My Musings

Mare@Work
I saw Mononoke Hime for the first time today... There are few films that move me the way in which this one did. The visuals were spectacular but what caught me, like a moth in a web, was the soul of the story. Life, death, rebirth. There were so many layers that anyone who watched it would see a depth beyond the dross we are usually presented with in animation. Yet... I wonder how many beyond myself felt the film in the same way. We have done so much wrong and created so much unbalance... We have so many ‘great’ people we boast of but how many of their feats have been for something other than human gain? How many have created or done something that benefited the natural environment over our own advancement in whichever direction our society states is forward at the time, over material or emotional reward? We are so motivated by reward that it some times seems against our nature to do anything without thought of reward. Why should I care? It isn’t related to me. Should not a ‘higher’ being, as we so often considered ourselves to be, not only care but put the effort into doing something? And then I look at myself. I could easily go out and collect the rubbish that litters my home town and the degraded, eroded environments that surround, planting native species to hold the soil together where people driving through the bush have churned up the ground and spend each day doing so until the eternity of death. Yet it would make little difference because there are so many people out there who would continue to throw waste on the ground even as I collect it and drive over the soft saplings planted. At one time last year, while I waited for a bus, a girl tossed a gum wrapper on the ground, despite the fact that there was a bin less than a meter from her. I sat and debated with myself for a full five minutes before standing up, picking up that small piece of paper and putting it in the bin. She gave me a dirty look then ignored me. So much for a small act making a difference >sigh< I understand that each person has different mental wiring and that no two individuals view the world in the same way yet I cannot understand how people cannot care. Maybe it is because the are ignorant, they have trained themselves to be blind to that which is unpleasant... But then I cannot understand what would drive a person to anorexia, to alcoholism, to suicide... I I I. It is all very much me talking of myself. How very human of me. I was listening to the radio last night, a program on environmental ecology, and one of the speakers said this: The virtue most rare in man and one of great importance is Humility. I think it would not be hard for me to become like San, I am not fond of the human race now. Were I not even raised by wolves, or dingoes but in such a setting as she I think I would try to find a place in such a forest to hide, to shun my own species. I would rather be a short lived snake or frog in such a place than a human with the knowledge that my own kind willingly created cankers on the land like ‘Iron town’ like our cities and towns. There are individuals I love dearly, human individuals. Yet as a species we are worse than plagues of rodents or grasshoppers: We consume and consume as they do but will not allow a predator to be higher on the food chain than us. True higher level species, such as wolves, felines, raptorial birds, they are at the top of the food chain true, but their numbers and abundance are governed by those below them, a increase in predators means a decrease in prey, then a decrease in predators, a ever shifting balance. Humanity defies this balance, our populations continue to grow, like a cancer, we spawn more and more hungry offspring, each grasping greedily for whatever they can. I thing they are few are rare, those human souls who can say ‘yes that is all I need.’ I see fashions in clothes, on objects, change daily and people grasp and grab to try and remain with it. Never satisfied with what they have now, they grasp for the next. I am one of them. In these dark moods I wonder why I do many things, simple, foolish things like my manga collection, and porcelain animals packed away safe... Why even bother to create these webpages? Will my words make a great difference? Why bother drawing? Yet....and yet through these medium I can create, I can teach a little of how I see the world... Perhaps one day, like the creator of Princess Mononoke, I will create something that will enlighten people. Perhaps in a small way, merely by my existence I am... But I mourn the uglyness we create never the less. Being an ‘enlightened’ being is bitter when one can see how truely base we are, I would rather be a simple beast. I often let myself forget this, immersing myself if human ‘living’. I wonder if that is what other humans do... to forget that as a whole we are the cause of so much unbalance. I apologise, though, in a way, there should be no need for me to, for the darkness of this text, it is strange, that a film, a beautiful, meaningful film, like Princess Mononoke brings me to this darker state of mind, one I so often stow, folded away, like a dark garment. It sits heavily on my shoulders now, as any time I don it, any may do so for the next few days. Now I long for the green oblivion of The Forest, one such as the world between worlds in CS Lewis’ Narnia series.