Pilgrim / Seeker

While doing a search for lanterns last night, I came across this image of a medieval watchman. There was no reference given to where the image came from on the site and I doubt that I'll be able to track down the mysterious author of the painting by the symbol in the bottom left corner. However, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for it.

The image of the watchman in his cloak and carrying a staff and lantern is mixture of symbolism. The cloak protects him from the wind, cold and the rain. The lantern allows him to see through the darkness - as he is charged to seek out any crime in the city - but also it proclaims his location like a ship's lantern. The staff, a simple object, is also a form of protection in that it can be used to defend one's self from attackers or the occasional large rat.

So the image conveys PROTECTION, SEARCHING, and ASSURANCE.

Because of his search, people can feel assured that they are marginally safer with people like this watchman doing his job. Though given the simplest of tools to aid him in his search (Lantern, cloak and staff), it is none-the-less a Quest. It could be a quest for crime, or fire or just anything out of the ordinary. I would imagine that the nightly quests of the Watch were quite boring, but if they weren't out there there would be little sense of assurance or protection. This lead me to the writings of Edmund Burke.

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke

I would take Burke's idea and expand upon it to say:

When people speak of evil, they speak of all the bad forces that affect our life. Fear, Doubt, Anger, etc. Evil is then the collective effect of those things which we can't control in our lives and that limit our choices. Freedom to make one's own choices is a cornerstone of most works concerning civil rights. The restriction of freedom, slavery, has brought nations to its knees. So i simplified the association to state: "If freedom is Good, then restriction as it's opposite, must be Evil." And what, generally, restricts our choices more often than any other force if not Fear. Fear of the unknown, or fear of an unwelcome eventuality.

Therefore, I can begin to re-interpret Burke's maxim about evil to read:

"All that is necessary for fear to succeed is that good men do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke (modified)

To continue my interpretation of Burke's work, I examined the last phrase: "Do nothing". According to Burke, all we (good men) need to do to defeat fear (evil) is to do something. Well, how do you conquer fear? There are far more things in this world that we do not understand than what science and religion have attempted to answer. Therefore, fear of the unknown would seem to be the most crippling, the most limiting, the most powerful form of evil.

Knowledge is the best weapon against fear. As children we are afraid of the dark because we don't know what's "out there". Our vivid imaginations crawl with media-induced phantoms and specters and we succeed in terrorizing ourselves with vagaries of perception. To combat this fear, it is important to learn from ourselves and our environment. A tree which terrorizes our dreams by night can be seen to be little more than a twisted-trunk by day.

So educating ourselves about our world and our own minds is the key to combating these phantoms of shadow and crumpled jeans. Many different religions and philosophies would describe the process of educating one's self as the process of Enlightenment. The path to enlightenment, an understanding of yourself and your world, is the quest for awareness.

"All that is necessary for fear to be defeated is to encourage the search for enlightenment."
-- Thomas Riley

Or, to be put simply:

"Always, the Quest."

or in another sense, "Always seek Enlightenment"

My gods, I think I just said I'm a Buddhist.