I find myself in a comparable position to 30 years ago, when I was unable to see any external solution to the future: personally, professionally, politically, economically, nationally, globally. Then the butterfly's wings flapped & the collapse of the status quo in the West moved further east: the USSR, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Bosnia & down a bit to Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq. This is all part of a massive change, the short present moment of which is 200 years. The details are unpredictable, the overall view more so.
One person, with a camera or a gun, can cause disruption far beyond the quantitative scale. Small mobile units, of varying degrees of intelligence, are able to do damage to larger, unwieldy units that are inevitably vulnerable. A small act can cause repercussions that spread far beyond its original target and, where this act is violent, has a knack of turning round and inflicting all manner of damage to those parties nominally represented/defended by that act of violence. One act of violence is a reaction to another, and generates another in turn. This is gravity working. We all lose, although the ways of loss are different.
So, the only solution I am able to see, now as thirty years ago, is an internal action.
There are significant actions that take place which, mostly, we never get to see. Occasionally, I read a small something in a newspaper and I have a sense: this is not attracting publicity, this is not exciting, something is happening here. But this kind of internal action is not, and cannot in its nature, be institutionalised. It cannot get fixed in this way, or it serves something other than its founding conception intended.
When something real, authentic, genuine takes place, it takes place for a while. A specific aim is served. The, the spirit moves on to another external situation, where another action is initiated. Sometimes there are records left of particular pieces of work, or schools in action. Sometimes these are pieces of architecture, such as those that give me hope when touring Europe. Sometimes pieces of literature have an echo of something more distant. Yet all these external pieces of work, however real, however "objective", are only fingers pointing to the moon. It is not enough to take photos of these buildings, put them on the wall or use them as screen-savers, and marvel at the wonders of an earlier age. The architecture is internal, the building external.
And here/there I am again: the only future I see is the construction of an interior architecture.
"Yet all these external pieces of work, however real, however 'objective', are only fingers pointing to the moon." Beautiful. posted by Tim Wilson at 10:34 PM
