The great decomposers
He was the most adored singer of his time, his vocal brilliance bringing him fame and wealth beyond comparison. Before the age of 10, Carlo ‘Farinelli’ Broschi (1705-1782) had joined countless other young boys subjected to that barbaric snip that kept their voices high-pitched, pure, and flexible. As women were barred from taking part in Roman Catholic services, “castrati” became commonplace from the 16th century onwards. Their lucrative careers – boosted by starring roles in Handel and Vivaldi operas – inspired thousands of poor families to offer up their sons for castration. But of all of them, it was Farinelli who hit all the right notes with the public. Now, more than two centuries later, I am interested to learn that researchers examining his exhumed remains are finding out much more about this extraordinary musical legend.
I called up Luigi Verdi, Secretary of Bologna’s Farinelli Study Centre, to find out a bit more. ”Farinelli’s bones were chosen because, as a castrato, he might have physical features completely unknown to scientists,” Luigi told me. “We’ve already noted interesting things about their dimensions and structure, which seem to relate to his being a castrato.” Castrated boys’ vocal cords were smaller and softer than an adult male’s. Their bones – including the ribs – kept growing, allowing for phenomenal lung power. Contemporary images of Farinelli depict a slender man with an unusually small head and extended limbs. ”We have this abnormally thick skull, the dental arch, the legs and ribs,” he says. “We are learning what effects castration had on the bone structure, the metabolism, and the diseases that castrati were particularly prone to. We hope to discover more about his diet and habits. It may even be possible to reconstruct his face.”
The Farinelli project is the latest in a series of experiments being carried out on the remains of classical music’s greatest geniuses. Poor Beethoven has not had much undisturbed rest since his death in 1827. He was first exhumed in 1863, then again 25 years later. In recent years, scientists have confirmed the presence of large amounts of lead in Beethoven’s hair and bones, bona fide samples of which have popped up from time to time at auction and among family heirlooms. A significant portion of his genetic make-up has been identified using DNA analysis and it’s now thought lead poisoning may well have caused the composer’s illnesses and legendary irascibility. Late in 2005, when some thirteen fragments of Beethoven’s skull came to light among the inheritance of a Californian businessman whose family in Europe had possessed the relics for generations, an American Beethoven scholar enthused, “It puts you in the physical presence of Beethoven’s body and if Beethoven’s music means a great deal to you, that is a very powerful thing and has a lot of meaning.”
When Mozart’s 250th birthday celebrations got underway in January 2006, there was much media interest when researchers tried to establish whether a skull kept in a Salzburg museum since 1902 was Mozart’s. Staff claimed musical notes, even screams, were heard to emanate from it at night. However DNA analysis of the skull alongside bones from a Mozart family grave proved inconclusive and the mystery continues.
This fascination with the physical remains of extraordinary people may well be traced back to the Middle Ages cult of the saints. “A relic – some bodily reminder of a saint – gave people access to the divine and served a very personal need,” my old schoolfriend Dr.Michael Spitzer, now lecturing at Durham University, tells me, “But as religion’s influence declined, so composers and other great heroes of romanticism took the place of religious figures. The remains of a composer are deeply affecting because they communicated with a ‘divine voice’ that is all-embracing and, at the same time, personal.”
Several composers’ skulls were stolen from tombs during the 19th century as the science of phrenology tried to prove that a genius could be identified by the bumps on his head. Haydn’s was removed by a group of phrenologists in 1809. Police failed to find the skull which, it later transpired, was hidden up the nightdress of one of the grave-robbers’ wives. Haydn’s head and body were only reunited in 1954. J.S. Bach was also exhumed, 144 years after his burial in Leipzig. A scientist who analysed his remains concluded that his ears were “exceptionally suited to music.”
While phrenology and its more sinister offspring eugenics have now long been discredited, our interest in manufacturing human perfection remains. “Today’s fascination is cloning,” says Michael, “We love to imagine what would happen if we could somehow bring Mozart back using his DNA and hear how he would finish his Requiem.”
As the research continues into the bones of Farinelli, I wonder if this obsession with the remains of great musical geniuses ultimately reveal to us anything more about their talents, or increase our appreciation of their music? Michael thinks not. But Luigi Verdi at the Farinelli Study Centre is more open-minded: “We don’t know yet whether studying Farinelli’s corpse will help us to understand better the features of his voice and of his art,” he says. “I personally think that some of the analysis may change the image that we have of castratos – but we will need to wait a little longer to see the results.”
Filed under: History, Music, Thoughts | 1 Comment
Tags: castrato, eugenics, Farinelli, genetics, phrenology
Meat and seemly
Much to the disdain of my vegetarian friends, I never apologise for the pleasure I derive from consuming food that once lived and roamed the countryside as carefree citizens of the animal kingdom. From time to time I even delight in a little provocative stirring, by averring that animals fulfil their highest purpose by becoming part of the human kingdom when we bipeds eat them. After all don’t the atoms of the mineral kingdom progress to a higher level of existence when absorbed by the vegetable? And don’t plants enter the animal kingdom on being consumed by hungry herbivores? So it would follow, wouldn’t it, that when animals are eaten by human beings they are playing their part in civilisation building?
The Omega-3 oils oozing out of my favourite Marks and Spencers peppered smoked mackerel fillets contribute to the healthy functioning of my brain so I can think and work better. Isn’t that a worthy way for a little fishy to scale down his days and make a contribution to the betterment of the world? Didn’t God create animals so we can eat them?
You are totally entitled to shoot me down now, if you want to, And don’t forget to bring out the pilgrim note from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that the time will come when meat will no longer be eaten, and that our natural diet is that which will grow out of the ground.
I don’t have a problem with vegetarianism. I like vegetarian food and am known to knock up a pretty mean vegetable chilli sin carne, replacing the beef with aubergines – which can add a wonderfully satisfying texture when cooked properly. On balance, I actually prefer eating fish to any other kind of creature formerly known as living. (As an aside, I have never quite understood why some vegetarians come across all self-righteous and yet, eat fish. Fish were alive too, you know? They have feelings and faces like lambs and cows do, and if anything are funnier to look at which makes them a more useful contributor to human happiness than a bumbling pig or an inept pheasant.)
A decade ago, I tried to be a vegetarian and kept it up for more than a year. But ultimately I failed dismally to find a way to get the minerals and nutrients I evidently needed from the foods I was eating to replace meat. Seeing me tired and miserable, a friend suggested that perhaps I was one of those people who really needs to eat meat. A best-selling self-help book of the time, Eat Right for Your Blood Type helped me feel much better in justifying my carnivorous cravings. I possess blood type O meaning, according to the author Peter J.D’Adamo that I am not only dead common, but I am a natural meat eater. “Type O was the first blood type, the type O ancestral prototype was a canny, aggressive predator.”
Possessing the oldest kind of blood type, shared with my hunter-gatherer forebears, I should be regularly bolstering my diet, and filling my freezer – the book said – with beef, lamb and buffalo. Unfortunately, Tescos was all out of buffalo when I raced off to stock my trolley. But suddenly, with that licence to chew – ratified by a bona fide medical expert – well, “naturopathic physician” – my body felt that it just couldn’t get enough meat. I would sit at work all morning thinking about lugging back a hearty beef soup at lunchtime. I would while away the afternoons looking forward to a juicy lamb shank, thinking about whether to grill or roast a chicken breast…I was ravenous for the flesh of beasts.
That was then, after depriving myself of meat for a year, and I should say I’ve calmed down a little since. But even now, I sense that I know my body well enough to recognise when it is depleted of one mineral or other. I feel myself craving a steak to replenish my calcium or potassium and I’ll fry one up with onions – with mash on the side – to enhance the culinary pleasure and convince myself of its medicinal benefits.
But there’s a real problem looming. Humanity, I read yesterday in The Times, is more carnivorous today than ever before. In 1965 the average Chinese person ate just 4kg of meat per annum. Today he or she consumes 54kg of meat – that’s over a year I hasten to add, not all in one go – but it’s still a lot. The demand for meat is resulting in animals being treated as a raw material for exploitation – the aim being maximum output and profit. The result: an epidemic outbreak of anxiety about pandemics that will ravage the entire planet.
“As swine flu spreads, and fear spreads faster,” wrote Ben Macintyre in The Times, “it is worth remembering that this, and other animal-to-human viruses, are partly man-made, the outcome of our hunger for cheap meat.”
Scientists are now claiming that viral mutation is directly linked to intensive modern farming techniques designed to maximise production to meet our hunger. Animals packed into confined spaces are contributing to the spread of pathogens, creating new and virulent strains that can be passed on to us. The last bout of avian flu has been traced directly back to huge factory farms. “There is nothing natural about this form of disease,” Macintyre writes, “indeed it stems from an abuse of nature.”
Mr Macintyre’s comments call to mind ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s prescient statement about the engendering of new diseases as a result of human behaviour: “But man hath perversely continued to serve his lustful appetites, and he would not content himself with simple foods. Rather, he prepared for himself food that was compounded of many ingredients, of substances differing one from the other. With this, and with the perpetrating of vile and ignoble acts, his attention was engrossed, and he abandoned the temperance and moderation of a natural way of life. The result was the engendering of diseases both violent and diverse.”
“Today the world is once again under attack from infectious diseases,” writes Ben Macintyre, “The latest plague does not come from God, or from other planets. It does not simply come from infectious animals and rogue microbes. It also comes from Man.”
And that for me, despite my love of lamb and championing of chicken, provides a lot of food for thought.
Filed under: Thoughts | 5 Comments
Tags: Bahai, meat, Peter J.D'Adamo, swine flu, vegetarianism
A hole in the ground
Last Monday, I learned something that I had not known before. I learned it – believe it or not – while visiting a shed on a remote island, almost 1000km north of London in the North Sea.
The shed belonged to an artist living on the island of Bressay, eight minutes or so across the sea by ferry from Lerwick, the main town in Shetland – an archipelago of wind-swept islands off the north-east coast of Scotland. This is a place remarkable for its complete lack of trees and legendary knitwear. On outlying islands, communities numbering in their tens live their lives at the mercy of the elements. This is also the only place I have ever visited where corpulent, grey seals gather and laze around on rocks around the back of Tescos and where the roadsigns proclaim “Otters crossing”.
Arlette – a friend who also coincidentally happened to be visiting Shetland from London – had called me that morning and told me we were going to visit an artist. As we made the short ferry crossing, I asked her how she knew him. She said, “I don’t”. She had discovered this particular character by looking up “Artists” in the Shetland directory. She had telephoned, told the chap’s wife that we were interested in coming to visit artists and – Shetland people being what they are – received a warm invitation for us to visit.
So, after returning home from the fish factory where he spends his working days, Dougie – for that was the artist’s name – took me to the shed where he works to show me his paintings. Most of the work consisted of well-executed, realistic paintings of local scenes – boats anchored in the harbour, seagulls perched on posts, the quaint, white painted facades of houses rising up from the dock side. Then one of Dougie’s paintings particularly caught my eye. It was a surrealist fantasy in the manner of Salvador Dali that, on first glance, replicated the Catalan painter’s familiar, trademark beach scattered with oddly juxtaposed objects and figures. Then, with closer inspection and intense enthusiasm, Dougie pointed out to me that each of the items on the beach had some resonance to Shetland’s history or peoples.
One image in particular struck me as particularly strange – it was of a well-dressed chap in black cap, suit and tie standing, most unusually, in a crater. What was its significance, I enquired of the painter. This is what I learned: Although there was no intensive bombing of Britain by the German airforce in the early months of the Second World War, the very first bomb dropped on the British Isles during the Second World War landed on Shetland. As I understood it from Dougie, the then mayor instructed his chauffeur to drive him to see the crater and then asked the loyal servant to stand in it, to demonstrate to one and all – and a local photographer – its size. This image has become an iconic image of Shetland’s history, which was why Dougie had included it in his surrealistic beach scene.
The particular surrealism of the incident in itself made the image and its use in Dougie’s painting very compelling. This was the last place I would have expected a German bomb to be dropped. And that image of the proud and patriotic chauffeur standing in a gaping hole in the ground, while a bearded crofter looks on in his flat cap and shabby jacket, is almost Pythonesque in its absurdity. There’s something wonderfully stoic about the chauffeur’s posture. I’m not sure what he’s got in his hand – it looks like a gingerbread man! I can imagine him saying, “Jerry hit oor island but he didna destroy oor confectionary”.
I think this is possibly the story of Shetland: its original Pictish settlers conquered by the Vikings, the colonisation by Norwegians, the arrival of Christianity and the islands being pawned to the Scots – and through it all, survived a hardy people whose doors – and artist’s studios – are always open to strangers, warm, welcoming, a little amused by life’s absurdities.
“I like to visit artists,” I told Dougie, “whenever I travel places.”
“Och, I hope your not disappointed, coming all this way,” he said earnestly, gesturing to his own paintings, “But you’re welcome to come back anytime.”
“Not at all,” I replied. “It was very kind of you to let me see them.” Certainly, I won’t quickly forget the memorable image of an unlikely hole in the ground.
Filed under: Art, History, People, Thoughts | 1 Comment
Tags: Art, Bressay, Shetland, World War II
Who wants to live forever?
It’s official: I have reached middle age. Kind of.
I say “kind of” because medical diagnoses on the internet are about as reliable as expecting a London bus to arrive on time. Yet, according to www.livingto100.com’s Life Expectancy Calculator – which uses “the most current and carefully researched medical and scientific data” to estimate how old you will live to be – it is now a possibility that my current lifestyle and diet will get me to the grand old age of 86 – that’s twice 43 where I currently find myself. Hence I am middle aged.
So at 86, as I snooze – open-mouthed, dribbling and toothless – in the audience celebrating the centenary of the arrival of The Mousetrap on the West End stage – for it will surely still be playing in the year 2052 – my soul will extract itself from its mortal remains and begin its eternal flight. It will finally be free to: 1) discover all the things that had been gathering dust on the top of the wardrobe I never managed to reach; 2) find out how John F.Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Tutankhamun really died (as if I will really care by then); and 3) thank and shake the hands – or whatever they do in the non-physical realm where hands are no longer needed – of those great souls whose work I admired so much in this world – Mozart, Walt Disney, Tommy Cooper … the list goes on with increasing levels of post-modern irony.
I am really quite happy with the prognosis of getting to 86. It seems quite long enough to do the things one wants to do. Yet throughout human history there have always been those who would prefer to find ways of sticking around longer. Janacek wrote a spine-tingling opera about one such character called The Makropolous Case. It’s the story of a soprano at the Vienna Opera, who is actually 337 years old and remarkably, still singing like a canary. During her life, she has travelled from place to place, assuming many identities but always keeping the initials E.M – for example, Eugenia Montez, Ekaterina Myshkin and Elian McGregor. Originally her name was Elina Makropulos, daughter of a Prague alchemist who prepared a potion that would extend life by three centuries. She’s always on the move and is one of the best singers of all time – but her secret prevents her from feeling real love for anybody: she has had to leave behind so many husbands, sons, and lovers knowing that they will die while she lives on, and on, and on. It’s a lonely life. So extreme longevity is not without its setbacks. A more appropriate name for the doomed EM to take would be Eternal Monotony.
All this musing on immortality has been prompted by my reading a review of a new book called Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer in which its author, David Boyd Haycock, charts the human desire to stick around for as long as we can. I have learned for example that when King David was “old and stricken in years”, they “covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat. Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.” The girl was brought and “cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not,” which is probably a good thing because any kind of knowing, in the Biblical sense, would probably have had the opposite effect and killed the old boy off.
The girl came from the tribe of Shunammite and the practice of “Shunamitism” continued to be prescribed by doctors well into the enlightened era. By the 17th century, the philosopher Francis Bacon still approved of the practice, but suggested however that puppies might serve just as well as young maidens. Seems like a Snoopy comic book I enjoyed as a child entitled, “Happiness is a Warm Puppy” may have had its roots in Shunamitism. I read recently that there are organisations that take dogs into hospitals to cheer up the patients. Dogs, barring Snoopy, rarely cheer me up. To my eyes, they seem to contribute to increased stress levels in their owners who constantly yell at them and push them away from licking their faces.
There’s probably some truth in the fact that being in the presence of youthful vitality does uplift the spirits. Playing basketball with them from your wheelchair, however, trailing your intravenous drip behind you, may just push you over the edge.
So what limits my life expectancy to 86? For others it may be stressful work, large amounts of alcohol and tobacco consumption, and daily exposure to polluted city air. For me, I suspect it’s the general mistrust of anything that makes me ache, ie: physical exertion. Plus the hours spent in sedentary pursuits at the computer, oh, and the temptation of almost daily chips. According to at least one modern day scientist, human lives could easily extend to 120 or more if we reduce our calorific intake by 25-50 percent. The immunologist who suggested this, however, and lived by his own exacting rules, died in 2004 at the age of 79. So much for that theory.
Others believe that longevity is already on the radar – in other words, the first person to live to 1000 is probably 70 already. Techniques to repair molecular and cellular damage are already being perfected.
But to what end? What would life be like if it were double – or more – the current expected span? How would we spend our time? Retiring at 65 would be out of the question. Sales of Sudoku puzzle books would go through the roof. The price of tickets to everything would double so that old age concessions could still be offered without bankrupting every arts organisation or travel provider. Attending the Michael Jackson bicentenary tour would be the ultimate nostalgia trip and even spookier than the ageless singer’s forthcoming season at the O2 arena. Tutankhamun lives!
But longevity, it seems, will be an inevitable part of the coming of age of humanity. In his prediction of a far-off, united future for a human race attaining its maturity, Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, wrote, “The enormous energy dissipated and wasted on war, whether economic or political, will be consecrated to such ends as will extend the range of human inventions and technical development, to the increase of the productivity of mankind, to the extermination of disease, to the extension of scientific research, to the raising of the standard of physical health, to the sharpening and refinement of the human brain, to the exploitation of the unused and unsuspected resources of the planet, to the prolongation of human life, and to the furtherance of any other agency that can stimulate the intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race.”
The world that embraces such a future, which sounds pretty wonderful, will be a very different one from the world we know today. I, for one, departing as I might at 86, won’t be around to see it. Unless, of course, I reduce my calorific intake, put down this laptop and get myself down to the gym – quickly.
Filed under: Books, History, People, Thoughts | 2 Comments
Tags: Bahai, immortality, longevity, Shoghi Effendi, tutankhamun
Circles of adoration
For the past three weeks, I have taken up residency on the side of a mountain. Such a statement might evoke in the mind the image of a mendicant curled up on makeshift bedding in a cave, set amidst a barren rockface devoid of vegetation bar a scattering of scrubby thickets. You might envisage him crouching over a self-made fire, warming his hands or heating up a tin can of water to wash his face or assuage a galling thirst.
Well, while not wishing to disappoint, I must admit that the reality may not be quite so poetic or self-mortifying – but it is a whole lot better.
The mountain in question – Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel – is one of the most spectacular spots on the surface of the planet. At night the mountainside is ablaze with lights from top to bottom. The view from its crest looks out across the Mediterranean, around a crescent bay, taking in the ancient crusader port of Akko, the borders of Lebanon and off in the distance, the peaks of the Golan Heights. And in the heart of Mount Carmel, visible from all sides, a luminous gem shines out as a beacon of hope in a troubled region. The golden-domed Shrine of the Báb is set amidst luscious, verdant gardens cascading down the mountainside in the form of nineteen spectacular terraces, vivid with colour, birdsong and unsurpassed beauty.
Situated behind the Shrine of the Báb, there is one particular feature of this garden that particularly moves me when I visit it. It is a circle of towering, ancient cypress trees, standing sentinel-like in a spot where once, more than a century ago, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, Bahá’u'lláh, sat with His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and indicated where He wished the remains of His forerunner, the Báb, to be interred. The Báb had been executed in Persia in 1850 and His earthly remains had been secreted away in His homeland for close on half a century. With “infinite tears and at tremendous cost”, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – while still a prisoner of the Ottoman empire until 1908 – managed to direct the Bahá’ís in Persia to deliver their precious charge into His safekeeping.
Receiving the remains, acquiring the land and rearing that edifice were among the greatest challenges and achievements of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s life.
“One night,” He recalled “I was so hemmed in by My anxieties that I had no other recourse than to recite and repeat over and over again a prayer of the Báb which I had in My possession, the recital of which greatly calmed Me. The next morning the owner of the plot himself came to Me, apologized and begged Me to purchase his property.”
On the day of the first Naw-Rúz He celebrated after His release from captivity – 21 March 1909 – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had a marble sarcophagus transported to the vault He had prepared for it. In the evening, “by the light of a single lamp, He laid within it, with His own hands—in the presence of believers from the East and from the West and in circumstances at once solemn and moving—the wooden casket containing the sacred remains of the Báb and His companion,” wrote Shoghi Effendi.
“When all was finished, and the earthly remains of the Martyr-Prophet of Shíráz were, at long last, safely deposited for their everlasting rest in the bosom of God’s holy mountain, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who had cast aside His turban, removed His shoes and thrown off His cloak, bent low over the still open sarcophagus, His silver hair waving about His head and His face transfigured and luminous, rested His forehead on the border of the wooden casket, and, sobbing aloud, wept with such a weeping that all those who were present wept with Him. That night He could not sleep, so overwhelmed was He with emotion.”
Last Saturday, I was privileged to join some 1000 Bahá’ís – pilgrims, visitors, guests and staff of the Bahá’í World Centre – gathered on that same mountainside and, in an act of solemn reflection, circumambulate the Shrine of the Báb, 100 years to the day since ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had completed that singular act which, wrote Shoghi Effendi, “indeed deserves to rank as one of the outstanding events in the first Bahá’í century.”
How transformed is this rocky mountainside since the night when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá brought the Báb’s remains to their final resting place, close to that circle of cypresses, in a mausoleum befitting a Messenger from God Who had declared His mission on the very night of the very same year that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself was born.
Last year alone, the Terraces of the Shrine of the Báb attracted some 640,000 visitors and their beauty is being universally acclaimed. Last Monday, in Jerusalem, a special reception was held to celebrate the addition of the Bahá’í shrines and gardens to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Commenting on the achievement, Israel’s Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, said that the shrines reflect peace, beauty and tolerance. He said it was not only an honour for Israel to have the Bahá’í Holy Places within its borders, but it was an honour for UNESCO to have them on its list of the world’s most culturally significant places.
“The sacrifices of the Báb and the dawn-breakers of the Cause are yielding abundant fruit,” wrote the Universal House of Justice at Naw-Ruz, the exact centenary of the interment of the Báb’s remains on Mount Carmel, “The magnificent progress achieved over the past century demonstrates the invincible power with which the Cause is endowed.”
As we processed from the Seat of the Universal House of Justice, along the semi-circular arc path to the Shrine of the Báb, I turned back and glimpsed the multi-coloured parade of humanity in all its diversity, moving together as one soul in many bodies. I remembered the dramatic circumstances surrounding the Báb’s own execution and the vain hope of the clergy and rulers of His land that, with His swift demise and the brutal massacre of some 20,000 followers, the fire He had ignited would be quenched. The vision of humanity I glimpsed on Saturday demonstrated to me the futility of such attempts to snuff out this inextinguishable light - efforts which persist in Iran to this day. “He doeth as He doeth and what recourse have we? He carrieth out His will, He ordaineth what He pleaseth.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s depositing of the remains of the Báb in the bosom of Mount Carmel marked the beginning of the World Centre of the Bahá’í Faith. It was an act of love and obedience carried out by a son on the instructions of His Father. A seed, still bursting with life and potential, had been salvaged from a savagely felled tree and planted in new soil where it could take root. The circle of cypress trees, silent witnesses to momentous events, are now overshadowed by the efflorescence of Carmel, both in the magnificence of the gardens that now adorn its slopes and the vibrant variety of human hues that gather there in their thousands to pay homage to the martyred herald of their Faith. Today, these are the fruits of that seed, of that act of obedience.
As the Universal House of Justice noted, “It is but a portent of the ultimate realization of the oneness of humankind.”
Filed under: History, Thoughts | 1 Comment
Tags: Bahai, Haifa, Israel, Mount Carmel, The Bab, UNESCO, World Heritage
Of monkeys and men
Oftentimes we are reminded of the thwarted “best laid plans of mice and men” although, as the comedian Eddie Izzard once mused, it’s hard to imagine what exactly the best laid plans of mice actually might consist of.
But now it seems that we’ve had it wrong all along – and on two counts. Firstly, the original Robert Burns poem – pithily titled To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough – refers to “The best laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men”. I always thought that mice having plans was a tad far fetched. But scheming mice, that’s another thing entirely. I’ve had first hand experience of some of those in the less salubrious rented accommodation I’ve lived in.
Secondly, it now seems that it’s not mice that make the plans – it’s monkeys. Or a Swedish chimp called Santino, pictured, to be precise. Yes, scientists all over the world are going ape about an article just published in Current Biology magazine. Since I can’t recall ever having bought a copy of this no doubt excellent journal, I am relying on information reported elsewhere that Santino, resident of a Swedish zoo for the last 12 years or so, has consciously planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on the visitors ogling him in his cage.
The keepers at Furuvik Zoo found that the cheeky chimp collected and stored stones to later use as missiles. He gathered up the stones whilst in a calm state, prior to the zoo’s opening. Then, he lobbed them at the visitors who were getting him agitated hours later. And who can blame him, I ask? I’d probably do the same.
But this, say the experts, suggests that Santino was able to anticipate a future agitated mental state – something that has been difficult to definitively prove in animals – and make plans for it. Unable to readily access his hypnotherapist, his anger management tapes, or an innocuous Smooth Classics CD to soothe his addled nerves, Santino chucked igneous remnants at his tormentors.
“I bet there must be a lot of these kinds of behaviours out there,” the research’s author Mathias Osvath is quoted as saying, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if we find them in dolphins or other species.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I like animals. I really do. But, quite apart from the fact that I find it hard to believe that a dolphin could ever handle stone throwing with his little flippers (although I am sure he could spit a sardine at an annoying spectator as he leaps through his hoops), I think this is another one of those stories where well-meaning animal enthusiasts attempt to prove that animals really are the same as humans.
Take www.elephantartgallery.com, for example. “Here,” it says, “you will find original paintings that are made by elephants using their own creativity and volition, entirely unaided or directed by human hand.” And what, pray tell, do these fine examples of elephant art look like? Well, exactly the kind of images you’d expect if you stuck a paintbrush up the nostril of an elephant swinging his trunk. I am sure the titles of the pictures on sale there – including “Deeply Moved”, “Angels will Prevail” and “Flames of Passion” – are not the creations of elephants, unaided or directed by human beings. Elephants happily christen their paintings with the same trumpeting sound they use for everything else – and no doubt subsequently baptize them too with other creative outpourings. When an elephant comes up with something remotely resembling the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa, then I will be willing to accept that animals are the equals of human beings.
And what of the highly intelligent dolphin? “Dolphins are often regarded as one of Earth’s most intelligent animals,” says the Wikipedia entry on these lovable creatures, “though its hard to say just how intelligent dolphins are.” Well, of course it is! They don’t talk. They click!
“Dolphins are so clever that they break sponges off and put them on their snouts to protect them while foraging”. That’s truly remarkable. If any human being did that, they would be considered bonkers. When it’s a dolphin, absolutely brilliant! But when did the first dolphin land on the moon? Who was the first dolphin to perform a heart transplant? Or even sauté his favourite plankton in garlic butter? It’s not the same is it?
“The animal,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes, “although gifted with sensibilities is utterly bereft of consciousness, absolutely out of touch with the world of consciousness and spirit. The animal possesses no powers by which it can make discoveries which lie beyond the realm of the senses. It has no power of intellectual origination. For example, an animal located in Europe is not capable of discovering the continent of America. It understands only phenomena which come within the range of its senses and instinct. It cannot abstractly reason out anything. The animal cannot conceive of the earth being spherical or revolving upon its axis. It cannot apprehend that the little stars in the heavens are tremendous worlds vastly greater than the earth. The animal cannot abstractly conceive of intellect. Of these powers it is bereft. Therefore these powers are peculiar to man and it is made evident that in the human kingdom there is a reality of which the animal is minus. What is that reality? It is the spirit of man. By it man is distinguished above all the other phenomenal kingdoms. Although he possesses all the virtues of the lower kingdoms he is further endowed with the spiritual faculty, the heavenly gift of consciousness.”
So there we have it. It is clear that there is much to learn still about the animal kingdom, and God bless the biologists and scientists who get excited when they discover the project management abilities of baboons and the excellent budgeting skills that locusts demonstrate.
“To act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man” says Bahá’u'lláh. That is true. But I wonder if that works mutatis mutandis.
Filed under: Thoughts | 3 Comments
Tags: animals, Bahai, chimpanzee, intelligence, Santino
Attaining starship
If it was your task – or a matter of joy for you – to present someone with a precious gift, how do you expect they might respond? At the very least, you might look for an appreciative thank you or some gesture of gratitude. It would hurt – to say the least – to not only receive no such appreciation, but instead find a door slammed in your face, fall foul of a virulent tirade or, worse still, be the victim of an active attempt to cut off your hand to prevent such a gift being presented to others.
Such has always been the reception meted out to the great Messengers of God, those divinely-inspired teachers who periodically attempt to uplift the human spirit and nurture society through their words and deeds. Look at how the master of the English language, Shoghi Effendi, describes the response of humanity to the message of Bahá’u'lláh, forty years of Whose life was given up to chains, banishment, exile and imprisonment, in the promotion of His gift to humanity:
“Unmitigated indifference on the part of men of eminence and rank; unrelenting hatred shown by the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Faith from which it had sprung; the scornful derision of the people among whom it was born; the utter contempt which most of those kings and rulers who had been addressed by its Author manifested towards it; the condemnations pronounced, the threats hurled, and the banishments decreed by those under whose sway it arose and first spread; the distortion to which its principles and laws were subjected by the envious and the malicious, in lands and among peoples far beyond the country of its origin—all these are but the evidences of the treatment meted out by a generation sunk in self-content, careless of its God, and oblivious of the omens, prophecies, warnings and admonitions revealed by His Messengers.”
At the level of those who govern society, little has changed in 160 years. Indifference is one thing, but active repression is a more frightening response entirely. In Iran, the seven members of the country’s informal administrative committee of the Bahá’í community have been held for almost a year in prison, facing an uncertain future. Rather than enquiring into the high ideals that motivate them, the positive services that they could offer their society, the principles that so guide and shape their lives that they would rather offer up their necks than deny them – rather than that, they are branded as deceitful spies, manipulative enemies, a threatening danger to society.
“Who,” asked Shoghi Effendi, writing in 1941, “among the worldly wise and the so-called men of insight and wisdom can justly claim, after the lapse of nearly a century, to have disinterestedly approached its theme, to have considered impartially its claims, to have taken sufficient pains to delve into its literature, to have assiduously striven to separate facts from fiction, or to have accorded its cause the treatment it merits? Where are the preeminent exponents, whether of the arts or sciences, with the exception of a few isolated cases, who have lifted a finger, or whispered a word of commendation, in either the defense or the praise of a Faith that has conferred upon the world so priceless a benefit, that has suffered so long and so grievously, and which enshrines within its shell so enthralling a promise for a world so woefully battered, so manifestly bankrupt?”
Now however it is the ordinary people of Iran who are demonstrating their capacity to move beyond petty narrow-mindedness. In a powerful appeal addressed this week to Iran’s Prosecutor General by the Bahá’í International Community, it is the ordinary citizens of Iran and their staunch commitment to justice who are the recipients of appreciative gratitude:
“We see the fidelity shown by the young musicians who refused to perform when their Bahá’í counterparts were prohibited from playing in a recital,” says the letter. “We see the courage and tenacity of university students who stood ready to prepare a petition and to forgo participation in examinations that their Bahá’í classmates were barred from taking. We see the compassion and generosity of spirit exhibited by the neighbours of one family, whose home was attacked with a bulldozer, in their expressions of sympathy and support, offered at all hours of the night, and in their appeals for justice and recompense. And we hear in the voices raised by so many Iranians in defense of their Bahá’í compatriots echoes from their country’s glorious past.”
“What we cannot help noting, with much gratitude towards them in our hearts, is that a majority of those coming out in support of the beleaguered Bahá’í community are themselves suffering similar oppression as students and academics, as journalists and social activists, as artists and poets, as progressive thinkers and proponents of women’s rights, and even as ordinary citizens,” concludes the letter.
Such acts of kindness, such fraternal understanding paints an entirely different picture of a people whose lot it is to be tarred with the same public image brush as the authorities that govern their lives.
As for those who suffer selflessly behind bars, who cling on to their belief in the essential goodness and nobility of human nature, who willingly disbanded their informal administrative arrangements to demonstrate the goodwill they have consistently shown to the Islamic Republic of Iran for thirty years – as for them, they perhaps have attained “starship”. Not, of course, a spacecraft designed to shuttle between planets. Rather, the state of being a true reflection of the sun of truth.
The acts of Bahá’u'lláh, wrote His forerunner the Báb, would be “like unto the sun, while the works of men, provided they conform to the good-pleasure of God, resemble the stars or the moon.” By observing His teachings, they would “regard themselves and their own works as stars exposed to the light of the sun,” said the Báb, “…then they will have gathered the fruits of their existence; otherwise the title of ‘starship’ will not apply to them. Rather it will apply to such as truly believe in Him, to those who pale into insignificance in the day-time and gleam forth with light in the night season.”
Gleaming forth with light in a time of darkness is perhaps the greatest gift of all to offer the world.
Filed under: Thoughts | 1 Comment
Tags: Bahai, human rights, Iran, starship, suffering
Life in the fast lane
You might think I’m some sort of masochist but, once a year, I carry out a fast. In fact it starts tomorrow.
For a relatively few days, I refrain from eating and drinking between the hours of sunrise and sunset. And, believe it or not, I find that those early mornings give me a wonderful time to reflect and get my life in order – and after a while I feel healthier too. When I am at home, I also get to see the amazing skies over Wellingborough out of my kitchen window. Look at that picture, un-photoshopped, the real thing! Castle Fields at 0610hrs.
I’m not the only one: I just did an online search on the word fasting and it came up with almost 12 million references. There’s: fasting for healing, fasting for weight loss, fasting to look like Carol Vorderman – and fasting as a powerful spiritual discipline. That’s the one I’m interested in.
A Christian colleague told me that when he and his wife have to make an important decision, such as whether to buy a new house or something to do with their son’s education, they fast for a few days to clear their minds so that they’re inspired to do the right thing.
Not everyone though is so sympathetic to the idea. When one of my fasting friends told her workmate during our last Fast why she wasn’t going out for lunch, the colleague said, “I would never let my religion make me do that”.
It struck me as very curious – this notion that somehow a religion would, or even could, make me do something that I didn’t want to do. I was under the impression that I have the freedom to choose how I want to live and what I want to believe.
I chose to be a Bahá’í because its writings and the friendships I have in its community inspire me, its teachings are attractive and good for the world, and service brings me fulfilment. And I choose to follow its powerful spiritual disciplines, if you like, because I tried them out, tested them and found them to be beneficial to my well-being – and true.
“Being one, truth cannot be divided,” say the Bahá’í writings, “and the differences that exist only result from attachment to prejudice. If only men would search out truth, they would find themselves united.”
The freedom to search for truth is one of the blessings of living in this society. In some parts of the world, the decision to change one’s faith is a capital offence. We have the freedom to choose a faith or choose not to have one.
Some months back, I saw an article which said, ‘Freedom from religion in Britain is becoming as important as freedom of religion. Nearly two-thirds of British people do not claim membership of a religion or never attend a religious service.’
While I personally think society would be much healthier and happier if everyone lived their life according to powerful spiritual disciplines, the freedom to choose is more important than enforcing someone to do something against their will.
Mae West summed up choice thus, “Between two evils,” she said, “I always pick the one I never tried before.”
Filed under: Thoughts | 2 Comments
Tags: Bahai, fasting, freedom
Last Thursday, more than a dozen of the United Kingdom’s top comedians – including Jack Dee, pictured, Jo Brand, Omid Djalili, Alexei Sayle – put their names to a letter in The Times, expressing their concern about human rights in Iran, particularly the danger being faced by the national administrative committee that has been looking after the affairs of the country’s 300,000 strong Bahá’í community.
These seven, ordinary citizens have been detained in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for eight months now. They have been denied access to their legal counsel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr Shirin Ebadi. Up until recently, no case has been brought against them. It’s now been reported, though, that their files are to be handed over to the Revolutionary Court and that they will face serious charges including “espionage”. The possibilities of a fair, independently observed trial – and, based on previous precedents, the likely verdict when such a charge is leveled – are grim to say the least.
Over the past two decades, we have grown used to celebrities voicing their opinions on all manner of issues – from global warming to the fur trade. For many years, comedians have annually done their bit for Comic Relief and Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball, while rock’s megastars strut their stuff for famine-stricken lands and Nelson Mandela’s AIDS charity.
Such public displays of conscience are not without their critics. Cynics mock the celebrities’ intentions, dismissing their efforts as self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, ego-boosting publicity stunts. When this particular letter was reported on Sky News, some of the comments that readers left on the website were, to my mind, extraordinary. “These so-called comedians want to make me puke!” wrote one, “Is it the fact they honestly think it will make a difference? No chance! Is it to look like they give a **** in the public eye? Absolutely! Their hypocrisy stinks beyond belief.” “What is the point of writing a letter?” wrote another, “Do these guys honestly believe that Iran will listen to a bunch of westerners with no moral or religious integrity?” “Once again so called “celebrities” jump on the political band wagon about something they probably know nothing about,” retorted one reader. “If they’re so interested in politics then why don’t they become politicians ? But of course the work isn’t as easy and the pay and lifestyle isn’t as good is it?” asked another.
Rather than being a fashionable cause, the case of the Bahá’ís in Iran is like so many examples where innocent people are facing the most extreme hardship or persecution but aren’t actually dying in droves. The UK media generally isn’t interested, so supporting such a case is not destined to get these comedians widespread exposure to boost their already high public images. This one has barely been reported at all, save for an excellent interview with Shirin Ebadi on Channel 4 News. In fact, this cause doesn’t really fit into the predominant liberal grain, of which comedians are most likely to be the representatives. Why? It’s about religion, for a start. Generally speaking, people don’t want to start interfering in a matter that has, at its root, a difference of theological interpretation. For most comedians, religions are more for poking fun at than to be protected or defended. Furthermore, people seem dubious about speaking up against certain elements in Iran’s regime. They suggest that such widespread stories of oppression and human rights, despite being independently reported and condemned by respectable agencies, are either fuelling the flame of Western antagonism towards Iran or are even the fabrications of countries intent on intervening in Iran’s affairs.
Faced with a multitude of social ills, charities and causes to speak out about, celebrities in Britain are in a unique position. They are, at the same time, people of influence and targets of public vitriol. Ours has become a celebrity-obsessed nation. An article in this week’s New Statesman marking the 30th anniversary of the start of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister dates the beginning of such a culture back to the prevalent mores of the 1980s where wealth, selfishness, enterprise, getting ahead, were to be valued above the welfare of society which the Iron Lady famously denied existed.
Newspapers today report that the unhealthy obsession with celebrity culture is damaging the academic success of British students who are ignoring career aspirations to pursue the chance of fame instead – fame, not for their achievements, but for being famous. This obsession with celebrity is seen to be a symptom of a larger cultural obsession with three As – affluence, attractiveness and achievement – not in themselves inherently harmful, but with the great potential to cast into the shadows other values such as three Cs – community, charity and commitment. One American psychologist James Houran, has written that in a secular society the “need for ritualized worship can be displaced onto celebrities.” “Nonreligious people tend to be more interested in celebrity culture,” he says. “For them, celebrity fills some of the same roles the church fills for believers, like the desire to fit into a community of people with shared values.”
Fulfilling that role presents celebrities with huge responsibility. They are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. Wherever one’s sympathies lie for the ailing Jade Goody, there is no doubting that her very public life and death is boosting by the thousands the number of women going to have screenings for cervical cancer.
When our own government spoke up a week or two back for the safety of the Bahá’í leaders in Iran, how many national and regional newspapers reported it? None.
When this group of comedians signed their letter, the story was reported in the Daily Telegraph, on Sky News, in the Glasgow Daily Record, Metro, on teletext, in the Western Daily Press and, most excitingly, on This is Scunthorpe.co.uk – evidence enough, if any were needed, of the power of celebrities in our society to bring an issue to the fore. That is something, I believe, that comes with the territory and to be applauded. The courage on the part of these comedians to speak out deserves our gratitude. In all seriousness, it is no laughing matter.
Filed under: People, Theatre, Thoughts | 3 Comments
Tags: Bahai, comedy, human rights, Iran, persecution
The mummy returns
It’s half-term week for schools in the south of England and London’s Underground was packed today with grandparents and parents roving the capital on a quest for activities to divert their children.
The national Bahá’í Centre is situated close to the Natural History Museum – always a hardy perennial with those kids who for some reason like to be scared out of their wits by the very realistic animatronic figure of Tyrannosaurus Rex. But my tube journey also takes in Holborn, the train stop for the British Museum.
This morning I was amused to overhear the following conversation between a bright young boy and a woman who I assumed was his grandmother.
“Are there skeletons in the museum?” the boy asked, a fearful expression on his brow.
“Well there are Egyptian mummies which have skeletons in them…” Grandma smilingly replied.
Trepidation crossed the lad’s face. “I’m scared! What if they come alive?”
“They won’t come alive,” she replied calmly. “Skeletons can’t come alive. They’ve been dead for centuries. That’s why they are in a museum.”
“Some skeletons can come alive,” said the boy. “I’ve seen them.”
Grandma had an answer for everything. “That’s only on television”
“Yes, but what if they come out of the television?” he asked.
There was a certain logic to his line of thinking.
I remember as a child being very fearful of just about everything. At that time there had been a spate of high-profile kidnappings that I had overheard on the news. Someone calling himself the Black Panther had abducted a 17-year old heiress and demanded £50,000 ransom money. I was convinced for some reason that I was going to be kidnapped too. It didn’t help that a rumour swept round the children in our junior school that the Black Panther had been seen at the local swimming pool the night before.
Now when I think about it, why would Britain’s most wanted criminal be taking a quick dip in the Canterbury municipal baths? And, come to think of it, how would anyone know it was him? Did he have Black Panther emblazoned on his Speedos?
But for a child with an imagination such as mine, reasoning doesn’t help. Even my parents flippantly saying, “Don’t be stupid. We haven’t got any money” failed to assuage my paranoia of being kidnapped. Every time we travelled anywhere and a car was following us for any reasonable period, I would duck down out of sight on the backseat convinced that I was being pursued by someone who was out to get me. I wouldn’t sleep in the bedroom at the front of the house because a ladder could easily be propped up to reach the window.
Even today, when there are so many more frightening things bombarding young minds and kids are much more savvy, a child’s imagination is extremely vulnerable. The other day a friend of mine’s four year old daughter came home in tears from a birthday party at which the parents had stuck on a video of Indiana Jones. I don’t know which episode in the series it was but there’s not a lot of difference when you are four years old between melting Nazis, voodoo priests, or resuscitated skeletal aliens. They are all terrifying and, for a youngster unaware of the craft of special effects, all real. How could they be otherwise?
I am not sure what the answer is. I suppose bedtime fear has been and will always be part of growing up. Children, I guess, need to be helped not to give energy to their imaginings. A looming creature on the wall may be nothing more than the shadow of a tree outside the window. But when a child invests energy in the imagined danger, it takes on a whole new, potentially threatening life.
I suspect praying with children before bedtime can help redirect energy. ”In a time to come,” predicted ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “morals will degenerate to an extreme degree. It is essential that children be reared in the Bahá’í way, that they may find happiness both in this world and the next. If not, they shall be beset by sorrows and troubles, for human happiness is founded upon spiritual behaviour.”
That would seem to be a good measuring rod for what we choose to do with our children not just at half-term but all year round. But when will the museum of spiritual behaviour and positive thinking be opening? And what would they put on display?
Filed under: Thoughts | 5 Comments
Tags: British Museum, children, kidnapping, mummy
