麻豆社

Thursday night saw a glitzy premiere at Windsor Castle, complete with film stars on the red carpet. But rather than a Hollywood blockbuster or homegrown movie, this was the launch of a documentary by the King. Called Finding Harmony, it will be released next week. It is being promoted as the King鈥檚 vision for the planet, while the head of the king鈥檚 charity, the King鈥檚 Foundation, says it is about his philosophy of harmony.

While the documentary explores the King鈥檚 well-known love of nature and his thoughts on the future of the planet, his interest in the philosophy of harmony is perhaps not so well-known. Yet it is something that he has been mulling over for decades. A whole section of a two-volume set
of his speeches is devoted to harmony, what he calls 鈥渁 grammar鈥� that underscores, art, architecture and spirituality of all the great religions. He spoke about this harmony in a speech at the UN climate change conference COP28 in late 2023.

There鈥檚 a moment in the documentary which shows the then Prince Charles joking that people thought his ideas were 鈥渄otty鈥�, 鈥淚t was sandals and long hair鈥�, he said.

But the idea of harmony owes its origins to ancient Greek and Christian thinking. In a speech he gave in 2015 in Louisville, Kentucky, Prince Charles urged people to develop joined-up thinking about interdependent relationships within nature. 鈥淭he ancient Greek word for the process of joining things up was Harmonia鈥�, he said, 鈥渟o joined-up thinking needs to create harmony鈥�.

This idea of harmony is evident in Plato鈥檚 work, The Timaeus, where he describes the cosmos as a collection of elements arranged in musical ratios and this internal harmony ensures its survival, while St Ambrose, one of the earliest Christian writers saw the creation of the world, described in the Book of Genesis, as a narrative about harmony with a balance between the elements. He saw the way voices are lifted in harmony as symbolising the greater harmony of God鈥檚 creation.

Someone else who, like the King, expressed concern at a lack of harmony in the way people live now, was Pope Francis. In his major work on the environment, Laudato Si, he warned that humanity鈥檚 arrogance in attempting to dominate planet Earth had upset the balance of creation. 鈥淭he harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations鈥�, he wrote.

In other words, if there is any chance of the joined-up thinking the King calls for in our relationship with one another and with nature, a starting point for harmony needs to be humility.

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