A Very Public Private Man: December 2013

I think more clearly when I am on the road, Marseille Harbour, May 2013.

Lesson 1: The graveyards are full of indispensable men. Therefore:

No matter who you are, you need the right kind of friends, longevity, and favourable circumstances to be able to make your mark. I will not argue with those who proclaim that they are favoured by God, for I do not see how such an argument is resolvable, instead, for me, a general statement will suffice:

"Our efforts may bring us within sight of the goal, but fortune must favour us if we are to reach it" - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: Or On Education, 1762.

Lesson 2: Almost any action is right in the right circumstances. Or not?!

In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, we find that virtue can be a vice and vice versa. Virtue is thus argued to be the mean or rather the right reaction in a given situation. The best example I read of this went along these lines: if you react violently because someone has spilled water in the garden, your reaction would count as a vice. But we should not be lulled into thinking that a mild reaction is the exemplar of virtue, a mild reaction to someone murdering your wife would be a vice too.

"Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy" - Aristotle.

Lesson 3: Envy no person who is alive. Which is not the same as player hating!

The understanding here is that you never know what tomorrow holds. Hard times can strike even the most affluent and secure through a concatenation that will look like a conspiracy in retrospect. The player hater approach is also valid but only if we envision people who live beyond their means as subject matter. The way I choose to understand this lesson is as in the quote immediately below. Of course sophists of all hues go even further and say if a man dies but his descendants become insecure, then even in death you cannot count the man lucky.

"...count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last” - Sophocles, Oedipus Rex.

Lesson 4: It is possible to be wrong even when you are absolutely sure you are right.

“Do not believe that you alone can be right. The man who thinks that, the man who maintains that only he has the power to reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul - A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty” - Sophocles, Antigone.

Lesson 5: Be equitable with those who are equitable towards you. It's only fair.

"We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

These lessons are not free-standing, but interact and inform other lessons I have learned in the last year and, prior to that. I only raise these lessons to highlight what I feel is a transformation from my usual outlook: "the highest court on earth convenes on the battlefield."

I like to test my hypotheses in the theatre! Marseille, France, May 2013.

"There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its course: a quiet conscience" - Euripides, Hippolytus, 428 B.C.

St Cuthbert I presume.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

Every few weeks I must get away from it all, because it does take its toll on me. You would never know it from the façade I have worked hard to constantly present, but I am very sensitive and empathetic. Indeed, the statement "what you do unto my friends, you do unto me" captures my sentiment without effort, the News thus depresses me immensely. Studying the art of war, as I do, the observer's misconception that I am a warmonger is excusable, but the truth is that my subject matter is a private hell for a person of my disposition. I will not bore you with the specific instances that tug at my heart strings but they are many and it is physically exhausting, literally. Avoiding the news or altogether abandoning the study of the art of war is not an option because in the future I must needs deal with these matters first hand, so must be prepared.

A quiet conscience is useful to have as Euripides averred above, so I do not diminish the importance of doing right always. For my part, unless it be in matters of omission, I think my conscience is clear in matters of commission, thus my baggage is not so much guilt I have contributed to mankind's misery; but rather empathy with the situation others find themselves in in the world's hotspots. A day away from it all can be, and indeed was attempted 2 weeks shy of end of first term at my current institute: the Durham Global Security Institute [DGSi].

Hatfield College MCR Day Trip to Lindisfarne

Stranger in Lindisfarne

We left Durham (my current base) at 0800hrs sharp in the hope of beating the 1030hrs cut off at the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. You see, the Holy Island is connected to mainland England (off the A1 Motorway 79 Miles from Durham) by a Causeway that is susceptible to incoming tides.

Danger of drowning if caught by the tides when they flood the Causeway.

But as has become customary with my story telling I am getting ahead of myself, and rightly so because, this is the outstanding feature of the Holy Island for me. This is the one thing that makes it completely unique for me. I had never even heard in my whole life of this phenomenon; in fact the closest I can equate it to is the story in the Bible when Moses parted the Red Sea to escape the Pharaoh's Army.

The Causeway when the tide is out at 1000am, at 1030, everything will be under sea water

Still, you see what is happening here, already by thinking about this phenomenon my mind was already being given a respite from war stories, rumours of war, massacres and Mexican stand-offs in various places. It is with this in mind that I must take issue with Ralph Waldo Emerson's argument that all places are the same because it is you who travels there and you carry all your baggage with you.

That, You Cannot Get Away From Yourself?

"He carries ruins to ruins. Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Durham University mixed MCR Cohort on arrival at Lindisfarne.

I like to think I managed to leave my giant behind on this trip as I really managed to rest and recuperate from my usual surroundings. It was also lucky that I did not see the poster of what Lindisfarne promises until I was about to leave in the evening, because I am sure it was not suggested to me to feel relaxed. I felt it for myself, by myself.

The promise of the Holy Island.

This too is the downside to this trip, because I really wanted to relax, I did everything differently from my daily routines at DGSi. I did not take notes, I did not memorise facts, I did not imagine how the Island sustains itself or its politics or what pilgrims come here for. All I wanted to do was be away from the news, traffic lights, sirens and aircraft noises and I succeeded.

Walking everywhere; my staple for the day.

Usually, I write so as to encourage others to take the same trip by highlighting the sights and their significance. I will not bother. All I did was walk everywhere for 5 hours straight until 1530hrs when it was safe to make the trip across the Causeway back to the mainland.

Unforced march

Dear reader, I hope you visit this Island and write about your experiences, only then will I be able to gain useful knowledge about it, because all I tried to do here was keep my mind blank, and I succeeded!

1530hrs, it is now safe to cross back to the mainland.

PHOTO ESSAY:

Transport

Dunelm House at an ungodly hour.

Exit A1 Motorway for the Holy Island

The Causeway. The only way on and off the Island.

The Causeway proper.

Danger!

MCR Cohort on the Holy Island: Arrival.

In the distance, Lindisfarne Castle - a landmark of this Island.

“If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul” ― Russell Kirk. The author at St Aidan's Church, Lindisfarne Holy Island.