Changing, and Keeping the Faith

IN HIS SEMINAL dystopian science fiction novel "A Time of Changes" Robert Silverberg writes about a planet colonized by humans where, in accordance with its founding covenant, the culture is predicated upon a single ideal; self abnegation, the denial of the self. Founded as a colony where people might live in a world free from violence, the normal, hateful human passions are held in check by The Covenant, according to which all citizens are required by law to direct all energies towards society as a whole, to the complete and total denial of individual concerns and emotions. The pronouns "I" and "me" and "myself" are forbidden, and are considered to be the most egregious, epresssions of outlawed individuality. All outward emotional expression is prohibited. The inevitable accumulated stress and anxiety, emotional garbage, is dissipated by a "drainer", a sort of psychologist-priest who, for a fee, listens wuietly as pent up, unexpressed emotions come pouring out of each individual, everyone, each one. Everyone by law and custom in speaking refers to himself or herself as "one", speaking, referring to one's self only in the third person. One is hungry. One is in need of the servies of a drainer. One has a need to express one's feelings. The penitant soul is therefore cleansed of borken thoughts and dreams, revewed as an empty emtional vessel, free, destined to once again accumulate more of the same mental debris, manure of the mind, piled higher and deeper. A world of stifled human beings, trapped within the confining prisons of their unresolved conflicts of the mind. A prince of the realm, the bottled up planet "Borthan", Kinnal Darival, has an epiphany. In his sudden, new dound awareness, he realized the nonsensical, self destructive nature and consequences of this needless self restraint, and breaks the odious spell. He begins the book with the forbidden word "I". He screams it on the page and out into the emotional vacuum world, repeatedly. I I I I I. At first he is met with shock, and outrage, like some criminal guilty of the most heinous of crimes, an unrepentant sinner against a sacred ideal. The seed thus planted, a new culture of self recognition and expression begins to bloom, as others gradually preceive not only the benefits of the new way of thinking and acting, but the expedient necessity of recreating a culture or renewed humanity, unfettered by the constraints of isolation. Would we in today's violent strife torn world be better off to follow this fictional example? Would it better serve our purposes, among them survival, to so constrain ourselves, to deny ourselves a fundamental component of who we truly are and have always been, by "evolving" to a "higher level" of self awarness and self denial, to become a global culture of millions of Mr. Spocks? It may be that in some future human society, artificial intelligence, unable to replicate true human emotion, has made motionaless, robotic beings of us all. A world free of self destructive, hateful, violent passions of the heart. A cat without claws. In the Dhammapada it is written: "Man is a creature who lives by faith, and whatsoever is the faith, also is the man." Ultimately our greatest act of faith must be our faith in ourselves. Our creator requires it, by giving us the ability to obtain it. Our only true faith is our faith to become more tomorrow than are are today, or were yesterday "Noble be man, compassionate, and good" said Goethe. It is necessary only to maintain the faith that there will come a time when we truly actualize the hopeful, wishful faith which Goethe had in us all.