Storyteller’s World

Over at Marsha Hamilton’s place, there’s talk about the Tao Te Ching, reminding me that this wonderful little book, my second-favourite of all holy books, is also something that I have wanted to blog about from time to time. Perhaps the most useful edition is Jonathan Star’s ‘Definitive Edition‘, since it includes, as well as Star’s own translation, a ‘verbatim translation’ which has the Chinese characters of the original, their transliterations, and a range of possible meanings. From this it’s possible, even if you don’t know Chinese (!) to assemble your own preferred version.

So in that spirit, here is my first stab at one of my favourite chapters, chapter 80, which is a lovely vision of the Peaceable Kingdom where people live by the Tao.

Imagine a small country with few people.
Even if they have machines that will do their work
ten or a hundred times faster,
they will not use them.
Even if the people take death seriously,
they will not distract themselves with foreign travel.
They will have ships and carriages,
but there will be no one to ride in them.
They will have weapons and armour,
but no one will ever wear them.
The people will go back to using knotted cords
for keeping accounts.
They will enjoy their food,
take pleasure in beautiful clothes,
and live in peace and contentment
in their own homes.
They will delight in the everyday things of life.
Neighbouring communities will be so near
that they overlook each other.
They will hear their neighbours’ cocks crowing
and their dogs barking.
Yet people will grow old and die
without ever having gone abroad
to visit each other.

A commonwealth in which people were so content with what they had, that they took no interest in the ghastly programmes performing makeovers of gardens, houses, rooms, people’s appearance - or in the ghastly people who feature in them - that would be worth something, don’t you think?

They have a way of getting to you, don’t they?

Like Mme Cholet in the congregation who is - how shall we say? - one of the characters in our little community. One of the eccentrics. She can drive you crazy with some of her idées fixes, and her loneliness can be overpowering.

Leaving church this morning she said to me, ‘One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to pray for you more.’

This kind of thing makes me feel very small, and in the light of some of the things I’ve thought about Mme Cholet before now, more than a little rat-like.

Like so many others, I find it impossible to blog sensibly and responsibly about the Asian quake and tsunami disaster. So much of what we write in blogs is so trivial, compared with the life and death issues that have come upon those millions of people around the Indian Ocean. I have looked and listened and wept and felt helpless along with everyone else; and have thought that the only blogs worth reading about it, would be eye-witness accounts, or survivors’ stories, which in the worst affected areas are unlikely anyway as the infrastructure has been so completely destroyed. How many of those whose lives have been ruined even have access to a computer, let alone would grab it and run, rather than something of real value like a child?

It’s been odd to experience this past week without a TV, as we were staying at the flat. So all that we knew came from the radio - where the pictures, as we know, are different - and occasional glimpse of a newspaper at the newsagent’s. So the things that struck me, may well have been tangential to others’ perceptions.

I could not believe what seemed to be the idea held by some in the developed world: Why couldn’t more have been done to prevent this disaster, or give advance warning? This says far more about our gigantic hubris, and faith in our technological know-how so as to be able to solve anything and everything, given enough time and resources, than about real life. Compared with the sheer raw power of nature, we and all our knowledge are small dust. The shocking thing is that we are able to cushion ourselves from understanding this, while millions of the world’s poor have no such luxury.

The images of parents running towards the danger, to save children and family. Truly, there is something remarkable in the human spirit.

The response of ordinary people, donating so many millions (more than the Government were originally pledging - of course!) to the relief effort. Yes, there lies a fundamental goodness not so deep down people.

The aching pain, that so many efforts to help are frustrated by the civil wars and political divisions of various countries affected. There is the other side of the human riddle: all the greed and lust for power which are suddenly shown to be so worthless, in the face of the deaths of thousands and displacement of millions. And yet, and yet … how many of these political divisions and conflicts are caused by trade injustices, and economic inequalities, that we share responsibility for?

I am hoping and praying, like so many, that this catastrophe may somehow bear good fruit by bringing nations and peoples closer together, to learn that there are ways we can share this planet, and its resources, and the burdens of one another’s lives in strength and weakness.

The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell stories
by Christopher Booker
Published by Continuum, 2004
ISBN: 0826452094
£25 728 p.

Christopher Booker’s magnum opus, about the seven basic plots which lie behind all storytelling, has taken 34 years to write, during a period of human history which amply illuminates his central thesis that all storytelling has the underlying purpose of showing humankind how to live.

Booker has read widely to gather examples for this book, but refreshingly he does not limit his study to written literature (far too many people talk of writers as ’storytellers’, when in fact oral storytelling as it has been practised for most of history is a very different task.) He also looks at theatre, TV and especially films which provide many of the most significant of modern stories, and those which most closely follow the traditional archetypes.

The seven basic plots Booker identifies are:

1 Overcoming the Monster (e.g. Beowulf, Dracula)
2 Rags to Riches (Cinderella, Dick Whittington)
3 The Quest (Odyssey)
4 Voyage and Return (Robinson Crusoe, Alice in Wonderland)
5 Comedy (Marriage of Figaro, loadsa Shakespeare)
6 Tragedy (Hamlet, loadsamore Shakespeare)
7 Rebirth (The Snow Queen, Peer Gynt)

Even these seven basic plots all serve the same central thematic development, which is the Jungian one of integration with the Self. Insofar as stories have departed from this archetype during the last 200 years or so, since the age of Romanticism, and have reflected an ego-consciousness over against the true discovery of the Self, Booker argues that we have ‘lost the plot’. He analyses numerous examples from this period, and is particularly scathing of Thomas Hardy, Proust, James Joyce and D.H.Lawrence. (It might explain why, with the exception of Joyce, I have always found these guys so hard to get on with.)

One of the most interesting sections of the book is its potted summary of the history of culture over the past 200 years, and how the development of Western (and global) culture mirrors the archetypes of its storytelling. It’s a compelling case which I don’t always want to believe, and which makes me feel quite uncomfortable, but is also hard to argue with. Whether we like it or not, we all live by the stories we hear, and tell ourselves. However counter-cultural we might think we are (and as Christians, that’s quite a bit) we are still a part of the culture and its prevailing stories. The present state of the world might make us pessimistic about the future; but Booker is hopeful about the inherent tendency of human nature to correct wrong turnings (though sometimes only in consequence of catastrophic events) and restore a state of culture and society in which the majority of people are seeking to order their lives towards the realisation of Self rather than ego. In this quest, the way we instinctively imagine and tell stories contains a coded blueprint for how it can be and must be done.

In last Wednesday’s Independent there was this article about blogs. Frankly, most of the ones it quoted (most of them by ‘celebs’ needless to say) looked a whole lot less interesting than the blogs I read (see side panel) or the blog I write. I mean, who cares who gave out the Secret Santa presents at Jamie Oliver’s staff Christmas party? But I will go on writing mine, and reading the BlogsILike.

Happy New Year, everyone!