The Finger Post - a Resurrection Message
It's a great pity that the world was given to us without a user's handbook, and we've had to work out how it functions, unaided. The result is, we have been messing it about since prehistoric times, not purposely, but in blithe ignorance. The first major impact we made on our environment came with the clearances for the agricultural revolution. This was the beginning of a prolonged attack on the earth's breathing capacity, which has continued ever since at an increasing pace. Today the loss of the rain forests is bringing it home. The early farmers let out the first chickens; now they are coming home to roost.
But the evidence of human activity goes back much further than that. The first page of the user's manual would be a picture, drawn on the wall of a cave by blowing ash or colored dust on a hand placed against the rock.
The first art.
The first philosophical statement expressing awareness of self.
Yes, the first selfie, whatever that means.
And the first time a location became a place defined by an X marking the spot.
The first mark of an identity, for both the artist and the conjunction.
It's also the first tweet, the first message – but addressed to whom? Is it like Samuel in the Bible, saying “Here I am, Lord”?
Or is it just an attempt to halt time, to create a memorial, a sign that we should not forget this important moment?
What is it, so important that we have to remember? The hand on the wall is a reminder of the first moment of awareness that we exist in a world of which we are a part, but we are not the whole. This is the first finger post to an alternative reality, one which we can never finish understanding. Indeed, it raises as many questions as it answers.
Very quickly we began to lose the sense of an other to whom we were related, to whom we owed thanks even for our very existence. By naming places we laid claim to them as our property. We didn't have any title deeds, but nobody else made an appearance to stop us, so we claimed whole territories. On deeper reflection, we began to sense that there really might be invisible powers and spirits inhabiting these places, to whom we owed some fealty, some allegiance; or at least some sort of rental. But it took time to formulate a belief system which allowed us to co-exist with these invisible forces. In the meantime, we saw our own immediate community as the familiar other, different from all other communities in the unique sense that this was the community to which we our self belonged. When economics dictated competition for more territories, we quickly defined those other communities as enemies, and evident candidates for ethnic cleansing, subjugation, enslavement. Their territories became our larders, our mines; and their people our slaves.
The unseen other (God, Mother Nature) tolerated these processes, forgave us our sins and permitted us to commit worse atrocities. Because we didn't know what we were doing.
Other artworks on the prehistoric wall give us an idea of the complexities of early thought. Are the artists honoring the animals they depict, or imagining their capture and massacre? Are the drawings ideals or wish fulfilments? The careful attention to anatomical detail : is it scientific observation, or precise instruction in order to aid successful hunting? Or are these in fact the stuff of mysteries : invocations representing the quintessence of each type of beast, calling up the highest expression of the spirit of the prey? All are possible; maybe all part of the Other's truth.
Gradually, the sense of relatedness to the natural world diminished and dwindled. In our generation, the habit of saying grace before meals has virtually disappeared. For what we are about to receive, Lord make us truly grateful. It was a good habit. As the first among the self-aware in all Creation, we had been in charge of the world; yet now it has become so polluted it can scarcely breathe.
The experts are now saying that we need a paradigm shift if we are going to save the world. The attitude change needed, is to recover our relation with the unseen Other - whether we call that God, the Universe or Mother Nature. If we are not expressly grateful for the bounties of the natural world, if we think that we have an entitlement to pillage its resources, in the name of economic expansion or of human need, then we deserve the Armageddon which will be unleashed just from doing nothing about it. That's the message of the fingers on the wall, the memory tweet from the past : never forget to say thank you!
Comments
Post a Comment