Facing Up to The Consequences of Our Actions

I sometimes wonder why we seem so prone to ‘cherry picking’. I know that I am. I will construe and construct a great deal from a very few select facts. I do it on the fly. Sometimes it is possible to do this well; you can also fail miserably.

When I was a young boy, I was taught ‘proper’ hunting etiquette by my father and the older men. They made me carry an unloaded rifle for a season. I was to learn to look, listen and take care not to point the rifle at anyone. When I was careless, my ear was soundly thumped.

Try as I might, I had a hard time listening, seeing, and pointing safely. It just did not pull together for me during that first hunting season. Yet, the others could literally scan the signs and draw very probably conclusions. They could see, hear and move in one motion as it were. If we had not been able to do so as hunter/gatherers, we probably would not have survived as a species.

Yet, it is possible to misstep. You can read the indications wrong and wreck your day. You can, of course, destroy your life or that of the person standing next to you. I have seen it happen. A mistake is made and someone is no longer with you. A friend is lost. A companion gone. You are shaken to your core.

Can you ever make a life-staking decision again? You must. Life goes on.

Should you allow your child to be vaccinated? Should you sign the consent form permitting the operation your unconscious partner requires? Do you send your child on a two week camp a day’s drive away? Do you drive an extra hour before you stop for the night?

We pause with each question asked because the unthinkable does happen.

When it does, for the remaining span of our years, nagging thoughts can routinely undermine us. What if...what if I had?...would they?...I honestly do not know. Am I just hiding from the truth? Perhaps I simply cannot let myself know too much. These thoughts can haunt anyone responsible for another. P. D. James captured this ever so well in her novel, The Children of Men.

So, it should be no surprise to discover that an experienced commander and a young medical officer clashed over what they believed was the right action to be taken by whom on the 'Burma Railway'.

Avoiding the Fate of Victor Frankenstein

I am mindful of the fate of Victor Frankenstein. There is danger in seeking the reanimation of a man’s all too frail flesh. Sometimes the result can be more destructive than one might have ever imagined. The natural dissolution of memory and a loss of narrative allows many things to drop from our personal and collective consciousness.

This can be a good thing.

It is well known that a restful night’s sleep is a curative after the worries and cares of the day. It can be wholesome to wake without the immediate memory of our past sorrow and pain. Yet, it can also doom us to repeat the same scabrous problems that fester just beneath the surface of our lives. Such ‘infections’ endanger the immunity of an otherwise healthy corporate body.

Am I being too florid? Cornel has been accused of this. So, I am in good company? Or, am I? Was Cornel Lumiere a good man? In what sense might we say he was good? Some of the things that he did were not good in the eyes of some people. Other people only have good to say of him. Both types are what Australians refer to as ‘one eyed’. They can only see things from one perspective.

In this digital biography, I will try to be somewhat more ‘objective’. Not entirely. I have a grudging like and respect for the man. However, he was a complex person; he was many sided. Should you be on the wrong side of his agenda, you might get short shrift. But, must a person be all things to all people? Perhaps not.

But, what if you projected this image out into the world? Can you be held responsible when you fail? And, what of the potential biographer? Does he or she not have a responsibility to provide sufficient evidence to understand the complexities of the person? Should they also not recount the complexities of the times?

In a sense, Frankenstein’s monster had a moral case against his creator. The monster had been abandoned with disgust by Victor without a hearing. So, I must give Cornel Lumiere the benefit of doubt while giving you sufficient information to draw your own conclusions.

Can the REAL Cornel Lumiere Stand Up?

On the Feast of the Assumption (15 August) in 1993, just two years before Lumiere’s death, Justin White wrote in the Sunday Gleaner (Jamaica), “Cornel’s lifetime ambition is--’Let the real Cornel stand up, please...’” What precedes this summary comment of the interview is a very long list of the things that Lumiere had done, places he had been and people whom he had known. In essence, it is a quantification of his life. Do the numbers add up? That depends.

Answering this question well will require a diligent search for and discriminating use of the facts. It will also necessitate imagining appropriate frames of reference to provide us with plausible surmises. I am not sure that we can ever hope to gain certainty. There will be room for alternate constructions of the identity and credibility of ‘Cornel Lumiere’. However, I think that I have undertaken sufficient research to bring some light to the shadows.

Many questions will remain and new facts may well require an extensive reassessment. Still, it is doubtful that such facts would be brought to light without this beginning. It has not been an easy matter to find all of the necessary needles in the digital haystack. But, I believe that it has been worth the effort. In many respects, ‘Cornel Lumiere’ was a prototypical man of the modern technological age.

It would be good to try to understand him and, thereby, ourselves better.

Oh What A Tangled Web...

Much of this tale is about the importance of a name, or two, or more. In this game, if you are to unravel the tangled skein, you must attend to many subtle distinctions. So, here is the plot for your perusal taken from the Montreal Gazette [nota bene: I have changed some names and have used this extract under the Fair Dealing Provisions (40 & 41) of the Australian Copyright Act of 1968]:

LUMIERE, Cornel. Passed away on Saturday, September 2, 1995 in his eighty-third year, in the company of his family. Beloved husband and companion of Jewell Lumiere, devoted father and father-in-law to sons, Joe and wife Janice, Charles and wife Veronica, and to daughters, Sharon and Charlene. Cherished grandfather of Jennifer, Johanna, Maria, Nancy and Tom, and loving brother and brother-in-law to Rev. Harry Punt and wife Clazine. A private service was held. He will always be held in loving memory of his family as well as his many friends around the world.

Now, some of what is implied in this square is not, strictly speaking, true. Ironies also abound; so does pathos. Sorting out what may or may not be the case will be the gist of my task. Both the difficulty and the lack of difficulty in doing this is significant.

Lest anyone think that I am seeking to be flippant, I am not. I have a genuine regard for the various members of this family and what they have gone through. That they have, for the most part, ‘gotten through’ is a focus of this case study.

What are the conditions for survival when all hell breaks loose in your life? How do we pull together this “booming, buzzing confusion” that the founder of American psychology, William James, wrote about? How is it that there is something like an ordered world at all when it seems that everything is working against just this possibility? To what degree are our lives being reordered by technology and to what degree are we vulnerable as ‘private’ persons to undue public scrutiny?

At the end of our lives, will we know who we have been and what good we have done?

What's The Plot Really?

I know that ‘Cornel Lumiere’ has died. That is, I know this as well as anyone can in such circumstances. I was not there. But, in the portion of the Montreal Gazette before me, there is a square of words, a virtual plot. It is Cornel’s. And, like any real plot, it is surrounded by others.

In the square are written the usual things. But, it might be hard to accept that these are, indeed, the usual things without seeing the other plots. When they are in view, you nod your head and say to yourself, “Yes, of course, that is how it is.” A man is born. He lives; he dies. People say things about him. Thus, we signify that his span of years has been completed.

But, not always. Rather, it is not always the case that people know when another person has died. They are not always afforded an opportunity to speak openly about that person. And, when they do have such a chance, is that life really over just at that point; just because such words have been spoken?

Aristotle once added a twist to this question--when can we actually call a man happy?

These questions are also part of this story. In fact, they are a very strange and difficult aspect. In part, this is the source of the anger. Therefore, exploring this source is a salient reason for writing. There are times when it is important to right a wrong only dimly perceived or partially understood. In fact, it is sometimes necessary to ensure that things are skewed against the possibility of people getting ‘it’ all wrong in the first place. But, will I create new ‘wrongs’ in seeking to do this?

I sometimes wonder if I am not the sorcerer's apprentice making a bigger mess.

Some people are still living. So, one of the decisions that I have made is to limit the provision of ‘real’ names to those that are absolutely essential and publicly accessible. I shall be circumspect with the names of both the living and the dead. However, I must take care to provide you with sufficient evidence to answer any uneasy doubts. And, there must be enough information to genuinely enlighten your understanding as a reader of this ‘digital biography’.