How many of us feel exactly like that man today – surrounded by a civilisation that has chosen blindness and now regards our ability to see as an affliction to be stamped out?
HG Wells, author of such incredible works as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Island of Dr Moreau, is described as a Socialist yet I often find myself wondering if he was more an ideologist than a Socialist? No matter what, his work was prophetic and he was a visionary.
His short story “ In the Land of the Blind the One eyed Man is King “ has been on my mind for some time now. Like George Orwell’s “ 1984 “ and “ Animal Farm “ , CK Stead’s “ Smith’s Dream “ ( a New Zealand author I have long admired ) and the works of John Wyndham – “ The Day of the Triffids “ and The “ Chrysalids “ - all dealing with a future dwelling in the imaginings of people who lived 70 years or more ago.
Even CS Lewis had some words to say:
But, despite ( or in spite of ) the prophetic horror of the Big Brother Communist and or dictatorial regimes portrayed in these novels, HG Wells story stands out the most.
Because it speaks of the general populace who are blinded by acceptance of what they are taught and have become to believe as true.
THIS is the true worry: the fact that WE are now being seen as oddities in a world that WE see is insane.
I am, however, also moved by the writings of Rudyard Kipling.
A man who was born in Bombay ( India ) on December 30th 1865. Kipling was a friend of Cecil Rhodes, of Lord Milner, and of Dr Jameson, on whose qualities the poem "If " is said to have been based.
Kipling foresaw the First World War and tried to alert the nation to the need for preparedness. He was involved in the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission, and King George V became a personal friend. His story is told in the movie " My Boy Jack"
In the New Yorker, Charles McGrath remarked
“Kipling has been variously labelled a colonialist, a jingoist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a right-wing imperialist warmonger; and—though some scholars have argued that his views were more complicated than he is given credit for—to some degree he really was all those things. That he was also a prodigiously gifted writer who created works of inarguable greatness hardly matters anymore, at least not in many classrooms, where Kipling remains politically toxic.”
Kipling deserves his own article, one I shall write when time allows. But, for the moment, I wish to share with you his poem " The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon "
as read by our dear friend, the late Malcolm.
It made me wonder.
Are we getting close to being beyond the time of politeness? Are we becoming the Awakened Saxons - whether we be Australian, American, New Zealander, Brit, Canadian or other? Have we simply reached a point where the "Woke" has awakened a slumbering Saxon?
Have we turned the cheek once too often? Have we grown tired of being blindfolded and masked?
Is it the case that the Land of the Blind is winning and we, the people blessed with sight and insight, are becoming the people perceived as insane?
Do we fear that they will cut out our metaphoric eyes if we are not careful and diligent?
It seems to me that the Left will continue to seek us out and to blind us; to cut out our eyes and turn us into blind followers of a flawed system where the media is censored, social media is censored and our views are condemned, mocked and ridiculed....
