…INTO UNKNOWN TERRITORY…
Stage 2 / Tuesday 28 April / From Roche to Arzay / 25 km
About twenty generations have endured while preceding us. Let’s go further back to the civilizations which have influenced our Alpine or Rhone valley culture: the acquisition of new knowledge has been progressive. Each new “invasion” has brought new technologies or skills to improve their well-being. For example, the minaret-shaped Saracen chimneys found on the old farms of Bresse and Dauphiné: they are believed to have been brought to us by the Moors. The knowledge of the invaders infiltrated the unknown of the local people.
Did this gradual infiltration come from the local inhabitants own vitality, or from the impetuous unfurling of non-natives? Should we see in it a personal thirst rising from the local people opening to the new arrivals? Or does it find its source in a universal force being transfused from beyond?
In any case this osmosis was spread over centuries, unlike the avalanche that we suffer every moment today, bombarded by a plethora of technologies and information. An overflow of superfluous data: we become like the coots submerged by the accumulation of rubbish and diverse debris along the banks of a dam on the Rhône. I have often observed the proliferation of foam in which these birds search desperately for enough food.
Yet, does softening new comfort levels, which turn out to be treacherous, not lure us? We dream, but we become so easily enslaved! These refined modernities hide insidious new demands: like my computer which must be protected with ever-improving antivirus software. So many unexpected constraints! Should we not make do with the severe but wise renunciation of these shiny modern gadgets? Learned ignorance, are you the safest bet for survival?
Not that we have to dumb-down to survive, but to choose cultivating (with greater effort) the uplifting scope of precepts and traditions rather than sinking (with laziness) into the collective hypnosis of a so-called daily “efficient” output, using tools which are not always useful and often de-stabilizing?
How difficult it is to swim against the current! How delicate it is to temper progress in order to release durable lulls by a slower and more prudent adoption of a more measured evolution. Who will survive? The Hindu with a million idols ? The Jew or the Muslim with one God ? The reclusive Cistercian scholar, practical and ready to reclaim new land? The American subservient to the holy Dollar and holding free enterprise as a sacred doctrine? The illiterate Bedouin crouching by the wadi?
Can human beings re-align their intelligence in order achieve a healthier lifestyle, escaping the artificial by will power and commitment? He whose behavior increasingly resembles that of a savage, will he control himself in order to attain a saner culture? Would he be able to evade the implacable destiny of the consumerism that surrounds him? Yet, it is only a Superior being who can domesticate another…
It’s one thing or the other, then: either the human being is indeed the superior species and therefore not tamable, or else it is not, and therefore is capable of submitting itself which means there is a superior being to bow to. Is this entity a concept to be invented, a truly existing one to be discovered, or a revealed word? Could it truly be the God of the Scriptures? Or a cosmic force working effectively to ensure the continuation of the human story?
