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April 2012Here's a controversial statement...
...all things that live have to kill other forms of life in order to thrive, survive, progenitise. A sapling tree tries to suffocate its neighbours thus to obtain more nutrient light and mineral, become taller, stronger, more reproductive of itself. You and I do roughly the same in that we need, daily, to kill, (have killed on our behalf), all kinds of plants, eggs, animals, and for similar reasons.
The Celts understood this. They accepted the essential fact of life through death and were thus more comfortable with the whole idea of dog eat dog mortality than are we. Take a look at the gloriously inscribed zoomorphic border designs in the 8th century Lindisfarne Gospels. Bird eats bird eats bird eats - animal eats animal eats, etc. You get the picture.
So why is it that we twenty first century humans have become obsessed by the need seemingly at all costs to prolong (our) lives, however weakly, and conversely by the need to kill in war those elements of our fellow Man we do not like, who do not like us? Who are, in short, not like us?
Witness the man in Oslo.
Witness the men in Afghanistan.
If you have any answers to those two questions you should be writing fiction because fiction (and religion alike) is based on those unanswerable questions and the underlying facts in my first paragraph. The stuff of life, of novels, is that which we call 'pathos': sadness, suffering, tragedy, misery. The opposite of that yearned-for joy as promised at birth and thus
far undelivered.
PS: To read my latest work, The Book as it takes shape, sign-up to my mailing list (here) and I'll email you on the last day of each month the latest chapter - feedback always welcome. | |
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