Pilots Need Love Too

My daughter Silvie’s latest artwork.

August 07, 2012

Haldimand Monthly Fireside Notice

Baha’i Principles Series

A Key to Loving

This book, A Key to Loving, by local author Betty Frost discusses ideas from the Baha’i Writings, like: “The first principle of divine guidance is love,” and, “The most important feat in this day is harmony and agreement.”

Featured Speaker:  Betty Frost

 

 

 

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

8 PM

 

Garfield Disher Room,

Dunnville Branch,

Haldimand Public Library

Sharing a Show

 

The Ricky Gervais Show

 

I enjoy the comic genius of Ricky Gervais. His depiction of an impervious, self-contradicting boss man in the original British version of the TV program "The Office," is absolutely hilarious. You listen to this egotistical maniac with a mixture of horror and dismay. How can anybody put his foot that far into his mouth and not suffocate? Gervais performance is based on an actual boss that he says he had once, but the type is a universal one.

 

 

Anybody who has ever entered the workplace has no choice but to meet such a manager, an absolute idiot who talks far longer than his thoughts can carry him, twisting himself around his own superficial jargon and catch words, imagining himself a poetic master, the sort of speaker who would be mocked, ridiculed and laughed off the stage under any circumstances other than the one he is in, that is, standing before a captive audience of underlings. He is not so much sadistic as utterly clueless; on one level he knows that his listeners depend for their paychecks on taking what he says serious heed, but he honestly thinks that he is an entertainer, a guru, a beloved friend to those under him, and that he can disregard every rhetorical convention, including internal logic.

 

His performance in the movie "The Invention of Lying" takes second place to the utter freshness and originality of his brilliant idea of a story about a world where the ability to deceive has been somehow removed from the gene pool. A normal schlep like him, or, I have to admit, myself, who is capable of deception, would pretty much rule. He could write his own ticket, without even having to lie well. It is a charming movie, a good one to watch for those who in their institutes are memorizing the Master's observation that "truthfulness is the foundation of character..."

 

Anyway, I heard about the podcasts Gervais was having with two of his producers and was not particularly interested. I saw the promos for the animated version that came out of it, and I remained unimpressed. The series, the Ricky Gervais Show, is now into its second season, and is available, thanks to my father's paying the entire cable bill here, on "on demand." In a moment of boredom, I watched a recent episode or two from the second season and remained unimpressed.

 

 

For one thing, the British street slang they used was off-putting. One word brought on some nostalgia though, "mental," in the sense of, "You don't have to go all mental about it," meaning, "do not take this to an extreme." I remember in grade school hearing and using the word casually, then in high school in the 1970's the expression disappeared. I do not know if it was the fact that "mental" was part Canadian argot but not of the American slang that dominates the media, or if "mental" was a victim of political correctness, or, most probably, both, but I have not heard "mental" being used like that for decades.

 

Finally, one day I gave the Gervais show one more chance. Then, as I was watching the episode, it hit me. I do not know if it was the mood I was in or what, but suddenly I started laughing uproariously. I could not stop laughing until the entire half hour was over.

 

Definitely, the Ricky Gervais Show is an acquired taste.

I realized that at this point in my life I need a daily humor boost, so I went back to episode one, season one and took a ration of an episode or two every day. It gave a lift to my day to have my sides split and roll on the ground laughing. The kids were unimpressed. They could not fathom why I would listen to incomprehensible gibberish interspersed with non-sequential cartoon illustrations.

 

I noticed that season one started out with Gervais openly mocking the main subject of the show, "That round headed buffoon that is, Karl Pilkington." They read on air some of the letters and emails that they were getting, and it is pretty clear that sympathetic listeners were siding with the "round headed buffoon." In the second season Gervais clearly moderates his mocking attitude, and this actually improves the show considerably.

 

Where do my laughs come from? As I watch I sometimes wonder. I do like these three fellows. You cannot really laugh at somebody unless you like them. Okay, there are exceptions. I am thinking of a certain grotesque dictator right now who is going on air declaring war on his own people. I do not like him, but I do laugh, along with many others in the Arab world, when a journalist Autotunes his Gervais-like performance as big boss to rap lyrics. But generally speaking, laughter is a function of love, not hate.

 

Clearly, these are three buddies who hang around with one another even when they do not have to. They have feelings for each another that you can only call love, in spite of all the ribbing. That is the real secret, I think, of the belly laughs I am getting out of this. Such friendships among men are rarer here in North America than in Britain. This kind of laughter is not an outcome of wit or jokes but of fellowship. This is a fact of life that the insipid American sitcoms that infest commercial television forgot long ago. Here the sense of harmony and fellowship among these three men is real and palpable. The humor, once you catch on to it, is intense.

 

Anyway, in season two as the mockery moderates Karl Pilkington starts to flower into less of a buffoon than a sort of original thinker, a real poet in the raw. During Season One they had gone from a feature called "Monkey News" to a reading from Karl's diary. Gervais rightly recognizes these diary entries, written in block letters in a huge volume, as "one of the best diaries ever written, absolutely brilliant!"

 

Some people love animals and nature in soppy way, but Karl is more than that. He is also capable of being annoyed, frustrated and bothered by what he sees on his walks in natural surroundings. He observes the behavior of insects, mollusks and other animals with annoyance as well as wonder. I ask you, is that not a deeper sort of love than the sentimental, stereotypical observations of people like, well, myself, when I observe nature? It has got to love if you can react with the full gamut of emotions to the phenomena of nature.

 

Anyway, I was going through the second season when my eleven year old son Thomas took more than a few glances at the show. He especially liked Karl Pilkington's relationship to animals. It took him maybe three times longer to start to like the show, but now he is asking to see the show every morning.

 

I am now fielding questions like, "What is a bloke?"

 

So now I am going through the entire series with him a second time. There is profanity there, but nothing worse than he will hear if he sticks his head outside the door and listens to the voices in the street. It is not entirely as funny for me seeing it the second time, but, as Adam Smith says in the book he regarded as his masterpiece, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, (not the better known "Wealth of Nations"), one's pleasure in sharing a joy is almost as great, and in some ways greater, than it was the first time. I will give the last word to Smith.

 

I think what he says here explains why Karl Pilkington takes pleasure in this company of mockers (they sympathize with his annoyance little things in the world), even though he is the butt of almost every joke. Smith's observation also explains better than I have here why I cannot stop laughing every time I watch the Ricky Gervais Show.

 

==========

 

"When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty; we enter into the surprise and admiration which it naturally excites in him, but which it is no longer capable of exciting in us; we consider all the ideas which it presents rather in the light in which they appear to him, than in that in which they appear to ourselves, and we are amused by sympathy with his amusement which thus enlivens our own.

 

"On the contrary, we should be vexed if he did not seem to be entertained with it, and we could no longer take any pleasure in reading it to him. It is the same case here. The mirth of the company, no doubt, enlivens our own mirth, and their silence, no doubt, disappoints us.

"But though this may contribute both to the pleasure which we derive from the one, and to the pain which we feel from the other, it is by no means the sole cause of either; and this correspondence of the sentiments of others with our own appears to be a cause of pleasure, and the want of it a cause of pain, which cannot be accounted for in this manner. The sympathy, which my friends express with my joy, might, indeed, give me pleasure by enlivening that joy: but that which they express with my grief could give me none, if it served only to enliven that grief.

"Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief. It enlivens joy by presenting another source of satisfaction; and it alleviates grief by insinuating into the heart almost the only agreeable sensation which it is at that time capable of receiving."

(Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments)

Validation

Other Baha'i bloggers have noted how this sheds light on the holy words: "A kindly tongue is the lodestone of the hearts of men..."

FREE HUGS

Free hugs, a true story.

Animal odd couple

Three Thoughts About Love

Amour in Paris, Xanthippe in Athens, plus Jalalu'Din Rumi

  

By John Taylor; 2008 Dec 07, 14 Qawl 165 BE

   In our daily study class the kids and I just finished Paris Talks, one of my favourite books of all time. It is simple yet profound, perfect for those frequent times through the years when I need inspiration desperately but my mental faculties are severely impaired by chains of migraine attacks. The Master leaves throughout little statements that seem innocuous at first -- I call them grenades of profundity -- but whose full meaning only hits you afterwards.

Paris Talks is truly a work of genius, distinctive among the other products of Abdu'l-Baha's mind. It is a collective proto-deepening worthy of the creative spirit of Paris and France, a culture I long ago fell in love with, in spite of its materialistic strain. In America, the Master was overwhelmed with interest and publicity, but at least in His first visit to Paris the response from the press seems to have been chilly; most of the talks in Paris Talks were given to small gatherings of Baha'is. The welcome was warmer in His second visit over a year later, but by then the strain of the voyages was telling, His health was worse and the need to convalesce prevented giving many addresses to large gatherings. Nonetheless, he did give enough to fill a volume, entitled "Divine Philosophy." Why this book, which could be called "Paris Talks II, the Sequel," remains out of print and unavailable except in digital form is a mystery that I have never been able to fathom. What I have read of the digital version while sitting at the computer seems as wonderful as anything else the Master said.

Loving the book so much, I long ago lost track of how many times I have read it. This has its disadvantages. My favourite book can hold no more surprises for me. This is why it was refreshing to read it with the kids, who see everything with new eyes. Silvie in particular was instructive in her reaction.

When Silvie has problems with something she does not hide it. In spite of her shyness before strangers, she is very much in my face about issues of faith. Every day for the past several weeks I have had to deal with two sore points from every possible angle: one, the lack of women on the Universal House of Justice and, two, the lack of eternal souls for animals. I have tried every possible angle and explanation without success. When she is reading a text and disagrees with it, she slows and then stops.

So it happened that we were, as always, taking turns reading the talk about love where Abdu'l-Baha goes through the four kinds of love, love of God for God, of God for man, of man for God and man for man, and then we came across the following, which provoked a marked reaction. As she read aloud, she first slowed, then did a dead stop mid-sentence. Many more stops followed, each with a long discussion. Here are the paragraphs that provoked her surprise and consternation about what love is.

"But the love which sometimes exists between friends is not (true) love, because it is subject to transmutation; this is merely fascination. As the breeze blows, the slender trees yield. If the wind is in the East the tree leans to the West, and if the wind turns to the West the tree leans to the East. This kind of love is originated by the accidental conditions of life. This is not love, it is merely acquaintanceship; it is subject to change.

"Today you will see two souls apparently in close friendship; tomorrow all this may be changed. Yesterday they were ready to die for one another, today they shun one another's society! This is not love; it is the yielding of the hearts to the accidents of life. When that which has caused this 'love' to exist passes, the love passes also; this is not in reality love." (Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 181)

This was shocking for her, and I can see why it might be. It goes against everything that we are taught about love, what little is taught. It is not that she argued against it in the way she argues about exclusion of women from the UHJ or animals from heaven. But clearly, this came as a shock. The Master is quite incontrovertible about this. He continues:

"Love is only of the four kinds that I have explained. (a) The love of God towards the identity of God. Christ has said God is Love. (b) The love of God for His children -- for His servants. (c) The love of man for God and (d) the love of man for man. These four kinds of love originate from God. These are rays from the Sun of Reality; these are the Breathings of the Holy Spirit; these are the Signs of the Reality."

Love is not love, then, unless God is somewhere in the equation. We are used to Paul's assertion (I thought it was Paul, but Abdu'l-Baha says that it came from Jesus) that "God is love," but here the Master asserts the obverse: what is not God is not love." Surprising indeed.

In my other reading, this time of Xenophon's Banquet or Symposium, I came across another surprising thing about love. Like Silvie, I did a double take as I read. What happens is that early on in the banquet Antisthenes makes some negative comments to Socrates about his wife, Xanthippe (the name "Xanthippe" means "yellow horse," by the way, and Socrates is clearly punning on her aristocratic name in his response). Judging by the age of their three children when he died, Xanthippe must have been about 40 years younger than Socrates, who was 70 years old himself. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthippe) Antisthenes confronts Socrates, remarking that Xanthippe is the hardest woman to get along with of all the women in the world. Why was he, the wisest man in the world, so foolish as to marry such a problem personality? Socrates replies that her difficult qualities were exactly why he chose her as his wife.

"I follow the example of the rider who wishes to become an expert horseman: `None of your soft-mouthed, docile animals for me,' he says; `the horse for me to own must show some spirit' in the belief, no doubt, if he can manage such an animal, it will be easy enough to deal with every other horse besides. And that is just my case. I wish to deal with human beings, to associate with man in general; hence my choice of wife. I know full well, if I can tolerate her spirit, I can with ease attach myself to every human being else." (Symposium 17-19)

Most readers take this as innocuous banter, or perhaps evidence that Xanthippe was a shrew. I suddenly realized that this should instead be taken as highly significant and indeed central to Socrates' philosophy. One does not marry in old age and have three children lightly. This man was not called by the oracle the "wisest of men" for nothing. He chose her because she was difficult.

Think about it.

Socrates chose Xanthippe for the same reason that God chose the Jews to receive a string of Prophets. Socrates loved her for the same reason God picked out the Iranians to be the cultural "bride" for His Twin Manifestations. Not because they were the nicest and most malleable cultures but because they were the orneriest pains in the butt, the toughest, most fanatical and spirited of all nations.

Jalalu'Din Rumi also wrote about this theme in the sixth story in the Mathnavi. This story Abdu'l-Baha repeated -- so it is important for that reason alone. It is about a slave called Luqman the Sage, reputedly Aesop, or perhaps the nephew of Job. I will finish with this, since I think that Rumi's poetic commentary is important too, especially since it leads to an important analogy -- the two symettrical, balanced wings of a bird in flight -- that Abdu'l-Baha used to describe both men and women and science and faith. That is what love leads to after much suffering and pain, the total symettry of God in love with God Himself.

(Luqman's Master examines him and discovers his Acuteness.)

Luqman the Sage, though "gifted with wisdom by God," was a slave. His master, however, discovered his worth, and became extremely attached to him, so that he never received any delicacy without giving Luqman a share of it. One day, having received a watermelon, he gave Luqman the best part of it, and Luqman devoured it with such apparent relish that his master was tempted to taste it. To his surprise he found it very bitter, and asked Luqman why he had not told him of this. Luqman replied that it was not for him, who lived on his master's bounty, to complain if he now and then received disagreeable things at his hands. Thus, though to outward appearance a slave, Luqman showed himself to be a lord.

Love endures hardships at the hands of the Beloved.

Through love bitter things seem sweet,

Through love bits of copper are made gold.

Through love dregs taste like pure wine,

Through love pains are as healing balms.

Through love thorns become roses,

And through love vinegar becomes sweet wine.

Through love the stake becomes a throne,

Through love reverse of fortune seems good fortune.

Through love a prison seems a rose bower,

Without love a grate full of ashes seems a garden.

Through love burning fire is pleasing light,

Through love the Devil becomes a Houri.

Through love hard stones become soft as butter,

Without love soft wax becomes hard iron.

Through love grief is as joy,

Through love Ghouls turn into angels.

Through love stings are as honey,

Through love lions are harmless as mice.

Through love sickness is health,

Through love wrath is as mercy.

Through love the dead rise to life,

Through love the king becomes a slave.

Even when an evil befalls you, have due regard;

Regard well him who does you this ill turn.

The sight which regards the ebb and flow of good and ill

Opens a passage for you from misfortune to happiness.

Thence you see the one state moves you into the other,

2

One opposite state generating its opposite in exchange.

So long as you experience not fears after joys,

How can you look for pleasures after disgusts?

While ye fear the doom of the angel on the left hand,

Men hope for the bliss of the angel on the right.

3

May you gain two wings!

A fowl with only one wing

Is impotent to fly, O well-intentioned one!

-- Mathnavi of Rumi, E.H. Whinfield tr.

--
John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

::