Quite frankly, there is so much that I'm not very good at that one tends to avoid these things like the plague.
Weak, I know but there it is.
Playing tennis, dancing, suffering fools gladly [which is a bit rich because I've done so many foolish things in my time] - these are just a few. For example, I've always underestimated the human capacity to overcome the direst of circumstances and adapt or win against all odds; it's often turned out I was wide of the mark.
Perfect example here is predicting football results or betting on a horse - better I just don't try.
But in other aspects of human nature and group behaviour, especially if not emotionally involved with the person and abandoning all modesty here - I'm rarely wrong [the Poirot inside] and this can be put down to a Miss Marple quote in A Christmas Tragedy:
[How few people] ever stop to think. They really don't examine the facts. Surely, the whole crux of the matter is this - how often is tittle tattle, as you call it, true. I think if, as I say, they really examined the facts, they'd find it was true nine times out of ten. That's really what makes people so annoyed about it!
"The inspired guess," said Sir Henry.
"No, not that, not that at all. It's really a matter of practice and experience. An Egyptologist, so I've heard, if you show him one of those curious little beetles, can tell you by the look and feel of thing what date BC it was or if it's a Birmingham imitation. And he can't always give a definite rule for doing so. He just knows. His life has been spent handling such things.
And so, you see, superfluous women, as you might put it, get to become what you might term experts. Now young people nowadays, they talk very freely about things that weren't mentioned in my young days but on the other hand, their minds are very innocent. They believe in everyone and everything. And if one tries to warn them, ever so gently, they tell one that one has a mind like a sink.
... My nephew Raymond tells me that I haven't a shadow of proof but I knew ...
As a superfluous man, with a certain amount of the feminine in the psyche, certain things have always been so obvious and when I've discussed them with people, expecting they'd find them equally obvious, I've been amazed that something simply stops them seeing it. Or else they have an agenda in not seeing and accepting unpleasant truths, especially about those they revere.
Me, I have no sentiment this way, as Miss Marple didn't. Anyone can be foolish or crooked, no matter how high or low. Unfortunately, this breeds a certain distrust and often people are reticent to talk, for fear of what it will reveal. That was especially so as a Headmaster. I'm sure they realized I'd never make use of it, except to try to help but still - they'd be trying to put certain constructions on things which were quite simply not so or else missed the main point.
And they'd resent that I didn't accept their constructions and they'd often quite savagely turn on me as if to say: "Well, what makes you so special? Why should truth reside in you and not in me?"
It doesn't.
As Holmes might say: "You see just as far as I, Watson but you don't observe." Arrogant bstd? Not at all. There's just a history of keen interest in and the honing of these particular skills, that's all. You do it in your field, I do it in mine. But you'd call me a smug bstd, all the same.
Tangentially, there's one thing I know to be an absolute lie and one of the cleverest lies ever perpetrated on the world. And that's that there is and must always be, a dualistic "balance" between good and evil in the world. The idea is so simple and combines a number of universal truths but in a most destructive, twisted cocktail.
This theory long ago ingratiated itself into and is integrated into certain Eastern religions, drawing on what
is a truth - and the Australian koori know this full well - that there must be a balance of eco-systems, of the earth and its inhabitants and that people must continually aspire to wisdom and nirvana.
Then, in that spirit of balance, tolerance and compromise, laced with religious terminology and an all-seeing pseudo-wisdom, there is introduced a single evil thought - that there must also be war to "balance" peace, that there must be cruelty to "balance" kindness and that there must be perversion to "balance" purity.
They can point to ancient, frail texts to support it all but it's a lie just the same, simply because of the eventual fruits of the idea - the idea does not promote harmony on earth at all but seriously unbalances the environment and eco-systems and why? Because this particular dualism takes the metaphor out of context, takes the analogy too far into unsupportable and unsustainable territory and relies on its debunking being so complex and difficult.
Because to debunk this notion, one must unravel each thread, one by one. One must refer to a model of living which does not and never has been given a chance to exist because the other model, being childishly simple to grasp, is thus grasped by barely sentient young people who find it much easier to come to terms with than the truth. And then they grow older and tacitly pass this model down.
You can test the truth out in a micro-environment. Put one thousand people in one square kilometre. Every time one feels like berating another or issuing an ultimatum, don't. Do a kindness instead, though it goes against the grain. Do the hard thing each time and then, as with physical exercise, eventually the hard thing becomes easier and easier to do.
Realize there are just too many people in that square kilometre and that a spirit of compromise is the only sustainable way. Take your destructive urges out by breaking a stick or kicking a rock but these become less and less anyway, the less you utilize them.
Every time you need something, ask if it is really necessary. Every time you need a kilo of this, buy 0.7 of a kilo instead. Practise a certain frugality but not in generosity. On the road, if there is one space and two cars going for it, hold back and let him have it. And so on. In this model there is no "balance" between good and evil.
There is simply no evil.
And what of the rogue element who doesn't play by the spirit of the game? Nothing - as long as everyone else is tenaciously clinging to the model, knowing full well that happiness and security only come through a spirit of give and take, the rogue element will eventually die off.
And this brings us to the second thread - no compulsion.
Disdain is your strongest tool here, non-inclusion of the destructive behaviour, not of the person himself. Every parent knows that you don't dislike the child - you dislike the behaviour. No need to incarcerate, no need to attack, let the rogue element dash itself to pieces on the rock or else come to its senses and rejoin its mates. Always hold out the olive branch and always hold up the sustainable model to follow.
And where are excitement, fun and really wild things under this model?
Here is another lie to debunk - why can't there still be rollicking fun and raucous laughter? Dost thou think there'll be no more cakes and ale? Even a bawdy joke - for goodness sake, is no bad thing. We're sentient, sensual beings, we're sexual. Physically towards one woman because the ultimate pleasure is growing into and upwards with one another, though we notice many others along the way and have a laugh. We are passionate - so let's act passionately. What's the problem?
The problem is the lure of obsession and excess.
You think I don't know deep anatomical exploration, paralytic drinking, tangerine dreams of penguins at dawn and psychic paradise, the thrill of speed and black humour? You think these words are coming out of a sheltered churchgoer? The thing is, there are even higher things than these and the exquisite pleasure in these depends on your ability to regulate your intake of everything, in your capacity for finesse and passion at the one time.
So if a person urges you to indulge your libido or your anger without limit, to substitute substances for higher pleasures, then he's twisting the human quality of constraint and sufficiency, suppressing the equally human qualities of loyalty and trust and seriously unbalancing the psyche. The road he's leading you down leads only to a weakening of the character and eventual desolation.
It's the law of diminishing returns, the law of excessive consumption demanding greater and greater kicks to get the same buzz. Or greater and greater perversion of the real balance in one's life. It's the Emperor Palpatine urging, urging, urging Vader and Skywalker to give way to the misnamed "dark side".
Misnamed because there are no "sides". Again, this suggests a balance between two equal and opposed forces, whereas, in fact the sustainable model is quite different.
The true balance is between all living things and inanimate things in the world [Australian aborigines again or if you prefer - Dirk Gently's fundamental interconnectedness of all things] but humans need to regulate themselves, hone their hardness and ability to survive, through self-denial, through exercise, through controlling the will, through pleasure - just enough of it and once or twice too much, for artistic effect.
Passion should be poured into projects rather than destructive behaviours, anger should be directed at those who would nobble this model, rather than at fellow humans.
In a species which has the capacity to overcome its base instincts and has the capacity to reach for higher things, what then will rein in it's excesses? There has to be something.
In this model of the world, evil is seen for what it really is - not a glorious counterbalance but a sad, tacky cancer entering from without, making its home in the human host [like in Alien], a virus trying to nibble at the edges of a powerful model - simple affection - and trying to pervert it.
It's a wolf trying to separate the lamb from the flock, it's a mentally sick entity trying to turn everyone else into equally mentally sick entities and gaining some short-term comfort from doing so.
So the person calling for all people to give way to their worst excesses and urging them to call it pleasure, this person has become a sad shell, his humanity suppressed [whereas he believes it is shining]; he's being used by a powerful force for its own purposes and ends up calling white black and black white].
There's no reasoning because shells can't be reasoned with.
But the door's always open and this human is always welcome back, if only he will come. I'm referring to NO one person here but to a type, all too common these days. I'm referring to an idea which has taken root [to switch metaphors] and is spreading like a vine across the world. I'm referring to a false model which, as Miss Marple indicated, if people would just sit back and think it through, they'd see through.
But more positively, it is presenting a different model, a more sustainable one and one more appropriate for this time of year.
Some comments:
Perhaps, in the end, the only criterion was whether people felt they had their money's worth and whether they came home afterwards feeling satisfied. To hell with the detractors.
