{"id":8929,"date":"2017-12-14T21:23:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T04:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8929"},"modified":"2017-12-15T08:23:42","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T15:23:42","slug":"8929","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8929","title":{"rendered":"Woody Guthrie Got It Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Sunset, 9 December 2017, near Horsethief Falls, Teller County Colorado.<\/p><\/div>\n

I went camping with some friends last weekend.((Note the general absence of snow, which is disturbing when you’re up at 10,200 feet (3100 m.)). Some of my friends like to have music all the time, so there was a set of Bluetooth-enabled speakers and plenty of digitized music covering the last fifty years of American popular song.<\/p>\n

One song was older, however \u2014 Woody Guthrie’s classic “This Land is Your Land,<\/a>” composed in 1940. It’s been covered multiple times by many famous musicians.<\/p>\n

Only it hit me this time what an anthropocentric piece of Marxist crap it is.<\/p>\n

You have heard the refrain, “This land was made for you and me.” Let’s think about that for a moment. Ol’ Woody, if not a Communist himself \u2014 he certainly hung around with them, and he claimed to be one<\/a> \u2014 was expressing Marxist values there:\u00a0 There is nothing beyond “Man.” No gods, nothing supernatural. “Was made” does not really suggest that presence of a Creator; it’s just a statement of fact: All of this was put here (somehow) for us to use because we are the most important creatures in the world.<\/p>\n

Communist, capitalist, what’s the difference when they share this viewpoint?<\/p>\n

So I looked up at Sentinel Point<\/a> and thought, supposing Ol’ Woody had written, “You and I were made for this land”?<\/p>\n

It would not scan, for one thing. There would not be the gratifyingly drawn-out me-e-e-e<\/em> at the end. There is nothing in his lyrics<\/a> about responsibility or reciprocity; it’s mostly a diatribe against the idea of private property, so it has appealed to generations of disaffected intellectual backpackers.((Let’s have a show of hands.))<\/p>\n

But just as a thought experiment, turn it around in your head. “You and I were made for this land.” Wouldn’t we owe the land something? Wouldn’t we have to admit that we were not the only “owners” of it \u2014 a concept far beyond in Guthrie’s line about “As I went walking I saw a sign there \/ And on the sign it said ‘No Trespassing'” (talk about not scanning!)?<\/p>\n

The concept of “source of sacred value” is completely un-Marxist, but I have one, and it is not “Man as the highest good.”<\/p>\n

The next time I hear that song \u2014 and I am sure that I will \u2014 I am making that change, and a little pledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went camping with some friends last weekend.((Note the general absence of snow, which is disturbing when you’re up at 10,200 feet (3100 m.)). Some of my friends like to have music all the time, so there was a set of Bluetooth-enabled speakers and plenty of digitized music covering the last fifty years of American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169,315,34,48],"class_list":["post-8929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-capitalism","tag-marxism","tag-music","tag-nature-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-8929","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10477,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10477","url_meta":{"origin":8929,"position":0},"title":"Bejayus, It’s the Eco-Fairies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In the last of the four-part post about \"the cousins\" (start the series here), I raised the question of what do fairies look like. Here is the man who knows, says the (Irish) Independent: \u201cLooking at fairies on my farm is the same as looking at traffic in Dublin. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"agriculture\"","block_context":{"text":"agriculture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=agriculture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8327,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8327","url_meta":{"origin":8929,"position":1},"title":"Ancient Music: “Time Demands an End”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I often like to post re-creations of ancient music. Supposedly, the \"Song of Seikilos\" is the oldest that has music and lyrics. It is Greek, dating from around 100 CE. The words can be translated as, While you live, shine have no grief at all life exists only for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":957,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=957","url_meta":{"origin":8929,"position":2},"title":"Gallimaufry with Cocktails","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Having watched most of the \"Thin Man\" movies out of sequence, M. and I finished tonight with the last of them, Song of the Thin Man. It is notable for its proto-hipster dialog in some scenes and what I am sure are well-veiled cannabis references, slipped past the Hollywood\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8604,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8604","url_meta":{"origin":8929,"position":3},"title":"No “Neos” Here, We’re “Ethnic”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A letter from one of the leading Hellenic Pagan groups to the government of Lithuania supports a request by the Lithuanian Romuva for state recognition. Just as the Hellenic Ethnic Religion, Romuva is by no means a \u201cneo-pagan movement\u201d or a \u201cnew religious movement\u201d. It belongs to the category of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Romuva_flag-200x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":555,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=555","url_meta":{"origin":8929,"position":4},"title":"Scarborough FairListening to the Mediaeval\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Scarborough FairListening to the Mediaeval Baebes' short version of \"Scarborough Fair\" on Mirabilis, I got to thinking about the different lyrics of this old song.The version available at this site make it clear that the singer is asking his lover to perform a series of impossible tasks, for example, to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10818,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10818","url_meta":{"origin":8929,"position":5},"title":"A Proposal for Honoring the Spirit of the Poudre River","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 2, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I had to follow Wind over Tide, \"a folk band specializing in traditional music of the British Isles and Americas with special emphasis on tales of seafaring and adventure,\" which was kind of a challenge. The evening before I was scheduled to give the keynote address at the Fort Collins\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/floating-biologist.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8929"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8953,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8929\/revisions\/8953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}