GLINDA AND THE GATEKEEPER.

I'm sure there are lots of sophisticated interpretations of Kafka's parable ‘Before the Law’ (contained in the novel ‘The Trial’) but the one thing which it always makes me think is: the gate was meant only for the man, ie it is there for him only. So why didn't the Gatekeeper just tell the man this at the start?

The gate is physically open and the Gatekeeper stands to one side which means that he isn't physically in the way of the man. In that sense the man is free to walk through the gate. The reason why the man doesn't do so is because the Gatekeeper has said he can't. The man is waiting for permission. But there is something else that stops him from walking through. And this is the fact that the Gatekeeper fails to tell the man what he tells him at the end, ie that the gate belongs to the man. That it is intended for him and for him only. If the Gatekeeper had told the man this at the beginning then the man would have walked through despite the fact that the Gatekeeper had not given express permission.

Similarly in 'The Wizard of Oz' why didn't Glinda tell Dorothy at the start that she could get home just by clicking the heels of the ruby slippers? The Scarecrow asks this question and Glinda's answer is "because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself." But she didn't learn it for herself, Glinda! You still had to tell her. And even if she hadn't believed you I'm sure she would have given it a try. I mean how much effort does it take to tap your heels together three times when it might get you home in an instant?

What both these things are about is the fact that you can spend your whole life in ignorance of something which would really help you if only you had been told it at the start. Where your ignorance is due to the unhelpfulness and contumely of other people. I'm not against the idea of finding out things for yourself but when there's something really obvious that someone doesn't know. And where the thing that they don't know is something that they don't know that they don't know. (It wouldn't be so bad if it was something that they didn't know and they knew that they didn't know it.) And where their ignorance is causing them to suffer. Then it would be wrong not to tell them. ... This matters so much because non-adult human life is so dependant on acquired complex knowledge. (Unlike with non-human animals where what they need to know is innate or is simple and easily picked up.) Which means that failing to tell people the things they need to know to thrive mentally is as bad as not giving children the food they need to thrive physically.

[31 July 2012]

Sometimes it’s trivial. Say Mary is doing something the long way and Jack says: “hey there’s a button to do that, I can’t believe you’ve been doing this the long way all this time”.

Mary: “but how was I supposed to know there was a button that does that unless someone told me.”

Jack: “Yes but you must have known that, in this day and age, you couldn’t possibly be having to do that the long way round”.

Like on YouTube you can use the J and L keys to do minus and plus 10 seconds. But I was always doing it by clicking and moving the time marker. Which is not easy to do! I should have know that there is some shortcut for something like that.

[December 2019]