Oubliette
3 March 2019 11:49 AM
Oubliette
A 16th century poet named John Donne in piece called Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Seuerall Steps in my Sickness - Meditation XVII, 1624:
Wrote " No man is an island of itself, every man is a piece of the continent , a part of the main"
That is to say that people are dependant upon interaction with eachother not just for survival of the body but survival of the mind and soul.
One of the cruelest of punishments is to be marooned on an island for the rest of your life, or to be placed in a french Oubliette which was a hole like a well that was under the castle where prisoners were taken and thrown in alive and forgotten. In modern times we use a less cruel method called solitary confinement.
It sounds and is cruel and makes one sad when we think of it. And yet we do this to ourselves even when we are surrounded by loved ones and people. Like the picture going around of people walking like zombies stairing mesmerized by our computerized devises. Thinking that we are escaping from our day to day troubles and dulldrums when if fact we are immersing ourselves in an electronic Oubliette! Human contact is not just seeing and hearing it is also touching. It is feeling one anothers presence spiritually by looking into eachothers eyes and reading the expressions in one anothers face. It is inhaleing the pheromones and having chemical exchanges with one another. Robots and computers can not replace the human touch the human spirit the human emotions and mind.
Get out of your Oubliette and grab the hand of a friend and share not just information but life itself.
Comments