The Promised Land Project: A Moral Compass Devised from Poetry

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, August 31, 2010

A Moral Compass Devised from Poetry

Getting back to Dante, who poetically dramatized that reason, symbolized by the poet Virgil, can only take us so far, and that we must look to love, symbolized by Beatrice, to take us the entire distance. From the poetic genius of Dante we can devise a kind of moral compass to be used less didactically than poetically, that is, as a means to inspire. Providing a visual chart, on one side represents the exploration of the depths of our nature, in a downward spiral of pride, greed, wrath, envy, gluttony, and lust. At the bottom we find a misanthropic culture writhing in shame and shaming, a kind of hell on earth.

From here we go back up to explore the heights by harnessing the redemptive aspects of our nature that recognizes a hierarchy of collectives. We ascend through sexual love, to family love, to community love, to national love, to human love, to divine love, the latter to include our collective dependence on all creation. At the top we reach a kind of heaven on earth of individual freedom acting in harmony with others and nature, a culture of sympathetic love, where the arts and outdoors lend rhythm to action (to craft a line from the shards of Rimbaud’s shattered dream). As noted, these collectives are hierarchical and should be achieved within the context of the above; for example, to avoid the evils of nationalism, a national spirit should be achieved within the greater context, or within concert, of the human spirit.

But this compass is just a tool with limitations. If it’s misused toward shaming, it means its taking you off course in the wrong direction. It’s simply a means to confront the truth of our nature and provide focus on the redemptive aspects of our nature. For the modernist dismissive of the so called “dark ages”, by drawing on the middle ages for inspiration is an act of contrition. We shouldn’t devalue any time or culture on earth, but incorporate whatever lessons we may glean and move forward. Here we’re in step with the rallying cry of contemporary, integral philosophers, such as Steve McIntosh, as we strive to “transcend and include”, which also hearkens to Whitman’s “reject nothing”.