['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a
column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day,
Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Scroll down for previous articles]
Ages
ago, the Advanced Level physics syllabus had a section on properties of
matter. I vaguely remember the teacher talking about viscosity. There
were some theories and probably formulae, but I’ve forgotten them all. I
want to write about property and properties, so I looked up the term.
Apparently it’s about characteristics that can be measured, for example
‘an object’s density, color, mass, volume, length, malleability, melting
point, hardness, odor, temperature etc.
Measurable. That’s the
key term here. And that’s a fixation that has contributed to a lot of
tragedies including the crises of civilisation and humanity. The world
has by and large learned to believe that whatever cannot be measured
either does not exist or is, well, immaterial. And so the decisions are
based on a body of knowledge that leaves out things that cannot be
measured or categorised. And we wonder what went wrong!
Of
course there’s nothing intrinsically wrong or bad in material things.
The issue lies in how we consider them and how we relate to them. If you
see things as property, given general trends or rather notions that
have been made to appear like general laws (remember, as Pierre Bourdieu
once put it succinctly, what goes without saying [actually] comes
without saying), you tend to perceive them in that eminently problematic
binary — mine or not mine. In other words it becomes an issue of
ownership.
It is perhaps not an accident that the words
property and propriety (fitness, proper character) are derivatives of
the same Latin root, proprieties (‘a peculiarity, one’s peculiar nature
or quality, right or fact of possession, property’), which gave the Old
French ‘propreté,’ and ‘proprieté.’ So we have learned to see these two
as related and sometimes two sides of a single coin.
Now
consider the properties or characteristics that are not of the material
kind and the relevance of propriety and ownership. Something like love,
for example. It simply defies definition. Perhaps this is why the focus
is on the object or person associated with the sentiment, i.e the lover
or the one enamoured with. It is not an accident, I feel, that people
refer to the person they love as ‘my love.’ And once corporeality is
inscribed on the sentiment, immediately we are faced with the issue of
ownership, of exclusivity and a whole corpus of propriety-rules.
She’s
mine. He’s mine. Hands off. It all boils down to such things. And, as
though norms of engagement are not strong enough to affirm the
principle, laws are formulated.
A young man recently told me, ‘I
want her, I want her to be mine.’ I asked him, ‘You want to own her?’
‘Yes!’ That was his immediate response. I asked him, after a pause,
‘haven’t you ever wondered that the more beautiful and tender desire
would be that of wanting to belong to her?’
He was silent for a
while, this poet cousin who knew how to declare love in a thousand ways
and in another thousand ways convey his anxieties, sorrows and
helplessness on account of unrequited love. Then he said, ‘I had never
thought of it that way.’
Since faith is one of those things that
people are particularly fascinated about and are attached to, a few
religious or philosophical questions might help unravel the knotted
issue of ownership and belonging.
Does the cross (as associated
with Jesus Christ and not the pagan faiths which used the same symbol
long before the crucifixion) belong to Christians? Do Christians or some
of them at least instead believe that they belong to the cross (and
what it symbolises)? Is god someone’s private property or are theists
convinced that they belong to some omnipotent entity? Do those of the
Islamic faith believe that Allah belongs to those who accept the word of
Prophet Muhammed with regard to god and no one else or do some of them
at least feel that faith is about accepting and belonging rather than
jealously guarding a name or doctrine as though it were private
property?
Other articles in this series:
The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha
Signatures in the seasons of love
To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows
Fragrances that will not be bottled
Colours and textures of living heritage
Countries of the past, present and future
Books launched and not-yet-launched
The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains
Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace
The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville
Live and tell the tale as you will
Between struggle and cooperation
Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions
Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers
Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills
Serendipitous amber rules the world
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