[Type text]
SOVEREIGNTY ANESTHETIZED
ASMA AHMED HASHMI
PROFESSOR TEDDY CHOCOS
ENGLISH 102
DATED: 02/26/2013
HASHMI-2
The makeshift laboratory of sovereignty equipped with the insinuations of conventions; the
bottled up perspectives, coupled with the forbidden implications of thinking, fosters an ambience
where autonomy is anesthetized, taken and caved. It dethrones the personification of an
individual. There are countless amongst us who are content to follow behind the crowd, to take
what the system and the planners of life choose them to give; to see what the sight of others
permits them to see; to hear what they subscribed them to hear; to feel what they incite them to
feel, and to become unfeeling to your own senses and individuality. They believe that their
responsibility lies in following and conforming to the expectations of the experts of the blind
folded system. Thinking is not encouraged, and actions, even more prohibited. Walker Percy in
his renowned essay ‘The Loss of the Creature’ rebelled against the fraternity of that prototype.
The manicured ideas of the planners are nested to hood wink the consumers. The science of
sovereignty was made barren of the liberalism to explore and its literature visibly dried up. Percy
tried to highlight the complications of the journey of the explorer, “Every person names his
island Formosa, beautiful. To him it is beautiful because, being first; he has access to it and can
see it for what it is. But to no one else it is ever as beautiful-except the rare man who manages to
recover it, who knows that it has to be recovered.” So is the beauty lost after the advent of its
exploration? Or do we lose the sight to see it, the same way as its explorer did? It’s the latter
with which Percy built his argument. The explorer didn’t discover the island through the
meticulously mapped way. He hadn’t heard of the promises of the island’s beauty from the
tourists avowals; he hadn’t even seen any visuals of the island in postcards or even close. He
didn’t follow the ‘most beaten track’ of all. In fact he didn’t know of any. For how could he
HASHMI-3
when he was the first to discover it. He was privileged to see the beauty in its raw form; the
beauty that was not enslaved by the infrastructure of the planners’ vision, the planner who
ultimately decides which part of it should be exposed and in what way. To the first person who
sees it, the beauty is natural. But to the others who follow him later, it is all planned. And it is
part of their responsibility to check the entire check lists of the planning and to come to terms
with the planners. But that doesn’t mean that those who follow later could never break the chain
of planning. There is a recovery, provided they know what is to be recovered-the track, the
beauty, the sight, or the sovereignty?
And unfortunately, for the most part they are unaware of the occurrence of the lost. They are
unconscious of even the planning’s of the crafted planners. As Percy states in his beautifully
carved out example of the Grand Canyon,
“The assumption is that the Grand Canyon is remarkably interesting and beautiful place
and that if it had a certain value of P for Cardeans, the same value P could be transmitted
to any number of sightseers-just as Banting’s discovery of insulin can be transmitted to
any number of diabetics. A counterinfluence is at work, however, and it would be nearer
to truth to say that if the place is seen by a million sightseers, a single sightseer does not
receive value P but a millionth part of value P.”
The place that was explored by the Cardeans, namely the Grand Canyon, was explored when
it was wholly in its natural state. The Naturality was obscured by giving it the ‘Grand Canyon’
name; and then trying to make various revisions in its naturalness, the beauty was visibly tamed
to concur with the expectations of the sightseers. But it was not just the beauty that was tamed,
the expectations of the sightseers was also cleverly controlled to the ‘pre formulations’ of the
planners. The tourists now come and see not what the Canyon has to really offer, but rather they
come and see to check if the discovery of the Canyon matches up with what is shown on the
postcards, books, pictures, geography and tourists folders. They are supremely happy if they
HASHMI-4
could see what they wanted to see; if their experience of the Canyon matched the stratagem of
what they should experience; and they would conclude candidly, as Percy said, “Why it is every
bit as beautiful as the picture postcard!” It was as if they saw the Canyon but really did not see
anything. What they saw was an infinitely small subset of the Canyon’s beauty. And it was so for
the million others who saw the Canyon, but were unaware of its trappings. They surrendered
without knowing what they surrendered. They answered without knowing which questions they
answered. They lost, without knowing what they lost.
The dilemma of the lost and discovery was not just confined to the Canyon and its beauty,
instead, its metaphysics extends far beyond that. Percy’s essay is powered by strong examples
through which he tried to frame “The Loss of the Creature”. He states,
“I do not refer only to the special relation of layman to theorists. I refer to the general
situation in which sovereignty is surrendered to a class of privileged knowers, whether
these be theorists or artists. A reader may surrender over that which has been written
about, just as a consumer may surrender sovereignty over a thing which has been
theorized about. The consumer is content to receive an experience just as it has been
presented to him by theorists and planners. The reader may also be content to judge life
by whether it has not been formulated by those who know and write about life.”
Percy’s theory emphasized on the reverence of an individual’s perspectives- that being, not to
surrender your beliefs to the common redundant views. He was wearied of people who couldn’t
recover from following the most ‘beaten track’ of all. He believed when a person is left to
explore, the discovery should not then be bounded by the expertise theory. He should be
liberated to form his own thinking without being belittled by the expertise’s theoretical views.
Percy gave an example of a person who was dissecting a dogfish out in an open frame actually
learns more than a zoology student who makes calculated movements to cater to the professor’s
requirement. That is so because the student failed to muster enough strength to break the odds to
HASHMI-5
excavate that learning, that beauty that comes in the package of that educational learning. We all
tend to believe more on what others envelope in their expert theory and submissively accept our
own inferiority. And Percy put it bluntly, “A student who has the desire to get at a dogfish or a
Shakespeare sonnet may have the greatest difficulty in salvaging the creature itself from the
educational package in which it is presented. The great difficulty is that he is not aware that there
is a difficulty; surely, he thinks, in such a fine classroom, which such a fine textbook, the sonnet
must come across! What’s wrong with me?”
For worse we are not even aware that there is something wrong with the system, or that
something has gone amiss in our way of thinking, in our own way of looking at things. There is
change in thought, change in sight and also the lamentable surrender of sovereignty. We are
content to be on the receiving end. And receiving the things as it is given to us. We don’t
question the package in which the thing is presented to us. And we don’t even question the
contents of that package for which we are trading our sovereignty. For we believe that there is no
reason to question. We are studying in a reputable school, by a world class faculty; we are given
a classic educational package. So will it be justifiable to raise questions? Perhaps not. But it
certainly also does not stand to reason that we tend to abuse our own sense of wisdom, our
perspectives and our own sovereignty. We are human beings. And it is our innate characteristic
and right to question; not to follow behind like sheep in herd. There is a need to protect ourselves
from this plight. And it is not easy; probably because that we don’t even realize that we have a
problem. Percy wrote about this debacle, “It is only the hardiest and cleverest of students who
can salvage the sonnet from this many tissued packages.” This is just not a loss of beauty, a
discovery, literature or science but also the loss of thinking. The thinking that has lost its
individuality; it is now shaped by the pressures of an educational requirements and the peer
HASHMI-6
pressures. This way it’s not surprising when a person who studies Shakespeare sonnets because
he has an inclination to, actually learns more than a student who studies it in Harvard university
by the best of faculties. This is so because he subconsciously surrenders to the expertise of the
educational package that is awarded to him. In a complex web of system and theory that is
planned for the people to see and learn; Percy administered people to see beyond what is
designed for them. He wanted each individual to experience something different from the
experience that is designed for them; to salvage and procure your own perspectives from the
many used packages.
There is an important need to put an end to the chain of robots we are producing in the skin of
humans. There is an equally important need to break away from the ambience that’s designed by
the planners. We need thinkers who can think, explorers who can make discovery with their own
sight. Percy proposed in his essay that the mode of education should be altered at regular
intervals, the auspicious mode where a Biology student mesmerized himself in Shakespearean
sonnets, and the literature student indulge himself in the intricate details of science. And though
each of them have a separate major, but still they would learn a little more than that they would
learn from their own major because they are not expected to fulfill the requirements of the
educational package. They should have the freedom to approach the subject with their own
vision. And when you have that freedom, when you refuse to become a conformist, that’s the
time when our society produces intellectuals like Steve Jobs, Shakespeare and the like; because
what they have before them is their own vision, and their own coveted sovereignty which they
refuse to barter. As Steve Jobs quote in his commencement speech at Stanford, “Remembering
that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have
something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” So it is
HASHMI-7
better to take a step forward and put an end to the clichés that the society has for so long
protected. You no longer want to follow the conventions of a pre-packaged deal. Your present
should not surrender to the past’s pre-formulations and the future expectations. People say not
everyone can be Steve Jobs. True, because very few actually has the courage to not auction their
sovereignty, whatever the bid may be.