Foreword
The most influential text on my life this year is the "Tradition in the Modern Age" and "The Human Condition" extracts by Hanna Arendt. The extract discussed that in the modern life, there are no boundaries that once classified us as individuals, but rather mere consumers of a giant, sentient machine. In essence, to draw upon a humorous extract by Terry Pratchett, we live in a crab pot.
The crab-pot is a large pot, iron by option, of crabs. These crabs, be they mud crabs, snow crabs, or even small beach crabs all pile on top of one and another, crawling, snipping, snapper and skittering. Within this crab-pot is the world we call life. You see, the crabs have a particular habit, in that should any crab seek to escalate the sides of the pot, and they are conditioned by their crabbiness in such a way as to crawl towards the elevated crab. The high achieving crab however, cannot possibly take the weight of his mates, and thus, a tangle of crabs fall back into the pot. This, and indeed I have seen tubs, basins, and foam boxes thereof, is the reason crab-pots have no lids.
Life then, as described by the masterful Pratchett and supplemented by the significantly more academic words of Arendt perfectly echoes the modern crab-pot world. The poor buggers at the bottom are crushed by the weight of the crab-swarm, those in the middle aim to climb atop the crab swarm, and those on top never quite get over the edge of it all, been pulled down by their mates back into the pot.
The analogy may need some work, but it's a working metaphor.
Arendt in her excellent piece stated that for the modern man to validate himself, he must apply himself thus to the public sphere. The private sphere does not constitute action but rather mere behaviour. An analogy she draws is as thus:
A painter of unfathomable skill paints alone, he is imprisoned by his own accord or otherwise, and his works are never exhibited. He gains from his creative current a great multitude of pleasures, from the joy of creation to the ecstasy of surveying his deeds. However, these works however powerful, however great, even if the painter were to auction them to private sellers who then appreciates them in their own abodes – are no actions but merely behaviour.
Thus, to be man of action in the modern world is to be a man of the public. The worth of life accumulated by one in our short existence should be measured by our contribution to the public, the critique that we receive, and the legacy that we leave.
Of course I am hardly seeking to explode from my bunker like an ICBM and light up the sky, but I am seeking in my own way to make my interests public ones. Running games for kids and the like at the local store, doing a little community service here and there, and writing for publication. As such for this year's National November Writing Competition, I am going to write about the most affluent Crab-pot in the history of the world.
Shanghai 1921 – 1938 – A Crab-pot not only in name, but built on a marsh by every colonial nation in the world on the backbones of the oldest nation in history.
