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

29 How to Tie Tongue (2)
© Eso Anton Benjamins

If Latvians have a role to play in their government, it is not as ordinary passive citizens who do little else than drop their ballots in a box on Election Day. While some will continue to vegetate, others may begin to think of themselves as a “chosen people” or, better, the only people. Of course, today this is a discredited notion. Yet others will identify with naked humankind and succumb to the pleasures of fools gold.

An alternative is possible if the citizens of Latvia realize that succumbing to elitist-materialist pressures is as certain to betray national identity as it identifies with fascism and neocapitalism. Today the charisma of neither holds or ought to hold one’s attention for longer than a passing glance. This suggests that the alternative belongs to some third way.

If we look at the alternatives of becoming “chosen”, “selected”, or “elite”, we must also remember that democracy in a “parliamentary a democracy” (the kind of democracy that is instituted in Latvia) is a democracy for the minority. To what extent is democracy real for citizens when the order of democracy does not extend its privileges beyond the princes who sign the Magna Carta?

When a parliamentary democracy draws into an ever tighter knot [as it does when (vis a vis the rest of the population) it bypasses the human dimension of personally caring], it becomes a democracy for an even more restricted group, an oligarchy of—to be generous—a conglomerate of oligarchs. If the concentration of juridical parties financed by said  oligarchs is topped off with a constrained language, we have a zionationalist choke on the freedom of thought and language.

Because Latvians are so few in number (est. 1.2 million), the risk of them losing their language is as certain as is the blending of the oligarchs of the world into a one supra nationalist entity at Davos. Something like that happened when the Baltic Prussians became German speaking. As we know, the Prussian orientation aligned with that of their repressors. The native population became militaristic or assumed a passive stance, and the nurturing Saulele (see blog 26)—what happened to her?

We are witnessing the crumbling of the Latvian language in real terms on the internet. Thought and language receives little attention in hyperspace or it is an exception. Coherence is not something that has yet made an appearance.

To corroborate the dismal prongnosis, studies show that Latvian students read the least number of books among European students. As for poets, they have freedom to speak, but most, having been brainwashed about the glories of anarchy in the West, have nothing to say about the community. For the most part poets write either positivist claptrap or write in a language that is the technical inverse of legalese. Writing at the folk (in this instance subjective) level may exist, but no one is certain of it or encourages it in a consciousness raising manner. A subjective meme centring on the community is not poetry’s forte as a subject these days.

In spite of the bleakness created by the anaemic memes, there may be one area where a small nation may excel if it but comes with the right memes. Such a right meme—one which can make quick political and economic manoeuvres, practice discipline, reach a high level of education, be loyal to its nation and cultivate its language, knows the advantages of small, etc.—has to be not only persuasive, but its persuasiveness has to come with charisma attached to it.

Such a meme however must be achieved and does not come of its own and without effort. At the present, the Latvians have a chance of coming to such charisma only if they overcome the sacrificial crisis plaguing their community. Likewise they must discover a ritual worthy of repetition and without it soon wearing out. At this time it does not appear that in Latvia either the state or church is capable of creating the kind of charisma that leads to action.

An alternative to dying has for humans always meant turning to community building. The Children of Johns (heck past blogs to find out more) would surely be among the volunteers attempting to renew and breathe life (charisma) into the community. Unfortunately, after their repression in the middle of the 19^th century, they went underground, many of Germanic origins having been part of the local community integrated, and with the repressions creating demand for a more radical reaction than a not-violent community could offer, in due course ceased playing a visible role. Having brought proto-Latvians communal singing, choirs, and a unique and ancient system of democracy by lottery (the system is unworkable today because of the institutionalization of gross social and economic inequalities), the disappearance of the Herrnhuters was actively encouraged by a more rough and tough workers movement that no longer had roots in a countryside neighbourhood, but were thrown to the winds of urban streets. Without the protection of life in a community in situ, the endearing term, as well as the endeared rock suffers a sacrificial crisis. The memes of the weak words are up on the board to be erased.

What if anything can save the post-Soviet-Latvian language and Latvians from dying by 2050, a time when the population of Latvia—assuming no great wave if immigration—is 1.3 million in total? Will Iceland save Latvia? It is a brave island, but it is an island far in the ocean.

How can survival be realized when, for the most part, the European Union (EU) works toward collapsing and eliminating differences by way of a bribe (the charisma of money) rather than blood (the charisma of reality)? How can a sacrificial crisis be resolved under circumstances when a sovereign nation loses its financial sovereignty to a central bank and it has no money to fight back with?

There is only one answer: the only weapon available against those who have money and power is one’s body. However, one’s body cannot be brought to bear unless the entire community joins in.

In short, the answer (example of action) must be sought back in the time when the arch-Christians refused to join the Roman Empire’s sacrificial ritual, because Rome had become polluted. We may recall that Rome—after it became an empire—lost charisma because its sacrifices became gladiators who lost their lives as part of bloody games, which could no longer be construed as anything other than entertainment. The games turned sacrifice into pornography.

It does not appear that survival of small bodies of nations and their languages is a possibility at this time, because “the financial bubble” can be made seem perpetual (inflation). In other words, money will be used to compromise any resistance, even at a time when money clearly is turning into worthless paper. Illusions do not always die easily.

Bankers are using all kinds of sleight of hand to collapse the differences between value and nonvalue: deflating value is masked by inflating price. The use of language to create of language a circus causes ordinary and not so ordinary people loss of a sense of coherence.  The resulting state of uncertainty, a state ever in suspended animation, threatens society with anihilation. This is the reason why during the last one thousand years Armageddon or Apocalypse has always roused the public’s interest.

The dissembling of reality is done by institutionalized lying by government functionaries planted within a democracy’s more vulnerable institutions. In a parliamentary democracy such functionaries are its unelected ministers, prime ministers and presidents. During election time, the Saeima (Senate) also makes its significant part by playing at being alive, while actually it is quite dead.

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 3 (…story begins at blog 15), in the next blog. Less the reader forget, we left Clever John despairing of discovering a pile of gold and, therefore, rubbing the ring he was given by Crazy Jane. He hopes that the maid he had let the old witch kill, may come to his rescue. Is may be a hope as crazy as is Crazy Jane.

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

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=vxNrfZE3elM so others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/  This is the 9^th video of a series.

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/