The following blogspots center on a variety of subjects, which I have initiated. You are invited to look and respond.

http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Not-Violence main subject

http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ Temple of Janis (John) site

http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ Arguments for systems change

http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ Sacrificial crisis in Latvia

http://oedipusrexrewritten.blogspot.com/ Oedipus Rex Rewritten

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

The 4^th Awakening

27 Watching A Language Being Lost (2)

© Eso Anton Benjamins

How does one recover from such a blow, an irreversible population crash? How does a language recover when the population it depends on reaches the demographic “no return” point? No one talks about the murder.

Or maybe the killing is not done with yet and someone can dash to the rescue? The common place answer to such concerns is a “do not worry, be happy; there is nothing else we can do; Latvians have always made it before, they will again.”

This kind of response dismisses language as essential for subjective life—as if a community lives without it. If the response reflects an attitude and the attitude is that of a government, the government secures for itself a legalistic monopoly over the language, while it leaves the individuals who speak the language outside the realm of government. The citizens  falsely assume that government is also taking care of the language. No one seems to mind (…or is it that no one has thought of it?) that the speech of the inner voice of Latvians has been choked up at the throat by the government and its sleep walking ministers.

Politicizing the Latvian language dismisses the psychologically imbedded aspects of the endearing word (and other internalized traditions) as irrelevant to our age and with no role to play in the war over who controls Latvia or the world. The perspective of pietism in its broader sense, the sense that evolves with and from out of a language as carrier of human nature (religion evolved through language, the enterprise of one’s life, family, and community is dismissed as irrelevant to the official view.

The officialdom would have done well to stay out of the language business and stick to the business of good government. Good government has to do with enabling a study of languages according the need of the times; and the time now is for Latvians to speak two three languages: English and their own. Seizing on the Latvian language as its special ward, the Latvian government has substituted secular corruption for the spiritual evolution of the language. Having long collaborated in the despiritualization (of native inhabitants by way of neo-Christianizing them, the government is attempting to fetishize the Latvian language now. To some extent this is a done job. At the same time the government attempts to lie its way out of the obvious: the death of Latvian as a result of fear, i.e., protectionism stifling the creative powers of the language.

The legalistic pretense over the Latvian language even as it builds expensive glass houses, shows up the government not as facilitating the Latvian language, but as facilitating a neoliberal elite flunking economics 101 by permitting same to mistake debt accumulation for capital accumulation and choose short-term interest over long-term.

Of course, if the orientation of a culture is to be short-term, it does not matter, glass is fine, and all that glistens is gold. But who has determined that Latvian is for the short-term? Who has determined that there is no crisis? Many years ago it took me the whole of an afternoon to walk around a 4^th of July gathering at the Washington Monument. The crowd was estimated by the authorities to be about four million. How long does it take to walk around 1.2 million Latvians? Perhaps two hours.

There are always the poets, the last refuge of a dying language. But modern Latvian poets are not very attached to the endearing word or pietism. Their religion has been of a more pretentious meme. One can take as an example the well known Latvian poet Aleksandrs Chaks, or Ojars Vācietis, or Imants Ziedonis. The endearing word is not a stranger to them, but none of the poets uses the endearing word often. So are they un-Latvian poets?

The poets are as Latvian as they come, but they are all poets of urban times. The poets all are pretenders to the stage of the world, not the kitchen, the yard, or field, or wood. These poets are not people who live in an intimate community. These poets’ speech has little time to indulge a stone, a pot, or politics.

Through the poets of the urban court, we meet with a circumstance where the Latvian language meets up with the same problem that the Japanese language does. The famed Japanese Haiku—the scaffolding of the poems by way of an exact number of syllables and a certain sentiment dependent on the image the words evoke—comes close to echoing the endearment implicit in a Latvian folk poem.

Would not a culture minister who is aware of the danger facing the Latvian language, its subjective self, invest in the language? Ought one to not encourage—next to Haiku—the development of a Dainu tradition?

A Latvian folk poem.

What is it?

It is an endearment,

a few lines of words

come wed for life.

Tautas dziesmiņa.

Kas tā tāda tāgadiņa?

Tā ir svētībiņa,

Vārdu kopas dzīvībiņa.

The reason the pietist meme is hidden from poets may be because it is in danger from unidentified bureaucrats and a danger to itself because it and the people who own it are in a sacrificial crisis. A state of sacrificial crisis brings everyone special responsibilities, which is why at first no one wishes to see the situation for what it is.

The sacrificial crisis turns on the issue of religion, implicit and explicit, as it resides in the Latvian language. Its pietist elixir is a “weak power”. The language is a force like gravity. One is so used to talking religion through one’s language that one no longer feels it except when one must jump.

This is about where we reconnect to contemporary politics and political events. This is where we come nose to nose with the Latvian government. Like Clever John, it has a horse that grows wings and pretends charisma, when in fact it is a goose with wings clipped.

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 2 as retold by

© Eso Anton Benjamins (…story begins at blog 15)

“No problem,” answered Clever John to King John I, “just tell me where to find the gold, and it is as good as here.”

“You misunderstand me, Clever John,” said the king. “You have to go and find the gold for yourself. If you want my daughter for your bride, you go find and bring me the gold on your own.”

“Can I just see the princess a little before I go?” asked Clever John. He was suddenly seized by anxiety: What if the princess had crooked teeth like the king had crooked toe nails?

“Do not worry, Clever John,” said King John I, “if you bring me a wagon of gold, the princess will give you the time of your life.”

So, Clever John let Rozinante go graze, while he went for a long walk and think where there might be a pile of gold. In those days banks were not yet invented, so there were none to rob. He knew that he did not want to dig for it. That would take all life, but he wanted the princes as soon as possible.

The more Clever John thought, the less could he think of where to find the gold. When evening came, Clever John still had no idea where to look. Then he remembered the ring and kerchief that Crazy Jane had given him in remembrance of their night together at The Old Witch’s Inn. Clever John started to rub the ring with the kerchief. If Crazy Jane had not been lying, she should hear his call for help and come running.

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

Unchanged Feature: The Witches of Ghana in Gambaga

http://www.pbs.org/georgewashington/collection/other_last_will.html

Could we have the word and name of Ghana pronounced as Yana? If so, we could then call the withches Yanas (Janas, Zhenas) of Yana (Jana, Zhena).

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

http://www.voltairenet.org/article167588.html

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of a series of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a telling context. This is a continuous story. If it began in the past, now it is moving parallel to the day we live. Note what is happening around you. Put this clip as a tail to your blog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa2xXx34lCU so others may see or start your own "movie". The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ 

The following blogspots center on a variety of subjects, which I have initiated. You are invited to look and respond.

http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Not-Violence main subject

http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ Temple of Janis (John) site

http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ Arguments for systems change

http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ Sacrificial crisis in Latvia

http://oedipusrexrewritten.blogspot.com/ Oedipus Rex Rewritten

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

The 4^th Awakening

26 Watching a Language Being Lost (1)

© Eso Anton Benjamins

The mission of the Latvian language is implicit in its unique pietist foundation. Pietisms, reverence for life, animate and inanimate nature, and gentling are all part of the “weak” force that labors to turn the Earth’s habitat into a more livable place.

To the Latvian baby along with the mother’s breast comes a language its forebears fashioned to feel themselves welcomed into the world of nature, too. Thus, a stone against which I may lean my back against is no longer a mere stone, but a “dear stone”.

Pietism distinguishes the Latvian language by means of enabling its users to turn every noun into an endearment real or ironic. Through the Latvian language a Latvian gives evidence to a mindset that disputes the aggressive and mercantile Zeitgeist of our time. No doubt, this linguistic facility may be ignored; and today we live in days when it is ignored. For that reason, we may say that today the Latvian language is half of what it can be. The missing half cannot be replaced by advertisements showing pretty nature pictures with few or no people. This harsh and at the same time slick meme, which has occupied the mindset of Latvian media, bureaucracy, government, and much of private communication on the internet defines our times,

We have a good example of what a wholistic language ought not to be in English. Whether English words acquired their clunky-ness as the result of the Great Vowel Shift that took place in the 15th century and practically speaking destroyed an earlier poetic tradition may of course be debated. However, by way of example, we may note how the word Sonne (the Sun, feminine gender) was turned into the sun, masculine gender, with a small s. In German, the sun is still die Sonne, and it may be endeared as when we speak of it as Sonnchen [Saulele (Prussian), Saulīte (Latvian) = (Sonnchen; saule=Sonne), die Sonnengoettin, Saule, the Dearest Goddess].

It may seem a paradox to some that on the one hand I urge Latvians to learn to speak and write English; on the other hand, suggest that the Latvian language is more relevant to our times than English. What is the reason for such apparently contradictory advice?

The paradox is of pragmatist origin. English, the language of expedience when it comes for two or more people born to a different language, to communicate, is one of the most widely distributed languages. It is also—as per the Great Vowel Shift—a hybrid and a relatively recent language, and, thus, in many ways an academic language. [No, I am not contesting American country music, but if left to itself, it would probably revert a la populism to a form of profoundly emotive speech.]

The arrival of English is intimately linked to the bastardization of democracy by political science and the arrival of the Magna Carta, the latter a document limiting democracy for the forest dwellers (the forest cover necessary for true democracy was fast disappearing at the time), and increasing it for secular princes and today’s oligarchs.

At the time of Chaucer and his “The Canterbury Tales”, the poet had three languages to choose from: Latin, French, and Middle English. Chaucer chose Middle English not only because it was the evolving vernacular of those who lived about London, but the poet’s own intuition of the way the tilt of the Vowel Shift would lean. One may imagine that the poet had a meme that had followed him (who knows through what labyrinth) and was developing an increasingly powerful charisma.

The charisma, in this instance the attraction of clunky words, was sufficiently strong to attract not only Chaucer, but to turn out to be the call of the future. Perhaps one of the causes of this meme was what one may call the “galloping” mindset. There are no memes of endearment to interfere with the academe when it comes to enlarging the classification and filing system. Like violence, clunky words have no bars to hold them back. Dissed emotion checks neither violence nor greed unless one pays with one’s life for it.

In other words, violence and freedom (to be greedy or whatever) belong to the same meme. Both are elements belonging to the great wilderness, to nature unrestrained. They are the syndromes that remove all obstacles— children including.

The Latvian language (valodiņa) [Vaidelotis = singer = moan = ruler = priest = male witch = wound = fault …], on the other hand, carries a “weak” meme. The language is able to endear everything about it, and if the endearment seems to be questionable, then surely it speaks in irony. Today the posts on internet sites, if not blocked by some computer activated editor, are a river of plastic bottles, rotten oranges, condoms, and misplaced flowers. This froth of rubbish is said to be of the Latvian language. This is true because for the last one hundred years or more the endearing word has been relegated to the barn or garage. The children who are born today receive in school lessons in sanitized Latvian, i.e., Latvian sans the endearing word. The secularist catechism is no longer an overtly a religious script of neo-Christianity, but comes to strip the language of its native and spiritual meme all the same.

The immediate blame for the demoralization of the Latvian language goes to the Latvian government of the past twenty years. This is to say, the blame is with the post-Soviet-Latvian government turning the language into a rag for its own purposes. In hind sight, the Soviets were kind to the language even if everyone had to speak Russian. Bleaching words like rice and then sowing freeze dried white rice in the nation’s garden is of positive advantage to those in office. Positivism recited by rote, with not a gram of self-sacrifice or endearment to pepper coming with it, drives the Latvian language and the people behind the language off the bridge. Never mind. Every bureaucrat and politician continues to wear a look of saintliness as if nothing happened.

The government keeps the undercurrents of the Latvian language, some would say the real language, the language with a mission, out of everyone’s field of attention. While the word ‘government’ has beneficial connotations, the Latvian government’s embrace of the Latvian language as a matter of identity is smothering the real function of the language—its mission, its vision. Such behavior brings one to the conclusion that what is happening is a hiding of the death of the Latvian language—if not actually desired, then not opposed either.

For how long can the government defend the Latvian language and hope that no one will notice that its failure as government is complicit in the exodus of Latvians to foreign lands? Conservative commentators observe that over 12% of Latvians have left Latvia for jobs abroad. That is 12% out of an estimated total of 2.3 million people; that is ~ 250,000 people conservatively. Other figures suggest that 340,000 340,000 have left. Some may think 500,000. These are not census figures. The census may double that figure.

Now for a quick return to

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 3 as retold by

© Eso Anton Benjamins (…story begins at blog 15)

It so happened that King John I was taking a stroll through his garden and saw Clever John arrive. He and his mare looked like they had ridden through an apocalypse circa 1492. That was the year for which the Apocalypse had been written six years before. King John himself had commissioned the work and was happy enough that the astrologers had got the year wrong.

King John I walked up to the gate. His guards were about to seize Clever John for a vagrant, except his bear skin coat and he stunk like a real bear. The moment the guards saw the king, they sprung to attention and gave a salute. “Hail King John I,” they shouted.

“A good Sunday,” said King John I. “Who have we got here? Is it another cricket bather?”

 Clever John did not wait for the guards to speak, but spoke first. “King John I,” he said, “I am just from Sun Mountain and a visit with the Sun. The Sun sends her greetings.”

“Why thank you,” answered the king. “I have visited the Sun also. I know how hot it can get there. By the way, what is your name?”

“I am Clever John,” answered Clever John. Just as he said it, he noticed that King John I did not wear a golden crown as he had expected, but that his toe nails were uncut, long, grey and curly. Clever John had heard that rich men could afford to look however they wanted; on the other hand, if the guards had not saluted him, he would not have believed the king to be king at all.

“What brings you here, Clever John,” asked the king.

“I have come to ask for the king’s daughter,” answered Clever John trying not to look at the king’s toenails.

“What a great idea, Clever John,” answered King John I, “however, no one can have my daughter without first bringing we a wagon full of gold. Do you have such a wagon or do you believe that you could find one?”

(To be continued. Part 3 of story.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

Unchanged Feature: The Witches of Ghana in Gambaga

http://www.pbs.org/georgewashington/collection/other_last_will.html

Could we have the name of Ghana pronounced as Yana? If so, could we then call the withches Yanas (Janas, Zhenas) of Yana (Jana, Zhena)?

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

http://www.voltairenet.org/article167588.html

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of a series of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a telling context. This is a continuous story. If it began in the past, now it is moving parallel to the day we live. Note what is happening around you. Put this clip as a tail to your blog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CkXhtw7UNk&feature=related so others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ 

The following blogspots center on a variety of subjects, which I have initiated. You are invited to look and respond.

http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Not-Violence main subject

http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ Temple of Janis (John) site

http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ Arguments for systems change

http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ Sacrificial crisis in Latvia

http://oedipusrexrewritten.blogspot.com/ Oedipus Rex Rewritten

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

The 4^th Awakening

25 A Coat to Keep Warm

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 2 as retold by

© Eso Anton Benjamins (…story begins at blog 15)

“So, Clever John, what is it that you came to see me about?” asked the Sun. Her bright blue dress oozed with rivulets of orange flames. Clever John was happy to note that the fires were as gentle as those of a bees’ wax candle.

“Ahh, mam, I came to ask why you have not been shining lately,” said Clever John. “When I and Crazy Jane last saw you on the mountain on Johns Day morning, you did not appear to be too happy. People say that it ought to be fun to see you, but I wasn’t…. I was wondering if perhaps you wanted to come to my farm for a rest. You see, Latvians are turning their farms into temples, sort of a rest home for tourists exhausted from visiting exotic places.”

“Why, John, how nice of you,” replied the Sun, “I am glad you thought of me. But those six brothers of yours, I could ….” The Sun broke off.

“Send the old witch after them?” Clever John tried to be helpful.

“Never mind, son,” replied the Sun. “Is there anything else you came to see me about?”

“There was a whole bunch of people there climbing up to the branch of a big tree to hang themselves. They did not look too happy. How long will they have to be hanging themselves?”

“It depends, John,” answered the Sun, “it depends on how many times you yourself will keep on hanging yourself.”

Clever John gulped. What did the Sun mean? How could he possibly go hang himself? He was entirely against suicide if only because he wished to live for ever. In fact, he had thought of defending his rights to immortal life with a gun, those things the gendarmes called “trumpets of angels”.

“I have another question, mam.”

“Speak, John,” said the Sun.

“There is that young maid standing in the river dipping for empty buckets of water. She says that you are her mother. She asked to ask you for how much longer must she continue,” Clever John asked.

“Well, Clever John,” answered the Sun, “that is a very serious question. I have punished her for trusting you with her head. Why did she steal from her father his leather boots and give them to you to put on Rozinante?” Some of the flames on the Sun’s dress began to shoot off sparks.

Clever John trembled and sweated. The bearskin coat felt like the bricks of an oven. Nevertheless, Clever John managed a brave: “Mam, you did not answer your daughter’s question.”

“You give her back her father’s boots, and then she can go,” declared the Sun.

“I have one more question, mam,” said Clever John.

“Speak, John,” said the Sun.

“The raven on the pine tree asked to ask you for how long will you tie it down to the tree, mam.”

“That is easy, John,” said the Sun, “when someone, perhaps you, buries the infant that the king fathered on the maid. That will let the raven go.”

“For how long must the big fish be tied to the shore, mam?” Clever John asked in a hurry. It was obvious that he was in a rush to get away.

“Tah, tah, John,” replied the Sun (tah tah means “you don’t say?” or “I am amazed to hear” in Latvian). “Frankly, I do not know. It just turns out that way. Tell the fish to mind its conceits.”

Clever John was gushing sweat in rivulets. He wanted to up and go as fast he could, but the Sun had a question of her own. She looked at her son sternly.

“I know that you did not really come to see me, but are on your way to more important things, Clever John. That’s alright. It shows you have what it takes when it comes to daring, but the question is whether you have brains? So, tell me, Clever John. Tell me what you really want?”

“I am happy to tell you that, mam,” answered Clever John. “I want to marry a princess and be rich.”

“Who is the princess may I ask?” asked the Sun.

“I have not met her yet. They say she often walks in the king’s garden. They say that she has many suitors, but so far she has refused them all. I know that she is waiting for me,” said Clever John with conviction.

“Good luck, son,” said the Sun. ”Good luck, my dear son!” The Sun repeated and roared a blast of fire in Clever John’s ears. Luckily it was only her laughter; it rolled like a thunder clap retreating.

If Clever John had not backed off that very moment, the coat of fur might have caught on fire. As it was, his back felt like it was covered with hot mustard sauce. Clever John duck walked from the Green Gardens of the Sun backward and with hands clasped in profound reverence. This was no fake. While this was not the first time that Clever John had been with his Mother, it was also only the second. He was impressed with Her Awesomeness coming forth so straight forward.

Rozinante, who had been standing next to Clever John, tried to curtsy, but because her boots were on backward, it did not come off gracefully. Then the mare backed off. It was a near head-over-heel retreat.

Perhaps it was the fear and trembling that overwhelmed Clever John. Time flew as mare and rider both, seized by a perverse moment multiplied a thousand times thousand struggled down Sun Mountain. And so it was that Rozinante brought Clever John to the very front gates of King John I.

(To be continued. Next Part 3 of story.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

Unchanged Feature: The Witches of Ghana in Gambaga

http://www.pbs.org/georgewashington/collection/other_last_will.html

Could we have the word and name of Ghana pronounced as Yana? If so, we could then call the withches Yanas (Janas, Zhenas) of Yana (Jana, Zhena).

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

http://www.voltairenet.org/article167588.html

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of a series of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a telling context. This is a continuous story. If it began in the past, now it is moving parallel to the day we live. Note what is happening around you. Put this clip as a tail to your blog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVnk891ChPc so others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/  This is the 9^th video of a series.

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/ + Forum Home + Open Forum – The 4th Awakening. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

The 4^th Awakening

24 The Proto-Latvian Meme

Before we revisit the Sun Goddess in The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, we must come back to the issue of the word “payan” or belittled John, which I argue is the proper meaning of “pagan”. “Payan”/ pagan hardly stands for the happy agnostic, but is an elitist putdown of the Son of the Sun.

If one was to seek in the short history of Latvia (1918 to the present) the previous two hundred years, one would discover that the entire period between the Great Northern War (1700-1720) until about 1860 is largely erased from popular memory. This is not so much because it is a period of no events, but because the proto-Latvians were rushed into becoming Latvians, then were traumatized by world events. Subsequently, a puritanical brood put the numerous episodes of violence in the forefront of public attention (similar to the way Israel sets up the holocaust) and erased their forebears from their memory by keeping silence about them.

An example of the process of excluding the past is presented by a brief overview of Latvian history for high school students by teacher Vita Krieviņa, “Latvijas vēsture” (Latvian history), published by Zvaigzne ABC. Krieviņa writes (p. 52, my translation): “Possibly national identity was contributed to by the Herrnhuters in the middle of the 18^th century.” About the Herrnhuters themselves we have barely half a page (pgs. 75-76) of presumably depoliticized information: “The Brethren movement facilitated the spiritual awakening of the peasants, especially in the region of Vidzeme in the middle of the 19^th century, but as researchers point out, wherever one found the Herrnhuters, the traditions of folklore and paganism died out.”

While historian Kaspars Kļaviņš (translate) identifies the Herrnhuters with a puritanical movement (in one sense I agree, but in many other ways I disagree) in his thought provoking book (in Latvian) “apSTĀVĒŠANA”, Mansards, 2009, (apStāvēt = to fix, to translate, to popularize while there is yet time) the professor does great service by pointing out that “…the situation [of Latvians] is further complicated by our problem of identity, finding ourselves in the midst of old myths and stereotypes, to put it simply, our lack of [?self] knowledge.” I recommend the book not because I always agree with the author (he too believes that neo-Christianity is an original rather than a post-arch-Christian movement), but because it is critically important to blow away the cobwebs of secular clericism that appears to have immobilized the ability of Latvians to think for themselves. I cite from a summary of Kļaviņš book on the back cover of the book: “The historians of Western Europe, when they discuss the question of European ethnicities, use the map of Aeruatlas*. There among places of honour one will find Jersika of the 12^th and 13^th centuries.” It is true that the media occasionally present titbits of archaeological news about Jersika, but when it comes to analyzing the times and then prevalent secular and/or religious views there is a blackout. We are faced by a wall of dogmatic presumptions, which by being what they are deny other considerations to entertain other interpretations of history.

The perspectives above (not to mention my own) perhaps support my arguments that the subject of history, while it is a profoundly political matter, in its present state condemns Latvians to psychic confusion, in effect, loss of identity. By focusing exclusively on the period of the last one hundred years, the Latvian leaders have lost for the Latvian people their history. It is not unusual to find Latvians roaming the world referencing Latvia in their minds eye with little more than a point on the map and a vague “I was born there”. In fact, the names of Latvia, or Estonia, Lithuania, Prussia, Livonia ought to bring up many associations and charismatic (live in the mind’s eye) historic experiences to any European, Latvians including.

As I have suggested in earlier blogs, I am attempting to link Jersika (destroyed 1209, last heard of about 1214) and the Children of Johns with the Herrnhuters and find the linkage legitimate. It is not a matter of making neat fits, but looking for continuities. If such continuities do not exist, as the present government of Latvia appears to believe, then we are indeed in the process of succumbing to another occupation.

I first suspected a psychic continuity, a yet unextinguished mind meme, in the inner clash that resulted from my experience as a young boy on a Latvian farm in the Ergļi-Madona region coming in contact later in life with the Latvian state-school apparatus, which continued to exist in Displaced Persons camps in post-war Germany.

The trauma of atrocities perpetrated by the Soviet and Reich governments and the need and will to remain a community influenced and justified the refugees from Latvia in their Puritanism. On the other hand, the Puritanism, pretty much become a lockdown of most critical thought processes, has to this day not been challenged and questioned.

Is perhaps the Puritanism of the Herrnhuters related to the Latvians abroad after World War 2, and are both puritanisms in one way or another linked to Jersika? It is worth a consideration, a look see.

There is an obvious mismatch of memes in the public media and the memes found buried within individuals, the former brought to us by Latvia’s repressed public media, the latter brought by the mother tongue of Latvians. Even before we examine the Latvian meme, we ought to be aware that the authoritarianism of Displaced Persons camps, post-neo-Christendom, folkloric fetishism, and the like are the consequences of times of extreme anxiety, while pietism is of a stable community and one that pre-existed the multiple traumas.

Assuming that Latvians emerged from a pre-existing “stable community”, that is where we also ought to look for the true mind meme that connects all Latvians. One of the most fundamental memes for Latvians is to be sought in the word of endearment in the Latvian language. Why? Because an endearment is such a noteworthy “extract” of pietism. If so, why is it in hiding?

The reason the pietist meme is hidden is because it is in danger. And the reason the Latvian language is in danger is because its pietist elixir is a “weak power”; it is a force like gravity; one is so used to it that one no longer feels it except when one goes to jump. However, the modern consumer way of life is not a movement that “jumps”. Instead, it floats like a dead fish of habit in the canal that divides “Old” Riga from the “new” Monument to Freedom (Brīvības piemineklis) and its massive relief of Bear Destroyer (Lāčplēsis) in place of John, the teacher and priest (krīvs), who stood at the altar of the “Līgo” flag of 1873. The incessant bombardment of brain and eye by commercial advertisements turns the public into a passive entity with regard to everything but consumption. Indeed, it is noticeable how the Latvian public—which is a theatre loving public ever since it participated in the Johns Eve rituals (which is a theatre of sorts)—continues to call actors to the stage three times even when the performance has been painfully dull and boring.

This is where we reconnect to contemporary politics and political events. This is where we come nose to nose with the Latvian government. Like Clever John in my rewrite of an old Latvian folk story, it pretends charisma when in fact it has none.

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 2 as retold by

© Eso Anton Benjamins (…story begins at blog 15)

Evidently Clever John blinked once more. Though the black ocean of black tar was still before him, this time he saw on the opposite end of the horizon the Sun. She was majestic, a bramble of sunbursts.

“Hello, Clever John,” said the Sun, “how are you my son?”

“I am fine, mam,” replied John. Suddenly he was shy. The total moment of black had intimidated him. “I am happy to see you, mam.”

“That is good,” said the Sun, “here son, here is something to keep you warm in your travels.” The Sun waved her left hand and all the black tar turned to green grass and a field of flowers and forests. Then She waved her right hand and put over the shoulders of Clever John a vest made of the finest bear fur.

“I see that it fits you fine, Clever John,” said the Sun. “You are my son, is that right?”

“Yes, mam,” said Clever John, “there is no other.”

“I may want you to prove it to me one day, Clever John,” said the Sun.

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

* I am not at this time able to discover the map used on the backcover of said book.

Unchanged Feature: The Witches of Ghana in Gambaga

http://www.pbs.org/georgewashington/collection/other_last_will.html

Could we have the word and name of Ghana pronounced as Yana? If so, we could then call the withches Yanas (Janas, Zhenas) of Yana (Jana, Zhena).

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

http://www.voltairenet.org/article167588.html

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of a series of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a telling context. This is a continuous story. If it began in the past, now it is moving parallel to the day we live. Note what is happening around you. Put this clip as a tail to your blog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7GjfyTfjPk&NR=1&feature=fvwp so others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/  This is the 10^th video of a series.