The Promised Land Project: Black Elk: A Vision of Eastward Invasion

Turning Vision into Action....at least hypothetically

Strike up the music of the band
We're blazing a trail for the promised land
Heaven on earth is within you.

Through the writing of stories, poetry, essays, and a novel, I’ve creatively contended with the consumer culture and the problem of the ideal in the modern era. This preoccupation in time would lead to a vision of cultural transformation and where I believe our democratic society needs to go to truly progress beyond the modern era. Conceding my limited credibility, this blog provides a synthesis of recognized visionaries, poets, and writers with the objective of making a credible argument. Ultimately, it is a certain feeling the project strives to inspire and sustain on a certain level, making more vital use of poetry and the arts; consequently whether one agrees or not is less important than whether one senses it and feels it over time.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Black Elk: A Vision of Eastward Invasion

The individual consciousness of Whitman's vision of westward expansion, to my mind, should be balanced by the vision of Black Elk. As excerpted from his Great Vision as related in Black Elk Speaks, we get an illustration of a hunting and gathering society of the American Indian being forced into the modern era:

Then the people broke camp again, and saw the black road before them towards where the sun goes down, and black clouds coming yonder; and they did not want to go but could not stay. And as they walked the third ascent, all the animals and fowls that were the people ran here and there, for each one seemed to have his own little vision that he followed and his own rules; and all over the universe I could hear the winds at war like wild beasts fighting.

The "promised land" is symbolic of a shared vision, or a collective vision, that is capable of overriding and incorporating one's own personal vision. Put another way, the project strives to induce a greater sense of the 'we' over the 'I'. To some degree or other, the Promised Land Project provides a hypothetical means to reverse that which is occuring in the above excerpt from Black Elk's vision.