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Musicmystery -> RE: How are you a sovereign? (1/31/2010 11:00:10 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Trevelyan
"In peasant villages on this world each hut was originally built around a flat stone which was placed in the center of the circular dwelling. It was carved with the family sign and was called the Home Stone. It was, so to speak, a symbol of sovereignty, or territory, and each peasant, in his own hut, was a sovereign."
Tarnsman
Tal Goreans
Home Stone is the first (and in my opinion the most important) aspect of Gorean culture discussed in the books.
What does being a sovereign in your own home mean to you?
Please give real life examples of your thoughts and/or behavior as a sovereign, contrasted against how you might think/behave if you were not a sovereign.
Tal Trevelyan,
I always appreciate your posts on these boards. You are careful and thorough, and your thoughts always give me reason to consider and examine my own views. We don't always agree, but I always find the exchange enlightening. For example, a while back I questioned the existence of a cohesive "philosophy"; you ardently disagree. I think this issue here, of Home Stone and sovereignty, speaks to that difference and why I don't think it's as different as it may seem at all.
We absolutely agree on Norman's overall purpose, his thesis as you've well laid out previously, that people on Earth are unhappy, that cultural/social attitudes/assumptions are the cause, working against our nature rather than supporting our place in the order of nature, creating inner conflict, personal and interpersonal, that approaching life with a better, more natural, appropriate and realistic set of assumptions and attitudes can lead to happier, richer, more effective and passionately fulfilling lives of accomplishment and purpose. Please correct me if I've mischaracterized your positions in any of the above.
And here's where we overlap considerably. Much of Norman's work does, indeed, outline thought positions, a philosophy, but the advantage of fiction is the ability to play these out in more than a series of arguments and counterarguments in the pattern of traditional treatises. We see characters learn and grow. We see them struggle and succeed/fail. We see them saying one thing while their nature screams another. We see the interaction of some very different people. We see ideals. We see the corruption of those ideals. And we see this through the thoughts of people who, like ourselves, are not fully conscious of the thought world in which they live.
In another thread, twinkle pulled some quotes I had referenced (thanks twinkle!):
quote:
..."Beware," he said, "I carry a Home Stone."
I stood back and made no move to draw my weapon. Though I was of the caste of warriors and he of peasants, and I armed and he carrying naught but a crude tool, I would not dispute his passage. One does not lightly dispute the passage of one who carries his Home Stone. ~Nomads
But especially this one:
quote:
...Perhaps the most significant difference between the man of Earth and the Gorean is that the Gorean has a Home Stone, and the man of Earth does not. It is difficult to make clear to a non-Gorean the significance of the Home Stone, for the non-Gorean has never had a Home Stone, and thus cannot understand its meaning, its reality. I think that I shall not try to make clear what is the significance to a Gorean of the Home Stone. It would be difficult to put into words; indeed, it is perhaps impossible to put into words; I shall not try. I think this is one of the saddest things about the men of Earth, that they have no Home Stone. ~Slave Girl, 9:213-214
Fish discover water last. It's vitally important, but because it's so important that it literally is their entire environment, they have no need to consciously consider it. Think about what this simple difference means to us. Fish never sit or lie down. Up and down are of no more consequence than left or right. Two dimensional thinking, like the way we think of traveling across the land, would be bizarrely foreign and pointless. Our assumptions, like breathing underwater is death, would be patently ridiculous. Our daily concerns, like the weather, would mean nothing. And all this absurdity and change is on our own planet, just a surface away. Look even at our own conceit--Earth? There's 20 times more ocean than land, and ocean has depth in a way we land-dwellers don't use or usually even consider. 95% of Earth's life is in the seas. We are the anomaly, arrogantly parading about as the purpose for the planet.
Oxygen is vital to life for us. Four minutes without it and we're dead. A minute without it and we're in panic. Two minutes without it and our lungs are burning. A few minutes with low oxygen in the blood can cause brain damage. It's crucial. Yet when do we stop and consider its importance? Rarely if ever. But it's there! Our breath even reflects our emotional state--a sigh, a sharp intact, a long breath outward...each is tied to expression and circumstances, a correspondence that's instinctive and universal to us, simply part of our nature, an integral part, an easily recognized part, even if we don't normally notice.
In English, the name of our planet is synonymous with dirt, soil, the ground. That linguistic underpinning is reflected in our attitudes. The Earth is something to be worked, mined, used, moved about, at our disposal. And "disposal" well reflects our society's lack of connection with that Earth. It's a common theme in the novels, appreciating the purity of Gor's environment and atmosphere vs. the polluted one of Earth.
But in Gorean, the planet Gor is synonymous with Home Stone. Home Stone! That's a fundamentally, radically different starting assumption buried deep in the psyche of every Gorean. Consider, for example, traditional Native American or rain forest peoples and how differently they see their environment and their connection to it. For a Gorean, Home Stone is such a self-evident concept that it's difficult to explain. And I absolutely agree with you, Trevelyan--
quote:
Home Stone is the first (and in my opinion the most important) aspect of Gorean culture discussed in the books.
"Come on over to the ol' Home Stone--we'll have some drinks!"
"Yeah, I'm thinking of moving to a bigger Home Stone, maybe one out in the country."
"So--what Home Stone are you from?"
We'd see all of that dialogue as ridiculous onlinisms. And rightly so. Home Stone is far more than place, residence, city. It is that fundamental connection, even far more than flag (allegiance comes close, but is not the entire concept), that speaks not to choice as much as it does to our nature. No one would lightly challenge a woodland creature cornered, injured, or defending its young. Even a small critter, under those circumstances, can be swift and viciously dangerous. It speaks to their nature. And so does Home Stone to a Gorean. That Home Stone carrying peasant is dangerous, even to a trained warrior. And no Gorean would lightly challenge him. Yes, Home Stones might be stolen by warring nations, but that speaks to how much they respect it, not how little. You attack targets of value in a war. To destroy that Home Stone is to destroy that which binds the rival city. Yes, that's silly to us. It's a foreign concept, as if we've moved to a different world, on the other side of the water surface or the other side of the sun, where the assumptions we take as truth are questioned and found lacking.
This is the point of Gor--that close, careful look at ourselves, our interactions, our community, our society, our culture, our world, rather than taking what's presented as a priori. As Plato says, "The unexamined life is not worth living." But if all anyone takes away from Gor is a bunch of stories--stories that appeal or stories that seem silly--then that reader has missed the point.
Trevelyan--I lived in many places before I moved here. An independent artist (musician and writer), whether free-lancing or doing business jobs, I've always made my own unique decisions about my career and my life, about my relationships, about my society and its politics, about philosophy and morality. Some of this I liked--Taoism, for example--and some of it, while I still respect it, I rejected (Catholicism). But independence alone is not sovereignty.
When I moved here, however, just an empty field, me at the time a busy artist struggling for regular income, everything changed. This land was my land (yes, I actually sang that, over and over and over). My land! Mine! I owned it! I controlled what happened on it! That I planted forest, orchards, vineyards, gardens, that I drilled for water and put in a driveway and utility pole and so forth for my new home--none of that is really the issue. This is my home. I have a deep, firm, fantastic connection to it. There are nicer homes. I don't want them. This is my home.
When my grandfather died, his house and farm were sold off in pieces. Although I had no use for any of this, I felt an intense loss. I was connected to this place. It connected my family. My other grandfather's land had long since been sold to a ski resort and taken by the state for a park. And when my mother died, my parents' house was sold. Bit by bit, what had been my family's Home Stone was gone. Not the places--the connections to those places in and among them that connected my warring siblings. I have a line of maple trees on my property, seeds I planted from maple trees in our yard, given to my by my mother when I moved out here. I cherish those trees for the connection they provide. My grandfather's farm is here now. My Home Stone is here--and it has nothing to do with the location.
Here, I am sovereign. And only a fool would challenge me here--not because I'm a chest-thumping arrogant sword-waving character, but because here I have a Home Stone. And every Gorean would know already not to do so--in fact, it would be unthinkable.
To understand Home Stone is the foundation of understanding Gor. Whether we label it a coherent, purposefully laid out philosophy, as I know you see it, or an inherently different way of being, living, thinking, interacting, one rooted in the natures of our being and branching out in accord with the order of nature into the various other elements of Gorean thought (just as all Taoism originates in Tao, and through yin and yang creates "the ten thousand things"), creating a de facto philosophy, I think matters not. What's important is to understand that essential root of Gorean thought and being.
I wish you well, my friend.
Tim
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