Name-calling is all over the place. The North Koreans are calling President Bush a “hooligan.” The Iranians have moved away from satanic lore into fangs and teeth dripping with blood. The president is countering back with ‘evil’ and its synonyms, of which he is running very short. Blair is telling his electorate that it was right to have removed an evil man such as Saddam, regardless of any evidence needed. The opposition is countering with ‘liar’ and asking why this dictator and not the other?
What’s a gentleman to do these days? I mean the Swiftian gentleman, of course, who is “good at everything and excessive at nothing.” One solution is to watch Saudi television. There is nothing that requires washing your mouth with soap on their newscasts, and the rest of the programs are excessive only in their redundancy. There is a tad of excessiveness in the ugliness department, but beauty is a subjective matter.
You might consider reading a book written by a Saudi. If you are blessed with Arabic, you can finish the biggest saga in three hours flat if you do not count the dots on every line. The latest product to hit the shelves of our bookshops is a curious production by a lady poetess. Rest secure, Sappho, in your eternal sleep, the lady is not a threat, but her production might be. The book has less than five hundred words of so called poetry, but it has a high relief of a cat on the cover whose one eye lights as you move the book.
If you really want to run away from nuclear-armed people calling each other names, you should perhaps try going into the desert.
In the suffocating heat and the bleaching sun, you might ponder Sartre’s declaration that man has more dignity than stone or vegetable. Just as you are about to concur with the philosopher, there comes from behind the stone a geezer of unkempt equanimity who will call you names if you are wearing a hat instead of a ghutra to ward off the sun.
In times gone by you could simply laugh at the insanity produced by the relentless sun and remember Pirsig’s words that when you “look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he’s insane, which is not to see him at all.” Now, that same “madman” calling you names, is probably loaded with a camera that will blow him to smithereens and take you with him in one push of the power button.
Such “truths” are not powerless in the face of myth, Rodinson notwithstanding. With bombs going off in all directions and in all cities, one is really humbled in the face of brute reality. Liberation from Self is a philosophical concept that is rather complicated and quite pertinent. However, I don’t think Liberation in this contest means a swift sendoff to the afterlife.
