Universal Truth ?

Universal Truth ?

'Pride and Prejudice,' [1813] Ch.1. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.                 Jane Austen 1775-1817.

My wife has set me a problem. Nothing new in that you would probably think. In setting this problem entirely unsuspectingly she may have hit on a completely new vein of thought which had passed me by for some considerable time, years in fact. Or merely put the mockers on forty years of effort and kidding myself that I had solved a fundamental problem, to reveal an obscure red herring of enormousness proportions, that had been clogging up the progress and smooth flow of humanity's evolution toward a more peaceful and productive life style. For the moment though my problems are more mundane. Bins to be removed to the back of the house. Breakfast to prepare. Ironing to make a start with, been putting that one off for a few days.

What brought the whole matter to a head was the Magazine 'Akhand Jyoti,' [ The light divine ] {www.awgp.org}, which was given to me to read, and furnish an opinion. I had been doing so over the course of the past week including exerts to my wife, which I felt often illustrated anecdotes of moral tales or life lessons, similar and sometimes from the Bible. The essence of the magazine, while Hindu, also appeared to incorporate stores and life lessons from other sources. The illustration of Androcles and the lion, being an example.

After several days of reading these items to my wife, and comparing them with my own efforts, which had caused her so much anguish in the past. She finally put her opinion on the line: Just what is so marvellous about them? They are just Universal Truth, the sort of things you learn with your mother's milk. Then to cap it she quoted the opening line from Jane Austen's, Pride and Prejudice, [ top of page ]. Certainly a definite, riposte of quality to put the argument in a category. Which was that of a middle class lady two hundred years ago, where options were decidedly limited. In the past half century or so many universal truths have been laid in the dust of 'progressive thought and action,' the phrase hardly has a single unifying component.

Not to mention the pecking order of moral and ethical of rights and responsibilities of the group. With tie-in reference and deference to the human rights, and total inconsiderate selfish individual responsibilities. Over laid with health and safety consideration, once again with the demeaning of the individual's right to place themselves in danger to accomplish what : instinct, faith and determination often successfully accomplished, before society allowed nanny's apron strings to strangle its initiative. 

When offered the magazine to read I had been discussing with my friend how much better the world would be if we could get together and pool all the good stuff we believed in and got rid of the bad, which divides us and leads to conflicts and worse. I used one of my favourite illustrations of the compromise, using the cake division. The trouble is if you carry on dividing it all you end up with is a few crumbs. Why? He replied: that it is because everyone finds it too difficult to give things away. They prefer to keep what they have. Regrettably there were plenty of illustrations to that view, of my own, which showed how this opinion was correct. One that has bugged me a great deal since retirement is the difficulty with parting with clothes and other items there is little further use for, but they become difficult to give away. The problem is the history, the mental baggage of times past.

Nevertheless despite often making it clear that what I was writing was really only an update on times past, my ideas and theories did have something to offer. The trouble was I could see and hear her frustration. My rants, short tempter bursts and occasional impatience, spoke more to her of the bar-room bore, or the trade union agitator, fighting yesterday's war. Than a man with intellectual status, and an incisive mind camouflaging a new approach to love, life the universe and everything. Who really had found the mental leap the most difficult to acknowledge: my long suffering wife or myself? Even now with the whole matter coming through so abundantly well, I had to suppress the odd pang of self-doubt. Even so instinctively now I knew there was no way I could, would, or even should explain to her just what the nitty-gritty of my ideas were that had been fine tuned and now about to be launched through my blog onto the world at large.

So what is this, Universal Truth ? that we all learn at our mother's breast? For me it is the strength of the will to survive. The will is the basic survival tool of the brain to enable it to survive long enough to develop a mind with which to link to the brain. In the development of the most highly evolved life form on the planet, humanity. There are many, many dozens of other complex changes progressing throughout the body, without specialist medical expertise it would be foolish to detail any programme of these changes in their sequence to the build up of the mature adult. It is a given though that each child is developed along the various lines it is fortunate or less so to follow. These will include, country of birth, family group, number of siblings, status of parents, quality of teachers. The child's ability to adapt their own temperament to suit the mature adults they come into contact.

Naturally this process of adaptation, and continual adjustment of perspective, will continue for the rest of the individual's life-span. It is my belief that this life-span can be considerably extended where the mind is not allowed to become cluttered with negative thoughts to the extent that far too much time is allowed for dwelling on past errors of deed, or judgement. Essentially a mantra of: remembrance of things past, live and dwell in the present, dream and plan for the future. Simple but how quickly it can be forgotten in the mad rush to live in the future, if only in the mind? Or perhaps especially in the mind.

Like many breakthroughs and changes of life style longevity, will most likely build gradually as the older generation gets used to the confidence that numbers will give to the survivors. Then there will be help to begin to break away from the dependency of a retirement age set in stone, which can in many cases be a death sentence in disguise, and certainly to  the manual workers, who need to be weaned off the bone crushing labour that has sent so many to early graves in the past centuries.