The Ascendancy of the Son

It is hard to say when, or by whom, but sometime in the latter half of the previous century, the son has come to replace the father as the source of our passions on the issues. We no longer seek the true and the tested, instead, we exalt the new and untested as the defining experience of our times. It is the light that touches upon and nurtures the new sprouts, to lead it to a new height of iconic experience of ourselves as humans.

Such a thing would have been considered peculiar, previously. Certainly, to throw away the stereotypes of our past endeavors is an act of great courage. To substitute in its place, new thoughts that redefine man, brings us closer to our loves and passions for that which moves us. But where does it lead us to?

The son as the basic experience of ego in the individual, loved and supported the father, raising him to an experience beyond what the son, can in vain self consciousness, refer to as himself. The father was therefore a half-half of the pillar of strength and a mirror for us to dwell on. But along the way, we became engaged with other issues in regards to the experience. The pillar of strength grew to the size of the world, fully equipped with issues of life and death, survival, success and that which defines our rationality. The mirror was an object of relation to the opposite gender, which in time has become the possession of the beholder, not the craftsman of the art.

Our response? We have cast the father to the winds and let the breezes fill its sails with whatever justification for it to move on. Like a ghost ship, it today occupies our mindset like a napkin at the table; If we don't drop our food, we won't need one. In its place, we have begun a bold new experiment; to cast the net of innocent self righteousness and claim to ourselves what is ours. Curiously, this strange act of singular audacity, has caused the father not to become less but more than what our tentative natures permitted itself to feel.

Our father today is the universe, while we, the son, have come to be identified with the human experience. Early Indian writings referred to the relationship as the Vaibhava-Prakasa, the creativeimpulse; the play between the self and its potency for growth, cultivation, attachment and object creation in the mind.

What is new in the experience, is the fact that we no longer experience it as the inactive passion based instrument of our fathers, but as the active, driving force of the impulse. We are the creative impulse, the muse and the scientist rolled into one, redrawing by the hand of god, the map of human destiny.

What the son previously assented to, by the inherent nature of the individual in his vanity; today, he affirms his previous act of self-esteem and continues his acquiescence to the will of creation by his knowledge. Such a knowledge, he conveys as a partner to the creation process; as an equal to the father.

Where the father once viewed themselves as the misty, blurring of the will he shared with his son, is viewed today as a relationship he experienced in erogenous paint. In the West, such a perception is already expressing itself in a peculiar juxtaposition of common gender confusion. Elsewhere, the common head of unity rises above the usual commonplace, wearing a necklace of thorns. There's much to be worked at to refine the experience.

With all the hallmarks of a classical tragedy, our situation in the world today, calls for a subtlety we have not experienced, a knowledge yet to be learnt, a clandestine relation within, yet to be clear and a call to say things as we see it, yet to be said. The father, the epitome of the norm in society, the field commander of life, as unshakeable as unripe fruit on trees, views our situation with concern.

In the midst of knowledge that is undeniable, we are as yet unable to call it true. But we see in the future, the course of its trail; of a mother who was also the father, of the mind of a man in the body of a woman, of a father who thought himself entitled and a son who perceived himself the acquiescing friend.

In the days when ' girls were girls and men were men', there was no test of the sensation. The father, when he moved to test his son, must have shared the son's will to know. We spy such intentions in poetry but is carefully hidden in pun and rhythm. In the phenomenon, we view the father turning to look back at his son, whose confused mind of form and purpose is spinning like a wheel. But the son perceives a purpose in his father's actions, yet not in the free expression of communication. To say the father approves of his actions today is to say more than the father intends and yet it is in the general drift of things.

Where the mind of the father is in the man, it introduces a strong bond in their relationship. Where the mind of the father is in the woman, it tears at the son and scolds him for disloyalty. Did Herakles murder his family in such a fit of madness reigning in his times?

Is the mind of man in the mother a frantic ruler; In a sister, the forbidden lover; In the daughter, an ally sounding a warning; In the grandmother a conductor at the orchestra; and in the wife, a promise to be fulfilled? Strange questions. The son may not be alone as he ponders them. Others must share with him the same insatiable seeking of the truth.

So here we are, at the beginning of the 21st century with our journal filled with puzzles. The road ahead may be a long one, but it promises to challenge, to empower and to raise us to heights never traveled before. The son has risen and will not, in the foreseeable future, go back to sleep again.


Further Reading :

Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises
Mallory        -  La Morte de Arthur
Kalidasa       -  The War God