Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The golden chains of who we are and what we represent

Walt Disney created a cartoon with the song "whose afraid of the big bad wolf" and some anonymous person in a bar in Greenwich Village scrawled on the wall "Whose afraid of Virginia Woolf" which inspired the  title of the play/movie. The author had to get consent from the Woolf family to use the name in the title.  Now 100 years from now, we shall all most likely be dead. So why should we particularly fear being thought ill of for some less than brilliant paragraph. It has occurred to me that I have been totally free to write whatever I please precisely because I am a nobody and am not attached to any academic institution, political party or organized religion. Imagine Billy Graham and Mick Jagger are walking along the beach one day discussing their lives. Suddenly Mick Jagger is convinced of some truth in Billy Graham's life and in turn Billy Graham is convinced of some truth in Mick Jagger's life. Are EITHER of them free to pursue their new-found conviction without damaging their public image. If tomorrow Pope Benedict feels some conviction about reincarnation and the Dalai Lama feels an urge to convert to Catholicism, are they free to follow such inclinations? We are tied to our public image and what we represent. It is said that Camus approached a Baptist minister and asked if he might secretly be baptized. The minister said "No. Baptism must be a public declaration." But every word we post swirls into the search engines and remains there for who knows how long?

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