Culture: Rant Warning

(Note to self, and advice to readers)

This volume of the Rough Guides is the one where I am most liable to leap onto one of my hobby horses and go galloping into the fray.

So let me just remind myself and you:

      - notice any vehemence that creeps in,

      - be interested in why I might be all het up about this, and

      - return to neutral.

Wherever I find myself - in history, geography, in a given culture and social situation - is my starting point in this life.

There are no righteous places to stand, there is no moral high ground somewhere above or outside our shared present, from which to point an indignant finger at other people.

In other words, we are all involved and implicated in whatever is going on - just by virtue of being born into this time and space.

My aim in writing these Guides is to express and encourage knowing without resistance – i.e. without ego interventions, rhetoric and flag-waving.   (This is an aim, not necessarily an achievement!)

Self-acceptance includes

acceptance of my ‘here-ness’

in time and place.

I need to keep practising switching off my ego, with its pretensions to ‘look out for’ me, ‘take care of this’, ‘make sure they hear’ me, and its claims to ‘know best’ and ‘know who to blame for this’.

Whenever such a rhythmic, rhetorical list gets under way, ego is probably quite close by. Hear those hooves – the charge of the heavy brigade, thundering down the valley . . . .

. . . . fruitlessly, banners waving.

updated 19/2/12