WHO AM I? WHO ARE WE?

SEARCHING FOR WHAT MATTERS

I believe that we are in a precarious state of being as a species. I believe that the old stories of left and right no longer have validity or deep meaning. We now live in a world which is being driven all to quickly to a hellish nightmare for our children and grandchildren. Scientists, thinkers of all sorts, journalists and many other people know what is happening is real and acute. Whereas our arguments win the day in terms of knowledge, sense, reason and need, none the less, the other side – those CEOs of the financial world, of the extractive industries and mostly the of the political class, plus so many religious fundamentalists and other loonies ignore the reality.

Meanwhile this brute form of neoliberal capitalism is eating democracy alive, day by day distorting the news, education and the popular culture, assuring that the vast majority of us do not awaken and say enough is enough.

NEVER HAVE WE SEEN THIS DROUGHT AND RAIN IN JUNE  200 miles south of Paris, June 2022; photograph: Robert Golden

For me, we who care must act on the streets or in our work to help the best instincts of our young to find ways to end what we have not had the courage to do. That is why seeking the answers to life is so profound and so central to our species continued existence. It is not easy but it is vital.

I have lived decades trying to understand who I am, what I believe in and how to express these through images and sometimes texts. This desire to express is neither because I claim to be special nor anointed, but because I am compelled to make images. This compulsion is like a virus that must be placated. I am now old and still find myself searching. This is because reality, truth and perfection are illusive, and that I, as all of us, am marked by my beginnings.

THIS YEAR THE GARLIC FAILED FROM LACK OF RAIN, 200 miles south of Paris, June 2022;  photograph: Robert Golden

As a young person I desperately needed to figure out who I was and what I should do, but suffering from teenage nihilism, I knew that underlying both questions was a more basic problem: ‘Why did any of it matter’? I was hungry to know what the meaning of existence was, and how my life might figure in it. I decided that the most pressing questions were: ‘what did I believe in’, and ‘what did I accept was true?’

Everywhere the earth has been touched by our species. Tuscany, Italy, 1985; Photograph: Robert Golden

As a first-year university student I thought I would find answers I sought in studying philosophy. Quickly I was overcome by the feeling that what I was being introduced to was an inessential intellectual game. As complex and as fascinating as it was, it seemed to spin around what I needed to figure out, but it never revealed it.

I gave myself over to intellectual history, hoping that in the sum-total of human endeavours, the intellectual and military battles must have been about profound changes, changes I could relate to. Although I am still passionate about history and believe that it has given me perspectives and tools to better understand the contemporary world, I was again disappointed.

I read Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, the history of revolutions and histories of religions. Again, I learned a lot about a lot, but not the essence I craved. It occurred to me that in each of the areas in which I had sought my answers, there were too many rules, restrictions, damnations, exclusions; too many stories of how beliefs led to power, led to wealth, led to wars, but not to truth and beauty, love and understanding.

I turned to Rilke, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, eventually to Federico Lorca, Thomas Wolfe, Albert Camus and other great writers. Although I did not find the answers I sought, I found insights and comfort in the struggles of those artist’s souls. I discovered that they were asking many more subtle questions which I should have been asking, and that sometimes they offered answers. I realised that the confusions of my soul were part of my own mythology, and that great art provided images of my dreams and nightmares, and it offered guides to my journey without the rules, holy books, little red handbooks and without the hate filled exclusions of other races, genders, sects, groups and individuals. Through these writers, painters, poets, photographers and especially through Albert Camus, I discovered the wisdom of modesty, kindness and inclusiveness, and through Camus I recognised the value of embracing the nature of my humanity. With Camus and other influences, I recognised my unimportance, which was to a degree liberating, and provided a richer perspective.

I accepted that the rarest form of culture, that is to say ‘art’, was the only viable guide for the journey. It was the guide which accepted that I would never master all the secrets, and that although the journey was and is about trying to understand, I know that only cultural works reveal to me that all within me and all that surrounds me is far too large and diverse for me to gain full understanding and control over my life.

In my experience, only culture accepts the mysteries as part of the splendour of life rather than as phenomena to be measured, quantified, ruled over and controlled. Religion, politics and business bind my feet, mask my eyes, and block my ears. Sadly, I feel nothing but contempt for those three arenas of civilization, as they have been and still are cruel, mendacious, self-serving and exploitative of human labour and this good earth.

It is only beauty* created in art that can help to change people’s minds about these damming manifestations of our species.

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*NOTE

All of these Substack essays of mine are connected. 
See WHAT IS BEAUTY - Parts 1 and 2