close. distant. part two.

I'm reading a book. It's a short one and I hardly ever have time to read in it, but I am reading. And it got me thinking. It's a book by Stephane Hessel - Indignez-vouz! in french, I don't know the title in english. Even though I haven't read all about it, I felt I wanted to write a little something here, since the subject is so important. Monsieur Hessel is a man who has been through a lot in his long life, and who has fought hard for human values. He was one of the men who formulated the Human Rights. And he is exasperated to look at the way the world is being shaped, and how indifferent we are in front of it. Refugees that are treated like criminals, extremely wealthy powerful people argumenting why they should have more and the poor less. The list goes on. And I can't help but think of it a little bit in the terms that I wrote about here:

close. distant.

It may not be the exact same thing, but don't you agree that there is a sort of "stream" or "value" or "way of living" that promotes distancing ourselvesfrom eachother that has been going on for a while now? When I look around I see so much focus on surface. You can't go anywhere without being compelled to buy, buy, buy stuff. And a large part of the culture we are fed seems to have no content, no purpose except to make us forget the present for a while. This can be all good, and I like that kind of culture too, but sometimes it seems so much in majority compared to other things. It's like we live only for the surface of our lives. How do I look (fashion industry fiercly claiming to be "proper" culture with depth and meaning (some of it is, but most of it...) is quite interesting, don't you think?)? How does my home look? What things (as in items) do I want in my life? And that seems to be it. You seldom get any further. Is all this an elongement of those fears I wrote about? That we cannot be close, because then we might get rejected, and we cannot be distant, because we fear being alone. If we leave the surface and look for meaning, truth, relation instead of consumation, we might face some pain and agony. Because the world is in many ways suffering. Many people are severely suffering. And many other persons are committing atrocious actions. And all of those persons are in some meaning people just like ourselves. I sure understand all this. I go to the surface to escape having to face that pain in my everyday life. Like everyone else.

Reading Hessels book makes me feel I shouldn't.

And that, I think, is a good thing. The next, much more difficult step, is to figure out what to do. Not so easy.

I do however feel that culture hasan important role to play here. Through the arts we can get in touch with sides of ourselves that we don't in our ordinary everyday lives. We can also experience understanding and get close to people, places and phenomena or actions that we normally feel a large distance to. And this may create bridges. Possibilities to experience The Other as a You, not an It, as Buber might have put it. So for one thing, I feel I need to further explore how I can encourage people to dare be creative, and fight for everybody's right to experience a variety of cultural expression - like actually reading some of the classics in school - they have so much t teach us!

What do you think about all of this?

Love and light to all of you!

/Robin