Murder Most Foul- our civilisation’s most recent Mona Lisa

 

I’ve been grappling with where we are all going.  By that I mean humanity, the English or European Civilisation, us.  Where is our soul and what is going on. And what is the collapse of Enlightenment science going to leave us? Is this a new Dark ages?  Or is it environmental destruction, or both? Are we about to enter Vincent Ward’s The Navigator, a world with circa 500 AD inhabitants struggling with survival from plague and intellectual appreciation of the world, with a portal or door to civilisation today? https://g.co/kgs/fgSE9f

If our civilisation, circa now or immediate future, is analysed will we be characterised by our Barbarians, warlords or dictatorial masters?  

Or just extinct?

I see the English speaking Civilisation in decline,  it is really the European civilisation, AS China / Asia rises before India or South America take hegemony before Africa. As long as climate change and collapse don’t wipe us out. The Easter Islanders’ future. 

Part of my thinking lately has been the issuing of Murder Most Foul by Bob Dylan.

https://youtu.be/kfP5Es07vik

To me it is our most recent Cultural Mona Lisa, or Odyessy.  Bob Dylan being the Magician who has captured Zeigeist for 50 years. The Fool, the poet.

I see him as talking about the death of the American Dream and the American hope, dying with the assassination of JFK. Alongside Capitalism as we know it is declining, Our civilisation is running out of answers.  I’ve discussed this with any one and everyone who will engage. While This is ostensibly about America, not England or anywhere else, THIS is about the lead hero in the decline and end of a civilisation.

Today I found this by Timothy Hampton of UCBerkley, published by MIT. Link below.  I want to highly recommend it.  As I recommend listening to the song.  Hampton provides connection to contextualise Dylan’s work, and highlight the traditions and genesis of the work.

To synthesis some of my views with what I took from Hampton - Dylan has grabbed this significant moment as a marker as our world translates, communicates and assimilates the loss of hope, the struggles of capitalism, the confidence and certainty of the western world, and our existential souls.I’m being dramatic, but I can’t see anything as dramatic. When I looked back at history I think, What was it like to live in the Roman Empire as it collapsed? If you asked people of the time, would many see it’s the end of Rome?  And does the end of an Empire or civilisation look like Trump, Boris, climate crises, Anti science, viruses, violent enemies with different world views like China and Russia? 

That is where I came to Murder Most Foul, the USA who only 20 years ago could credibly declare themselves the leaders of the free world, but now won’t get many takers for that view.

Hampton has found many of the cultural connections and contextualised them, brilliantly. 

Please listen to the song, read Hampton’s article.  Then let me know, where we are.

Timothy Hampton teaches literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also directs the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities. He is the author of, among other books, “Bob Dylan’s Poetics: How the Songs Work,” published by Zone Books.

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/murder-most-foul-and-the-haunting-of-america/