In Atlantis Ego

Here I sit, with the realisation that, whereas men will say certain kinds of victory are important or that some victories are losses because not absolute, these things are not true. Victory is where you find it; victory is sometimes the avoidance of loss and sometimes the acknowledgement of truth.

Sometimes, the pagan poets saw this first. Shelley in his unbinding of Prometheus said, "This then is Life, Joy, Empire and Victory." They are all the same thing, given the right context.

Fame

Way back in 1980, Irene 'Flashdance' Cara came up with one of the truly iconic songs of the 1980s boom generation — Fame. The song, with its adrenaline-laden lyrics and vibes, soared to #1 and has never quite been forgotten. I remember waking up as a teenager and walking around with it echoing in my ears.

Many years have passed. Since then, I've learnt to detect the signs of fame-hunger in myself and others — a need to see one's name on everything, from notes to papers to slides to blogs to tweets to... and of course, the opposite reaction, a shunning of any spotlight whatsoever. Fame is fleeting, but many of us seize what we can get, it seems.

I think that the right way is a simple acknowledgement of work done. You don't muzzle the ox when treading the grain; the workman is worthy of his hire. If somebody did stuff for you, acknowledge the doing of it. No need for glitz and neon, just the simple naming of who was responsible for what.

Beyond that of course, we learn to be decreased that others might increase. This is a harder lesson; it is one that humans existentially resist — very few normal humans have a desire to be diminished. And yet, John Donne wrote, "... each man's death diminishes me." It implies that each life that you enrich will have the opposite effect.

And that's the sort of fame I guess I personally cannot resist: I want to have done something for other people. It doesn't matter if nobody else remembers, but I can't help but hope that people I have helped will remember that I helped them, even after I myself no longer live and breathe.

I wish I could be more humble than that, sometimes. But even the patriarchs and heroes of the Bible were not resistant to this; in fact, that dashing 'James Bond' character of the Old Testament, the man called Nehemiah, keeps repeating the phrase, "Remember me, O my God..." (see especially Nehemiah 13.)

Some things don't change very much. But I should hope to resist the overweening kind of fame-seeking that ends up in pathetic defeat — the lesson of Shelley's Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Thanksgiving Reasons

There is always a reason for the things we do. Of late, I've been thinking and writing about food even while part of my brain contemplates globalisation.

The first wave of globalisation was great, but landbound. Alexander's host swept out of Macedonia. By the time he died in Asia scant years later, the Hellenic wave of philosophy and understanding had reached India. The great empires of the time were Hellenized: the Egypt of the Ptolemies, Persia, the Rome that was growing from a seed. India and China felt it, but their masses of culture were more resistant.

In the light of that wave, the Pax Romana was a secondary wave. It built on the remains of the Greeks, for Alexander was heir to Aristotle, and Aristotle to Plato, and Plato to Socrates. And Rome was Plato's Republic writ large, but different from what the old sage would have thought. The Imperium filled a lot of Europe, and all the Mediterranean, with the language and the voice which we hear today echoed in Catalan, French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish.

Later, the third wave built on these two waves with the ascent from Elizabeth I of England to Victoria, Empress of India and, by the grace of God, Queen of England. It is this third wave, a tide of British vigor crossed with Graeco-Roman pollen, which spawned the bastard sons and daughters of Empire. To this day, the Venetian lion of the sea is echoed in the merlion of Singapore and the trident of Barbados.

And behind, and with, and through all these waves, we learned to eat many things. Bananas, chocolate, wheat, tea, prawns, coffee, cinnamon, rice; we learned to eat the flesh of all things that crawl and walk and swim and fly, the fruit of all things that sprout and bloom and spread. Not all of us eat all things. Many of us eat many things.

Today, I was at the eating house called Gastronomia da Paolo when it hit me. I eat the sun-dried tomatoes and the durum pasta of ancient Rome. I eat the chocolate and the fruit of countries distant, the scones of a British summer, the stuffed vine leaves of Greece. I am the son of the waves of change and empire crashing on the shores of the once-immutable and mysterious East.

All of these things are miracles of time and space and energy. All of these things are to be appreciated and enjoyed. I give thanks for every single bastard child of these phenomena of greed and gain, of adventure and daring, of life and empire. For we are all the world, and all the world is us.

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From last lines of Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

From the last lines of Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley:

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

Prometheus (Again)

Today I was reminded of one of my favourite quotes, from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound:

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance--
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

Of course, these verses describe a peculiar combination of strengths that makes man able to survive the whims of those who would be gods, but are not. They show an optimism that, in its sidelong glance, mocks the powers who would suppress freedom of thought and information. Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, Endurance – seals against Destruction's abyssal power, spells which will create order against the fall of Night.

Tonight, I am weary to the bone. But Shelley's Prometheus inspires me to live another day, perhaps holding on for some long-deferred victory.

The Greater Trumps: (27) Thought

As the Sun rises and the lights of Star and Moon fade in comparison, so also does Reason look more enlightening to people in the bright light of day. This image shows a brightly glowing and naked Titan holding Chaos at bay, or perhaps supporting the massive burden of the World. Whether Reason alone can support the World is debateable. Intuitively, it is hard for any human to accept that this might be true. But the Titan in the image is more often Prometheus - 'Forethought', and not Atlas.

What this image symbolizes is the strength of pure Reason. Many of the previous images emphasized the more nebulous or mysterious workings of the mind and soul; this one emphasizes the work that goes into building structures with the mind in such a way that others can appreciate them and build further on them. Whether the Titan that is Reason builds bridges ('pontificates'), towers ('a towering intellect'), foundations ('fundamentals') or lights ('illumination', 'enlightenment') in a dark world, the image signifies a source of productive insight which creates new things - or renews old and tired things.

Reason is not always the best option, many will say. But it is always worth considering.

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I don't often quote Shelley, and then most often from Ozymandias. But I have a special place in my heart for Prometheus Unbound, quoted in part below:

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance -
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

I have long kept these words at all my places of work; they are implicit in my own mission statement. More important to me is that these lines show Reason for what it ought to be, a spectrum of approaches: Gentleness - Reason as primarily non-aggressive, firm without aiming deliberately to cause hurt, declaring only itself; Virtue - Reason as moral and compassionate, declaring what should rationally be for the best; Wisdom - Reason without arrogance, in a spirit of understanding, declaring what ought to be done; Endurance - Reason with determination, declaring its truth in all possible ways until it triumphs over the dark.

Reason isn't just logic, or linear thinking. Reason is more than that; it is the highest ability of humanity, and the most dangerous.