GUNS AND ROSES
by K’lakokum
[Kangaroo Poet K'lakokum was a candidate for Mayor of Toronto in 1974, and this
item appeared as a guest column in Paul Rimstead's space in The Toronto Sun.
Rimmer had run for Mayor in 1972.]
Some people regard the gun as a symbol of
danger, but others regard it as a symbol of safety. It is a weapon, an
instrument of death, but guns do not kill people; the people who pull the
trigger kill people. Amongst those who see the gun as a symbol of safety are
the people from the country which has the most guns per capita. That is not America (which comes in second); it is Switzerland
which has both the world’s highest number of guns per capita, and the world’s
lowest rate of crime. As a matter of fact, you’re not entitled to vote in Switzerland
if you don’t own a gun. There has been a constutional requirement for six
centuries that every citizen over 14 must possess a deadly weapon [originally a
sword]. All school children between the age of 12 and 14 receive compulsory
instruction in the safe use of the gun. It is this that has guaranteed that
no-one has tried to conquer Switzerland
for almost seven centuries! It is this that has guaranteed Swiss neutrality.
Everyone has a gun and knows how to use it. This was the thought, also, of
those who put the right to bear arms into the American constitution, but
something has gone seriously wrong in America. Perhaps it has been America’s
wars of agression or imperialism which have taught Yanks the improper use of
guns. Perhaps it has been the government-sanctioned genocide of the Native
People; perhaps the fact that America was the world’s last country to abolish
slavery has something to do with it (slavery was not formally ended until
President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1965! Lincoln’s Emancipation Order was a military
order applying only to those enlisted in the forces, and that Order was never
ratified by Congress). The gun, in America, has been used as a tool in
the imposition of personality. And so the gun has become a symbol of violence,
of power, of masculinity. Its very shape makes it a phallic symbol, a male
symbol.
The thorns of a rose can be dangerous, too, bringing forth blood, a symbol for
the escape of life, but we are much more likely to think of the rose as a
symbol of love, of romance, of femininity. And the unfolded rose has the female
genital shape; it is a female symbol.
A noble rose, as opposed to a wild rose, is an artificial creature which
requires a great deal of care. It will not survive without human intervention.
The average rose bush is three years old before it is sold in your local
market. It has been created by grafting the noble stock onto a wild stock. And
this furthers the female image of the rose: the requirement for greater care
and nurture; the increased fragility.
Our symbols determine our culture. We shall never end sexism if we keep
thinking this way. Guns and roses represent very different worlds, but the
people who are represented by these symbols dwell in the same world. How can we
unite or reconcile these images?
The male side of our brains is associated with utility, practicality,
knowledge. The female side of our brains is associated with feeling, emotion,
love. Each of us has both a left and a right, a male and a female brain. We
only use a small fraction of our brain, and we have rarely learned to use both
sides at the same time (or, if you believe in the legends of Atlantis, we have
unlearned this since then). Thus the change that is required is at least
partially a physical change in our brains.
This is the task for the modern philosopher, for the modern priest, for the
modern poet: how do we give women guns; how do we give men roses? It is time to
develop a completely new set of symbols, a completely new foundation to our
consciousness. As an active poet, I have taken on this task, but a new
symbology has not yet emerged, for it must be related to the reality of the
world as a whole. Piece-meal action will not do. It requires a fundamental
spiritual re-orientation of society. The subsequently required political action
will automatically flow from the inner change. Our symbols, after all do
represent what we are, not what we hope to become.
