 Kaar-e Engelisaa neest
You
must abandon stupidity to be functional again
By H. Utanazad
October 23, 2003
The Iranian
Even if you have not read a word of Shakespeare,
chances are that in this day and age, you have probably seen
a movie rendition of the "Romeo and Juliet." In a
scene as poignant as it is profound, Juliet wonders -- perched
as she is on a balcony -- "what's in a name" for "a
rose by any other name would smell as sweet" or as miasmic,
and as deadly if, that is, you happen to suffer from a particularly
acute form of an allergy.
Allergy is a disease. It discombobulates, disorients
and numbs you. Your sense of normalcy is the first casualty of
an allergy
. It wreaks havoc on your expectations of the universe. It forces
you to re-evaluate your presence in the world. In short, an allergy
gets to you in ways that even Socrates, in all his eloquence
and persistence, fails to do. Note that while Socrates was killed
trying to make us understand that "an unexamined life is
not worth living," an allergy will kill if one were to
ignore the warning signs. With an allergy one's life is
in peril. Bluntly put: your life will terminate if you do not
examine the way you live.
Juliet's anxiety stems in part from the contradiction
between a name and the reality it represents. Historical enmity
between
the Capulet and Montague families is an impediment to the desires
unfolding in Juliet's body for a reality embodied by Romeo
the lover. Juliet wonders: "what is Montague, it's
not a hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
belonging to a man...tis his name that is Juliet's enemy."
Now, allergy is widely understood as a reaction
caused by the mistaken perception of the body that an otherwise
harmless
substance is a threat. Once your mind perceives a substance
as an invading
allergen, then, the immune system tries to eliminate it in
a process that makes life a living hell. Either the mind
"suspects" and torments the body or the body "knows" and re-educates
the mind.
The first reaction might be psychosomatic but
it is no less real. What the mind thinks, the body acts on. Allergy
is
life writ
large. Our reaction to a given "reality" -- our
perception of it -- is very much linked to what that reality
is named. Whether it is called Romeo or a Montague, liberty
or licentiousness, a daisy cutter or an incinerator of
human flesh,
a martyr or a thug blowing up innocent kids, veal parmesan
or butchered and mostly burned baby calf toped by her mother's
milk -- names will have a lot to do with how we come to
perceive a reality embodied.
So what exactly is in a name? Quite
a lot actually. The development of a civilization, and her
stability, literally
hinges on
her naming convention. The Chinese were astute enough
to have observed
the importance of this "name game." They called it
the doctrine of the "rectification of names," many
centuries ago. Confucius, in the Analects, notes the
problem thus:
...if language is not correct, then what is said
is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant,
then what must
be done remains undone; if this remains
undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray,
the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence
there must
be no arbitrariness in what
is said. This matters above everything.
But with allergy, just as in life, nothing is
that simple. In today's jargon, the life of a sign is such that
the signifier and the signified
are, in
a complex sort of way, intertwined. A civilization, through the efforts
of
her court
intellectuals, might promulgate self deceptive stories, but allergy
makes one attentive to the
fiction and the nuances. That is the thing about allergy you see.
Allergy
pushes the limits of common sense. Out on the fringes of the
"normal"
experience, allergy dissolves the clear cut mind/body dualism.
By further blurring
the distinction between the names and the reality they (mis)represent,
allergy
forces one to
become attentive to the ongoing complex power play. In a sense,
in allergy the body sometimes revolts against the power of
the mind
by cutting throw
the
illusions
that hold our social lives together. Through allergy, the body
comes to share its "wisdom" with the mind.
The body becomes sick when the social body is
in turmoil and one is left with actions the possibilities of
which the
mind
is too
petrified to
fathom. This
might be an answer to the riddle of the peculiar symptoms
exhibited by our wives, our mothers, our sisters, ourselves or
our lovers
these days.
It might
pay to
look a tad more carefully into the social constitution of
the malady. To make life more tolerable, then it becomes essential
to examine
the
illusions.
Allergy is a force of nature. It is just as real,
just as constant, just as powerful, and just as disruptive as
a typhoon,
a tornado
or a blizzard.
More
so than in
other aspects of life, with an allergy one quickly learns
that it does not pay to be a hapless victim. One is forced
to take
charge of one's
life. Sure,
one consults an assorted army of the "experts," but no
one is as familiar or as attentive to one's body and one's needs
as
oneself.
Your local preacher or mullah might make you feel better,
but no sense searching the voluminous chapters and verses
of the
Qoran
or
the Hadiths
to find the
authoritative
pronouncements and the cures.
One quickly learns to abandon silly ideas about
the immediate causes of an allergy. One finally comes to learn
about
causality. It might
just so
happen
that there
are clouds in the sky each time one has an allergy attack.
But if one wants to be free of an allergy, one learns
that concomitance
should
not be equated
with
causality. It might be a mere coincident that one's allergy
attacks are coeval with the presence of the clouds. But
this assumption
too
must
be put to test. Subsequently, one is forced to learn
to reason; to look for
real
causes, to experiment, to postulate, to form hypotheses,
to validate assumptions and
to refute.
Popular prejudices won't help one either. One
quickly learns that the rehashing of a wide variety of the
nauseatingly repulsive gobbledygook
won't help
restore health. No sense blaming the Global Jewish
Conspiracy, the British Intelligence Services, the
Bahais, the CIA,
the Kremlin, or
Paris for
your allergies. You
must abandon stupidity to be functional again.
And
so here
we go, as a friend would want, attempting to close
the circle. What
exactly
is
in a
name afterall?
Spiritual anguish? Physical torment? The joy of discovery?
One learns in suffering through allergies that
there are no easy answers in life. What masquerades as
an authoritative pronouncement
is often
wrong. Experts
are
helpful, but persistently off the mark. Holy books
might make
you feel good, but they won't help you find the
root causes.
There
is no substitute
for
introspection, for analysis, for the exchange
of experiences, for the careful examination of the
problems, for an
experimental approach
to
the proposed
solutions; or for an open mind and for the freedom
of inquiry and for the freedom of action
and for the attentiveness to the nuances. Just
as in life, our approach could literally spell out the
difference
between
living
well and
dying.
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Kaar-e Engelisaa neest