The 2012 Olympics, Thomas Hardy, and

Future Culture

A look at the Olympics, “Jude the Obscure”, Papal nurturing, and Brazil

“Long Live Life”
      seized by the closed box
      caused beauty to die in pain
      releasing nothing…

The embryo of reactive politicization in its relationship to religious dissidence has, in specific circumstances, a multiple of systemic mutations which have designs connected to negotiated, and often, short-sighted policies in pursuit of misperceived interests. In some sectors of every country, through assessable news print, satellite networks, and elected assemblies, specific demographic groups appeared pressed into the background, economically, socially, and in expressions of faith.

That instance diminishes, due to the competence of a continued Age of Specialization or SpecAge. Although Sir Paul McCartney’s canto of “Hey, Jude!” may never make any thing better, no matter the exchange of ideas or pur autre vie, it did limit the value of propaganda-induced kleptomania. Self preservation, derived from SpecAge design and labor’s dual choice to produce and consume (Pro & Con), illustrated London’s improvisation, an event to secure and to impress its personality.

It only presents the “kultur” of the moment, and that medium’s interpretation of a magnified, colorful, and digitally guided past. I doubt if Thomas Hardy would have agreed to this familiarized attempt at generating a sense of calm and quality investment.

Yes, during the Olympic ceremonial shape-shifting, the community at large did receive some inspirational, if only, anecdotal messages. Still, questions remain evident: When and how does human strength and skill shape itself thru specialization? Who will receive the greater transfer of wealth? What clever financial instrument officiates its disposal? Where will public institutions invigorate labor’s right to property?

In fact, the one-hundredth anniversary of World War I, “the suicide of civilized Europe”, as said by Pope Benedict XV, will examine Europe’s progress, and certainly Great Britain’s distance from its old empire. Since empires institutionalize rules and outcomes, did the regime of Thomas Hardy’s work, “Jude the Obscure”, fulfill its assumptions that man descends into doubt, confusion, loneliness, and disbelief?

The realities of Thomas Hardy in word often define his idea of the creative process, built on motive, often hidden, sometimes stark and obvious. In Hardy’s final novel, “Jude the Obscure”, character conflict automatically erupts. The rational mind fears failure and lose of identity. As a major consequence of this conflict, its main characters, ‘Jude Fawley’, and his cousin, ‘Sue Bridehead’, are consumed by pride.

The background of the novel portrays the British common in the late nineteenth century. Public order maintains the framework of caring and giving to those within the British Empire. Consequently, order views “Ideen und Geist”, Ideas and Mind, as something more involved in private discourse and not public deliberations. Realität, reality, covered by social and religious values, cultured by class and monetary position, takes “elective” approval by a preoccupied, macabre, and otherwise utopian state.

Symbolism, magnifying Hardy’s own English stature, such as the character ‘Jude’, a stonemason, secures Hardy’s father’s form or “species”. He managed to continue the dreams, “allucinor”, of his father’s form while as an architect, when assisting in the excavation of the St Pancras Church graveyard, a location of early Christian worship. Yet his “struggles” with the concept of will, “voluntas”, continues to irrigate Hardy’s timidity, meaning his “attack” on contemporary matters represents his feelings, “affectus”, that do not join (a) the dignity of women in their own being and (b) their mission on the human and Christian level. The female characters portray auditors of their epoch, meaning they are elemental to the period, mimicking a “Victorian Era” of rules necessary to uphold the established order.

Hardy also separates the characters ‘Arabella Donn’ and ‘Sue Bridehead’ as to having pathways of the most dangerous and harmful experiences. Whether separated by distance or by choice, the realm of consciousness can not dissuade heritage, through immediate family or spiritual design. Hardy does not lift rational thought above predictive absolutes. Specifically, unified efforts in controlling agenda, fail.

Death also regards the extension of the colonial state, specifically the changing British Empire, as some of its colonies became more independent. While Hardy wrote his work, the future British Prime Minister, Lord Roseberry coined in 1894, when visiting Australia, the term “Commonwealth of Nations”. “Jude the Obscure”, published in 1895, treated Australia as a predictive entity of displaced souls with obvious human outcomes.

Of real importance, the novel, combining Hardy’s thoughts regarding the “fall” of women, from both spiritual and ethical heights, whether based on the special concerns of the Victorian Era, or any other era or location, presents death as a universal construct of change. The killing of two innocent children by another child named “Little Father Time” gave historic resonance to the fact that Great Britain instituted Greenwich Mean Time, adopted in 1884 to reference world time, in order to control an empire. Did Hardy’s last novel inquire into the futility of empire? Did the absolute tyranny of class stratification lead to warfare and death?

With the annihilation of three children, Hardy thrusts the triangular symbol of the Trinity, the saving grace of a sacrificial lamb, into the narrative. With the delivery of a still born child by ‘Sue Bridehead’, Hardy attempted to inject the higher meaning of eternity and not just model a basal expression, within a pain-pleasure context. Life in the Victorian Age had to change; nothing can replace the past.

Although the end of ‘Jude’s’ life appears to confirm the skepticism of Hardy’s imaginations, did the state learn anything from his proclivities? Did his characters reflect the disparity within the industrial age and its absolute need for labor and natural resources?

Hardy tried to illustrate the insecurity, and the obscurity, of his age. In fact, competition and fairness often do not respond to true happiness and true love. But it doesn’t mean that members of society will remain poor and tormented souls, only getting a deceptive remedy from external distractions. Thus, when a person, a group, or an economic class finds rejection, cut off from others or from vital resources, the thirst for perfection doesn’t end. The will to succeed shows neither fear or shame, “timor aut pudor”.

To present a complete, personal, and sacramental expression, Hardy could not bridge the spirit of dedication, seen through love, grounded in giving, because of the failure of will. ‘Jude’s’ objective was to refine himself through labor and sacrifice in the expectation of supernatural goals and not only the material and earthly aspects of this world. ‘Jude’ did not escape the exercise of authority over him by individuals who identified as “caring for others”. They only wanted to maintain a position of power. The spiritual and the divine, the resolve to “take care of one’s own sanctification and the improvement of the world … through the instruments of one’s own labor”, as stated by Pope Paul VI, points to a more sustainable pathway. (The Pope Speaks, The American Quarterly of Papal Documents, Vol. 10, No. 1, pg. 71, June 26, 1964)

Indeed, in 2016, during the next Olympic cycle, will London, and in fact, the rest of the world, travel to and then return from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, immersed in respect for life and justice for all? Or will they assume the role of ‘Angel Clare’, Thomas Hardy’s character in the 1891 novel, “Tess of the d’ Ubervilles”? ‘Angel’ leaves England to farm in Brazil, a nation that, only in 1888, made both the practice and institutionalization of forced labor illegal?

Brazil still finds outliers recruiting the underclass into the same conditions of forced and mercenary labor. Certainly, if Brazil prepares for the next Olympics, will it then construct an economic model for the world? Will the system respond more as a family or speed further from its way into deeper blindness toward creepage and then cultural darkness?

Thomas Hardy wrote about the need for family cohesiveness and well-being. The family represents both an historic and psychological connection to man and nature. In the same year “Tess of the d’ Ubervilles” was received, Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical, regarding equal rights. “Hence we have the family, the “society” of a man’s house — a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.” (Rerum Novarum On Capital and Labor Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII MAY 15, 1891).

I have not a doubt, Thomas Hardy would agree!

Ronald. C. Alexander Ph.D