3 x 3 - Quareness Series 216th "Lecture".
No Longer Capable.
The sale of the century is now rapidly closing down,
With fewer and fewer buying what's left on the shelves
As the myths generated by our mass seducing explode
Over mankind's hopes, dreams, desires...and discontents.
Peddling phobia and petulant ideology has birthed
The idea of progress as a perpetual complaint,
An ever-rising clamour now rapidly destroying
Our faith and freedom and social cohesion.
But when the propaganda is no longer capable
Of manipulating the desires of the populace
We might yet uncover the unmentionable...
All crisis be driven by managerial elites.
Footnote: A pervasive sense of resentment is inevitable with any mass culture magnifying insoluble grievances.
A Pen In The Hand.
A pen in the hand slowing down thinking
Is waiting poised at the page borders,
As I ponder my words before writing.
Taking my time before committing to paper
Has me longing for honest communication.
Awakening intimacy as well as imagination.
For any pen thus handled makes for a walking aid
Travelling the highways and byways of creation,
Consigning lived experiences to lasting memory.
Footnote: "...writing is the only device combining solitude with good company" - Lord Byron.
Mad.
With media mostly dissolving into
A circus of hysterical talking heads,
Entrapped in festivals of delusion and
Multiple hallucinatory persecution fantasies,
Feeding on the pathological parading of clowns
In feverish descent into the fascination of insanity,
Almost everyone is watching and unable to turn away.
Living out of control and unable to manage,
Running short on internal stability and resilience,
Trying to control all others and the world around us,
Pointedly projecting a performance fragility and anxiety
With weaponised tantrums of affected virtue and entitlement,
We may yet get to witness a truly disturbing civil society
With everyone watching and unable to turn away.
But such marching towards madness has to end
Though this may be savage "cold turkey" for many
Seeing it as proof of their oppressive fear come true,
For endless accommodation of such ain't love at all
Which needs to toughen up along with the buttercups
Fore the gods get to destroy those they first make mad.
Footnote: Is it at all cruel to require the privileged indulged to relinquish their thrones?
Art Centre.
Torches of emotion enlighten
More than torches of reason
When art illuminates.
Demonstrating human experience
The work of art evokes response
Reflecting universals.
And in reaching us emotionally
And teaching about survival
We remember well.
Footnote : Those survival adaptations we call emotions are central to any work of art.
Hand Work.
Working with hands over time and with extensive practice
Sees deep intuition and flow develop for a musician,
Allowing for steady progress towards expertise.
Developing pattern recognition beyond what's given
Becomes an instinctual understanding which
After competence, allows for creativity.
Excellent outcomes call for working with minimal dissonance
In striving to remain in touch with our human integrity,
Despite the inherent tensions of a fallen world.
Footnote: As we defer to the "comforts" of new technology, are fundamental skills disappearing?
To Behold.
Behold the broken body of the Christ on a cross,
Our highest ideal joined with what's most awful,
Healing all of our woundings with His sacrifice.
Making something new out of the broken,
Creating impossibilities to become possible
With faith in the substance of that hoped for,
Behold that great redemption by a great Artist
Moving from beauty to goodness and on to truth.
To behold calms the mind on the graceful journey
From lament on to glory, which comes after trauma,
Setting the table again after we've washed the dishes.
Footnote: The point of great art (and faith) is to clarify the way things really are?
Collective Good.
What's with this collective good we hear about
Entirely unknowably fictional, no doubt about it,
With its "one size fits none" coercive solutions
Beloved of all tyrannical elites and technocrats.
When it's never factual unless they say so,
Entitled to our opinions but not our own facts
And denying our rights for the collective good,
Truth keeps getting in the way of real consensus.
Any false consensus based on coercive rule is tyranny
And any such based on a majority is of the worst kind,
With wannabe dictator nestlings secure in the numbers
Filleting information so the mob can throw its weight about.
But these aspiring aristocrats care nothing for agreed rules
In their obsessive seeking of the right to denounce others
As liars, anointing themselves as the sole arbiters of truth
With their narrow-minded mantra of the collective good.
Footnote: Because uncertainty is unavoidably inherent in our human condition, there is no way to reliably foresee or accurately measure any true collective good for all of us.
Where Truth Lies.
With so many laws and rules nourishing
Contradiction, contrivance and confusion,
It's impossible to even know if we're onside.
When everyone can be an outlaw
Mired in a complex legal thicket,
No just system can survive.
Whenever the rules are so unclear
The arbitrary nature of offending
Renders each of us our own jailer,
And being our own thought police
With no idea where the red lines lie,
We must keep well away from tripping.
Without any a priori valid means to determine
Which viewpoints are indeed false or harmful,
We see "truth-shaping" censorship taking over.
But it's only in free and open debate,
Where all sides can be heard, that
We come to know where truth lies.
Footnote: Unclear reasons and rules are inherent features wherever unapproved viewpoints are stifled?
Progress.
Lifeforms such as ourselves find...
stability in homeostasis,
adaptability in environments,
integration in digestion,
purification in immunity, and
growth in the life cycle.
And yet, we see today's bio-engineering...
upsetting stability of cells by repurposing their functions,
upsetting adaptability by fixing cell functions to produce alien proteins,
upsetting integration by destroying the uniform genetic expression of cells,
upsetting purification by teaching cells to self-produce toxins, and
upsetting growth through the proliferation of rogue cells.
And I hear it called progress.
Footnote: Are we marching towards the dead end of human history?
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
January, 2025.