With Quiet Dignity

'Strange how there's always a little more innocence left to lose.' - The Outsider (Dishonored)

Love, Dignity, Justice
by ANDR3W A

From the title and quotation chosen for this particular stream of consciousness, you might hazard the guess that something has been troubling me lately. And rightly so, my dear, vociferous readers.

I may have stated this too many times already, but I feel that our species is quite fallible. We are all inclined towards chaos – to some extent at least. The irony being, of course, that we so strongly crave to order the world around us and shape it to our needs, desires, preferences…

None of us are perfect, which is both logical and unsurprising – if it were otherwise, I for one would be rather shocked that we had discovered true Artificial Intelligence without anyone noticing. The point I would make here is that none of us are exempt from failure in any way. None of us are true beacons of virtue and morality – paragons unblemished by a cruel world. However appealing the notion of such people may be, I would argue that they do not exist.

Perhaps I am awfully pessimistic and time will prove me wrong. I would be very glad, if that happened one day. Truly, I would like to believe that we are all capable of being much more than we are – you may have noticed how often I express this particular idealistic notion of mine. As is often the case, however, reality would beg to differ. The world touches us all eventually – no one remains innocent for long. And the farther we go from our most cherished dreams and ideals, the more we realise how deep this loss of innocence may become.

Yet, you will not hear me say, my dear, vociferous readers, that there is no hope – that there is no way to retain some part of your true self, to build it, to make it stronger. Fighting for that is both the means and the end, I think, and the calls to arms are too numerous to ignore.

Someone said to me once, ‘What is true is never loud.’ So let us fight on, quietly – for innocence lost. Let us overcome and rise above all of it.

And let us live on with quiet dignity.

Unheeded

'From something delicate to something brutal, a pattern repeated through all of history.' – Steven Erikson

Broken Flowers by h.koppdelaney.

Our history is one of mistakes repeated...

We walk within memories of warmth and ice, light and darkness, joy and despair – our triumphs are ever brief and followed by the inevitable fall. And we continue to move in circles, ever confused in a relentless pursuit of something greater than the cold, uncompromising reality we are faced with each and every day.

We are chasing after ideas and ideals, our seeking and craving fuelled by empty dreams. Dreams that have become devoid of substance by our own lack of understanding – while we chase after greater comprehension... Such irony.

Where will this endless cycle lead us? Will we even glimpse a final, ultimate goal? Circle after circle after circle...closed. Will we ever learn, I wonder – or are we doomed to repeat our mistakes, destroy what we create and forgo our noblest cravings?

Will we ever not end up right where we began? We seem to have the amazing ability to never heed the lessons of history.

All of this I say, my dear, vociferous readers, for a reason both simple and ridiculously convoluted: we all know, on some level, that there is still... something in our world that is untainted and incorruptible. After all, we have all felt the first touch of love, or the breath of unexpected hope – or even something as simple as a surge of sympathy for a fellow human being. And we have all, I have no doubt, at the very least glimpsed the Beauty that has become so very elusive of late. For the circles are ever closing...

And Beauty is ever in peril, my friends. Whenever it would try to rise above the shackles of this base realm of ours, chaos and destruction would rear their ugly heads and trample its frail endeavour. Again and again we have seen this – the rise and fall of something precious, splendid, magnificent.

Beauty is ever in peril. And it needs Guardians.  

One Year Later...

'We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still.' - Dr Carl Sagan 

It has been quite the journey, my dear, vociferous readers.

Some of you will know that, of course. Some of you will have noticed my winding path to a place I am yet to see with any clarity. Some of you are yet to share in my vision – if at all.

For those of you who have been with me all along... beyond the confines of this rather limiting form of expression. You know me far better than most. And far too well for simple words. But bear with me.

I have learned a lot, my friends. This blog began as a training regimen for my then dormant writing skills. And then it became something far greater – a challenge, a road less travelled, a way of knowing this crazy little world. It became a search for something more, a quest for dreams I can never know.

I have learned so much along the way. Too much to share through means as crude as words. But I know that I know far, far too little...

Nevertheless, I did discover certain bits and pieces of a larger truth I can call my own. And I got to know uncertainty in an entirely new fashion. I am now utterly convinced that to have blind faith in something is deeply wrong – to never change assumptions, beliefs, ideas, perceptions is nothing but a hindrance to becoming a greater human being. There are no final conclusions, I have come to think.

I know how deep bonds are forged. I know how much a true friend is worth. I know love is not the only answer, but it's a bloody good one. I know the people you care for are the ultimate frontier, the final scale of justice, balance and morality.

And I know far too much to say I know enough. But I know that there are lessons for all of us each and every day...

What did I learn recently, one might ask? Exempli gratia, I embraced whole-heartedly a principle I seemed to have forgotten: to judge another is a choice, not a necessity. Judge at your own peril...

Perhaps more importantly, I finally understood something I have always been reluctant to admit – that there is no tragedy to the deep turnings of this world. The strength to find meaning resides within us: we can make the choice. We are the ones who define and shape our own existence. There is no intrinsic tragedy – even if at times the Universe seems to be truly unforgiving.

Of course, this entire endeavour has amounted to a rather odd collection of random thoughts, musings and opinions. And it was inevitable that I would learn to trust my own judgement, wherever it may take me at times. Thus, I know something now that I failed to see a year ago... Even if the entire world would beg to differ, that does not mean you are the one who's wrong.

I will continue to try to see what lies beyond the immediately visible. There are far greater things that we may know that are dreamt of in our petty philosophy. We are capable of so much more...

But the choices we make are the dreams we can know. The choices not made are the stories untold. And the stories we make are the truths we have known.

Is the circle now complete, my dear, vociferous readers?

Through the Night

'Alfred: Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.' – Batman Begins

Being able to rise again when no one would expect us to do so – that's why I still have some hope left for our species.

Nevertheless, we do tend to focus too much on our failures, which is, rather ironically, what I am doing at this moment (even if they are not my failures, per se). The difference stems from the fact that I am trying to make a point. So bear with me, my dear, vociferous readers.

It's quite impossible not to notice how, far too often, we fixate on our shortcomings to the exclusion of all else. And I do not mean the bit of (almost) harmless perfectionism or permanent dissatisfaction with personal accomplishments we may observe here and there in this peculiar world of ours – I was, in actuality, referring to our terribly annoying habit to presume that we cannot.

We think we can't be better. We can. We say we can't change anything in this world. We can. We give up, we despair, we conform. We remain silent and on our knees. Yet, we choose to do all that. And we, as a global society, can make a better choice.

This, as ever, begins with a single person. Each and every one of us is a reflection, to some extent, of the communities from which they emerged – of the idiosyncrasies of our day and age, if you will. But also of the most common societal character traits and cultural practices that are at the heart of who we are as people.

Do we choose to accept and go on unperturbed, or do we dig deeper and try to rise from within our deep indignation at the reality we can now see? You and I both know, I hope, that each and every day is a challenge that is only going to become greater with time. And this is it. This is all we have, when all is said and done. It's you and the people you care for in the context of a Universe where the existence (or lack thereof) of our entire species, our planet and our solar system is irrelevant.

We can either stay down, unwilling to see beyond what we know – or we can go above and beyond ourselves to reach further that we ever expected and find strength we never knew we had. We can face this world with the supreme confidence that, in each and every thing we do, we will do everything within our abilities: and then rise above our limitations to become more than we can.

We are stronger than we know, I think. And whenever we may fall, let us lend each other a helping hand – along with a word of hope. I choose to believe we can make it through the night.

Let our spirits be tempered in the fires of Life.

Ceaseless Striving

'The brightest light is invisible. It shines through your deeds, and warms the universe.' – Chronicles of Courage and Conviction, by Captain Dylan Hunt Ret. (Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda)

This world is one of messages – where at every corner a new cause awaits, and in each of us there is a wealth of knowledge we never knew we possessed. We are surrounded by the new and unknown with ever greater frequency. And we have become numb, uncaring...

If it were easy to allocate blame, I would have done that already. My problem stems from the fact that we all seem to be wrong – as a society, as a species even. The problem, I think, comes from the way we have chosen to position ourselves in relation to... well, everything. There is no other way than to shut our eyes and our hearts to the pain of others – in this place we have chosen, morality is not welcome.

The crisis of ethics and morals, at least, may be easily speculated upon. Is our inability to distinguish between what we feel as right and that set forth by a fundamentally flawed system a sign of something more significant? Does it, perhaps, pertain to the models of 'correct behaviour' established by the artificial construct we inhabit? We are encouraged towards individualisation and selfishness, rather than any higher motive – we are not supposed to be better than we are, apparently. We are not supposed to overcome our limitations and rise above our selves. Not in a way that would help anyone else, that is: becoming 'better' at the expense of others is a core aspect of our definition of 'success', after all.

I must apologise, my dear, vociferous readers, for this hopelessly disorganised rant. This was not meant as a lecture on morality, but rather as a question – a question that has been bothering me for far too long... Why keep doing this, if we can choose to be different? Surely, we can be better than we are, can't we?

Perhaps one day these questions will receive an answer. If we intend to rise to the challenges that lie ahead, we must be better than we are... We must better than we can.