Old Man Lear

Eccentric Bias

Edward Lear (1812 �" 1888 ) is a British artist and writer of nonsense verse.  Its a quality of eccentricity … that marks the personality … and introduces an element of denial … to his normally stable views …  to draw it into something unlikely. He doesn't do it with any notion of grievance … to distort meaning … or to create a parody of life. In fact … we detect much in the way of love … and the truth of our lives … in the humor that it generates. And we wonder about why it does that.

 

 A review of humor … reveals contradictions. A man in Texas speaking about the size of his land … talks of riding hard on his horse … the whole day … and he's still on his land at the end of it. To which the man at the bar with him …  responds with … ' I used to have a horse like that.'  And yet … and yet … we say … we are all one … equal … implying that … we share the same disposition. But we don't … do we? So what does that mean … with regards to … living in a diversity … that is essentially one?

 

Does it say that the eccentricity is inevitable … unavoidable ... and when we come to understand its nature … we are thereafter … deliberately … practicing the arts of the eccentric? Is that possible? Can we bring that to an organization … in our personality … to reflect the condition of the human … and to share with others … the truth of its nature. Can we apply that to social discourse … with the full understanding of our fellow men … and institute that as normal? How?

 

As I write this today … I am accompanied by the celt vision … of a native American holding a bunny … in his arms … who supplies me … with the sarcasm … to help camouflage … my seriousness about the issue. He seems to be saying to me … ' Then everything you are saying … contradicts itself.' Even as I'm speaking of the play of contradictions in life! It certainly looks that way … doesn't it?

 

A pilgrim father in New England … once met a native American holding a bunny in his arms. 

' Having rabbit stew today ?' he asks. To which the Native American replies … ' No I'm thinking of raising him as a pet.' Two weeks later … he runs into the same man again … carrying all his belongings … and moving to another place with his people. ' Moving house?' he asks. ' Yes,' comes the reply, ' the bunny got too playful … tossed a lighted lantern and burnt down the village.' ' Oh my goodness!' replies father … who couldn't help smiling. ' But we had rabbit stew,' replies the Native.

 

And its here … in the suggestions of this write … that we encounter the play of bias in our lives. It works for us … and then someday … it turns against us. And we have come to understand a little about the content of bias … and its role … in the individual nature of the man. For instance … we find that a man encountering a bias against him … engages it to make contact with his passions … to pacify it … and to bring it to some acceptance. A man for whom such a bias brings a privilege … has no cause to apply himself to understand his condition.

 

The opposition parties in Malaysia … used to claim that the government … practiced a creative accounting … about the census data of the population … and ensured that it showed a larger number … of the locals … to ensure that majority rule … stayed sensibly in their hands. But no one has attempted to prove that correct. And I for one … am grateful for it. For we live in a stated circumstance … that is defined a state … and anyone so managing such a situation … if he was so doing … would be a very busy person indeed. Not only would he … be denied a sense of understanding his true condition … he would be spending his entire life … denying it.

 

The people in all walks of social organization … for whom the bias is positive … engage in all manner of adding to the bias … to justify their one-up-manship … in a life … in which our basic passions … are founded on an equality of all men. And in doing so … they go against the grain in themselves … and eventually lose their minds in a situation … of willed denial … that is at the heart of maintaining social order in the world.

 

We do need a bias in place in all matters. To dismiss that … is to live as individuals … in a part of the universe … in which we will be solely responsible for the life … and will play no part in the life of anyone else … neither anyone else in ours. The Buddha in his writings … referred to all suffering as false … and in my disposition … I'm inclined to say that all bias is also false. False as to individual self realization … but true in respect of social organization … and the speech of a man untrained in knowledge.

 

We see something similar in the historical experience of the world. Whether its the Jews … the Assyrians … early Egyptians … Indic … or the Germans … they all fell into obsession … in a quagmire of justification … about their place in the world. Today that obsession rises … in places … that brings a new role of leadership to the world. Such places … need to align their management of themselves … with the grain of social needs to understand … in order to grow.

 

For the thinkers … who lament a poor representation … of the truth of their lives … in a social organization of the world … that appears to reflect that badly … the alternative … can only be to cultivate their own individual view … and to bring such management of their passions … thats consistent with such a view. It stores itself in our disposition as the hope for the future … when specie generation … our knowledge … and the instruments of our living conditions … make it possible to realize such a life … alone in the universe.

 

In speaking of our bias … we practice …  laughing at ourselves … for the fabrication that it is … in our lives. But in coming to realize that such bias is truly baseless … we sometimes advance to a position of speaking it in venom. Like the Indic immigrant here in this country who said … ' They don't make women like they used to.' To which I had replied … ' You're talking nonsense.' I certainly have a long way to go … to handling that better.