Jorindel And The Disenchanting Flower

And on the need to resist stupefying ideas

"No man has ever seen a revolution. Mobs pouring through the palaces, blood pouring down the gutters, the guillotine lifted higher than the throne, a prison in ruins, a people in arms–these things are not revolution, but the results of revolution."

G.K Chesterton, The Wind and The Trees

Ideas sometimes work like spells. Enchanting the world to produce things slightly or greatly different from how they are. Like how wind produces sounds and ruffles in trees. Also, there may not be magic in this world but there is magic in this world. How could one think otherwise? There is magic of different kinds—some to light up your world (hope), others to darken it (despair), some to make others love you (romance), others to make others hate others (large-scale envy); magic of various kinds just with harmless names. There are some which sharpen the mind—the enlightening kind (good philosophies). And others which dull the mind—these are the stupefying kind (bad philosophies). And the kind which is our focus now.

Underestimate stupefying ideas at your peril. Because they are a robust category. Containing ideas and arguments of different kinds which give their proponents a magical superiority and turn their unprepared opponents into drooling rocks who can neither muster a response nor dare to conceive one. 

This category of the stupefying kind comprises arguments that often apply to matters of taste and fashion. And to matters of morals and society. Specifically, a statement like "no disputing about tastes" because "all tastes are equal" summarises the stupefying kind around taste and fashion. While on morals and society, "do what you want as long as it doesn't harm others'' summarises the spells from that end. But to sum both together, a statement like "x is a tool of the oppressive patriarchy" lives at the peak of stupefying ideas. For such arguments which appeal to malice stand to smash every convention that has served as a central idea meant for all of society to flourish.

For all I know, accusations of malice, that someone somewhere is trying to oppress you, stands as the ultimate enchantment which seizes the mind and tears entire societies apart and drains it of wholesomeness and love. It worked its dark magic with Nazi Germany as well as in Communist Russia, Poland, Spain and so on. It works in The United States of America and Nigeria today. Nowhere has this spell been cast so powerfully by its sorcerers that it has not drained the drum of love and social affection available in the public well. People are torn and separated from their loved ones by this instrument which we may otherwise call ressentiment.

Ressentiment, like and unlike resentment, is a sense of hostility directed toward an object that one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration, especially at a higher, nearly abstract scale. Just as we see in the Nazis’ rancour against the Jews, the communists against the bourgeoisie, and The US against the cis heterosexual white male. It is in the mould of ressentiment to locate a devil—a scapegoat—and proclaim him to be the direct afflictor of an afflicted class. Although much goes out—violence, inquisition, and murder—from introducing ressentiment into a population, the first and initial response is one of stupefaction. Of rendering both the accuser and the accused in such situations stupid, dull, and senseless to give a response befitting of humanity.

The essence of this stupefaction is captured in the fairytale which narrates the ordeal of Jorinda and Jorindel at the hands of the old fairy.

The story from The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales goes that a fairy lived in a castle towards which no one came close. Depending on your sex, either of these outcomes awaits you by enchantment: the men get stuck and stupefied on the spot, fixed like a stone, unable to move unless the fairy comes to release him. But only after he promises to never return to the premises. While the fairy immediately turns the women into birds, casts them into a cage, and takes them into the castle to sing sweetly never to be seen again. So, very often and in unison, a pair of lovers always have these outcomes waiting for them; the loverboy is dazed and stuck to the ground while the fairy transforms his girl-lover into a bird and transports the girl-turned bird into the castle. The same happened to Jorindel — a shepherd boy — and his lady, Jorinda.

Although they took great care to not wander into the fairy’s territory, their euphoria overtook them, they lost their way, and they found themselves on forbidden ground. Jorindel watched, stupefied of course, as his lovely Jorinda became a nightingale which the fairy moved into the castle. With the deed done, the fairy set him free on the promise that he will never return there again. Now free, he fled his current town to live the rest of his life elsewhere.

Lovers separated, one party banished and the other isolated, is the story of every society that has stood under the effect of ressentiment.

Often, ressentiment makes that prior and debilitating move of creating two distinct categories of people — the oppressor and the oppressed. Upon this distinction, its operations proceed. Because one wonders why the fairy-witch from our tale had two different outcomes for the male and the female. Why not fix them both? Or why not make them both birds? Why not, to be less demanding, make the male a dog and the woman a bear, and keep them both within the castle? That way, the lovers are assured of one another's presence. I perceive that it is a deliberate and peculiar decision to keep them apart for life: the male is sent away and the female is isolated as a singing bird forever. But why?

By creating the oppressor-oppressed divide, it is possible to divide and conquer. Ressentiment has the particular effect of making the designated oppressor into conscious statues—who can see but cannot respond. Because like Jorindel as he stood fixed to the spot, he could neither "weep, nor speak, nor stir hand or foot." To paint a clearer, more modern image, ressentiment, like the fairy's spell, hijacks the tender conscience of boys who just found out that their kind—with swinging genitals—are women's natural enemies, their apex predators, and a born member of the order of the oppressive patriarchy. It manifests in white people as they kneel at the feet of black people and apologize for years of slavery which they did not participate in. This particular effect, which causes people to fall to their knees and ask for absolution for sins they did not commit, is an effect of this spell of stupefying ideas; where you are left helpless at the mercy of another person who is casting the spell. Such spells, are so powerful that you lack both courage and intellect to offer an alternative explanation. Such happened once upon a time when asking to hear both sides of a story earned some good men accusations of misogyny and rape apology. Certainly, no one wants such a label pasted on himself. So, he must banish himself from the territory where that inquisition happens and wander far off. The effect resembles the fear of questioning orthodoxies like "believe all women" and the like.

And the "oppressed" are not free either. They might just have it worse. For they are not allowed to ever leave again. This ressentiment hijacks their innate sense of justice and makes them into angry flying creatures. They immediately become degenerate—falling to the level of birds—and recruit themselves into an old castle to sing for an old fairy for life. This resembles in the real sense, the recruitment of young impressionable girls into the unquestioning hatred of manhood. Of masculinity. Of referring to men as enemies for whom they have natural desires. As a protest, they may find themselves in rings of political lesbianism to defy this natural desire and sing like the birds they are. This often always has the effect of causing once pretty ladies to opt for fashion props—piercings, hair dyed, and tattoos—which disfigure them and render them unrecognisable to healthy taste. All in all, the stupor goes round: it touches the "oppressor" and more so impacts the "oppressed." It renders both parties stupid and unable to think. This is the power of stupefying ideas.

However, Jorindel's story doesn't end there. There is, after all, a bright end to this story.

The story continues that Jorindel found work as a shepherd in another town. But he never ceased wandering around the old castle with the hopes of sniffing Jorinda out. Yet, all to no avail.

But by a stroke of good luck, and by Jove, he had a dream. He saw in his dream, a beautiful purple flower which had a costly pearl in the midst of it. He saw, quite clearly, himself plucking the flower and approaching the castle. He touched Jorinda's cage with it and she became free from her captivity. Upon waking, he searched eight days for the flower and found nothing until the ninth day. Without wasting time, he approached the castle. And he saw, when he was within a hundred steps of it, that he was neither stuck nor stupefied. In fact, he walked close to the door. He was still not stuck. Then he touched the door with the disenchanting flower and it sprang open.

Approaching the fairy herself, she flew with rage. But she could not come close to Jorindel as long as he held that flower in his hands. But then, a problem. He could not locate Jorinda's cage as all the birds were nightingales just as how Jorinda had become. This speaks to the phenomenon of unusual conformity among those who make their highest aims breaking the current conventions. They cheer for diversity, but they all look alike, speak alike, and think alike (except of course they are not thinking at all). However, the witch gave away Jorinda's cage when she tried to flee with it. Jorindel flew towards her and touched the cage with the flower. Immediately, standing in front of him was Jorinda in her pretty human form. Seeing this transformation, Jorindel extended the favour to all the other nightingales who all became pretty women, who reunited with their lovers.

Jorindel and Jorinda got married. And so did many other young lads and their maidens. With ressentiment defeated, there was love in the land again.

It seems then clear to me that entire societies—and not only splintered individuals—can suffer a lack of love because of the proliferation of old gloomy wicked fairy enchantments in the form of ideas. But just as there are enchanting powers, there are disenchanting flowers. Just as many young men banished themselves to never wander towards the castle any more, there is a Jorindel who will one day dream of the solutions to free their beloved from the cages of the old fairy.

I know, in the face of ever-stupefying ideas like ressentiment, one feels the need to run away and never return. But if we have anything to learn from Jorindel, it is that the work of combatting evil ideas must be done. It may take a dream and some days of what looks like empty toil. But we must not desist, at least for the sake of our loved ones who have been kept captive by the wrong ideas, to seek the disenchanting flower that renders all stupefying ideas powerless. We must do the work. We must labour in study (and prayers) to find what can set our beloved free from the witch in the castle. 

This is the power of stupefying ideas. But do not despair, thus is the power of the disenchanting flower also.

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Feliz navidad everyone.