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IX. The Politics
of Storytelling
Caption: Mayan King with Court
And Now For a Review of the Hero as Embodied Leader--
Each election is exciting and history-making in some way.
Also, elections illustrate the kind of influence that cultural myths hold for
us. In the confusion and hubbub of the election results, the citizens of this
country were remarkably calm; interested, but calm. In times past, the changeover of
power was the most threatening thing that could happen - perhaps even more earth-shaking
than natural or celestial events (or celestial events were immediately summoned to explain
the rupture that accompanied the change of power).
In ancient Scandinavia, it was
customary for supporters of the chief to throw themselves off a cliff into the ocean in
grief. Other cultures had similarly drastic measures to accompany this kind of
upset. Even right now, in some other lands, the ruler is a personal symbol, one
whose defeat or death will usually be accompanied by mayhem and murder. But in our
country today, even a suspension of results brings forth merely a bit of carping in the
press and a general feeling that the rule of law is more important than the man, the
symbol more important than the individual, and that our fellow Americans will proceed
fairly to settle the dispute.
Let us return to the earliest folklore we know about the Ruler and take a
look at the way cultures have evolved.
What the King or Ruler
Represented - as seen
in Ancient China
Ancient China, the Shang Dynasty 1700
to 1027 B.C. : In addition to his secular position, the king was the
head of the ancestor-and spirit-worship cult. Evidence from the royal tombs indicates
that royal
personages were buried with articles of value, presumably for use in the afterlife.
Perhaps
for the same reason, hundreds of commoners, who may have been slaves, were buried alive
with the royal corpse.
The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than
any other, from
1027 to 221 B.C. It was philosophers of this period who first enunciated the doctrine
of the "mandate of heaven" (tianming or ), the notion that the ruler (the
"son of
heaven" or ) governed by divine right but that his dethronement would prove that
he had lost the mandate. The doctrine explained and justified the demise of the two
earlier dynasties and at the same time supported the legitimacy of present and future
rulers.
Statue of Qin Shihuang
The first Emperor of China and founder of the Qin Dynasty,
Qin Shihuang
(259-210 B.C.), was known as a conqueror, an enlightened leader, a merciless
tyrant, a builder, and a destroyer. During his 29 years of rule, he united the country
after five centuries of strife and transformed the land into what we now call China.
He instituted a centralized government that lasted until 1911, standardized
currency, set up a code of law, a uniform system of weights and measures, and
standardized script. He built a network of roads leading from his capital city of
Xianyang, and linked protective walls built to deter raiding nomads into 3,000
kilometers of the Great Wall that now stretches for 6,000 kilometers.
Caption: Ancient Chinese Pyramid Structure
the process then, has tended toward less and less physical
reliance on the presence of the ruler and more and more on the symbolic, mythic nature of
the leadership.
side note:
Quasi-political figures can also symbolically influence our allegiances.
Granbury dig for supposed body of Jesse James misses mark; Dalton search finds
wrong body
By Bill Hanna
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Never mind proving J. Frank Dalton was Jesse James.
How about simply finding Dalton's remains?
A much-ballyhooed exhumation on May 30 at Granbury Cemetery drew hordes of reporters, TV
crews, avowed relatives and onlookers, including convicted con man Billy Sol Estes.
Amid the hoopla, no one realized that the wrong remains had been unearthed.
"I feel like I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders," said a red-faced
Bud Hardcastle, the Oklahoma used-car salesman who has tirelessly championed the theory
that Dalton was the legendary train robber.
"You can't imagine what a bad day this is for me. It is not a happy day," he
said from Purcell, Okla. Apparently, the "Jesse Woodson James" headstone
was placed over the wrong grave, compelling scientists to remove a steel vault instead of
the wooden casket most believe holds Dalton. The history books say that James was
shot and killed on April 3, 1882. In 1996, DNA test results confirmed that James' remains
are in a Kearney, Mo., grave. But Hardcastle and other revisionists have attacked the
test's accuracy, insisting that the bandit faked his death and assumed a double life
before dying a natural death in Texas. Late in his life, Dalton claimed to be the
legendary train robber, sometimes charging admission for the curious to
view him. An ailing Dalton finally came to Granbury to die in 1951. If Dalton were
James, he would have been 104 at the time of his death.
David Glassman, a Southwest Texas State forensic anthropologist, said there were questions
when two caskets were found so close together on the day of the exhumation. But he
believed that the court order only allowed his team to remove the casket directly under
the headstone.
"I knew it wasn't Dalton the day after the exhumation," Glassman said from San
Marcos. "It was a male, but the age was wrong. From looking at the bones, it wasn't a
103-year-old man."
Hardcastle said the remains may belong to Henry Holland, a one-armed man who may have
married into the Rash family. The Rashes cared for Dalton in the last days of his life.
Local amateur historian Mary Kate Durham was still flabbergasted by the turn of the
events. The 75-year-old Granbury resident said that locals had wondered about the two
caskets in recent weeks but were stunned by the latest news. "I found it 100
percent frustrating," Durham said from Granbury. "We thought we were through. It
was all a big surprise. Nobody ever heard of W.H. Holland." The wrong casket is
the latest setback for Hardcastle.
A previous Hood County judge refused to grant an exhumation order, then a University of
North Texas scientist backed out when Hardcastle finally obtained an order.
Now, Hardcastle has spent about $8,000 in legal fees and must hold another exhumation
hearing if he wants to remove the wooden casket.
"I don't know how to quit," Hardcastle said. "I'm not a quitter. I've gone
this far; I think the truth needs to be proven, but financially it's not easy to do."
Hood County Judge Linda Steen said yesterday that she would consider signing another
exhumation order, though no hearing is scheduled.
Glassman said he would continue to participate in the Jesse James saga if the circus-like
atmosphere of the first exhumation isn't repeated. "If a court order does come
forward, we are going to do it in such a way to close off the cemetery from everyone but
my team," Glassman said. "Since this is a wooden casket, it will be a much
slower process. I would anticipate
it taking two days, and we would have to go through it layer by layer." Any DNA
samples would be sent to David Glenn Smith, an anthropology professor at the University of
California at Davis.
Durham would still like to know whether James is in the cemetery, but the local historian
is getting tired of the unrelenting attention focused on her hometown.
"The chamber of commerce and the visitors center say this has all been good for
tourism, that this has brought more people to Granbury," Durham said. "But,
right now, we're getting ready for the Fourth of July, and we don't have room for one more
visitor."
Bill Hanna, (817) 390-7698
billhanna@star-telegram.com
To close, a piece of general "political" folklore that
delights me. Each time I have seen this appear in the e-mail circulations, another
few individual reasons for crossing the road have been added. This is a perfect
example of folk material, generated by the "folk"--and always growing.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a
chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but
also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with
such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely
chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its
pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered
within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is
equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because
structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find
out.
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would
let it take.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes
also across you.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its
sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it
would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of
its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated
that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and
therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the
chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the
objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which
caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed
the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you meet the chicken on the road, kill it.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing
events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian
biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly
relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was
on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored)
reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out
of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
end Lecture IX.
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