Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Humiliation and forgiveness
I am becoming deeply troubled by Thomas The Tank Engine. I am often persuaded by number one nephew that it would be a good idea to watch television. I have often favoured the Thomas dvd because it is so much more watchable than Kipper the Dog, who is frankly rather childish. But there is a recurrent theme in the Thomas stories which concern me.
Most of the stories follow this pattern:
1. Arrogance. One of the engines will display some rather unpleasant selfish behaviour. Usuall it seems some kind of suppressed rebelliousness. Each engines' role in life is clearly dictated by the Fat Controller. He is basically a considerate man but his management skills are entirely arbitrary or reactive, never intuitive.
2. Calamity. This wilful behaviour will endanger other engines, their payload or often a carriage of children. Other engines will appear particularly magnanimous in their assistance by comparison when they save the day.
3. Humiliation. The engine in question will be the subject of hilarity and/or anger.
4. Contrition. Said engine will then have to humple himself thoroughly and apologise to all concerned.
5. Forgiveness. The other engines and more importantly the Fat Controller will forgive the engine and point out publicly how stupid it has been. It will then happily return to its alloted role free of it's rebellious spirit.
There is a clear message here; know your place. These stories seem fine for boys in pre war public schools being bullied in to appropriate roles for the British Empire. There seems no even faint justification for this message today, unless my nephew wishes to become a dictator.
Unfortunately the models in the tv show are absolutely fantastic. I do not believe you would have persuaded Jojou junior to play outside if it had been on when I was little. It was the model machines in Thunderbirds that fascinated me with that show. I watched some old thunderbirds a few years ago and was shocked to observe that the stories are rubbish. So am hoping that the bizzarre anachronistic fascist/feudal message of Thomas is wasted on today's small minds. If not I will have to insist on bloody Kipper, or worse still, the horrible Tweenies.
I am becoming deeply troubled by Thomas The Tank Engine. I am often persuaded by number one nephew that it would be a good idea to watch television. I have often favoured the Thomas dvd because it is so much more watchable than Kipper the Dog, who is frankly rather childish. But there is a recurrent theme in the Thomas stories which concern me.
Most of the stories follow this pattern:
1. Arrogance. One of the engines will display some rather unpleasant selfish behaviour. Usuall it seems some kind of suppressed rebelliousness. Each engines' role in life is clearly dictated by the Fat Controller. He is basically a considerate man but his management skills are entirely arbitrary or reactive, never intuitive.
2. Calamity. This wilful behaviour will endanger other engines, their payload or often a carriage of children. Other engines will appear particularly magnanimous in their assistance by comparison when they save the day.
3. Humiliation. The engine in question will be the subject of hilarity and/or anger.
4. Contrition. Said engine will then have to humple himself thoroughly and apologise to all concerned.
5. Forgiveness. The other engines and more importantly the Fat Controller will forgive the engine and point out publicly how stupid it has been. It will then happily return to its alloted role free of it's rebellious spirit.
There is a clear message here; know your place. These stories seem fine for boys in pre war public schools being bullied in to appropriate roles for the British Empire. There seems no even faint justification for this message today, unless my nephew wishes to become a dictator.
Unfortunately the models in the tv show are absolutely fantastic. I do not believe you would have persuaded Jojou junior to play outside if it had been on when I was little. It was the model machines in Thunderbirds that fascinated me with that show. I watched some old thunderbirds a few years ago and was shocked to observe that the stories are rubbish. So am hoping that the bizzarre anachronistic fascist/feudal message of Thomas is wasted on today's small minds. If not I will have to insist on bloody Kipper, or worse still, the horrible Tweenies.
map one
I had a lovely day with the Kitten on sunday. We walked by the canal in islington until it rained. She told me she had been considering quite how much I had changed my life. It is true, I have and I am delighted with the results, but had not considered that anyone else had noticed, because no one has ever really mentioned it so explicitly before.
A while ago I was contemplating how and why I made such a change, and saw that I had wanted to change things for a long time but was stuck in a trap. I identified from my own experience a rather tricky dead end in the labyrinth, which I feel applies to many other people living and working in a modern urban environment. There is a way out, the path that I took, and it goes as follows:
It seems to me that people seem to think they have to live in a way that they find intolerable. They cannot admit to what they really want to do because if they did they would have also to acknowledge that they dislike major aspects of their current experience. They cannot be fully present in their lives because they cannot afford to see too much truth.
So they stay locked in a world where they have to do things that they secretly wish they could just stop doing. There is so much quiet desperation within them; part of them that has either given up the struggle believing it has failed, or is silently stifling one long scream of anguish.
Yet all they have to do is consider the possibility that they may be wrong. They may have to accept that people who they trust and who love them have given them advice that led them to do what they are now so tired of. If they were to accept this one truth then they may slowly have to accept that they have been wrong about many other things too. They may have to confront the grief they feel at having forced themselves to endure such torment. They may weep to realise that the last time they remember doing just what they wanted was when they were a child. Yet all it takes is a moment's humility; these truths can be seen, and these old ideas can be put down.
And the business of being in truth can be practised in this way. The more we learn to recognise our truth when our experience reflects it, the better we become at spotting it. Slowly a much happier being emerges. Then we can start to enjoy ourselves.
I had a lovely day with the Kitten on sunday. We walked by the canal in islington until it rained. She told me she had been considering quite how much I had changed my life. It is true, I have and I am delighted with the results, but had not considered that anyone else had noticed, because no one has ever really mentioned it so explicitly before.
A while ago I was contemplating how and why I made such a change, and saw that I had wanted to change things for a long time but was stuck in a trap. I identified from my own experience a rather tricky dead end in the labyrinth, which I feel applies to many other people living and working in a modern urban environment. There is a way out, the path that I took, and it goes as follows:
It seems to me that people seem to think they have to live in a way that they find intolerable. They cannot admit to what they really want to do because if they did they would have also to acknowledge that they dislike major aspects of their current experience. They cannot be fully present in their lives because they cannot afford to see too much truth.
So they stay locked in a world where they have to do things that they secretly wish they could just stop doing. There is so much quiet desperation within them; part of them that has either given up the struggle believing it has failed, or is silently stifling one long scream of anguish.
Yet all they have to do is consider the possibility that they may be wrong. They may have to accept that people who they trust and who love them have given them advice that led them to do what they are now so tired of. If they were to accept this one truth then they may slowly have to accept that they have been wrong about many other things too. They may have to confront the grief they feel at having forced themselves to endure such torment. They may weep to realise that the last time they remember doing just what they wanted was when they were a child. Yet all it takes is a moment's humility; these truths can be seen, and these old ideas can be put down.
And the business of being in truth can be practised in this way. The more we learn to recognise our truth when our experience reflects it, the better we become at spotting it. Slowly a much happier being emerges. Then we can start to enjoy ourselves.
