So beneficent and strange was it that fire always remained a miracle to primitive man, fit to be worshiped as a god; he offered it countless ceremonies of devotion, and made it the center or focus (which is Latin for hearth) of his life and home; he carried it carefully with him as he moved from place to place in his wanderings, and would not willingly let it die.
Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, I, 12
December 25
Though I read the section on Paleolithic peoples in The Story of Civilization two weeks ago, fire serves as an appropriate topic for Christmas Day. This is the season when our homes and neighborhoods explode with lights, all symbolizing, whether one is a Christian or not, the Light shining in the darkness, electric flames of hope in the deep, silent nights of winter.
Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, I, 12
December 25
Though I read the section on Paleolithic peoples in The Story of Civilization two weeks ago, fire serves as an appropriate topic for Christmas Day. This is the season when our homes and neighborhoods explode with lights, all symbolizing, whether one is a Christian or not, the Light shining in the darkness, electric flames of hope in the deep, silent nights of winter.
Like language, fire was another of the great discoveries and tools of our primitive ancestors. Once they possessed fire—I understand how lightning could bring them the means, but how did someone ever figure out that rubbing two sticks together might lead to a bonfire?—a clan or tribe won a huge advantage over their environment. The flame provided them with illumination in the night, protected them against the cold and wild beasts, enabled them to cook raw game and make sharper the points on their wooden spears. Eventually, fire was key to metallurgy and contributed to agriculture as well, allowing human beings to prepare and eat many plants indigestible in their raw states, and thereby giving rise to settled villages growing cereals and vegetables for their sustenance. From a thousand such factors was civilization born.
For a graphic example of the importance of fire, I recommend you spend a couple of hours watching Quest For Fire, the story of a Paleolithic clan, the Ulam. When their own fire is accidentally extinguished, the Ulam, lacking the knowledge to rekindle a flame, send three of their clan on a quest to replace it. Anthony Burgess, one of the great twentieth century novelists, wrote the language used by the Ulam in the film, a fact that, given the verbal pyrotechnics of his books, has always amused me. Quest For Fire also reveals the differences in various tribes of human beings, featuring not only the rather backwards Ulam but as well a tribe of cannibals and another skilled in making jewelry and weapons. Rated R for sexual content and violence, Quest For Fire brings alive a world of terror, hardship, and wonder.
Open flames and coals retain a mystic hold on our imaginations, which is why we tell stories and roast marshmallows around campfires and gather around a blazing hearth in the winter. We do not extend this same reverence and delight to our modern version of the fire: electricity. We slip a switch and light pours over us; we insert a key and a car engine fires up; we turn a knob and music fills the air; we turn another knob and the warm water of a shower pours over us. Only while waiting for the power company to repair lines downed by snow do we appreciate this servant.
Over the years, I have met a few people who, for a myriad of reasons ranging from environmental concerns to a psychotic dislike for our culture, express antediluvian desires to cast aside the trappings of civilization. They long for an end to things, Yeats’s “blood-dimmed tide,” death and doom, the Four Horsemen riding across a red landscape at breakneck speed. Of course, these people always assume that they would emerge breathing and even triumphant from such a nightmare. One young clerk at the Ingles grocery store, decked out in the piercings and tattoos common to Asheville, remarked to a customer that such an end couldn’t come soon enough for her. Her remark brought me a grim smile: if that apocalypse came, I’d give her—or myself, for that matter—a week before she became either a slave or a Big Mac.
Civilization is what I want. We took tens of thousands of years getting here, and every day we fight a battle to keep the machine up and running, though we are rarely aware of that end. No Armageddon for me, thank you very much. No—I treasure electricity, cars, hot showers, computers, and Christmas lights. I hold dear a hot cup of French Vanilla Chai, my books, the heat in my room while the temperature outside is 25 degrees Fahrenheit, a super market where I can buy tomatoes, apples, chicken, Pellegrino, and toothpaste.
Like nearly everyone else, I may take these and a thousand other indicators of civilization for granted most of the time, but right now, this Christmas night, I am grateful I am not squatting by an open fire sans coffee, shower, car, heat, books, and lights.
Five notes with comments from Our Oriental Heritage, pages 1-109
*“Even the Romans punished with death the careless vestal virgin who allowed the sacred fire to be extinguished.” (Approval of such a punishment may flicker across the mind of a wife or husband during a January blizzard when his or her partner has neglected to pay an overdue electric bill.)
*“For the most part primitive women asked of clothing precisely what later women have asked—not that it should quite cover their nakedness, but that it should enhance or suggest their charms. Everything changes, except woman and man.” (Not politically correct, but for the first time in many I just watched a Carolina Panthers game. The ads feature many half-clad women, so who in reality could possibly debate such a contention? As for grooming to attract the opposite sex, even Uncle Bub shaves his beard and trims his eyebrows before sailing off on his weekend forays to the local pub.)
*“…The Natives of Gippsland believed that one who died without a nose-ring would suffer horrible torments in the next life. It is all very barbarous, says the modern lady, as she bores her ears for rings, paints her lips and cheeks, tweezes her eyebrows, reforms her eyelashes, powders her face, her neck, and her arms, and compresses her feet.” (Plus sa change, plus c’est la meme chose.)
*“Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.” (True in most cases, though in our Age of Victimization we like to think we are bound as tightly as Gulliver by the opinions of others. And who has not seen a marriage where one spouse enjoyed the luxury of security, but is more bound by regulation than a coal mine?)
*“…The essential government of mankind remains in that most deep-rooted of all historic institutions: the family.” (Other than Marxists, few would have disagreed with Durant’s statement when he wrote it about eighty years ago. The attacks on the family over the past fifty years, particularly by academics and the federal government, attest to its durability.)
For a graphic example of the importance of fire, I recommend you spend a couple of hours watching Quest For Fire, the story of a Paleolithic clan, the Ulam. When their own fire is accidentally extinguished, the Ulam, lacking the knowledge to rekindle a flame, send three of their clan on a quest to replace it. Anthony Burgess, one of the great twentieth century novelists, wrote the language used by the Ulam in the film, a fact that, given the verbal pyrotechnics of his books, has always amused me. Quest For Fire also reveals the differences in various tribes of human beings, featuring not only the rather backwards Ulam but as well a tribe of cannibals and another skilled in making jewelry and weapons. Rated R for sexual content and violence, Quest For Fire brings alive a world of terror, hardship, and wonder.
Open flames and coals retain a mystic hold on our imaginations, which is why we tell stories and roast marshmallows around campfires and gather around a blazing hearth in the winter. We do not extend this same reverence and delight to our modern version of the fire: electricity. We slip a switch and light pours over us; we insert a key and a car engine fires up; we turn a knob and music fills the air; we turn another knob and the warm water of a shower pours over us. Only while waiting for the power company to repair lines downed by snow do we appreciate this servant.
Over the years, I have met a few people who, for a myriad of reasons ranging from environmental concerns to a psychotic dislike for our culture, express antediluvian desires to cast aside the trappings of civilization. They long for an end to things, Yeats’s “blood-dimmed tide,” death and doom, the Four Horsemen riding across a red landscape at breakneck speed. Of course, these people always assume that they would emerge breathing and even triumphant from such a nightmare. One young clerk at the Ingles grocery store, decked out in the piercings and tattoos common to Asheville, remarked to a customer that such an end couldn’t come soon enough for her. Her remark brought me a grim smile: if that apocalypse came, I’d give her—or myself, for that matter—a week before she became either a slave or a Big Mac.
Civilization is what I want. We took tens of thousands of years getting here, and every day we fight a battle to keep the machine up and running, though we are rarely aware of that end. No Armageddon for me, thank you very much. No—I treasure electricity, cars, hot showers, computers, and Christmas lights. I hold dear a hot cup of French Vanilla Chai, my books, the heat in my room while the temperature outside is 25 degrees Fahrenheit, a super market where I can buy tomatoes, apples, chicken, Pellegrino, and toothpaste.
Like nearly everyone else, I may take these and a thousand other indicators of civilization for granted most of the time, but right now, this Christmas night, I am grateful I am not squatting by an open fire sans coffee, shower, car, heat, books, and lights.
Five notes with comments from Our Oriental Heritage, pages 1-109
*“Even the Romans punished with death the careless vestal virgin who allowed the sacred fire to be extinguished.” (Approval of such a punishment may flicker across the mind of a wife or husband during a January blizzard when his or her partner has neglected to pay an overdue electric bill.)
*“For the most part primitive women asked of clothing precisely what later women have asked—not that it should quite cover their nakedness, but that it should enhance or suggest their charms. Everything changes, except woman and man.” (Not politically correct, but for the first time in many I just watched a Carolina Panthers game. The ads feature many half-clad women, so who in reality could possibly debate such a contention? As for grooming to attract the opposite sex, even Uncle Bub shaves his beard and trims his eyebrows before sailing off on his weekend forays to the local pub.)
*“…The Natives of Gippsland believed that one who died without a nose-ring would suffer horrible torments in the next life. It is all very barbarous, says the modern lady, as she bores her ears for rings, paints her lips and cheeks, tweezes her eyebrows, reforms her eyelashes, powders her face, her neck, and her arms, and compresses her feet.” (Plus sa change, plus c’est la meme chose.)
*“Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.” (True in most cases, though in our Age of Victimization we like to think we are bound as tightly as Gulliver by the opinions of others. And who has not seen a marriage where one spouse enjoyed the luxury of security, but is more bound by regulation than a coal mine?)
*“…The essential government of mankind remains in that most deep-rooted of all historic institutions: the family.” (Other than Marxists, few would have disagreed with Durant’s statement when he wrote it about eighty years ago. The attacks on the family over the past fifty years, particularly by academics and the federal government, attest to its durability.)