Artists under censorship and contemplating that I am free.

Glutter's Hong Kong

As I am about the leave to put up the banners and T-shirts at the destination point of the protest. I thought about what I wrote last night and what I wrote tonight. I realized the crux of all my beliefs both personally, professionally and politically, I treasure my freedom. I treasure my need to be able to change my mind. I really treasure the feeling that I can explore and express, develop and muse. I treasure the idea that I can read what I want, say what I need, and know that it is safe to do so.

Without freedom of speech, without the fear of persecution you cannot.

I think of all the Chinese artists, writers and poets I have met from Mainland China, how each time I am at a talk or in a meeting or just privately, we are obsessed. We are obsessed with the ability to say what we need and how to they go about avoiding censors. I think of the times when you meet Chinese artists who have left China and they talk about the freedom they feel, the weight that is lifted of them, the sort of creative freedom that they have never experienced. They do not have to worry about hiding what their thoughts are behind metaphors, that they are pushing the boundaries or crossing the line. They feel that they can say or do what they want. It can be daunting. That void of restrictions has ruined many an artistic soul when they leave China because for the first time in their lives, see the blank sheet of paper and it overwhelms. But no one ever complains. Only an expression of relief.

Juxta position that with those artists and writers in the mainland. Hiding their thoughts, speaking about how they don't mind censorship. How it's okay to be banned. How they know which line to tread or call obviously political work, "simply fiction."

"I am only telling a story. I am not saying anything more. You can read what you want in it."

"Life is what it is. We bring our own stories. I try not to lead my readers into thinking a certain way."

But you go through the pages and you can feel the pulsing ideas and ideals that run through the work.

I wonder what it must be like to have to hide. I think it's a shame these creative minds, these intellectuals must lie.

It's the exact opposite of creativity or at least the need for it.

The feeling of making something out of materials and the mind is an innate want to share one's vision. To comment on society, to create a feeling and thought and transfer it to others. What happens when it is dampen by the knowledge that it can land one in jail?

Some say, but it creates good art.

I say good art is created despite it. Which denotes a mental strength and ability to withstand the threat of physical punishment. Going to jail is as physical as being beaten. One is confined. One's body is confined fully, totally, Submitted to the system. Those people are strong enough to withstand total freedom where the only limits in oneself.

I think that a lot. I wonder what can I create in the future? If I mediate on my art and writing for life, then the difficult periods, the dry periods, the moments of doubt will merely be small moments in a long career. Those simply gets wiped out as the need to tell compresses time. The openness of life can be overwhelming, but I know I will have it for the rest of my life. Mainly because I have a choice to leave China and go elsewhere. But even that choice I am grateful for.

I just think about how it's a gift that one can think, feel and express without the government's intervention. It helps to lose culture and propriety as well. In order to say things that no one has said before, one needs to say something other people have not, cannot, cannot bring themselves to.

That is hard in itself.

It's good to have a day once a year that I have to think about these things. A day a year where we devote the times to contemplate what it means to be free.

July 1st 2006. Hong Kong. 1:19pm.

May freedom prevail......

Comments

[James Fletcher Baxter]

Many problems in human experience are the result of
false and inaccurate definitions of humankind premised
in man-made religions and humanistic philosophies.

Human knowledge is a fraction of the whole universe.
The balance is a vast void of human ignorance. Human
reason cannot fully function in such a void; thus, the
intellect can rise no higher than the criteria by which it
perceives and measures values.

Humanism makes man his own standard of measure.
However, as with all measuring systems, a standard
must be greater than the value measured. Based on
preponderant ignorance and an egocentric carnal
nature, humanism demotes reason to the simpleton
task of excuse-making in behalf of the rule of appe-
tites, desires, feelings, emotions, and glands.

Because man, hobbled in an ego-centric predicament,
cannot invent criteria greater than himself, the humanist
lacks a predictive capability. Without instinct or trans-
cendent criteria, humanism cannot evaluate options with
foresight and vision for progression and survival. Lack-
ing foresight, man is blind to potential consequence and
is unwittingly committed to mediocrity, collectivism,
averages, and regression - and worse. Humanism is an
unworthy worship.

The void of human ignorance can easily be filled with
a functional faith while not-so-patiently awaiting the
foot-dragging growth of human knowledge and behav-
ior. Faith, initiated by the Creator and revealed and
validated in His Word, the Bible, brings a transcend-
ent standard to man the choice-maker. Other philo-
sophies and religions are man-made, humanism, and
thereby lack what only the Bible has:

1.Transcendent Criteria and
2.Fulfilled Prophetic Validation.

The vision of faith in God and His Word is survival
equipment for today and the future.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by
nature and nature's God a creature of Choice - and of
Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and definitive
characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural
foundation of his environments, institutions, and re-
spectful relations to his fellow-man. Thus, he is orien-
ted to a Freedom whose roots are in the Order of the
universe.

- from The HUMAN PARADIGM

[James Fletcher Baxter]

At the sub-atomic level of the physical universe quantum
physics indicates a multifarious gap or division in the
causal chain; particles to which position cannot be
assigned at all times, systems that pass from one energy
state to another without manifestation in intermediate
states, entities without mass, fields whose substance is
as insubstantial as "a probability."

Only statistical conglomerates pay tribute to
deterministic forces. Singularities do not and are
therefore random, unpredictable, mutant, and in this
sense, uncaused. The finest contribution inanimate
reality is capable of making toward choice, without its
own selective agencies, is this continuing manifestation
of opportunity as the pre-condition to choice it defers
to the natural action of living forms.

Biological science affirms that each level of life,
single-cell to man himself, possesses attributes of
sensitivity, discrimination, and selectivity, and in
the exclusive and unique nature of each diversified
life form.

The survival and progression of life forms has all too
often been dependent upon the ever-present undeterminative
potential and appearance of one unique individual organism
within the whole spectrum of a given life-form. Only the
uniquely equipped individual organism is, like The Golden
Wedge of Ophir, capable of traversing the causal gap to
survival and progression. Mere reproductive determinacy
would have rendered life forms incapable of such potential.

Only a moving universe of opportunity plus choice enables
the present reality.

Additionally, such rejection of transcendent criteria
self-denies man the vision and foresight essential to
decision-making for survival and progression. He is left,
instead, with the redundant wreckage of expensive hind-
sight, including human institutions characterized by
averages, mediocrity, and regression.

Humanism, mired in the circular and mundane egocentric
predicament, is ill-equipped to produce transcendent
criteria. Evidenced by those who do not perceive
superiority and thus find themselves beset by the shifting
winds of the carnal-ego; i.e., moods, feelings, desires,
appetites, etc., the mind becomes subordinate: a mere
device for excuse-making and rationalizing self-justifica-
tion.

The carnal-ego rejects criteria and self-discipline for such
instruments are tools of the mind and the attitude. The
appetites of the flesh have no need of standards for at the
point of contention standards are perceived as alien, re-
strictive, and inhibiting. Yet, the very survival of our
physical nature itself depends upon a maintained sover-
eignty of the mind and of the spirit.

It remained, therefore, to the initiative of a personal
and living Creator to traverse the human horizon and
fill the vast void of human ignorance with an intelli-
gent and definitive faith. Man is thus afforded the
prime tool of the intellect - a Transcendent Standard
by which he may measure values in experience, anticipate
results, and make enlightened and visionary choices.

Only the unique and superior God-man Person can deserved-
ly displace the ego-person from his predicament and free
the individual to measure values and choose in a more
excellent way. That sublime Person was indicated in the
words of the prophet Amos, "...said the Lord, Behold,
I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel."
Y'shua Mashiyach Jesus said, "If I be lifted up I will
draw all men unto myself."

- from The HUMAN PARADIGM