“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” (F Nietzsche).
I first came across this quote while at university and it has stayed with me ever since. There is a fascinating discussion regarding it’s meaning here, http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/and-if-you-gaze-for-long-into-an-abyss-the-abyss-gazes-also-into-38060-11.html
Bending, I trace the weathered stone resting peacefully in the grass. Being blind I know not who slumbers below, but hope they sleep well.
Birds sing. My dog investigates the plants growing in and around the grave, his warm head finds my hand, looking for an answer, “why have we stopped so close to home?” he seems to ask.
Turning, I run my hands over the rough bark of a huge tree. I notice a split in the midst of this mighty oak. Slowly the tree is dying. It won’t go soon unless storm uproots it but, in time the split will deepen, church wardens will consult. Perhaps staves will be employed to support the tree or, maybe a few blows of the woodman’s axe will bring it down for the safety of the community.
Intellectually I know death will one day find me but, standing here I feel no fear, only a curiosity about this place.
“The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man”.
I have felt the fire at midnight’s hour
It kindles brightly and sinks within the hour.
I have gazed at embers dying fast
Looked into the future and gazed into the past
I have raked the ashes cold, felt the bleakness in my soul.
The vision of heaven related by the brain surgeon in the above article reminds me of Hardy’s poem, “The Oxen”. In it the poet hints that he is sceptical about the existence of god however, where he to be asked to visit the barn, on a christmas eve to see the oxen kneel he would go, “hoping it might be so”.
“Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.”
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
At school I, along with my fellow pupils was encouraged to create a mini dictionary. Each time I discovered an unfamiliar word I would look it up in the dictionary and enter it into my little book. This practice kindled in me a love of words and to this day I still make a habit of looking up unfamiliar ones.
Yesterday I came across the word demythology. Turning to The Fontana Dictionary Of Modern Thought I found the following definition of demythologize, (a meaning for demythology isn’t rendered):
“Demythologize. To confess disbelief in the legends and mythological ideas present in the Bible, while translating the Bible’s message into a religious understanding compatible with modern science and philosophy …”. Yet another word to add to my vocabulary although not one I can envisage utilising any time soon.
As I stood at the Customer Services counter, in the supermarket, the strains of that beautiful hymn, Abide With Me, played by the Salvation Army came wafting through the open door,
“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me. Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see—
O Thou who changest not, abide with me”.
One does not need to be religious (I am an agnostic) to appreciate the power of this wonderful music. As I listened the fragility of life was brought home to me. How, in the blink of an eye that life which is so precious to most of us can be snuffed out.
The message of Abide With Me is that death is inevitable and that Christians call on God in times of trouble “in life, in death” to abide with them. Yet there has, since the birth of story telling been tales of people wishing to avoid death. In Chaucer’s The Pardoners Tale, for example a group of revellers in Flanders incensed at the death of their friend swear vengeance against death. In their quest to destroy him the drunken revellers come across an old man and question him regarding where death can be found. The elderly man tells the men they will find death under a tree. On reaching the spot they discover a pile of treasure and forget all about death. The youngest of the group goes off to procure wine while his 2 friends remain behind to guard the treasure. While the youngest of the group is absent his friends determine to murder him on his return so as to secure the treasure for themselves. On his return they murder him and fall to drinking the wine he has procured. However their friend, wishing to retain the whole treasure has poisoned the wine and the 2 men die in agony.
In The Pardoners Tale all 3 men find death in the form of treasure which leads to their destruction. The revellers perhaps also meet death personified in the shape of the elderly man who directs them to the treasure. However as the elderly man is, himself seeking death some have argued that he is not, in fact death but simply an elderly man who is (as he himself says) in search of death.
The Pardoners Tale derides the notion that one can escape death. Any attempt to avoid “that fel sergeant death” is futile and may actually hasten his approach.
A school of thought known as Transhumanism has grown up which postulates that all human suffering and even death itself can be vanquished by the onward march of technological progress. If we can slow down and (eventually) switch off the gene which causes ageing it will be possible to extend life indefinitely they argue. Other Transhumanists place their faith in artificial intelligence. At some point in the future they contend it will be possible to download (or upload) one’s consciousness into artificial brains which, in time can be placed into new artificial bodies thereby enabling the individual to live on long after there biological brain has ceased to function. Some Transhumanists, for example the inventor Ray Kurzweil believe that people will be able to choose whether to continue their existence (after uploading) in either the real world or virtual reality (I.E. on the internet). Consequently the future invisioned by Transhumanists is one in which death ceases to exist or becomes an option which may be embraced (optionally) by a few Transhumanists in the new utopia.
Will The Pardoner or the Transhumanists have the last laugh I wonder?
I must confess to finding XFM’s Thought For The Day For Satanists rather humorous. It is, I hasten to add a very much tongue in cheek production, not meant to be taken seriously and can, I believe be enjoyed by people of all faiths and none, https://soundcloud.com/the-xfm-breakfast-show/thought-for-the-day-for-3
Standing in my bedroom, the much loved pine bookcase giving off it’s scent of forests mixed with books. The flat is quiet, England is at peace. What a contrast to the situation in Iraq where madmen in the shape of The Islamic State murder and persecute Christians together with anyone else who dares to disagree with their warped view of the world. Mad men doing evil, chaos reigns and I stand, breathing in the smell of books mixed with pine, at peace in a free land.
The other day an acquaintance remarked that they felt uncomfortable in the presence of women wearing the Burka (the cloak worn by some Muslim ladies which leaves only the eyes exposed). France has banned the garment as an affront to equality, a decision recently upheld by the European Court of Human Rights despite the claims by some Muslims that the ban on the Burka in public breeches human rights. Is the prohibition a peculiarly French piece of legislation stemming from Rousseau’s view, expounded in The Social Contract that man “must be forced to be free”, (in this case those Muslims wishing to wear the Burka must subordinate their desire to “the general will” which, in France appears to be in support of the Burka ban?
Some in the UK are calling for the country to go down the French route and prohibit the Burka in the interests of “social cohesion”. One can not, they claim interact with fellow citizens when all but their eyes are concealed behind black cloth. The Burka is “sinister” and should be prohibited in public. Calls for a prohibition on the wearing of the Burka have found support among some muslim scholars who say it has no place in a modern conception of Islam, (see, for example the following recent article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2695181/Why-I-Muslim-launching-campaign-ban-burka-Britain.html.
Others argue that banning the Burka runs counter to a long and honourable tradition of British liberty. It is, they say intolerable for the state to dictate to people how they aught to dress. The British philosopher J S Mill was suspicious of what he termed “the tyranny of the majority” and adherents of Mill’s views might well argue that to impose “the general will” or what most people would call “the will of the majority” on fellow citizens as regards how they choose to dress is illiberal. The idea of a person being arrested merely for wearing a certain kind of garment sticks in the throat of many liberals. However other liberals argue that Muslim girls and women often come under intense pressure from within their own communities to wear the Burka and, in many cases it is far from being a free choice of clotheing. Therefore we must assist such women by prohibiting the wearing of the garment in public.
Leaving aside for a moment the rights and wrongs of the Burka there is also the argument of pragmatism. At a time of limited resources is it a good use of police time to go around arresting women for flouting a Burka ban? If such a prohibition where introduced might it act as a recruiting sergeant for Islamic extremists who could portray it as persecution of Muslims?
At a deeper philosophical level can one “force people to be free?” Would prohibiting the wearing of the Burka promote outward conformity with western norms of dress but leave those who wish to wear it inwardly seething with anger?
The advance of the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq undoubtedly helps to fuel suspicion and, in some cases paranoia against Muslims most of whom abhor what is being done in their name in Iraq. We must be steadfast in our opposition to extremism (whether Islamic or otherwise) but, at the same time consider long and hard before going down the road of Burka bans and other similar measures.
K Morris - Poet 