The news we hear is inevitably bad. But as we all live through epic times, is it possible we are caught in a positive spiral? A progressive global samsara?..
I am preparing a paper on Utopia and how this relates to innovation and transformation. By 'transformation', I mean the regeneration of socio-political life in Art and in business. I would like to add the 'full' regeneration, but I see my project as a collaborative project, something that could never truly be finished.
Over the last few days, I have been reading William Dalrymple's, The Last Mughal. I was particularly enthralled by a side-note in Dalrymple's text about the Ramayana, that great Hindu epic. The epic, as many Hindus will know, describes the terrible feud waged between Prince Rama and and the evil King Ravana.
What most intrigued me, however, is Gorresio's adumbration of the Four Ages or cycles of cosmic progress, of splendour and decline. One finds similar thinking in Vico, Spengler, Housman, Toynbee etc. And so, I contrast this footnote appended to Book I, Canto I "Narad" against Oscar Wilde's epigram about Utopia, that no-place so eagerly sought by man and woman.
In fine, Ramayana translates to Rama’s Travels. We all, globally, have many travels ahead of us…
The Four Ages
'The Bráhmans, with a system rather cosmogonical than chronological, divide the present mundane period into four ages or yugas as they call them: the Krita, the Tretá, the Dwápara, and the Kali. The Krita, called also the Deva-yuga or that of the Gods, is the age of truth, the perfect age, the Tretá is the age of the three sacred fires, domestic and sacrificial; the Dwápara is the age of doubt; the Kali, the present age, is the age of evil.'
Wilde's Utopia
'A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias'.
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