War and Peace | Frivolity

There were a few maverick voices that might, or might not, become part of a new tradition: one of these, I had once been arrogant enough to hope, might be mine. I argued against meaninglessness and political correctness: I recommended exploration, and trying things out. But I became discouraged: I could so easily be made a fool of! And I was not yet confident enough to make a virtue of this. My relationship with the college, the university, became ever more tenuous. I was thinking that sooner or later I would have to get out.

I had begun to appear occasionally on television, where I could ride my hobby-horses. I would say, But humans do not like peace, they are at home in war: they cannot stand happiness, they require resentment and complaint. There was for a time a demand for this sort of thing; but I needed to extend my repertoire if I was not to become a bore.

In the course of my reading I had come across traditions in which frivolity and convention did not seem to be a prevailing fashion. In particular I became interested in certain sects, tendencies, in the part of the Middle East that had once been Persia and was now Iran. Here were celebrated the teaching and style of old Persian poetry and mysticism; in this messages and recommendations were conveyed not through injunctions but through stories; and the stories were open to interpretation. The interpretation depended on the interaction in the reader or listener between the poetry and his own life.

One message that was conveyed was that if an individual wishes to be in touch with virtue he has often to be in opposition to prevailing conventions and laws; and if as a result he has to endure censure and hardship, then this may be what is required for a receptive state of mind. He may have to welcome, that is, becoming something of an outcast or a clown. And those who stick to established paths are likely to become rigid with arrogance or complacency.

In the locality in which I was interested this tradition had been largely overrun by militant Islam; but it flourished in individuals and in villages in the hills, and the hostility it evoked ensured its purity and thus even its survival.