A friend of mine claims the philosopher Fredric Nietzsche compared the world to a “lunatic asylum.”
In
his case, he was
convinced the “inmates” were the ones running it. This friend went on to claim he had been walking along beside a new wooden fence of one such hospital. He heard the distinctly frightening sound of a large gathering of people repeating a number on the other side of the fence.
Rhythmically they chanted “13, 13, 13, 13, 13.” It was eerie
and disturbing. Coming to a small hole in the fence he looked through. As he did so he was poked in the eye and the chanting continued “14, 14, 14, 14.”
At times, when in a melancholic mood, I think the world has gone mad. Wars, murders, violence, glut and famine, waste and abuse of resources are simply part of a world full of selfishness and self interest. Yet at other times I am full of hope
as I hear of so many good people bringing education, health and a better life to others. Being a Gemini, I alternate between forms of despair and gloom, and hope and joy.
In whatever mood I find myself, I am always concerned as to how we communicate.
I gave the Keswick Hall lecture a month or so ago at UEA. I wanted to make the point that we are responsible for ourselves, and responsible, in St Paul's words, “to all, for all”.
Responsibility needs knowledge and truth as the foundation. Yet for knowledge and truth to be learned, they need to be taught, handed on from generation to generation.
Concomitant is trust and reliability. If we live in a world of spin, of sound bite, of verbal camouflage or use language and speech for what
Archbishop Rowan Williams calls “half hidden power games” and “doubtfully truthful perspectives” we are lost. That way lies propaganda and deceit.
That way lies madness.
G K Chesterton wrote in a hymn of “easy speeches, that comfort cruel men”. This phrase haunts me and to it I apply the world of statistics, anecdote, survey and a whole gamut of tools used for the purpose of cajoling rather than informing. There are so many major issues that need honest debate, not persuasive exploitation. We all think of the war in Iraq as well as political probity, the shenanigans in Zimbabwe and a host of questions such as climate change.
We probably all know the infamous quotation of the United States Army Major in Vietnam in 1968: “
It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”
Tony Blair was correct to emphasise the need for “education, education, education”.
But what is meant by education?
It is not indoctrination, it is not examination-oriented cramming, it is not technical skill or learning by rote. It is about truth and the fostering and stimulation of all that is in the individual person so that he/she can discern truth. There are many theories as to the best means of this including allowing the imagination and senses to develop, curiosity to be encouraged and the teaching of skills such as reading, writing and, most vital and most undervalued, listening. It was the great theologian de Lubac who wrote: “It is not sincerity, it is the truth which frees us”.
If we cannot trust what we read or hear, or even at times see, how do we learn truth?
If we have no skills by which to discern truth because truth is ever hidden, how do we know the truth of ourselves?
Here is where in the Keswick Hall lecture I brought in the Desert Fathers. They sought solitude to find themselves, to find the truth and so be able to help others. They were prepared to face reality. They, with many since, have refused to conform, to be reduced to a formula but rather seek challenge in silence. T S Eliot speaks of such people as “purifying the dialect of the tribe”.
It was the Rev Martin Israel who felt called to follow “the path to authentic life”.
He believed wisdom comes not primarily through external authorities but from personal depths beset based on the experience of life's vicissitudes. He claimed to be called to “a lonely life in order to discover life's meaning”. In our society, in our “educational processes” we have insufficient silence, insufficient aloneness.
A wise monk of my Downside Abbey community told me that the most effective religious studies classes he taught were the ones when he had silence for the whole period. This is when teaching leads us to our own depths.
It is difficult to define madness. Yet part of it must be concerned with living in the unreal, make-believe, deluded existence of the self made world. Many powerful people seem deluded. Echoes of Pontius Pilate's “What is truth?” are everywhere. We can no longer afford to mock or to be cynical but rather must face reality.
