Owain Glyndŵr, The Imaginary Prince of Wales, Part 27
(For those new to Owain Glyndŵr, The Imaginary Prince of Wales, read the series so far)
The Prince found himself in a battle for control; or, more specifically, a battle to prevent others from assuming control.
The argument, as defined, was being reduced to the concept of control. Who’s controlling whom and how?
The ideal is perfect control; control over everything for ever. Is that true?
What is control? Who defines it and what are the terms of reference?
Money facilitates control. Yes? It’s not so much you can’t have too much money; it’s simply that you can’t have too much control?
Control. An imaginary concept made real; at least when it comes to people.
What are the instruments of control? Violence is an instrument; unequivocally real, pressed into the service of the imaginary.
Money is an instrument. Money can wield violence, or the threat of violence.
Violence and fear: self-defeating concepts as control would ideally involve a sense of security, a place happily free of violence and fear.
Happiness and control; forever at odds, unreconcilable. Perfect happiness doesn’t necessarily follow on from perfect control.
Neither money nor control can procure happiness: a truism or the truth?
Ranged against the Prince in this battle are (in order of intensity of purpose) Thalia, Hotspur, Falstaff, Mason and Poppy (house gentrifiers) and numerous citizens, all imaginary yet infected somewhat with reality.
The Prince stands resolute; his weapon of choice against the steady creep of control?
Imagination.
Imagination? A weapon? How can that be? What good is imagination, the last refuge of the less serious; the preferred home of artists and other more or less useless members of society?
Nothing good can come from imagination. Imagination doesn’t involve scientific method or mathematical precision. It is airy fairy, can’t be pinned down.
And yet…
Just to re-cap: the Prince, in his reign over the imaginary, had made three specific elements central to his efforts to distinguish the imaginary from the real. Those three elements were money, asset value and merit.
As time has gone on, the Prince has become aware that these were all underpinned by a single concept, the self.
The self. Invented (it is popularly imagined) in the late Eighteenth Century into the early Nineteenth, a longish period of violent upheaval when the United States was invented, France went slightly crazy and lots of men were afforded the vote.
Various European poets (and other ordinary people) had begun to see the self as a repost to the idea of man as machine, without a soul. Their response, a man (it was men) was arguably (they asserted), a being compassing wonders, with an inner life, an inner soul, that could correspond to, even surpass, the most wonderful of God’s creations. No storm, no hurricane, no mountain range, no vast desert, no deep, impenetrable jungle could hold a candle to the most wonderful, the nonpareil, the all conquering inner vistas comprising the self. Look on, ye mighty, and wonder.
The self, a pinnacle of enlightenment overreach, the central certainty in an empire building madness that destroyed civilisations and laid waste to the natural world both hither and yon.
The self: a philosophical imagining whose time had come.
It had occurred to the Prince that the self was a trap. The only way out of the prison cell of the self were the connective possibilities of the imagination.
The connective possibilities of the imagination? What?
In order to test the efficacy of his assertion, the Prince resolved to hold a town hall meeting; not necessarily in an actual town hall (this was imaginary) but a meeting of the population of the town and surrounding area nonetheless.
All of the major and minor players and concerned citizens would be present and would have an opportunity to speak and to present their take on the issue of imagination vis a vis reality and thus would be able, collectively, to come to a conclusion (hopefully in the Prince’s favour) or not.
As a minor deity, the Prince was able to organise such a gathering without delay and indeed the event proceeded with somewhat vulgar haste.
No sooner had he imagined it that it happened and he and his friends, enemies and recent acquaintances found themselves sharing a dais in front of an expectant and highly energetic crowd.
The Prince raised his hand for quiet.
And I’m afraid that’s all we have time for this week. See you next week at the Town Hall!