Inspiration to write has been hard to come by lately. When lethargy wins the battle, perfectly sound writing ideas find themselves in the mental bin, rather than on the blog. This partially has to do with my reading habit which has shown a steady decline in the recent past. Last night, however, I attempted a sudden resuscitation, which I hope gets me back on track. Then again, let's be honest. One likes a creative release every now and then. Creative ramblings that comprise of more than just aimless rambling about food, phone calls, birth, aging, sickness and death: "life", to give it a concrete form (interesting statistic to track, the number of blogs with the word "life" in the title). On to my recently CPR-ed reading habit then.
I have, for the third time, started reading Grimus (Salman Rushdie's first novel). Rushdie, without the slightest doubt, is my favourite author. I can already see that last statement generating strong remarks, pro and con. That precisely I think, is the hallmark of a brilliant author. The absolute inability of a reader or a critic to abstain from a strong reaction is probably the best reward an author can get. That, of course, having made the assumption that there is some sort of a fine balance between the bouquets and brickbats; for the want of a blue eye. Grimus seems like a good book. The only reason I have had to abandon the book twice is because of a general loss of interest in reading at that point of time. Last night, as I slowly made my way through the book, I struck upon a few lines that got me thinking of a few conversations I have shared in the past with friends, colleagues and scholars alike on issues of conformity, absurdity and profundity. There is a certain joy in exchanging ideas with such a motley bunch of men and women. For one, I realize that practically every subject that leaves space for free thought suffers from the above issues. I decided to let the idea out before it fell prey to a sense of all-pervasive lethargy. Allow me then, to introduce the lines, as spoken by a self-proclaimed pedant called Virgil Jones:
I have, for the third time, started reading Grimus (Salman Rushdie's first novel). Rushdie, without the slightest doubt, is my favourite author. I can already see that last statement generating strong remarks, pro and con. That precisely I think, is the hallmark of a brilliant author. The absolute inability of a reader or a critic to abstain from a strong reaction is probably the best reward an author can get. That, of course, having made the assumption that there is some sort of a fine balance between the bouquets and brickbats; for the want of a blue eye. Grimus seems like a good book. The only reason I have had to abandon the book twice is because of a general loss of interest in reading at that point of time. Last night, as I slowly made my way through the book, I struck upon a few lines that got me thinking of a few conversations I have shared in the past with friends, colleagues and scholars alike on issues of conformity, absurdity and profundity. There is a certain joy in exchanging ideas with such a motley bunch of men and women. For one, I realize that practically every subject that leaves space for free thought suffers from the above issues. I decided to let the idea out before it fell prey to a sense of all-pervasive lethargy. Allow me then, to introduce the lines, as spoken by a self-proclaimed pedant called Virgil Jones:
"What I'm driving at", said Virgil Jones, "in my rather indirect fashion, is that the limitations we place upon the world are imposed by ourselves rather than the world. And should we meet things which do not conform to our structure of reality, we place them outside it. Ghosts. Unidentified Flying Objects. Visions. We suspect the sanity of those who claim to see or sense them. An interesting point: a man is sane only to the extent that he subscribes to a previously-agreed construction of reality."
An interesting point, really. I remember being very disgruntled last year with branches of Physics dealt with things I couldn't see around me. I spoke of my disgruntlement with a leading scholar in the field soon after. He quite beautifully pointed out that our senses of perception, our concepts of time, space and dimension are at best, many orders less than those on which nature operates. Therefore, it'd be quite unfair to dismiss theories that are not immediately "perceptible" because perception itself is limited first by our restricted understanding of our surroundings, and also our attachment to "previously agreed constructions of reality" as Jones puts it. The same sentence was also my answer to a friend trying to decipher on a sociological scale, the implications of Chaos theory. Rather amused at the emergence of long range order out of short range chaos, and the subsequent breakdown of order (in a conversation that spanned harmonic oscillators and societal order alike), we wondered if the disorder fails to exist; or whether we fail to see it because of a restricted perception which primarily accounts for the majority.
Then again, Virgil Jones brings up another interesting point in his pedantic rambling. Consider two extremes. In the first, what if everyone conformed to the previously agreed constructions of reality. The death of innovation, it is safe to say, would have preceeded its birth. In the second extreme, consider a case where innovation was driven by a deep-seated antagonism to the prevailing order. A deep desire to be different, by any means possible. In this case too, the system would wind down to a moribund state, not very different from the first case. Somewhere in the lack of right-ness or wrong-ness, in the glaring ambiguities in the prevailing order, lie the engines of creation. A vague belief in one's "insanity", rather than a desire to be "insane" is probably what fuels change.
"Go, go, go said the bird", Jones quotes T.S. Eliot, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality."
Then again, Virgil Jones brings up another interesting point in his pedantic rambling. Consider two extremes. In the first, what if everyone conformed to the previously agreed constructions of reality. The death of innovation, it is safe to say, would have preceeded its birth. In the second extreme, consider a case where innovation was driven by a deep-seated antagonism to the prevailing order. A deep desire to be different, by any means possible. In this case too, the system would wind down to a moribund state, not very different from the first case. Somewhere in the lack of right-ness or wrong-ness, in the glaring ambiguities in the prevailing order, lie the engines of creation. A vague belief in one's "insanity", rather than a desire to be "insane" is probably what fuels change.
"Go, go, go said the bird", Jones quotes T.S. Eliot, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality."
3 comments:
two facts, connected to the animal kingdom, sprang to mind, one about the mahouts tying a small chain in the leg of the baby elephant, which remains so even when it grows up, even though it may break free at any point, it accepts its fate, conforms itself to its destiny, the second about a frog in a closed bottle; similarly trying to escape at first, but after a few minutes even if you remove the lid, it doesn't move. I guess forsaking perception and conventions is truly what makes one distinctly human, otherwise all of us would be like the frog in the opened jar.
Even within the human genus, I think it's a little bit of a privilege to be able to challenge conventions and not overdo it
Sanity is the limit of your senses.
Very well written.
Sarah
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