweetest
Constantly eatest.
When the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct to travel,
I can get enough gravel
On the Old Marlboro Road.
Nobody repairs it,
For nobody wears it;
It is a living way,
As the christians say,
Not many there be
Who enter therein,
Only the guests of the
Irishman Quin.
What is it, what is it
But a direction out there,
And the bare possibility
Of going somewhere?
Great guide boards of stone
But travellers none.
Cenotaphs (17) of the towns
Named on their crowns.
It is worth going to see
What you might be.
What king
Did the thing,
I am still wondering —
Set up how or when,
By what select men,
Gourgas or Lee,
Clark or Darby?
They’re a great endeavor
To be something forever.
Blank tablets of stone,
Where a traveller might groan,
And in one sentence
Grave all that is known.
Which another might read,
In his extreme need,
I know one or two
Lines that would do,
Literature that might stand
All over the land,
Which a man could remember
Till next December,
And read again in the spring,
After the thawing.
You leave your abode,
You may go round the world
By the old Marlboro Road.

[21]    At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, — when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road; and walking over the surface of God’s earth, shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities then before the evil days come.

---

Notes

1. Peter the Hermit, (1050?-1115) French preacher, associated with the earliest Crusades, his actual role in them is unknown - back
2. Occasional medieval practice: if a warrior fell on foreign soil, and he was royalty and merited such treatment, his heart might be removed, preserved, and sent home for burial - back
3. "everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life" - Matthew 19:29 - back
4. orders of knights on horseback - back
5. Gest of Robyn Hode, anonymous English poem, first printed ca. 1500 - back
6. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) French general & emperor - back
7. Classical style of columns used by the Greeks & Romans - back
8. 12th century French architecture, popular in Europe through 16th century - back
9. pertains to or occurs in the evening, animals who appear in the evening - back
10. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) English poet - back
11. native kingdom, later called Benin, in French West Africa, Nigeria - back
12. pertains to the mythological River Styx, which borders Hades - back
13. Marcus Terrentius Varro (116-27? B.C.) Roman author - back
14. variation of Manu; Hindu progenitor of and lawgiver to the human race - back
15. Homer, 8th cent. B.C. Greek epic poet, author of Iliad and Odyssey - back
16. America is named for Italian explorer Americus Vespucius (1451-1512) - back
17. memorial monuments not located where the deceased is buried - back

Part 2 of 3

[1]    What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
[2]    When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle south-west, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle — varies a few degrees, and does not always point due south-west, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-south-west. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The outline which would bound my walks, would  be, not a circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits, which have been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide for the thousandth time, that I will walk into the south-west or west. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes, or sufficient Wildness and Freedon behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly towards the setting sun, and that there are no towns nor cities in it of enough consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I should not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something like this is the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed the phenomenon of a south-eastward migration, in the settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging from the moral and physical character of the first generation of Australians,(1) has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern Tartars(2) think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet.(3) "The World ends there", say they, "beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea." It is unmitigated East where they live.
[3]    We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race, — we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the old world and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx;(4) and that is in the Lethe (5) of the Pacific, which is three times as wide.
[4]    I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk, with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds, — which, in some instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their dead, — that something like thefuror which affects the domestic cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a worm in their tails, — affects both nations and individuals, either perennially or from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and if I were a broker I should probably take that disturbance into account. —

                 "Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
                  And palmeres for to seken strange strondes."(6)

[5]    Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis,(7) and the islands and gardens of the Hesperides,(8) a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those fables?
[6]    Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon.(9) The herd of men in those days scented fresh pastures from afar. —

                 "And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
                  And now was dropt into the western bay;
                  At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue;
                  To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."(10)

[7]    Where on the Globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that occupied by the bulk of our states, so fertile and so rich and varied in its productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as this is? Michaux (11) who knew but part of them, says that "the species of large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe: in the United States there are more than 140 species that exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain this size." Later botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt (12) came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described. The geographer Guyot,(13) himself a European, goes farther — farther than I am ready to follow him, yet not when he says, "As the plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable world is made for the animal world, America is made for the man of the Old World."
[8]    "The man of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, he descends from station to station, towards Europe. Each of his steps is marked by a new civilization superior to the preceding, by a greater power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown Ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns upon his foot prints for an instant." When he has exhausted the rich soil of Europe and reinvigorated himself — "Then recommences his adventurous career westward as in the earliest ages." — So far Guyot.
[9]    From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger Michaux, in his "Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802," says that the common inquiry in the newly settled West was — "'From what part of the world have you come?' As if these vast and fertile regions would naturally be the place of meeting and common country of all the inhabitants of the globe."
[10]    To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say Ex oriente lux; ex occidente FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit.
[11]    Sir Francis Head, an English traveller, and a Governor-General of Canada, tells us that "in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the new world, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she used in delineating and in beautifying the old world." "The heavens of America appear infinitely higher — the sky is bluer — the air is fresher — the cold is intenser — the moon looks larger — the stars are brighter — the thunder is louder — the lightning is vivider — the wind is stronger — the rain is heavier — the mountains are higher — the rivers larger — the forests bigger — the plains broader." This statement will do at least to set against Buffon's (14) account of this part of  the world and its productions.

[12]    Linnæus (15) said long ago Nescio quæ facies læta, glabra plantis Americanis. I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect of Amercian plants; and I think that in this country there are no, or at most, very few, Africanæ bestiæ, African beasts, as the Romans called them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the center of the East Indian city of Singapore some of the inhabitants are annually carried off by tigers; — but the traveller can lie down in the woods at night almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild beasts.
[13]    These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length perchance the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man — as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative; that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher and more ethereal, as our sky — our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains — our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests, — and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the traveller something, he knows not what, of læta and glabra — of joyous and serene, in our very faces. Else, to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?
[14]     To Americans I hardly need to say —

                 "Westward the star of empire takes its way."

As a true patriot I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.
[15]    Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England, though we may be estranged from the south, we sympathize with the west. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of to-day.

[16]    Some months ago I went to see a panorama (16) of the Rhine. It was like a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz,(17) which I knew only in history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to come up from its waters and its vine — clad hills and valleys a hushed music as of crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under the spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to a heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry.
[17]    Soon after I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the stream in the light of to-day, — and saw the steam-boats wooding up — counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo — beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and heard the legends of Dubuque (18) and of Wenona's Cliff — still thinking more of the future than of the past or present — I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the stream; and I felt thatthis was the Heroic Age itself though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

[18]    The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus (19) being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence, have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It is because the children of the empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.
[19]    I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or Arbor vitæ in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots (20) eagerly devour the marrow of the Koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers as long as they are soft. And herein perchance they have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughter-house pork to make a man of. Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure, — as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.
    There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate — wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which, methinks, I am already acclimated.

[21]    The African hunter Gordon-Cumming (21) tells us that the skin of the Eland, as well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to be satirical when the trapper's coat emits the odor of musquash (22) even; it is a sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go into their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy plains and flowery meads which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants' exchanges and libraries rather.
[22]    A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man — a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin (23) the naturalist says "A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached by the gardener's art compared with a fine, dark green one growing vigorously in the open fields."

[23]    Ben Jonson exclaims,(24) —

                 "How near to good is what is fair!"

So I would say —

                 How near to good is what is wild!

Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.

[24]    Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analysed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog — a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda (Cassandra calyculata) which cover these tender places on the earth's surface. Botany cannot go further than tell me the names of the shrubs which grow there — the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, — lamb-kill, azalea — and rhodora — all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often think that I would like to have my house front on this mass of dull red bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce and trim box, even gravelled walks — to have this fertile spot under my windows, not a few imported barrow-fuls of soil only, to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house — my parlor — behind this plot instead of behind that meagre assemblage of curiosities — that poor apology for a Nature and art, which I call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments,  acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the swamp then, (though it may not be the best place for a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front-yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
[25]    Yes; though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp. How vain then have been all your labors, citizens, for me!
[26]    My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the Ocean, the desert, or the wilderness. In the desert a pure air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveller Burton (25) says of it "Your morale improves: you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded. . . . In the desert spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence." They who have been travelling long on the steppes of Tartary, say "On reëntering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity and turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia." When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place — a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength — the marrow of Nature. The wild wood covers the virgin mould, — and the same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A township where one primitive forest waves above, while another primitive forest rots below-such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer (26) and Confucius (27) and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the reformer eating locusts and wild honey.(28)
[27]    To preserve wild animals, implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So is it with man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those primitive and rugged trees, there was methinks a tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibres of men's thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness — and we no longer produce tar and turpentine.
[28]    The civilized nations-Greece, Rome, England, are sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on to his marrow bones.
[29]    It is said to be the task of the American, "to work the virgin soil," and that "Agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere else." I think that The farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects more natural. I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight line one hundred and thirty-two rods (29) long through a swamp, at whose entrance might have been written the words which Dante (30) read over the entrance to the Infernal regions — Leave all hope ye that enter-that is of ever getting out again; where at one time I saw my employer actually up to his neck and swimming for his life in his property, though it was still winter. He had another similar swamp which I could not survey at all because it was completely under water, and nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp which I did survey from a distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class.
[30]    The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bush-whack — the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian's corn-field into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with plow and spade.
[31]    In Literature, it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the Schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild-the mallard-thought, which, 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the west, or in the jungles of the east. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself-and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race which pales before the light of common day.
[32]    English literature from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets-Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakspeare included, breathes no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a green-wood — her wild man a Robinhood. There is plenty of genial love of nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct.
[33]    The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.
[34]    Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them — transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; — whose words were so true, and fresh, and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library, — aye, to bloom and bear fruit there after their kind annually for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.
[35]    I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side the best poetry is tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account which contents me, of that Nature with which even I am acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan age — which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a nature at least has Grecian mythology its root in than English Literature! Mythology is the crop which the old world bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; — and which it still bears wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses, but this is like the great Dragon tree of the Western isles, as old as mankind, and whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.
[36]    The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the east. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco — the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when in the course of ages, American Liberty has become a fiction of the past, — as it is to some extent a fiction of the present, — the poets of the world will be inspired by American Mythology.
[37]    The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent, — others merely sensible, as the phrase is — others prophetic. Some forms of disease even may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence "indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence." The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.
[38]    In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice — take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance, — which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.
[39]    I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights — any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor; as when my neighbor's cow breaks out of her pasture early in the Spring and boldly swims the river, a cold grey tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide,(31) swollen by the melted snow. It is the Buffalo crossing the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on the herd in my eyes — already dignified. The seeds of instinct are preserved under the thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the bowels of the earth, an indefinite period.
[40]    Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a dozen bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldly sport, like huge rats, even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! a sudden loud whoa! would have damped their ardor at once, reduced them from venison to beef, and stiffened their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who but the Evil One has cried "Whoa!" to mankind? Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness, they move a side at a time, and Man by his machinery is meeting the horse and ox half way. Whatever part the whip has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a side of any of the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a side of beef?
[41]    I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization, and because the majority, like dogs and sheep are tame by inherited dispositon, is no reason why the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says "The skins of the tiger and the leopard when they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned." But it is not the part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious, and tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they can be put.

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Notes1. early Australians included English & Irish felons deported as punishment - back
2. descendents of those led by Ghengis Khan in the Middle Ages, now in parts of eastern Europe and western Asia, to the west of Tibet - back
3. a variation of Tibet - back
4. in Greek mythology, chief river of the lower world - back
5. river in Hades whose water caused amnesia in those who drank it - back
6. from Chaucer's "The Prologue to Canterbury Tales." - back
7. mythical island city in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Gibraltar - back
8. in classical mythology, nymphs who protected a garden with golden apples - back
9. Columbus sailed for Isabella, Queen of Castile and Leon - back
10. from Lycidas by English poet John Milton (1608-1674) - back
11. Andre Michaux (1747-1802) French botanist, explored eastern U.S. - back
12. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) German naturalist, explored and described South and Central America from 1799 to 1804 - back
13. Arnold Henry Guyot (1807-1884) Swiss geographer - back
14. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) French naturalist - back
15. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) created system for naming and classifying organisms - back
16. pictorial representation shown in progressive segments - back
17. attractions along the Rhine River - back
18. city on the Mississippi River in eastern Iowa - back
19. in Roman legend, sons of Mars, suckled by a wolf; Romulus founded Rome - back
20. people of southern Africa, in HDT's time the term implied savage & wild - back
21. Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming (1820-1866) English author, wrote about African hunting - back
22. muskrat - back
23. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), developed theory of evolution. Thoreau was very interested in Darwin's work - back
24. Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) English dramatist - back
25. Legendary Greek poet, 8th or 7th century BC, traditionally the author of the Iliad and theOdyssey. It's not known if Homer was single a historical individual. - back
26. Conficius (1551-1479 B.C.) Chinese philosopher - back
27. Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) English explorer, soldier, writer, ethnologist, linguist, and diplomat, known for his travels in Asia and Africa - back
28. St. John the Baptist, as described in Matthew 3:3-4 - back
29. a rod is 16.5 feet, 132 rods is 2178 feet or .41 miles - back
30. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet, author of The Divine Comedy - back 

Part 3 of 3

[1]    When looking over a list of men’s names in a foreign language, as of military officers or of authors who have written on a particular subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been named by the child’s rigmarole — Iery-wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect. The names of men are of course as cheap and meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names of dogs.

[2]    Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus, and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own — because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own. At present our only true names are nick-names. I knew a boy who from his peculiar energy was called "Buster" by his playmates, and this rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some travellers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

[3]    I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William, or Edwin, takes it off with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his kin at such a time, his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue.

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[4]    Here is this vast, savage, howling Mother of ours, Nature lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard, — and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society — to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man, — a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.

[5]    In society, in the best institutions of men it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give mea culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil, not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements and modes of culture only.

[6]    Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of, would grow faster both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance.

[7]    There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce,(1) a Frenchman, discovered "actinism," that power in the sun’s rays which produces a chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues of metal "are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine, and but for provisions of nature no less wonderful, would soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtile of the agencies of the universe." But he observed "that those bodies which underwent this change during the day-light possessed the power of restoring themselves to their original conditions during the hours of night, when this excitment was no longer influencing them." Hence it has been inferred that "The hours of darkness are as necessary to the inorganic creation, as we know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom." Not even does the moon shine every night, but gives place to darkness.

[8]    I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have very acre of earth cultivated; part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.

[9]    There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus (2) invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knowledge — Gramatica parda — tawny grammar — a kind of mother wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.

[10]    We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.(3) It is said that Knowledge is power; and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense; for what is most of our boasted so — called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers, — for what are the libraries of science but files of newspapers? — a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into the great Fields of thought, he as it were goes to grass like a horse, and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes — Go to grass. You have eaten hay long enough. The Spring has come with its green crop. The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.

[11]   A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful, while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless beside being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with, he who knows nothing about a subject, and what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, — or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?

[12]    My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before — a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun: [original text in Greek] "You will not perceive that as perceiving a particular thing," say the Chaldean Oracles.(4)

[13]    There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a sucessful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live free, Child of the Mist — and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws both of heaven and earth, by virtue of his relation to the Law-maker. "That is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana,(5)"which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation; all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge, is only the cleverness of an artist."

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[14]    It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories; how little exercised we have been in our minds; how few experiences we have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity, — though it be with struggle through long dark muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would be well if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this trivial comedy or farce. Christ, Dante, Bunyan,(6) and others, appear to have been exercised in their minds more than we; — they were subjected to a kind of culture such as our district schools and colleges do not contemplate. Even Mahomet,(7) though Christians may scream at his name, had a good deal more to live for, aye and to die for than they have commonly.

[15]    When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is walking on a railroad, then indeed the cars go by without his hearing them. But soon, by some inexorable law our life goes by and the cars return. —

                 "Gentle breeze that wanderest unseen,
                  And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms
                  Traveller of the windy glens,
                  Why hast thou left my ear so soon?"

[16]    While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to Society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Kosmos [original text in Greek] Beauty — or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.

[17]    For my part, I feel, that with regard to Nature, I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world, into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.(8) Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will o’ the wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor fire-fly has shown me the cause-way to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The Walker in the familiar fields which stretch around my native town, sometimes finds himself in another land than is described in their owners’ deeds, As it were in some far away field on the confines of the actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set up appear dimly still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the glass; and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace, and it will have no anniversary.

[18]    I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine-wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had seated there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me; to whom the Sun was servant; who had not gone into society in the village; who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding’s cranberry meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer’s cart path which leads directly through their hall does not in the least put them out, — as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor, — notwithstanding that I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning.(9) Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum, — as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.

[19]    But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my mind even now that I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this I think I should move out of Concord.

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[20]    We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste, — sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin China(10)grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts — those gra-a-ate men — you hear of.

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[21]    We hug the earth — how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree at least. I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine on the top of a hill, and though I got well pitched I was well payed for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before, — so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for three score years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered around me, — it was near the end of June, on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red cone-like blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the streets, — for it was court week — and to farmers and lumber dealers, and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down! Tell of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men’s heads and unobserved by them. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer for ages, as well over the heads of Nature’s red children, as of her white ones. Yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them.

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[22]    Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it not in Plato (11) nor the New Testament. It is a newer testament — the Gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early, and kept up early, and to be where he is, is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world — healthiness as of a spring burst forth — a new fountain of the Muses,(12) to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note?

[23]    The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden side-walk on a Sunday — or perchance a watcher in the house of mourning — I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself there is one of us well at any rate, and with a sudden gush return to my senses.

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[24]    We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a meadow the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold grey day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest brightest morning sun-light fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the hill-side, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.

[25]    The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance, as it has never set before, — where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have his wings guilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright — I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of elysium,(13) and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman, driving us home at evening.

[26]    So we saunter toward the Holy Land; till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, so warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn.

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Notes

1. Niepce, Joseph Nicéphore (1765–1833)  French chemist, created the first photograph in 1827 - back
2. In Greek mythology, Cadmus introduced the alphabet to Greece - back
3. Organizations founded in London in 1826, and Boston in 1829. Both organizations were formed to publish works that could be used for self-education. - back
4. The Chaldæan Oracles, believed to have come from Chaldea (Babylon), are attributed the Persian prophet Zoroaster, ca. 600 B.C., also known as Zarathustra, who may have been more than one man - back
5. Indian Sanskrit scripture - back
6. John Bunyan (1628-1688) English author of  The Pilgrim's Progress - back
7. Mohammed or Muhammed (570-632) Arab prophet who founded Islam - back
8. 17th century maurauders who hid in the bogs along the border of England and Scotland - back
9. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin", Matthew 6-28 - back
10. Shanghai is in China, and Cochin China is the southern part of Vietnam. In Thoreau's time, the French took over southern Vietnam and Saigon in 1858, and three southern Vietnamese provinces in 1862. - back
11. Plato (427?-347 B.C.) Greek philosopher - back
12. in Greek mythology, goddesses who preside over the arts and sciences - back
13. in Greek mythology, home of the good after death - back

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