The Monkey-Mind Gang: Spiritual Calamity and Edward Abbey
Below Movie Trail, North Sandia, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Photo Aztlan Times
Introduction
“One time, Ed Abbey and I were talking about an upcoming election. Ed said to me, “I’m a registered anarchist.”
I asked him, “How long have you been a registered anarchist?”
Ed said, “Oh, about five thousand years.”
(Headed Into the Wind, Jack Loeffler. UNM Press, 2019)
Albuquerque in summertime can get stiflingly hot, oftentimes reaching into the 100’s. Fortunately, one can seek reprieve by venturing high into the nearby Sandia Mountains and its shaded forest; which is exactly what I found myself doing one recent summer’s day. In this instance, the destination was “Movie Trail” at 8,340 feet above Albuquerque; constructed in the early 1960’s for the filming of Universal Pictures’ Lonely are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas, with a screenplay from renowned black-listed writer, Dalton Trumbo, and adapted from a novel by Albuquerque resident and University of New Mexico graduate student in philosophy; one Edward Abbey.
That novel was The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale in a New Time (1956), Abbey’s first, set in Albuquerque, and the vehicle which brought him notoriety. The opportunity to produce Abbey’s book arose in the aftermath of the rousing success that was Spartacus, when its star, Kirk Douglas, found himself in the enviable position of being in control of his next career move, he first optioned, then developed young Abbey’s Western. However, the studio disliked the title, and despite Douglas’ objection, The Brave Cowboy is invariably released as The Lonely are the Brave in 1962.
The film only garnered meager box-office returns - though Douglas was nominated for a BAFTA award in 1963 in the Best Foreign Actor category (Burt Lancaster, however, won for The Birdman of Alcatraz). The film has stood the test of time, though, and is a cult classic on Rotten Tomatoes (93%). It’s also widely circulated that Douglas consistently maintained that his performance in the film was his favorite of them all.
One-Sheet for “Lonely are the Brave.” Copyright Universal Pictures 1962.
The Master’s Thesis Abbey finally completes at UNM in 1962, three years after The Brave Cowboy is published, Anarchism and the Morality of Violence, seems to be a conscious effort to lay the groundwork for his ensuing fictions, and, indeed, much of Abbey’s work is rooted in the anarchist canon; its themes directing his life choices over the years; leading to many escapades along the way. And so, this east-coast transplant to the southwest; this anarchist, self-described lone-wolf and border-line Don Juan, is a complex character: on the one hand, a brilliant dreamer who is tied to the natural world in a way few are, on the other, a crass, cynical, racist, and sexist curmudgeon – although, this sort of dichotomy isn’t such a big deal; for, if one were to truly examine themselves it would be evident these differences aren’t exclusive to Abbey, but reside in all of us to varying degrees.
To his credit, Abbey did acknowledge his lower self, writing about it about as honestly as one can. Yet, recognizing and writing about a pattern, and actively seeking to change it are two completely different matters. The fact is, Abbey relished in his own particular brand of barbarism, wearing it as a sort of badge of honor to those anarchists he studied and emulated. He also became a sort of spiritual guide to some – though it’s safe to say Abbey would be uncomfortable with the “spiritual” label being applied to him. He was somewhat of a matter-of-fact sort of guy, applying that mindset to people, places, events, and a variety of other circumstances with a consistently critical eye.
Regarding Abbeys graduate thesis, he clearly says in his Introduction that the entire purpose of the work is to answer two fundamental questions regarding anarchy’s lineage:
(1) To what extent is the traditional association of anarchism and violence warranted?
(2) In so far as the association is a valid one, what arguments have the anarchists presented, explicitly or implicitly, to justify the use of violence?
Abbey’s response to these questions?
(1) It’s not
(2) None.
As becomes evident over the years, Abbey promotes a personal sort of anarchy. One focused more on institutions and infrastructure, then on, say…Kings, or Presidents. In the Introduction to his Master’s thesis, he gives his reason for his staunch support of anarchy, implicitly stating:
“The importance of anarchism lies in the fact that it is alone among contemporary political doctrines in opposing the institution of the state, stressing the danger while denying the necessity of centralized authority. Socialism, Communism, and what is at present called Democratic Capitalism (the Welfare State) have, on the other hand, both accommodated themselves to and actively encouraged the growth of the national state. Thus supported from within and without (through international rivalry) the state has become the paramount institution of modern civilization, and exerts an increasing degree of control over the lives of all who live beneath its domination.”
(Anarchism and the Morality of Violence. Chapter1, Introduction, p. 1.)
Despite Abbey’s promulgation of anarchy, as America became more entrenched in the morass of bi-partisan bickering – even before corporations wanted to be considered as individuals – anarchy is merely a vague concept which only periodically arises, and generally in a derogatory manner. By the time the satirical and cynical 80’s arrived, Abbey was all-in on the bitterness; growing increasingly despondent, as most of us were. Due to this, there is a constant stream of a certain type of dissatisfaction which runs through his work; a part of Abbey that wants to dejectedly hide out in the desert just to get away from the endless wave of morons; go check out cactus flowers and have a sip of something strong to make oneself feel better.
Perhaps being alone in the desert for extended stretches blinded Abbey to the fact that unfortunately for anarchy, the writing was on the wall. Commercialism had come, proving to be the biggest steamroller of them all. Commodification took sway, stealing any movement’s most alluring points by attributing them to specific people, places, or items, then monetizing these (think the beret, or the slogan t-shirt). In addition to this tragedy, the great, ever-growing dichotomy of America: Left vs. Right, Black vs. White, Metropolitan vs. Rural, grew wider and wider; battle lines drawn. Eventually, Abbey came to see America as a sinking ship with only one life raft; the question became, who went down with the ship, and who rode in the raft?
Were it up to Abbey, those going down with the ship would include the greedy and the rapacious, the political and corrupt, the liberal and sexually liberated; as well as a good deal of minorities. Later in life this provincial outlook becomes increasingly problematic for Abbey; limiting his broad appeal and cementing his legacy as racist and sexist. In the end, large swaths of the ecology movement which championed him in his prime, eventually turned on him.
Prime example of this is mentioned in an article by Keith Goetzman in the Utne Reader online, entitled Was Edward Abbey Racist and Sexist? (July 30th, 2009), wherein Goetzman quotes an Earth First writer going by the pseudonym of S@sh@, who writes in the July-August journal:
“One quick look at Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang exposes the racism and sexism that poisoned the movement throughout the 1980s. Its transparently patriarchal depictions of gender stereotypes show up throughout the book and are even more pervasive in Abbey’s disturbing diary, Confessions of a Barbarian.”
In addition to pointing out the racist and sexist rap hung on Abbey by S@sh@, Goetzman himself goes on to point out Abbey’s shortcomings by quoting from Confessions of a Barbarian himself regarding Abbey’s racist side:
“According to the morning newspaper, the population of America will reach 267 million by 2000 AD. An increase of forty million, or about one-sixth, in only seventeen years! And the racial composition of the population will also change considerably: the white birth rate is about sixty per thousand females, the Negro rate eighty-three per thousand, and the Hispanic rate ninety-six per thousand.
Am I a racist? I guess I am. I certainly do not wish to live in a society dominated by blacks, or Mexicans, or Orientals. Look at Africa, at Mexico, at Asia.
Garrett Hardin [the author of Tragedy of the Commons] compares our situation to an overcrowded lifeboat in a sea of drowning bodies. If we take more aboard, the boat will be swamped and we’ll all go under. Militarize our borders. The lifeboat is listing.”
To be fair, both Goetzman and S@sh@ eventually address Abbey’s undeniable contributions to a budding ecology movement. Eventually though, Goetzman presciently points to how the socio-political reality of Abbey’s point of view prominently mirrors current far-right fringe groups:
“Abbey’s views would fit right in among today’s vigilante border militias, white-power groups, and right-wing talk-radio haters.”
To this point, S@sh@ wisely summarizes:
“To be sure, he was not alone in his oppressive beliefs; it was a different time, and they pervaded and hampered the whole EF! movement. … [But] Remember, the revolutionary presence that drove Abbey and his minions away created space for the philosophical introductions of eco-feminism, deep ecology, and bio-centrism. We should never return to the petulant and puerile egoism of certain old traditions.”
Placing Abbey in the company of the far right and the militant, Goetzman exposes the vast chasm which had come to separate Abbey from fellow writers and journalists of his time. We contend that Abbey hewed to a divisive brand of anarchy, both internally and externally, and over time this affected his work, and consequentially, its options for publication.
Saliently, S@sh@ points to the fact it was a ‘different time’ and Abbey’s racist and sexist beliefs were widespread among most in the early ecology movement. This is a relevant point, for everything has its time and place, and to a certain degree, we are all victim of the moment, a product of our time; Abbey no different. It’s also an important topic – time - and although S@sh@ uses it regarding a specific era, more often than not it is used as a measuring stick for our existence; how long one’s time on the earthly plane lasts. This is time in a linear form. That is, there is a point a and point b, or a beginning and an end. We use this sort of timekeeping for such mundane matters as keeping track of how many hours one sits in class; on the job, or are waiting for someone.
However, it should be mentioned this is merely one of time’s forms. Another, older, version is cyclical time, that is, time with no beginning, no end. In cyclical time, past, present, and future inter-mingle in one’s mind simultaneously, intermittently, based on purposeful intention. In the past of the American Southwest, this cyclical brand of time ruled the day; practiced for eons by a priestly class and various individuals within the confines of the ceremonial kivas of Southwestern Pueblos of the area, as well as in the hogans and plains teepees; cyclical time is the frequency which resonated therein, even to this day. This is also the basis of Zen mind, and both these concepts were all around Abbey in his lifetime, yet, he remained impervious to them, choosing to concentrate on political, ecological, and social change through his writing and cinema.
That is, despite being surrounded by the view of cyclical time for most his adult life, Abbey often chose to lose himself in the moment, to the constraints of linear time; subject to his raw emotions and the immediacy of it all. On the one hand, this approach works for him in the regard it makes for great comedy, which is a hallmark of his writing. On the other, extended periods in this sort of mindset can oftentimes lead one to a deeply cynical approach, which generally results in dramatic scenarios.
Beginning with the youthful Abbey and his time in the Beat-era; a time full of hope and transformation of the open West; of being on the road, we travel through the decades, witnessing his impressionistic world via his journals, up through the rough-and-tumble Eighties, where we find a deeply cynical Abbey; aloof of spirituality, yet hewing towards it in his own, distinctive manner. This is a theme in his life; closeness to the unseen and indescribable a ship he passes in the night, yet never sets sail in its direction. To get to the bottom of Abbey’s deep spiritual disdain, one realized it would be necessary to view the problem from the perspective of cyclical time; seeing neither yin nor yang, but the true non-duality of their oneness. And while we recognized this sort of jargon might send Ed into histrionics, we continued in this vein because it is informative and has many truths therein.”
Chapter One: Padmasambhava’s Prediction & Abbey’s Beatnik Bones
Still photo from “Lonely are the Brave,” copyright Universal Pictures. Re-Worked by Aztlan Times.
“When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered across the face of the earth like ants, and the dharma will come to the land of the red man.”
-- Tibetan Buddhist Master Padmasambhava in the 8th century.
In case you’re wondering what the above prognostication from an 8th century Tibetan Monk has to do with Edward Abbey; the answer is that Lonely are the Brave happens to have a particular scene which illustrates Padmasambhava’s above quote perfectly.
In the opening scenes of the film, the Cowboy (Kirk Douglas), prepares a campfire for a breakfast of coffee and beans. The setting is timeless American West: Cowboy out on open mesa…cactus and chamisa; the solitude of the moment mesmerizing…when, out of nowhere, the roar of a jet engine ripping across the morning sky breaks the silence. From the ground-level, panned-up, one-shot of the Cowboy, we pull back to reveal the sky above and the lone jet deafeningly speeding across; the iron bird which flies in the land of the red man.
We offer the above Lonely are the Brave scene not only as a visual depiction of Padmasambhava’s words, but as a brilliant interpretation of the passage from whence it came, which is from The Brave Cowboy, Chapter One:
“The silence was intense, burning, infinite. He could hear the silence, or what seemed like its music, the singing of the blood through his ears.
Far to the southeast, from the direction of the giant military base adjoining The Factory, came the shattering roar of a jet engine. The sound rose, drove like an iron wedge through the sky, scoring the air with its transparent vibration. Then retracted, faded, died, and the vast silence closed in again, and sealed its perfect dome over the desert and the river and the valley.”
(The Brave Cowboy, pgs. 7-8)
To be clear, our point is not that Abbey used Padmasambhava’s foretelling of the East/West meeting of cultures as a theme in his work; but to demonstrate that although Buddhism was all around him, he remained somewhat contemptuous of its tenets and culture; unaffected by its views, yet often danced around its core concepts through his own images and words. Unfortunately, Abbey seemed to mistakenly connote Buddhism with mysticism somehow; seeing mysticism as nothing more than imaginative fancy, which, we would argue is due to the fact Abbey’s soul and psyche were Occidental and modern to the core. And so, although Abbey was surrounded by Buddhist, as well as Native American cyclical thought, he remained an impenetrable stone in their respective streams; unaffected by their precepts and true to his European roots.
In his youth, Abbey hitched rail-cars out west, much like Kerouac and the Beats, and back then was apparently somewhat open to their Buddhist ramblings, as demonstrated by the following passage from Confessions of a Barbarian, a collection from Abbey’s notebooks over the years:
September 3, 1956 – Arches
You cappuccino drinkers! What right have YOU to be so wise, so dull, so blasé and jaded, so conservative, so timid, so morose and defensive? At your age! So bored with protest, so disdainful of revolt, so tired tired tired of the straight and angry statement! What have you done to EARN your indifference?
“I say hurrah for Ginsberg, hurrah for Rexroth, hurrah for Kerouac, hurrah for Miller and Jeffers and Mailer and Abbey and Williams and Dean Moriarty!”
(p. 151)
While in the mid-1950’s Abbey exuberantly cheered these Beat figures, he also simultaneously critiqued the college-age youth of the time which generally constituted that group, which is more about Abbey’s penchant for judging those around him, the process oftentimes sending him on extended tirades; in time this theme would predominate his novels, life, and thought processes.
There are also a couple of major distinctions between the Beats and Abbey which separate them further. Once again, we’ll turn to Abbey and his notebooks to give a sense of what we mean:
September 16, 1959 – Albuquerque
JAZZ: Music for sophisticated patriots. Night music. Midnight music. Lonesome afternoon music. The blue sax. The squealing trumpet. The obedient drums. Amazing virtuosity exercised around a pill. Insipid. Tame. Deliberately dull. Ah, tedium! (Who wants to live forever?) An idiot’s paradise. A tight narrow badly constricted kind of art. Can’t break the limits without self-contradiction, without ceasing to be jazz. A long long way from Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy. A long way down.
Jazz: The destruction of melody. The rigid meter. The elaboration and direction of deliberately banal tunes. Nightclub music. Cigarettes and boredom. The music of boredom, bored people. The urban ennui. Big-city music. American? The American Negro loose in the slums. Crafty, cunning, subtle, arid music. Cool and dry. No emotion, no passion, no blood and guts. The mechanical meter. (Shuffle dance.)
Industrial rhythm. Classicism. Factory-style.
To hell with jazz!
(p.156-7)
While Abbey wrote this observation about the Beats in 1956, alone in Arches, safe in the solitude of desolate wilderness, by 1959, he’s back in the urban mix of Albuquerque and seems to have gone from celebrating the early Beats, to somewhat condemning them and their culture. Aside from his harsh criticism of Jazz (which the Beats loved), Abbey also exposes his ideas on race, which would come to define him and his worldview: that is, whereas the Beats admired and somewhat emulated African-American culture, Abbey obliquely critiques it by its association with Jazz; this the first of many tirades regarding race: Abbey’s Achilles heel.
However, for now, let’s stick to Abbey’s rejection of Eastern thought and its affiliated trappings of mysticism and the unseen and unknown. By way of comparison, we’ll use one of Abbey’s contemporaries whom he admired, yet never really got to know - novelist Peter Matthiessen.
Matthiessen was also an East-Coaster, and like Abbey, served in WWII, and was also a great lover of nature. Later in life he came to Buddhism, becoming a staunch adherent and teacher in his own right. Also, his voluminous work In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, centered around the Wounded Knee Incident, wherein two FBI agents were killed, and the subsequent 1976 trial and conviction of AIM (American Indian Movement) activist, Leonard Peltier, for the crime was produced at great personal risk to Mattheissen. The book was pulled from the shelves for several years due to an FBI agent and the South Dakota Governor suing Matthiessen for his account, although Matthiessen eventually prevailed in the case, and in the process drew considerable attention to the plight of the Lakota Sioux, as well as the rest of Native America.
In the following passage from Confessions of a Barbarian, Abbey reacts to a NY Times book reviewer who has connected him with Matthiessen, and consequentially to a ‘mystical’ element.
September 1982 - Tucson
My “friend” Hoagland says, in his NY Times review of The Snow Leopard (a novel by Peter Matthiessen), that I am some kind of mystic, and guilty of “cranky quasi-political pronouncements…Cranky! I say, that’s not nice. And what the phuck does he mean anyhow? I’ve always ridiculed mysticism – which is why my books sell even worse in California than in New York.
(p.260)
As is clearly evident by the above quote, Abbey’s critique of mysticism and its movements, which spread across the American Southwest in his time, is set in stone. What’s also evident is that he frequently engages in biting, satirical witticisms. Indeed, Abbey’s sense of humor resonates with the times in that it pokes fun at others in a xenophobic, sexist, and racist manner. And, as is well noted throughout time, sarcasm is the most violent form of humor. However, it should be noted Abbey’s resentment extended to his peers, as well:
Just read Matthiessen’s Snow Leopard. Good Writing, but – there’s something ludicrous and pathetic in the spectacle of these rich Americans going all the way to Nepal, trekking through the Himalaya, followed by a string of porters bearing the white man’s burden, spending thousands of dollars, in order to – “find themselves”! Good Christ! Why didn’t he just stay home and hike the Catskills? Traverse Long Island on a skateboard? The colossal egoism of these soul-searchers. What makes them think their useless pitiful souls are so godawful important?
(p.319)
Within the tempest of Abbey’s emotional response to Matthiessen’s book there are several meaningful expositions. The first being that Abbey has no problem making sweeping judgements regarding large groups of people based on a few scant facts. Secondly, regarding race, Abbey seems to vacillate between playing benevolent protector of minorities and severe critic of them; in either case, he makes sensationalist proclamations even though he has extremely limited access to those groups he judges, i.e., he oftentimes relies on second-hand information or distant observation regarding non-Caucasian cultures and their daily practices to formulate his opinion of them. The irony is that the Southwest population of his adopted home is primarily non-Caucasian, a centuries-old mix of Hispano-Native American “mestizos,” whose culture predates the formation of the United States, and has a wealth of localized knowledge and customs unique to itself. And yet, over his time there, Abbey remains aloof of these, focusing on the negative aspects of said culture, going so far as to extensively write about it in earnest over the years, letting his disdain be known.
It is also widely understood Abbey reveled in his frankness, eschewing any sense of conforming to any given social situation, as demonstrated by this passage from Confessions of a Barbarian editor and long-time Abbey cohort, David Peterson, regarding how he compiled the contents from Abbey’s notebooks for Confessions:
“In making the editorial choices necessitated by this nearly fourfold compression of the journals. I have taken great care not to “sanitize” Abbey by eschewing an inordinate proportion of material that may strike some as offensive. To cater to “correctness” would be to betray both the man and his dedication to candidness. It would also be cheating readers both now and in the future, since a “politically correct” Edward Abbey would be – well, no Edward Abbey at all.
(Confessions, Introduction, p.xi)
If one were to contrast this sort of “frankness” with the first chapter of Peter Matthiessen’s Nine-Headed Dragon River (Shambhala Press, 1986), wherein Matthiessen recounts the summer’s day in 1969 he returned to his Sagaponack, Long Island home after a seven-month excursion in Africa, and is offended by finding three small Japanese men hanging-out in his driveway, who he later discovers are guests of his wife, Debra Love, and in fact are Zen Monks. Surprisingly, over the years, though, Matthiessen becomes more involved in Zen, developing relationships with the three monks that were in his driveway that summer’s day, and in time, learns that upon their meeting they had perceived his unenlightened condition, shook their shining bald heads in unison, sighed, and said, “Poor Debbo-lah.”
Contrast Matthiessen’s frank assessment of his spiritual and moral growth; his deep understanding nearly two decades later of what was previously a rather limited worldview, with the following excerpt from Abbey’s Confessions regarding his own self-reflection:
May 12, 1983 – Tucson
“I do not want to become a grouchy, growling, grumpy old man. Do not want to become cranky and quarrelsome. Would rather be like some Zen saint, cheerful and careless and reckless and foolish and generous and patient and somewhat detached and comical and ironical and imical (not inimical) and spry and relaxed and lucky and happy (life is too short for grief, even good grief) and healthy and nimble and active and sexy and zany and hexy and gamy…and what the hell!
He done his best.”
(p.319)
Ironically, Abbey and Matthiessen were both born in 1927, and Abbey is fifty-six when he writes the above quote; and although it is merely a passage in Abbey’s diary, it’s evident he meant it to be published someday; i.e., Abbey is keenly aware of the fact he is entertaining, hence the humorous tone his passages take. So, to a certain extent, Abbey is posturing.
However, what becomes evident in his description of Zen “saints,” cheerful and careless and reckless and foolish and generous and patient and somewhat detached and comical and ironical and imical (not inimical), is that Abbey doesn’t have the faintest idea of how Zen bodhisattvas (Saints are a Catholic thing), behave. Here, Abbey has conflated his egotistical desires with a second-hand interpretation of how enlightened beings purportedly behave. Once again, it makes for good entertainment, but there are no ‘Zen bones’ beneath the skin of that statement.
The passing years of one’s life afford each of us the opportunity to expand our horizons, reach deeper levels of understanding; witness and experience good and bad sets of circumstances, and in their aftermath, engage in thoughtful reflection regarding them. However, Abbey shuns the rocky road of personal growth by admitting to himself and others he’s incapable of it, falling back on his “Aw, shucks” folksy-excuse of he done his best; as if his failure were something so benign as being unable to eat one’s veggies because of the bad taste.
Indeed, the spiritual counterpart of having to ‘eat one’s veggies’ is oftentimes just as revolting and difficult to initiate. Admitting one is wrong can be hard; humble pie rarely tastes good, and having to wash it down with sober reflection can be downright loathsome. Increasingly, we look to the circumstantial factors involved in our less-than valorous actions, whether they be cultural, political, medical, or innate, rarely getting to the point where we can enumerate all these destructive tendencies without digressing on an emotional tirade; never getting to the point of personal reflection that famed Oedipus did, and realize that, yes, indeed, it was us that did this ‘terrible thing to our city.’ In any event, Abbey never seemed to have that Oedipal epiphany, and over the years fashioned his own view of the sacred, religion, and how the universe works through the eyes of an anarchist; a move which, in the end would have debilitating consequences.
Chapter Two: Jesus is Not All Right with Me: Abbey’s Long Struggle with Christianity
“There are, for example, privileged places, qualitatively different from all others – a man’s birthplace, or the scenes of his first love, or certain places in the first foreign city he visited in youth. Even for the most frankly nonreligious man, all these places still retain an exceptional, a unique quality; they are the “holy places” of his private universe, as if it were in such spots that he had received the revelation of a reality other that in which he participates through his ordinary daily life”
- Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane
In his 1858 work De la Justice dans la Revolution et dans L’Eglise, (Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church), French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon offers a rare glimpse into the relationship between anarchy and religion. In said work, Proudhon delves into the creation of God, the history of the church, marriage, and love, as well as the inequality of the sexes to detail his concept of the “moral equilibrium,” based on self-respect of the individual and a subsequent condition of mutual societal respect.
The problem with the world as it is, according to Proudhon, is that it is a sick, divided society; sick because its material interests are divorced from its spiritual interests, and this leads to what he refers to as “moral unbalance.” According to Proudhon, the only way to eliminate this schism and restore social peace is by reuniting the material (equality) with the spiritual (liberty) under the reign of justice. In true anarchist fashion, Proudhon circumvents any mention of the Church (be it Catholic or Christian), by affiliating the spiritual with liberty; a sense of freedom divorced from the material which promises equality. The problem with this idea is that it rarely delivers.
This removal of organized religion from the equation of the individual to the godhead was innovative for its time in Europe, as was the hard look at the pervasive inequality of the sexes. Yet, while Proudhon and his cohort may have written about and imagined this egalitarian approach, the reality is most of these ideas failed to gain any traction for the long haul. However, the impetus to connect to the spiritual the French anarchists strove towards is widespread in humanity to varying degrees; i.e., some will make it their prerogative, or profession, while others may spend more time and energy denying its existence, rather than seeking to connect with it.
Of course, Abbey falls into the latter category, and as we shall see, this is evident in his writing. For, there can be no doubt Abbey likes to control his “religious” experiences, or as Eliade refers to them in the above quote, the “holy places of our private universes.” Yet, for Abbey, attached to this is a deep dislike of Christianity. For example, early on in his diaries, he takes many subjects to task for their purported “Christian” influence.
Such is the case in the following excerpt from Abbey’s journals, where he critiques Hamlet:
Is Hamlet a tragedy? Or a muddled farce? A little of both, I would say, though a little more the latter. First thing, of course, the Christian metaphysic underlying of the play has to be ignored; for how can death be taken seriously if it is merely the gateway to Hollywood? (I need not specify an alternative; Heaven and Hell are fundamentally identical, and Hollywood easily embrace both.) And death, real and honest death is essential in tragedy, and since most Englishmen have suspended their Christianity and taken death, not the doctrine of immortality, as something real and important.
Good. With Christianity on the shelf: we can look at things clearly. It soon becomes apparent that the essential conflict in Hamlet is that between order and disorder, with good, personified by Hamlet, identified with the former. The theme is the necessity for the restoration of order, the duty falling upon Hamlet. Unfortunately, both theme and conflict depend to a critical extent upon the Christian or medieval concept of the world, which had to be rejected previously in order to make Hamlet eligible for consideration as a tragedy.
Here, it’s evident Abbey has placed too much emphasis on the idea of Christian themes in Shakespeare, which is a mistake many make, however, despite Abbey and countless other’s attempts to do so; the endeavor invariably falls short. Undoubtedly, there are biblical passages and references to Christianity in Shakespeare, yet these merely represent the ideas and thoughts of certain characters, or scenes which transpire in Church surroundings; not as proof of Shakespeare’s Christian bent.
It is clear Abbey often engages in hyperbole to comment on religion, however, he does so to the end of distancing himself from a religious order he views with disdain and mistrust, in the manner of a true anarchist. However, it’s helpful to remember this brand of anarchist metaphysics is predicated on the aforementioned spiritual component, firmly affixed to the concept of “liberty,” and a material world based on a vague concept of “equality.” Unfortunately, this view ignores the myriad ways in which one might engage in either spirit or material; limiting existence to a world where the man-made rules the day, and the connection to the natural world is merely a by-product of a vague realm which hosts the spiritual in some unknown manner.
However, based on the following passages from Abbey’s diary, Christianity was heavy on his mind when traveling Europe as a young scholar on a Fellowship, and, correspondingly, in the manner of combative young men, he offers the following commentary:
March 1, 1952, Edinburgh
“In fact, I don’t believe sins can be washed away by anything, not by the Blood of the Lamb, not by Christ on or off the cross, not by love of God or God’s love, not by a billion Hail Marys or a Milky Way of candles or a thousand ages of penance or a million miles of contrition on broken glass and burning coals and leprous bodies.
In fact, I indignantly reject, with horror and with loathing, the dark, ancient, vile and filthy lie that another man or God-Man can redeem us of our sins by his own suffering, or that we can purify ourselves and start over again by compounding our sins with more suffering, more ugliness, more filth and gibbering faith.”
(pgs. 35-36)
This outright rejection of the Christian schema sets the tone for Abbey’s religious views going into the future. The existential dilemma he describes, and his preoccupation with sin is paramount to his religious views, as he consistently seeks to find a beneficial structure for personal growth and broadened understanding of the human condition. However, twenty-seven years after his European trip, and after years of ruminating on sin and faith, he writes the following regarding Catholicism:
September 16, 1979
“No wonder I can’t sleep some nights. I suffer too – from guilt. And regret. And bitterness. And petty resentments. And anger. And all the other miserable little sins that flesh and mind are heir to. I envy the Catholics and their confessionals, though they show no sign of being happier, or less evil, than any others. How can I free myself from the bondage of their passions?
So wallow in your sense of guilt, shithead. And do nothing about it, as usual.”
Religious faith and interpersonal growth come to a head in the mind of Abbey in the form of self-loathing; poignant moments which only serve to confound. Unwilling to subscribe to a power outside himself, he succumbs to the ebbs and flows of life in a pattern known only to him; a personal brand of religion crafted over time. The fifty-four-year-old Abbey of the above quote shows a man grappling with how things are versus how he would like them to be. It also shows a distinct disconnect between the world at large and the world of his mind; two entities at constant odds, the friction a part of his personal process. And yet, his skewed version of Christianity remains with him throughout his life; an external entity to be studied and scrutinized. This much is evident by the following passages from his diaries:
October 12, 1987
“Read the entire book of Genesis (King James) at Herdina Park. A delightful book, but followed immediately by the tedious horrors of Exodus.”
February 19, 1988 – Tucson
“The splendid wrath of James, Chapter five, verses one through six:
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries…
Here, we have Abbey at, respectively, sixty, and sixty-one years of age; that point in life where one’s eventual demise begins to factor prominently into one’s thoughts, both conscious and subconscious. During this period, many embark on a search for meaning and inspiration in religious doctrine; an investigation to come to terms with death, oftentimes resulting in re-investigating the religious roots of one’s culture. In Ed’s instance, this would be a long recounting of Christian and Anarchist thought: Christian, as that is the dominant religious paradigm of America at the time, and anarchist as that is what was available in young Abbey’s home.
However, as evident by his observations, Ed is only kicking the tires of Christianity, checking to see if there’s anything there of value. By this time, however, it’s too late, and Abbey’s interpretation of Biblical passages are ultimately viewed through the lens of his particular brand of anarchy. What’s important here though, is despite Abbey’s periodic existential investigations; his attempt to come to terms with eternity and the after-life, is that in the midst of that process he kept bumping up against the glass ceiling of the “now,” which separates us from the eternal; goldfish trapped in our mutual bowls, creating a spiritual conundrum impossible to overcome. Tragically, this inability to escape the moment would prove costly for Abbey, and one found themselves pondering what might have happened had he chosen a different path. But by the end of his journals, it became evident this was just wishful thinking.
Chapter Three:
The Fault is in the Stars,Not Ourselves
“The name of Revolutions is a true technical term of astronomic knowledge and myth: that whichever returns to the same point. It became insistently identified with the idea of the Great Change. As soon as men began to misunderstand it, it set History on the march with irreversible changes.”
- Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth. Giorgio De Santillana & Hertha Von Dechend
Uranus/Pluto Conjunct
Richard Tarnas is professor of philosophy and cultural history at the California College of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. His groundbreaking work Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of A New World View (Plume Printing, a member of Penguin Group, 2007) is a bold look at major shifts in astronomy over time and how they’ve affected humanity. According to Tarnas, his book:
“Addresses more precisely the crisis of the modern self and modern world view, and then introduces a body of evidence, a method of inquiry, and an emerging cosmological perspective that I believe could help us creatively engage that crisis, and our history itself, within a new horizon of possibility.”
Tarnas’ book is based on distinct astronomical observations, which pigeonholes it into specialized categories, and yet, the work’s premise is rather straight-forward, dealing primarily with the schism between what Tarnas refers to as “modern vs. primal” mind.
So…what are these differences? According to Tarnas:
“What sets the modern mind apart is its fundamental tendency to assert and experience a radical separation between subject and object, a distinct division between the human self and the encompassing world.”
For the modern mind, the universe is viewed as distinctly apart from the individual: cold and impersonal. According to Tarnas, from this perspective, there is no “intrinsic meaning and purpose,” which is the perfect recipe for an existential crisis; as any clues and communication from the world at large; sacred texts, places, or rituals, must be seen as:
“Reflecting an epistemologically naïve state of awareness: intellectually undeveloped, undifferentiated, childish, wishfully self-indulgent, something to be outgrown and corrected through the development of a mature critical reason. Or worse, it is a sign of mental illness, of primitive magical thinking with delusions of self-reference, a condition to be suppressed and treated with appropriate medication.”
Conversely, “primal mind” is described as such:
“The primal mind does not maintain this decisive division, does not recognize it, whereas the modern mind not only maintains it but is essentially constituted on it. The primal human being perceives the surrounding natural world as permeated with meaning, meaning whose significance is at once human and cosmic.”
(Tarnas, p.18.)
The world of primal mind is full of meaning which saturates both individual and universe: the microcosm of the macrocosm. Tarnas posits this outlook is embedded in the anima mundi, a “living matrix of embodied meaning,” which engages us emotionally, mystically, and consequentially; not only in the workings of our world, but in the divine machinations of the universe.
We present these two ways of thinking: modern and primal as means for situating Abbey firmly in the realm of the former. Although, there are intimations of the latter in Abbey’s relating to nature; both in his actions and writing. However, as mentioned earlier, Abbey and the “mystical” are diametrically opposed. His actions and words falling squarely into Tarnas’ definition of modern mind in their disdain for the unseeable and unknowable: the realm of religion and mystics.
Admittedly, knowledge of this existential situation made one uncomfortable. From the advantageous perspective of hindsight, and with the record of Abbey’s thoughts as guide, it wasn’t hard to read the tea leaves of the choices he’d made and see the impending danger therein. Mircea Eliade states in his previously quoted The Sacred and the Profane that “man’s reactions to nature are often conditioned by his culture and hence, finally, by history.” In Abbey’s case, his culture, even in his youth, was based in anarchist thought, and correspondingly, in its view of history, i.e., his actions sprung from this matrix, continuing to do so until his death.
However, the world of anarchy is predicated by the parameters of man-made systems, a desacralized cosmos, according to Eliade, and this is perhaps the ultimate challenge for those of this mindset; for this is dangerous territory; a world, nay, a universe lacking any sense of sacredness, light, benevolence, or wisdom outside of one’s concept of them.
This isn’t to say modern mind lacks structure and meaning. Eliade’s holy places of one’s private universe which provide the markers of time and sacredness, or “otherness” constitute this form of consciousness and from this angle, modern mind:
“Lives in varying temporal rhythms and is aware of times of different intensities; when he is listening to the kind of music that he likes or, being in love, waits for or meets his sweetheart, he obviously experiences a different temporal rhythm from that which he experiences when he is working or bored.”
Eliade adds the problem with this viewpoint is that it presents “neither break nor mystery; time constitutes man’s deepest existential dimension; it is linked to his own life, hence it has a beginning and an end, which is death, the annihilation of his life. However many the temporal rhythms that he experiences, however great their differences in intensity, nonreligious man knows that they always represent a human experience, in which there is no room for any divine presence.”
Regarding the influence of music on the modern-mind mentioned by Eliade, the following quote firmly places Abbey in the company of those affected by said phenomenon:
September 8, 1978 – Aztec Peak
“Yes, Virginia, there really is a heaven. There is an ideal world. And we find that world in the realm of music. (I mean real music, of course, not our commercial “sounds”) In Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, a hundred others, we find that perfect world delineated, expressed, made real.
Proust was aware of this fact but, in his usual confused and fumbling way, went too far beyond the truth, into fantasy, by suggesting that the ideal world of music proves the existence of the traditional Christian notion – an actual 3-D Heaven up there, beyond time and space, where we can all disport ourselves after death. (“Mind is everything.”)”
Abbey plays the flute.
Abbey’s subjectivity on this point lessens its validity. In addition, he mistakenly claims music is solely the realm of European-Anglo males, which also reinforces Eliade’s point regarding the modern mind perspective and its limitations. From the passages of Abbey’s regarding the issues of sacredness, mysticism, and faith, its rather evident he truly is a modern man with modern thoughts: his obstinate pride being one of his hallmarks, as well as a cross he bears.
However, in light of this, something still seemed missing. It all seemed too easy; too neat and clean. The record showed Abbey was thoroughly of modern mind; correspondingly, he suffered from the same limited world view of his era; his view of sacredness and time limiting his choices for introspection and self-improvement. However, these observations still lacked the why of it all. Of course, these circumstances call to mind the old “nature vs. nurture” argument, itself the cause of a divisive rift in our society, wherein two camps point fingers at one another, and no common ground can be found. However, deep inside, one knew this way of thinking to be an intellectual sinkhole to be avoided at all costs.
This is where Tarnas’ research became prominent in providing a new framework for riddling out the problem. Based on patterns of cyclical alignments of the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto), Tarnas realized certain conjunctions or oppositions had visible effects on planet Earth, and therefore, global consciousness. Prior to Tarnas’ observation, this sort of study had been confined to how these movements relate to personal astrology, or in using myth and poetry to cast these planetary bodies as gods in human form and consequently creating stories which explain their movements and their effect upon us. This form of euhemerism, or of anthropomorphizing the planets of our solar system, while simultaneously deifying them took root in Hellenic Greece and, subsequentially was conveyed to Latin and then Christian canons, e.g., Saturn the father-figure, Mercury the messenger, et cetera…however, it should be noted, euhemerism fails to track and incorporate the changing definitions the planets have had ascribed to them over time.
For example, over millennia, Saturn has been variously referred to as:
“Heaven, or Time; for others, an early king of Italy; for still others, Fertility.”
(The Survival of the Pagan Gods. Jean Seznec, Pantheon Books, 1953.)
What’s evident by uncovering Saturn’s evolving nature is that the names and characteristics used to describe astronomical phenomena are fluid, their changes in name or title due to our interpretation of them. Still, they are inextricably tied to us in that we tend to see ourselves in their patterns and behaviors. For Tarnas, his detailed study of this phenomena was catalyst to the seminal idea that:
“These extended alignments of the outer planets consistently seemed to coincide with sustained periods during which a particular archetypal complex was conspicuously dominant in the collective psyche, defining the zeitgeist, as it were, of that cultural moment. The dominant archetypal complex was always discernibly composed of the specific archetypal principles associated with the relevant aligned planets, as if those archetypes were interacting, merging, and mutually inflecting each other in highly visible ways.”
(Cosmos & Psyche, p. 142)
Specifically, Tarnas noticed a particular pattern in the 18th and 20th centuries, CE, involving the conjunction of Uranus and Pluto. The first in 1787-1798, the time of the French Revolution; the second from 1960-1972, the “hippie” era, also known as the most turbulent and dynamic period of our time. This axial alignment, which brought Uranus and Pluto within 15°exactitude of each other united two distinctive energies; Uranus, associated with an archetypal principal Tarnas describes as Promethean, “emancipatory, rebellious, progressive and innovative, awakening, disruptive and destabilizing, unpredictable, serving to catalyze new beginnings, and sudden unexpected change.” And, conversely, that of Pluto, whose archetypal principle is Dionysian, “elemental, instinctual, powerfully compelling, extreme in its intensity, arising from the depths, both libidinal and destructive, overwhelming and transformative, ever-evolving. On the collective level, the archetypal principle associated with Pluto is regarded as possessing a prodigious, titanic dimension, empowering, intensifying, and compelling whatever it touches on a massive scale.”
Within the dynamics of this cosmic dance and their resulting energies; Uranus and its Promethean, and Pluto its Dionysian, lie the recipe for instinctual, rebellious change; destructive and intense, begging the question, is it just coincidence the anarchist movement was born and developed within this frame of time? If Tarnas is correct in his thesis, it reinforces the already established dictum, “as above, so below.” However, whatever the cause for these periods of social upheaval, Abbey bought in wholeheartedly to their forces in his adherence to and dissemination of Anarchist principles. In fact, if we take Tarnas’ theory into consideration, Abbey seems to be a sort of poster-child for all he purports; the Promethean and the Dionysian; rebellious and instinctual; transformative and libidinous. This brings us back to the idea we are all subject to the zeitgeist of our own particular era; part of something larger than ourselves. Although, for Abbey and those who view the world through the lens of “modern mind,” these ideas would be considered absurd in that they are predicated on a radical separation between subject and object, a distinct division between the human self and the encompassing world.”
This, as previously mentioned, led one to believe this was the framework for an existential dilemma; a closing in on oneself in the manner of a collapsing star in the expansive firmament. However, in addition to the fact Abbey was part of processes both universal and personal, the one thing that was glaringly evident was, although he is of a particular time and place, Abbey is an anachronism: chronologically out of place and incongruent with his time. This condition implied a schism between his impressionistic and external worlds, creating a constant state of tension evident to all he came across, i.e., an untenable situation.
Chapter Four: Abbey’s Barbaric Yawlp!
Dionysus of Syracuse
“Does not Dionysius, then, seem to have declared there can be no happiness for one who is under constant apprehensions? But it was not now in his power to return to justice, and restore his citizens their rights and privileges; for, by the indiscretion of youth, he had engaged in so many wrong steps and committed such extravagances, that, had he attempted to have returned to a right way of thinking, he must have endangered his life.”
(Charles Duke Yonge. Tusculan Disputations: On Whether Virtue Alone is Sufficient for a Happy Life New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877.)
In his consistent intellectualizing of spiritual matters, Abbey attempted to create a philosophy which would satiate both mind and spirit; a foundation for moral action and a coming to terms with the afterlife. In this, he is no different than any of us. However, for Abbey, the process seemed to be a particular point of angst and vitriol. Take, for example, the following observation from his notebooks:
December 31, 1983 – Tucson
“The world is really nothing but an idea in the mind of God, say the physicist-orientalist-mystics. To which my response is: So what? Who cares? What difference does that make? We still have to live in the world of actual daily experience, of all those hard objects and firm living bodies that certainly appear to share the world with us. We are not alone.”
In the above quote, we find the basis of Abbey’s thoughts regarding existential matters. However, the biggest take-away from his statement is his bitter tone and incomplete understanding of universal consciousness, though five years after the above entry in his journal he divulges the source for his statement that “The world is really nothing but an idea in the mind of God,”:
0600, Friday, June 24, 1988 – Eagle Tank, Cabeza Prieta
“…read the conclusion to Santayana’s Three Philosopher Poets (Lucretius, Dante, Goethe). Such sweet fine precious writing! So finicky and fastidious a fellow!
The work by George Santayana (Jorge Agustin Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás), the Harvard-educated Spaniard who became a prominent pragmatist/naturalist philosopher in the first part of the 20th century briefly mentions the so-called physicist-orientalist-mystics to which Abbey alludes, however, Santayana’s full quote seems to belie Abbey’s take on the matter:
“I do not forget that Aristotle, with Dante after him, asserts that the goal of life is a separate being already existing, namely, the mind of God, eternally realizing what the world aspires to. The influence of this mind, however, upon the world is no less magical than would be that of a non-existent ideal. For its operation is admittedly not transitive or physical. It itself does not change in working. No virtue leaves it; it does not, according to Aristotle and Plotinus, even know that it works. Indeed, it works only because other things are disposed to pursue it as their ideal; let things keep this disposition, and they will pursue and frame their ideal no less if it nowhere has an actual existence, than if by chance it exists elsewhere in its own person. It works only in its capacity of ideal; therefore, even if it exists, it works only by magic. The matter beneath feels the spell of its presence, and catches something of its image, as the waves of the sea might receive and reflect tremblingly the light shed by the moon. The world accordingly is moved and vivified in every fibre by magic, by the magic of the goal to which it aspires.”
(Three Philosophical Poets. George Santayana, The Santayana Edition. https://santayana.iupui.edu, 1910. P. 60)
The concept of the world existing ‘solely in the mind of god’ is merely the interplay between the divine and the human. The dialectic only works in the unseen, unquantifiable “magic” of the interaction, which can only be quantified in the human realm via the mind of the perceiver. Abbey’s statement regarding the quote confuses the two as separate entities; the idea in the ‘mind of god’ and the world of actual daily experience, of all those hard objects and firm living bodies that certainly appear to share the world with us,” he alludes to are merely one side of the coin, the yin to the yang; a short-sighted dualistic approach to a non-dualistic phenomenon. Modern philosophers such as Santayana reduce the inner-workings of the dynamic and reduce them to the world of “magic,” when in fact the process is one single action. For example, Santayana’s description of the ocean reflecting the moon complicates and divides non-divisible phenomenon; there is no moon, no ocean, no god; only Tao, or, the un-nameable.
As a result of his take on Santayana’s passage, Abbey fences himself into his own existential drama by attributing ones pondering of their own mortality as the basis of an endeavor he refers to as “Religion,” as described in the following journal passage:
March 15, 1986 -- Tucson
WHITE NOISE:
“Religion, self-deception – the compulsion to believe in some form of life after death, without examining what such a disembodied existence could consist of or amount to. Suppose there really is an intelligent Being “out there” – a transcendent God. So what? What good does that do us? Such an answer answers nothing. We are all still confronted, God or no God, by the riddle of the universe, the mystery of existence.
(Pgs. 326-27)
Abbey’s failure to acknowledge sacredness, while focusing on its organized, hierarchical, man-made counterpart; religion, provides the cage in which the bird of Abbey’s soul was trapped. Or, according to Tarnas, Abbey engaged in a “radical separation between subject and object, a distinct division between the human self and the encompassing world.” Abbey also claims religion is a compulsion to “believe in some form of life after death.” Yet, from the aforementioned primal mind perspective, there is no division between life or death, but merely an acceptance that they are two different states of being. Also, Abbey’s characterization of “God” as a transcendent fount of intelligence unto itself, creates an unbridgeable theological split; further compounding his existential dilemma. In his staunch refusal to see the past as anything but regressive, or the source of contemporary problems, he closes reality in on itself, ignoring the popular aphorism of Santayana’s that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Abbey’s interpretation of the past becomes an impediment over the years to a holistic view of reality in the regard he tends to take bits of wisdom from disparate sources and orders them in his mind in a non-sequential, random order which he draws from at will. His main framework is comprised of both classical and medieval philosophy, music, and literature. For instance, regarding a potentially life-threatening medical diagnosis he receives in his late-fifties, he refers to the news and all it purports as a “Damoclean sword”:
January 4, 1984 – Tucson
“For a Damoclean sword, Brendan Phibbs (a doctor friend) recommends aneurysm: sudden death. But is the terminus predictable? How about – varices?”
The irony in Abbey’s remark is due to the fact the tale of the sword of Damocles is a cautionary one whose details resemble Abbey’s life to a degree, in that it resembles the story of the Syracusan ruler, Dionysus (432-367 BC), who was renowned for his cruel and tyrannical nature; a paranoiac who trusted no one. Dionysus’ story goes that, one day, a member of court named Damocles is flattering him in conversation regarding Dionysus’ opulent wealth, royal palaces, and power. Dionysus tells Damocles that if he should like to have a taste of it, he would be happy to arrange that. Damocles replies he’d like nothing better, so Dionysus arranges for him to be able to recline on an ornately designed bed of gold, fed the most sumptuous foods and attended to by a cadre of servants who meet his every need. However, the catch is that above the bed of gold Damocles rests on, Dionysus has a razor-sharp sword hung from the ceiling by a single horse hair directly over where he lay. The apprehension caused by this setup causes Damocles to forget about the opulence and wealth and concentrate on the impending doom of the sword overhead. He ends up begging Dionysus to be released from such “opulence.”
The moral of the story is generally construed as, “there can be no happiness to those under constant apprehensions,” and for the most part, that holds true. However, regarding the story of Dionysus and Damocles, in his 1877 work Tusculan Disputations: On Whether Virtue Alone is Sufficient for a Happy Life, Charles Duke Yonge adds this regarding Dionysus’ dilemma:
“But it was not now in his power to return to justice, and restore his citizens their rights and privileges; for, by the indiscretion of youth, he had engaged in so many wrong steps and committed such extravagances, that, had he attempted to have returned to a right way of thinking, he must have endangered his life...Yet, how desirous he was of friendship…What misery was it for him to be deprived of acquaintance, of company at his table, and of the freedom of conversation! especially for one who was a man of learning, and from his childhood acquainted with liberal arts, very fond of music, and himself a tragic poet — how good a one is not to the purpose, for I know not how it is, but in this way, more than any other, everyone thinks his own performances excellent.”
(Charles Duke Yonge. Tusculan Disputations: On Whether Virtue Alone is Sufficient for a Happy Life New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877. pgs. 121-23)
How much does Yonge’s assessment of Dionysus’ deep desire for true connection and friendship compare with Abbey’s own experience? Scattered throughout Abbey’s journals are many passages that deal with “friends,” notably regarding his specific instructions on how he wants his closest friends to inter his body after he passes. It seemed strange that Abbey should want to exercise such control on his crew concerning what to do with his corpse after he’d died. His journals concerning the matter read more like instructions some Bronze-Age tribal chief would leave his subjects; done to the end of achieving some after-life goal. Indeed, Abbey’s inner-circle was populated by a few specific individuals who’d withstood the test of time. Even then, they seemed to have been kept somewhat at arm’s length; only called-upon for specific adventures or celebrations.
There are also many he admired and wished to befriend, yet due to his nature, would only offend and create an insurmountable divide with due to his matter-of-fact nature. The following quote from his journals provide prime example:
November 10, 1982 – Tucson
“Wrote a letter to John Nichols in praise of his Nirvana Blues. Especially his “gift for satire,” but advised him to “avoid ideology.” I also said that he “sentimentalized” (or romanticized”?) the Meskins of New Mexico, whom I described as a people now devoted mainly to drugs, crime, spray paint, ward-heeling politics, cars and the monthly welfare check. That was over a month ago – I thought he’d be pleased – but no reply. Have I made another enemy? Not unlikely.”
What Abbey failed to recognize was that Nichols was married to one of these so-called “Meskins,” a brilliant, beautiful, and talented local woman from around the Taos area, who attended NYU, and whose father was a celebrated artist and sculptor. I know her personally and she is an exceptional person. Therefore, Abbey’s letter could only have come across as somewhat offensive to Nichols, who’s own novel-turned-film The Milagro Beanfield War, whose subject is precisely the same “drug-addled, spray-painting vermin” Abbey refers to, is the vehicle which brought him the most notoriety. These sort of social- miscues are where Abbey is most like the despot Dionysus. Much like him, Abbey wants to return to the time before his destructive mistakes, make a clean slate and put his best foot forward; yet fails to recognize we are often victim of our own egocentric impulses when it comes to dealing with others; never able to see ourselves through the ‘other’s’ eyes.
This form of self-delusion is rampant in the modern era, where we are encouraged to push our own agenda if it is what we “feel” is the right thing to do, by asking others to be complicit in our personal hysterias and inner-worlds. Abbey’s unsolicited “advice” to Nichols is nothing more than a litmus test to see if Nichols is of the same mindset. If he’s not, then he becomes a source of disdain. By laying out the parameters of a relationship at the outset, Abbey is essentially saying, “It’s my way or the highway.” This method can only lead to surrounding oneself with those who lend credence to our own limited points of view; an insulated world oftentimes devoid of deeper truths.
Regarding how this relates to the sacrosanct and religion, it is evident Abbey rejected modern religious constructs, primarily those Christian-based. Holding true to Anarchist principles he sees the church as a corrupt enterprise that historically has sought to delude humanity. His “religious” ideals belonging to those sensual endeavors such as music, philosophy, and literature. It’s this fact which led one to the idea of Abbey as an anachronism, for this outlook is primarily related to pre-Christian themes. This viewpoint was also reinforced by his well-reported brusque attitude, which reminded one of the reports of the manner of the ancient Celts and Gaels by Diodorus Siculus written between 60-30 B.C., in his The Library of History:
“They invite strangers to their feasts, and do not inquire until after the meal who they are and of what things they stand in need. And it is their custom, even during the course of the meal, to seize upon any trivial matter as an occasion for keen disputation and then to challenge one another to single combat, without any regard for their lives; for the belief of Pythagoras prevails among them, that the souls of men are immortal and that after a prescribed number of years they commence upon a new life, the soul entering into another body. Consequently, we are told, at the funerals of their dead some cast letters upon the pyre which they have written to their deceased kinsmen, as if the dead would be able to read these letters.”
This passage brought together several seemingly disparate points. First, it displayed how Abbey’s ancient relations’ behavior mirrored his own to a degree, primarily in regards to a natural inclination to dispute and arguing. Secondly, in the regard that organized “religion” in its modern construct, is not a part of the ancient world. It also placed an emphasis on the written word and its importance in the after-life, much in the way of Abbey. The irony is that the philosophy of Pythagoras is an ancient European form of Buddhism in the regard it is based on reincarnation (metempsychosis), and its followers bought in whole-heartedly to the scheme. So much so that it apparently influenced their bravado, making them somewhat fearless.
Also, much like Abbey, they were keen on verbal dispute, braggadocio, and insulated knowledge amongst one’s own clique:
“The Gauls are terrifying in aspect and their voices are deep and altogether harsh; when they meet together they converse with few words and in riddles, hinting darkly at things for the most part and using one word when they mean another; and they like to talk in superlatives, to the end that they may extol themselves and depreciate all other men. They are also boasters and threateners and are fond of pompous language, and yet they have sharp wits and are not without cleverness at learning.”
(The Library of History, V.31.)
The parallels between the first-century B.C. Celts/Gaels and Abbey were many, and seemed to point to the innate traits of an ancient people still evident in their modern ancestors. In addition to this, the notebooks of Abbey are loaded with passages which corroborate the “barbaric” mindset we affiliate him with. Most notable is an early passage where he is in the “sacred space” mindset of one whose intrepid travels trigger thoughts from the collective psyche of their forebearers.
The particular passage which provided the epiphany of this observation is based in events which transpired four-hundred years after Diodorus’ report, in A.D. 375, when the Huns arrived in Europe from Asia in the form of the first heavily armored cavalry (cataphractarii), who tore their way through the lands of the Ostrogothic Empire of Eastern Europe. The survivors of these incursions adopted the cavalry equipment of the invaders and continued to spread that culture westward across the continent and to the British Isles, invariably creating the concept of “chivalry.” The most successful of these warriors were the Sarmatians, whose culture would result in Arthurian legend. Among the themes they would import, several would become seminal to Britain:
“For their distinctive battle standard, Sarmatian troops carried a dragon made like a windsock on a pole; it had a metal head and a red fabric body that writhed when the wind blew through its jaws. They worshiped their tribal god in the form of a sword stuck upright into a small stone platform.”
The red fabric dragon would end up on the Welsh flag, and the sword stuck in stone is obviously tied to the Arthurian legend. However, we mention these details only to tie them back to Abbey as anachronism, this much evident from a passage in his journals, particularly from a trip he made when he was twenty-five and travelling the European continent as a Fulbright Scholar:
April 15th, 1952 – on the North Sea
What is more beautiful than red streaming
Banners on the wind
Screaming –
“Fire! Revenge! Death to Kings! Life
To the new world if the heart’s
Dreaming!”?
(Confessions of a Barbarian P.40)
Abbey’s passage seems more like a medieval cry in an age of turbulent violence, and harkens back to a bloody world where tribal warfare ruled the day; a situation he seemed to yearn for in his time. Indeed, much of Abbey’s frustration with the world at large seems to have been based in cognitive dissonance; when one’s beliefs are contradicted by new information, yet they refuse to admit it to themselves.
To summarize, we have an individual who apparently is of a modern-mindset; a representative of their particular era. However, that era seemed to have been under the influence of the Uranus/Pluto conjunction Tarnas observed, which also adds another dimension to the multi-dimensional reality of our existence, whether acknowledged or not. In his shunning of religion and, more importantly, sacredness, Abbey created a reality out-of-step with the natural order of things; a dangerous mix of ego and desire, supported by intellect. His reticence in accepting the natural order of reality as put forth by the ancient wisdom cultures he found himself surrounded by (Native American and Buddhist), led to a cynical and selfish approach to existence.
The Zuni of New Mexico see the world in the varying degrees between the beautiful (tso’ya) and the dangerous (attanni) within and between all lives. This profound, yet elementary observation acknowledges two radically different ways of perception. Primary, being the within; the relationship we all have with our best and worst selves (our own tso’ya and attanni), the second, being the beautiful and dangerous between all lives, i.e., the external world. These two realms; the beautiful and the dangerous remained mutually exclusive in the soul of Abbey. To be sure, he is not alone in this predicament, for this seems to be the modern formula for existence in a world controlled by forces unseen and apparently misunderstood.
In Abbey, we find a man caught between the ancient and modern worlds; unwilling to accept the former and victim of the latter. His demise and disillusion are beautiful in their own right; a construct of a brilliant mind, however, it is also a cypher unproveable in a world laden with meaning and value to those willing to riddle it out. Abbey’s unwillingness to investigate the external and internal worlds he faced in many ways is a modern construct; a result of a cynical time where the sacred is often referred to as disillusionment; where the magic and wonder of just “ordinary” existence is lost to dark and sinister forces. However, reality is far more complex than that; the tso’ya and the attanni forever co-exist in the constant moment, as well as in timeless space out of reach of our understanding on the earthly plane. Abbey got stuck in a perpetual space where he felt inclined to label all phenomena encountered by stating in his mind; this is good/that is bad with no propensity to alter those perceptions as time marched on and things had apparently changed in some circumstances. This was a form of arrested development, and while that condition is generally applied to adolescence, the truth is it can happen at any juncture in one’s life.
Afterword
“Once when he [Pythagoras] was present at the beating of a puppy, he pitied it and said ‘stop, don’t keep hitting him, since it is the soul of a man who is dear to me, which I recognized, when I heard it yelping’”
- Xenophanes
Below Movie Trail. Piedra Lisa Trail, North Sandia, Albuquerque. Photo Aztlan Times.
It’s been a little over a year since I commenced the process of writing this article. Since then, many facts have come to light regarding Abbey previously unknown, and, over the course of the intense research and analyzation that went into developing our tale, Abbey has become fully fleshed-out in my mind. There’s the Abbey that makes me laugh; the Abbey that makes me wince; the Abbey that makes me sad. There have been times I’ve wanted to punch the son of-a-bitch in the face, (and I know he would have been up for the physicality); the times I wanted to console him and let him know everything’s all right; times when I just plain felt sorry for the guy. However, throughout the process, I’ve done my best to be open-minded and fair, i.e., to afford Abbey the courtesy he oftentimes didn’t extend to others. This fact alone is tragic, and there is no need in re-hashing it.
Edward Abbey was a wonderful writer and a bright light in the struggle to defend planet earth from a species bent on its destruction. Alternatively, he remained prisoner of his darkest phobias and fears, becoming vulnerable to all they portend. And yet, I’ve attempted to broaden the scope of Abbey’s existence by delving into the past, expanding definitions of spirituality and religion; looking to deep space and the limits of our solar system in an attempt to be equanimous to the man and his memory. At no juncture did I feel superior to him, nor inferior; we are decidedly different animals, and that is that.
However, Ed and I have our own particular traits; though we’ve shared many experiences, lived in many of the same cities, worked in the same industries, traveled to many of the same foreign countries; we couldn’t be any more different at our respective cores.
Realizing that the most challenging concepts in our thesis are those very same issues Abbey had problems with; unseen and difficult to quantify factors such as universal forces connected to the solar system; planetary bodies and their effects on humanity; the concept of spirit and the soul; and how our respective existences play out in the concept of time, I realized it would be prudent to offer some clarification.
Regarding the differences between modern vs. primal mind, where they stem from, and how they differ at their core, that is best described by Jung:
“The collective unconscious is a part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that it does not, like the latter owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity.
Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes.”
(The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. C.G. Jung. P.42.)
These innate, inheritable traits accessible through the collective unconscious Abbey experienced, yet never acknowledged, due to his denial of their existence and his heavy reliance on his personal experience; comprised of complexes; unconscious factors which influence one’s attitudes and behavior, set the stage for the calamities addressed herein. This situation also forms the basis of the chapters dealing with spirituality and ancient ancestors. His participation in, and close adherence to anarchist principles excluded any concept of universal forces playing a part in human actions; therefore, Tarnas’ work would have garnered much disdain from Abbey; as their description of broader phenomena would probably be a source of derision from his perspective.
This much should be evident by now. Less obvious would be the part comedy played in Abbey’s ethos and writing. For there is a distinct difference between tragedy and comedy. Tragedy deals with the elite and the concept of honor, based on principles rooted in patriarchy and militarism; it valorizes “warrior virtues,” such as blind obedience, the willingness to kill or die on command, unquestioning loyalty, single-mindedness, resoluteness of purpose, and pride. Comedy, on the other hand:
“Embodies an anti-heroic, pragmatic attitude toward life’s incongruities. From Aristophanes’ Lysistrata to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, comedy has mocked the irrationality of militarism and blind respect for authority. Its own methods of handling conflict include deal-making, trickery, getting an enemy drunk, and running away. As the Irish saying goes, you’re only a coward for a moment, but you’re dead for the rest of your life. In place of Warrior Virtues, it extols critical thinking, cleverness, adaptability, and an appreciation of physical pleasures like eating, drinking, and sex.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/
Abbey’s take on comedy is a unique blend of comedy and tragedy, although his comedy is of a decidedly satirical nature; one which looks at the tragedy of the loss of elevated virtues such as democracy, rising industrialization replacing artisanal endeavors, and the loss of individual power. From this perspective, he acutely ignores the basis of comedy, though, which lie in the marginalized communities he constantly criticizes, never fully realizing that in doing so he becomes “the other,” valorizing an elevated ideal inextricably tied to heroism, and is therefore tragic.
Regarding the title of our thesis, specifically monkey-mind, it is well-established that the term is known as our discursive mind, our inner-critic, directly connected to one’s ego. It can also prevent one from seeing the world objectively. It is a Buddhist term also recognized by the psychological community as a profound inhibitor of personal development. Abbey’s own “monkey mind” served as impediment to many of his goals and aspirations; primarily in the aforementioned areas of developing relationships, accepting the world as it is, and cultivating a sense of inner peace.
On the other hand, despite the many critiques offered in this thesis, there can be no doubt Abbey was spot-on about many things. Although I am a blend of Native American and Hispanic, I understand Abbey was correct in many of his criticisms of the culture in which I was raised. In addition to that, his observations regarding the African-American community and other non-Anglo cultures cannot be dismissed as completely inaccurate. Most importantly, he was correct in a majority of his critiques of his own Anglo-American culture. Our deepest concern regarding these critiques of Abbey’s is that they are merely just criticisms. They offer no resolution, no original thinking regarding modern complexes and problems endemic in contemporary American society. It is easy to complain about situations and circumstances; indeed, this is the root of much comedy. However, less frequently we offer true solutions to complex problems, utilizing these to foment change. Perhaps this is the biggest tragedy of Abbey’s, as with others equally as perceptive. If only they would spend more of their precious time aiding and disseminating useful answers, then we might trend towards balance and harmony on this planet.
Unfortunately, I cannot offer the grand plan. However, there are many out there who have offered useful suggestions. Oftentimes these come from marginalized and fringe groups of society, and are rarely given the exposure needed to affect change. Such is the case with Acoma Pueblo writer and poet, Simon Ortiz, who succinctly summarizes a beneficial path forward for these troubled times in his essay, Our Homeland, A National Sacrifice Area:
“We must have passionate concern for what is at stake. We must understand the experience of the oppressed, especially the racial and ethnic minorities, of this nation, by this nation and its economic interests. Only when we truly understand and accept the responsibilities of that understanding will we be able to make the necessary decisions for change. Only then will we truly understand what it is to love the land and people and to have compassion. Only when we are not afraid to fight against the destroyers, thieves, liars, exploiters who profit handsomely off the land and people will we know what love and compassion are. Only when the people of this nation, not just Indian people, fight for what is just and good for all life, will we know life and its continuance. And when we fight, and fight back those who are bent on destruction of land and people, we will win. We will win.
