Monday, 15 August 2011

No Place for the Beautiful.

The classic song Starry Starry Night contains the lines:

I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

I never thought much about it before, but now it makes sense. This world is a place for tarts and testosterone-charged tough guys, both actually and figuratively. It’s a world in which value and success are not measured in self-contained terms, but in terms that are linear and vertical. It’s all about having more or being seen to be better than other people.

And that’s why when I hear the word ‘ambition’ (as opposed to ‘aspiration’) used in terms which suggest it’s a desirable quality, I have to turn away. To me it isn’t, it’s just one of many signs that, to use a Buddhist analogy, the monkey in man continues to have dominion over the angel.

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