the short answer: bigger than thou in every kind of comparative status ranging from a presidency, a papacy, a world teacher, a richest man, a supreme court judgeship to lots of pennies in the begging bowl (once the media thrusts the “hunchback of notre dame” or begging buddha or papacy kind of fame upon an unknown beggar).
a name that is given at birth is not that name that is automatically attached to fame, unless being born to at least one of the two parents, whose is a well known name, like the english queen.
what is not in the name is an automatic insight in all areas of knowledge outside of the area that has made a name for one, but with the power of equation a famous person assumes to have an all round expertise. this enables a president or prime minister to have an on-air sightseeing of the flooding and storm disasters, calling it a damage survey without actually knowing what to do and helping the victims.
the nameless state of being eludes being framed with an identity that being is within and without. it is a contour-less and limitless element. it is only when some commotion is experienced as feeling pleasure or pain in the physical body that that particular area of the body gets an imaginary contoured body part that gets to be named as a particular limb or organ. otherwise, within the naturally existing body itself there is no such body part that exists separately on its own.
so, too, it is only when one’s wholesome sense of being experiences some disruption generating feeling lonesome or meaninglessness of existence in the very being that one feels (thinks) separated from other elements.
the elemental being does not have to have evolved from a big bang effect on a pea sized assumed original element. like the burst of light spherically spreads all over, and not like one on selected spot with a spotlight, and then that spotlight is reflected from there in a defined zigzag way, as the humans are said to have spread from kenya in africa. the idea of the single source origin originated from the son to father to the great grandfather, imagining the first creator named god. that is the thinking that further kept refining from father to son, much the same as any of the modern inventions that kept improvising in form and function. scientists improvise their individual variation of the earlier thinking not unlike a musician improvising on the original musical composition, one's own or someone else's.
just because man is unable to think or do something does not mean that another form of being must not envision or even create something outside of man’s manmade limitations. besides, when not thinking of forms separated by the defined contours the very notion of separation from source loses meaning. it negates the dependency or interdependency of individually identified, named and numbered elements and interest in such becomes a non functional idle curiosity.
the sanskrit word: shiva linguistically expressed a blissful state of being, which is experiential. it has no static physical shape or form. the verbal elements, as a singular or collective entity have no fixed identity. what has no identity has no form that is created or even self-born. it is only when man tries to imagine the linguistic words of expression into an audio-visual physical form he creates a philosophy and philosopher; and then the path finder and the follower; a religious concept with a plethora of non sensory forms like god, and heaven, and life after death and all that, that the seekers torture themselves in trying to attain. that is how the vedic indian and the greek and chinese and biblical philosophies are set into the motion in the minds of the well known names — moses, jesus, buddha, lao tse and the likes. except for their names and their imagined existence they are quite unknown to the nameless persons who created them by chanting their names.
universal natural being has no fixed role to play like an actor. a human being, too, not existing only physically, and existing in a male or female physical body, has many other elements that are in common to both; and both with other forms of life, and all forms of life ultimately as congregated elements with the non-elements. yet, their motivational being exists only in a certain transitory formation unique to their precise formation in a given instance. existence is not what had existed. so in the ever changing state of existence, the naming is all too far behind, and its description would be as meaningless as reading of the train schedule that has for long left the station. eternity is nothing but a never ending state, the now, which is ever continuing present.
in the past women were not allowed to act in theatre. so male actors acted in the role of females, wearing the female dress and makeup. but having all other nonphysical aspects in common, a male actor could play the female role depicting all such emotions augmented with the physical make-up. a male writer, too, can describe all the fine sense of femininity that the culturally made macho man is not supposed to display.
inside this eurocentric depiction of the male and female role-playing the adolescent girls and boys feel confused having feelings assigned exclusively to the opposite sex. male handshake is all allowed for the depiction of the male bonding. europeans seeing two oriental men walking with hands on each other’s shoulders was mistaken for the homosexuality. but even philosophically and aesthetically the expression of the bonding between the same gender is not the opposite of the sense of the wholesomeness of one’s being. the bharat natya shastra, the actor’s detailed manuscript for the depiction of the visual expressions of the nine basic moods, the aesthetic juices, show clearly how even subtle feelings of joy or sorrow etc, bring out minute changes in facial, vocal and other physical expressions. unless there is the commonality of the non physical elements to both female and male, much of fine acting and writings would not have happened. emily bronte could not have said as empathetic as cathy: “i am heathcliff” who was her soulmate in the novel: ‘the wuthering heights’ she wrote when barely above the teenage girl. and through her writings she has helped young women to assert their rights to not exist as the male subordinates.
in the greek culture and much of the cultures of the past, woman did not exist on her own outside of the culture given identity. Woman, in sanskrit poet kalidas’s expression:
- “karyeshu dasi: works like a servant
- karaneshu mantri : in activity: advises like a minister
- bhojeshu mata: feeds like a mother
- shayaneshu rambha: in bed like the heavenly beauty rambha
- roopeshu lakshmi : in beauty like goddess lakshmi
6
- kshmayeshu dharitri : in patience like earth:
woman who has these six virtues is a good housewife.
the japanese word for woman: okusan, in the past meant the housewife who stays inside the house. it in itself defines the contour around the name: woman, who was not supposed to be seen outside of her home, from which came the harem, and burkha, and in the traditional christian wedding ceremony, the priest asking: ”who gives away the bride?” and father says: “i”, who gives away the daughter to the groom. in the hindu wedding, it is called 'kanyaadaana' (kanyaa;- the virgin; daan:- to give). even the truth insisting gandhi overlooked his god rama's mistreatment of sita in favour of maintaining his role of the king. and draupadi of mahabharata was a payment in a gambling loss. of course the born again hindu would not want to know such blemishes of the cultural practices.
of course, the women's liberation movement has moved away from much of that, and yet, much of the roleplaying for the woman has only put on a new attire on an old notion of the woman as man’s property. so now man does not fight wars as it was fought over the women named helen of troy and sita of ramayana. now it is fought with the power of a purse: the diamonds and pearls and gold and fine clothes, and “the house on the hill facing south”, like the white house and the houses with the famous names. the bulk of the commercial junk is produced to keep woman confined to the definition of the word: woman. unless women reject the existing cultural identity, in all walks of life, including the cultural notion of not being noticed by men and other women, and hence having to look in the mirror in order to make-up to ask the mirror: “mirror, mirror! am i not an attractive woman?”
what inspired emily dickinson, after making a name for herself write:
i am nobody! who are you?
are you — nobody — too?
then there is a pair of us!
don’t tell! they would advertise - you know!
how dreary — to be — somebody!
how public — like a frog —
to tell one’s name — the lifelong june —
to an admiring bog!
