CLEVER PEOPLE
Many years ago, a peer in the House of Lords referred to another as having been “educated beyond his intelligence”. After much reflection it occurred to me that this phenomenon was in fact far more widespread and certainly not restricted to that venerable institution.
Now I realise that the peer had not got it quite right. What he really meant was that the other gentleman was “educated beyond his wisdom”. And this certainly is a feature of modern society in general. Particularly since the World Wars but probably since the advent of modern industrialisation and possibly since Adam made that fateful goof, we have emphasised and concentrated our efforts on cleverness at the expense of wisdom. We have created generations of clever but stupid people.
"It wasn't the apple on the tree that caused the sin, it was the "pair" under it" anon
This process can be seen in all spheres of human endeavour. Lets take a few examples-
Housing and post- war “planning” : this is widely accepted as having been a sensible process to have gone through in order to mitigate the worst effects of ribbon development and “uncontrolled” development of green field sites. Yet, what have we created- huge featureless swathes of dull housing estates enough to depress any soul, connected by tarmac ribbons to massive industrial estates and plastic supermarkets.
The issue in this example is not that planning in itself is a bad thing- we would certainly have had much environmental destruction without these limitations on builders and developers. The planning “idea” is probably a good one but we have been clever rather than wise in our management of the process. It is one thing to stop a destructive influence- and quite another to devise a more creative alternative.
One only has to stay in some of our less spoilt towns and villages to get a sense of what we have lost elsewhere. But even here we realise that these communities too have had their hearts ripped out by decades of poor planning. The tourist loves to visit those quaint little places untouched by supermarkets and motorways- but all too often these places are shells without a soul. There is rarely enough local employment, the shops have all but gone and people stay there rather than live there.
But perhaps we are starting to see the error in our ways. Now that every town has its supermarket we are restricting in-town stores, although we are still creating hypermarkets on the fringes. And government is trying to encourage community enterprise and community spirit through help for the voluntary and environmental sectors. We are having to help to create that very infrastructure of support and help which our lifestyle has all but destroyed. The community sector has itself become a growth industry – it is having to pick up the pieces and mend the souls of the victims of modern society.
What about health? Aren’t we living longer and more healthy lives than we were in the past? Well- yes and no. We seem to be living longer and we don’t hear so much about those awful diseases that once afflicted us. Why then is the media permanently obsessed about the state of the Health Service; about lack of money for “basic” health facilities; not enough nurses, not enough doctors. And one has the feeling that if everyone were to be really healthy- the economy would collapse- such is the size of the health industry.
We certainly are being very clever in the medicine department. Multiple heart by-pass operations without anaesthetic; key-hole operations; wonder drugs (!); vaccines against anything and of course genetic engineering. Its difficult not to be wowed by this impressive performance. We are on a roller-coaster of medicinal techno-science. Medical scientists are on a massive spending spree funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
But is this all resulting in healthier people? And how are we measuring health?
We have unfortunately come to see health as the absence of disease- rather than a positive state of being. Measured in terms of lack of disease perhaps we are “healthier”. But this is little comfort for the depressed, the overweight, the lethargic, the insomniac and the inactive who crowd medical centre waiting rooms. How often are people told that their feeling of “illness”, of being unwell, is in their minds- there are no medical signs.
Seen in a broader context it appears that we have exchanged a lot of those acute, life-threatening diseases for a whole raft of chronic, debilitating illnesses which allow us to operate and live, but at a far from optimal level. Many of us are firing only on 2 or 3 cylinders. The medical establishment is not yet clever enough to measure mental and emotional health- perhaps that is a blessing! And until we start to see health and illness in a much more holistic manner we are going to be chasing our tails looking for that illusive state and the illness industry will continue to get bigger and richer at our expense.
TRAVEL and MOBILITY
Human response to travel and transport again illustrates the precedence of cleverness over wisdom. The world now has a transport infrastructure which allows the richer minority to travel long distances at high speed and at relatively little immediate financial cost. Mobility is the buzzword that matters. If one is mobile, the world is at your fingertips. And yet now we see that this mobility is stifling, choking us- literally. Asthma and other respiratory illnesses are rising rapidly as a result of widespread air pollution and death or serious injury from car accidents is now a common phenomenon.
So why have our decision makers concentrated so much energy on facilitating mobility for everyone to everywhere? Does unlimited mobility result in greater well-being?
Again, the scientists and technologists have to be given their due- their achievements are truly impressive- Concorde, motorways, undersea tunnels…… But the ultimate achievement- space travel perhaps makes us question how this journey can end and what can we gain from it on a meaningful level. As a society we have failed to put the issue of mobility and human transport into a wider context. We have assumed that travel per se is a good thing and staying put has become loaded with negative resonances.
Looking at a mundane example we can see how facilitated mass travel has, in other ways restricted our life. A couple of decades ago, every town had its hardware shop, often within walking distance- selling DiY, cookery and household items and these could often provide practical advice on a multitude of subjects. Then the hypermarket arrived. Now, to purchase a screw or piece of wood means a car journey to the nearest mega store, parking and walking miles across swathes of tarmac and concrete and, hopefully finding that over packaged item which is only dispensed in quantities suited to the retailer. Gone is the human contact, the helpful advice, the local service and local employment and local variety.
FEAR
Roosevelt said “All we have to fear is fear itself” and he was right. There is a lot of money to be made from fear. The tabloid moto “If it bleeds, it leads” has come to symbolise media priorities. Our subconscious apparently responds more strongly to the negative, bleak, and destructive images and messages presented before us. This tendency is amplified by the fact that stark, black-and-white issues are easier to portray in the media- and this applies particularly for TV. The more subtle, esoteric messages require far greater skill and artistry to present.
ON TRANSIENCE
Things are increasingly transient. 24 hours news programmes reflect our obsession with things happening today, now and inevitably this displaces any tendency to reflection on broader patterns and historical perspective. This process encourages superficiality and also repetition because, as the old saying goes “there’s nothing new under the sun”- today’s news is actually surprisingly similar to last year’s “news”, just repackaged with a new label.
DEATH OF COMMON SENSE
A common refrain bemoans the increasing burden of legislation. How has this obsession with legislation, rules and dictats come about? Is it perhaps our loss of confidence in that thing we call “common sense” Or is the root of the problem our actual loss of common sense? In actuality it is probably a combination of both of these compounded by the process of centralisation in virtually all spheres of life, which dis-empowers people and transfers that power to central bureaucracies and power bases. And, just as muscles which aren’t used gradually wither, so, common sense, superseded by legislation and regulation, also diminishes.
COINCIDENCE and 2nd ATTENTION
Are “coincidences” really that? Or are they something else? How does the concept “coincidence” fit in the wider scheme of things? All our understanding of the world at large- both at macro and micro levels indicate how intricate and interdependent the universe is. The level of organisation, the pattern of complex interrelationships, continues to stupefy our scientists. Everything points to a world so organised that every event affects and is affected by all other events.
To suggest that within this organisation we have random events, or “coincidences”, defies logic. To my mind, it ranks alongside terms such as “iatrogenic conditions”- that is, a condition without a cause, in its ilogicality. A “coincidence” surely is only termed that because we don’t understand the reason behind the event. If a mechanism were discovered and elaborated upon, which explained how “coincidences” happen, they would no longer be “coincidences”.
I suggest that there is no such thing as a “coincidence”. By all means lets admit that such events seem strange and hard to explain. But why then consider them just random accidents? Instead, such occurrences should be viewed as specially meaningful- even if the meaning cannot at first be recognised. Arthur Koestler, in “The Roots of Coincidence” argues that there is probably a natural law which explains the mechanism behind “coincidences”. With the old scientific objections to such phenomena as ESP increasingly being removed, he suggests that a similar development will clarify how “coincidences” take place.
On another level, human beings seem to have a need for occurrences which are out of the ordinary or “extraordinary”. Whilst we have a hunger to explain how things work, our place in the grand scheme of things, we also seem to require mystery and surprise.
In Carlos Castaneda’s (4) and later Florinda Donner’s books (5) the notion of “coincidences” is put to practical application through the discipline developed by the sorcerers of old Mexico. In these books, Castaneda and Donner relate how “dreamers” and “stalkers” are able to access other realities by a relentless self-discipline which relegates the ego or “self” to a subordinate state. Implicit in these tales is the significance given to what one might otherwise consider as “coincidences”.
MIND THE MIND
We look at things, we look at people, we consider something “objectively” and, in this modern, scientific age we feel we are facing the “truth”. Unfortunately, whatever we, as individuals do, which is mediated by the mind cannot be truly “real” since our mind is not objective. The mind cannot help but judge, compare, make assumptions, about the object in question because it is rooted in time and thus filters everything through memory. Since truth and reality are not things of time but of the moment, they cannot be accessed via the mind.
Hence, and here I think we have the nub of the problem for humans, we have to see the world without the lens of the mind. This explains the notion, for instance, of two types of “seeing” in Carlos Castaneda’s books¹ about traditional Mexican Indian culture.
Krishnamurti emphasises the importance of going beyond books, gurus and acquired “wisdom” because these are all matters routed in peoples’ minds. Education, he states must free individuals to really learn for themselves and not just be trained to absorb facts. Education has failed. It has failed because “educated” people launch wars, they set nation against nation etc. The nation state in itself leads to conflict because it artificially separates people- we need to see ourselves as members of the earth with shared responsibilities and values.
SEEKING IS NOT THE ANSWER
One could argue that we should seek wisdom, seek love, become wise individuals. Krishnamurti argues that the process of seeking itself, ambition, are facets of the mind and hinder the journey to enlightenment. Rather, humans have all the accumulated wisdom of the ages within themselves and do not need to seek further or look to the outside. This once again reflects an observation of life that humans are forever searching externally for things, understanding, wisdom, experience which they already have but do not recognise it.
Travel has become the latest obsession of the materialistic world- once we have acquired all the trappings of comfort and consumerism, we focus on “consuming” experiences. The irony is, as in all seeking, the process itself ensures failure to gain the object of our desires. Seeking love has the same result- it can only distance us further from love.
The travel analogy can be extended to say that it’s the process of getting somewhere which is important, not the arriving. The same observation is often made of achievements in sport- what is important is the participation, not who wins the trophy, although in modern society, as predominantly throughout history, the winner is everything.
Of course, the search for “enlightenment” itself has fallen victim to the same process. Once we have a comfortable lifestyle, with enough food and other gratifications in general, and we note that we are still not happy, we seek spiritual “gratification”. However, reading the works of sages and gurus etc can become just as much a distraction as the materialistic traps.
ON ENERGY
If we can accept that within the cosmos there is an infinitely complex network of “connections” between all its components and that every activity, action or thought is a form of energy, then it would appear likely that every action or thought has an effect on the cosmos. Hamish Miller (3), in his book “In Search of the Southern Serpent” comes to a similar conclusion through his studies into earth energies. After many years of measuring and studying lines of energy flowing across the earth, and in particular, his observations on specific foci of energy, or “power places” Miller concludes that humans are not only affected by earth energies but that humans themselves effect energy changes on the earth. This has profound implications for humankind which are only gradually being grasped.
That “primitive” cultures” such as the Waitaha, which pre-date the Maori people, were clearly aware of these effects, and acted upon this knowledge should change our perception of what is advanced and what is primitive. It should also help focus our concern on the present imbalance in modern society between material and spiritual values.
"The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why."
"The truly valuable thing is the intuition."
-Albert Einstein
Carlos Castaneda A Separate Reality Penguin ISBN0 141 01702 3
Arthur Koestler: The Roots of Coincidence Picador 0330 24167 2
Hamish Miller/Barry Brailsford In Search of the Southern Serpent Penwith Press ISBN 09582434-1-7
Carlos Castaneda: A Separate Reality. Penguin ISBN 0-141-01702-3 ( and others)
Florinda Donner: Being-in-Dreaming. Harper Odysseys isbn 0-06-250192-5
