| In the Light of Awareness |
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In so far as I have any memories of when I was a child, taking into consideration that the human mind is an independently operating mechanism which, although it is fed by external events, nevertheless has a mind of its own where it comes to classifying and processing its intake, I seem to recall that I would have preferred, whenever an adult asked me how it was that I knew this or that, simply to say that I had found out all by myself. No drastic changes there, for whenever I ask my daughter how she has found out about something or other, her favourite reply is a casual "You know". However, when recently I saw her and a friend judiciously watching "Villa Achterwerk"* on television (or rather, it was me watching judiciously) and rhythmically singing the line "Hebban Olla Vogela" (see below), even my parental instinct had to resign to the fact that all dormant hopes of exceptional intelligence had for the time being been overruled. Seven years old, almost eight, and yet she's singing the first text ever to have been written down in Middle Dutch as if it was a Britney Spears production? Should I interpret this as a last-ditch effort on the part of the much-maligned educational sector to back out of school test standardisation, or as the influence of an inspired teacher furnishing his pupils with an added-value backpack to give them the edge in the equal opportunities rat race when everyone least expects it, or was it simply the doings of a dyed-in-the-wool educator who appreciates full well that given half a chance his unruly students will burst into song, chanting "Fuck you, baby", thus making sure that if parents having forgotten their own youth were to start whingeing, he'd have something to fall back on? (As it turned out, she had picked it up from Thijs, her relentlessly inspirational music teacher.) *) "Villa Achterwerk" (literally, The Bum Villa) is a children's TV programme steeped in the sort of surrealist anarchy which arguably makes it even more entertaining for adults than children to watch. Postscript Two days later it hit me. If you were inadvertently to think that I associate the English words "Fuck you, baby" with that oldest Middle Dutch line to survive in writing, "Hebban Olla Vogela", I would point out that reality has a way of being stranger than fiction, and that I too tend to underestimate its elusiveness, in addition to which there is no rule against suspecting that at a stage in society where script was only just beginning to take hold, it would not have been very likely that the average quality of the average surviving sentence would have outshone the level I casually suggested just now by any serious margin. No, I'm wrong, this is flawed logic: those who were capable of writing at the time must have been particularly well developed intellectuals who must have had plenty of other things on their mind. No, I'm wrong again, as this would require a more basic question to be answered as to the origin of written profanities: was this an act of defiance in the face of excessive seriousness, a run-up to more elevated thoughts, a need for a change, or mere inability? I've already stopped feeling guilty - without sound scientific research you may not ascribe this association to me. Post-postscript Another two days having gone by, I happened to notice a strip cartoon in the NRC Handelsblad (13 March 2002) entitled "Fokke and Sukke" which not only featured the text "Hebban Olla Vogela", but also the word "horny". As gratifying as I find it to convince myself that the whole world is acting on my words, even I had to admit that it was not very likely for creative minds to have taken cognisance of my diagonal thoughts within a mere two days, which can only imply that the odds are improving for the nice gentleman who impressed me no end in "A Splendid Accident"*), with his blue tits and coal tits which despite being dispersed across different continents nevertheless continued acting in unison, in his attempts to attribute this to some kind of fluidal transfer mechanism. I'd give my eye teeth to be able to contribute to these kinds of ideas, but how does one find out? Or could it be that the parents in question are simple local residents whose children attend the same school as mine? *) A series of VPRO programmes which the late Wim Kayzer presented in 1993 and in which a group of scientists from a variety of disciplines philosophised about their views of unexplainable phenomena, and in the final programme engaged in debate as well. British-born Rupert Sheldrake has developed notions such as morphogenetic fields and morphic resonance, which he uses to describe the phenomenon of creatures which are nowhere near one another and which cannot therefore communicate in any discernible manner nevertheless displaying the same behavioural changes. These discussions and impressions have been published in the form of a book under the same title, "Een Schitterend Ongeluk" (A Splendid Accident) (1993, Contact Publishers). |