Shangri-La

By Bill Barksdale

Almost everyone has heard of a place called Shangri-La.  A mythical place. A kind of utopian paradise where people live in happiness and harmony with themselves and nature.  Shangri-La was invented by author, James Hilton in his 1933 book Lost Horizon, later made into Director Frank Capra’s haunting film of the same name.

As a filmmaker, Capra often seemed to be searching for what is good and fine deep inside the human spirit.  His films (It’s A Wonderful Life and State of the Union - both made shortly after World War II) examine the innate courage and decency of one person to prevail over greed and cruelty.  

In Lost Horizon, Robert Conway is abducted away from his strife-filled life and finds himself in a strange, remote paradise hidden in the Himalayan Mountains.  Here he meets the ancient High Lama, Father Perrault.  In Capra’s version, screen writer Robert Riskin wrote the High Lama’s words, “Look at the world today….What unintelligent leadership!  A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other, compelled by an orgy of greed and brutality.” 

In her novel, The Kin Of Ata, writer Dorothy Bryant portrays an angry, successful, reckless man who is speeding away from his cruel and mediocre life, a life which has no meaning. After a catastrophic accident, he suddenly finds himself inexplicably transported to a strange land where the people live seemingly simple, introverted lives but things are not what they seem.

Much like Dorothy Bryant’s character, Father Perrault had been seeking meaning to his life, and found a simple answer: Be kind.  Is there any more profound guidance than, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”?  Much creativity and wisdom can flow from this advice.

The idealistic purpose of Shangri-La was to be a depository of the best of humanity so that if human blindness and madness destroyed civilization, there would be a community that could seed a renaissance to rebuild a broken society.  Of course, with today’s powerful and insane weaponry, chemical and nuclear pollution - a world without humans to decommission and decontaminate its waste would likely end the life of our magnificent planet altogether - a sad and asinine legacy for humanity when we have the potential for a much better outcome.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes in his book Anger “Anger is a zone of energy in us.  It is part of us.  It is a suffering baby that we have to take care of.”

As I’ve quoted many times before, the Realtor® Code of Ethics begins “Under all is the land.”  As we create community we build upon that land.  Our very life itself depends on our good stewardship of the land.  This fact is something no rational person can deny.  When we get lost in tribalism, politics, greed, the compulsion for dominance – one over the other – we lose site of the reality that there is only one.  And by “One” I mean the planet, all life on it and all that includes. 

In Lost Horizon, Robert Conway says “There are moments in a man’s life where he glimpses the eternal.”  We can’t spend our individual and collective existence escaping.  We must be moving toward something better.  In my lifetime it has never been more important than now that we, as the human race, begin to consider what we are moving toward.  That begins with listening to one’s inner truthful conscience.

We hold a great gift in that we are intelligent and creative beings that share a unique planet in the vastness of the universe.  We have the choice to evolve and get better, or we can throw away and destroy the gift we share through hubris – arrogance.  James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon between World War One and World War Two.  Our own great country, The United States of America, was nearly ripped apart by the Civil War.  Lately I’ve heard news commentary speculating of a second Civil War.  What!  Will we really head foolishly into such a hellish future?  Or will we, as a nation of diverse people, come to our senses and choose wise goals and wise leadership?

Will we need a Shangri-La to reseed the world or even our nation?  I hope not.  Under all is the land.  I hope we humans can evolve as a nation and a world to the next level. 

Richard Curtis, in his movie About Time, said “I just try to live every day as if I deliberately came back to this one day.  To enjoy it as if it was the full, final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.  We’re all traveling through time together every day of our lives.  All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable life.”

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

By Bill Barksdale

First published in 1842, Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Masque of the Red Death is about the wealthy and privileged Prince Prospero.  As a fearsome and deadly plague ravages the country, the Prince and his wealthy friends isolate themselves in Prospero’s castle to party and wait-it-out until the plague passes.  The common people will be dead, but the Prince and his friends will emerge untouched. 

The Prince holds a huge masked ball one night for his guests’ entertainment.  A mysterious party-goer appears in a tasteless costume dressed as a victim of the plague.  The enraged Prince, determined to murder the intruder, chases it through each of the seven rooms, each decorated in a different theme, until he confronts it.  Ripping off the mask he discovers there is nothing inside the costume, only the Prince’s horrible death and soon to follow, the deaths of all the party guests.

Well, as Marilyn Monroe sang “When Love goes wrong, nothin goes right”.  

We’ve “sheltered in place”, as the new vocabulary says, to help slow the spread of a deadly disease.  One of the good things about the Covid-19 virus pandemic is things have slowed down for a while.  Filthy air and water all over the planet have started to clean up.  Clean air and water are, of course, essential to life – most life that is.  Some pathogens thrive in toxic conditions that most life on Earth cannot thrive or even live in. 

Unfortunately, many people haven’t been able to earn a living.  Some people in large cities or isolated areas have died, unnoticed and alone.  Others have become frustrated and even abusive.  Society has become a kind of pressure cooker, and we are seeing the contents of that pressure cooker explode as “non-white” people finally say “Enough is enough!” and rebel against centuries of abuse at the hands of people who see themselves a superior.    

I watched a violent “thriller” movie last night that seemed dull compared to the nightly news. 

Instead of real federal leadership in a time of tragic national need, states have been played against each other, scratching and begging for desperately needed personal protective equipment and imperative testing so the disease can be tracked as it spreads, so we can identify its trajectory and try to protect those in the path of danger. 

In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed The Federal Emergency Relief Act.  It read in part:  “That the Congress hereby declares that the present economic depression has created a serious emergency, due to widespread unemployment and increasing inadequacy of State and local relief funds, resulting in the existing or threatened deprivation of a considerable number of families and individuals of the necessities of life, and making it imperative that the Federal Government cooperate more effectively with the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia in furnishing relief to their needy and distressed people.”

FDR also went on to establish The National Recovery Administration, whose goal was to foster fair business practices, regulate “cut throat competition”, and establish antitrust regulation so corporations couldn’t become so large and dominant that they could gouge citizens of their resources at any price, thus forcing people into poverty and insecurity.    

Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor, a great progressive activist herself, really cared about the people of the United States.  Ancient philosopher and Roman lawyer, Marcus Tullius Cicero, said near the end of the unstable Roman Empire "The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law". 

Real leaders have emerged – sometimes - in times of great need to help “We the People” find our way and thrive.  That’s the highest and best function of effective government. 

In 1934 a group calling itself The American Liberty League was formed, funded largely by the enormously wealthy DuPont’s and their wealthy corporate cohorts.  Their goals were to roll back President Roosevelt’s creations of Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum living wages, and to advocate for an extremely “conservative” Supreme Court that would back them in rolling back the FDR reforms meant to prevent a second “Great Depression”.  The members of the deceptively named “The American Liberty League” wanted to preserve and increase their vast wealth.

For some people, too much is not enough. 

In actual fact, spreading the wealth through fair wages, makes our nation a wealthier country.  Helping every responsible person who wants to own their own home reach that goal, makes us a more equal, just and secure country.  When people feel safe in their homes, that’s a better and freer country.  When a person can walk down the street and not fear being killed because of the color of their skin, that makes all of us freer.

When the super powerful and wealthy try to lock themselves away, disregarding the rest of the people, they violate the “supreme law”.  They might find themselves tearing off that frightening Masque of the Red Death to an unanticipated bad outcome. 

Bill Barksdale was a 2016 inductee into the Realtor® Hall of Fame.  He is a referral agent for Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty Inc.  CADRE# 01106662.  Read more of his articles at his blog at BBarksdale.com