Paul Gauguin's character fascinates many critics of Western civilization, and in this context he rightly pointed out the importance of A. Danek ("Think Poland No. 15-16, 9-16 April 2023).
Gauguin as an outstanding artist was a peculiar case, but the phenomenon he presented through his departure from Europe to Tahiti with a complete change of way of life (before that he was a broker, he had a wife and children he abandoned) had a broader scope and deeper and more many than only artistic or individual causes, which is why it is worth paying attention to the immense changes in civilization that are taking place today.
Europeans have come into contact with more primitive or "less developed" ways of surviving since the large geographical discoveries. It was a kind of paradox that the inhabitants of the Old Continent, along with the improvement of shipping technology, could travel further and at the same time get to know peoples more and more technically backward. Before that, the only viable alternate was the muslim countries, on their way to them the Crusaders caught on about Byzantium, with uncommon news about another planet in the Far East. The differences, however, were not crucial adequate to let for a view of civilization as such, with as much distance as it did erstwhile the overseas territories were discovered. The Muslim countries, the Byzantium, India and China could not be said to have been savages, the more innocent and noble and, above all, defenceless.
The longing and fashion for the “nobility savage” began to be more popular in the 18th century. Then the first European ships reached the “happy island” in the southwest Pacific. The most spectacular example of the seduction by the paradise that was found there was the case of the Bounty ship and the rebellion of parts of the crew. The rebellion on “Bounty” inspired large directors and actors – there are at least 3 awesome screenings of this communicative and is possibly 1 of the most spectacular challenges cast by Western civilization, a voice of refusal to proceed along this way of development, which has just drawn in the industrial revolution of the British monarchy.
During my youth “flee” from the PRL to the West, sailors from the “Bounty” “flee” from the West in “wild”. What tempted the leader of Fletcher Christian and his companions to specified a desperate step for which the gallows threatened? What is conspicuous as 1 of the most crucial motives was the anticipation of satisfying sexual needs, having children and starting families, whatever the second means. The position of sailors on His Majesty's ships in those days was akin to that of a slave without a greater chance of a future another than death from sickness or wounds on the ship, and the only women he had to deal with were port prostitutes. The food on the ships was mostly moldy, discipline was maintained by whipping and another physical penalties.
Tahiti with its mildly warm climate, easy to satisfy hunger, lush vegetation, and a fish-filled ocean already made it a contrast not only to the conditions of the ship, but besides to the stinking British cities of the 18th and 19th centuries. The ease of establishing relationships with local women whose attitude towards sex was diametrically different from what prevailed in the age-old burgher Puritanism of large Britain was an additional asset. Denis Diderot In the book referred to by A. Danek, he attributes the top affirmative difference to Polynesia compared to the Western countries of his day. Listen: “If a girl becomes pregnant, and it turns out that the child’s father is simply a young man, a beautiful, well - built, courageous, intelligent, hard - working man, the hope that the kid will inherit his virtues awakens fresh joy. Only a bad choice brings shame to a girl... Look at me: how do you think? There are 10 1000 more grown men, strong men, but not 1 braver than me; so mothers frequently urge me to their daughters.”
So we are dealing with not only a extremist deficiency of pruderia, but besides an approach that takes into account the principles of natural eugenics. On the another hand, the problem of overcrowding was not taken seriously, which in the Pacific islands was governed by wars, completed slaughters, and the eating of excess competitors, before being fattened in bamboo cages.
The rebels from the Bounty wanted to take refuge from the anger of the British admiralty, as in those days despite the deficiency of satellites and electronics was almost as hard as present the U.S. revenge outlet by E. Snowden or J AssangeThey were looking for a decently hidden paradise. The consequence of this search was a landing on the lost Pacific island of Pitcairn. There were 9 Europeans, 6 Polynesians and 12 local women (vahine) on the Bounty. In a short time, there was a common slaughter on the island, the main motive of which was the shortage of women (those who were de facto kidnapped on the Bounty), and the racial division was besides important, the whites tried to make the Polynesians a kind of serfs and, above all, limited the number of women they were assigned.
In the first phase, each white man had his vahine while six Polynesians had to satisfy 3 erstwhile 1 of the white smith's women died (his skills provided him with a strong position in the group) and it was decided to compensate him for this deficiency by taking another vahine to the Polynesians, then a ruthless conflict began. As a result, with a large share of vahine, who at a crucial minute murdered (poisoned) respective of their compatriots, there were 4 whites and 9 vahine who were shared jointly. Later, another white man was removed from this planet who fell into alcoholism and applied what we call home force today, then 2 killed the 3rd and 1 of the survivors died. erstwhile 18 years later, in 1808, an American seal huntsman ship came to the island, only 1 of the rebels – John Adams, his harem, and a large group of children remained alive. The most crucial settlement on Pitcairn present is called Adamstown, and he lived happily always after (died in 1828), as the admiralty in the Napoleonic Wars had another matters on its mind. Among the successive generations of related islanders, he had the position of a prophet, which was commanded by: “Pitcairn residents should live in marriage, but in specified a fewer societies the anticipation of getting a wife for themselves may sometimes be limited, so it is not lawful for a man or a female to search out-of-marriage connections to condemn morally.” Idylla ended in 1886, erstwhile a missionary of the Adventist sect arrived on the island and shortly “converted” the inhabitants.
The phenomenon of abandoning Western civilization and fleeing to a more simple way of life, the case of which illustrates the past of rebellion on Bounty is devoted to the work Tomasz Sikorski "Precursors of Green Anarchism. La Belle Epoque’. In it the author shows the past of the trend of agrarian founding popular at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, in establishing self-sufficient communes by anarchist protoecologists of that era. Their past was not as dramatic as the "Bounty" crews, but usually failed after a fewer years. The main reason for the disintegration of communities, or as anyone would prefer, were conflicts against the background of women's-men's relations (they frequently adhered to the principles of free love) and money, although many of them were powered from the outside by eccentric millionaires or successful artists or intellectuals.
This is besides at the time erstwhile the fashionable agrarian communes of Gauguin emigrated to Tahiti. A deeper intellectual analysis of the painter's character and deep motives of his conduct was given in his biography of the fresh “Moon and Copper” by the celebrated English author Somerset Maugham. Unlike the “Bounty” sailors Gauguin did not look for easy and incompatible sex on Tahiti, at least not just him. According to Maugham, 1 of the crucial reasons for his decision was the full form of the male-female relation in the then bourgeois Europe. In an alter ego fresh Gauguin named Strickland he dumped not only his wife and children, but besides a mistress who had previously abandoned a painter's benefactor for him and committed suicide following Strickland's departure. The author puts the following words into the painter's mouth:
“When a female loves you, she will not be happy until she gets the soul of a loved one. due to the fact that she is weak, she is consumed by the desire for rulership. He won't be happy with anything else. Her tight head defends itself from abstraction that she cannot comprehend. She's obsessed with material things and she's jealous of ideas. The soul of a man wanders in the most sublime areas of the universe, and she tries to trap her in the ellipse of matters covered by the household budget. Do you remember my wife? I saw Blanche slow effort all her tricks. With infinite patience, she set snares and prepared to entangle me. She was trying to get me to her level. Actually, she didn't care. She just wanted me to be hers. She was willing to do anything for me but 1 thing I wanted from her: to leave me alone.”
However, the narrator of the fresh in which Maughama himself can be surmised wrote: “Strickland’s sex train took small space among Strickland’s life interests. He was nothing. He was. His soul was breaking out into another areas. He had a chaotic temperament, and sometimes lust mastered his body with so much force that he threw himself into the orgy of sensuality, but hated the instincts that drove him out of balance. In my opinion, art is simply a manifestation of sexual instinct. It is the same feeling that awakens in the human heart at the sight of a beautiful woman, the Gulf of Naples in the light of the moon or Titian's laying to the grave... Even to me, it seems unusual that I can consider him a large idealist, showing him at the same time as a cruel, selfish, violent and sensual man. However, the facts stay facts.’ At Tahiti Strickland, he found a solution to his problems in the form of inexpensive life – specified a kind of today's guaranteed income and local vahine, which dealt with the preparation of meals, home and, above all, spent most of the time in the company of children and many families. erstwhile he became ill, she looked after him heroically until she died.
Similarly, the problem A. Schopenhauer, however, extends the origin of dislike of companionship to all that he wrote the delights of sensitivities which: “they consist in seeing, feeling, practicing poetry, painting and sculpture, music, science, reading, meditating, making inventions, philosophizing, etc.” He himself severely beat up a alien whose loud gandering disrupted his thinking, resulting in him having to pay her a pension for the remainder of his anger's sacrifice's life, and her death with sentiment: “No 1 grieved.” Today, the majority of intellectuals in the introduction to their works place like a home declaration of loyalty on the ground during the times of socialism, ensuring that the author is grateful to his wife for being graciously sustained with him erstwhile he thought, wrote, did not play, was apart.
It is not clear what share in specified a degree of devotion of the Polynesian vahine Strickland had of individual feeling, local upbringing of women, or the fact that Strickland, despite his individual poverty, belonged to a race seen in Polynesia as a race higher and desirable in the process of reproduction, according to the approach presented in this passage by the protagonist of dialog D. Diderot. Was he not any kind of Western man present seeking happiness in love in the Far East countries, and the fact that he was an artist who could make it regardless of where he lived just made it easier for him?
How very specific, culturally dependent and unnatural from the male point of view are male-damese relationships in Western industrial civilization I realized erstwhile while I was in Brussels erstwhile in a mixed, loudly witty, cheerful global group we were looking for a cafe and someway we entered an arabian place. There was silence, there were no women, men of all ages spoke quietly, played games, drank something, or in awe smoked. They threw our group at us with a look we rapidly retreated. There was no apparent hostility, alternatively a gentle disregard with a barely palpable but clear shade of pity. We went back rapidly to find a place full of noise, flashing lights and idle flirting in accordance with the requirements of our civilization at its present stage. 1 of the sharpest chroniclers of the fall of the West besides writes about the enticing attractiveness of Muslim matrimony relationships in his novels (a good example is “Relension”). Michel Houellebecq.
In turn Janusz Korwin-Mikke stated in 1 message that it was precisely the highly strict or simply boring and conflicting rules of male-dame relations that made Europeans conquer the world. Going to his proverbial second end would so besides be a refuge not only from monogamy, Puritan rules, but besides as in Gauguin's case, from a model so called partnership, romantic, from the constant “walk and stay of couples” visible on pedestrians and cafes of European cities full of families or only “nuclear” unions. 1 might add that in specified a way the dramas which caused this moral coercion (in Freud's language culture as a origin of suffering) resulted not only in the conquest of the world, but besides in wonderful literature, ba, possibly a large part of all large works. The question in this context is whether Gauguin born of Tahiti would have become a artist at all, would he have appreciated the beauty surrounding him being immersed in him from birth?
This relation between suffering, hardship and creativity is besides 1 of the main themes of anti-utopia presented in the fresh “A fresh large World” Aldous Huxley.
One of her protagonists – rejected by the tribe surviving in the reservation and for this reason the isolated chaotic 1 was delighted by the accidentally found volume of Shakespeare's works, in the fresh large planet they were strictly forbidden, as they were born from suffering, were created in pain, “determined” and caused anxiety in the “butted” and decently conditioned within the caste to which they were destined alf, bet, gamma and another classes of a new, better society, in which everyone was always happy. Men's and Women's Relations are treated in the fresh large planet very likewise to their description which he placed in his poem D. Diderot. The difference is that they are separated from the reproductive process. However, taboos exist, they are only reversed. The rebels flee in the other direction, in limitations, in sexual shame, suffering, in hardship, renunciation and loneliness (this is suspected or even forbidden). Their rebellion stems from method malpractice in the process of booting, with not adequate excellent conditionality.
Happiness understood as a constant deficiency of any obstacles to gathering the needs, or even momentary desires, in the absence of having to overcome difficulties or solve problems, stood in the opinion of the Huxley rulers of anti-utopia in the fundamental opposition to fact and beauty. They were achieved with what can be called the physiology of life, soma dosage and conditionality by constantly repeating simple slogans resembling calls for vaccination or condemnation of Russian onuc. But the highest values of the planet were: community, identity, stability.
Pandemic, vocalism, climateism, war perfectly fits this strategy of values. For 2 years it was essential to behave foolishly and ridiculously to "protect others", it is essential to be identical in order for no 1 to feel offended and yet to "protect the climate" in order to be unchangeable like a well-managed orangery. In this context, the English word sustainability, specifically sustainable development, is simplistic, fatally translated into Polish as "sustainable development". Well, sustainable improvement with no improvement has nothing to do with, sustaining the current state, possibly forever. This word so means a more model resembling a perpetuum mobile, a rat reel, a closed circuit that is intended to deny the laws of space, nature and entropy, although it is in the presumption and in declarations akin to the relation with nature in conventional agrarian or even gathering-thinking communities.
Can we from a civilization subordinated to “sustainable development” as suggested by A. Danek and as P. Gauguin did 130 years ago to escape? Hide in tropical wilderness or Podlasie? This is the way he tried in Huxley Wild's fresh and the strategy errors 2 another heroes, in our planet their equivalent Teodor Kaczyński author of the celebrated "Unabomber Manifesto". However, erstwhile lumberjacks arrived close his hut in Montana, then Kaczyński started something Huxley presented as a bow shooting to helicopters. In both cases it did nothing, and for authors it ended tragically.
The 2 remaining unsuited characters of Huxley's fresh were sent to the islands – Falkland Islands, Iceland, Samoa being any kind of reserves, where individuals were placed under strict control who had a conditionality mistake or any malpractice in the booting process.
Teodor Kaczyński considered the main culprit and eater of the values that we value technology. It is thanks to technology that easy to meet basic needs would be the origin of the search for another ways of discharge of civilization, left-wing autoaggression. On the another hand, the complexity of the technological planet in itself is forcing more and more regulations and regulations to restrict freedom. The case of the Amish, who, as part of their doctrine, have perceived that technology has an impact on the foundations of the community, and as any of the few, they are in effective opposition to industrial civilization, confirms this diagnosis and there is no point in angering Marx claiming otherwise. In this context, I do not think that those who ignore the impact of technology on morals and another areas of life are right, standing in the position that it is adequate and that conventional values can be preserved and everything else will work itself out. specified religion puts them at a loss, due to the fact that a false position in the fight against the imagination of the planet they symbolize Klaus Schwab or Juwal Noach Harari.
Technology shapes consciousness. People surviving in a different environment become different. In addition to technology in the conventional sense, social psychology, the art of human conditioning, has made large advancement in the last century, we would say "the technology of human resource management". Public panic is needed little often, it is adequate to be professionally aroused fear, hatred, deliberately maintained ignorance and appropriate conditioning. The fight between the last existing powers before the advent of 1 global power is not only about the resources or territories, but besides about the "who destabilizes whom", hence any and others support freedom or indicate hypocrisy, but only in the camps of their opponents. Everyone in his own home is increasingly limiting in the liberal sense of law and freedom for the full control possible through the improvement of technology.
Mustafa Mond The ruling Huxley planet was benevolent and did not usage almost at all violence, but the rape scenes applied to the not rather well-conditioned members of the society we watched during the "pandemic" that we see almost all day in France or the war in Ukraine show that power has and does not hesitate to usage specified a tool and that behind Mustafa Mondem there is besides a more brutal face of the Orwellian large Brother.
Kaczyński in his manifesto slipped over only 1 of the most crucial reasons for the improvement of fresh technologies, namely combat and competition. Mustafa Mond in Huxley’s fresh points to war as an chance to strengthen control: “However, unlimited technological investigation was inactive allowed. There was inactive talk of fact and beauty as the highest good. Until the nine-year war. It just made me change my tone. What's the truth, beautiful or cognition erstwhile there's a burst of bacteriological bombs? This was the first time that discipline began to control: after the nine-year war. People at that time were ready to control even their appetite. All in the name of a peaceful life. always since then, we've been in constant control. Of course, it did not work out for health, but for happiness."
So possibly the current war in Ukraine is specified a equivalent of the “nine-year war”, and after its completion and the establishment of a fresh planet order, the improvement of technology will slow down, and the rulers of the planet will be able to combine the other of the charms of the first paradise on Tahiti and industrial civilization into a controlled by Artificial Intelligence digital synthesis, and it is unconsciously like the conviction of destiny with specified enthusiasm that Klaus Schwab and his followers implement.
Only at what price will it be, and will we be happy then, as they believed in the fresh planet of Alphas, Betas, Gammas, and the epsilons, and why would Aldous Huxley be so ferociously mocked, and why would he stand up to the devilish laughter? Or, alternatively of focusing our efforts on condemning Harari's ideas, should we present and, as far as we can, implement another, better utopia – synthesis?
Olaf Swolkień
Illustration: Paul Gauguin "Two Thaitenkos"
Think Poland, No. 10-20 (7-14.05.2012)
