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A podcast focusing on issues related to nonviolence, and a member of the Kingdom Outpost.
Welcome back to the Fourth Wave Podcast. This episode is going to be a complete change of pace. Maybe not complete in terms of ideology, but yeah, pretty complete. I am planning on doing a poem. I I'm doing a poem because I really, really like to write poetry.
Derek:It's probably really terrible poetry, but I like it for me personally because I can be a a very loquacious person who just doesn't really get ideas across succinctly. And what poetry causes me to do is it causes me to really really think about a concept and to try to fit that concept in a small box, and to help me bring out different emotions and elicit different ideas in unique ways. And so I love the artistic aspect of poetry which allows you to, I don't know, use sarcasm or double entendres and all kinds of things that that jam pack so much meaning into such a small space. And so I wanted to share a poem that I think would would help us round out this this part of the the season in this section really well. And hopefully it does that.
Derek:And if you you're not into this kind of thing, then it's okay. You can you can skip it and move on, and I don't think you'll you'll miss all that much. But the purpose of this episode in particular, of of me incorporating this poem, is that it's really going to touch on the idea of suffering and death a bit, which is something that we saw in our episode on Eudaimonism, where we talked about Viktor Frankl and and just this man's search for meaning and the idea that death and suffering are going to be things that prime us to recognize dissonance within within the world and within our desires for meaning and just create this dissonance with with our perception of the way that the world is versus the way that it ought to be. So much of our life is spent ignoring truth or masking the truth, and when something as as terrible as death is unmasked and we're reminded of it, it's something that can snap us back to reality, and it's something that can point us to the ideal. Like surely there's something more than this.
Derek:Surely this isn't the way that the world works. And, being pointed to the ideal and understanding the importance of living out the ideal is is extremely valuable. So hopefully this episode is different and interesting for you and we'll just jump right in. Lucidity. They say that looks can be deceiving.
Derek:More and more, I find myself believing that as I'm torn between the facts my eyes deliver and the translation my brain extracts. If what I see is what I get, that's all there is and nothing more. Still, my mind loves to conjure illusory perceptions, cunningly woven fabrications of its invention. So with every look I give, I find I live in tension between what I know and what truly is. They say the eyes are windows to the soul, but less and less I feel it stressed to look in two big black holes.
Derek:Mere physical features of social creatures, there's nothing more there to behold, or so I'm told. But what then a beauty? Where then does it lie if not in the eyes of an immortal, past those black, those glassy portals onto perspicuity, into the essence of a being? They say that death remedies all ills. It cures all that it kills, ending pain, ending want, ending rule of lands by tyrant gods who have all power that they flaunt.
Derek:But this death will also daunt the meek and lowly of the earth alongside the evil psychophant who disgraces his own birth. While death may cure the ills that time will build within a fallen creature, who will cure us of this feature which also haunts and destroys all mirth? As now I look into the face of death, I see it has no eyes. Indiscriminate destroyer, harbinger of all's demise, just a windowless employer of a broken space and time, soulless creature with no beauty, pure darkness, devoid of life. When I look, I don't see deceit, just pure and simple explanation, evil's embodiment replete.
Derek:For once in my life, I don't feel a shred of tension. There's not an ounce of beauty here to see, no panacea to remedy. I see no illusion, no soul, nothing to make one whole. All I see, all there is, all there ever was, will be, is a dark and damning, overbearing, torturous lucidity. Alright.
Derek:So the poem is pretty straightforward. Right? Essentially, it's entitled Lucidity, right? Being able to see perfectly clearly, this thing so clearly. And at the end, you find out that it's this exposure to or encounter with death that is is the clearest thing possible.
Derek:So much of life is is a blur, is is just murky, is something that where we have facades built up all around. But man, when you see death, you don't see more clearly than when you see that. Just the the despair that's that's behind death. Because death, if I work backwards in the poem, right, death is something that supposedly, right, cures all ills. I think the actual saying is like time remedies all ills or something.
Derek:But what is time? Well, wait long enough, time is death and decay. Whether it's like from my favorite poem of all time, Ozymandias by Shelley, you've got the decay of this great king's monument and even though it's been maybe been around for thousands of years, it's withering away into the sands and there's nobody around to respect the king's legacy. So the king's legacy is disappearing into the sands, the physical monument is deteriorating into the sands. Just like thousands of years ago, the king physically died and deteriorated.
Derek:Even if he's mummified, how long are you going to last? A couple thousand, ten thousand years? Right? Eventually, you're all just done. So time remedies all ills?
Derek:Sure. You live in a land where there's a tyrant king, he's got what, like ninety years max if he lives to be a 100? And if he started ruling really young? Okay, time's going to remedy that ill, right? In death.
Derek:But then that time that remedies that ill of the tyrant is also the same thing that is going to haunt and destroy the mirth of you. Even even the most meek and the most lowly of the earth will be taken by death. And so that's that's depressing, right? That's true. That's clear.
Derek:So let's jump up to the first stanza though, right? They I take a phrase, so death remedies all ills, looks can be deceiving, eyes are windows to the soul, right? I take three kind of sayings or ideas and I sort of flip them on their head and say, it's not really it's not really how it works or I kind of have a double meaning. So here in the first stanza, Looks can be deceiving, and you'd think, Oh yeah, that's like you can't judge a book by its cover, right? Looks aren't always how they appear.
Derek:Your brain can be tricked. And I say, Yeah, sure. I find myself believing this thing, like I I can't trust exactly what I'm seeing all the time because my my eyes see something, but then my brain translates it a different way. And in the second stanza, I I continue to play off of that where, well, what do you look with? You look with your eyes.
Derek:So the eyes are windows to the soul. And then I say, but less and less I feel it's stressed to look into big black holes. And there's supposed to be a lot of irony here because right now you've got physicists and scientists who are are peering into, like literally looking into or at black holes. Right, because they're looking for the the theory of everything and the the meaning of the universe and quantum physics and all of this stuff and trying to find meaning for humanity. So you've got that version of black holes, But when I say eyes are windows to the souls, the the two black holes I'm talking about are pupils.
Derek:And I like to look into another person's eyes, and instead of spend spending our time staring into these black holes of space, like the the the soul isn't found out there, it's found behind the black holes of the eyes. You know, the eyes are windows to the soul. And so, just talk about how we've kind of traded one black hole for another. And then I I flipped this idea of beauty is in the eye of the beholder on its head because normally beauty is in the eye of the beholder means that, well, you you kind of beauty is subjective and and you kind of create it or recognize it however you desire. But here, I mean, no, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
Derek:Like that's that's where true beauty is. It's in in humanity, in the humanity of the person whose black holes, whose pupils you look into. And so when you you think about the the poem as a whole, and you you get back down to the end, you've talked about our our understanding of reality in stanza one. In stanza two, the truth that the value of reality is found in other, in the black holes and the pupils, right? When we look into their eyes, we see their souls.
Derek:And then in stanza three, you get the introduction of death that destroys humanity, that destroys the soul carrier. And then in the final stanza, you get a summation of all of this, right? I say lots of things that tie everything together. When I look into the face of death, I see it has no eyes, which if you remember stanza two, right, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. And so death, it doesn't have beauty.
Derek:It doesn't see it's indiscriminate. Yet, in death, there is nothing but utter cold calculating truth. We can see the truth of of reality, the truth of the way that the world is. So there's there's a lot, a lot there that's just kind of scratching the surface of kind of the the double meanings and and just all of the ways that that one stanza ties into another and how they all go together. But hopefully, this idea of of suffering, of the ideal, of of clarity, of truth, of value, of the soul, and and perpetual existence of all of these things are kind of put in a really small box for you here.
Derek:So, hopefully you enjoy that as a little bit of a change of pace and, if not, next next episode's back to normal. That's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.