An Exalted State

In some countries of the world, the very wealthy are building a separate city for themselves and their kind within the capital cities they live in, so they, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, in The Great Gatsby, can be immune to suffering, ‘shining like silver, safe and proud, above the hot struggles of the poor.’ 

Imagine what that must be like. It reminds me of the description of what Prince Siddhartha’s father tried to provide for his son. He had given strict instructions that his beloved child and heir should not see any mortal suffering - no human being whose youth and vitality had been eroded by illness or age, and no dead person from whom life had been extinguished. 

Nothing to offend his senses or his mind. Immunized. 

The old social contract of feudalism was an agreement involving injustice and fiscal oppression, but those of the Prince’s noble caste felt a sense of social responsibility towards their people. They did not own fleets of expensive cars or private jets or yachts, but their equivalent of these were their pleasure palaces, their jeweled clothing, and their chariots of gold. They were of exalted birth. In those days, an assumption of equivalence was made between nobility of birth and nobility of character. 

Imagine creating a new kind of Silk Road: bypassing every eyesore and waste ground, every open market and every dumping site. The rainbow of stenches. The noxious insects and rodents. The unpleasant stains and discarded remnants of failed initiatives. The dark spaces where abuse, cruelty and corruption serrate the hope and optimism of the unprotected citizens. 

A Silk Road on which a privileged individual could materialise from resort to resort, and even from their home in a gated community in an exclusive area directly to another refined space, deodorised yet full of synthesized colour. A life punctuated by welcome drinks. Uncomprehending and uncaring that it would take the wait staff two hundred years to be able to achieve the lifestyle they are currently enjoying. And does that not add to the pleasure, of some? The brazen legalization of the obscenity of unconcern. The fully-guaranteed, uninterrupted view of the Indian Ocean. Content writers for the websites of real estate developers vying with each other to use cliched words like ‘turquoise’ and ‘aquamarine’ in the glossy brochures. Buy off the plan, and get a discount. A key to the exclusive kingdom, in your outstretched hand. 

The social divisions that are taking place could then be complete - the underclass would be unable to afford to dine at the pristine restaurants and ice cold, sparkling, air-conditioned hotels habituated by the wealthy. They would be brutally and effectively priced out. And the ‘noble savage’ sentiments of the 19thC could emerge again: tales would be told of the beauty and poetry of the lives of the poor, their sturdiness and respectability and low expectations of happiness - the repulsiveness of these ideas enabled by the fact that the poor are not physically to be met with, in the Golden City. Only seen in silhouette against a vivid green landscape, briefly glimpsed as the chariot goes from pleasure palace to pleasure palace. 

Remember the day the Prince broke out of the construct of perfection decreed by his royal Father? He saw all the sights he had been protected from, at once, and the spectacle horrified and repulsed him. 

He saw the human body distorted by illness, and age, and at last devoid of life, being carried to burial. 

Is it any wonder he was so shocked, and almost immediately withdrew from his family and left the life that had been created for him? He realized that his beautiful, wealthy companions, socially graceful and noble of birth and countenance, would age and become ill and pass away, and no amount of wealth or political power could stop this reality. 

We build fortresses, cities within cities of various kinds, and by doing so try to hold back the storm of suffering that this life brings. But there is no immunity in the end. In our numbed adoration of the conveniences, comforts and luxuries our salaries and investments bring us, the privilege status and the reward points and the loyalty cards, we often temporarily forget this. 

We behave as if we can immunize ourselves, from the crudeness of human suffering, the humiliations people routinely endure, and the consequences of the myriad kinds of deprivation that we see all around us. 

In a place of stone, riven by social chasms, the Silk Road dazzles the vision: our senses get tired of being assaulted by the chaos around us. It is understandable, to want respite, when the system suffers thirst and fiery inflammation. 

But the old story shows us that the Prince only became resplendent with enlightenment when he walked out of the glowing restrictions of the palace in which he was raised.