THE BOOK- "BEHIND THE TALE
OF THE
LITTLE PRINCE"
The network of a civilization binds people together, from deep past to future, through our present. Our first goal should be, to reveal the network of the civilisation through the micro-network of the trilogy of Saint Exupéry: Little Prince, Wind, Sand and Stars and Flight to Arras. Hereby it is possible to feel the sense of what could be absolute for us but not universal for everybody. Taht is what we call truth. Truth is what we have chosen to believe in, even if we feel that another civilization may have chosen another truth.
In the context of humanity, organization is given by spirit of a country through the civilization that brought this ideal to existence. There is no struggle between civilizations. Yet, when the ideal cohesion does not exist anymore, defeat will come, and humanity can be lost. The fact that humanity is given, by great spiritual expression, is a mystery, as only civilization can bring out. And this expression is so fragile that it can be lost and than life goes on, what is only the expression and the horizon of our first animal nature. We cannot feel comfortable in any political system, nor in our modernity in the sense of our artificial superiority or our numerical presence. We are always confronted by the fact and the mystery of our spiritual need as a pillar of our humanity.
When we execute rituals, we are a spiritual group, bound together by an idea. When we feel that we are responsible through our work which brings fulfilment to the group to which we belong, it can bring us a spiritual sign of our humanity. Therefore, we are not lost in the face of the absurdity of our presence, as an animal with superior pretensions.
In the Little Prince, the fox revealed the same message by speaking about rites indirectly in a humoristic style .
"It's the fact that one day is different from the other days, one hour from the other hours. " The rite he proposed to the little Prince is to come every day at the same time, to give him the time, the possibility to enjoy his presence by expecting him. A rite is a reciprocal expression of their humanity and their symbolic presence. Rites are for that reason adapted to communicate with the past and with members of the community who lived before us.
"The only things you learn are the things you tame (…) People haven't time to learn anything. They buy things ready-made in stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends. If you want a friend, tame me!"
This is the definition of the liberal economic world without spirit. And rites without spirit are also expression of a political "supermen", superior animal prototypes of that humanity which appeared during the media shows of Hitler. Rites can catalyze political expression, but are not sufficient to hold humanity in its essence. The appearances will give us the illusion of continuity; but habits cannot be confounded with rituals.
A hero is that kind of man who brings sense to his existence through responsibility. He finds himself responsible for something or someone.
Civilization is a creation between man and land, country in the meaning of soil, who must be conquered every moment as if it were the first time. The little Prince brings the revelation about the term: "tamed", who does not mean domesticated, because he is proud and self-conscious of his dignity. He feels he is different, but not inferior. That is a personal meditation of what friendship is, and overall what a civilization is. But the temptation is to believe that our absolute is universal, that our civilization is the best, that our values are universal. It has to be confronted and be tamed by the inhabitant of another planet, as it is represented in The Little Prince.
There are three dangers to the future of humanity. The first, Machiavellian politics, which claims only the ends matter, as did Hitler and the fascists. The second danger is Communism as totalitarianism, an ideology that gives the individual human personality no way to escape. Both are able to sacrifice a part of the community for the welfare of the totality. This is the animalistic law for Saint-Exupéry. The third danger is Liberalism as an illusion that truth and values come from the exchange market.
Our goal is to let Spirit speak to us, from beyond either fascism, stalinism or absolute liberalism. The three have been errors on the way, because Spirit was silent at the moment they each appeared. There is a clear answer in the work of Saint Exupéry...