Friday, October 14, 2005

11] On becoming Personacrat

ON BECOMING A "PERSONACRAT" by Azly Rahman Columbia University How limiting can the term “individualist” mean if it hovers merely within the realm of one’s beingness in relation to this world wherein information is mistaken for knowledge and propaganda for truth within the assumption that what we know can merely be grasped by the senses five. If one’s entire beingness and becomingness is shackled by it being shaped by the apparatuses of the modern state, as Gramsci once said, and if one’s understanding of the world is merely a mimic of what politics, culture and scientism has dictated then the world “individualism” is but a term coined so that the personhood in each and every one of us becomes an object to be studied by the process of othering. Within this and shackling context then, I must name myself as an individual and more as a “personacrat.” My personacratic self promarily aims at understanding first and foremost my Inner World with its attendant beauty and self-government, evolving personhood, destroying of paradigms and perpetual awareness of the supraconsciousness of what lies within. I am a personacrat derived from a conceptual meadow I coin as “personacracy”; a government of the self, by the self, for the self. I reject all terms of democracy; a system of government which has lost its meaning since it was first conceptualized. Personacracy allows me to be in this world of illusion, of MAYA, but not be and become part of it. I am thus in this world but not of this world. the government I have created in my wakefulness entails me to mediate between the I and the Thou-ness of the of things. I conjure Existence as the highest ideal, going beyond merely thinking therefore I exist, rather believing that I exist within the a universe of Existence. I persist to exist within this uncapsulated notion called mind an body , Deathbecomes the beginning of perpetual existence. I am eternal within this form and shape of beingness, until Eternity calls upon me to be me with Narute and to be a witness to the Truth I have longed to meet. I am truth within a . truth of greater magnitude. I am one and indivisible within a greater design of Oneness and Indivisibility. I utilize my sense fine with guidance from my lunar self in torn guided by a conter-balancing self within. And within these faculties and the political organs witthin, my entire personhood is a govvernment in itself to be ethnically mastered and manuevered oceans of Mercy I call the World outside. I am thus as such, closer to my Self that my jugular vein! In what ways then, I am not individualistic? Here are a few: I once wept when I had no shoes, until I saw a man with no feet; I once believed that man can rise to become Superman, until I since deeper within myself to become a of the Supreme Spirit; I once believed that life is to be lived until I one said the life unexamined is not worth living; I once believed that we live once and then die, until I discovered that Death to me comes by nightfall and I live a new life at the break of day; I once heard of a distant heaven and hell, until I name name them so as I can be in them; I once let time pass, until I became it and gave what it asked for; I once thought loneliness is bliss until I began to desire of its unspeakable beauty; I once asked who should govern and why must I be governed until I found the ways to those within me who loved to be governed; I once marvelled at creation, destruction and sustenance until I found that I am all in one Creator, Destroyer and Sustainer. I am this a world within and the world without but not with it. Because if I am part of it, I will be apart from the Thou I longed to be part of! I am a traveller passing through my I have met mice and men, savages and politicians and philosophers, economists and ecofeminists. In my journey I met Marx, Nietsche, Sartue, Foucoult and philosophers beyond the individualism I have been told to mimic. I am talking to the read not taken, for it should make a difference and as I pass through, I kept looking at open windows lest I be oblivious of what this world may teach and as I pass through I become more subdued in my anger of what has wrought this world and made men wretched of the earth as I know that this journey is an one; one which begins with a web of guess but will end in a point of certainty. And at the moment of Death, the end of the road, I am meeting a self of whom I am familiar with, who I once met before this journey begins. And hence, why am I not an individual? Because the world is too much for me. If awll the world’s a stage, I insist not being a mere player but to create one for myself so that I can, in the end hold it like a crystal ball – the world and the stage and its players in all. Is there not beauty in personacracy, then in democracy? I believe, therefore I am a personacrat!

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AZLY RAHMAN is an educator, academic, international columnist, and author of nine books on Malaysia and Global Affairs. He grew up in Johor Bahru, Malaysia and holds a Columbia University doctorate in international education development and Master’s degrees in six areas: education, international affairs, peace studies communication, fiction and non-fiction writing. Twitter @azlyrahman.