The Art Of Looking On

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3468, 19 May 1934, Page 3

The Art Of Looking On

means the supreme gift of tolerance.

TO PAUSE AND SEE IS TO WIDEN THE CENTRE OF A PERSONAL UNIVERSE.

A BROADER OUTLOOK AND A MORE WORTHY ATTITUDE CAN BE ENCOURAGED BY A RECOGNITION OF THE SPECTATORS’ VIEWPOINT.

There is truth in the adage: “The onlooker sees most of the game.” Yet how few of us engaged in the game of life ever detach ourselves from our own concerns sufficiently to take the standpoint of a spectator and cultivate the art of looking* on? Even in the arena of sport spectators are apt to sacrifice the advantages of seeing most of the game, as they would do by preserving an impartial attitude instead of adopting that of a partisan. The football ground resounds with roars from the throats of thousands of lusty partisans, who, because of their partisanship, are able to appreciate only half of the game —-the half played by the side which they favour. As partisans they deplore the skill of the opposing players, and they see in every decision of the umpire which is in favour of their opponents a display of rank favouritism or incompetence. The impartial observer of a good football match sees most of the game because he is able to appreciate the skill and cleverness of both sides. Doubtless his exaltation never reaches the height of the partisan whose side wirjs thie match, but it never sinks to the depressing level of the partisan whose side is defeated. For this reason he is able to get pleasure out of every match, no matter who wins. There are games in which the impartial observer can exercise the spirit of impartiality without being disturbed by the raucous partisanship of those around him; that is to say there are games in which partisanship cannot work itself into a fever. Football, boxing and wrestling seem to eliminate the spirit of impartiality from the spectators, but the etiquette of bowls, billiards and chess demands from the spectators a pure admiration of skill; and partisanship, if it exists at all, is in that mild form which is content to express itself in whispers. But it is to be noted that games which do rot generate pronounced partisanship make a much milder appeal to the public than those which do. The attendance of spectators at a championship chess match has never equalled, and is never likely to equal, the attendance at the final match for the Rugby championship at the end of the football season.

The art of looking- on is based on the spirit of tolerance, which can be developed only at the cost of constant conflict with the natural tendency of human nature towards partisanship. And nowhere is this tendency more difficult to combat than in matters in which we are personally concerned. We are all agreed that human nature is in need of reform, and that it is mainly the defects of human nature which stand in the way of the arrival of the millennium. But effective reform can begin only with oneself, and each one of us is so unconscious of the need of reform. Every man is commendable to himself; but everyone is sharply conscious of the need of reform in others. Everyone has had occasion to deplore a friend’s or a neighbour’s obliquity of vision which prevents him seeing- things in their proper light. On a variety of

subjects our neighbour has false ideas, especially on those relating to himself —to his wonderful abilities, and the neglect of the world to pay them the tribute of admiration. His delusions in this respect extend even to most of his possessions; he thinks that his roses flower better than those of anyone else in the street and that his children who are chips off the old block, are a great deal better behaved than other people’s children. Our neighbour’s delusions are easy to recognise, since we possess the necessary detached point of view, whereas his view is distorted bv the magnifying glass through which he contemplates himself and his possessions. But when we sit in judgment on ourselves a perposterous leniency tips the scales in our favour. there is no man who does not regard himself as in many inspects superior to his neighbours. No man condemns himself. Excuses, explanations, justifications, he has in more than adequate quantity for any apparent inferiority on his own part; and as for his merits, they stand out so conspicuously that only the myopia of those with whom he comes into contact prevents their widespread recognition.

The art of looking on, like other arts, is difficult to master. It means an unqualified submission to its primary gospel of tolerance, and it preaches with an air of conscious superiority the virtures of humility. It teaches us that vanity is a form of mental distortion, and that the people who consciously or unconsciously wound our vanity are to be commended for their honesty and sincerity instead of being condemned for failure to recognise our superiority. It encourages detachment from those heated controversies which plunge the community into opposing camps. It insists that the common habit of having* an opinion on every subject under the sun is only an addition to the sum of human ignorance, because in most cases such opinions must be ill-informed. By cultivating the art of looking on we cease to be the centre of our own universe and the victims of the mental distortion which such a situation creates. By emancipating himself from the delusions of vanity, the looker-on ceases to regard as enemies these who have small regard for his attainments. He teaches himself to recognise that he is not always right, that the fact that there is a point of view diametrically opposed to his own is proof that neither is right. He learns that the whole truth of any question seldom or never rests on one side; that the premises on which to form an absolutely just conclusion can never, in our complex civilisation of interwoven conflicting interests, be secured. Wjith so much acquired he will find that life, deprived of its distortions or partisanship, and the conflicts which partisanship creates, is based on the spirit of brotherhood. Most of its daily annoyances and exasperations will disappear. He will be doing his part towards lifting mankind clear of Carlyle’s indictment that we are “creatures who live in confusion, who cnee thrown together can readily fall into that confusion of confusions which quarrel is simply because our confusions differ from one another, or even because they seem to differ.”