There Are No Walk-On Parts

Barry Lopez interviewed by Bill Moyers

BILL MOYERS: So, is the new metaphor not nature, but the stage? That's a powerful idea that we all- have walk on parts in this drama that never ends.

BARRY LOPEZ: But who is it, Bill, that says, one person has a walk on part? You know? That's a political question. Who is it that's standing there saying, that person, this person, that person, those are walk on parts. And this person over here will be the star of the show. I don't like that. I don't like to hear it. What happens if a person speaks imperfect English in a culture like ours, is not articulate, but can dance in a way that makes you shiver? Why is that a walk on part?...

I and Thou, not I and It

BARRY LOPEZ: We have from, you know, the beginning of the Holocene, you know, the raising, the creation of cities in the Tigris/Euphrates, we have created a world in which we marginalize that which we don't think serves us as well as it could. We've turned nature into a thing. You know, Martin Buber's wonderful I/it relationship and I/thou relationship. This is an "it." The book is an "it." It is soulless. It is utilitarian. I can throw it on the ground if I want. But if it's an I/thou relationship, you never make those kinds of presumptions. So a lot of what traditional people when you watch- when you're in their environment, everything is I/thou. The relationship to the wind; the wind is alive. It has a soul. It's part of the moral universe.

And we've created something in which we have excluded from our moral universe everything but us. And in fact, a lot of people have been excluded from this central White Western European dominant culture. Everything else is an I/it relationship. With African Americans or, you know, in Aboriginal people, whatever it's going to be. But when you-- with traditional people, the relationships with everything are about the holiness of the other, the mystery of the other. That's that I/thou relationship.

And what I would like to I guess encourage people to understand is that for the sake of our own convenience, we created an "other," and that other was nature. And we said, if it doesn't serve us, kill it, move it, destroy it, crush it. Make it serve us. And if it doesn't, it's no good.

(hat tip = JR, from a very long time ago)