My father was a deeply committed Christian. He believed. He knew things. He was certain.
I am not. I do not believe. Or rather, I don't think I believe. In fact the process of thinking is a large part of the problem. It is about the concept of Faith. It is about the conviction that there is only one solution. It is about the arrogance inherent in the absolute confidence that one version is real, true, genuine (depending on evangelical muscularity) and the other is illusion, false, fake.
What at one time was called heresy before the ideals of freedom of speech or religion were discovered.
The problem is - I read books. In the process of reading I enter the narrative metaphorically. I interact imaginatively with the characters. I become involved. When I think about the book and any meanings which it may carry, even accidentally, I interpret that message. I make my own decision. In fact this is the best reason to read the book rather than watching the film. For the act of reading a book - substitute the problems of living in this modern world - participating by speech and thought and word. The modern human being is being encouraged to think for himself (up to a point). One is presented with a multiplicity of interpretations of every shade of opinion. Opinion makers varying from tabloid to television, from grapevine to graffiti, from fiction to fact, and between ideology and insinuation and information lies (possibly) the mystical new grail of the truth.
But perhaps therein lies the fundamental difficulty in decision-making. There may be more than one truth. There may be many truths. There may indeed be more than seven types of ambiguity. There may even be a single valid interpretation for each single individual. When societies were united, whether by Church or by State, by celebration or crisis, the consensual perspective seemed to be accepted (particularly from the historical viewpoint). When Henry VIII altered the goalposts he burned the conscientious objectors. When war is declared aliens are interned. The Roman legionaries on Anglesey probably exchanged few philosophical pleasantries with the Druids. History traditionally records very few dissident voices. The modern age is however steeped in dissidence. The chattering classes witter and wail and write. The media manipulate and the press pontificate. Outsiders abound even in the midst of organisations devoted to the Status Quo and they all have voices. And there ultimately is the individual, whistling to himself and playing pick 'n mix with the meaning(s) of life, the universe and everything.
He/She is now alone. Not the fearsome cold of an existential isolation but the crowded, conflicting, cacophony of a children's playground. The decisions the person has to make start with either detaching or participating from their allotted space. In other words whether to belong to a gang or not. And most importantly the question of how that gang and its members behave in its interactions with the surrounding world. I think I want to be in a gang of one. I want to be able to interpret the world through my own lens and to learn to live with this fractured image of uncertainity and relativity. This is the tolerant approach that democracy hints at, but is afraid of. This is a methodology that can make and mend the status of the individual, it will reduce the organisation of religion, education, politics, communication and employment to also-rans in competion with each other, reducing them simply to human interest stories that carry no heavier threat than choice, chance and catharsis can deliver. I would like the world to think for itself but to accept that no one perspective is absolute truth in any field of endeavour or sphere of influence. I would like the world to read the millions of narratives it constructs and to share them. I would like my late father to understand that he did, in fact, help to teach me this.
