Some people say,
Oh if I where King for but a day!
Ah, but those who grab power go mad with it,
and in their madness they never stop.
This has been the case for 3,500 years already,
mankind is perishing by it.
There were many women at the conference. Some stood out far above the rest. None, though, had the same powerful effect on people that Tara from our tavern had. The speeches were theoretical. Tara was real. The speeches were demonizing. Tara had an uplifting influence. On rare occasions an exceptional speaker broke this pattern. One of these was a woman from India, a tall, slender woman with dark hair and a gentle and caring expression that did justice to her name. The introducer told us that her name, Dayita, means, "beloved." She was further introduced as a Professor of Universal History, presently unemployed for political reasons, living in New Delhi, the place of her birth.
Dayita was the first and only speaker that afternoon, the last speaker for the day. She opened her presentation with some bright new ideas and new material that hadn't already been mulled over a thousand times before. I admired her for that. Her message was one of hope. She talked about the scientific power of the human being with the potential to enrich the world with ever-richer states of civilization.
Her message also had a dark side. It became terrifying at times. At least it became so for me when she talked about the consequences for a society that stops regarding itself as human beings and looses sight of itself as the most precious gem in the universe, and thereby looses the foundation for civilization. She spoke about depopulation in this context, the kind of madness that the Spanish painter Francisco Goya seemed to have understood well, who had lived in the end-phase of a great renaissance that was overthrown in his lifetime by the same oligarchy that the renaissance-movement had once had successfully combated. Goya had seen both the day and the night. Dayita appears to have seen the same contrast in India and probably around the world in modern times. She spoke in this context of the distorted logic of bankrupt decadence, the empty heart of the ruling imperials who lack the intelligence, humanity, and the scientific awareness of universal principles to create a viable world in which they themselves, society, and the coming generations have a future, who therefore in their emptiness at heart are hell-bent to prevent those future societies from exiting. Hence their focus on depopulation.
Dayita also spoke about the willing victims across the world who are so deeply married to the imperial game, by its corruption, so that they eagerly play their assigned roles for the few scraps of pleasure, privilege, and comfort that it affords them, who have thereby become so emptied of their humanity that they are more inclined to 'devour their own offspring' than to stop the game that gives them their pleasures. Dayita called the process 'deindustrialization.'
It struck me that Goya had painted the scene of 'deindustrialization' already 150 years ago and in a much more descriptive manner in his painting of Saturn devouring one of his sons. He painted boldly and courageously the naked truth that the 'civility' of modern language is designed to hide.
Dayita never mentioned the name, Goya, in her presentation. She didn't have to. She spoke primarily of her own country's history, which by all accounts was worse in all respects. Still, she found that looking at this history as boldly as Goya looked at the truth serves us well in our age, in metaphor, in judging our present world.
Dayita also spoke about the New Hope for mankind that she beheld with a sparkle so bright that it defines the Ice Age that is looming over mankind's future as the potential savior of civilization and mankind itself. And she spoke about America in glowing terms as standing at the center of this New Hope.
