Norse Code Morse Code

24 October 2019

In the deepest recesses of our human evolution, the darkest corners of human recessive thinking and brute aggression too admit to the light of a kindred spirit. The reason why light and how light can win over darkness is a theme of human inspiration is as simple as this knowledge that each one of us is born with. It is this spirit that has allowed cultures to evolve and to create their kind of logic, which is then dressed up in nuanced layer upon layer of myth and narrative, becoming custom and more.
In our wide world, there is Uluru in Australia which has a strong local Anangu ( Australian native tribe) legend that it must not be climbed. When it was Ayers Rock, it was a fashion for tourists to come over from Alice Springs some 400 kilometres away, and it is a risky climb causing over a dozen deaths due to fatal slips and falls. Then some 3 decades back it was handed over back to the natives in a formal ceremony and they have since been demanding the end to violations of their sacred space. The area is where there are 36 such rock formations, with this being the largest of the sandstone outcrops of them all. (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/26/new-dawn-for-uluru-as-climb-closure-ends-decades-of-disrespect)Remember our Mount Kailash too has a similar code, it is one that no mountaineering expedition is yet to tread on. It is also one where some yogic traditions have its practitioners go and merge into to call finality to their embodiment. So considering some spaces as sacred and making them off limits for human presence is trans continental and perhaps universal, before the advent of modern rationalist movement and science. Blind faith has now taken conservational tones and restored the civility in human conduct, allowing for ‘sentiments’ to overlay the general modern thirst for ‘wanderlust’ of ticking off ‘bucket lists’!
I chanced upon a documentary from BeeB that makes a panoramic sweep of Norse codes and cultural corner stones, and learnt how immigration is bringing in newer generation of people who do not want to subscribe to these values in Sweden. The Swedes are running a campaign getting young people to acknowledge the presence of depression, loneliness and stress, allowing the youth particularly suffering from adjustment disorders to take extended sick leave to try and recoup from their gaps of reality with expectations! Jantalagen is a Swedish precept that disparages them from display of vulgar wealth and ostentatious success. (https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191008-jantelagen-why-swedes-wont-talk-about-wealth)So the ‘haves’ in their society are not going to be rubbing into the ‘have nots’, and this cultural discipline is what allows them to be socialist in their outlook. Some how, till day it has not prevented the Swedish from being successful as individuals and as a nation, and it is one of the few places on earth where it is simply great to be, as a single mother, as a girl, woman, as a youth, and as an old person. As a society Swedish are most invested in their human resources that it would take generations for Indians to reach their levels of involvement and investment in their own!
As a country the Swedish have commons with their forested areas and wildlife. This operates through another cultural concept called allemansrätten (meaning “everyman’s right”), ‘the right of public access gives people the freedom to roam just about anywhere in the countryside as long as they “Don’t disturb – Don’t destroy.”’It is wonderful to see young women seek out inspiration in the wilderness, tell stories of how flora and fauna react to changing length of sun rays, how changing seasons bring about changing hues to the land and its population of trees, birds, insects and animals. Such groups of committed youth are the biggest watch dogs for environmental causes, and their connect with the soul of their native soul, spurs them to a new degree of patriotic ideation. It is almost spiritual and deepening, the bond that nourishes them and their land!
So is the society’s discovery of mental health issues a reflection of its approach or a result of it? The Sparta type of tough world and toughening, which incidentally many tribals in Africa and Asia too followed, involved boys coming of age to go out into their nearby wilderness and meet the local apex predator, it would be a wolf or a lion or a tiger depending on where you are. It was a survival vigil of the night, and magically at dawn you were conferred the title of manhood. Luckily, thanks to advances in psychology, we realise that such bravado does not transform into martial courage, leave alone granting the individual the focus to handle challenges that ordinary life confronts him with. Yet the underlying principle of going into natural environments for a ‘self discovery’ is something near universal. In Dharma, one underwent ‘sanyasa’ or retreat into sylvan surroundings of nature, to contemplate and to connect with one’s self! So did these ‘night outs’ start with more meaningful emphasis before they degenerated into a boyish charade? Is the Swedish allemansrätten a kind of foray that was close to one where young rishis and rishikas stepped out into the forests and sought ‘truth’?
It is not just in the exalting inspiring way that humans across regions and ethnicities have shown cultural context that is capable of detecting an underlying thread of commonality. It is also in the degenerate body shaming stunts where the attires of one sex- female have been at the heart of this perhaps last battle in human evolution. Patriarchy is quite unwilling to give up its tenets of chauvinism, sometimes even ingeniously arguing that rising homosexuality, falling male fertility, fragility of modern marriages, increasing loneliness in men is all a rebound to the increasingly assertive and equality demanding female. So we saw in India a social media assault on school children, on girls wearing above knee skirts, and as usual the pervert suggestion of linking it with crimes against children. Now a culture where the loose loin cloth or free hold lower garment was a single piece for the commons, looks at shorts and skirts as sexually provocative for girls and ladies, while men can continue to bare not just knees but their chests and thighs as well! Then you read a case of one lady who was sought to be body shamed by a prospective employer in Texas USA! Now firstly why social media accounts of prospective employees must be given is not understood, and for a culture like the American one, where what you do in your free time is not a matter of concern for any one, leave alone your future employer, what caused a supposedly female empowering firm to spook this lady by sharing her bikini photo on her Instagram and made silly comments about her unsuitability! (https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-49931273)
It shows how humans are universal in their basic instincts as well as their desire for mystic leaning stirring an inward journey. As if there is one common fulcrum, a revolving door where all our cultures and theologies must pass through threshed out, our greatest good and our darkest bad, a kind of Morse code of human behaviour! Instinctively we seem to react, from the prism beyond our cultural moorings, based on hormonal and gender genetic slant! Yet, a watcher like me, looks at reactions and trends for hours to say that as a world we are becoming better. Not every immigrant is a votary for rejecting the traditions of that land adopted, many are votaries for deeper study and acknowledgement of it like a Swedish expert of Nigerian descent Lola Akinmade Åkerström! It’s a mixed bag. It is better to premise an optimistic outcome than drag oneself into a deeper hole of recessive retrogressive pessimism. It is better to engage with all than to embrace only a chosen few. That is what the human Morse Code is transmitting loud and clear!