Beautifully Broken Issue #15: Freedom vs Responsibility
Beautifully Broken Issue #15: Freedom vs Responsibility
IDEAS, ART & WISDOM TO REPAIR YOUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD
Happy Saturday! Welcome to the new, compact format of Beautifully Broken.
IDEAS FROM ME: Greedy Monkey Ruins the World
The fundamental promise between state and citizen is one in which the state offers the framework for a stable and peaceful life and in return the citizen agrees to live up to certain responsibilities - to defend the state in times of war, to give their energy through work in return for symbolic tokens (money) that can be in turn be exchanged for shelter and food; to pay a share of that money in taxes to help maintain the operation of the state and its services; and lastly, to participate in the life and energy of the culture.
This arrangement works well when a balance is maintained between the needs of the state and those of the citizens as a whole but there’s something about the animal nature of humanity that always seems to ruin what should be a fairly simple, easily maintained exchange.
I recently saw a video where monkeys at a popular temple in Asia will observe tourists and steal whatever they think is valuable to them – Ray-Ban sunglasses, purses, expensive phones – and then hold those items ransom in exchange for food. An offer of a banana is rudely rejected with a cry of outrage. An upgraded offer of a chocolate bar is accepted and the valuable item is returned.
This detrimental instinct that arises from our monkey ancestors, to take more than we need, to trick, steal or extort more than our fair share is now seen as legitimate business practice. Executives, politicians and community leaders look around and see other bold and aggressive monkeys gaming the system by every legal and sometimes illegal avenue and then follow suit. Grab as many bananas as you can, even if you can’t eat them all, before everyone else strips the tree bare.
How do you maintain justice, democracy and social stability when there is one set of rules for the wealthy and their companies, who can avoid paying taxes or making any contribution to the nation they conduct business in, and another for the common citizen, who is pressed by the system to comply fully with rules they can’t afford to escape?
If you were a greedy temple monkey, would you extort the chocolate bar or steal a purse if you knew it would eventually lead to the destruction of your environment, troop (yes, that’s the collective noun for a group of monkeys), and social structure? The monkeys don’t have that level of self-awareness but we do.
So what can be said of the current selfish rush on the world’s resources by the wealthy and powerful? A rush to be the emperors of a ruined world.
There’s another way of course, for human self-awareness to rise above animal fear and desire.
Look within yourself, find your own humanity and through your own actions set the example that will spread the message: that at the very least we must learn to charitable and curtail our greed while we still have a world worth living in.
HEADLINE FICTION #2: Dig Your Heels In
Here's a new format for short fiction that I've invented. It's a 70-word story in three panels with a pattern of 7-16-47 words, where the first 7 words form a headline style title, the 16 serve to fill out the headline information a little more and the final 47 contain the meat of the story and resolution. I think I'll call it "headline fiction". These micro stories of mine are based on dreams (and nightmares!) :)
ART TO MEDITATE UPON
The Feast Of Samhain Leonora Carrington • Painting, 1951, oil on canvas
Meditations: Sometimes we have to turn to the surreal to find the real. Observe the expressions on the faces of the two figures in the detail (second image), the personalities the artist has captured. The scene is surreal, magical and ghostly but I've seen people just like this in the theatre in London, in old people's homes, at the local shops.
Who are we? What ideas and energies shape us? What experiences or ideas do we cling to to find meaning?
Those forces shape our muscles, the way we hold our bodies, they appear in our eyes, faces, posture, and as the body is only a reflection of the mind, emotions and soul, they reflect something about ourselves, where we are stuck or where we have found a beautiful oasis of the heart that we are able to abide in.
WISDOM OF OTHERS: Excerpt from The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowels
And now for so long there had been no love, no possibility of it. But in spite of her willingness to become whatever he wanted her to become, she could not change that much: the terror was always there inside her ready to take command. It was useless to pretend otherwise. And just as she was unable to shake off the dread that was always with her, he was unable to break out of the cage into which he had shut himself, the cage he had built long ago to save himself from love.
Excerpt From: Paul Bowles, “The Sheltering Sky” (1949)
What a powerful and insightful passage from Paul Bowels’ masterpiece The Sheltering Sky.
A woman who tries to become what her husband wants her to be in the hope that that will bridge the abyss between them and fill it with love, but instead feels terror and insecurity, that her efforts are doomed to fail.
On the other side, her fears being proved true as her husband has built a cage to retreat within, to save himself from love.
The situation depicted is one of failed human communication. Not the inability to coordinate their physical lives, but to connect heart to heart. Human communication must surely be the greatest problem, the source of most suffering in the world.
Why does the male character wish to save himself from love? Because love is frightening, it opens you up, makes you vulnerable and vulnerability can make one weak to the suffering of the world. So men learn to shut their heart away because once you are hurt and lose your innocence, the world tells you that it’s best to lose yourself in doing things, that that’s the best way to ensure survival and minimise suffering. So then why have a heart at all? The suppressed heart is like a ticking bomb. The longer it is ignored, the bigger the problem down the track in terms of the toll it will take on human relationships.
For the female character, she seeks a way to her husband’s heart but can never break into the cage, never find the way to make the connection that will give her meaning, despite trying to change herself to satisfy him. What to do?
Perhaps the male character can invest in loss and risk being hurt, opening the door to his cage.
Perhaps the female character in turn must not define herself and risk her entire future happiness on the hope of his love, she must act from her own centre, defining herself on her own terms, as well as in the context of her relationship.
His heart open, her centre regained, balance is restored, love can flow within a solid framework.
Notes: "In this case, Paul Bowles’ fictionalized experience of the North African desert. In 1947, Bowles received a contract for a novel from Doubleday; with the advance, he moved permanently to Tangier. Jane joined him there the following year. Bowles commented: I was a composer for as long as I've been a writer. I came here because I wanted to write a novel. I had a commission to do it. I was sick of writing music for other people – Joseph Losey, Orson Welles, a whole lot of other people, endless." Bowles traveled alone into the Algerian Sahara to work on the novel. He later said, "I wrote in bed in hotels in the desert." He drew inspiration from personal experience, noting years later that, "Whatever one writes is in a sense autobiographical, of course. Not factually so, but poetically so." He titled the novel The Sheltering Sky, from a song, "Down Among the Sheltering Palms", which he had heard every summer as a child.
PHOTO HAIKU
Four billion flowers,
all fragrance runs into one-
pure scent, change the world.
Ideas To Live By In The Coming Week:
Work to recover integrity in your state by voting for representatives with integrity.
Realize that we are in a surrealistic world with material outcomes. Our inner lives shape our external world.
Open your heart to love and the world will change around you.
All the best,
8th June, 2024, The London Library, St. James’s, London