Reflections on Beauty

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1857, USA

Definitions of beauty have changed from the time of the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses, to the worship of a single male God, to today where we are confronted daily with images of feminine and masculine ideals urging us to improve ourselves.

However there are notions of beauty from deeper reflections by poets and philosophers.

Confucius says  “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”  This implies that beauty is larger, more inclusive than the outline of a woman’s shape, that it is everywhere, in everything, and it is up to us to see it.  So if I call someone “ugly” does it reveal more about myself than the one I observe?

If Confucius were alive today, and could see the messages that come from the beauty industry what would he think?  

I remember many years ago, working in an office where a young man repeatedly put down women.  “She’s got a face like a dog” he would say as though a woman’s worth was contained in the shape of her eyes, nose and mouth.  Every time he opened his mouth I felt my skin shrink. I was affected by his comments even though I wasn’t responsible for his opinions.  Why should I care?

I think the answer to that, is, we are raised to be part of something larger than ourselves and sensitive to the messages that tell us how we should be.  We absorb generalizations about men and women on several levels, not just the rational.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.” When we receive so much negative feedback how can the light endure?

What I look for in other people is that light within.  It has different colours and shapes but its beauty resonates, affirms and inspires. If I can’t see it in others then do I have the responsibility to find it and draw it out? To see the beauty everywhere and in everyone as Confucius says?

For Anne Roiphe “A woman whose smile is open and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears”  I have met men and children and dogs and cats whose expression is glad and who look beautiful to me. If I say that I could be viewed suspiciously by spouses, parents and pet owners.  Because of the commodification  and exploitation of beauty, I cannot say it without offending someone.

How can we celebrate beauty then, in this climate?

“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.” says Ralph Waldo Emerson.  In our art of creating community, there is abundant beauty. We can find it in music, ideas, friendships. 

Identifying the most beautiful things in my life I recall moments with friends and family – their art, their pain, their labour, their concerns and their love. Truth and beauty is embedded within the human family.

Kahlil Gibran affirms this. We find beauty “in a loving heart” and truth “in a labourer’s hand”  Here the most prized elements of civilization are returned  back to a reverence for life.

Dante Alighieri claims that “Beauty awakens the soul to act” The soul, for me, includes all our relations, back to the first living cell that inhabited this planet. Now I understand what Confucius means when he says beauty is everywhere. All I have to do is see it.

Let Them Eat Guns: a glimpse of the future

How many people have been killed in the US by guns since Newtown? At the point of writing this post: 2, 519.  What does this mean in terms of years or decades into the future?

The proliferation of guns is only one part of the main story here. Really it tells of social despair and nihilism.

When "let them eat cake" was attributed to Marie Antoinette  it remained as an example of contempt for the public, the majority of whom were poor. Although there is no proof that Marie said those words, it reveals the power of words, of what they represent to the people. It reveals an attitude among the  ruling elite that sees commoners as a nuisance, like mice, rats or rabbits.  Something to trap and get rid of or turn into a resource, like factory workers or rabbit stew.

Since the 1700's we have survived cultures who taught that everyone who was not white, not male, not protestant, not rich - as the other, the enemy, the stranger.  Perhaps at one time violence was just violence but somewhere along the way we attempted to idealize our own and demonize the other to maintain a choreographed and predictable future. But instead of creating peace we find ourselves in chaos.

Some of our species, we might call a ruling elite, such as the heads of church, state and business, are attempting to maintain the status quo by keeping the masses economically powerless. However this is the messiest, most violent and chaotic way.  The countries that most eagerly embraced communism, the troubles or the Arab Spring, were those where the gap between the haves and have-nots were the greatest. The populations where there is no equality between genders and races, where marginalization is ritualized throughout the land and narrative, find they have no choice but to rebel, to seek revolution.

When power is centralized to a few, then power-over or hegemony is the way the unreflective choose to feel safe. They demand guns for the institutions in place to serve them; weapons of mass destruction against other nations; ideologies that create more, not less fear; gated communities; inhumane immigration policies; private health and private schools; larger more brutalized prisons; and routine torture.  Centralized power creates war as a means to keep the focus on the other-other  so the masses will not have time to see how they are being robbed.

Right now the planet has been purchased, if not legally, then by propaganda. The governments, the leaders, the laws, and the fifth estate have abandoned the future in favour of a false sense of power, because all over the world civil society with its freedom and responsibility is being systematically destroyed.

What we have to look forward to, if we don't engage with this theft, is one of incremental suicide.  Society is not status, not communism, not a shopping mall, and not celebrity.  Society is the way our species survives by caring for one another and by creating systems that celebrate the creative community. Society is about the love of humanity and the opportunity for our evolution.

This is not idealism. It is a re-direction from the glorification of violence (which is the first gate of terrorism) to the masses estranged from their own capacities through uncertainty and fear.

When ordinary people believe that they must carry a personal weapons to protect themselves, it is because they have not experienced the protection of justice and freedom, no matter how many times the words are trotted out.  Without justice and freedom life is not worth living.

Nanaimo-Cowichan MP responds to UVA Letter

Dear Ms. Vickers,

Thank you for copying me on your letter to Stephen Harper about the proposed purchase of unmanned aerial vehicles (UVA) for the Canadian Forces.

New Democrats agree that this possibility raises concerns about unsolicited military spending. Like you, I feel these funds could be better directed at issues such as health care, the environment, and the development of social programs for all Canadians.

The government has currently dismissed the possibility of purchasing UVAs, New Democrats will continue to monitor the situation. As always, the NDP remains committed to the responsible use of public funds for the benefit of Canadians and will continue to hold the current government accountable for their actions, as we did in the case of the F-35 stealth fighter jets.

Again, thank you for taking the time to voice your concern in this important matter.

Sincerely,

Jean Crowder, MP

Nanaimo-Cowichan

Ceasefire and me: No Attack Drones

Subject: No Attack Drones [267]

Dear Prime Minister Harper, I do not support your government's plans to purchase armed drones for the Canadian Forces. Instead, I urge you to cut wasteful military spending and use our tax dollars to support social programs, protect the environment, improve our health care and assist the world’s poorest people. M. le premier ministre Harper, Je n'appuie pas le projet de votre government d'acheter des drones armés pour les Forces canadiennes. Au lieu, je vous demande de mettre fin au gaspillage de ressources à des fins militaires. Utilisez plutôt l'argent de nos impôts pour protéger nos programmes sociaux, préserver l'environnement, améliorer nos services de santé et venir en aide aux plus démunis de la planète. Salutations sincères | Sincerely Janet Vickers Canada

This email was sent by the signer through ceasefire.ca. For more information, please contact petitions@ceasefire.ca

Crises in Power

Uroborus

When organizations, institutions, nations and global corporations have destroyed the means of democratic power that comes of thoughtful, intelligent cooperation among people, "Power" becomes a dirty word, and humanity appears only to be little more than vermin.

Murray Dobbins has illustrated in his post "The Tyrant's Poison Pill: the suppression of civil society" the way violence harms whole societies. But also, I suspect this mass violence permanently damages our capacity to survive by creating a new species incapable of nurturing life.

We live in a time of global, political, social and religious dysfunction. The age of pathology where  structure demands its members compete for power in the arena of zero sum games.  Politicians, CEO's, corporate representatives must, by default, divest themselves of anything civil and decent in order to play the game - where egos are isolated, alone, enemies among enemies, looking over their shoulder, in mistrust.

We are trained to believe we are successful when we are losing our way, going mad. The biggest bullies are not in control because the whole organism known as civil society is decaying.  

At the end of World War II, European civilizations were in the spiral of destruction and nihilism, and courageous people worked together to re-build new worlds through extraordinary effort, and faith in the best of human nature.

America shined like a beacon of hope for many, with its creative energy. But megalomania got hold of it too, and the more wealthy and successful they became, the more violent their foreign policy. Now America is being destroyed by the ideologies that destroyed Europe.

What are the main instruments of this destructive power? Fear, hate, and greed. But these are also natural human emotions that most, if not all, have experienced.

Where is the way out? First to acknowledge the seeds of destruction are within us. Then to see that power as something elevated or superior to life,  is the carrier of delusion in our collective mind.  Power for power's sake fixes nothing and destroys everything. It is the uroborus (the serpent that swallows its tail for the integration and assimilation of the opposite).  In Christianity it is the fallen angel Satan and "our race apart from God".

For me, the first steps towards our way out is to fill up on love and compassion, in order to return to the power that reveres and comes from life.