Tag: freedom

allegory, memoir, mythology, nationalism, politics, Uncategorized

The minotaur’s memoir

But, despite the tensions we were soldiers first and Kreet was the land that bound us, both the unwilling and the blind. The hour before sunrise is the coldest. The wind picks up and the chill settles on the bones. You can run for the whole hour and not feel warmed up inside. But any time away from the camp is a relief. Especially now with the prisoners there. The enemy prisoners. We prefer the 1am duty. The guardhouse is noisy until 11pm anyway and the chance of being hauled away for some dirty job is high. At one in the morning the world feels like a peaceful place. The lights in town shimmer, the lights of the main road hang beneath the horizon like pots of fire. Once a barn owl swooped over our heads as we sat in the grass smoking a cigarette, cupping our hands over it carefully to avoid detection and putting our heads between our knees to suck in the smoke and hide the soft glow. We felt it before we heard it. It sounded like something big breathing out over us. We felt a quick rush of cool air on our necks and then heard a swoosh. Between feeling the owl and hearing it we had rolled away and were aiming at the blackness behind us. After a kilometre we started laughing uncontrollably and sat down again and smoked a cigarette but coughed a lot through laughter. That was one of the happiest moments from that time. It bound us and allowed us to remain friends after the difficulties later. That we could laugh together gave each of us permission to forgive one another later.

There was this evening in the beer garden. Blokes getting drunk and forgetting stuff they had seen or done and finding absolution in the wordless confessional of alcohol.

We have to fight to hold onto our land, Kreet is ours someone said. Maybe the beer had given me courage? Maybe the guilt of silent collusion got the better of me?

Is it really our land? I said. The Company officer, the one who had forced us to leopard crawl over slate and laughed as we had bled, was there. Like dogs we were eager for his approval. We imagined he had become a friend.

You’re crossing a line he said.

A veil of distrust descended over us. Things continued as normal after that but dialogue strained as if emerging every time tired from a long journey through an internal labyrinth where pre verbalised thoughts were considered according to possible interpretations and consequences. Everyone became cautious, having to hold the thread of the original thought while surveying the various landscapes that began to form and take shape as a result of the words spoken. Conversation collapsed under the pressure and became chatter skimming along the surface of things: the weather, physical ailments, safe complaints about people mutually agreed upon to be fools and the camp dog, Asterion. It was always safe and comforting to share stories about Asterion’s antics as if talking about him bridged the abyss deepening beteeen us.

That was all a long time ago and Kreet is reclaimed now. Those who were once prisoners now lead and those who used to lead have been imprisoned. I wonder now if we were soldiers protecting the land or minotaurs prowling the imagined idea of a country in the subterranean labyrinth of some nameless terrain in wait for a name change? The friend with the owl now farms the land and I exiled myself from it.

The new country has a name but I have become weary of names for land. There are leaders here also, I’m not sure yet whether they lead soldiers or minotaurs. I was a minotaur once. Now I look for Asterion instead. There is always an Asterion. I only saw an owl once. There are prisoners here, they are everywhere.

writing

The Gospel of Jack

after which he smiled. 7. Then God located the binary swing of the atom and gave it prominence. Thus there emerged from their subsequent dance, the sky and the land.  8. He breathed air and called it Heaven, peopled the land and, called it Hell. 9. People dreamed of flying, watched birds and, like them, wished to fly. It was a grand dream that took grip of their imagination. 10.  But, even those who managed to fly, found that sooner or later, they had to return to the ground. 11. What goes up, must come down. It’s not rocket science. 12. Where the planes came down, at an aerodrome on the outskirts of town, a bird-chaser lived in a shack. 13. His job was to chase flocks of ducks and seagulls that gathered there and presented a hazard to planes. (They did not consider that, perhaps, the planes were a hazard to the birds). But, the duck chaser did as he was told.

14. His name was Jack and he thought a lot about flight, birds, growing olives and the meaning of life. 15. He was looking for a unified theory of everything. 16. Or rather, he was looking for the words to describe the thing that connected everything.  16. If the world is all that matters and matter is comprised of atoms, why is conscious thought still on the outside of everything? In fact, where is it located? 17. It’s a very hard problem he thought. But it can’t be rocket science. 18. Jack inhaled great draughts of air and as he did, he had a thought that opened like a flower of light stretching its petals. If heaven is in the sky and, the sky is air and, we breathe air, do we not have heaven within us? Surely we do not need to fly to get to heaven he thought?

a flower of light

19. Jack told his friend Felix, the owner of a local Tavern, about his idea. 20. Many pilots frequented Felix’s Tavern and opened up to him about their problems, like in the movies (except this was for real). 21. One night Felix told some of them about his friend, Jack, and his theory that men did not need to fly to reach heaven. 22. You could have heard a pin drop. 23. What does a duck chaser know about the science of  flight? they said, and left . 24. The dedicated fliers among them did not like this talk. It made a mockery of their endeavours. 25. Then they became angry. 26. Through friends of friends in high places, they had Jack fired from his job. 27. This did not bother Jack who moved to a shack in the country to grow olives and think.

Country scene by Hannah Scallan

28. The disgruntled airmen flew as often as possible to forget what Jack had said. 29. They grew angry and bitter, he had tainted their flights with doubt. 30. They resolved to call him evil, for he had made impure what had always been pure. 31. Only fliers and those with aeroplanes, or friends with aeroplanes they said, were loyal to the idea of heaven. 32. It is blasphemy for a person to claim that just by breathing, on his own, anyone can find heaven they exclaimed. 33. To know Heaven, a person must fly with an authorised carrier. This, they proclaimed, is the way.

The way

34. And that became law because big money was involved. 35. Jack and his kind would now face legal proceedings if they dared speak against the authorised carriers, big or small. 36. How cruel you are to take from people their dreams. Begone from our midst, leave us at least our dreams the lawyers representing the authorised carriers told Jack. 36. Jack was happy to begone from them. By begone he understood them to mean be quiet. That he could do. 37. And, the lowly breather of air departed from the lawyer’s office whistling a happy tune. 38. The lawyers cracked open a box of Cohiba Siglio #3 and celebrated. They laughed and laughed. 39. They had outwitted Jack and his kind. Furthermore, they were friends with people of influence.  40. Soon, it came to pass that there were two kinds of people. Fliers who dreamed of flying and those who grew olives, had regular day jobs and just breathed.

41. The fliers became like gods. They sought to safeguard their knowledge of flight.42. After months of collaboration they produced a very special book: The Authorised Manual Of Flight. It was a Big book.

There were pages of complex illustrations

43. They filled the manual with complicated mathematics and laws of physics and equations to describe force, gravity, velocity and motion. They concluded with a chapter entitled How to fold your parachute and avoid death. 44. Initially there was a great demand for the book but since no-one could understand it, sales dropped and soon it was forgotten. 45. This pleased the fliers. There plan had worked. Their jobs were secure, as was the adoration they enjoyed from the masses. 46. The masses accepted that they were illiterate in the field of flight. They were relieved they did not need to read complicated books or learn to fly. They were happy to pay authorized carriers to carry them. 47 They continued to work hard and save like heck to pay for the privilege of being flown. 48. Everyone was happy.  49. Except the men of influence, the friends of friends of fliers. 50. Everyone was benefiting from flight but them. 51. They introduced a tax for all authorized carriers, big and small. 52. The carriers were busy, the tax was annoying but they had expected it. They increased their fares and paid their taxes. 53. Now, everyone was happy. Those who were not, did not count.

54. Meanwhile, back at his shack, Jack was happily harvesting olives and sharing his ideas with back-packers who came from all over the world to experience honest work. 55. And, they paid Jack for the work they did. This made no sense to Jack, but it was what they wanted. He was happy to comply with their wishes. It’s not rocket science. 56. Besides, their company was good. 57. Jack’s ideas got traction overseas. He did not spread them but the back-packers who were mostly young were liberated by his notions and upon returning home, many took up flying. They built their own flying machines. 58. The authorized carriers were not happy when they discovered that people were flying independently of them. 59. We must stop these anarchists before they destroy our way of life, they declared. 60. And the headlines in newspapers (owned by friends of friends of people of influence) read: Anarchists threaten our way of life! 61. The young flyers were stunned. They searched for the meaning of anarchist: 62. a person who believes in or tries to bring about anarchy.  They then had to search the term Anarchy: a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems. 63. They quickly sought legal representation. 64. No lawyers were willing to represent them. 65. The anarchists were arrested.

66. Everyone felt better. 67. Troublemakers are selfish, the tabloids reported, never happy. 68. The authorised carriers breathed a collective sigh, smoked their cigars and went back to the skies. 69. I went back to my olives and shack, smoked my pipe and wrote this down. 70. Now I pickle olives and between thoughts, I breathe, deeply and contentedly. 71. I wish you peace. 72. The end.

I wish you peace
philosophy, politics

The new world order

The state of democracy.
The state of democracy.

Seven score and 12 years ago Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as “government of the people, by the people for the people”. His social context was civil war and his political context was re-election. Nevertheless, we have adopted the cultural habit of associating individual freedom with the political structures of democracy. Furthermore, we tend to assume that the latter guarentees the former. But democracy has always been experienced within a firmly regulated space where the initial vision of egalitarian power has evolved into a mercenary political drive to ‘hold’ power.

Now, on the threshold of a new century, it is perhaps time to re-evaluate what democracy means to the average person. By average person I imply one of the ‘people’ for , of and by whom the above mentioned governance is meant to be administered. Those in power have always offered limited freedoms to appease the masses. The illusion of participation is a powerful opiate. In the age of social media this is especially true. Technology makes us feel that we are active participants in the world. Maybe we are? What is the alternative? What does personal liberty look like?

By the late Eighteenth century”Liberty”was represented as a lady in a toga. The bold, proud voice of seduction dressed in the cloth of imperial Rome. A woman in men’s clothing with enough cleavage to dispell any seriousness we might have in her ability to lead. A novelty perhaps? After about two and a half centuries it seems a lot of people are asking whether individual freedom has ever been taken very seriously at the level of governance. The daily bread of facebook, twitter and linkedin nourish the illusion of action. We tweet, ‘like’ activist pages and ‘sign’ petitions while chained to the cogs of the various systems that keep the engines of society churning. Maybe that’s enough and to expect any more is to be naive and hopelessly romantic? It begs the question, is democracy as an ideal flawed? Declining voter turnout (where voting is not compulsory), the emergence of the Occupy Movement since 2011 and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America appear to indicate an increasing disenchantment with many aspects of the democratic process.

Democracy has everything to do with a political process and little to do with the condition of being human in the 21st century. Globally there is a tangible disenchantment with politics. The primary goal of politicians appears to be re-election and pandering to an electorate. People feel powerless because they feel that the influence of their vote is diminished by the very political process that promises to safeguard their voice. We just don’t feel that we are being heard. Political speeches sound like lip service, politicians appear contrived. Shirt sleeves rolled up, blue and red ties, dark suits for men, executive haircuts for ladies, … everything feels manipulated. Politics has always been a form of theatre, lately it resembles a farcical puppet show. That’s ok if that’s your thing. I suspect this is why people are more inclined to tweet than vote. Their tweets are read, their votes may be counted but do not appear to affect any meaningful policy. Democracy has become the realm of bureaucracy. To borrow from Winston Churchill, an interminable paper tray has descended between the people and their government. The box has replaced the voice. “Tick the box that ye may be heard” is the new world order. And don’t draw outside of the box, under any circumstances.

Perhaps the best that we can do is to bring all of the conviction we have about life and humanity to the square metre of space around our feet and then treat the people that come into this space the way we treat the world online. If we want to actively participate in the world we may practice our ideologies online, but if we do not act them out with the people around us we lack integrity. Then we are no better than the politicians who pretend to care while they fight for re-election.

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