Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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Hello Rose
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One of the most amazing things about the human race is the intricate and imaginative ways we have of justifying ourselves. If you ask a man what his goal in life is you will probably get an answer, but the answer will most likely have more to do with his purpose in regard to what he does. A life's goal is a deeply held secret thing that is hard, and perhaps impossible, to put into words. It is the unspoken and invisible challenge that motivates but continually frustrates us. It comes from a consciousness we are only occasionally aware of. It is a matter of personal achievement, of finding and filling one's true destiny.
A man can describe himself as a craftsman of some sort. He may say that his goal is to be a better one, a master at his craft, but that brings on the question of why he isn't. And the answer to that question is so elusive it seems to be outside of himself. It's a mystery.
Gradually appearing on the mental horizon comes the nasty four letter word FATE. Yes, there is no doubt in his mind there is something, some unexplainable thing that keeps him from achieving his purpose in life. He has an urgent need to find and understand that thing, that force from beyond him, that keeps him down.
Ancient priests used to sacrifice sheep and read the entrails to find answers. In Asia they would cast the I Ching by reading the lines on the belly of a tortoise. Astronomers could chart the future of men and nations by reading the stars. It is written that the mother of Alexander the Great held off giving birth to him until the court astronomer said the stars were in the exact proper location for greatness. His success was "in the stars." But what does Shakespeare say? "The fault, dear Brutus, in not in our starts but in ourselves that we are underlings."
The search for the mystical truth got more personal with palmistry, gazing into a crystal ball or a circle on the ground, reading tea leaves or coffee grounds. And then there are the cards. The mystic can read your destiny in the cards. Which gives you an ample excuse for failure. If it's "not in our stars" and "not in the cards" where is it?
The emergence of a new kind of religion in the early Middle Ages gave us the answer. It's Satan, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, the Devil. "The Devil made me fail." That's a good one. It lends itself to all sorts of colorful self justification and ritual confession, sacrifice and cleansing. We all know what the Devil does. Satan is responsible for all tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, for all non Christian religions, for murder (the illegal kind), for illness, insanity and death, for noisy neighbors, disobedient children and snakes, for Communism, Hollywood and the Democratic Party. Or so we have been told by one pastor or another.
If we could just get the Devil out of our lives our destiny would improve, success would be possible and happiness assured.
But wait. The Devil has been replaced. There's a new crystal ball, a new circle on the ground, a new deck of cards, a new zodiac. DNA. Instead of the Devil it was "my DNA made me fail." The modern mystic can chart your destiny by reading the DNA leaves. It provides a solid scientific reason for self justification
How long will it be before they find a way to alter your DNA, before we decide who lives and who doesn't based on their DNA and thus their probability of success or failure, of benevolent or criminal behavior? When will chemistry take the place of ethics?
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our DNA.
William Jennings Bryan wrote "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up.
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AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
Only 3 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answers.
DB
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Showing posts with label Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Show all posts
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Light The Lights
Do we stand in our own light wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
***********************
"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)
Years ago I knew a photographer who told me one day that she had mounted an exhibit of her pictures at a photography gallery in lower Manhattan, and that they were self portraits. I thought that was intriguing so I went down to see it.
It was a nice big gallery with some beautiful pictures. In one large room there were films and videos. One of the videos consisted of people cavorting around in very active and suggestive ways. But the video screen was very small. I went over to it to see what they were doing and as soon as I stepped up to the screen the image changed to a very lonely scene. I shrugged and walked away, and as soon as I did the original scene returned. So I stepped back and again the video changed to the lonely scene. It seems there was a switch which would change the video whenever anyone came close to the screen.
In another room there was a very large print of a photo taken with a camera obscura. That's a technique in which one frame of film is exposed over a period of time. In this case the film was in a box with a pin point lens using ambient light. And what the artist had done was to set up nine chairs in a row and put a model in each one of them. Every ten minutes, from one end or the other one of the models would get up and leave. At the end of ninety minutes the only model remaining was the one in the center. The resulting photograph showed her, very clearly, and those on either side of her gradually becoming transparent as your eye moved along the surface of the picture.
Finally I found my friend's self portraits. What she had done was to go all over the city on a sunny day and take pictures of her shadow, on the sidewalks, on the grass, up against a wall and so on.
I could have said "Hm" and left the exhibit simply having spent an entertaining two hours. But those three exhibits, the changing videos, the slowly disappearing models and the shadows, all pointed toward the same thing and I had to think about it.
There's an existential carpet there. But is it a magic carpet, does it fly or is it only to sweep confusing hair balls of thinking under. "Cogito ergo sum." I once knew a philosopher who paraphrased that Cartesian axiom by saying, I think therefore I am, I think. Carefully setting under the carpet for today the possibility that I may not exist in the form in which I think I do, is the fact that I am a thinking creature irrefutable evidence that I exist? It can be a fearful thing to face one's own thinking if it is honestly and conscientiously done. Where do my thoughts come from? Are they a product of the passionate love affair between imagination and reason, are they the product of some phylogenic process, are they the intellectual merchandise of some tyrannical brain seeding, are they (heaven forbid) mental weeds which grow out of nature's chaos to fill a vacuum? How many of the thoughts that twirl and bounce around in my head like a bunch of lottery balls can I claim to be my own. The fewer of those there are the more transparent I have become and the earlier I have quit the scene.
What is the reluctance we have for facing the clear light of reality? Is it fear, indifference or ignorance? It doesn't hurt to turn one's attention to ideas and experiences greater than one's own. It shouldn't hurt to explore the open fields and mountain tops of one's own thinking. Why then do we habitually look away from the light and define ourselves by our own shadows when we could let ourselves be defined by the brightness that is hiding in us like a prehistoric creature in a cave?
I grew up in a threadbare family; no father, a difficult and demanding mother, a brother and sister who were a whole decade and more older than I. I suffered a great lack of the feelings and experiences of a family life. Hence I tried to make a family out of whatever theatre company I was with. I tried thinking of them as my fathers and mothers, my sisters and brothers and, eventually, my sons and daughters. Of course it didn't work. They all had families somewhere, and other lives. When I retired it was my destiny to live alone and lonely. But it was also the time to start learning about, understanding and appreciating myself. The party is going on, the games are being played and the crowd may be fun to be with, but you won't find yourself there. You will find yourself in the vast, bright, mysterious, secret and sacred cathedral of your own mind.
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.
14 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
Thank you.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
And fight our own shadows forever?
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
***********************
"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)
Years ago I knew a photographer who told me one day that she had mounted an exhibit of her pictures at a photography gallery in lower Manhattan, and that they were self portraits. I thought that was intriguing so I went down to see it.
It was a nice big gallery with some beautiful pictures. In one large room there were films and videos. One of the videos consisted of people cavorting around in very active and suggestive ways. But the video screen was very small. I went over to it to see what they were doing and as soon as I stepped up to the screen the image changed to a very lonely scene. I shrugged and walked away, and as soon as I did the original scene returned. So I stepped back and again the video changed to the lonely scene. It seems there was a switch which would change the video whenever anyone came close to the screen.
In another room there was a very large print of a photo taken with a camera obscura. That's a technique in which one frame of film is exposed over a period of time. In this case the film was in a box with a pin point lens using ambient light. And what the artist had done was to set up nine chairs in a row and put a model in each one of them. Every ten minutes, from one end or the other one of the models would get up and leave. At the end of ninety minutes the only model remaining was the one in the center. The resulting photograph showed her, very clearly, and those on either side of her gradually becoming transparent as your eye moved along the surface of the picture.
Finally I found my friend's self portraits. What she had done was to go all over the city on a sunny day and take pictures of her shadow, on the sidewalks, on the grass, up against a wall and so on.
I could have said "Hm" and left the exhibit simply having spent an entertaining two hours. But those three exhibits, the changing videos, the slowly disappearing models and the shadows, all pointed toward the same thing and I had to think about it.
There's an existential carpet there. But is it a magic carpet, does it fly or is it only to sweep confusing hair balls of thinking under. "Cogito ergo sum." I once knew a philosopher who paraphrased that Cartesian axiom by saying, I think therefore I am, I think. Carefully setting under the carpet for today the possibility that I may not exist in the form in which I think I do, is the fact that I am a thinking creature irrefutable evidence that I exist? It can be a fearful thing to face one's own thinking if it is honestly and conscientiously done. Where do my thoughts come from? Are they a product of the passionate love affair between imagination and reason, are they the product of some phylogenic process, are they the intellectual merchandise of some tyrannical brain seeding, are they (heaven forbid) mental weeds which grow out of nature's chaos to fill a vacuum? How many of the thoughts that twirl and bounce around in my head like a bunch of lottery balls can I claim to be my own. The fewer of those there are the more transparent I have become and the earlier I have quit the scene.
What is the reluctance we have for facing the clear light of reality? Is it fear, indifference or ignorance? It doesn't hurt to turn one's attention to ideas and experiences greater than one's own. It shouldn't hurt to explore the open fields and mountain tops of one's own thinking. Why then do we habitually look away from the light and define ourselves by our own shadows when we could let ourselves be defined by the brightness that is hiding in us like a prehistoric creature in a cave?
I grew up in a threadbare family; no father, a difficult and demanding mother, a brother and sister who were a whole decade and more older than I. I suffered a great lack of the feelings and experiences of a family life. Hence I tried to make a family out of whatever theatre company I was with. I tried thinking of them as my fathers and mothers, my sisters and brothers and, eventually, my sons and daughters. Of course it didn't work. They all had families somewhere, and other lives. When I retired it was my destiny to live alone and lonely. But it was also the time to start learning about, understanding and appreciating myself. The party is going on, the games are being played and the crowd may be fun to be with, but you won't find yourself there. You will find yourself in the vast, bright, mysterious, secret and sacred cathedral of your own mind.
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
In your opinion what is the most amazing thing that could happen during this decade? Make it as outrageous as you want but keep it within the realm of what you consider a possibility.
14 responses so far.
Answers will be published the first day of Summer.
Thank you.
dbdacoba@aol.com
DB - The Vagabond
*******************
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