Third-World

There is always a danger of criticising aspects of another tradition, people, or civilisation because it is usually accompanied with a hardness of heart and/or self-righteousness. The decadence of critiquing what one takes to be 'decadent' is all too-often forgotten: he who plays the angel ends up playing the beast.

But having said that, I have to say that I find there to be something shallow, mean-spirited even, in much of contemporary culture. I think it is partly down to the inability to think religiously, but also -and this may just be a consequence of that- due to the sheer self-centredness and narrowness of outlook that arises from a materialistic vision to life (I do not say worldly, because that can, quite properly, be a profoundly humanising element in our lives). The nihilism entailed in a materialistic monism is quite staggering.

Men are free when they are obeying some deep , inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled purpose, perhaps unrealised purpose. Not escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. ..Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like , there is nothing you care about doing. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes..America has so far meant the breaking away from all dominion.
---D.H. Lawrence, Selected Essays.

The amount of times we 'third worlders' have to listen to Bush et al talk about freedom and how everyone else is jealous of them almost makes me laugh. It is repeated incessantly , like some sort of mantra, and one wonders after Iraq if anyone really thinks much of American freedom...

Sometimes I think Americans are unaware of the extent to which others think of their lives are hugely impoverished, trivial, and childish. Please, don't give me Dylan! He can't sing for a toffee ! I much prefer Toots, 54-46.


Brando: Have you ever considered any real freedoms?


Merlau-Ponty on freedom: Should we look at freedom exclusively as an act of the will. The 'true decision' of a warrior is not a choice but a spontaneous action...[a higher fatalism: Allama]. Freedom as the removal of constraints [negative liberty] only makes sense in a field of possibilities given to us.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
---Arnold, Dover Beach