Aureate...

XV.

“And those who husbanded the Golden Grain

And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain

Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn’d

As, buried once, Men want dug up again.”

We live in a world where everyone is unnaturally obsessed with themselves. Our culture is one where the ego is always front and centre: we take photographs of ourselves; we list the minutiae of our daily lives on social media; we carry a sharp (and, frankly, offensive) sense of entitlement with us wherever we go. It’s all about Us. Or rather, Me.

Fortunately, this isn’t the first time that such attitudes have proliferated, and, conversely, it probably won’t be the last. One hundred years ago, the prominent generation of the time thought that it knew best and that it had The Answer; those youngsters blithely went to War, took drugs, or embraced radical lifestyle choices, thinking that their sole input would be the difference that would tip the state of affairs in Our Favour. In its way it was a stark relief from the stultified inactivity of the previous generation, which had slipped into a malaise, unable to see a way forward from the many woes which beset the civilisation; but equally, it was brash and unconsidering, prone to grand gestures which could cause more damage than they solved. This is not to say that either generation got it right; as usual there was a middle way which, if taken, might have had different consequences. It’s the “Me-ness” of the activity that is its hallmark, and which is doomed – apparently – to come around in cycles.

FitzGerald and Omar talk about this phenomenon in this quatrain. “Who do you think you are?” they seem to say. “Of what value are you exactly?” And, almost inevitably, “Think again!” You might be a miser, hoarding all of your money and thinking that whoever dies with the most, wins; or you might be a wastrel, throwing away your cash on anything that catches your eye. Whichever hat you wear in life, at the moment of death you are indistinguishable from anyone else. Dead is dead. There are no winners. After it’s all over, you’re just a bunch of spoiling chemicals in a container rapidly losing cohesion; regardless of what you did in life, you end up in a hole and no-one will want to dig you up for a look-see.

No-one gets turned into gold – “aureate Earth”. No-one is more valuable or special than anyone else. Death is the great leveller.

This might seem to be an overly pessimistic view of things, but, as often happens with these two poets, there is a potential silver lining. While we are all equal, they say, our actions have a degree of permanence which lives on after us. We have the ability to create change. We are not the gold we use to facilitate our schemes and plans: that gold exists apart from us. What we do with it defines us.

The Ancient Egyptians knew this also, as revealed by this inscription:

“The strength of the Pharaoh lies in Justice.

A Destroyer’s monuments are themselves destroyed.

The acts of a Liar do not last.”

-Kanais, Inscription of Seti I

Even Pharaoh, an incarnate divine being to the Egyptian way of thinking, was not important in and of himself – it is his Justice wherein lies his strength. Justice – lawmaking; governmental control – exists apart from Pharaoh and lives on after his death. Further, Seti goes on to qualify the actions of living beings: those of a destructive bent are themselves destroyed, with all of their works; liars are eventually discovered. The Egyptians believed in a concept called “Ma’at”, often translated as “Truth”, but more accurately meaning “Correctness”. There is a way in which things should be done, a measure against which actions are judged: those who flouted the tenets of Ma’at were in for a sticky end.

The deeds of an individual stand apart from them and define their value; this is what Omar and FitzGerald (and the Ancient Egyptians) seem to be saying. Good or bad, these are the things that we leave behind us after we’ve turned to dirt. The implication seems to be that we shouldn’t think too highly of ourselves as individuals: we should just get on with things and try to leave behind the sort of legacy that will serve the goals to which we adhere.

Your name might get slapped on a new public library; you might make headlines after you walk into a subway station with a backpack of TNT strapped to you; someone might name a new species of chewing louse in honour of you; you might have cast the deciding vote allowing deadly weapons to be available for public sale. Many years later, people may wonder how that library got there, or why exactly they have to surrender their luggage for inspection when getting on a train; or how to pronounce the word “garylarsonii”. Or they might rail against the stupidity which led to a sharp rise in annual gun fatalities. And they might be motivated to dig deep and examine the various circumstances. What they won’t remember, is YOU.

One clod of dirt looks much the same as another.