|
[The West has] embraced
recycling as a transcendental experience, an act of moral
redemption. We're not just reusing our garbage; we're performing a
rite of atonement for the sin of excess.
Recycling teaches the
themes that previous generations of schoolchildren learned from that
Puritan classic, The Pilgrim's Progress. John Bunyan's
17th-century allegory features a character not unlike the garbage
barge that left Long Island: a man dressed in rags who flees the
City of Destruction, desperate to find a place he can unload the
"great burden upon his back".
Guided by the
Evangelist, the pilgrim wanders the world trying to reach the
Celestial City. His worst trial occurs in Vanity Fair, a village
market founded by Beelzebub and inhabited by noblemen named Lord
Luxurious and Sir Having Greedy. The market offers tempting wares,
but the pilgrim bravely practices the first R - reduce - by shunning
the products of the "merchandizers" and continuing on to the
Celestial City.
Today's schoolchildren,
though, might be confused by one character encountered on Bunyan's
road to salvation: a man, the source of our word 'muckraker', who is
busy raking together a compost pile. This recycler of household
waste isn't presented as a role model for the pilgrim. He's a symbol
of moral blindness because, instead of looking up to see the
heavenly rewards awaiting him, he
| "could look no way but
downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand." |
In Bunyan's time, it
would have been hard to imagine that pilgrims would one day be
taught to search for salvation right down there in the muck.
Maybe parents and
children correctly see the intangible value of recycling lessons.
But as children pursue their moral education, as they learn to
ponder the fate of the earth, it wouldn't hurt for them to also
study, once again, that recycling scene in Pilgrim's Progress.
If Bunyan were an administrator in today's schools, he might call it
a lesson in prioritizing.
The thrifty muckraker,
intent on his compost pile, doesn't notice a figure hovering
overhead, offering to trade him a golden celestial crown for his
rake. This scene is observed by the pilgrim, who consults a helpful
guide named the Interpreter.
| "This is a figure of a man of this world, is it not,
good sir?"
the pilgrim asks. |
| "Thou hast said the right,"
the Interpreter replies,
"and his muckrake
doth show his carnal mind." |
The Interpreter points
out the waste on the ground and sadly explains that, for the
muckraker,
| "Things here are counted the only things
substantial." |
The muckraker has
forgotten that there is more to life than hoarding natural
resources. His recycling has become the most primitive form of
materialism: the worship of materials.
| "Earthly things, when they are with power upon men's
minds, quite carry their hearts away from God"
the Interpreter says. |
The pilgrim cries out in
horror:
| "O! deliver me from this muckrake." |
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