Des Downunder On Sundays

By Desmond Rutherford | Adelaide, Australia -- When Artists Are In Residence

When I think of those early tree dwellers jumping down to the ground and walking upright looking for a cradle of rocks to protect them from the harsh conditions of those days, I am in awe of their tenacity just to live.

When I think of how our distant ancestors roamed the plains and deserts searching for water and food, looking for an oasis of friendly souls with whom they might form a protective nurturing nourishing bond, I wonder at their hope, their drive to trust each other, their determination to live, and create those conditions where love can hopefully flourish.

I marvel at our ancestors' survival, their desire to explore, work and build a tribal culture, whether as wandering nomads or as cave-dwellers.

I am also reminded of the discovery of fire, learning to dance -from when a cave dweller accidentally stepped on a hot coal from the burning wood, shadow puppetry from when he saw the shadows of his arms waving as he tried to swat the mosquitoes, and drawing on the cave walls from burnt wooden sticks. Dance, moving images, art, graffiti and laughter were just some of their earliest discoveries that accompanied their burgeoning self-awareness.

Elementary language developed, “Ug, ug oog, ug-ug,” Everyone it seems was the artist of their life. Of course some cave dwellers were more successful than others, but practically everyone was included in their spontaneous “Our Cave's Got Talent,' shows.

These shows also educated the dwellers in matters of how to roast a duck, how to kill a wild boar, or escape an enemy, but they also enabled human interactions. The shows were uncensored. They had no need to restrict what experiences they depicted. Indeed it was absolutely necessary that there were no restrictions, in order to advance, to develop their early cultures, achieving together what was impossible alone. They made things better.

It is worth bearing in mind that children slept near the other inhabitants of the cave, and so, by observation, learnt about sex at a very early age, which certainly didn't limit the innocent playfulness of the toddlers, harm them, or stop the human race from advancing. The tribe most likely didn't object to same sex relations either. Sex was not something they did to beget children; they did it to express the attraction they had for each other. There is also little doubt that as time passed that affection grew into loving bonds that lasted a long time, and one in which they shared the nurturing and protection of their young.

Orphans were more than likely adopted without fuss, and sometimes by two people of the same sex, again without any raised eyebrows. Everyone was quite used to the volcanic eruptions, and no one seemed to equate seismic and sexual activities as being dependent on each other despite the feeling that the earth moved for so many couples.

When I think of their probable progression from tree-habitats to living in caves, huddled together in fear of of the menaces outside the cave, preferring to believe in the shadows of the thoughts in their own minds, I am reminded of modern day religious escapists with their fear of accepting reality, of their supplanting reality with myth.

Yet, escape, is what our ancestors did. After millions of years of evolution they ventured from their caves to build civilisations that by comparison, at around less than 10,000 years or so, are not really all that ancient.

Unfortunately some of our ancestors crawled out from under their rocks, and dragged their illusions and pretensions from the caves along with them, confusing reality with what they thought, rather than allowing thought to sense reality. Ignorant thoughts allowed the adoption of superstitions, abandoning reason for unsubstantiated belief. They mistook their own inner voices as being those of external supernatural beings which they deemed to provide answers to the early mysteries raised by the observations of their burgeoning self-awareness. The as yet undiscovered, unexplained mysteries of existence, became cursed with the overbearingly fabricated answers of divinity. And deities restrict almost everything.

Human history, in many ways, is the story of our overcoming those restrictions of superstitious thoughts, many of which still exist.

We find ourselves in cultures that limit our growth through contrition, and yet simultaneously, almost paradoxically, we manage to expand our ability to build new cultures of freedom by displacing ignorance with all the knowledge we acquire when we recognise the reality of living in the here and now.

We should be able to understand that our capacity for self awareness empowers our ability to observe, to reason, and to do so rationally. We should feel challenged, but not discouraged, by the unknown.

Unfortunately there are those who would force contrition on us all, usually so they can, in the cavernous hollows of their imaginations, preserve social values that have arrested our development. Such infantile fixation stops us from fully realising our talents, furthering our cultures, and limits us in the real world from thinking of ourselves as being artists of life, artists of loving each other, of just being who we are -artists in residence.

The so-called gay agenda is, if anything, nothing more than the desire to release us from this regression, to realise the art of loving for everyone, LGBTQ or straight, and that we truly can, if we make the effort, be loving artists living on this rock we call Earth. Unfortunately, there are irrational people who fear love and life, and work to limit the perception of reality. The fact that they do it in the name of religion, for money, power and tyranny over others is unconscionable, soul destroying, and leads to mental illness; to not only a corrupt culture of greed and avarice, but to an insane society.

Despite those corruptions, young people everywhere, instinctively seek to gain knowledge and explore their talents. Remember this the next time you see a group of young people gyrating on a dance floor, or a teenager going through those perplexing fogs of puberty. Realise that when you are waiting at the traffic lights and look across at the car alongside you, to see young persons rocking back and forth whilst singing, “Ug ug oog, ug-ug,” that they are, what I like to call, artists of life in training, evolving into whom they have every right to be, themselves; artists in residence, aware of life, passionately sharing and creating wonders with compassion and love.