Bob Dylan has Got Charles Darwin Trapped Out there on
Highway 5
In Bob Dylan’s High
Water (For Charley Patton) which was released on "Love And Theft"
on Oct 19, 2001 there is a remarkable lyric that few have really taken notice
of. Let me quote here in context, to
get it out in front of us:
Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the
Jew
"You can't open
your mind, boysTo every conceivable point of view."
They got Charles
Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the
High Sheriff,
"I want him dead
or alive
Either one, I don't
care."
High Water everywhere
George Lewis and Charles Darwin are some old bluesmen from
the south right? Friends of Blind Lemon
Jefferson or something like that right? No, I don’t think that is the
reference. He can’t be talking about
Charles Darwin the English Naturalist, can he?
I mean this seems to be sort of a negative reference. There
was a time when Bob could warn about “Karl Marx having you by the throat and
Henry Kissinger having you tied up into knots.”
But those days are long past for Bob, right? Having
Charles Darwin trapped out there on the highway and "wanted dead or alive?” That is how we might talk about Billy the
Kid or his outlaw sidekick Alias, but certainly not the distinguished English naturalist.
Dylan is not challenging the established orthodoxy of the
university and the scientific culture of the Western World is he? I mean if there is one thing that can’t be
challenged in polite society in the twenty first century it has to be Charles Darwin’s
theory of Natural Selection. Hopefully
Dylan isn’t still so “born again” that he is questioning this, the unquestionable
verity? I mean Neo-Darwinian evolution is
accepted at every level, from the grade school, to the high school, in the
university, graduates schools, to institutions of research, to the Smithsonian. Come on Doug, you are not about to suggest
that Dylan would be willing to question this overwhelming consensus are
you? To question this is tantamount to
questioning the cultures’ overriding understanding of reality, he couldn’t, he
wouldn’t go there, would he? That would
make him a rebel, and Bob Dylan is
such a nice man, only occasionally “Preachin’ the Word of God, Putting out your
eyes.”
Dylan understands the larger implications of this scientific
theory, the larger worldview implications that arise from it. Every worldview must answer the question,
What is the thing or the process from which everything else comes? A materialist or naturalistic worldview
answers that question with reference to matter and energy and strictly material
processes. So Darwin’s theory provides
a critical plank in this larger materialistic narrative or theory of
being. Is Dylan, with just a couple of words
in a song, trying to undermine the very foundation of this very comprehensive and
strictly materialistic view of reality?
In a word …. Yes. He claims this theory has a limited future:
Oh it’s rush
hour nowOn the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow
Dylan has been critical before of those who would come to a place in their lives where “all they believe is their eyes, and their eyes just tell them lies.” There is so much more going on in the world than simply what can be seen with our eyes. We can’t even see the wind, only its effects, but we "don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows."
The artist has been concerned with this issue for a long
time. Forty three years ago on the New Morning Album from 1970 there was
the interesting song called Three Angels. The artist is sitting on a park bench
observing things near 10th Avenue, presumably Manhattan, and he is noticing
everybody failing to ask basic questions….
One U-Haul
trailer, a truck with no wheelsThe Tenth Avenue bus going west
The dogs and pigeons fly up and they flutter around
A man with a badge skips by
Three fellas crawlin’ on their way back to work
Nobody stops to ask why…
And as a result, they are missing out on something real going on in the unseen world, the world beyond
The angels
play on their horns all day
The whole earth in progression seems to pass by
But does anyone hear the music they play
Does anyone even try?
These are
great questions by a sensitive seeker of truth, “In this concrete world full of
souls” who can hear the music played by the three angels that is being drowned
out by the whole earth passing by in progression, totally oblivious to what is
really going on.The whole earth in progression seems to pass by
But does anyone hear the music they play
Does anyone even try?
There is a
bio-ethicist at Princeton, Peter Singer who is an advocate of the radical
animal rights agenda and the denial of any qualitative difference between
animals and man. He says that we are
just catching up with Darwin and anyone who puts any kind of distinction between
“us and them” is not following the theory consistently. It follows from that to assert anything like
human dignity simply has no ground on which to stand. To stand up for human dignity is just a form
of “specism” Peter Singer says. And
this naturalistic way of thinking has a way of bleeding into our understanding
of the other disciplines, sociology, political science, jurisprudence.
But Dylan
reminds us that this way of thinking is headed in a bad direction in the
conclusion to his song Ring them Bells,
Oh the lines
are long
And the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong
There is only a little distance between right and wrong when there is no distinction between man and the animals. “Tattooed my babies with a poison pen” i.e. murdering them, can be made to seem justified if the world is over populated and the gravest danger facing mankind is made out to be something as banal and commonplace as “climate change.”
But Bob councils his friends, And the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong
There is only a little distance between right and wrong when there is no distinction between man and the animals. “Tattooed my babies with a poison pen” i.e. murdering them, can be made to seem justified if the world is over populated and the gravest danger facing mankind is made out to be something as banal and commonplace as “climate change.”
"You
can't open your mind, boys…….To every conceivable point of view."
You have to
find some place to stand. Maybe it
should be on the “Solid Rock, made…. before… the creation of the World.” Which is something to which "he won't let go, and he can't let go."
Doug
For a good live performance of this song, with some great harmonica work from 2011 visit:
For a good live performance of this song, with some great harmonica work from 2011 visit:
