Am I trying hard enough?

Published: Fri, 03/20/20

I got a complaint about my last post. I don’t get that reaction very often which probably means I am not trying hard enough. Part of the complaint was that it didn’t have anything to do with Stav. Okay, fair point although the idea of posting to an email list is to keep in touch with people who have opted in in some way (if on a Facebook group then I count that as an opt in too) and giving people something to think about. If there is something major going on in the world then commenting on it seems like a reasonable thing to do.

So, a specific Stav point about the COVID-19 epidemic.

The web of Orlog is a pattern of lines and intersections which we depict in Stav as nine lines. In case you are not familiar with the image you can see it using this link https://iceandfire.org.uk/images/web2.png There are many ways to explore the web and then use the understanding gained from it. I go into some detail in the first few modules of my foundation programme and frequently refer to the web when teaching Stav as a martial art. For this post I am interested in lines and the chaos points of intersection. Most of the time life follows a line which takes us in a particular direction and there is little reason to change direction and limited possibilities for doing so. Think of it like driving on a motorway, between junctions you have no choice but to carry on in the direction you are going. At a junction you can still carry on in the same direction, or you can leave the motorway and make a choice of alternative routes. Why
would we take a particular line on the web rather than another one? We usually make decisions about the future based on the past, this line into the future looks like the lines I have followed before so I know what to expect. Very often there is no reason to change direction at all any more than there is any reason to leave a motorway until you have reached the appropriate junction for your destination. I would suggest that most people are not even aware of the Web of Orlog and don’t see the opportunities to change direction which are presented all the time. Motorway exits are well signposted, the chaos points of change on the web usually indicated more subtly.

Then we have a situation like the epidemic that is taking over the world now. Governments are choosing a particular line on the web and creating a very particular reality by traveling along that line. Why? Mainly because of looking back at previous episodes of mass illness and deciding that those are guidance for the future. The problem is that the web is neither random or predictable, rather it is ergodic which means random within predictable parameters. EG, we are all going to die (sorry to keep going on about it, but you might as well get used to the idea) but we really can’t predict when or where or how. So, an outbreak of COVID-19 created a point on the web which allowed for various directions to be taken. A very particular response has been made and now we are on a very different line to the one we were on just a couple of weeks ago. As I indicated on Wednesday I don’t know what the right response is and it isn’t my
decision anyway.

In 1984 Milan Kundera published a novel called the ‘Unbearable Lightness of Being’. It was made into quite an entertaining film with Daniel Day Lewis in 1988. The story suggests that we could only know the best course of action if we could live our lives over twice, each version living out a different choice of line on the web. The problem is of course that once we have taken a particular course of action a whole new pattern of reality is created which may only be tangentially related to the original reason for making the original choice. It would be very interesting to visit a world in a year’s time which had just let the COVID-19 outbreak take its course with no special measures at all. I can’t do that, and neither can you, so now we have the reality we have and the Orlog will unfold as it will. Perhaps the most reassuring thing to remember is that whatever human beings do, or don’t do, the sun will still rise and set, the
seasons will still come around and the leaves will reappear on the trees. I am not sure what else we can be sure of, so I will finish with this quote from Skirnir’s Ride as found in the the Poetic Edda:

When told that he faces mortal danger Skirnir says.

‘There is always a better choice than cowardice, if you have business to take care of.

One day long ago my life was already shaped, and my fate was fixed.”

(Translation by Jackson Crawford)

regards

Graham