Anthropologist, ethnobotanist, and author, Wade Davis, writes of what he describes as the “ethnosphere, a notion perhaps best defined as the sum total of all thoughts, beliefs, myths and intuitions made manifest today by the myriad cultures of the world.” He holds that “The ethnosphere is humanity’s greatest legacy. It is the product of our dreams, the embodiment of our hopes, the symbol of all that we are and all that we have created as a wildly inquisitive and astonishingly adaptive species.”* Although we may imagine ourselves bereft of companionship and comfort, akin to the bleak inner and outer landscape of King Lear on his heath, as reflected in the title line, we can never be wholly seperate or distinct from the web of the ethnosphere of which we are perpetually a part.
At base, strip any of us of clothes, belongings, shelter, and we become like Lear, conscious of the poor, bare, forked animal that we are. Often, even within the confines of what may be relatively comfortable lives (should we be lucky enough to have such lives), we perceive ourselves as distinct, as alone, raging with the often convulsive elements around us. Or we may believe ourselves to be isolated in a silent darkness, akin to the “the way to Destruction, which [leads] into a wide field, full of dark mountains, where [one may] stumble and fall, and rise no more.”**
Yet, even when we conceive of ourselves as entirely alone, in the sense of the ethnosphere of which we are an integral part, our isolation remains impossible. In Shakespeare’s plays where central characters often find themselves alone on stage, they are still surrounded by, not only the ongoing story of the drama in which they are imbedded, but also by the codifications of cultural understanding, ritual, and human experience. Some may soliloquise, and some may sing.
After Puck magically transforms Bottom, giving him the head of an ass, the weaver’s friends all flee in terror, leaving him alone in the woods. Choosing to sing to allay his own mounting fear has consequences. Because, Bottom only believes himself to be alone, but, of course, he is not, and his singing wakes Titania, the fairy queen, who (under the influence of juice squeezed from a magical love flower) straightaway falls in love with him. Where Rackham’s illustration clearly pictures parts of the active but invisible fairy world surrounding Bottom, Wade Davis apprehends an often unconsidered atmosphere of language, belief, cultural practice and interaction, ritual, and human understanding that surrounds us and of which we are an integral part. A deeply textured web of multiple apprehensions, the ethnosphere provides a place for nearly limitless exploration as we poor, bare, forked animals move within it and navigate our own lives.
As Davis reminds us, “just as the biosphere has been severely eroded, so too is the ethnosphere — and, if anything, at a far greater rate.”**** Bear in mind that Davis spoke the following words in 2003:
When each of you in this room were born, there were 6,000 languages spoken on the planet. Now, a language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. A language is a flash of the human spirit. It’s a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed, a thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.
And of those 6,000 languages, as we sit here today in Monterey, fully half are no longer being whispered into the ears of children. They’re no longer being taught to babies, which means, effectively, unless something changes, they’re already dead. What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your language, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the ancestors or anticipate the promise of the children? And yet, that dreadful fate is indeed the plight of somebody somewhere on Earth roughly every two weeks, because every two weeks, some elder dies and carries with him into the grave the last syllables of an ancient tongue.
Wade Davis, “Dreams from Endangered Cultures” TED Talk 2003.
As anyone who has read this blog in the past will know, the ghost argues that our part in this ever greater effort to respect our world, and to preserve our environment and our vanishing cultures, goes hand in hand with our preservation, cultivation, and promotion of the cultural treasures that come to us through literature and the arts. Each links to each, and each domain of our being remains inextricably linked to the next. Sometimes, we may begin to feel as though we are fighting on all fronts, and that can be wearying. Yet, it is something that we must continue to do, at all costs. Connection through our expression, through literature and the arts is our lifeline to the cultural milieu that we inhabit. Without it, our world becomes sterile, without imagination, a dead world where our eyes turn to empty spectacles on decaying billboards.
Although Winston Churchill never really uttered the words “Then what are we fighting for?” in response to a question about cutting the arts, he did value the arts. In 1938, with clouds on the European horizon, he said, “The arts are essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them….Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due.”
These days, many of those in power argue that we might collectively be better off trimming our budgetary provision for the arts or cutting it completely. Then, we might utilise those saved funds to better promote greater safety and economic progress for all–at least that’s how the argument usually seems to go. The idea is that people benefit more from a thriving economy than they do from seeing another production of Hedda Gabler. Theatre and Cinema audiences have been in decline for decades and more people are interested in Netflix’ current Tiger King than they are in The Seagull or Huckleberry Finn. (Not that the ghost isn’t grateful to have Netflix and similar platforms, especially as they offer new venues for performing artists and creative projects. Neither would the ghost presume to attempt to legislate taste, as creativity should be and is always moving, always changing.)
Leave aside the idea that the fairy story of trickle down economics and even the emptiness of present day rhetoric about the perpetual and universal benefits of capitalism. Leave aside the evidence that the current U.S. administration appears ready to trade countless lives (especially those of the old and infirm) for the possibility of reigniting a system of monetary exchange, one that habitual gig economy underpayment had rendered on the brink of exhaustive collapse long before any virus swept across the globe. The fact is that, while we need money, and while some (or many of us) need it badly, most of the striving for maximum profit that we have built into our system still leaves us unfulfilled. While the work that consumes our days may pay the bills (even if it often doesn’t pay all of them completely), it often fails to complete us. Much of the time, our remunerative work does not allow us to touch our real dreams, our core dreams, but instead interferes with those. As the Bible says, “For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?”*****
Not that work can’t feed us in multiple ways. Our vocation can be our vacation too, and for those of us lucky enough to do what we once dreamed, or to interact in ways we love with subjects which continue to fuel our passions on a daily basis, well done. Yet, those who have managed to secure suce a life remain in the minority. And what about the rest of us? The “dog without a bone, [the] actor on a loan” as Jim Morrison would put it? What about them? Those who can’t pay the rent? Can’t eat? Can’t feed their children? Can’t sustain themselves and still dream of so much more? With all due respect to Edwin Arlington Robinson, so many go “without the meat and curse the bread”, but in spite of this Richard Cory tends to live on, and this time, he seems to be swaggering down the sidewalk, bigger than ever. He tweets offensively on an almost daily basis, and all the while, the rest of us fall further and further behind in the accounts.******
Yet, the moon still sometimes rises above the trees. Banksy’s latest piece for the NHS won’t necessarily feed the frustrated steel worker in Peoria, Illinois, or the jobless academic in Portland, Maine, but the money generated by that gift will almost certainly help save lives by helping the NHS to which it was generously donated by the reclusive artist. (Thank you to medical staff in all the countries, and to everyone everywhere who has helped or tried to help. That includes Banksy.)
The fact remains that by promoting the arts everywhere, we find ourselves more connected. A society that fosters artists and the arts, and one that promotes creation and innovation, continues to sponsor more and greater creative solutions to its challenges. It does this in ways that nations which have largely abandoned their arts do not, having more resources and resourcefulness amongst its people, and hence more answers forthcoming when these are needed.
Creative expressions also bring us together–humanity as a whole. Without our arts, our rituals, our literatures and languages, our world becomes flat, dull, and impoverished as an interdepartmental memo sent via email. These multitudinous demons of loss and subversion pound on our doors and the situation is serious. The colours of our world fade even as the world is slowly submerged in melting polar ice.
Yet, even as we scrabble for bread, dicing for silver in the strange low doorways of our sinking world, at those moments when we behold those moments of cultural context that truly move us, we pause and recognise our human fellowship in its broader context. Then we remember that we move within a vast web at the intersection of environment, ethnosphere, and all the actual and metaphorical extensions of our greater universe, and that our lives are nothing more than ongoing expressions of that vital spark.
Even when they are alone, and even as their respective worlds dissolve around them, the disillusioned Lear and the blood weary Macbeth both speak in ways that resonate deeply with the essential bedrock of the human condition. The poetry in each character’s fall speaks volumes of terrible beauty to the conflagration of human error and unforgiving consequence. Special provenance or not, when the sparrow falls, the plays offer vehicles through which countless artists have been able to speak creatively to the depths of human existence.
On the other hand, when seemingly alone in the wood, Bottom, who dreams of “lofty” dramatic presentation even as he (albeit perhaps unwittingly) weaves together all the strands from the rest of the play, chooses to sing. His song of birds weaves them and their vitality into the forest around him, awakening the fairy queen and precipitating her liaison with him. Awkward and mismatched as it may seem, Bottom’s choosing to sing reflects the subsequent ritual of regeneration, where lowly mortal is touched by, and participates in, immortality.
Like each of Shakesepare’s characters, we do find ourselves seemingly alone in various settings in our lives. It matters not whether these moments are dramatic or mundane. How we interact with where we are, and how we choose to participate in the visible and invisible around us, remains our choice. There are potentially as many choices as there are people on the earth. Here is one:
Unaccommodated man, the human without culture, really is a poor, bare, forked animal. Please support literature, live theatre, and the other arts. Read. Give generously if you can afford to do so. Watch and immerse yourself in the arts if you cannot.
It behooves us, individually and collectively, for each of us to continue to experience and learn. During the shelter in place restrictions that have affected so many of us, many theatres, operas, speaking houses, and educational institutions are making some of their best material freely available to the public. Please partake and remember how essential your continued support of cultural, educational, and artistic institutions of all kinds continues to be, and will continue to be long into the future. Thank you.
*Davis, Wade. Light at the Edge of the World: a Journey through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2002, 8.
**Adapted from the journey of the Formalist and Hypocrisy, in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress iii.iv. Bunyan, John. Available online: “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Work info: Pilgrim’s Progress – Christian Classics Ethereal Library. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/bunyan/pilgrim.html.
***Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003, 81.
****Davis, Wade. “Transcript of ‘Dreams from Endangered Cultures.'” TED talk 2003. https://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_dreams_from_endangered_cultures/transcript.
*****King James Bible. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 1973, Luke 9:25.
******Robinson, Edwin Arlington. “Richard Cory” from Children of the Night, 1897. The entire poem may be read here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44982/richard-cory. Robinson’s entire second volume of poetry entitled Children of the Night may be read at project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/313
*******To read more about “Lil Buck” Riley’s intuitive dance, you can Google him. He does a fantastic interpretation of a piece of Swan Lake with cellist, Yo-Yo Ma.
This was a glittering treasure chest of insight, imagery, reference and rhyme, and I am a pirate, joyfully plundering it.
Thank you for reading, Daniel! Plunder on!