What Is Culture?
In The Spectator of 26.7.2008 Aidan Hartley wrote an article, 'Uninvited guests', which starts thus:
"With a concussive 'thunk', another bird flies against our new farm house on the African plains. This happens a dozen times daily. They must be following flight paths established long before a human home went up. I designed our place to be solid. Construction used up 555 tonnes of sand, 1,476 bags of cement, 688 kilos of nails, 1,235 cedar poles, 16,500 running feet of timber, 1,833 wheelbarrow loads of rock ballast and 47 wheelbarrows (since it was all built by hand). An atom bomb could not destroy it.
"But Nature rudely ignores our claim over home. Tap! goes the bedroom window at dawn. Taptaptap! Pull back the curtains. It's a male hornbill attacking its own reflection in the glass. 'How charming, ' I say. Tappetytaptaptap! Many dawns later this becomes an ornithological version of Chinese water torture. The only solution is: 'Tappetytappetytappety BANG!' "
As you can guess, this is about the way nature finds a way into your house, merely a man-made construction. I found nothing offensive about it, taking the BANG! of the gun to be humorous remark. I do not think Hartley actually took a gun, went outside and shot the bird.
However, in The Spectator dated 9.8.2008, there is a remarkable letter from Andrea Weiss:
"Sir: I was distressed to read Aidan Hartley's account in Wild life (26 July) of how he dealt with what was presumably a ground hornbill pecking at the window of his new house -- 'Tappetytappetytappety BANG!' These unique birds are listed as 'vulnerable' and are generally not found outside of large game reserves in southern Africa.
"They are incredibly slow co-operative breeders, which means that the dominant pair in a group only successfully fledges a chick an estimated every nine years (see Roberts Birds of Southern Africa as a reference). Surely Mr Hartley could have taken other measures to stop the bird from attacking his window -- a film of non-reflective glass at the hornbill's eye level might have done the trick."
I think this kind of sensitivity, the courteous and measured reponse, is the mark of real culture.
I don't know whether the author really acted like that when he wrote 'tappetytappetytappety bang'. It may have just been thought out of a frustration of seeing his beloved possesion getting damaged. Most of us do get this kind of aggressive thought when something close to our heart gets damaged / hurt. Not many act that way as their head will rule to stop them and probably may have made Hartley realise the endangered status of hornbill.
ReplyDeleteThe reader who responded to the article showed good restraint while expressing his unapproval and anger.
By the way who named that bird as HORNbill?
ha ha!
ReplyDeleteI think freedom of expression invalidates itself if it shows no respect for its listeners.
In that sense, i liked the letter. That is why i posted it.
Freedom of expression is not bound by anything. If it is to, then it is not freedom. So I don't think it invalidates itself by lacking respect to its listeners. But it certainly loses credibility when the majority is offended or hurt by it. In such situations a strong and cultured letter like the one mentioned in the article, puts the freedom of expression, in this case, in its place.
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