An Unpredictable Place

 Beyond Hand me Downs

It took years for Preston Haskell to finally finish it.

It being this book so relevant today.

The following is the forward of 'An Unpredictable Place' - beyond hand me downs.

The year was Nineteen Ninety-Eight. That was a very
consequential year. That year was of such consequence to Nancy and me for one very good reason. That was the year we met Ayn Rand. That edifying introduction was exactly one century after the revolutionary painter, Mr. Gauguin, wrote his enlightening Eighteen Ninety-Eight letter to Dr. Gouzer espousing his contempt for the critics, academics and mediocrities that he felt were dragging on the world of art at that time. I often muse that we endure those very same characters that perpetually drag on today’s art world with their everlasting pant-load of historic suppositions and their enduring fear of the unversed and innovative.

            Gauguin’s rebellious letter was a century after the French Revolution; a revolting contretemps that gave some of the greatest nations on earth pause for thought, reflection, and a sense of urgency for social reform.

The French Revolution, like the American Revolution, was born of the enlightened philosophy that characteristically rages against recurrent arrogance of power. The French Revolution, like the American Revolution, ruptured centuries of forcefully contained loathing. Words, expressions, and thoughts such as, “Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains”, captured the minds and hearts of the repressed, unleashing an explosion of unstoppable energy. The revolution continued in various forms following the dramatically induced paraphrase of the American experience, “Declaration of the Rights of Man”. Centuries of vulgar assumption, abuse, and arrogance are observably not changed overnight, or indeed, any time soon.

My interest lies in the fact that these words, “Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains”, are written, and caused to be written in the book titled The Social Contract, by an intuitive fifty-year-old, unschooled, eighteenth century French philosopher, named Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Given that Rousseau self-educated himself through reading, could it be that he has received these sentiments from the English philosopher John Lock? Lock proffers the theory of a fair and balanced social contract between the state and the individual.

Lock also espouses his judgment that a government that breaks the social contract can be terminated, even by force if necessary. I must conclude that Lock garners his opinion from history. There certainly has been, and continues to be, ample evidence of arrogance of power, abuse of power, malignant greed, and even professional misconduct, from which eternally hopeful and repeatedly deceived societies have been, and continue to be, so painfully forced to rediscover. Society is repeatedly forced to rediscover that which they fail to learn from available prior knowledge, from readily available information that stares society in the face, screams enlightenment, shrieks to be heard, bangs on debilitated brains incapacitated by the arrogant supposition of overly educated know-it-alls, who surmise that so much knowledge has already been acquired that the computation of fact, intuitive deduction, and reason are only valuable if combined with inflated forms of deceptively and deliberately protracted study.

Our philosophy and our reasoning can be traced back through knowledge handed down to us from recorded history. Aristotle, one of history’s most influential philosophers, transforms the inherent thinking of Socrates, through the efforts and philosophy of Plato, into a road map of life that influences our politics, our legal system, and even our thought.

Music, as we know it, following the common ‘Gregorian chant’, can be charted in an unbroken line from the magnificent and, more importantly, creative efforts of the sixteenth century composer, Palestrina, “The Prince of Music” and his enduring Missa Papea Marcelli to the present day.

Art, as we appreciate it, has been continually and masterfully portrayed back 30,000 years to the primitive, ever imaginative and illuminating, images created on the walls of caves.

Political, professional, and bureaucratic corruption and greed, as we suffer it, highlights the destruction of every society in history. Can there be any greater menace to any society?

Knowledge, as we understand it, has been expanding throughout the course of history. It has been handed down to us through verse and song. The receptive, particularly the very young, grasp for knowledge like a drowning man will clutch for a straw. Long before we understand that we need knowledge for life’s prerequisites, we are eagerly searching for it in every nook, crook and cranny of our domain. Baring irrational impediments, our eager search endures unabated and unabashedly for the whole of our natural lives. We fervently harvest the preponderance of our desired knowledge by inquisitive investigation. We garner the necessary expertise throughout our vocation as a protégé.

All prior knowledge comes to us as hand-me-downs. Everything we think we know, and everything that we think we are, comes from others. The only time we advance beyond hand-me-downs is the moment we create or discover something that never was.

Knowledge appears and expands through continual discovery, rediscovery, and more importantly, creative genius. Our knowledge will continue to appear and expand by fortuitous discovery and/or through the efforts of the multitude of marvelous people with the innate propensity to create.

Facing the turn of the century and entering the third millennium, how are we doing? Our scientific knowledge has mushroomed! Technology has triumphed! We are on the cutting edge in medicine! Our education system is smugly espoused to be the greatest! The supposedly unassailable Bill of Rights and Constitution ostensibly protects personal rights and freedoms. With all this extraordinary success and a good measure of professional braggadocio, surely we should be forgiven if we, erroneously, conclude that man’s inherent barbarism has also been conquered.

Unfortunately, our baggage of brutality has traveled with us through all of our successes. Everything we have accomplished, everything we have developed, and everything we have learned is being put to use either as weapons or bait.

The world is becoming a society of knowledgeable savages! -Preston Haskell, Photographer