What is Pala?
The Palanese Constitution
Rules and words to live by seem to be the private fad these days. From the Biblical Decalogue to Jordan Peterson’s Dodecalogue, the Second Amendment to Hitchens’s ‘Turn off that f***ing cellphone’, outlining one’s own dispositions are an important part of forming an identity - and maintaining it.
Despite the wealth of plenaries from which to choose, Pala believes in upholding its own individuality, and therefore proposes its own constitution, which in writing and representation, it must not subvert nor oppose.
It must be said, there is hardly any assonance between this Pala’s manifesto and the ‘Notes on What's What, and What It Might be Reasonable to do about What's What’ of the Old Raja in Huxley’s Pala. Huxley’s Pala, for all pretences, represents a fallible utopia; this newsletter observes the aphorism that all utopian endeavours terminate in dystopia.
Without further ado…
To Have and to Keep
Freedom of speech. The bedrock of everything we have. The most important observation one can make as to the benevolence of this Liberal tenet is that, in silencing the speaker, one silences the listener. Our duty, in sustaining the literary practice, is to defend the muted and the encroacher alike.
Humour over facetiousness. There exists within the modern writing world an etiolated dichotomy between morbid humourlessness and callous ignorance for the uninvested topics. The subsequent jokes and quips cultivated in this arid allotment tend to commit two crimes - they are careless, and much worse, they are unfunny. To write without wit is to speak without a tongue.
The pursuit of information. Reading is the ultimate pursuit of knowledge; if a piece of writing fails to be informative, it fails to be a piece of writing.
Rampant opposition to all forms of bigotry and idiocy. Iterated almost to the point of tedium, this must not be forgotten. Pala exists as a sentinel of liberty in all its forms, and harbours the mandate to critique in the harshest terms, as well as praise in the most superlative.
Time spent with cats is never wasted. The meaning of this criterion is two-fold; firstly, although widely attributed to Freud, he never did in fact say it (Freud is on record, in fact, explaining his dislike of our feline friends). Myriad false attributions feature throughout history, and in the interest of veracity, Pala must endeavour to be thorough in the face of misinformation. Secondly, it is one of my favourite quotes; Pala reflects the author’s enjoyment of writing, and obliges that if one is reading (or writing), one is not reproachably procrastinating.