If not, let me remind you:
Forgotten Victorian author Margaret Gatty wrote a series of "Parables from Nature", that is, moral and religious stories based upon natural phenomena.
One of them, "The Deliverer", set before the birth of Christ, tells of humankind's hope for a messianic redeemer. While most people expect a royal palace to be his birthplace and courtiers or royals for parents, "the lovers of pleasure hoped for a Deliverer in scenes of earthly enjoyment":
The conquering spoken of is but the overcoming of all wish for strife; the rule in store, the sovereignty of love, suppressing all desires but that for universal joy.
Ah! surely, when the Deliverer came it would be to make all people happy alike, and pour a healing balsam into every wound! Then would all the old griefs be buried and forgotten, and the soothed minds of the contented trouble themselves no more with struggle.
Oh for the dawning of that morn when the world should resound once more to the songs of rejoicing which gladdened the golden age! Had not the Sybils so spoken, and had not the Poet so sung? Then should everyone sit under his own vine and his fig-tree, and poor and rich alike cease from the land, for all should be equal and all happy.
"But whence should such a Deliverer be looked for—where be expected to arise?—Ah! surely only in some happy spot of Nature, some valley peaceful and beautiful as that of Cashmere, among a race of pastoral simplicity; in some perfect household, where disturbance was never known, and one mind prevailed. Thence alone could come He who would cause the cruel swords of war to be turned into ploughshares, and spears into reapinghooks, and animate and inanimate Nature to join in one general song of joy.
So these looked to the lovely valleys and the quiet nooks of Nature for the magic spot where discord had never entered. But they, too, looked and waited in vain—yet looked and waited on as before, and called upon Nature herself to confirm their hopes."
They looked and waited in vain because the Lord "had chosen base things of the world, and things which are despised, that no flesh should glory in His presence." And the Earth remained in suffering and oppression because "not many wise men after the flesh" are called by the Lord. That's why, according to Mrs. Gatty, Jesus was born in midwinter:
"Thus, thus, thus—while Nature lay torpid and hopeless, and half the world was winter-wrapt in snow. Thus, thus, thus—with healing on His wings, but not the healing they sought for: not a deliverance from death or sorrow, not a freedom from toil or pain, not even a ransom from temptation and sin." And, to add more fuel to the fire, the village inn where he was born and near which his carpenter father came from was located in a warzone (something Gatty never came to mention!).
Mrs. Gatty was a devout Christian, while I am a pacifist, an epicurean (i.e., a "lover of pleasure"), and a freethinker. The idea of "the magic spot where discord had never entered", so dismissed by the author's realism and spirituality simultaneously, is tantalizing to people like me in spite of its lacking foundation; for the problem of pain was and is a riddle without an answer.
Remember Leibniz, the baroque courtier? He clearly told physical evil from moral evil. The "sorrow" and "pain" mentioned in Gatty's excerpt refer, clearly, to moral evil: "strife", "struggle", "disturbance", "the cruel swords of war", "discord". These words refer to conflict between humans, not to pain caused by the laws of Nature (illness/injury).
As a teenager, I wondered why we humans are able to do wrong: to untie knots of love, to declare wars, and to persecute outsiders. I asked my wise and well-spoken Philosophy teacher (who currently resides in Stockholm, and whose wife I met in the Swedish capital a month ago) the question. He replied: "Because we wouldn't be free if we could only do good."
Free will is both a blessing and a curse. If we are free to do wrong, we can do wrong. But if we only can do good, we are not free. Now, what is good actually? There lies the quid of the question!
Let's say, like Gatty's lovers of pleasure, that earthly enjoyment/happiness/joy/pleasure is good/right, while disturbance/discord/warfare is bad/wrong. The snag is: we humans are too self-centered and stubborn for "the magic spot where discord had never entered" to be a reality.
There have been attempts at recreating "the magic spot" in vivo, the most remarkable (nation-level, in several countries!) being Karl Marx's egalitarian and classless nationwide Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It still survives in some military governments of the present day. The Marxist doctrine is too good to be true: it works only on paper, but not in real life. Communists from Eastern Europe crossed the heavily fortified Iron Curtain en masse, not stopping at anything, because of their own interest's clash with national authorities. Let's illustrate this phenomenon with a satirical East German joke:
Q: What's the difference between the black market and the Leipzig Trade Fair?
A: At the black market, you can't see anything, but you can buy everything.
At the Leipzig Trade Fair, you can see everything, but you can't buy anything.
Long story short: liberalism/capitalism, though it relies on the survival of the fittest, is a far better economic system.
Moving from economy to life in general, we find the fallacy of humans striving for earthly enjoyment while not caring for fellow humans (0r other species). A striking Swedish proverb reads: "One's person's bread is another's death".
A sad but true paradox. Yet "the magic spot" must live on in myth and literature, in every Edenic/Arcadian scenario, from Siduri's isolated house/stronghold/palace/inn in the garden by the Waters of Death to the candy lands of modern children's daydreams.
The Edenic myths often tell a story of paradise lost, of how both physical and moral evil came into the real world. Eve was told by her Father that the forbidden fruit was lethal, but she was persuaded to taste it by the serpent's words and the bright colour of the fruit itself. The first transgression makes her aware of her nudity and causes her to hide. At the end of the Fall from Grace story, poor Eve and her spouse are cursed with pain and sorrow; with toil, blood, tears, and sweat. The punchline of this immense black joke is reached when, out of her two children born in pain and trouble, the jealous older brother kills the younger one. It must have felt like a stab to the heart, especially because one of her children was killed by the other as their quarrels escalated.
The Mediterranean pre-Christian "Fall from Grace" story, of which my favourite version, an Andersenian masterpiece by Nathaniel Hawthorne, can be read at http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=hawthorne&book=wonder&story=paradise, substitutes the fruit for a box. The sinner is here called Pandora: "Everygift", since the gods have circled aroud her like the fairies around newborn Sleeping Beauty and given her each a gift or two: a pleasant appearance, a good mood, a taste for the arts and music... Hermes/Mercury, the trickster on Olympus, called Quicksilver by Hawthorne ("mercury" is "Quecksilber" in German and "kvicksilver" in Swedish), gives her both the box, with the interdiction to open it, and the gift of curiosity: thirst for knowledge and/or for pleasure. He has arranged for her not to fear the unknown, so that the box can be opened. She's got both the lock and the key (like, in Genesis, the Eternal Father placed the forbidden fruit -and presumably the serpent as well- within Eve's reach): it is a test of character. A tricked test whose only outcome was, perhaps, for the rule to be broken: it was expected of Eve to taste the forbidden fruit, of Pandora to open the forbidden box. Which makes this kind of stories theodicies: what kind of deity would allow evil (physical and moral) to exist, keep it in one place, and then entrust that place to someone who, most surely, would let it all out?
Remember Leibniz, the baroque courtier? He clearly told physical evil from moral evil. The "sorrow" and "pain" mentioned in Gatty's excerpt refer, clearly, to moral evil: "strife", "struggle", "disturbance", "the cruel swords of war", "discord". These words refer to conflict between humans, not to pain caused by the laws of Nature (illness/injury).
As a teenager, I wondered why we humans are able to do wrong: to untie knots of love, to declare wars, and to persecute outsiders. I asked my wise and well-spoken Philosophy teacher (who currently resides in Stockholm, and whose wife I met in the Swedish capital a month ago) the question. He replied: "Because we wouldn't be free if we could only do good."
Free will is both a blessing and a curse. If we are free to do wrong, we can do wrong. But if we only can do good, we are not free. Now, what is good actually? There lies the quid of the question!
Let's say, like Gatty's lovers of pleasure, that earthly enjoyment/happiness/joy/pleasure is good/right, while disturbance/discord/warfare is bad/wrong. The snag is: we humans are too self-centered and stubborn for "the magic spot where discord had never entered" to be a reality.
There have been attempts at recreating "the magic spot" in vivo, the most remarkable (nation-level, in several countries!) being Karl Marx's egalitarian and classless nationwide Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It still survives in some military governments of the present day. The Marxist doctrine is too good to be true: it works only on paper, but not in real life. Communists from Eastern Europe crossed the heavily fortified Iron Curtain en masse, not stopping at anything, because of their own interest's clash with national authorities. Let's illustrate this phenomenon with a satirical East German joke:
Q: What's the difference between the black market and the Leipzig Trade Fair?
A: At the black market, you can't see anything, but you can buy everything.
At the Leipzig Trade Fair, you can see everything, but you can't buy anything.
Long story short: liberalism/capitalism, though it relies on the survival of the fittest, is a far better economic system.
Moving from economy to life in general, we find the fallacy of humans striving for earthly enjoyment while not caring for fellow humans (0r other species). A striking Swedish proverb reads: "One's person's bread is another's death".
A sad but true paradox. Yet "the magic spot" must live on in myth and literature, in every Edenic/Arcadian scenario, from Siduri's isolated house/stronghold/palace/inn in the garden by the Waters of Death to the candy lands of modern children's daydreams.
The Edenic myths often tell a story of paradise lost, of how both physical and moral evil came into the real world. Eve was told by her Father that the forbidden fruit was lethal, but she was persuaded to taste it by the serpent's words and the bright colour of the fruit itself. The first transgression makes her aware of her nudity and causes her to hide. At the end of the Fall from Grace story, poor Eve and her spouse are cursed with pain and sorrow; with toil, blood, tears, and sweat. The punchline of this immense black joke is reached when, out of her two children born in pain and trouble, the jealous older brother kills the younger one. It must have felt like a stab to the heart, especially because one of her children was killed by the other as their quarrels escalated.
The Mediterranean pre-Christian "Fall from Grace" story, of which my favourite version, an Andersenian masterpiece by Nathaniel Hawthorne, can be read at http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=hawthorne&book=wonder&story=paradise, substitutes the fruit for a box. The sinner is here called Pandora: "Everygift", since the gods have circled aroud her like the fairies around newborn Sleeping Beauty and given her each a gift or two: a pleasant appearance, a good mood, a taste for the arts and music... Hermes/Mercury, the trickster on Olympus, called Quicksilver by Hawthorne ("mercury" is "Quecksilber" in German and "kvicksilver" in Swedish), gives her both the box, with the interdiction to open it, and the gift of curiosity: thirst for knowledge and/or for pleasure. He has arranged for her not to fear the unknown, so that the box can be opened. She's got both the lock and the key (like, in Genesis, the Eternal Father placed the forbidden fruit -and presumably the serpent as well- within Eve's reach): it is a test of character. A tricked test whose only outcome was, perhaps, for the rule to be broken: it was expected of Eve to taste the forbidden fruit, of Pandora to open the forbidden box. Which makes this kind of stories theodicies: what kind of deity would allow evil (physical and moral) to exist, keep it in one place, and then entrust that place to someone who, most surely, would let it all out?
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario