King Canute famously ordered the tide back (or perhaps the waves to diminish) and found the limits of his power. It is a matter of opinion whether this was done in wisdom to demonstrate to his courtiers and admirers the limits of his powers or, as I remember the story from my childhood, it was rather in his self-belief, the delusion of his own omnipotence. I wonder what went through his mind as the sea came in?
Reading, as I have just been doing on Wikipedia, the account of what is known about Canute, I was struck by the ‘as if only yesterday’ quality of the story; the slaying of political opponents, his bigamy, his alliance with the church. And the image I have of him based on a drawing from an encyclopaedia on the bookshelf of my childhood home: a bearded, crowned man of noble demeanour, sitting on an elaborately carved throne with the waves lapping around his feet (which reminds me, whatever happened to those volumes of encyclopaedias? I used to spend hours lying on the floor, turning over the pages–though I’m not sure how much I read, I think it was more the pictures that held my attention).
I’m inclined to see good old Canute as a mirror held up to two of our major current concerns:
One being our old friend, global warming, and the other being Iraq.
What I learn from Wikipedia is that Canute established a certain stability in eleventh century England and yes it was based on the willingness to use violence, just like Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Though it has to be added that any state reserves the right to maintain its rule with violence if necessary. We don’t like to see “how ruthlessly society covered up its atrocious base,” (as Seamus Heaney puts it–The Redress of Poetry page 94). And now, four years after the US led invasion, I guess most Iraqis would prefer that repressive stability to the current murderous anarchy.
And what about global warming? Literally the rising tide; we know the tide’s coming in because almost every newspaper, any TV or radio news mentions it, but maybe we don’t have to face it yet, or at least not quite yet, and let’s face it, if we do face it, we’ve got no idea what do about it or how deep the challenge is going to take us.
Better put off the evil moment as long as possible!
Can it really mean the end of our profligate ways? Or can we turn it to a profit? Will new technology come to our rescue? Even worse, does it mean that like Mugabe in Zimbabwe (see the article by R.W. Johnson in the London Review of Books 22 February 2007) who is apparently happy to see a third of the population die, there a future of mass famine and death?
In other words how far are going to have to change and how on earth is it going to be managed? What sort of thinking will get us out of this mess? There’s plenty of thinking going on but is any of it any good?
King Canute is said to have removed his crown after he failed to stop the sea coming in, meanwhile our own dear PM Tony Blair tries to delay the removal of his crown; desperately trying to get the final pieces of his legacy in place before he retires.
I do believe we can all see those waves lapping at his toes.