You have five senses. Beware of those who want to control them.

July 2019

Shearing is over for another year. Because of inclement weather in early June we sheared inside one of the buildings and everything seemed to go much smoother. In retrospect, I think it was because the sheep could not see the fields and trees and the wide open spaces and, as a consequence of being confined to the walls and alleyways of the shed, their sense of freedom was restricted greatly. They could not see beyond the walls and in accepting their situation, they were therefore, easier to deal with. Restricting their vision made them easy to control.

Those who have read Gulag Archipelago by the Russian writer Solzhenitsyn will know that like sheep, when humans are confined and accept their situation, they too become easier to handle. This is how ruling elites have always tried to control the common man. Whether that elite comprises Dictators or Democrats, they all try to get what they want by restricting the vision of others.

I have a picture in my mind of Moses staggering down the mountain with a barrow full of stone tablets thinking he had got something really important, but blissfully unaware that from that day forward, leaders with a legalistic disposition would turn his tablets into zillions of reams of red tape. His guidance on the broad principles of behaviour were codified into proscriptive edicts legalising the minutia of everyday living.

Despite the evidence of history, I find it amazing that there are so many campaigning groups, academics, the broadcast media and political ideologues are all working hard to emulate the Scribes and Pharisees and restrict the vision of the ordinary person so as to compel us to see only that world which exists in their own minds. They even bully and ostracise  anyone who dares to use words and concepts that challenge the ‘woke’ view. Woe betide the man or woman who uses words that are not ‘woke’ in the lexicon of that class of people who view themselves as the liberal elite but who, in reality are intolerant of any view that challenges their own.

The New Testament makes it clear that the Ten Commandments are intended to show how to place limits on our own behaviour and that the notion of ‘Free Will is crucial to this understanding. However, it appears that some folk will not rest until they have replaced self-disciplined free-will as being the bedrock of society, by one in which folk are legalised out of bad behaviour.

The New Testament also shows us that humans are meant to have an unrestricted vision of the whole nature and process of creation. This vision is wider than any campaigning group, wider than any political ideology, and one which reaches beyond even this planet and the universe. And yet, as I |have touched on above, from Moses on-wards, people and organisations have narrowed that vision to become one of which they can themselves conceive. This perpetual narrowing of man’s vision was also noticed by the hymn writer George Rawson. Born in Leeds in 1807 and before he died in Bristol in 1889, he recognised this tendency to narrow the vision of the New Testament in the words in the hymn,

 “We limit not the truth of God to our poor reach of mind, to notions of our day and sect, crude partial and confined,” ……

Finally, talking about man’s narrow vision and rules of behaviour, brings to mind the French Philosopher Francois-Marie Rouet. Better known as Voltaire, he was born in 1694 during the time of the Enlightenment. (Age of Reason) He wrote entertainingly on history and philosophy and was, like many at the time, critical of Christianity as practiced by the established church. He was a keen advocate of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the separation of the church and state.

He was scathing of a centralised church hierarchy which, like now had too narrow a vision and was resistant to change, but had sympathy for a local priest whose ideas for change in his parish had been rejected by canonical officials. His pithy reply to the disappointed incumbent echoes today, “Our wretched species”, he said, ‘is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road”.

His wit did not wane as he aged and, as he lay on his death-bed was approached by a haughty Cardinal who admonished him to renounce Satan. Voltaire shrugged and replied,

“Now is not the time to be making new enemies.”