The way I want to live

Human history is not a history of increasing cleverness or increasing acuity of vision. It is just that we change our views. It is astonishing how many people, in this day and age, are still incredibly negative and cannot or will not change their views on certain matters. I think that no one will deny that we, Homo sapiens, are not always guided by reason. I tend to agree with Schopanoer, the German writer and philosopher who argues that human behaviour is governed not by the intellect but by the irrational impulses of the human will – which includes ambition, hate and sexual desires.

A central concern in my thought is that man is a being unique on this earth; he is endowed with an essential worth that exists nowhere else in the known world. Man is a being who may easily be degraded, but to degrade him is wrong. If he is debased, man is forced either to succumb or to defend himself and fight for his own human dignity.

In some of his Songs, Gustav Mahler says

Man languishes in great need
Man languishes in great pain

I agree, there are indeed great needs and great pain for us human beings on this earth; but I cannot help thinking that there is one kind of pain that we bring on ourselves and as long as there are people who cannot or will not change their views on certain matters, there will always be murders and totally unnecessary degradation of certain people and, in consequence, rebelliousness and retaliation with disastrous results, which is horrible, despicable and totally unacceptable. This is not a way to live! As it is, I feel bitterly, bitterly disturbed and ill at ease.

I am referring to the unreasonable question of intolerance on the part of white people against black people and black people against white people. To me, a perfectly ordinary person, I cannot see any sense in this kind of attitude. Even if one does not subscribe to any particular canon or credo in any religious faith, one cannot help - if any one cares to reflect - to realize that people with different coloured skin have always existed and will always exist just like there are different kinds of trees and flowers. To fell down a tree or pluck out a flower just because we do not like them is totally senseless because they do exist in abundance and however much we try we will never be able to destroy every single tree or flower we do not like. People, like trees and flowers, are part of nature and have always existed and will always exist. To kill one man or to bully and harass him until he commits suicide just because he is White or Asian or Black – how does this resolve one’s problem? Furthermore, I simply cannot see how, because someone is White, Asian or Black, affect me in any way and that I have to take those drastic actions against them. The fact of the matter is that our profession on this earth is to die and that is irrespective of whether one is White, Asian or Black. It is this mortal life and nothing else that we should consider and reflect upon.

We perfectly ordinary people cannot grasp what is going on in the mind of some people who, though possess with an immensity of a complexity of a brain, with which they can achieve almost anything they want, and yet say absolute barbaric inhumanities. I prefer to say that this is outside my range of outstanding.

One cannot listen to Gustav Mahler’s music without confronting the question of music as an expression of life. The “Adagietto” in his 5th Symphony is a case in point. And there are so many examples of this in his music. Mahler’s music takes one beyond what one is able to bear, because it is the relief and because it is the freedom. Music, like Mahler and Bach’ music, help us to touch something that is eternal and greater than ourselves.

A few years ago, I witnessed something on television that brought tears to my eyes and it still does whenever I watched this particular programme on my video. It was at a performance of the Vienna “New Years Day” concert and while the orchestra was playing a waltz – “Roses from the South”, incidentally, one of my favourites – something happened that I have never seen before, something that touched me very, very deeply: The Vienna Choir boys distributed flowers to members of the audience – European, Chinese, Black people, any one. I thought, that is what I want to see, all the time, all over the world, no crime of any sort, just pure love for every human being. This is the way I want to live!

France Chorley