Re: Imagination

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Caroll-- you may well be right. But when I mentioned "mystical
speculation" I was not thinking of St John of the Cross or a Zen
master.Perhaps I should have said metaphysical -- I meant the kinds of
questions people in all social classes have about humanity's place in
the universe, how to rightly align oneself with nature, why are we here
etc. Homer's greeks definitely asked these questions: they were not
materialistic atheists who thought life was just putting one foot in
front of the other. Of course they recognized the inevitability of death
(but they also believed in a shadowy post-life existence in hades). And
you can read the whole heroic enterprise--the quest for undying fame
through great deeds -- as a protest against that inevitability, or, more
existentially, the  meaninglessness of existence.In any case, I don't
think you can use one quote from one poem to summarize how the people of
Homer's day actually thought -- any more than shakespeare tells us all
we need to know about Elizabethans, or any one great contemporary writer
about ourselves.
  But you know?  who cares? Maybe, if there is ever a socialist world,
people will spend a great deal of time on metaphysical questions.  Maybe
(as i originally wrote and still think more likely) they will drop the
whole longing-for-the-ultimate thing aside and put that energy into sex
or gardening. maybe some will  choose one path, some the other. There
really is NO way to know in advance. We'll just have to take our
vitamins and hope we live long enough to find out.

Katha