(Capt. Cook statue at Victoria harbour personifying Arnold’s quote)
that he had come to understand, realize, and actualize what Matthew Arnold had said about a friend “who saw life steadily and saw it whole”. Took him that long to become what he had long unconsciously sought those many years. And who would not want that much focus, wisdom, integrity, and perspective?
All of us are culpable and morally involved, no matter how innocent we proclaim ourselves. Which is why our choices are important. There is great responsibility in choices. If slave or child labor is three links back in the chain of cellphones or clothing, we are all potentially implicated, morally involved, and guilty in the West. Still.
And I doubt that you’ll ever see a law in North America forbidding export of goods from child or slave labor sources like the U.K.’s recent humanitarian law. “All that exploitation stuff’s got nuthin’ to do with me.” The Machine/s roll on, smoother and shinier than ever, worse than the sixties when that term was first coined.
So shut up and stand back for impending ubiquitous flying drones, automatic cars, robot maids, and Asian sex dolls. Too many say,”It’s a no-brainer, baby. If it can be technologically possible or done, it must automatically be right or good for everyone, for godsake.”
true equality, fairness, honesty, common sense, and meritocracy, in particular, die hard deaths simultaneously. Many of the best people for whatever jobs and positions do not get the appropriate or best jobs and positions because of agenda politics.
The Western world has steadily gone topsy-turvy in the current ongoing deconstruction and diminishment of democracy, social order, and overall structure.
The best do “lack all conviction” and the “worst are full of passionate intensity” as Yeats correctly predicted.
Sure, I sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” in a 1967 Viet Nam war rally near Winnipeg’s Legislative grounds, and later got on the front lines of Calgary Trail waving placards to get school secretaries a higher wage on my breaks and noon-hours. There are times I have been or gotten political in action and consciousness.
But the world is much larger than our puny individual actions, thousands of charitable donations later. Instead, The Crucible lives and children are burned as witches in Africa, slave labor is used in the Congo (a la Conrad) to dig out materials for our cellphones, wild animals are still slaughtered for trophies and money, and women are still haremed hither and thither in the Western and Third World worlds.
No, some things have not changed since Dickens, Wilberforce, Conrad, Mother Teresa, and Jane Goodall–significant people who have wrought much change and social consciousness. The world, at large still exploits, abuses, and kills for money and material goods. And money, greed, profit, power, and control have always spoken louder than fairness, equality, democracy, human (and animal) rights, philanthropy, and humanitarianism.
As for me, none. I’ve put whatever ‘genius’ I’ve had into my choices along the way and filling in whatever missing pieces long before “bucket-list” became a contemporary conventional catch-word. Sure, I’ll miss a lot of who and what I consider to be Beautiful, True, Good, and Most Valuable (pretty much non-material and non-monetary). But regrets, non. I have/firmly possess my essential Information, values, beliefs, and self-created world and life. That and self-knowledge (The Core and acceptance thereof; no desire to change It).
Reaffirming yet again that, Matthew Arnold-like, I remain, ever day, interested in the best that has been said, thought, written, and otherwise expressed by humans.
That I also remain most interested in possibilities of the human/individual variety, for myself, for others I know and am close to. What is still possible in a vastly deconstructed, diminished Western world and civilization currently under fire from various toxic people and negative forces. (“While I looked around for my possibilities”–Paul Simon, “A Hazy Shade of Winter”–where my exploration of possibilities and personal consciousness truly began, in the ’60s)
And how far the history of this absurd, crazy, violent, and chaotic human world goes far back, particularly as documented by the many truly great artists and those significant writers like Shakespeare, Voltaire, Dickens, Lewis Carroll, T.S. Eliot, Conrad, and myriad others.
(More than ever these daze, I find myself almost exclusively in the transitory, passing here-and-now, expressing my personal consciousness periodically about this possibilities process, usually fusing memories with truths, moments of being, and connection with whatever passing audience of those closest to me in a given moment or lived context.)
This is a remarkably strong production of Dickens’ autobiographical classic, published in 1849, which reminds one of many things about life.
1. The relevance of his topics goes on today in Third World and Western countries alike. Relevant still are his themes on the status of women in marriages, the English class structure, the criminal justice system, the quality of schools, the employment of children in hard, and menial work situations.
2. Dickens’ world is mainly one of unique, interesting, memorable characters. He holds two main views of people; one view is that people can be incredibly evil, cruel, mean, nasty, and bitter, as in the cases of Uriah Heep, Edward and Jane Murdstone, Creakle, Emma Steerforth, Rosa Dartle is likewise timeless. Also, timeless are his naïve, innocent, good, or decent characters of which there are, significantly, more of: David’s mother Clara, Betsey Trotwood, Mr. Dick, Peggotty, Freddie Barkis, Agnes Wickfield, Daniel and Ham Peggotty, Wilkins Micawber, Dora Spenlow, and David himself.
3. Dickens also shows how one can be mistaken by first impressions as in the case of David’s perceptions of Steerforth and Dora. The novel is a Bildungsroman about a young orphan who undergoes many hardships and setbacks to achieve positive personal and moral progress and development. Through his experiences, David becomes more responsible, conscious, and autonomous. (In contrast, Great Expectations is a more mature, realistic book about large social forces that leave Pip, the main character, sadder but wiser, though disillusioned unlike David.)
4. Ultimately, Dickens reveals life process through his main character with all his various setbacks, challenges, learnings, failures, and successes.
5. He equally shows that life is something that happens to one and that one can also be an agent, sometimes unwittingly or unintentionally, in the lives of others.
6. Dickens equates happiness more with relationships than with work and career, though the latter (David becoming a writer) may prove to be therapeutic and potentially fulfilling.
The production script, sets, costumes, music, cinematography, and direction are uniformly flawless, faithful to the original novel, and quite effective. The acting features strong performances by Daniel Radcliffe, Bob Hoskins, Maggie Smith, Ian McKellen, Zoe Wanamaker, Trevor Eve, Ciaran McMenamin, and Nicholas Lyndhurst.
Highly recommended for its perspectives on life, Victorian times, coming-of-age theme, and wide assortment of characters.
…………………..
There are 2 more videos in the set: an interesting biography of Dickens using actual places from Dickens’ life hosted by his biographer Peter Ackroyd, and a performance of A Christmas Carol by Anton Lesser as Dickens.
-Life is not perfect. People are not perfect. There are many dualities (e.g. appearance and reality, good and evil, individual and society) built into life, individuals, and relationships. For this reason, there will be mixed feelings and conflicts in many situations and about people.
-Because of the multiple levels of experience (e.g., physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), there will be many more mixed feelings and conflicts. In the search for order, organization, structure, patterns, meaning and purpose, there will be much frustration and people will often find that there is simply too much to manage, control or manipulate to one’s satisfaction. This, in turn, leads to limits, limitations, restraints, and a lack of freedom/s. Complicating matters is the fact of change–something that is implicit in process, context, and furthered by choices and changes within the individual, situations, and others. One of the great human problems is simply change and the lack of stability or permanence and anxiety that it produces. Willy Loman’s “I’m feeling kind of temporary about myself.”
-In addition to the fact that one can never step into the same river twice is the very basic problem of communication, complicated somewhat by the influence of other languages and cultures. More and more, we live in a Tower of Babel in which basic understanding has become a major problem. Add to that, that individuals hear what they hear and want to hear, poor listening skills, decreased empathy and sympathy, and it is no wonder that meanings and understandings have become blurred–alienating people from one another more than ever.
-Because of the way we are biologically built, we see the world mainly in terms of ourselves, and whatever common sense, information, past experience, upbringing, values and beliefs we personally have. We are each of us very unique and separate from others to begin with from birth. (Death performs the final separation.) All of this makes communication even more difficult from the get-go. To communicate clearly and fully we need to actually listen, to pay attention, to be empathetic and sympathetic, and to try to imagine who others are, what their personal experience is–where they are ‘coming from’.
-If communication breaks down, things will go awry. Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies are full of examples of this sort of thing, likewise, of how appearances and reality are not the same, and how appearances can be majorly deceptive, misleading, tragic or comic.
-If communication is flawed or imperfect, and people tend to view the world in terms of themselves, then it is not surprising there are as many separations and divorces as there are. What has been called by some as “the fundamental incompatability of men and women” as well as many researched biological and social differences suggest the odds are great against any kind of permanent happy, lasting relationship. Those that last require that the couple accept as each others as individuals, warts and all, recognizing there may be many things which cannot be changed, managed or controlled.
-Relative to life experience further, much there is that is a matter of luck, timing, or opportunity. These three can cut both ways with some being luckier or not. In a lot of experience, there is little equitability or fairness across the board for the many.
-Taking care of oneself is basic and necessary. Autonomy is a quality which can be a life-saver. To be able to function on one’s own without others is basic since one’s life is one’s life and that the choices one makes apply to or reflect oneself first and foremost. In this there is a common sense as in matters of health and moderation. One needs to look after oneself and not assume that someone else will do that. Likewise, it will be hard to live life fully or to do for others and loved ones if one is run-down, ill, or stressed out.
-Though humans are mortal and process being what it is, it will be necessary as some point to make big changes, to downsize, to be prepared to deal with loss of favorite people, activities, or lifestyles. These are inevitable acceptances at some point. In particular, simple mobility and ‘having enough’ to get by or live become basics later in life.
-Attitude is central to the process of one’s life and how one views his or her own life. In a real sense, bad attitude is the only disability, and whether the individual views the glass as half full or empty, relatively speaking, will determine much of what happens to people and how life and changes will register on the person. Life is what you make of it in that sense. Humor, irony, and a sense of the absurd are completely necessary to live in our world today. The human comedy, indeed. The hardest parts of the end of one’s life is when the spirit, the will to live, and one’s unique humor go. (It is all really over then.) In my experience, humor is key to living the contexts and process of life. It makes that which can be tough, awful, unbearable, or crazy tolerable and cope-able. Humor is the imaginative, creative action to keep the keep the glass half-full and then some.
-Nature plays an important role as backdrop and context to our many changing moods and life situations. It is certainly far more important and potentially beneficial than the myriad screens of our screen-bound culture. There is a huge difference in any case between what used to be called real life and screen life or cyberlife. This is somewhat supported by our recurring need for the live in-person presence of others, real, physical, tangible individuals who colour and support our lives.
-One related acceptance is that of human need for inner nourishment–every bit as real as our three-times-a-day-need for physical nourishment. Human beings have souls whether latent or consciously realized. There are many elements that go to feed that essence including love, nature and the arts.
-Though there are always limits and limitations on us (on our souls and spirits as well), freedom becomes an important, key experience that humans want and need to experience (some even dying for it or from a lack of it). Individual freedom on some level/s is good and necessary, but so are larger freedoms experienced through one-on-one relationships, for specific groups of people, or across nations.
-Two elements not experienced or applied enough are imagination and creativity–these are keys to freedom and love, incidentally. The imaginative, creative life or love knows few limits and experiences the glass as brim-full or brimming o’er. It is in many ways the most self-actualized, personally fullfilling, and enriching form of life that a human being can be fortunate to experience.
-Lastly, one must also finally accept (among all those things one cannot control) certain “repulsive” (Virginia Woolf’s word) qualities about human beings including ‘show’, greed, materialism, making money, blind ignorance, stupidity, violence, manipulation and control of others. Viewing others as means rather than as ends makes countless millions mourn. The blight of advertising everywhere tells us that everything is up for sale and there for the buying. Anything not protected or bolted down is literally stolen or poached. People and things are portrayed as mere ends, something to be exploited. That too much is done, exploited, and abused for business, Mammon, The Economy (today’s sacred buzzword), and the sake of making money or “entitled” personal profit is the central flaw and common practice of our time.
…………………………………………………………………………..
There is always much to be said, but sometimes the clear-headedness of perspective while taking stock affords the opportunity to record some personal observations and significant conclusions within this blog. In a nutshell, I would add that if one wanted to know what I thought, believed, or valued, it is mostly here in the concise summary above of the various things I have come to accept in my life and personal experience.
I am glad daily for whatever pleasures and engagements emerge in the course of a day. I appreciate my consciousness and happilly become myself (cf main blog title) more every day. It is a privilege to think, write, and be alive. My vague ’60s understandings of the word “consciousness” have come to a beautiful fruition in 2016 AD. Words, language, books, reading, writing, Nature, the Arts, ideas, thinking, and sensibility have freed me beyond belief.
Previously posted on November 7, 2012
(A bona-fide classic; MGM DVD)
A simple decision for me, really, having stopped going to theatre movies of late. The line-ups, packed houses, rude behavior, noisy popcorn-chomping or chatter of nearby patrons that I don’t frankly miss. There are far better ways to spend one’s time with regard to movie-watching.
But perhaps my disillusionment with recent movies began about 2005 as I was finishing a three-year-stint as a film classifier for the province. Toward the end of that challenging time, I would estimate that about 95% of what we had to watch was simply populist pap-crap and poorly-made, awful stuff. Usually we classifiers could tell how bad a movie was going to be within a few minutes from the get-go and where it began to run off the rails in terms of being good, solid entertainment, or a well-made film.
A Very Long Engagement was one such film that kept us all hanging out to the end, waiting for the often predictable, conventional/commercial misstep, but it didn’t happen with that one. Unfortunately, most films today are just biz deals, or very cynical crap pandering to the most shallow, phony, false emotions of the hoi polloi. Usually with an excess of bludgeoning violence, gore, or excessive toilet or sexual humor. So, why waste one’s time?
As I have done for several of the past years, I watched a good or great classic film from the past when movies were more of a conscientious craft or art that challenged viewers or appealed to their better, potentially higher instincts. Last night’s fare was the 1955 black-and-white first film of legendary director Stanley Kramer–Not as a Stranger. The story was strong from a Morton Thompson novel about a doctor’s process into actual practice and in his relationships. Robert Mitchum starred, which brings up another key difference in movies today–we no longer have great actors or true stars like those of the original Hollywood era.
He was ably supported by Olivia de Havilland as his decent nurse-wife, Frank Sinatra as his loyal intern-friend, Charles Bickford as the shrewd country doctor, Gloria Grahame as the smouldering, horsey-set love-interest, Broderick Crawford as the harsh, humorless doctor-mentor, Lon Chaney as his drunk father, Harry Morgan as a comical Swede, Lee Marvin as a fellow intern, along with many other (what-used-to-be-called) character actors.
There were numerous conflicts of the realistic variety and this is what I used to call a teachable film–something I could have taught at one time when I was a high school teacher, at least into the ’90s. The entire arc and process of the film was pleasurable, engaging, and ultimately of consequence. It was unconventional with its cynical views of health care and medicine presented by outsiders and the doctors themselves. At the same time, it offered inspiring idealism and glimpses of what would be considered beyond-the-call medical attention in two dramatic life-saving-effort scenes.
At the end of the evening, I felt very satisfied and genuinely moved by what I had seen– something I know I would not have felt if I had tuned in the banal, predictable, phony-baloney, fashion show, with its agenda-politics of much ado about contemporary nothing.
(tablecloth, main coffee bar in Radium, B.C.)
“Language is our common denominator.”
–William Hazlitt, Political Essays, 1819
“Language as an instrument both to shape and understand reality.”
–Alberto Manguel, The City of Words
“I have to protect myself from the toxicity of this culture.”
–Kate Braverman, quoted in “From the Tropic of L.A.”
“The moment of change is the only poem.”
–Adrienne Rich, “Images for Godard”
“Everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities.”
–Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
“Irony is wasted on the stupid.”
–Oscar Wilde
“I dwell in possibility.”
–Emily Dickinson
“A poet is a state of mind.”
–Virginia Moore, “Saint Teresa”
“Truth-telling implies disagreeableness. It is part of truth–the sting and edge of it.’
–Virginia Woolf, Granite and Rainbow
“A man can do all things if he will.”
–Leon Battista Alberti
“The limits of language stand for the limits of my world.”
–Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
–Rudyard Kipling
“Language is the soul’s ozone layer.”
–Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies
“You can never step in the same river twice.”
“All is flux, nothing stays still.” “Nothing is permanent but change.”
–Heraclitus
“If a man is worth loving at all, he is worth loving generously, even recklessly.”
–Marie Dressler, My Own Story
“Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.”
–Jean Anouilh
“Touch is the meaning of being human.”
–Andrea Dworkin
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
–William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“We have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and love as we are to die.”
–R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience
“To refuse The Call means stagnation.”
–Joseph Campbell
“Touch is the landscape of what is possible.”
–Kate Green
“Enthusiasm is life.”
–Paul Scofield
“There is nothing greater than enthusiasm.”
–Henry Moore
“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.’
–George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
“The last of human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstance.”
–Viktor Frankl
