Light bulb? No, Eureka.

Sundays seems to always have a beneficial effect on one's reflective abilities. Having only watched a couple of films this year I attemped a catch up today with two at the National Film and Sound Archives (NFSA) cinema. There was roughly an hour between them and that was enough to motivate me to pull out my pad and get down some thoughts, something I've been slack on lately. Obviously the right bits of the brain started ticking over because it was only a minute or two into the second film that a bomb went off inside me. For years and years I've felt that I'm passionate about culture. That passion has led me to travel to very different places, attempt a handful of different languages, involve myself in diverse communities, study international development, and finally pursue work in foreign affairs and international policy. There are few things I've been more sure of than my love of different cultures. But as I sat watching the opening scene of 'women without men', a beautifully shot and powerful Iranian film, I realized, and promptly grabbed my pad out to scribble in the dark, that it's not culture, it's humanity.   

Culture, to me, describes the practices and languages of different groups (normally I'm thinking of different countries). I now realize that what has always filled me with wonder is the common humanity that exists across vastly different cultures. Fragility, compassion, love, grief. It's humanity I love - different cultures have just provided the strongest proof of these common traits, a case of correlation being mistaken for causality, if you like.

This may seem a trivial point, what does the distinction really mean? It means it's not about the differences, though these are obviously valuable too, it's about the similarities that exist despite the differences. It's about being in love with what makes good people good. The upshot is more room for wonderment, for joy at living and sharing life with others. The difference possesses liberation and vitality, and to me, it's a little revelation.   

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May 22, 2011
c said...
I don’t quite know what to say. I came here seeking something – your reflections on the films, perhaps (or maybe an energetic remark upon, yes, light bulbs.) This is well scribed, a.

It’s something that I’ve fought against for years, I think - confronting humanity, being a social being and especially the constructs of communication, our very *same*ness, our gracelessness, our baseness!! - finding solace in the plants and scapes and pre-occupying thoughts there, and the contemplation and quietude to be had in it, endlessly so. The deeply mysterious, diverse, bewildering, wonderful and humbling means of existing. The stark, stark beauty of finding your first desert pea amongst the dry fields – that fierce shock of joy and scarlet, it seems such an improbable thing– these things will always be with me.

But really, it’s just a way of thinking about lifetimes, life and organismal perspectives other than our own, the energy and years shouting in a seemingly barren arid dry land, and in a cool tall forest (for fear of everyday imagery, but I have now encountered the forests of the south-west...) and, fundamentally, the sheer marvel of the differences that exist (ways and timelines to thrive, grow, collect resources and ‘knowledge’, reproduce) despite the similarities to us and animals broadly – we are all trying to do the same things, as animals and as plants – to have life!

I think that it’s communication that frustrates me to all ends, especially verbal communication. Is communication within culture (and is language communication?)? I’m not sure, as it seems beyond even humanity and is certainly not constrained to us in a species sense. How do the differences among languages shape us and our neural processes (indeed there may be no intrinsic commonalities or patterns among the languages of the world, is one hypothesis) let alone shape the ways in which we express our humanity? How to begin to capture the fleet-of-foot thoughts and quiet wryness and extreme grief and rage and delight and joy and marveling and realisations and wanting to be, to love, to give, and to be able to give more, somehow, that are large, light, fast, and beyond words? This is the sort of thing that drives me right back to silence.

You’ve compelled me to write here, though. As you have written, there’s so much joy and delight and love in the good in good people (that is humbling, and almost a kind of grace) – what a great space to share.

c

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