Cross Talk
Force and form
LET me introduce the Shakers to you before I tell what I like about them. They are a Protestant religious denomination, which originated in Manchester, England, in the 18th century. But that isn't why I like them. I like them for their celebrated proverb, which goes like this: "Every force evolves a form."
Ironically, the Shakers have proven it with their own lives. They built 19 communal settlements that attracted some 200,000 converts. Strict believers in celibacy, Shakers maintained their numbers through conversion and adoption of orphans. Turnover was very high; the group reached maximum size of about 6,000 full members in 1850, but now has only four members left as per the last count.
Perhaps the Shakers never thought that celibacy was not a force and it couldn't evolve a form. It was Parmenides who had popularised the maxim "Ex nihilo nihil fit" in the Greek cosmogony hundreds of years ago. In plain English that means nothing comes out of nothing. What Socrates preached, the Shakers practiced, and that reduced their number to as many as a table has legs.
Well, if brevity is the soul of wit, then what the Shakers have said in five words can be expanded to interpret this world. In fact, the form is as good as the force. The force of wind makes a storm. The force of will makes an ambition. But then Shakespeare said that ambition was the sin by which fell the angels.
If sin is a force, then so is virtue. It is all about action and reaction. It can be seen in another way. Form is the reaction to force, just like the dent on a surface is reaction to a blow.
In 1985, this year's Nobel laureate, Doris Lessing, had said in her Massey Lectures for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that the future generations of historians would be puzzled by the fact that the Western civilisation had the knowledge it needed to avoid its collapse, but, yet, it did nothing to prevent it. This is eloquently summed up once again by another concise remark. "We would rather be ruined than changed," wrote W.H. Auden.
The best example of the Shaker proverb is man himself. He is the product of a force of passion, which starts with a man and a woman who are responsible for his birth. Then this man evolves on the force of his own passion to create and procreate throughout his life. He is propelled by his hopes and dreams. When it's said that a man is as large as his hope, again it's the Shaker proverb that makes the sense. The form evolves as far as the force revolves.
This world, therefore, is about force and form. The big bang created the universe. The force of combustion evolves the speed of a car. The force of war creates national boundaries. The market force shapes economy. The force of intellect harnesses knowledge. The force of a potter's wheel fashions his craft. The spin of roulette formulates chance. Evolution itself is a force that evolved from tiny one-celled animals to trilobites, fishes, and eventually amphibians, quadrupeds, dinosaurs, birds, monkeys, and men.
Furthermore, life is the force that evolves death. Time is the force that evolves age. Seconds strike a minute, minutes strike a day and days strike a year. A single stir creates motion, and then motion creates commotion. In five words the Shakers have given away the secret of life.
Faith is the force that evolves religion, and then religion is the force that evolves conduct of man. What he believes evolves into action when a man turns into a formidable weapon. He rises against governments, he rises against tyrants. One man can carry enough force in his conviction that ultimately evolves change. An image of that evolution was seen at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. A lone man stood against a convoy of advancing tanks.
If love is a force, so is hatred. If privation is a force, so is satisfaction. If sleep is a force, so is wakefulness. If emptiness is a force, so is fullness. Nothing is a force like everything. Sorrow is a force like joy. Motion is a force like stillness. Van Gogh was starving once when he went to a rich relative and asked for money. He was told that it was the time to start painting, because when the when stomach was full, men always created on the wrong end.
So hunger is a force that evolves masterpiece, whereas a sumptuous meal produces wind in the belly. Who hasn't heard it a few times in life that there is a way where there is a will? The willpower is the force that evolves a man. It is like a bulldozer that razes down obstacles and makes its way in the dense forest.
But the fundamental question is what creates force? There are gravitational and magnetic forces, which influence objects. The force that evolves life, one that creates thoughts and emotions to set a life on its course, is a different force. Fate is one way to explain it. It is written in the cards before a man is born. It is a certain alignment of stars, which favours or disfavours the luck of a man. Life is a mere stretch of time when its unfolding force unfolds the man.
If this civilisation ever crumbles, it will crumble not from failure but from success. It will crumble not from ignorance, but from knowledge, from understanding not from confusion. Evolution is so long as force dominates form. Revolution is when form dominates force.
Somehow the force and the form are coming too close, leaving no space between them. Man is trying to conquer hunger, poverty and ignorance, and then he is going to stall. Neither revolution, nor evolution will change anything. The force shall not evolve form for the same reason one can't shoot if one has no space to step back and take aim at the target.
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