on Boxes

Primarily because I believe beauty deserves to be shared, I recently showed a spectacularly beautiful image my sixteen year old daughter Julia drew to a couple of my co-workers.  One person’s response to the picture appalled me.  That feeling has indirectly lead to this post, in which I’m sharing two of Julia’s drawings.  The first appears immediately below.

The comment this wonderfully essential image invoked from my co-worker was, “She’s a sixteen year old girl drawing pictures of girls butts? I’d be worried if I was you…”  Though I wanted to respond by asserting I’m not in the least worried as I know my daughter while they do not, and then asking what century they think we live in, I refrained, turned away, and showed the image to someone less judgmental and thus infinitely more able to appreciate beauty for its own sake.

A few days passed, then, in the way of the universe Julia brought me a gift. Another incredibly beautiful, incredibly essential drawing, possibly provoked by an earlier discussion we had had about how universal, widespread, and immoral the subjugation of women is. That image appears below.

“Boxed In” by Julia

Julia’s second drawing lead me to reconsider the comment made to me by my co-worker.  Perhaps they made their judgmental remark precisely because they are themselves “boxed in” to what they have been taught and conditioned to think is “right”.

Artistic people like Julia are a gift to us all. They make us realize the universe is benevolent.  They allow and encourage us to delve the depths of thought, feeling, spirit, and motivation.  Their visions of beauty open our hearts and let our eyes and minds perceive things we might not notice on our own.

Are you boxed in?  Did you willing climb into the box society demanded you dwell within?

Boxes do not improve life, they constrain it.

If we are truly moral beings then we have no need for external rules, for within our souls we already have all the rules we’ll ever need.  By their very nature these internal rules must be universal, and thus they must be universally true for all sentient and moral beings, which I believe most humans are.  What are these universal moral rules? Well, if they are indeed universal you should intuitively know them, and you should also know they are true.  If they are indeed universal then where they reside is within you, and they might be uncovered by delving the depths of yourself, as art encourages.

But be warned, you may have to dig deep for many societal influences seek to impose some nefarious agenda on us.  These influences presume to impose their rules, constrain us to their goals, and place us in boxes from which they tell us it is immoral to escape.  Since these influences are external, they are not universal and therefore they are artificial.

Art is the light that allows us to see into ourself.  Art allows us to dig deep into our own psyche.  Art allows us to climb out of the boxes others place us in.  Art allows us to discard the superfluous and clearly see the essential.

Universal moral rules are the things our soul has always known, without need of any external teacher.  Perhaps you think the Ten Commandments are these universal moral rules?  They are not, they are just another constraining box into which far too many unquestioningly climb.  The truly universal moral rules are few, and furthermore are essential to our survival as collective humanity.  If, as I believe, there are indeed universal moral rules, then they exist within us all, every one of us should abide by them, and every one of us should search for them.  That search begins within, and art is the gate to the start of the path that leads to personal enlightenment.

To me the essential universal morals are very simple and very few. They include these thoughts:-

• Never be Greedy.
• Be inclined to Love more than you are to Indifference.
• Grant dignity to all until they deny it to you.
• Be tolerant of difference, for without diversity we are doomed.
• Trust the unvoiced whispers of your soul more than you trust any external law.
• Abhor cruelty in any form.

Our soul speaks to us.  It tells us right from wrong.  But do we listen, do we hear then choose to ignore, or are we deaf to our own conscience call?

I also believe there are many grossly immoral external laws, however since these are merely my personal thoughts I don’t consider them to be universal.  They include…

• Since they encourage and facilitate greed, laws which allow one person to gain while another loses are immoral.
• Since authority should be earned not assumed, laws which compel obedience are immoral.
• Laws which are more concerned with property than with morality are, by their very nature, immoral.

Thank you for reading.  Thank you also for thinking.  Should you be interested to learn more of Julia you can find her in my work of Philosophy Couched as Fantasy, Malmaxa, where she goes by another name, but is Julia no less – I think you will recognize her, even though you have never met her.