Idealism: Etymology: derived from 'Ideal', from 'Idea' - Greek, meaning 'form' or 'pattern'. Rooted in 'idein' - 'to see'. Having recently been involved in discussions regarding idealism, I wished to bring stranded thoughts into a succinct, cohesive text.
The primary issue seems to be a lack of space to explore idealism; where do we open up our minds to test new ideas? Why do we neglect the role of our hearts in this process? (Indeed, what is the role of the heart in this process at all?) What does it matter if no test-bed exists? If it cannot be implemented, does the idea have any value?
As the poet said, these ideas are like Semtex [Soliloquies]:
‘Semtex’, performed live by Abbas Maysam Z (MC) & Fahad Khalid (acoustic guitar & vocals) @ Rumi’s Cave, London
For me, Idealism is born from imagination. We conceive of an idea, inspired by experience, surroundings, stimulus and meanings (these are distinct - stimulus is sensorial, meanings transcend time and space). We seek to rectify, destroy, reconfigure or re-align a set of dominant paradigms. We measure the success of the ideal in its implementation, the results garnered and the affect upon our quality of life, usually within short time frames.
A close friend lamented that within the Muslim community (the moral and ethical framework to which he and I belong) our idealism is quickly corrupted or polarised. Where it has acted out, it usually takes a political direction, burning brightly like a match for some short duration, before fizzling out either by course, or blown out deliberately by another. Once the ideals have begun to establish themselves, the results do not satisfy us because the main actors have never done this before; they have no experience in succeeding or failing with their ideas. There are no coping mechanisms. The language has been one of resistance, dissension and radical thought, which comes to some position of authority and does not know how to adapt.
The first problem is that idealism seems to have been reduced, like many things, to politics. A fine example of this is vicegerency; the idea that Humanity has the role of witness to and custodian of the universe it inhabits, appointed by and answerable to God or a sovereign ruler, to treat it dutifully and ethically. The muslim community has suitable examples of the reduction of this enormous and profound reality, into a purely political agenda and identity. Vicegerency is then about political will, a political system, political religion, political frameworks, voting, who is voted in, how was this done, is he man or woman, what next politically....the list of 'important' issues continues.
At this point, all the concerns have strayed so far away from the principles of vicegerency that we may as well end the conversation. One cannot have a discussion about ideas when we do not know the meaning of the words we are using. Everyone needs to go back to square one, Book 0, points of Origin and points of departure and realise what words and concepts actually mean. We then act on them. That is, to act on knowledge (this was covered in my previous blog regarding words).
The same friend challenged me on this point of what words mean; is it wrong to associate something new with a word? Is it incorrect, or undesired, for a word to mutate over time and its new use accepted grammatically? Is this not a part of our idealism, forming a new lexicon (the vocabulary of a language, person, or branch of knowledge)?
I conceded after some reflection that this was true. Not all words need the treatment I was espousing, namely reading a dictionary, or the etymological exploration of a word, to truly understand it.
But vicegerency, as an example, is not simply a word with meaning, it is a word that represents a whole range of principles based on an objective moral standard. A word like this connects activities, responsibilities and ideals. Instead of this being a discussion on politics, this actually deals with the essence of humanity. Our idealism must first be rooted here, and this word must be re-understood so that we can act on it again in modern times.
So next, we need a space to experiment. We reject trusting entire countries and millions of people's lives to unproven political approaches, motley gathered civilian-suedo-military figures born from revolutions, or 'technocrats' (this has become a real favourite of the published media these days; I do not know who they are) No, I refused to be definedbytechne, or a system of rule that is based on those principles (that includes technical leaders who measure success, operation and social justice in purely technical and empirical terms).
This relates to a brief discussion I had yesterday with a fellow artist. We had never met before. He was a singer, I am a visual artist. He experiences the world through sound, I through visuals. I visualise what people say and what music I hear, which is why I have to be very selective on what I listen to. He translates visuals into acoustics, sound-waves and sound forms, thus the stimulus he needs to censor is what he sees. Corrupt what he sees, corrupt what I hear, and our other senses go off the rails. This thinking requires a standard by which you operate, that you believe in and accept having made the prerequisite studies. It also requires an open mind - I do not condone narrow thinking. let go of some inhibitions that your own ethical framework allows for. Go back to the essence and root of a thing, being radical be definition, to then design something incredible. Thats why it is a set of principles, and not just a legal system.
So I compose from what I see, he composes from what he hears. Its is a beautiful thought. Let us hope we can synthesise it harmonically. We compose together, forming a landscape - multi-sensory so that it is as close to reality as possible. This cannot be one dimensional. We test the idea against others. We perform, or recite, or exhibit, or share. We then discuss. Some ideals are formed, a language becomes embedded within the landscape. Discourse continues, dissension occurs, debate and argumentation, done with the intention to succeed. Eject voices of pointless destruction; they seek to undermine creativity for the sake of it, sometimes without even realising, and could later seek to destroy lives for the same reason.
We have travelled from inclinations, to convictions, to definite decisions. Now we have a rich texture, a multi-dimensional landscape that evokes mental, emotional and spiritual responses from mind and heart. The heart, separate from the physical organ, possesses an intelligence we have relegated to 'consciousness'. Walter James Skellie, in his forward to the translation of Al-Ghazzali's Marvels of The Heart, concluded the following from the masterful thinker's exposition,
"If the Qur'aan tells us that the heart is the essence of man, so that the Prophet on his ascension saw the highest perfection 'with his heart' (53:11), and if revelation itself descended on his heart, then the heart is the unique interface of the eternal and finite realms, where the 'event horizon', to borrow a term from modern physics, exists in the world, whilst breaking all the rules, to produce 'miracles' and 'signs'. The heart, therefore, is like the Ka'ba itself (the structure that sits at the centre of the sanctuary in Mecca, to which all Muslims face in prayer), whose black stone fell from heaven (a stone embedded within one corner of the Ka'ba) and which represents, in its aporetic mystery, the eternity of God, approachable only through rituals of self purification, not logic and formal analysis."
He continues, in reference to Al-Ghazzali's work, that the heart has two doors by which knowledge enters:
- The Outer Door - sense perception - knowledge of material things - sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell.
- The Inner Door - Divine inspiration and mystical revelation.
The inner senses are five:
- Shared Sense: receives impressions of the various external senses and unites them harmoniously.
- Retentive Imagination: takes from the shared sense the physical sensation and transforms it into psychic possession.
- Reflection: the pondering, cognitive faculty of the heart.
- Recollection: the power to recall mental images of past sensations that have been forgotten.
- Memory: store house for the meanings of sensory objects.
We can now see the importance of the hearts contribution to this process. It is through this organisation of the hearts faculties, tied to those of the brain but uniquely receptive in a way that 'consciousness' does little to explain, that we can further contextualise our ideas and ideals. Idealism, that practice of developing our ideas into ideals, to implement them into the world, is now active and delimited.
Music, poetic speech, recitation, architecture, creative writing, fiction, film, visual art, sculpture, photography, digital modelling, augmented reality; the craft and techne we use to expound these ideas become the crucial means of making and layering the landscape. We continuously add new dimensions, we do not sit on our laurels, we do not pat ourselves on the back and say 'what an idea!'.
Perhaps it is time we dropped the 'manifesto', that political ideology, and instead took up idealism, knowing that it is a process that leads to a reality, rather than something that simplistically opposes it or runs away from it. This is not escapism, this is not folly or a bourgeois hobby. Embracing intellectual knowledge, the knowledge of the heart, the sensorial, the meaning of things, our words, their roots and implications, our tools and techne, and what they allow us to do that our limbs cannot through methods of augmentation, all come together in this process. With so many facets, testing is crucial. Throwing a prototype ship into the sea could lose it to malfunction, corruption or sinking. One tests it first in waters designed, before unleashing it.
This is a parallel reality, but reality none the less, expressed creatively and designed fully interactive. It is deeply personal and rooted in language, state of mind, state of soul and land of origin. History becomes its keys, current contexts populate it, but new contexts become its dreams. As our poets said, we 'emerge on the verge of a synthesis'.
