Defining Greed

Recently, I developed a perception of how many Americans, particularly right-wing Americans, look at greed. Just last night I had my perception confirmed. I think it’s simple and pretty obvious, but we have to make these things clear if we’re ever going to deal with them.

I read an article in the New York Times about some multi-millionaire hedge fund manager who has been on a buying binge. New houses, a painting by Picasso, etc. I and a bunch of others saw him as being an example of the grotesque excess that characterizes those with obscene amounts of wealth today. One person suggested in a comment on the article that it would be a good thing to be able to confiscate some of that wealth. A reader responded to that, saying:

“By what right would you or anyone confiscate the property of another? And how would you decide what is ‘excess’?”

I felt like responding to the response and, in a slightly prickly mood, I wrote:

“In a sane world excess is taking more than you need to live a decent life. Let’s amend the constitution if need be.”

This motivated yet another reader to respond to me:

“Mark, your ‘sane world,’ where those who work to earn are ‘takers,’ must be one heck of a horror show.”

My response, which I’m making only here, is that we are already living in a horror show. And it’s largely because of those “earners.” This is right at the heart of my perception. They say it’s not greed if you’ve earned it. But greed is, precisely, working to obtain great wealth. Morally, no one is entitled to go after as much as they can “earn.” “Earn” is a self-deceptive term here. If you insert the word “get,” the meaning changes. And it’s more honest. You cannot earn a billion dollars. Invariably, someone will ask, “So, how much do you think one should morally be able to earn?” I think enough to make a living, but not a killing.

A Clever Rejoinder

I’ve been edging toward putting up a more serious post on a subject that, since my return from Santa Barbara Island, has been taking up a lot space in my head. But I’m not quite ready to write it. So in the meantime…

I love clever rejoinders. We probably all do. This week I was reminded of one of my favorites. It’s a well-known rejoinder, but I repeat it out of affection for its humor and for those who might never have heard it.

Steve Earle is a singer-songwriter whose big inspiration was the singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. (Singer-songwriters were once extremely important to me. I wanted to be one.) Steve Earle was asked to write a blurb for a Townes Van Zandt album and came up with this: “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” When Van Zandt was asked about Earle’s blurb he replied (spontaneously, I hope), “I’ve met Bob Dylan’s bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table, he is sadly mistaken.”

A Thought I Had While Sitting In Moonlight

I’m back out on Santa Barbara Island. Last night around midnight, I went outside to sit and listen and watch. I  heard sea lions barking, waves crashing against the cliffs, the peeping of some species of seabird, and the banging of the flagpole rope against the pole. I saw the stars, the moon, the reflection of the moon upon the ocean, and forty miles away the dim glow of Los Angeles. I thought to myself, “I ought to try to write a poem.” And then I thought, “Naw. Nobody reads poetry anymore. Poetry is dying.” A terrible thought, really, and I had to think about that for a little while.

What is poetry? When it functions correctly, it’s a people’s expression of its deepest convictions and insights. The universe has a constant poetry going that sometimes we see in the form of coincidence. Not accident, but coincidence—where things mysteriously coincide, that is, the workings of karma. Those levels are always there. So, poetry, or the poetic, never dies, but a people’s awareness of it can. We can lose our convictions and insights. If no one is paying any attention to poetry in America these days (perhaps you could even say the modern world), I have to think that it’s the culture that’s dying, not poetry.

Poem #87 from Cold Mountain (Han Shan)

A greedy man who piles up wealth

is like an owl who loves her chicks

the chicks grow up and eat their mother

wealth eventually swallows its owner

spread it around and blessings grow

hoard it and disaster arises

no wealth no disaster

flap your wings in the blue

Translation by Red Pine

Last Night’s Dream

Judy and I were at a convention of the nation’s top environmentalists. We were all in one big room. Before the meeting started, one of us went out in the hallway and discovered a troop of about ten poor whites, “trailer trash” types, who had been sent to kill us. None of them was holding a weapon at the moment—they’d laid them down while discussing how to do the job—so the guy who found them was able to round them up and march them into the big room. They were a mix of men and women, mostly men, and they all looked malnourished and poverty-stricken. Each one was carrying a copy of a letter that had been written in 1978 by the CEO of a major corporation. He’d originally sent it to one of the environmentalists present, threatening him with death for having stopped his company’s production of DDT. The CEO was finally making good on his 34-year-old threat, except that now he wanted to do away with all of us. Judy and I were chosen to read the letter out loud to the assembly. The letter was so badly written, though—incomplete sentences, mangled syntax—that we had to keep asking each other what the poor fellow seemed to be trying to say.

An Appropriate Word

I’ve been far too busy with my work on the book to post anything here lately. I do want to make one comment, however. There’s a tremendous amount of name calling that goes on in this country, and sometimes a name will stick and the object of scorn has to carry it around for years. “Tax and spend liberals” is one I can think of at the top of my head. Lately, I’ve been seeing a word being directed at the Republicans that I like because I think it’s accurate: Nihilist. I hope it sticks.

A Song

I’ve been trying to get to a new post regarding the nature of evil, but I keep running into obstructions. So, here’s an interim post, a song. I wrote it 40 years ago. It was true then and it’s true now. It’s a short song. It’s called Life.

Life goes on.

It’s ongoing.

On and on and on

and then it’s gone.

The Evil in Wisconsin

Tonight I was reading the readers’ comments attached to the New York Times article about the sick act the Republican party pulled off in Wisconsin, and I found myself hitting the recommend button on any post that said, “this is war.” I don’t know yet how that manifests itself. I’m not the kind who gets enthusiastic about wars—of any kind. But it’s clear that something needs to be done. The Republican party is evil. While it will destroy itself eventually—that’s a real universal law—it’s doing far too much harm to the common good right now to just stand by and wait. For starters, I sent some money to the Wisconsin Democratic party to help them in their recall efforts.

There are readers of this blog who dislike it it when I use the word “evil.” But it is the correct word. I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a speaking gig in Pasadena. When I get back I’m going to start work on a post dealing with my thoughts on evil.

The Craft of Writing

I started writing at an early age. In the second grade, I was into poetry. (I’d forgotten all about that until I received an e-mail from a classmate from elementary school who had seen the documentary and remembered me writing then.) In the third grade, I wrote a long detective story that took me months to finish. In the sixth grade, my specialty became humorous pieces that were heavy on language play. My writing took a more serious turn in high school when I decided that I wanted to be a novelist. I wrote short stories, poems, and songs until late in my senior year when I abandoned prose altogether and focused on becoming a singer/songwriter. From high school on, all my writing, regardless of form, was flowery and heavy with symbols, which was how I figured writing was supposed to be. It was easy to have beliefs then, and my writing was filled with my easy beliefs. Within two years of graduation, I was having serious trouble believing—in anything—and my writing, save for a piece here and a piece there, completely dried up. I didn’t write again until I began working on the preliminary material for The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

As I work on this new book (I’ve written more than 800 pages for this second draft alone), I’ve had to redevelop my working methods and my aims. I haven’t spent my entire life working at becoming a writer, so there’s a certain amount of bringing myself back up to speed. I’ve found that what works best—and I think it’s the only thing that really matters—is to say what you mean and mean what you say. That’s a tremendously difficult thing to do! And it’s a more than adequate goal. Good writing has electricity in it, but that electricity should be the result of getting down into the nerves. It arises naturally then.

I see very little writing nowadays that works in this direction. My sense is that most people who regard themselves as “serious writers” are enthralled with postmodernism, and postmodernism doesn’t recognize the existence of universals. So I don’t read postmodernist writers. I know the argument that says language needs to be elliptical and surprising in order to catch the jaded attention of today’s reader. But I don’t buy it. I think that postmodernism is, in fact, one of the forces working to destroy interest in literature. People will respond to truth, and, as rare as it is these days, I think we all recognize when something is “really real.”

I Didn’t Vote For This

A few days ago, Joe Biden called Julian Assange a “terrorist.” Regardless of what you think of Assange, “terrorist” is not the right word. In the 50s and 60s they would have called him a “communist.” It’s the very same syndrome at work. Biden was simply demonizing Assange. I didn’t vote for this kind of bullshit. It’s precisely what I was hoping we could move away from. Like a lot of people on the so-called Left, I’ve been increasingly disappointed with Obama and Company. I generally attribute the course they’ve taken to the influence of “The Empire,” of being in charge of the unholy entity that runs the world. But whatever the reason, they are losing me. Something still clings tenuously, but they are losing me.