Getting It Together

Bridging the Gap

The first time I gave tongue in a kiss … it produced an effect that stayed long after the experience. It conveyed a warmth … that seemed to say …  from my body to yours. I am yours. And in my experience … it seemed to say a little more than … the ' yours ' … as a signing off remark in letters. It is certainly physical … and right there … I was getting my lesson … on the many ways in which a physical action … differed from the word … even when that word is loaded with habituated meaning.

 

I could have sworn after that … that a person who has not experienced tongue … missed a great deal … in the tiny nuances … of affection … as it displayed itself in our personality. An Indic song asks … ' Aren't the intimations of Mindthan … Eros … heard in the palace ( mind )? ' … referring to a peculiar … knowledge base of the body … as regards its own heart and the hearts of all.

 

Some years before … Time magazine reported on a student in Berkeley University in California … who would dress for class … simply with a normal sized handkerchief tied around his waist. Apparently he dressed that way in his native homeland in the bush. It attracted the usual attention … and the press got to it … but by all accounts … the youth … couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.

 

How is someone so entirely cut off from … from the obvious … gross perceptions of others around him? It would appear that our conceptions of privacy … nudity ... and norms … is first undertaken in the liberty of our innocence as children. And where that child experience … is carried forth … into adulthood in some communities … it is the very basis of their experience of the true …  love … and virtuous.

 

No doubt … man has been trained in the values of society … with regards to that which he considers is norm. And that outlook … comes to define all else … in his experience with regards to meaning … purpose … and the will of creation. So strong is the view of our beliefs … that we are unable to discern … the meaning and purpose of anything else … practiced by others. In our youth … until we approach middle age … we are hence driven … by the volition of these views and it comes to define the life lived.

 

There are communities … particularly in the middle-east … who practice faith … with a total consecration of everything … in their person … and who live for ' him ' … as the almighty creator of man. Such experiences emanate from the body … and in relation to mind and the procreative energies … clothe the individual … in a reality … which is a part of the life in the world … along with others.

 

Is there such a thing as a one truth … that is universal … and forms the standard … in our diversity of experiences? Certainly the social reformers … men of faith … and education … have long strove … to create a one standard … founded on universal values. And I think … many people … on the basis of the popularity of the electronic media … have come to believe that such a … one standard exists … with respect to ' common sense.'

 

But it appears … that like healing the symptoms of an illness … with medicine … what we have done … is to smooth things over … with an agreeable view … that's founded on our cherished beliefs of civilizing behavior … and what's good for business. Underneath … and beyond the pragmatism of new highways …  our journeys around the communities we live in … persuades us that … there's an extension to the experience of the world … that is yet undiscovered.

 

A civilized mind that brings itself … into contact with the singular volition of the passions … understands the wisdom of the passions … no matter how subtle … and wonders if such wisdom … was at some point in creation … sourced from the mind itself. Obviously it expresses itself differently with the body … and in doing so … brings to the mind … a salutation to rationality. A rationality … severed from the passions … simply points but is not the life lived.

 

A kid returning from an education in the US … is arrested for transgressing the laws of the state … in the middle east. Another kid in Hong Kong … is fighting the transformation of the society … back to Oriental culture … after the artifacts of British administration. A man in Malaysia … with a western education … organized a program for petting dogs … and received death threats from the more conservative parts of society.

 

The ways in which we receive the news … regarding these events … points to the encroachment of ' civilizing influences ' … on other cultures and practices … as if modernity is the great evil. We need a balanced news reporting … that examines lives lived with virtue … that is yet un-examined … and prefers death before dishonor. We need a sharing of responsibility on the issue by both sides … beyond the stereotypical views we have cultivated of each. For if we truly brought all the cards to the table of the world's purpose … we will find out how it completes us as man.

 

 And beyond the facade of the news reports … in the review we undertake of the events of the world … in the subtle solitude of the passions … in engagement with the mind … we find that it does indeed … reach out to each other … in play … in wars … and in the poignant relation it undertakes with each other … for its final union. The true victims … the bane that we call human bias … suffers under its own pretense … and inquiry … because it cannot yet manage … the apparent difference … in the value systems … in the common life … of the world.