Again Thinking

The human condition has always been, and still is, a fascinating area of study.

My childhood in Kerala and Singapore, adulthood in Singapore, Pakistan and France, with work-induced travel all over the world and now "la troisieme age" in France, have provided opportunities to view at close hand the sameness of human aspiration but, sadly, also the sameness of the way in which we manage to turn these aspirations against ourselves through a belief that what we hold dear is sacrosanct, the only divine truth, and that all those who deny this truth must be put, (literally unfortunately in many parts of the world) to the sword.

Human evolution perhaps once demanded that one defy the next family, the next tribe in the perilous search for shelter and sustenance. Natural selection perhaps did enhance ruthless selfishness to the extent that even when cooperation in group activities garnered better safety and richer rewards; the push to kill, grab and run remains paramount.

One is always afraid of loss, always afraid of the other. This has in time become the driving force of group consciousness and evolved into the political doctrine that what the others believe is false and reinforced the comforting belief that truth and justice were always behind one's own actions.

But our own ingenuity in making travel easy and in making international and national barriers porous has breached the bastions of belief and called into question so-called facts that less than half a century ago were held to be "incontestable": that some were divinely ordained to be the masters of others.

Called into question but not dispelled, as the wars in the Middle East, Sudan, Afghanistan and other places prove on a daily basis. Once upon a time when I was young, I tried to comprehend:

from The Interior Landscape of the Heart

I

the interior landscape of the heart
against which days are held
for photographs, recorded moment succeeding
other moments laid end on end conspire
into one life: there are no new landscapes
to discover, we have forgotten
computations for the angle of the sun,
the use of light on a fading day
to measure distances between hearts.
the hands we hold against our sides
do not reach to find the universe,
only the shutters of the mind expose
this inertness.