Excerpt: Sophia: Exile and Return by Kathleen Granville Damiani
Published Monday, March 09, 2009 by Dan Gainsford | E-mail this post
"The beast-like, inhuman quality of the machine is also associated with the symbol of the dragon. Every civilization East and West has dragons roaming about its mythology. The jewel that the dragon holds is our humanity, that part of ourself which the culture enslaves in order to perpetuate itself. When a culture is life-enhancing, the dragon is friendly and we do not fight it, as is the case with the dragons of the East. The task of the West, however, seems to involve a battle with the dragon, a quest to wrest the jewel from its clutches, or to slay it.
Our job is to recover our humanity from the grip of its executioner. If we simply sleep, letting the corporate-media machine determine our desires and needs, then our hard-won consciousness will be snuffed out in the belly of the whale. Our most perceptive thinkers and poets have warned us repeatedly now and in past ages that if the machine is allowed to lurch forward, unguided by human integrity, that the human race will not only go down, but go down in a miserable, bloody, cruel self-destruction, taking down with it the beauty around us and rending the fragile complex web of organisms that is the body of our exquisite earth.
The system is indeed a beast, and the beast is large and extensive. Its breathing is the very atmosphere we live in. To stop this beast from destroying humanity and the earth requires the ability to recognize its life, its breathing, in its small everyday dimensions. But this requires much courage.
The dragon sleeps--until you make a move to regain the treasure of your humanity through exposing it. How? By standing in your truth, by speaking or acting with honesty, integrity, by questioning or whistle-blowing. The boxes, balloons, self-referential enclosures that constitute daily life in America do not want to be disturbed. The dragon lives off millions of people's vital energy (their desires, needs, and fears). Not only does it want to continue its vast sleep, but if it is roused, it gets angry because you are leaving, and that deprives it of some of the vital energy that it requires in order to perpetuate it. Everything--media, interpersonal conversations, advertising, schooling, medicine, law, businesses, universities--conspires to keep us from looking at the beast. Why? To preserve the status quo intact, unmoving--and inhuman."
- Kathleen Granville Damiani, Sophia: Exile and Return
Our job is to recover our humanity from the grip of its executioner. If we simply sleep, letting the corporate-media machine determine our desires and needs, then our hard-won consciousness will be snuffed out in the belly of the whale. Our most perceptive thinkers and poets have warned us repeatedly now and in past ages that if the machine is allowed to lurch forward, unguided by human integrity, that the human race will not only go down, but go down in a miserable, bloody, cruel self-destruction, taking down with it the beauty around us and rending the fragile complex web of organisms that is the body of our exquisite earth.
The system is indeed a beast, and the beast is large and extensive. Its breathing is the very atmosphere we live in. To stop this beast from destroying humanity and the earth requires the ability to recognize its life, its breathing, in its small everyday dimensions. But this requires much courage.
The dragon sleeps--until you make a move to regain the treasure of your humanity through exposing it. How? By standing in your truth, by speaking or acting with honesty, integrity, by questioning or whistle-blowing. The boxes, balloons, self-referential enclosures that constitute daily life in America do not want to be disturbed. The dragon lives off millions of people's vital energy (their desires, needs, and fears). Not only does it want to continue its vast sleep, but if it is roused, it gets angry because you are leaving, and that deprives it of some of the vital energy that it requires in order to perpetuate it. Everything--media, interpersonal conversations, advertising, schooling, medicine, law, businesses, universities--conspires to keep us from looking at the beast. Why? To preserve the status quo intact, unmoving--and inhuman."
- Kathleen Granville Damiani, Sophia: Exile and Return
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