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"…..And I will leave. But the birds will stay, singing;
and my garden will stay, with its green tree,
with its water well.
Many afternoons the skies will be blue and placid,
and the bells in the belfry will chime,
as they are chiming this very afternoon.
The people who have loved me will pass away,
and the town will burst anew every year.
But my spirit will always wander nostalgic
in the same recondite corner of my flowery garden."
--Juan Ramon Jimenez; El Viaje Definitivo.
In the 1940s, Evelyn Hallock lived in this house, along with her husband and their children. She had been raised on the next farm west on the old turnpike, in a family that settled there many generations ago, in the late 1700s. As a local/regional historian, I know a little about Evelyn from reading the deed, and from talking to some of her extended family members who have long since moved out of this area.
Her brother rebuilt one of the brick fireplaces, with stones from the creek. She and her husband were married in front of it, much as my wife and I were after we bought the property. She died here a few years later, leaving her husband and two young sons. Sometimes, I think I know the most about her, from the enormous flower gardens she created, that spanned the entire border of the large lawn.
In the 1980s, when what the neighbors refer to as "the hippie commune" lived here, they worked as landscapers. They sold a significant amount of the flowers, though there are still more than enough here. My wife has given hundreds to family and friends when she separates bulbs, and transplants them.
This spring, I’ve replanted quite a few out near The Pond. Though I’m no longer able to do the hard work, my children dig the ground, bring the bulbs out, and bring piles of small field stones out for me. I sit, plant the bulbs, and make terraces of miniature stone walls around them. The boys set larger flat stones between some of them, for walkways. I like to think that Evelyn would approve.
After he built the pond a few years ago, my cousin noted that in the future, people will assume that it "has always been here." Last weekend, D said these terraced flower gardens give the pond "character." Those are two different concepts, and as I sit here in the cabin watching the rain fall, making thousands of tiny waves on the pond’s surface, it’s the type of thing that I like to think about.
The word "character" has numerous meanings, which range from a description of a place, an individual (such as an eccentric), to a nation. Recently, as a result of reading a "new" Erich Fromm book on violence – then re-reading a pile of Fromm’s other works – I like to think of it in a slightly different context. Fromm uses "character" to describe an individual’s personality structure, the root of their behaviors. He starts with the genetic and environmental development of the child, and then identifies the role of that individual (including character and behavior) within their cultural setting.
Societies provide the fertile soil from which certain character traits grow. A healthy society promotes very different character traits than does an unhealthy one. Obviously, just as with a dysfunction family, there is a range of potentials that individuals can meet. However, an unhealthy society, like a diseased family system, reinforces and rewards sick behaviors – and sick behaviors are rooted in unhealthy character structures.
Fromm’s classic works focus upon two types of character structures, each which contains a range of behaviors, that relate to the flower gardens. that Evelyn created. "To Have or To Be?" is the title of his 1976 book which reviewed and summed up this question. This work lead to college professors across the country using two poems about an individual’s approach to a flower, to sum this up. The first is by English poet Tennyson, the second by the Japanese poet Basho:
"Flower in a crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower – but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."
--Tennyson
"When I look carefully
I see the nazuna blooming
By the hedge."
--Basho
Tennyson, who wrote this in the 1800s, sought to understand the flower by picking/owning it. Basho, who wrote his in the 1600s, sought to understand the flower by looking at it. To have, or to be?
In our society, character traits such as egotism, selfishness, and greed, are not so much the result of the individual’s influence on "the system," as the system’s influence on the individual. Or, as Fromm wrote, these character traits are the "products of social circumstance."
Those who do not participate in the behaviors caused by such character traits are either marginalized or crushed by them. Other societies which did not reflect this character structure are referred to as ""primitive," and its members as "child-like." Those individuals who do not participate in today’s rat-race are those "eccentrics" that I mentioned earlier. And many more are like the victims of an abusive family system, who are silenced by feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, by the madness and cruelty of the system.
Gesellschaft overwhelms Gemeinshaft, just as surely as the modern consumers become a cluster in the edge cities’ shopping malls, rather than participants in a democratic society by meeting in the public commons. When the consumers return home, they may be consumed by outrage when they watch cable TV, and hear of another sick fiend kidnapping and torturing an innocent child. At the same time, they turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the reports of the Dick Cheney - Donald Rumsfeld – George W. Bush torture "program."
The vulture capitalism that has consumed the inner humanity of its citizens, and which feasts upon the carcass of our Constitutional democracy, can only self-destruct. It is impossible for it to take just actions, because such actions can never come from such a character structure. The only thing that can change are people, and the only people who can even begin to institute meaningful change are those eccentrics and marginalized "family members" who recognize how sick the machine is.
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