fountainhead or vent?

fountainhead or vent?

As Emerson says, we humans are ‘vents’ that transmit influences from the vast and universal to the point on which our genius can act.

 

Indigenous aboriginals describe terrorists in the same way.  As tensions build in the relational social dynamics between Euro-American colonizers and the colonized peoples of the Middle East, there is a violent ‘venting’ of pent-up energies.  The people we call ‘terrorists’ are the vents through which relational tensions are dispersed, but they are not the jumpstart source of the violence; i.e. “it takes a whole community to raise a terrorist”.

 

The politician is like a sailboater who may initially, and at various times, be ‘becalmed’ for his power derives from having his sails filled with the influence of others.  He, too, is a vent that transmits influences from the relational continuum to the points on which these influences may act.

 

In general, people are vents that can focus and direct influence that derives from elsewhere; i.e. from a transforming relational continuum. (more…)