I have been enjoying writing a lot lately. Well, I have learned to love writing most of the time anyway, but low price has brought a whole range of new dynamics into the space and with them, new observations, thoughts and reflections. For me, the feeling that I am increasing my understanding of the world holds value and as prices crash, business models fail and social panics take hold, there is a great deal to learn.
This photo is one of my favourites taken of late and even though it is by no means a great or overly interesting photo by itself, it holds a great deal of value to me. It was taken near dark on a small slope of grass that covered the entry to the first gas chamber built at Auschwitz, the place where they tested and perfected their techniques. Does knowing the background change the image feel and meaning for you? It does for me, but I was there to take it.
A picture might speak a thousand words but experience contains volumes and feelings can never adequately be expressed through words. Whether history makes it a terrible image or one of beauty, will depend on the perspective of the viewer. For me it is something beautiful, so much horror passed beneath this soil yet, years later a flower grew and its seeds will travel on to become a potentially endless supply of new points of beauty. Testament to the resilience of life itself, impartial to our conflicts which even at their worst, are no more than momentary slivers in life's timeline.
It is strange isn't it? Our minds can reduce time into such irrelevance, dinosaurs that roamed the earth for hundreds of millions of years, incredible creatures of power and ferocity, condensed into a few pages of a text book, while a few years of our own existence seems an eternity. We know the importance of the moment takes precedence yet we are unable to let even the smallest felt slight pass us by, we will hold on until our memory slips away.
Forgiveness is not possible until past pain no longer restricts our current growth and thereby our future experience. As the saying goes, forgive and forget, but we are designed to remember, hardwired to weigh loss at a greater rate than gain. It makes forgiveness of those who have hurt us near impossible, our differences irreconcilable, peace impossible. Maybe we are destined by nature to live in conflict, maybe we repeat the past because we remember, not because we forget.
Perspective and self-reflection to gain insight into personal fulfillment going forward, what more can a past gone offer? The world we have created around us, with all the innovation, comfort and entertainment possible is not fulfilling us, not providing the meaning we require to move on from the torment of what has gone, take root and grow to become flowers that bear seeds of forever, taken by winds of change to experiences unimaginable by the flower itself, by our own limited lives.
Beauty is only skin deep only when you look for the beauty on the surface, it is there in the depths and darkness too, beauty pervades all things. Like matter seen or unseen, there it lays in wait to be discovered by those who turn their eye its way, those who tilt their head, squint their eyes and invest themselves into the curiosity of what more there could be hiding away in the peripheries of awareness.
Perhaps we as individuals, the eye that beholds are the only one who can see the beauty in the universe we occupy because we each have built our own, each stand alone on this earth. Minorities of one. All that is, started from a single point of which we are a piece of as it expands and maybe that dictates our purpose forward, expansion.
An evolution of what we own, or an awareness of all we could create.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
As many believe, out of chaos came life so it is all possible that this is another example of fate or destiny so that a communities suffering could be a generation’s hope for betterment...
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I heard a story (I don't remember the exact source) about there being a basic difference in attitude difference between those who came out of the camps. Essentially there was a victim or a survivor attitude bias with those who lives as survivors having higher quality of life than those as victims. It had something to do with being grateful for life.
No matter how many books read or how good an imagination, no one can understand the horror of a concentration camp fully without living it, despite what they might feel about their attempt. However, if we think about our own life challenges, often when we look back at the moments that have shaped us to be better, they are negative situations overcome. It would be the same for a group overcoming too I guess.
Repeating the past because we remember rather than forget is both a terrifying thought and also makes a lot of sense.
I thought that photo of the flower was beautiful. Your added context didn't make it any less beautiful but it did significantly alter the meaning I derived from it. I'm always fascinated when that happens.
It is a bit of a terrifying thought considering we are not only hardwired, most of our education is trained toward practicing memory.
An image out of context (or placed into context) can alter meaning significantly and can make a mind wander well off the path of reality. Putting the same concept into use in a news story can shift a reader position immensely.
This image was taken in my garden where as far as I know, no atrocities were committed. Well, that is hard to really know for sure as people have lived in this region 10,000 years, so many atrocities might have been committed here, it is just not in known history or living memory. There is a viking period grave about a kilometer or two from here, who knows?
As people add their own words to images, the meaning shifts but, the image itself is not the reality of the situation, just like words are descriptors of idea and concept, not the thing.
You have a fascinating take on things, sir!
I truly fail to see how the history of concentration camps, can seen as 'beauty.'
(irrelevant of your thoughts on 'the holocaust' itself - they were places of misery and death).
But you are correct, it does depend on your personal perspectives of what 'terrible' or 'beauty' is...
...my full post here.
https://steemit.com/blog/@lucylin/the-jousting-files-1-defining-perspectives-at-least-it-s-a-start
Actually, you have an interesting take on things:
You see the history of concentration camps in the image of a dandelion? Do you see misery and death in that picture of a flower?
You were in Auschwitz , yes....?
Yes, I was in Auschwitz a few weeks ago.
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