“Our view of the world depends on who we are and where we come from.”
SATURDAY REFLECTION IN THE MEREDITH GAZETTE
“Our place in the world and us”, by Jeffery Smart.
You remember the story that featured in the Meredith Gazette last week about Fred Davis, the property developer. Fred was on a get rich quick fix. He was encouraging people to buy into his big Australian Dream scheme – own your own house with a next to nothing loan. Fred himself, was not just into owing one house, but into owning whole estates. Never mind that people often could not pay back the money, or that his company often ended up buying back a cheap house after a lot of trauma.
How could you forget Fred!
I was thinking about Fred when I went to see Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which was staged by Meredith Theatre Company last week.
I was looking forward to Scott Johnson’s adaptation of the play, and in particular the performance of Henry Stanton, our very own local star, who debuted recently in a performance by Playbox. Indeed Miller makes you think about the similarities between Fred and Willy and whether our Australian Dream is so very different from the American. Are these narratives a product of place or just a matter of simply being human with simple desires and haunting fears?
Willy lives the American dream, which is not very different to the Australian dream of owning your own house and living a full-to-the-brim life based on aspirational self-improvement. Willy aspires to bring home a steady income and put substantial meals on the table for his two boys and wife. But more than that, he aspires to be somebody; to his eternal shame thought he fails to achieve the same of wealth, popularity and likeability as his heroes, Ben and Dave. The director cleverly portrays Willy as a strong man, but weak on the outside with the use of lighting and sound effects.
As the self-made man, Ben epitomises the American Dream and appears as a product of time and place. He is a likeable character despite or because of his executive-style suitcase and bundles of cash. He is one of those who achieves his dream and haunts everyone as a reminder of their failure. Moving over to Alaska to mine for diamonds, following, the ‘get rich’ syndrome, he shoots home to Willy his inability to part the waves. Ben strategically enters the stage at critical moments to reinforce Willy’s despair and his mental fragility. He reminds Willy of his delusions. No wonder Willy is quick to put his head in the oven!
Which brings me back to my original point. Are people like Ben, Dave, Willy and Fred specific to their time and place or are they tapping into something universal about who we are?
Are they just living out their own individual dreams and desires in different ways? Or is it a combination of both? And what about Biff, also living in the same time and place.
In this sense, the audience cannot help admiring Biff. In one way, he, too, is influenced by place in opposing ways to Willy and resentfully rejects Willy’s dream. On the other hand, he is living out a universal human desire to be just himself. He enjoys the simple pleasures of life and wants to enjoy the fruits of his labour, working with his “shirt off”.
(Perhaps not during our Australian summers.) But he follows the dictates of his heart or the Shakespearean maxim: “unto thine own self be true”.
On another note, I recently attended the release of the new docudrama by Matt Coyte on the “Boston Marathon bombers”. Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is ambiguously depicted as both victim and villain: the foppish boy next-door anti-hero as well as the ugly face of home-grown terrorism. The movie challenges us to see Tsarnaev as both a product of place (exclusion) as well as a misguided individual caught up in his brother’s paranoid desire for revenge and notoriety, that is “who we are”. Furthermore, by presenting Tsarnaev as a pleasant and likeable type of character, the director challenges our own concept of evil. He asks what do we expect to see when we think about evil? The same question can be asked about other concepts that are fundamental to who we are, such as goodness, happiness and love. Perhaps these are all about who we are in a simple way. But this “me” is also a complex mix of factors such as time, experience, background, family, culture and society. The list never ends.
After seeing the film, I have since pinned on the walls of my office one of my favourite poems. In “Mending the Wall”, Robert Frost symbolically represents two neighbours, living literally side by side, but instinctively having different world views. It doesn’t seem to matter where we are. “Who” we are is a different thing. Evidently, our intuitive sense of the world around us as well as perhaps our experiences, background, perception and intelligence, conspire to influence our reality. The narrator instinctively does not like the wall, “something there is that doesn’t love a wall”. Alternatively, the neighbour believes that, “good fences make good neighbours’. He appears conditioned, perhaps by his father, to view the wall as a necessary territorial device that wards out the gremlins.
The narrator is one who seems to have the confidence to “peep” into his soul and search for freedom and happiness in the world outside that has no borders.
Perhaps Biff has the right idea after all, but it takes courage to be who we are.
Spinning reality in our favour: on the art of deception
“Unto thine own self be true” by Mr Gale Jockers.
Mr Jockers is a youth lifestyle mentor and counsellor. The following article was published recently in the Wellbeing Youth Magazine sponsored by Deer Council.
Firstly, let me share with you a story of a client of mine, Steve, (whose name I’ve changed for privacy). He thought that if he worked hard enough and for long enough he could own his own house, his own car, everything he could ask for. Just flick his fingers. However, he thought, too, that he just needed to convince all those around him, and he would begin to believe his own myth. When his own family began to realise that many of his plans had already evaporated, and that much of the money he earned was already spent on higher purchase, they began to ask questions. And the more questions they asked, the more Steve cracked, and like a hairy, desperate rabbit, got caught in his own trap.
Treating him was a scary but humbling experience, and I was always aware of just how close to a knife’s edge we were, especially when I started to become aware of a trail of failed car crashes. So do you take away the keys and the very edifice upon which his dream is based, or do you water the illusions and hope that they will bear fruit?
For those of you who enjoyed the recent performance of Death of a Salesman, staged by Deer Council’s Youth Group, let us reflect on the attempts of Willy and Biff Loman to find a degree of “truth” among the debris of their lives. Are there lessons for us?
My whole life has been a “ridiculous lie” says Willy Loman shortly before his death.
Could he have saved his life with a bit more honesty?
The famous New Orlean’s salesman imagined that his funeral would be a pompous affair. Sadly, only a teary-eyed family and a few distressed relatives turned up.
Willy it seems died because he had run out of lies.
As Dorothy Rowe states in her newly released book Why we lie, it is important that we learn to live more authentically. She says we must be honest in a way that is not geared to harm others. With children, we must be truthful in a way they are able to understand and deal with; honesty becomes a part of them. “Truth-telling is really quite difficult but it’s a task that we really ought to improve in the way we do it,” she says.
If we must lie to others, Rowe writes, we must do it knowing that we are lying and be aware that there will be unintended and unimagined consequences.
“Never lie to yourself,” she implores us. “By recognising your own truths, no matter how painful and saddening these might be, you make yourself into a whole person who is much better able to deal with whatever life throws at you.”
Unfortunately, Willy Loman lived his life far removed from Rowe’s values and paid the price. Herein lies a lesson for all of us who are trying to lead a life according to the dictates of our materialistic rat trap institutions.
However, perhaps we might also ponder whether our chances of surviving better if we deceive and evade the truth? For a time, Willy Loman certainly thinks they are. He believes he may just become like his idol Dave Singleman.
Indeed, this question continues to vex social critics and commentators and there seems to be good reasons to evade the truth, and equally good reasons to be truthful. Does telling the truth help or hinder our survival? Do we pay a price for distorting the truth?
Contrasting to Rowe’s ideas, Ian Leslie contends in Born Liars that we need to distort the truth and evade our predators if we are to survive. It is after all part of our ancestry. Indeed, we have a tendency to see things in our own favour and this often helps to protect our self esteem and our dignity; creativity with regards to the truth helps us find our place in a difficult and often hostile world.
In May, an interesting article in New Scientist titled “The Grand Delusion” focussed on how we never actually see what is really around us. We are, it suggested, designed to deceive ourselves. Probing this aspect from an evolutionary point of view, Leslie writes about how baboons, as well as other primates, octopuses, birds, snakes and even some plants, regularly use deceit to survive. For humans, lying and deception have been essential to us surviving how else could we evade predators, snare food, seduce mates and outdo our competitors?
But Willy’s tendency to deceive leaves him feeling “temporary”. He becomes suicidal and betrays all those he loves. Sadly, he too, tried to destroy the life of his son who was trying to lead a more authentic life.
We all share no doubt in the enormous pain suffered by Biff who was only trying to tell his father a small, honest trifle.
A trifle that was so much bigger than himself. Biff rejects the American dream of opportunity and wealth (cult of personality) that consumes Willy. He rejects materialistic false competitive values that judge a man according to his status, reputation and the brand of his car and size of his house. He rejects a system where people feel a need to “get ahead of the next fella”. All he wants to do is “be outdoors, with your shirt off”. (16)
Perhaps there is a lesson for us all in Biff’s desire. He states there is “nothing more inspiring – or beautiful than the sight of a mare and a new colt” (16). And yet his tragedy is that he cannot be fulfilled or feel satisfied because he has been pumped full of “false pride” and false ideals and false values. He feels a failure because he is not participating in the materialistic rat race. Sadly, Biff was never allowed to be true to himself and this is a tragedy for those who just want to be their natural selves and follow their heart’s desire.
Willy would have benefit from some sage advice from Dorothy Rowe. As she states, if we do lie, we must be aware that there will be unintended and unimagined consequences. “Never lie to yourself. By recognising your own truths, no matter how painful and saddening these might be, you make yourself into a whole person who is much better able to deal with whatever life throws at you.” Such are the facts of life.
It is now more important than ever for people to ensure that they construct a reality that stays as true as possible to their core beliefs and desires. Don’t be swayed. Don’t indulge in false pretences.
Do not be swayed from your course. Do not live your life to please another. Do not allow yourself to be fooled into believing that another’s dream will satisfy you.
Let us take to heart Shakespeare’s advice: “unto thine own self be true”.
Prompt: To challenge social expectations may be both destructive and enlightening.
Social expectations : the driving force by Gale Smithers, social commentator.
Last week, I interviewed a man who exposed all that is wrong with society. And yet, as I will reveal, his dramatic change in circumstances shows us that in some ways, everything is fine.
The 38-year-old businessman was on a get-rich quick fix. Chase money, look good and you’ll find happiness and success. Lots of it. He jokingly told me, “I can park my car in any street in New England and the cops protect it like their own’’.
He had a very blokey, jokey sort of personality so you couldn’t help but like him, but there was something fishy. I smelt a rat right from the start.
I have written extensively on the phoniness of looking good. Most of us have at some stage been found guilty of wanting to be somebody else. Who doesn’t want to be the slickest guy with the raciest car and sauciest blonde?
Well, this 38-year old Mr GetRich Quick came to the interview, dressed in a skin tight blue suit with a $400 hair cut. He had blonde tips to match his gold cuff links.
His false nature and persona were immediately apparent to me when he stepped through the door of our humble coffee shop and waved good bye to his sycophantic limousine driver.
But he was nervous the whole time I spoke to him, fidgeting his cuff links and smoothing his smooth hair.
Fast-track two months. Here was a guy who greeted me with a calm smile and a steady hand. Gone were the fashionable tips and the racy car. He opened his own doors! And no blokey jokes.
He said he had only just recovered from a terrible fall. A fall from grace. A fall into the light. Something had recently happened to our number 1 businessman and property developer. He had starting uncovering shady deals that his office had been making with his authorisation and signature.
His company with his knowledge had been seizing people’s houses when they were unable to pay back their mortgages. This also included taking all their prized possessions. Their furniture, jewellery, wedding rings gone. On the surface he appeared to be thriving with this immoral business enterprise as a good businessman would. Just as the wall street journal would expect ‘greed is good’. And clearly he had adopted this image and tried to the best of his ability get rich by ruining the lives of others.
One day, he visited a family whose house he had claimed. They had nothing. They were forced to live with three small children with their parents. All clammed up in one four bedroom, he thought he was in another country. He couldn’t believe how poor they had become.
He informs me that, in a fit of conscience, he had arranged this interview and shut down this appalling enterprise. He could not live with himself.
“What do I get for looking after others?”, he asks.
“The bank has claimed my business. They foreclosed because I wanted to do the right thing and to be true to myself.”
He said he had lost friends and was having to rebuild his life. He had to start from scratch but he was happy now with just the shirt of his back and beholden to no one.
It was a long road back but he would make it.
As I have often written many times before, those of us with ‘two faces’ eventually come unstuck.
This business man had the courage to reclaim his values and do the right thing.
It’s not easy.
Sometimes we need to challenge these assumptions so as to stay true to ourselves and live a life free of moral bankruptcy.