the poetic in the midst of chaos
For far too long humanity has been living not in the awe of its creation, but in the shock of its actions. The glory of being human has been robbed from us as millions around the world die of starvation each year ... are murdered by war ... are tortured by humanity's ignorance of what it means to treat another human being with love and compassion.
Our society replays itself as if in a loop film. Economic collapse, war and technological stagnation rewind over and over as we spin through the galaxy. We can print 300 billion dollars in a nanosecond, but 70 percent of the world's population lives in eternal poverty. The tsunami of our phantom enemies - the Vietcongs, Saddam Husseins and Al Qaedas - bashes ashore, decade after decade as continuous emerging waves of hatred. And though we can land men on the moon and fly around the galaxy, we still drive combustion engines, a technology which is more than a hundred years old.
Images Are Portals Within the Mandala of Life
There's a continuous pull on humanity toward the darker side of life. Documentary photography, for example, often focuses on the tragedies of life more than life's glories. And here in lies the dilemma. If we ignored our murderous ways, would they go away? And yet, by focusing the viewer to contemplate on the blood, torture and endless cruelty, don't we emotionally re-enforce the violent act?
A Mandala is constructed as a path leading to numerous portals for spiritual contemplation. Each portal offers a spiritual lesson. Images and words are our portals within the Mandala we call life. Each image or word is similar to Alice's rabbit hole. And once we start down the path, we never really know beforehand what spiritual lesson will be learnt.
In today's society images frequently focus on acts of violence or situations of despair, for violence and despair are very intense moments in life and seem to sell well. And when these images are propagated out to the public, they ripple their intensity in proportion to their distribution. But is anyone paying attention to the message, to the cries of anguish and help these images evidence?
If we think of the photographs documenting the tragedy of Palestinians in Gaza 2009, did anyone understand the moment and empathize with their fellow human beings? Have all acts of violence turned us numb to our own feelings of compassion for another's suffering?
Society has a peculiar way of digesting information. We don't point a finger at a fraudulent banking system, but speak about the person next-door who lost their job and house. We don't take photographs of the financier who backs violence, or the political group that benefits from policies which favor violence, or the corporate leaders whose profits from violence permit them to live lives of luxury unheard of by 95 percent of the population. We focus on the victim. Perhaps this is because the majority of humanity having been a victim in this life on Earth can relate to suffering more than it can to the blasé cruelty of certain power figures. Or maybe we've become addicted to strong emotions. A photograph of someone suffering is possibly more exciting than one of an executive dressed in an expensive dark grey suit.
The power of the image as a portal is real. Consumerism has successfully used images to drag the masses down the rabbit holes of ecological and economic collapse. Portals are very effective in what they do. And politics has used its images to hypnotize voters into believing that yes, change is just around the corner. But how many corners do human beings have to turn before life changes positively for humanity? For many of us, when the game's over, we're going to still find ourselves standing on go.
To deny our violence leads to ignorance. And our ignorance permits daily genocide in every part of the world. But where's the balance to bring us back to the other side of life? Hatred without the temper of love will always remain hatred.
There's a poetic awe to creating our illusions of reality as a non-violent intention. By stretching our consciousness to embrace the multiple illusions of reality and reaffirm the poetic in the midst of our current chaos, I believe humanity can reclaim its right to create its illusions of reality without the tyranny of destruction attacking us at every desire for a poetic vision of our today and tomorrow.