Sell your reputation for a song.

This is actually quite an old post that I have resurrected as I believe it has some resonance today.

People have idols; things they value above all others; even, unfortunately more than they value themselves – their self-worth, their honour and their reputation. There has been a spate of media reports about people who have indulged in, shall we say, less than charitable behaviour.  People from all walks of life have been found guilty of malpractice of one type or another.

I have said before that poets can often say in a few words what it takes others, like me, many words to express. There is a very appropriate quatrain (verse) in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Omar Khayyam was an 11^th Century Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet) - which goes as follows (verse 69): 

 

69

                                           Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

                                           Have done my Credit in Men’s Eyes much wrong:

                                              Have drown’d my Honour in a shallow cup,

                                           And sold my Reputation for a Song.

 

For many people their idols are money (or the “stuff’ that money can buy); or prestige and the power that comes with their position. If you “love” something above all others – an idol - this will soon be apparent to all who know you. You will have removed yourself from the rest of humanity; you will be using people as a means to an end; you will be using people to acquire more of what you “love”. They will sense this and you will have done your “credit in Men’s eyes much wrong”. 

To get your idol you will cheat, you will lie, you will become untrustworthy, you will be immoral, you will not be ethical in your activities. You will have drowned your honour in a shallow cup – lost your honour for something of little value – a “shallow cup”. 

Your love for, your fixation to, your worship of your idol means that you have lost all sense of proportion or reason and are prepared to sell your self-worth – who you are – for a “song” - something of no substance. You will have diminished yourself as a human being.

No one will ever trust you again – your self-worth, your reputation, your honour will have been damaged almost beyond repair.

Today - The importance of ORDER.

I know that I have commented on this before but I strongly believe that today, in April 2022, it is even more necessary for Governments, all Governments, to be VERY careful.

 

These turbulent and extraordinary times require that we should all take time to reflect on what we, as belonging to the species Homo Sapiens (“wise man”?) can start doing now and keep on doing into the future. 

 

We need to reflect on the full meaning of the term “civilization” and how this is expressed by our current ways of life and the general disorder we generate.

 

Such reflections may, just may, help to redress the disastrous and damaging ways we, as a species are despoiling the very Earth, the Nature, we need for survival.

 

To this end I offer the following extracts from quite an old book – but the sentiments expressed are, to my mind, still valid and very true:-

 

From “African Genesis” by Robert Ardrey, (Fontana Books paperback, 1970).

Pages 393/394:-

 

“But no animal compulsion stands alone in the debate of our instincts. And so I return to my second assertion, that civilization is a product of evolution and an expression of nature’s most ancient law. Far antedating the predatory urge in our animal nature, far more deeply buried than conscience or territory or society lies that shadowy, mysterious undefinable command of the kind, the instinct for order. And so, when a predatory species came rapidly to evolve its inherent talent for disorder, natural selection favoured, as a factor in human survival, the equally rapid evolvement of that sublimating, inhibiting, super-territorial institution which we call, loosely, civilization.

 

It is a jerry-built structure, and a more unattractive edifice could scarcely be imagined. It’s greyness is appalling. It’s walls are cracked and eggshell this. It’s foundations are shallow, it’s antiquity slight…… Yet however humiliating the path may be, man beset by anarchy, banditry, chaos and extinction must in last resort turn to that chamber of dull horrors, Human enlightenment. For he has nowhere else to turn.

 

If man is to survive without war, a gloomier conclusion could not be written that that this fragile, despicable, unattractive structure must become our last court of appeal. It has failed us consistently in the past. It tends to fall down every thousand years or so.”

…….

 

“But the choice is not ours. Never to be forgotten, to be neglected, to be derided, is the inconspicuous figure in the quiet back room. He sits with head bent, silent, waiting, listening to the commotion in the streets. He is the keeper of the kinds.

 

Who is he? We do not know. Nor shall we ever. He is a presence, and that is all. But his presence is evident in the last reaches of infinite space beyond man’s probing eye. His presence is guessable in the last reaches of smallness beyond the magnification of electron microscope. He is present in all living beings and all inanimate matter. His presence is asserted in all things that ever were, and in all things that will ever be. And as his command is unanswerable, his identity is unknowable. But his most ancient concern is for order.”

……

 

“You may read his command in the regularity of turning things, in stars and seasons, in tides and in striking clocks….”

 

“Where a child is born or a man lies dead; where life must go on though tragedy deny it; where a farmer replants fields despoiled by flood or drought; where men rebuild cities that other men destroy; where tides must ebb as tides have flowed; there, see his footprints, there and there.”

 

 He does not care about you, or about me, or about man for that matter. He cares only for order. But whatever he says, we shall do. He is rising now, in civilization’s quiet back room, and he is looking out the window.”