Vanitas Vanitatum Guillotine

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Thursday, January 03, 2008

Let us go back to the days after the Second World War, you remember, the first time we felt the need to number World Wars in prevision of the next ones.

http://www.art-ww1.com/fr/visite.html

Otto Dix, Flanderen

Indeed there was a life, even a human life as way back as 1945, even if listening to history reports it would seem that the middle age started at the best around 1980 and the seventies are seen as some kind of “dark age”.

So let us to back to the forties.

In a World exhausted by the Second World War, trying to build a future.

We were schooled by the Republic which taught us citizenship.

Citizenship was something akin to moral and possibly Christian values but was accepted only if it was totally separated from any religious bias.

You may feel that this is reprehensible, but remember that both German and Allied Armies had confronted one another in the name of God, in the first War the Germans had “God is with Us” inscribed on their uniforms, in the Second World War the soldiers on both sides were convinced that they were the armed hand of the Angels fighting against the demons of Evil.

So we were the youngsters who were going to create the Brave New World with its values, values which would be so strong that never again would the World endure a World War.

Values?

Which values?

The Republic did not go as far as saying that we should “Love one another”, but there was a strong feeling that we were “One Nation”, that we belonged to the same Group, that our efforts should be individual efforts whose results should be to the best of Humanity. He who wanted to become a Doctor, and many wanted to become doctors, doctors of medicine, to cure and help those that suffered, those that wanted to become Medical Doctors did it not only for themselves but for the Good of the Community. In those days the students did not look at the statistical handbook to see how much a doctor was earning; In those days a Doctor was not earning much and those who devoted their life to working in far away villages were sometimes paid, often not paid.

Some values were seen as Evil.

Stealing was Evil

Murder was not even mentioned as it was obvious to anybody that only a madman would kill. (Incidentally the Talmud expresses the same idea)

Lying was Evil.

A citizen should trust another citizen. With the obvious consequence that you should not incur debts and if you incurred debts you should pay them as agreed. But contracting a debt, however honorable that debt could be, was not seen as something very proper.

Good common sense prevailed, coveting your neighbor's wife was never mentioned by the Republic, they had the wisdom to know that this is life and it was pointless to forbid it.

Each morning when we entered the class room we would find on a separate blackboard a wisdom sentence, such as

“He who steals an egg will steal a cow (sounds much better in French, Celui qui vole un oeuf, vole un boeuf)”.

Some values were taken as granted, and enforced.

Vanity was bad.

Not Evil, but bad, bad to the point of being ridiculous.

Pride was bad. Not to the point of being Evil but laughable.

Ambition had a dubious status; We were brought up in a kind of Orwellian double talk, ambition for myself or for my family was good, other's ambition was seen as dangerous.

Which is a very long preamble to bring me to the core of my note. Vanity!

What is really vanity?

The Ecclesiast was often quoted in those days and misquoted.

Vanity, everything is Vanity.

Figure 1 Vanitas Vanitatum

In the forties, vanity was something bad; vanity had a smell lingering from the days of the French Revolution. The Blue blooded courtesans of the Kingdom were always depicted as being vain of their position, however useless and often brutal and harmful they were to the ordinary people. The silk courtesans were also described as scheming double crossing liars whose aim was to increase their social rank and wealth, as opposed to the Sword courtesan whose pride was not linked to any vanity but to the blood given when fighting for King and Country.

The ladies of the Court were vain and proud of being vain. They were considered as useless creatures going on their back at a snap of the Kings mighty fingers, and for the rest of their useless time, poisoning one another with words and quite often with poison. Their vanity contrasted with the total poverty of the population, therefore at the French Revolution, their parade at the Guillotine was a much enjoyed spectacle. In a way it was very unfair, the courtesan's vanity was just one weapon in the struggle for the pecking order, today we would consider it as a Darwinian war for survival.

Figure 2 Juliette Récamier

Vanity was such a powerful concept that an often quoted Swedish law consider invalid a marriage where the husband could prove that he had been cheated on the quality of the pig he bought in the bag when he could prove that the pig had used such devilish tricks as brassieres and lipstick and “rouge” to conceal it's true nature.

Vain and liars were also those who strolled and paraded in the streets claiming to be true “résistants” while it was known that they at been at the best cowards hiding behind their walls and becoming “résistants” a few weeks before the arrival of the allied troops, at the worst, collaborators with the Nazi oppressors, while the true “résistants” would modestly go back to being anonymous, going back to work and family.

Nobody wanted to be “vain”.

It would take many years and many lectures in psychology before “vanity” took another meaning.

To the French ear, vanity brings up the image of a lady of the Court displaying her silliness and emptiness in expensive dresses, expensive jewels and the happy days of the guillotine.

To the Bible reader “Vanitas Vanitatum” is the expression of the disdain with which we should look at our efforts to construct for ourselves castles of sand and clouds, devoting all our time and forces to the frills of our vanity at the expense of our duties to God.

Such were the days, Vanity was bad.

It would take many decades until the psychologists began talking to us patients of “our image”, of the image we were making of ourselves, of the image we believed others were making of us.

Psychologists would work with the patient, trying no longer to change what he was but his perception of himself and his perception of others look at him.

Vanity changed status by changing name; Instead of speaking of the horrible “vanity” we were taught to speak of our “image” and taught to understand that if we carried a flawed image of ourselves, we would crumble.

“Vanity” became “image”

Figure 3 So, why should I not like myself?

How could we describe vanity using today's daily words?

A man is living in a forest; one of these cold forests you see in films from the Great North; A tree here, another one a mile away, some kind of rubbish in between that we would call bush for lack of knowledge of the vegetation of the Great North.

This man eats like a trapper, makes his own cloth with fur;

But even the most expensive silver fox fur will not give warmth to a man who has not got any warms inside himself.

So this man has got to make a fire to keep his temperature above death level.

If he is a stupid white man he makes a great fire which makes a lot of flames and thunder with all the warmth going out through the roof hole. If he is a seasoned trapper, he makes a small fire, crouches near it, get's all the fire for himself and his cooking. He will not get very warm, he will not get so warm that he can stretch out and yawn out of well being. But he will survive.

The foolish white man makes a fire the way he used to do as a kid, he piles up an under layer of logs, puts a pyramid layer of logs on top and gets a good fire that really inspires a man to stretch out and have a good drink and fall asleep. Only he cannot fall asleep because he has to run out and get more firewood to keep the fire going and while he is out getting more firewood the fire is still burning and the heat is going out in the cold freezing air. The more trees he fells, the more he has to run longer and longer to get more firewood, the less he is near his fire, until he spends all his time running and running, further and further away just to get the fire going until it gets too far and the fire gets smaller and smaller, until the tragic end is unavoidable.

The old seasoned trapper has that little fire that looks so ridiculous, not much more than the fire a child gets when he lights the whole matchbox, a very small fire, so small that he can crouch around it as if he was nursing the fire in his embrace; Now and then he adds a twig, a little branch, a bit of bark, just enough to keep it going, when he sees that his provision of firewood is decreasing he dims the fire with a blanket, just keeping the embers while he is out gathering more branches; he does not fell trees, other years will come, a tree will share its branches and go on living for you and itself, not its trunk.

So is it with vanity.

We live in the freezing cold of life, we need the warmth we can get from the good will look of those around us, we need to be able to look at ourselves and feel that hope and joy are pulsating through our eyes. We need a good image of ourselves, what we used to call a bit of vanity. It does not really matter if the good image we have of ourselves is not so true, if we feel that that we are really good a whistling, or that we have a knack for making the best hamburgers in this village, or that we are proud of our skill of adding numbers, or proud of our good look. So long as we have enough vanity to fuel the fire we need to go through the cold night of life under the uncaring watching eyes of the voracious stars.

We might often feel that we would like to feel really good, to be able to walk out and have our fans lining up to applaud us, the photographers battling to get the best angle, the friends so happy that we have time to answer on the phone, even call them up, not letting this menial job to our social secretary, that our words are quoted by the papers. It is so good to be in the full sunshine but I do not know why, it is as if the sun is getting colder from one day to another and we need more fans, more photographers, more friends, more articles, more publications, more winnings on the Stock exchange just not to freeze.

And we run and run just to satisfy our growing need of vanity until we do not seem to be able any more to feel anything from the photos, the winnings, the so called friends and the bank account.

We try harder, but it seems that the trees have gone further away, the photographers are less, the fans older, less cheering, some even jeering, the Bank account takes bad hits, e feel the cold creeping in however much we try and try.

To quote the Navajo, you cannot live without vanity, nor pride, nor wins, nor successes, nor delusion, but all of this has no meaning if there is no harmony.

Apparently we have done a rather good job at coming to term with our need of vain rewards for imaginary accomplishments.

We are humans, warm blooded animals, something has to keep our blood from freezing, an harmonious level of vanity is a necessary part of our life.

So what more is there to say?

Teddy Chan, Technical Officer at the Fertilizer Program at FAO HQs in Rome often reminded us:

“No man is an Island”

I am not quite sure whether this was a statement of hope, of encouragement or despair.

No man is an island, what about our lonely trapper in the Cold Plains of the Snow Covered Great North?

We assumed that he as alone, alone as only a trapper can want to be. However it might happen that his fur catches are too good (vanity kept him away from harmony) and attracted the attention of the other trapper who one by one came into his flatland. There is nothing he could do about it. Endure.

Now we do not have one trapper alone, we have three, five, ten trappers, but the wood supply has not increased. The foxes and other fur animals are sufficient not to create too much tension amongst the trapper, but the firewood is limited. There was barely enough for one trapper and now there are many of them.

The obvious solution is too group them and work and share the resources, but that solution which is so typical of a typical International Management Consultant is foolish, the whole point of being a trapper is not that you want to catch animals, this you only do to survive, the whole point of being a trapper is that you must shun the humans, you cannot stand them.

To quote Swedish Northerners again:

“When I see the smoke from the chimney of a new neighbor I move further away.”

So our trapper is caught in a quandary.

He has to stay where the resources are, further he considers them as “his”.

His territory is invaded by no good competitors, which he can stand by ignoring them and pretending that they do not exist and try to shame away by catching more fur than they do.

But the firewood, what should he do?

He has so carefully managed that resource which is the key to his survival and here comes these foreigners that even go as far as hacking down live trees.

One solution is to grab as much as he can of the firewood, he is more skilled than they are, more rapid, consumes less than these green horns, but if he does that, it means that his future is limited.

Or he can act wisely knowing that they will not act wisely and they will waste the firewood. How does he know that they will waste the firewood, I cannot say, he simply assumes it because so are humans and this is the reason he went away from them.

Or he can act as an altruist, combat his repugnance of them, teach them what he knows of wilderness skills and train them in using resources wisely.

Which will hide for a time the raw fact that there is enough firewood for one man for one lifetime and more, not for a group of men.

So if he acts wisely, humanely, as an altruist he will extend the goodwill period for a short time, then the management models indicate that they will oust him, possibly to the extent of murdering him, then they will murder one another and when only one man remains he will light a big fire, drink himself to stupor and die.

It does ring a bell does it not?

Petrol?

Water?

Air?

Minerals?

Has this got anything to do with vanity?

I am not so sure, but the management models show that if the trapper is a wise man he will rate his life as more worthy than the life of his competitors and do everything he can to oust them of his patch, even to the extent of killing them, which will ensure his survival and the survival of the natural resources.

It does ring a bell does it not?

USA?

China?

Europe?

Middle East?

And all of us.