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Sunday, April 03, 2005
"You poor take courage, you rich take care""In the beginning of time God made the earth. Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach and rule over another."
- Gerrard Winstanley, "The New Law of Righteousness", 1649
Here I've been thinking about April 4 and the Lorraine Motel, and I almost forgot about April 3 and St George's Hill.
I suppose I have a lot of heroes, but Gerrard Winstanley holds a special place. On this day in 1649 he and about 30 Levellers, or "Diggers," marched on the commons of St George's Hill in Surrey and "sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots and beans." Other Digger groups reclaimed land from the gentry in Kent, Surrey, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire. The gentry was, let's say, nonplussed.
Oliver Cromwell reportedly said, "What is the purport of the levelling principle but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord. I was by birth a gentleman. You must cut these people in pieces or they will cut you in pieces."
Response was swift: the Diggers were ordered beaten; their homes, crops and tools destroyed. Within a year, the Diggers were finished. Or maybe, just biding their time. And you know what? That time may be now.
Because if things really are this bad, then the Diggers' philosophy may be humanity's best last chance to salvage something like a sustainable culture, even on a local level.
Here is an account of the march to St George's Hill, now a private golf course, on the 350th anniversary in 1999.
If you don't know Leon Rosselson's song, "The World Turned Upside Down," you really ought to. And you can here, as interpreted by a number of artists. It's a versatile little number. Attila the Stockbroker's version is a bloody operetta, and incorporates Winstanley's own "Diggers Song" ("With spades and hoes and plowes, stand up now, stand up now...")
In 1649
To St George's Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people' s will
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed
Reclaiming what was theirs
We come in peace, they said
To dig and sow
We come to work the land in common
And to make the waste land grow
This earth divided
We will make whole
So it can be
A common treasury for all.
The sin of property
We do disdain
No one has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Now everywhere the walls
Rise up at their command.
They make the laws
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feeds the rich
While poor men starve
We work, we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to masters
Or pay rent to the lords
We are free men
Though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now
From the men of property
The orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers
To wipe out the Diggers' claim
Tear down their cottages
Destroy their corn
They were dispersed -
Only the vision lingers on
You poor take courage
You rich take care
The earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share
All things in common
All people one
We come in peace
The order came to cut them down
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.de/20 ... -take.html
One reason I am grateful for this thread is that it functions as an encouragement and reminder to go back and reread some of Jeffs oldest blogposts.
Friday, April 01, 2005
"a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it"
...
The great calamity of America is too big now for just analysis and rational thought. To be parsed, it needs now also art and faith, and the insights of supra-rationality. Almost everything I've written in this blog could be distilled to four lines from a mediocre Dylan song of the mid-80s:
Witchcraft scum exploiting the dumb,
Turning children into punks and slaves
Whose heroes and healers are rich drug dealers
Who should be put in their graves.
...
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.de/20 ... s-all.html