4 posts tagged “loyalty”

“The relationship between a husband and a wife is like a garment; if a garment is torn, it can be mended. The relationship between two brothers is like a limb; if a limb is broken, it cannot be repaired.” – Chinese Proverb taken from the Romance of the three Kingdoms

A few weeks ago, while browsing through the “free books” section of a local library sale, I came across a pristine set of the two volume Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a classic 1300 page novel written in 14^th century China. Perusing through it, it seems to be an almost endless testosterone laced tale of military valor, intrigue, adventure, swashbuckling, and feudal conflict. Definitely a switch from reading Jane Austen as I have been lately. Imagine a teenager playing World of Warcraft for a year and then creating a novel from the narrative. Anyway, in one particular story, the warrior Guan Yu attempts to reunite with his brother and sworn overlord Lu Bei. In chapter 27 of the epic, one reads of Guan Yu’s seemingly unlimited tenacity as he overcomes numerous obstacles to fulfilling his desire to live up to his filial ideals to his brother. The chapter is entitled “Crossing Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals” and for all intents and purposes, the chapter title tells you about all you need to know about the story. Pity the man or army who stands in the way of Guan Yu as he seeks to fulfill his duty to his sworn brother. (incidentally, as the quote at the top of this page indicates, the relationship between men is primary in the Confucian world view and ethic.)

 You can read of the original vows made between the brothers in the first chapter of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms below:

“Fei said, "There is a peach garden in the rear of my estate, and the flowers are now in full bloom; tomorrow, we should conduct a sacrificial ceremony to heaven and earth. We three should become brothers, joining forces with a common purpose, and later we will be able to accomplish great deeds." Xuande and Yunchang both responded in unison, "An excellent idea!" The following day, they prepared sacrificial offerings such as a black bull and a white horse. The three of them all burned incense, and performed double obeisance. They all took an oath, saying, "When saying the names Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, although the surnames are different, yet we have come together as brothers. From this day forward, we shall join forces for a common purpose, and come to each other's aid in times of crisis. We shall avenge the nation from above, and pacify the citizenry from below. We seek not to be born on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. We merely hope to die on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. May the gods of heaven and earth attest to what is in our hearts. If we should ever do anything to betray our friendship, may the gods in heaven strike us dead." Having completed the oath, Xuande was declared to be eldest brother, followed by Guan Yu, with Zhang Fei as the most junior brother.”

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms/Chapter_1#Map

From my limited understanding, the story of Guan Yu “Crossing Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals” is a story of a Confucian determination to live up to filial obligations and in many respects, it mirrors the fealty that one sees evidenced in Count Roland as he takes on any challenge and fights any foe on behalf of Charlemagne in the French epic Song of Roland. You can see Guan Yu “riding alone for thousands of miles” in this famous mural.

So, where is the connection? Last night, I watched Zhang Yamou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, a contemporary story about a modern day Japanese fisherman who determines to go to China and record a particular Chinese Opera of the same title on behalf of his estranged son who has liver cancer. I am not exactly sure of all the connections between the plot line of the movie and the plotline of the opera and the plot line of chapter 27 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms but on the surface it seems as though the theme has to do with the demonstration of one’s respect for filial ties, be they between father and son or between brother and brother.

In the story of Guan Yu, he goes through a series of obstacles and challenges as a result of his commitment to Liu Bei but in the end, arrives at the destination only to find that his brother is not there. The whole chapter, all its passes, all its skirmishes, seems to have been for nothing really. Similarly, in the movie, the fisherman Gouichi Takada’s, son dies before the father gets him the video he hoped to give him. Similarly Takata fails to reunite Yang Yang, the orphan with his father in jail. In both the ancient Chinese novel and in the movie, the mission is a failure. But on another level, the attempt itself is what may matter most. Chapter 27 of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, celebrates Guan Yu’s feat, honoring him not for what he accomplished but for what he sacrificed and attempted.

His seal hung up, the treasury locked, his
courtly mansion left,
He journeyed toward his brother dear, too long
from his side left.
The horse he rode was famed for speed as for
endurance great,
His good sword made a way for him and
opened every gate.
His loyalty and truth forth stand, a pattern
unto all,
His valor would frighten rushing streams and
make high mountains fall.
Alone he traveled lustily, this was death to meet
his blade,
He has been themed by myriads, his glory never
will fade.  

I suppose we all have relationships that have at some point in time been severed. And perhaps we may never fully accomplish our wish to reunite them. This story is all about what we are willing to try even if we are quite sure that we will fail. For maybe there is something honorable in attempts and something that can inspire others in trying.

This entry is dedicated to my brothers Andy and Tim and my sister Faith. May we always be friends.

Question for comment: What failure in your life serves as testimony that “at least you cared”?

What does one say about a play that people have been talking and writing about for several hundred years? And yet, I somehow feel compelled.

The play opens with reports of MacBeth and Banquo risking their very lives to fight for the cause of the old king Duncan.

For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

So, here is a guy who "disdain's fortune" we are told. By that, we are to assume that in the service of his king, MacBeth is a man who cares not what happens to himsel. And yet, later that day, we see that this same man is full of kingly ambitions. Even his own wife will testify to this about MacBeth. He is a man who wishes to be king and she knows it. MacBeth will, of necessity, ASSERT that he has no interests but the king's interest of course. "The service and the loyalty I owe in doing it, pays itself." he says to Duncan after the fight. Your highness' part Is to receive our duties; and our duties are to your throne and state children and servants." But in the very next statement, Duncan tests this outward show of loyalty by telling MacBeth that the next king has already been chosen and that it will be Duncan's son Malcolm and NOT MacBeth. Immediately, we see MacBeth begin to split his public and private selves, as he whispers (to the audience):

"That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:

I think it is fair to say that the risks that MacBeth had taken earlier that day were not entirely selfless and altruistic. This was a man fighting for an aged king, campaigning for advantage in the next round of monarchy selection. Lady MacBeth will later compare Duncan to her aged father, indicating to us that his days were already numbered at the onset of this play's events. It is this moment that Duncan publically determines to advantage his own son above the risk taking warriors MacBeth and Banquo that forces MacBeth to chose between his public and private selves - between MacBeth the chivalrous loyal suck-up and MacBeth the monarch wannabe. It is fish or cut bait. Kill the King or serve his son the rest of his life.

Even Duncan realizes that MacBeth's services are in excess of what Duncan can reward him for. "More is thy due than more than all can pay," he says. Clearly, MacBeth was gambling for the crown in taking the risks he did in the day's battle. The question of the play is ... will he take matters into his own hands to achieve his ambitions? Or will he, committed to fair play, be a good loser and let fate pass him by in spite of all his investment. MacBeth wants to be king. But he wants to be king, if he can, without violating his conscience. As Lady MacBeth puts it,

Glamis thou art (the rank MacBeth had already attained), and Cawdor (the rank that MacBeth had just recently attained); and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win:

MacBeth wished to win the kingship "holily" that is, by playing the game fairly ... by flattery, and bravery, and merit. But what will he do when these means bring him to a dead end and the only way that he can achieve his ambition involves some serious "unholiness"? He has ambition but does he have the "illness" that so often goes with it? The willingness to let ends justify means? Will he pursue a Machiavellian path?

Ultimately what we discover in the play however is that MacBeth's commitment to holiness is really simply a commitment to appearing holy. Once the Lady MacBeth shows him how he can kill Duncan and have someone else take the blame, the argument is over. This reality led to an engaging homeschool discussion about the meaning of morality and the meaning of the word "guilt" and the fundamental decisions one has to make about living a moral life.

At what points do our ideas about moral behavior diverge when we discover that it is possible to have both a public morality and a private morality? Throughout the play, there are these continued references to the divided self. Of the betrayal of the thane of Cawdor, Duncan says "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face". MacBeth says "Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires" and later

Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Lady MacBeth advises her husband

"Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't.

Malcolm later asserts that there "are daggers in men's smiles."

And even the wierd sisters, the witches, pretend to be encouraging MacBeth when they are in fact messing with his head and plotting his demise. Throughout the play, "foul is fair and fair is foul". You can't believe anyone really.

Which is why it is interesting to draw conjectures about King Duncan. He says at the beginning of the play that there is no art to "finding the mind's construction in the face". He has, as it were, given up thinking that he can tell a loyal friend from a competitor to the throne simply by listening to their suck up speaches about loyalty and devotion and duty. But that leaves the question: Are there other ways of testign a person's integrity? Was Duncan putting MacBeth's public proclamations of loyalty to a specific test when he declared that the succession had already been decided in favor of Duncan's own son? In a conspiracy theory of grand proportions, might Duncan have sent the weird sisters to set MacBeth and Banquo up? As a emans of bringing to the surface what he needed to know? Not likely but ... it is fun to speculate. Grin. 

Question for Comment: Have you ever experienced what it is like to have someone "look like the innocent flower" for you while "being the serpent under't"? How do you make your way through life AFTER an experience like that? Do you allow yourself the freedom to "test" people? Has anyone ever tested your public self against a private trial? Did they find integrity? Why or why not?

A few nights ago, I got to watch Deepa Mehta's film EARTH, the first in her EARTH, WATER, FIRE trilogy that provoked such a firestorm of protest in India. EARTH is about the unraveling of India upon the acquisition of Independence from the British in 1948. It looks at this period of great anguish and suffering through the eyes of one young girl (Lenny Baby) and a circle of her young adult caregivers. The film opens with Lenny Baby intentionally breaking a China dish, as though she senses the divisions to come and needs to symbolize them in some tangible way so that she can talk about her fears. Needless to say, no one really takes notice of the message she was trying to send, just as no one REALLY took time to think about the emotional and psychological stresses that a free India would bring to bear on its diverse populations.

India had always been a multi-cultural and multi-religious society. But it had always had some caste or some foreign power to regulate their co-existence. Political Independence demanded that whole new ways of thinking about one another be developed. Unfortunately, it led to the surfacing of deep and buried suspicians and animosities. Muslims, the minority, did not believe that they could trust a democratic and mostly Hindu India to protect its cultural distinctives. Sikhs and Parsees were forced to align themselves with one group or the other. It became too difficult to take the time needed to distinguish between one "sort" of Muslim or one "sort" of Hindu and another and individuals became identified as simply cells of the group, either enemy or friend.

 “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression.” Sigmund Freud

And EARTH looks at this one group of comrades, some Sikh, some Hindu, some Muslim, some Parsee and it looks at how the forces of the wider community eventually split them apart and set them to warring against each other. In the midst of them, Lenny Baby, a nine or ten year old girl who loves them all is also split apart. In one of the most poignant scenes, She takes a doll and rips it apart, as she herself is being torn apart.  She is hopelessly doomed and in her childlike way, she knows it. She loves a Hindu. She loves a Muslim. She loves a Sikh. She speaks English. Her parents are Parsee. In a world where all these are killing each other in horrible ways she too will be forced to chose.

It raises important questions. Will we always resort in our loyalties to the communities were were born into? Can we create communities from the various "pre-loaded communities" and make them just as solid, just as enduring, just as formidable? And why can't we all see that really, we are most healthy when we feel free to belong to a number of communities that can overlap. Of course that makes life more complicated but, can we not manage it?

Have you ever done something symbolic, hoping that someone would see what you did and hear your cry for help in it?

“not what they want but what is good for them.”
Remark by Oliver Cromwell.

Tonight's movie was To Kill a King. It is the story of the Roundhead's victory over the armies of King Charles in one of England's more interesting revolutions. It's about an inspired movement to dethrone a tyrant without having a clear plan for what sort of regime will replace it. It is about how even leaders of revolutions come to find out that their brothers-in-arms have different visions. And it is about how easily wealth can purchase power out from under idealism as long as there is a table to make deals under. I found myself asking "Am I watching a movie about King Chalres, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Fairfax, the Tower of London, and England? or am I watching a movie about Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Colin Powell, Guantanamo Bay, and Iraq?"

Soon after the Roundhead armies defeat the armies of the monarchists, King Charles goes about bribing parliament to vote to keep him in power. Oliver Cromwell wants to see him tried and beheaded. Lord Thomas Fairfax sees a more moderate approach to change in view, seeing only a need to get Charles to sign a new Constitution limiting his power. Unfortunately for him, he is caught in the middle. His family's privileges have their origins in the Monarchical system whereby families are rewarded with special treatment for serving and defending the crown. The inequalities that he enjoys are founded on a belief in the divine right of kings so ... how can he kill the king?

Eventually, he determines to kill his friend Cromwell instead. It is only King Charles who is not conflicted by second guesses in this portrayal of regime change and personal loyalty. Fairfax's loyalty to his wife, to his children, to his family, to tradition cannot take him on as long a leap as Oliver Cromwell takes. Cromwell seeks not a reformed old order but a completely reformatted new order.

... And yet, a few years into his new regime, Cromwell has to consider that the idea of a king might have its advantages. The following comes from an article by Patrick Little in History Today; Feb2007, Vol. 57 Issue 2, p24-31,

"If his highness can be moved to accept of it [the crown], the services he hath done the nations have abundantly deserved it; but if he who hath so much merited it do judge it fit to continue his refusal of it, the contempt of a crown -- which can not proceed but from an extraordinary virtue -- will render him, in the esteem of all whose opinion is to be valued, more honourable than any that wear it.

WHEN THE AMBASSADOR to France, Sir William Lockhart, wrote this in April 1657, it had been nearly two months since the first formal offer by Parliament to make Oliver Cromwell king, and in England people were waiting anxiously for the Lord Protector to make up his mind. Would he choose to become King Oliver or not?"

Ultimately, Cromwell went with his convictions and insisted that regardless of the pragmatics, it would be a sin to resurrect the idea of monarchy.

"Truly the providence of God has laid this title aside providentially … I would not seek to set up that that providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again."

His reference to rebuilding Jericho is from a passage in Joshua where God instructs that the city of Jericho, once razed, should never be rebuilt.

Again, the parallels to Iraq are interesting. Should Iraq have been completly deBaathified? should the Iraqi army have been dismissed entirely? How much change was possible in Iraq in such a short period of time?  Should America have ever started using "Cromwellian methods" to achieve what may have been idealistic objectives?

“No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.”
Cromwell on personal fortunes.

Question for Comment: How are you affected when you feel that a cause you have dedicated yourself to has been taken over by someone who is using it for their own purposes?