The Moon Palace Chapter 1 Time, The needs of the parents, Requirements of the Status quo.
The Moon Palace chapter 1 The needs of the parents. The demands of the status quo and society.
The Narrative. (link here to complete narrative) Once upon a time, there was a mother and father who had a daughter. They live in a very cold country, and it was particularly important that they had a young man in the family to help them catch the food that they needed to it eat in their old age. The mother and the father were concerned that the daughter did not have a young man in her life, and they wondered what would become of them in their old age.
This story is a story of disassociation and escaping from the brutality of an over-dominant father and an over-dominant society in general as represented by the patriarchy. When we disassociate it is said we are living in the Moon Palace, though we have other names for it in our language.
This story is also about the “refusal of suitors” (Chapter 2) the father and the patriarchy unconsciously engage and encourage this. There is a special relationship between the father and his daughter. Not necessarily sexual as we would assume today but psychically. This overwhelming and-dominant father is not only her physical father but also represents the dominance of the patriarchy, the status quo for all of us, men, and women. Yes, men as well.
Disassociation is a defense mechanism of the psyche to protect the Ego from being overwhelmed especially the young emerging Ego. The Ego’s job is the one of a warrior patrolling the boundaries of the psyche only allowing in what the Ego can manage at any given time. This could also be seen as denial, but for me, it’s not quite the same thing. We have different names for this, Space cadet-ing, not being in the moment. We say to our children “FOCUS, pay attention, watch what your hands are doing, etc”.In the case of disassociating we (our consciousness) can actually leave our bodies to escape the trauma of the moment. This story describes this process in metaphor and describes the return journey into our bodies.
The narrative. Once upon a time, there was a mother and father who had a daughter. They live in a very cold country, and it was especially important that they had a young man in the family to help them catch the food that they needed to eat in their old age.
Once upon a time, immediately we are told that this story is not happening in our time but springing out of the eternal, which of course makes the story always relevant. As usual, whoever is mentioned first in the narrative shows the energies and the characters the story is going to deal with in this case the mother, the father, and the daughter. The geography of the story is one of a frozen landscape which is another way of saying the psychological space the three main characters are stuck, frozen, frozen in time, and needs some healing.
The demands and needs of the Status quo (A link to an explanation of the status quo) are expressed in the story by the needs of the parents in a small village depending on the youth of a young man to provide for them in their harsh climate and old age. However, if we place the demands and needs in a global context and as a metaphor, it gives us a different picture of the same needs the same requirement of youth-driven by the same demands of our Status Quo.
The Status quo and the machine God. In this video by Collin Campbell, one of the many points he makes is that in our western world our god is a machine. That we are machine-like and only value production and what it can buy. Money of course is our main means of exchange and how we value productivity and what we must lay on the altar of production to have our prayers of supplication answered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqUKS1G8tTA.
At 7:16 min. Here is an excerpt from Collin Campbell’s video with its timestamp.
“There is a starvation of Soul, a malnutrition in our lives and in our expression and experience of life. Soul has gone to live in another part of the psyche and regresses, swivels up, carries resentment and rage. We have become a dystopian culture. We have the notion of cocooning, Virtual reality, reactions of all sorts, Agoraphobia, Disconnection from nature and the natural world, the natural cyclic nature of life”.
Given that this is true. Why is that?
The Machine God and a dystopian (Ego) reality.
“The elders say the difficulty you face is that your God is a machine, God. The God you worship, where you put your attention and energy is a machine. Everything we do, the whole way we operate as people is machine-like. This machine God like any other God creates life in its own image”.
If we cease to be productive then we are side-lined, retired, lose our status and of course income. We become invisible on the trash heap of the human condition. Poverty is ugly and heartbreaking to see.
Therefore, youth is revered by the Status Quo because potentially it can be very productive. We try extremely hard to remain youthful to the point of vanity and physically change our bodies to retain the appearance of youth.
In our western, Islamic, Judaic culture, money is everything. If you have money even if you have stolen it, you will get more respect than a person who works diligently for a small salary.
Money stems from production and is our God, That God that drives the beliefs of the Status Quo, has various hierarchies including our social structures, our education structures, and how we organise ourselves.
From the time of conception, the limitation of the local belief systems begins to impinge on our life through our mother’s relationship to her environment including the local belief systems.
Getting back to our story which is an Eskimo Story. We can see how one or two lines can encompass our whole cultural attitude ……or am I reaching too far?
The narrative asks us to understand it is up to the daughter to bring a young man into the family to sustain the parents and his young bride. It’s a sort of a contract, for the young man, you get the daughter and you feed the family. This seems to be the way it is in one form or another.
In South Africa, there is a thing called the Black Tax. This is an unwritten rule but a definite expectation. If you have a job and earn money then you must support the other family members who don’t have work. One person with a job may support 3 or 4 other families. Just as well for through this and the concept of Ubuntu, most people can get something to eat each day. In the local African tradition if you have no food and nothing to eat then others will share their pot with you, everybody eats out of the pot until the food is finished. So very different from a European tradition where you would be dished a plate of food and that what you got irrespective of what anybody else got.
Ubuntu. “I am because we are.”
Continue to Chapter two.The Moon Palace Chapter 2 The Refusal of Suitors.
I have introduced some words here without explanation, please see links to these concepts for deeper understanding.
Sam Sleeman 12/4/22