To their detriment, adults are more complicated than children because they are aware of more. Their minds become more intricate and their bodies become larger. The faculty of imagination is surrounded by practical and theoretical reason and a greater ability for self-reflection. Greater awareness corresponds with greater abilities. Greater abilities do not come without a price. Adults are able to do more than children, and thus are expected to do more. Responsibilities bring pain in tow—the pain from the exercise required to meet them, the pain from not understanding how to meet them, or the pain from understanding one has failed to meet them.
Adults are most obviously responsible for their preservation. Once they leave their parents, they must work to sustain themselves. The responsibility for self-preservation is partially fulfilled by a job or career. Labor is traded for wages and wages are traded for goods and services, necessary or not. Labor is an expenditure of energy by the will, and the will does not always replenish quickly. When depleted, a person feels lethargic and lacks motivation.
There is another responsibility, hidden in interiority, to be autonomous. Autonomy is the capacity to choose one’s course of action without being determined to do so by exterior influences. Fully functioning adults can determine their course of action in the world more independently than before. Drawing from theoretical reason to establish their goals, self-reflection to establish their identity, and practical reason to set about accomplishing their goals, they can freely direct the course of their lives. Autonomy requires knowledge and a lack of knowledge leads to anxiety and despair.
While in childhood, we saw entertainment supplant the imagination, in adulthood we will see it supplant the will and suppress rationality, both theoretical and practical. Entertainment can be a supplement for the tired and a sedative for the anxious. Love of entertainment jeopardizes these faculties, and so we are right to explore the “whys,” “hows,” and “whens” of jeopardy.
To continue our examinations, our strategy must be even less systematic as we enter the thicket of maturity. Anxiety, despair, and lethargy are not temporally related. They do not unfold in a certain order. The roads between them are not one-way. As before, we will begin with the most obvious and work our way towards the obscure. I beg you patience once more at the outset. At times, I will need to do a great deal of prefacing in order to return to the disease under our microscope.
Lethargy
We observed earlier adults are weary. Reflect upon the lives of the adults you know to verify this observation. Self-preservation leads to lethargy. Maturation is the process of determining the indeterminate. In the professional context, many of the determinations are involuntary. Once practical concerns are met, we have time for leisure. Leisure is time that can be spent on other responsibilities or on what one fancies. Perhaps a person needs to take a nap. Perhaps a person wants to read a book. If the person is a contemporary of ours, he will likely turn to the television. This is all the more understandable considering he is tired from his day. Work has many ways of making us weary. Doing something we do not appreciate makes us tired. Doing something around people we do not like makes us tired. Doing something monotonous makes us tired. Doing something exciting makes us tired. In short, action is tiring. The whistle at the factory and the click of the office lights at the end of the day are the sounds of surrender. We have expended energy all day long and we retain just enough to click a button.
One of the consequences of a weak will is a predilection towards laziness. It requires much less effort to be entertained than to be, for instance, entertaining. Sloth, like all vices, is fertile. Left unchecked, it will reproduce viciousness elsewhere. Love of entertainment can be its progeny.
When an adult enters into the liberated atmosphere of the evening, far from work and mandatory tasks, one is confronted by the "what now?" of freedom. What a cruel master freedom is who asks us every time we raise our eyes to him, "What now?" How exhausting to take the question seriously each time, to treat each query afresh! The mind, like the body, travels frequently along the path of least resistance. Through sloth, we adopt the readymade response instead of forging a new one.
The strength of habit is a contributing factor to this widespread forfeiture of freedom. Repeated choosing of entertainment corrodes the will. To the "what now?" of freedom, one can quickly retort, "when then?" What was before? we wonder. What did I do before when I was free to do something? I remember spending the evening playing a game. I frittered away my time on the computer. How manageable this question becomes with the retort of “What then!” The question nearly answers itself. The solidity of the past conquers the fluidity of the future. One's life builds itself automatically as the cyclical invitations to living are answered by the circular repetitions of prior responses. What could be easier?
We have worked for another all day long. When we can work for ourselves for ends not required to live, we say, "Enough. I have worked enough today and don’t want to be bothered anymore. You choose." Who or what is there to choose for us? There is no boss inside the home. There is no manager in the living room. There may be a spouse or child, but we have listened enough to others today. There remain only the contents of one's abode. The bathroom can be no help here. It is too boring. The bedroom will be helpful eventually, but not yet. There are only the prefabricated voices from prefabricated devices to listen to—those conduits of entertainment pouring into our heads.
Children and adults live in the same world where entertainment is inescapable. Nothing attacks us more in our culture than entertainment. Because of the superabundance of entertainment, the option of what to do with oneself is nearly made for a person. Entertainment presents itself as the answer to the question of “What now?”
Our environment is another factor contributing to our choosing not to choose. The situation is like that of a woman who is hungry and looks into her pantry. If a salesman had snuck into her house, unbeknownst to her while she was away, and stocked her shelves with nothing but his products--what would she eat? She would be surprised at first to be sure. All she finds on every shelf, from top to bottom, are boxes of cereal. It is time for dinner; she has no interest in eating breakfast again. She might tip a few boxes over to see what else is available. In the end, her disappointment succumbs to her hunger. For all she knows, there may be a can of soup or a bunch of bananas shoved in the back, but that would be more work. She does not want more work. "Cereal it is," she decides. On her next trip to the store, our heroine recognizes the boxes and purchases it without a second thought. So it is with entertainment. How can a man look into his soul when all of this entertainment is heaped on top of his eyes? How can a woman consider her freedom when all of this entertainment is welded onto her mind? It takes great effort to resist these forces of exteriority. Worse still, how could a person be autonomous when he would rather not be free? Left unchecked, the environment will do the choosing for you.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Vital Signs: Boredom and Youth
Boredom
Entertainment can be the medicine for the sickness of boredom. What is boredom? Most succinctly, it is a sort of privation. It is the absence of an object of consciousness that retains one's interest. It is a vacancy in the house of the mind. It is a void which causes the structure of consciousness to collapse into itself in dejection and disappointment. If boredom gives rise to a desire for entertainment, what gives rise to boredom? Literally, nothing is boring. Boredom occurs when something is missing.
To be bored is a mode of consciousness. It is the feeling of emptiness. As the whole body aches during dehydration, so the whole mind aches during boredom. The emotion felt along with boredom, ennui, contains the revulsion of pain, but more generalized than localized. It is a manifestation of languishing. It is the nearest one comes to an awareness of the inner process of decay. Protracted boredom atrophies the will. One wants something more, but has been so long without something, one is unwilling to pursue more. The capacity for thought decreases. One sees nothing to draw upon. The emotions dull from the luster of ennui to the matte of apathy to the stain of depression.
For instance, a person feels bored while waiting twenty minutes for a doctor to enter the little white room where she has been deposited. There is no noise. There are no colors. Even the smell is notable for its absence. Her senses are not stimulated. She cannot abide in deprivation. Early in the process, perhaps she seeks something out. She searches the drawers for a magazine or for useful items to pilfer. She thinks about her shortage of bandages, or her need to go to the pharmacy, or her route to the nearest one, and so on. She has managed to fill her consciousness, thus avoiding boredom. Has the outer world offered anything new or additional? No. The room is as sparse as it was before. She has created material to occupy herself. As children, the acts of creation come from the playful imagination. As adults, the imagination is conscripted into practical concerns and is accustomed to thinking of plans and tasks. Either way, one may stave off boredom by taking mental leave of lackluster environments.
Youth
Boredom first and most simply afflicts the youth. Understanding their discontent is an appropriate starting point.
The explanation for boredom in youth is developmental. The mind and body grow in tandem. Consciousness complexifies as one becomes aware of the world, then aware of being aware, and then aware of the self. The mind's foundational faculties—perception and imagination—bloom most quickly.
To grow, one needs nourishment. It is fitting for the process of growth to begin by feeding upon low-hanging fruits. The body relies upon a mother’s milk for its first food. The mind relies upon sensory phenomena, which are the most abundant interior occupants. They are available nearly everywhere you turn. The process of perceiving takes little more than the process of digesting. Perception needs no enticement; it happens on its own.
The move from mother’s milk to solid food for the body is repeated in the mind by the inauguration of the imagination. It is the next step in the process of liberation. One is freed to perceive more than one’s immediate surroundings. Although digestion occurs naturally and thoughtlessly within the healthy body, the biting, tearing, chewing, and swallowing that provides the stomach with sustenance requires effort. The imagination, the grist mill of the young mind, requires more effort than digesting. Mercifully, exercise of the imagination is rewarding. The consumption and digestion of the sensorial is generally pleasant. The imagination’s first creations use material from the sensed world. It needs only to recall sensory phenomena, mix them up, or spin them around, and thereby a new outcome is made. Naturally, one seeks out aesthetic satiation and avoids its unpleasant counterpart, boredom.
Although blooming is good and necessary, it is taxing. Growth depletes resources, both those contained in one's surroundings and in one's self. One has to consume from without and then process within. One needs to take and then turn the taken into something. These requirements are pressing as long as one feels the need to be occupied.
The specter of boredom ever-encroaches upon us because every object of perceptual interest will soon be uninteresting. Not only do such objects keep one's interest only as long as they are being perceived, the repeated perception of them decreases their interest value. As soon as the sun falls below the horizon, one departs from the overlook. The most moving experience upon first witnessing is blasé upon the fiftieth. Few objects are impervious to human forgetfulness and fickleness. We see this constantly in the youth and their limited attention spans.
How does this discussion of something as old as humankind relate to our previous observations of contemporary culture? Our nature—our tendency to depreciate the same object over time and repetition—is nothing new. If our sickness—this love of entertainment—is as advanced as it seems to be, something must have multiplied its symptoms. What was the catalyst? Technological developments funded by economic developments together with enough political security in life's necessities to pursue and profit off life's frivolities.
Entrepreneurs seek to entertain our youth, prone to boredom as they are, and we—their guardians—pay for it. Now, the children are at liberty to develop more quickly and move on to higher pursuits faster. Children are relieved of the burden of having to imagine for themselves—so the guardians think. Creativity is a puerile stage that can be accelerated with flashing lights and loud noises—so the guardians think. The children can put away the childish things sooner and learn the skills necessary to make wealth—math and science. At the very least, they will stop struggling to find something worth occupying themselves and cease pestering us for our attention. Give a child an electronic game, sit her in front of a television, or hand him a controller, and imagination is made easy. There is no need for playful manipulation and demanding struggle. The environment is saturated with perceptual interest. A child needs only to stay awake to experience as much, if not more, pleasure from witnessing someone else's imagination than using her own. Once exposed, she will be quiet and contented. She will be entertained.
Do these provisions tend to retard growth or hasten it? If a person is systematically supplied a necessity, will he be more or less equipped to acquire it for himself? When a person is put on dialysis, do we expect her kidneys to mend? Is dialysis refreshing—rejuvenating? No. It is a recognition that the kidneys are beyond repair. It would be odd indeed to unhook a patient from the dialysis machine after a year and say, "There. You have seen how it is done. You do it for yourself now." "No! Stop!" the patient would protest. "I know nothing about how it is done. I see the blood whir around, but I cannot make it do so in my body. I cannot do it on my own! Nothing has changed inside of me." The same protest, translated into the language of youth, is the declaration of "I'm bored." It is a plea for help and an admission of inability. What entertainment damages most in children is creativity, the catalyst of the imagination. Without the willingness to self-start, a child searches for other ways to get to the finish.
Boredom is not a disease like kidney disease. A child can regain functionality, if only she is encouraged to reclaim it. When you take the training wheels off of a child's bike, recognize that she may fall. Prepare to soothe her. If you put the training wheels back on after she falls, you cannot expect her to have better balance the next time you take them off. The same holds true for the imagination. If a child cannot occupy herself and you give her something that imagines for her, you cannot expect her to better occupy herself in the future. Out of love, you must be firm in your reply: "You can do it."
The wound will not mend on its own. A child may be frustrated and confused by stern support. Overstimulation has diluted children's abilities. Their situation is like that of a man who has along the way indulged in spicy foods at every opportunity. In the nursing home, he heaps salt and pepper onto his meals by the spoonful, complaining all the while that he cannot taste anything. He has ruined his taste buds. The youth have ruined their receptivity through incessant, pre-processed perception. It is no wonder they tug on our clothes, throw tantrums, and beg for entertainment. For them, the world without entertainment is a desert—a hostile and foreign place. What they perceive in it is less enticing than what they remember and what they can do about it is less than they could the day before. There is no time to waste. Bored children often mature into bored adults.
Entertainment can be the medicine for the sickness of boredom. What is boredom? Most succinctly, it is a sort of privation. It is the absence of an object of consciousness that retains one's interest. It is a vacancy in the house of the mind. It is a void which causes the structure of consciousness to collapse into itself in dejection and disappointment. If boredom gives rise to a desire for entertainment, what gives rise to boredom? Literally, nothing is boring. Boredom occurs when something is missing.
To be bored is a mode of consciousness. It is the feeling of emptiness. As the whole body aches during dehydration, so the whole mind aches during boredom. The emotion felt along with boredom, ennui, contains the revulsion of pain, but more generalized than localized. It is a manifestation of languishing. It is the nearest one comes to an awareness of the inner process of decay. Protracted boredom atrophies the will. One wants something more, but has been so long without something, one is unwilling to pursue more. The capacity for thought decreases. One sees nothing to draw upon. The emotions dull from the luster of ennui to the matte of apathy to the stain of depression.
For instance, a person feels bored while waiting twenty minutes for a doctor to enter the little white room where she has been deposited. There is no noise. There are no colors. Even the smell is notable for its absence. Her senses are not stimulated. She cannot abide in deprivation. Early in the process, perhaps she seeks something out. She searches the drawers for a magazine or for useful items to pilfer. She thinks about her shortage of bandages, or her need to go to the pharmacy, or her route to the nearest one, and so on. She has managed to fill her consciousness, thus avoiding boredom. Has the outer world offered anything new or additional? No. The room is as sparse as it was before. She has created material to occupy herself. As children, the acts of creation come from the playful imagination. As adults, the imagination is conscripted into practical concerns and is accustomed to thinking of plans and tasks. Either way, one may stave off boredom by taking mental leave of lackluster environments.
Youth
Boredom first and most simply afflicts the youth. Understanding their discontent is an appropriate starting point.
The explanation for boredom in youth is developmental. The mind and body grow in tandem. Consciousness complexifies as one becomes aware of the world, then aware of being aware, and then aware of the self. The mind's foundational faculties—perception and imagination—bloom most quickly.
To grow, one needs nourishment. It is fitting for the process of growth to begin by feeding upon low-hanging fruits. The body relies upon a mother’s milk for its first food. The mind relies upon sensory phenomena, which are the most abundant interior occupants. They are available nearly everywhere you turn. The process of perceiving takes little more than the process of digesting. Perception needs no enticement; it happens on its own.
The move from mother’s milk to solid food for the body is repeated in the mind by the inauguration of the imagination. It is the next step in the process of liberation. One is freed to perceive more than one’s immediate surroundings. Although digestion occurs naturally and thoughtlessly within the healthy body, the biting, tearing, chewing, and swallowing that provides the stomach with sustenance requires effort. The imagination, the grist mill of the young mind, requires more effort than digesting. Mercifully, exercise of the imagination is rewarding. The consumption and digestion of the sensorial is generally pleasant. The imagination’s first creations use material from the sensed world. It needs only to recall sensory phenomena, mix them up, or spin them around, and thereby a new outcome is made. Naturally, one seeks out aesthetic satiation and avoids its unpleasant counterpart, boredom.
Although blooming is good and necessary, it is taxing. Growth depletes resources, both those contained in one's surroundings and in one's self. One has to consume from without and then process within. One needs to take and then turn the taken into something. These requirements are pressing as long as one feels the need to be occupied.
The specter of boredom ever-encroaches upon us because every object of perceptual interest will soon be uninteresting. Not only do such objects keep one's interest only as long as they are being perceived, the repeated perception of them decreases their interest value. As soon as the sun falls below the horizon, one departs from the overlook. The most moving experience upon first witnessing is blasé upon the fiftieth. Few objects are impervious to human forgetfulness and fickleness. We see this constantly in the youth and their limited attention spans.
How does this discussion of something as old as humankind relate to our previous observations of contemporary culture? Our nature—our tendency to depreciate the same object over time and repetition—is nothing new. If our sickness—this love of entertainment—is as advanced as it seems to be, something must have multiplied its symptoms. What was the catalyst? Technological developments funded by economic developments together with enough political security in life's necessities to pursue and profit off life's frivolities.
Entrepreneurs seek to entertain our youth, prone to boredom as they are, and we—their guardians—pay for it. Now, the children are at liberty to develop more quickly and move on to higher pursuits faster. Children are relieved of the burden of having to imagine for themselves—so the guardians think. Creativity is a puerile stage that can be accelerated with flashing lights and loud noises—so the guardians think. The children can put away the childish things sooner and learn the skills necessary to make wealth—math and science. At the very least, they will stop struggling to find something worth occupying themselves and cease pestering us for our attention. Give a child an electronic game, sit her in front of a television, or hand him a controller, and imagination is made easy. There is no need for playful manipulation and demanding struggle. The environment is saturated with perceptual interest. A child needs only to stay awake to experience as much, if not more, pleasure from witnessing someone else's imagination than using her own. Once exposed, she will be quiet and contented. She will be entertained.
Do these provisions tend to retard growth or hasten it? If a person is systematically supplied a necessity, will he be more or less equipped to acquire it for himself? When a person is put on dialysis, do we expect her kidneys to mend? Is dialysis refreshing—rejuvenating? No. It is a recognition that the kidneys are beyond repair. It would be odd indeed to unhook a patient from the dialysis machine after a year and say, "There. You have seen how it is done. You do it for yourself now." "No! Stop!" the patient would protest. "I know nothing about how it is done. I see the blood whir around, but I cannot make it do so in my body. I cannot do it on my own! Nothing has changed inside of me." The same protest, translated into the language of youth, is the declaration of "I'm bored." It is a plea for help and an admission of inability. What entertainment damages most in children is creativity, the catalyst of the imagination. Without the willingness to self-start, a child searches for other ways to get to the finish.
Boredom is not a disease like kidney disease. A child can regain functionality, if only she is encouraged to reclaim it. When you take the training wheels off of a child's bike, recognize that she may fall. Prepare to soothe her. If you put the training wheels back on after she falls, you cannot expect her to have better balance the next time you take them off. The same holds true for the imagination. If a child cannot occupy herself and you give her something that imagines for her, you cannot expect her to better occupy herself in the future. Out of love, you must be firm in your reply: "You can do it."
The wound will not mend on its own. A child may be frustrated and confused by stern support. Overstimulation has diluted children's abilities. Their situation is like that of a man who has along the way indulged in spicy foods at every opportunity. In the nursing home, he heaps salt and pepper onto his meals by the spoonful, complaining all the while that he cannot taste anything. He has ruined his taste buds. The youth have ruined their receptivity through incessant, pre-processed perception. It is no wonder they tug on our clothes, throw tantrums, and beg for entertainment. For them, the world without entertainment is a desert—a hostile and foreign place. What they perceive in it is less enticing than what they remember and what they can do about it is less than they could the day before. There is no time to waste. Bored children often mature into bored adults.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Vital Signs: Introduction
When a doctor enters the room, he surveys the patient. He checks the pulse, looks into the ears, eyes, nose, and throat. He checks the reflexes and listens to the person's lungs. "But doctor, I think I broke my finger,” the patient could protest. “Why are you doing all of this when the problem is with my finger?" The physician would respond, "You are my patient. There may be something else amiss, something just starting to be wrong or else wrong quietly, and I must take the opportunity to investigate. I am your doctor and am concerned with your overall health. I will examine your hand, of course, but I must always consider your vitals."
I admire this approach to medicine. It has its priorities rightly organized. Medicine does not properly seek diagnoses. It seeks wellness, which is a quality applicable to the whole person. In a like way, I do not seek merely clarification, but repair. I am not a doctor, although I share similar concerns. I see illness in myself and in others, so I inquire. Inquiry is a needful, if arduous, task. How many times do we misdiagnose ourselves? How many more times do we fail to detect a problem or underestimate its severity? How many ailments are the sort that we are unable to uncover on our own? I take a page from the book of healing and investigate generally as well as specifically.
When I enter the world, I survey the culture. I talk with people, listen to the radio, watch television, peruse the internet, and walk the streets. I observe passers-by and the signs posted on windows. What I find is that I am never far from a pair of phenomena. Are they symptoms, something caused by an ailment already in us? Are they sicknesses, things that can be cured? Or are they constituents of health, things we all share—as normal as a heartbeat?
Take the pulse of the youth. Ask them how they are. "I'm bored" is the most common response they offer. They offer it whiny voices begging to be helped. Boredom is an epidemic sapping children of their initiative. They are so tired of their surroundings! There are not enough stimuli present. They want more to be attentive to.
Test the reflexes of adults. Watch what they do. See how they come home, kick off their shoes, and place themselves in front of a screen. The day of earning has made them weary. Now, they want to be amused! Men and women work all day and most want nothing more than to be relieved before they go to bed. If only they could doze the evening away before they sleep.
Listen to the lungs of the society. With the rise or fall of the chest, a question repeats: business or pleasure? The horns of this dilemma pierce the heart of our culture. There is little else it would seem. Our culture is preoccupied with wealth and entertainment. Every adult feels the need to make money and everyone, young and old, is told how to spend it. Wealth is a limited concern, but entertainment is universal.
Wealth is recognized as problematic. We have mixed feelings about it. We are at once desirous and critical of money. We spend a great deal of time talking about it and how to become wealthy (since few consider themselves wealthy). Yet, many resent how the wealthy have become (since many of us think we are upstanding by comparison).We judge we can better use it than those who have more of it, if only to use it on ourselves.
Our greed and avarice is well-documented and frequently expounded upon. Speeches that rail against excess and essays that condemn conspicuous consumption are well-received. There have always been more 'have nots' than 'haves'. If a commentator wishes to increase his readership, he needs only criticize something unpopular--like the wealthy and their depravity.
Why are we so divided about wealth? As with other areas of interior tension, our moral judgment conflicts with our desires. We want wealth and at the same time know that our desire, if unchecked, becomes greed. Greed is a sickness. Greed is the depraved relationship to wealth. Greed turns people into beasts primed to lay waste to anyone and anything in the way of gain. Wherever people are used for illicit gain or when a person identifies with his possessions, there greed afflicts us. We remember being slighted by greedy people, and so we condemn improper use of wealth.
I sense no such division about entertainment. Does that mean it is a benign part of life? What is there to say about it, after all? There is no apparent conflict between morals and desires here. Who is harmed by entertainment? It does not seem possible to viciously relate to something so innocuous. Who would dare enter our homes and cast an unflattering light on a little source of fun? To criticize a favorite institution--that would be ill-received. But if the receivers are ill, could we expect anything else? Let us not be deterred. Let us pursue the topic further.
Entertainment is not simply evil. Entertainment can be simple-hearted fun. It is comforting, so we naturally welcome it. At times, it is the material for virtue and uplift. Art can be an ennobling form of entertainment. Moreover, entertainment has its proper place. Rest, relief, and leisure can be good. A person cannot function properly without sleep. The mind and body need time to recover. These are all indications of our limitations—limitations we should all recognize and abide by.
I think, though, there is something amiss here. I am suspicious of our infatuation with rest. It seems to me indulging our limitations abuses our possibilities and squelches our aspirations. The harm is not with entertainment per se any more than the harm is with money per se. Vice in all things is immoderation. See the nature of the depraved relationship: one is disproportionately devoted to an object. The harm is found in the reverberations of our relationships to objects when we are too devoted to them, spend too much time with them, and idolize them.
Why is the love of entertainment not condemned? To begin with, we lack the language to speak on the topic. Some of the most incipient, most common vices have names, but the list is not exhaustive. While we can use a specific word to critique the love of food (gluttony), the love of sex (lust), the love of self (pride), or the love of money (greed), to name a few, what could we say for the love of entertainment? There is no classification. Is it any wonder that we do not speak such a vice? How our feeble thoughts are constrained further by language! We do not talk about what we do not think about. We do not think about what is difficult to talk about and what is difficult to talk about is what we cannot state quickly. Thus, if there is no word to summarize the concept, it is likely not to be considered. What we do not consider, we soon will think does not exist. Tragedy of tragedy—that words constrain reality when it ought to be the other way around!
Aside from the linguistic difficulties, this vice is unlikely to be noticed because it is private. A word of caution: the most successful offensives are those that do not trip our defenses. (Remember the Trojan Horse?) While on guard for the malevolent behavior of others, we neglect the malignant traits in ourselves. Contrary to the painful products of greed, love of entertainment never causes suffering in others. One is not offended by the entertained. The entertained do not act out. They are nice, quiet, and pleased. They tend to be light-hearted and languid. Those sick with this particular vice never felt better, but we cannot always trust our feelings to tell the full story. A person living in the soft world of anesthesia feels no pain, but we cannot say he is well.
Oh that we would stop thinking that harm is only a public phenomenon! A house can have a beautiful façade and contain walls ready to crumble inside, riddled with a termite infestation or water damage. When one takes break after break after break, do we not call him lazy? When one wakes up in the morning only to turn over and try to sleep into midday, do we not call her slothful? These people have lost all sense of proportion. Associate enough imbalanced people and you will make a culture full of immoderation apt to be oblivious to lop-sidedness. All the same, we can hear the echoes of this vice, quiet though they may be.
Taking stock of our preliminary testing, we can conclude the abundance of entertainment is not indicative of health. The amount of it suggests an overestimation of its worth. We have begun to pull back the skin covering this infection, but we are far from a medical opinion. We need to understand what it is and why there is so much of it. We are farther still from a course of treatment. The prognosis is guarded. We must proceed, but before we do, I must ask for your patience. It is a doctor’s prerogative to shine his light upon all areas of the body. Like a good doctor, I will look wherever my intuition takes me—even if it seems far removed from entertainment. The specific disease is an opportunity for expansive inquiries into vitality. In order to explain a disease, a physician must have recourse to the fundamental study of the body. I will likewise need to draw upon foundational principles. There are patterns in the movements of the mind and motivations of the heart as surely as there are law in the laboratory and the environment. It is to these that we look.
Entertainment
Let us proceed with a biopsy of entertainment so that we may be clear about the ailment prior to examining the patient (i.e., ourselves). Entertainment is an object of consciousness. To be entertained is a mode of consciousness. It is to be aware of pleasing sensory stimulation. One who is aware of the stimulus wishes to continue the stimulation and enjoys it. Entertaining experience is akin to aesthetic experience. Both are pleasant sensorial states of consciousness and as such draw humans towards them. What is entertaining provides for greater passivity than what is aesthetic. The aesthetic activates the imagination. The imagination manipulates established ideas, one step removed from the perceptions that bore them, into weaker but still pleasant, new ideas. Thus art, an aesthetic product, invites its audience to play, to see and think—to imagine—freely, without greater purpose. The entertaining deactivates the imagination. Entertainment presents the finished product of the imagination for consumption, free from the burden of effortful manipulation. It is not an invitation, but a reply to the weakness in us. It feeds us with the purpose of sating our discomfort.
A conversation, an image, a sound, a motion, a group of words on a page, a game, a toy, a performance can all be entertaining. Natural phenomena, too, may be entertaining. To watch a leaf be swept up in the wind or to hear an elaborate birdsong can be captivating should a person enter the world and find them. The list of possible things or actions that can entertain is longer than we have time for here and is ever expanding. Entertainment, as we consider it here, is a human artifice that aims at pleasant deactivation. It is a product of intentional crafting. What unifies entertainment is its end. Entertainment wants to remove us from the ordinary, the blasé, the commonplace contexts and events. It does this often by introducing novelty into a situation. What was not there before is now present. Before it was quiet; now we hear a melody. Before it was bleak; now we see an exotic landscape.
Some objects are secondarily entertaining. A child may be captivated by the paper his gift is wrapped in or the box her gift came in rather than the gift. It was not the intention of the artificer to entertain, but the audience can take great liberty with works after they are made. Many works of art and performances are secondarily entertaining. They hold one's attention, keeping one occupied. The natural objects referenced above are additional examples.
Other objects are primarily entertaining. These objects, intentionally made to entertain, are the material of our discussion. They are sensational. They grab your attention and once they have it, you hesitate to leave. Our surroundings are rife with entertainment. It is in our hands, on our screens, around our homes, throughout our commutes, and under our noses. Movies, songs, video games, episodes, webisodes, advertisements, clips, podcasts, programs--all are kinds of entertainment.
Look no farther than economic principles to explain entertainment's relative omnipresence. A market facilitates transactions between those with something to give and those looking to receive. Our grand market indulges consumers' most common demands as the givers seek to take as much as they can in return. People want entertainment. What they want, they will pay for. What they will pay for, people will sell them for the sake of gaining wealth.
Effort, like that which is necessary to exercise ones capacities, is inconvenient. We abhor inconvenience. Tedium is frustrating and banal. Cue the entrepreneur. Wherever there is a possibility to increase convenience, an entrepreneur is never far off. With entertainment, the work has been done for you. The cunning entrepreneurs have created products that reach so far into your space you need only sit back to eat out of the one hand while putting a dollar in the other.
Convenience is a cornerstone of capitalism. When a device is made or a service rendered that mitigates our contributions, it is desirable. People pay for such a privilege. Why grow your own food, when someone else will grow it for you--for a price? Then, you could—for instance—spend your time developing your craft. (Note: the specialization of labor is inaugurated!) Why use your own imagination when someone else will process perceptions for you--for a price? Then, you could—for instance—spend your time being pleased rather than working towards something. (Note: the consumerization of life is inaugurated!) You could spend your time spending your money rather than…but I digress.
Proceed with caution in the land of convenience. Convenient products and services can release a person to focus on other considerations or to be distracted in the absence of considerations altogether. This comes as a consequence of neglecting priorities. When we only concern ourselves with what is useful and neglect consideration of what it is useful for, we are prone to make a means an end. We can then only assure ourselves that we have the most, not the best. This is the danger of searching for the answers alone rather than both the questions and then the answers.
With a greater understanding of what we are looking for in our patients, we can proceed with the examination. We have observed entertainment is frequently sought out of discontent. Discontent with the external is seen in boredom and most clearly demonstrated by youths. Discontent with the internal is seen in anxiety and most clearly demonstrated by adults. While any age can be tired, we will consider lethargy in adults alone since they are more likely to seek entertainment out of a sort of tiredness than children. Since investigating the internal and hidden requires more subtlety and skill, allow me to begin with the obvious and hold out hope that, thereafter, I may be dexterous enough to dissect the obscure.
I admire this approach to medicine. It has its priorities rightly organized. Medicine does not properly seek diagnoses. It seeks wellness, which is a quality applicable to the whole person. In a like way, I do not seek merely clarification, but repair. I am not a doctor, although I share similar concerns. I see illness in myself and in others, so I inquire. Inquiry is a needful, if arduous, task. How many times do we misdiagnose ourselves? How many more times do we fail to detect a problem or underestimate its severity? How many ailments are the sort that we are unable to uncover on our own? I take a page from the book of healing and investigate generally as well as specifically.
When I enter the world, I survey the culture. I talk with people, listen to the radio, watch television, peruse the internet, and walk the streets. I observe passers-by and the signs posted on windows. What I find is that I am never far from a pair of phenomena. Are they symptoms, something caused by an ailment already in us? Are they sicknesses, things that can be cured? Or are they constituents of health, things we all share—as normal as a heartbeat?
Take the pulse of the youth. Ask them how they are. "I'm bored" is the most common response they offer. They offer it whiny voices begging to be helped. Boredom is an epidemic sapping children of their initiative. They are so tired of their surroundings! There are not enough stimuli present. They want more to be attentive to.
Test the reflexes of adults. Watch what they do. See how they come home, kick off their shoes, and place themselves in front of a screen. The day of earning has made them weary. Now, they want to be amused! Men and women work all day and most want nothing more than to be relieved before they go to bed. If only they could doze the evening away before they sleep.
Listen to the lungs of the society. With the rise or fall of the chest, a question repeats: business or pleasure? The horns of this dilemma pierce the heart of our culture. There is little else it would seem. Our culture is preoccupied with wealth and entertainment. Every adult feels the need to make money and everyone, young and old, is told how to spend it. Wealth is a limited concern, but entertainment is universal.
Wealth is recognized as problematic. We have mixed feelings about it. We are at once desirous and critical of money. We spend a great deal of time talking about it and how to become wealthy (since few consider themselves wealthy). Yet, many resent how the wealthy have become (since many of us think we are upstanding by comparison).We judge we can better use it than those who have more of it, if only to use it on ourselves.
Our greed and avarice is well-documented and frequently expounded upon. Speeches that rail against excess and essays that condemn conspicuous consumption are well-received. There have always been more 'have nots' than 'haves'. If a commentator wishes to increase his readership, he needs only criticize something unpopular--like the wealthy and their depravity.
Why are we so divided about wealth? As with other areas of interior tension, our moral judgment conflicts with our desires. We want wealth and at the same time know that our desire, if unchecked, becomes greed. Greed is a sickness. Greed is the depraved relationship to wealth. Greed turns people into beasts primed to lay waste to anyone and anything in the way of gain. Wherever people are used for illicit gain or when a person identifies with his possessions, there greed afflicts us. We remember being slighted by greedy people, and so we condemn improper use of wealth.
I sense no such division about entertainment. Does that mean it is a benign part of life? What is there to say about it, after all? There is no apparent conflict between morals and desires here. Who is harmed by entertainment? It does not seem possible to viciously relate to something so innocuous. Who would dare enter our homes and cast an unflattering light on a little source of fun? To criticize a favorite institution--that would be ill-received. But if the receivers are ill, could we expect anything else? Let us not be deterred. Let us pursue the topic further.
Entertainment is not simply evil. Entertainment can be simple-hearted fun. It is comforting, so we naturally welcome it. At times, it is the material for virtue and uplift. Art can be an ennobling form of entertainment. Moreover, entertainment has its proper place. Rest, relief, and leisure can be good. A person cannot function properly without sleep. The mind and body need time to recover. These are all indications of our limitations—limitations we should all recognize and abide by.
I think, though, there is something amiss here. I am suspicious of our infatuation with rest. It seems to me indulging our limitations abuses our possibilities and squelches our aspirations. The harm is not with entertainment per se any more than the harm is with money per se. Vice in all things is immoderation. See the nature of the depraved relationship: one is disproportionately devoted to an object. The harm is found in the reverberations of our relationships to objects when we are too devoted to them, spend too much time with them, and idolize them.
Why is the love of entertainment not condemned? To begin with, we lack the language to speak on the topic. Some of the most incipient, most common vices have names, but the list is not exhaustive. While we can use a specific word to critique the love of food (gluttony), the love of sex (lust), the love of self (pride), or the love of money (greed), to name a few, what could we say for the love of entertainment? There is no classification. Is it any wonder that we do not speak such a vice? How our feeble thoughts are constrained further by language! We do not talk about what we do not think about. We do not think about what is difficult to talk about and what is difficult to talk about is what we cannot state quickly. Thus, if there is no word to summarize the concept, it is likely not to be considered. What we do not consider, we soon will think does not exist. Tragedy of tragedy—that words constrain reality when it ought to be the other way around!
Aside from the linguistic difficulties, this vice is unlikely to be noticed because it is private. A word of caution: the most successful offensives are those that do not trip our defenses. (Remember the Trojan Horse?) While on guard for the malevolent behavior of others, we neglect the malignant traits in ourselves. Contrary to the painful products of greed, love of entertainment never causes suffering in others. One is not offended by the entertained. The entertained do not act out. They are nice, quiet, and pleased. They tend to be light-hearted and languid. Those sick with this particular vice never felt better, but we cannot always trust our feelings to tell the full story. A person living in the soft world of anesthesia feels no pain, but we cannot say he is well.
Oh that we would stop thinking that harm is only a public phenomenon! A house can have a beautiful façade and contain walls ready to crumble inside, riddled with a termite infestation or water damage. When one takes break after break after break, do we not call him lazy? When one wakes up in the morning only to turn over and try to sleep into midday, do we not call her slothful? These people have lost all sense of proportion. Associate enough imbalanced people and you will make a culture full of immoderation apt to be oblivious to lop-sidedness. All the same, we can hear the echoes of this vice, quiet though they may be.
Taking stock of our preliminary testing, we can conclude the abundance of entertainment is not indicative of health. The amount of it suggests an overestimation of its worth. We have begun to pull back the skin covering this infection, but we are far from a medical opinion. We need to understand what it is and why there is so much of it. We are farther still from a course of treatment. The prognosis is guarded. We must proceed, but before we do, I must ask for your patience. It is a doctor’s prerogative to shine his light upon all areas of the body. Like a good doctor, I will look wherever my intuition takes me—even if it seems far removed from entertainment. The specific disease is an opportunity for expansive inquiries into vitality. In order to explain a disease, a physician must have recourse to the fundamental study of the body. I will likewise need to draw upon foundational principles. There are patterns in the movements of the mind and motivations of the heart as surely as there are law in the laboratory and the environment. It is to these that we look.
Entertainment
Let us proceed with a biopsy of entertainment so that we may be clear about the ailment prior to examining the patient (i.e., ourselves). Entertainment is an object of consciousness. To be entertained is a mode of consciousness. It is to be aware of pleasing sensory stimulation. One who is aware of the stimulus wishes to continue the stimulation and enjoys it. Entertaining experience is akin to aesthetic experience. Both are pleasant sensorial states of consciousness and as such draw humans towards them. What is entertaining provides for greater passivity than what is aesthetic. The aesthetic activates the imagination. The imagination manipulates established ideas, one step removed from the perceptions that bore them, into weaker but still pleasant, new ideas. Thus art, an aesthetic product, invites its audience to play, to see and think—to imagine—freely, without greater purpose. The entertaining deactivates the imagination. Entertainment presents the finished product of the imagination for consumption, free from the burden of effortful manipulation. It is not an invitation, but a reply to the weakness in us. It feeds us with the purpose of sating our discomfort.
A conversation, an image, a sound, a motion, a group of words on a page, a game, a toy, a performance can all be entertaining. Natural phenomena, too, may be entertaining. To watch a leaf be swept up in the wind or to hear an elaborate birdsong can be captivating should a person enter the world and find them. The list of possible things or actions that can entertain is longer than we have time for here and is ever expanding. Entertainment, as we consider it here, is a human artifice that aims at pleasant deactivation. It is a product of intentional crafting. What unifies entertainment is its end. Entertainment wants to remove us from the ordinary, the blasé, the commonplace contexts and events. It does this often by introducing novelty into a situation. What was not there before is now present. Before it was quiet; now we hear a melody. Before it was bleak; now we see an exotic landscape.
Some objects are secondarily entertaining. A child may be captivated by the paper his gift is wrapped in or the box her gift came in rather than the gift. It was not the intention of the artificer to entertain, but the audience can take great liberty with works after they are made. Many works of art and performances are secondarily entertaining. They hold one's attention, keeping one occupied. The natural objects referenced above are additional examples.
Other objects are primarily entertaining. These objects, intentionally made to entertain, are the material of our discussion. They are sensational. They grab your attention and once they have it, you hesitate to leave. Our surroundings are rife with entertainment. It is in our hands, on our screens, around our homes, throughout our commutes, and under our noses. Movies, songs, video games, episodes, webisodes, advertisements, clips, podcasts, programs--all are kinds of entertainment.
Look no farther than economic principles to explain entertainment's relative omnipresence. A market facilitates transactions between those with something to give and those looking to receive. Our grand market indulges consumers' most common demands as the givers seek to take as much as they can in return. People want entertainment. What they want, they will pay for. What they will pay for, people will sell them for the sake of gaining wealth.
Effort, like that which is necessary to exercise ones capacities, is inconvenient. We abhor inconvenience. Tedium is frustrating and banal. Cue the entrepreneur. Wherever there is a possibility to increase convenience, an entrepreneur is never far off. With entertainment, the work has been done for you. The cunning entrepreneurs have created products that reach so far into your space you need only sit back to eat out of the one hand while putting a dollar in the other.
Convenience is a cornerstone of capitalism. When a device is made or a service rendered that mitigates our contributions, it is desirable. People pay for such a privilege. Why grow your own food, when someone else will grow it for you--for a price? Then, you could—for instance—spend your time developing your craft. (Note: the specialization of labor is inaugurated!) Why use your own imagination when someone else will process perceptions for you--for a price? Then, you could—for instance—spend your time being pleased rather than working towards something. (Note: the consumerization of life is inaugurated!) You could spend your time spending your money rather than…but I digress.
Proceed with caution in the land of convenience. Convenient products and services can release a person to focus on other considerations or to be distracted in the absence of considerations altogether. This comes as a consequence of neglecting priorities. When we only concern ourselves with what is useful and neglect consideration of what it is useful for, we are prone to make a means an end. We can then only assure ourselves that we have the most, not the best. This is the danger of searching for the answers alone rather than both the questions and then the answers.
With a greater understanding of what we are looking for in our patients, we can proceed with the examination. We have observed entertainment is frequently sought out of discontent. Discontent with the external is seen in boredom and most clearly demonstrated by youths. Discontent with the internal is seen in anxiety and most clearly demonstrated by adults. While any age can be tired, we will consider lethargy in adults alone since they are more likely to seek entertainment out of a sort of tiredness than children. Since investigating the internal and hidden requires more subtlety and skill, allow me to begin with the obvious and hold out hope that, thereafter, I may be dexterous enough to dissect the obscure.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Moral Fibers
Some philosophers take to painting verbal pictures in order to explain their concepts. Some of those philosophers will tell you the fabric of morality is made of principles woven together. It is a beautiful image to see that goodness is so orderly. It is a consoling thought to think that morality is universally applicable. Do we not desire for laws to govern our behavior like they do in fact govern the behavior of bodies?
If we continue with the metaphor, it continues to be fruitful. When looking closer at textiles, we see they do not consist of parallel threads. No. Cloth made in that fashion would fall apart. There are innumerable points where the strands intersect and wind around each other. Is it not the same with our picture of moral fabric? Are there not crossroads where the principles meet perpendicularly to each other? These intersections are the locations of human drama and human tragedy. Conflict and tension are what bind our lives together, and yet they also blind us to the truth. Moral quandaries exist because our vision cannot see past the knots. When two principles lead us in different directions: what then? How can both be true when each outcome is opposed?
Do not be dismayed. I am not implying these principles, which can run counter to each other, cannot be a part of one and the same string. I am not interested in passing judgment on the picture as a whole. It helps us understand morality, even if morality is something more. I will merely state the conflagration of principles and their collisions suggests they are substantial. Alas, substance is often indicated by opacity. Their being woven makes it difficult for light to shine through.
Here I want only to tug on a couple strings. Those same philosophers who paint this vision of morality will offer you various principles they think are a part of the fabric. Let us here examine examples of moral imperatives. Let us pull on two such principles to see whether and how they are connected. You will be free to consider their applicability on your own and how much that conclusion should bear upon the critique of the image as a whole.
***
1. 2.
Consider the following moral imperatives.
1: Never do evil so that good may come.
2: Do not let the perfect get in the way of the good.
The first is found in many moral texts and is attributed in its earliest written formation to the Apostle Paul. The second is heard in many political debates and is often attributed to Voltaire.
Both imperatives present commands of omission. Agents are not to do some act in order to be moral. Considering much of the good life consists in abstaining, this form of command follows. Beyond formal appearances, are the two equally strong parts of the presumed cloth?
If morality is universally applicable, then the rules it consists of must be like natural laws. They must be indisputably true through all circumstances.
Observe the truth functions of 1 and 2.
1: Always true. Evil and good are contradictory. Doing one precludes doing the other. Whoever wants to be moral--to do good--ought not to do non-good first (or ever).
2: Contingently true. If the perfect can be done and you should do what is best, then the perfect should be done and the imperative is false. In that case, the perfect is better than the good and should, therefore, "get in the way." If the perfect cannot be done and you should avoid doing anything, then the imperative is false. In that case, the greatest "gets in the way of" the less great. In this scenario, adulation for the unattainable (the best) prevents idolization for the attainable (the good). If the perfect is not achievable and if we should do something, then the imperative is true. In that case, perfection is not an impediment to human possibility. Thus, recognition of our limitations provides for realistically envisioned courses of action and gives us reason to pursue them.
It is now evident 1 and 2 are not a part of the moral fabric in the same way. 1 is absolute. 2 is contextual. While 1 is completely enmeshed in truth, 2 only partially is. 2 is like a loose string, connected on one end and dangling limply on the other. 2 requires further thought to determine whether it applies to a given case.
***
1 and 2
1 warns against compromise; 2 warrants it. Is this apparent conflict insurmountable? Let us consider possible definitions of our terms.
Both 1 and 2 use the term "good." When a good is compared against the best, a good appears evil. We know this truth of relativity when we concede that "second is first loser." If this is the totality of our understanding of the relation between perfection (best) and imperfection (a good), then we have reached an impasse. Not letting the perfect get in the way of the good entails doing a good act despite its limitations. Some of these shortcomings--that the good is not a panacea or a silver bullet--present like evils. The good at times is a half-measure and a mixed blessing. A good act may go to perpetuate the parasitic evils present in the situation while it furthers the good. If this makes the good act evil, then we would be unable to avoid doing evil so that good may come.
But is that all that is to be said? If perfection is a state and imperfection is spectrum, there is a way to abide by both imperatives. Could we not retort that it is better to be second than third, better to do a limited good act than to do nothing? If one cannot win on one's own, is it not laudable to lose as little as possible? If the good as it exists for us varies in its purity, then one is free to compromise within the range, provided the outcome is a greater good and the compromise does not involve perpetrating evil. Evil, on this view, would be circumscribed to the lowest depth.
If we consider who is acting--agents who are complex and frail--then, for them, the perfect is untenable. Imperfection is not always the intention, but is always a byproduct. Someone who does the less than ideal may not be doing evil so that good may come, but may be doing good so that better may come.
***
1 then 2
Let us apply these principles. Below, I have summarized a prevalent--if unstated--view on a moral topic.
Scenario A:
Self-sacrifice entails suffering.
Self-sacrifice is good.
Suffering is evil.
Never do evil so that good may come.
Therefore, never self-sacrifice.
Are we living in Scenario A? What an outcome we have gotten using a true moral principle! Never self-sacrifice? I shudder to think of the world where morality requires no such act. The scenario recognizes self-sacrifice is good, and yet we are prohibited from doing so. Is this an exception to 1? Where have we hit a snag?
Although a person may be tempted to believe suffering is evil, the true situation requires more subtle interpretation. Suffering, in itself, is not evil. Supplement Scenario A with 2, and we can craft a more accurate summary of the topic. Within 2, we find the possibility of redemption in suffering--the point where suffering is not evil--and thus disprove the proposition that suffering is evil pure and simple.
Redemption is an act of taking what one has and relinquishing it to be improved upon. A person redeems a coupon in order to have the discounted price. The coupon is worth its face value only after it has been relinquished.
When a person's suffering is redeemed, he releases it in order to have peace. Peace can come from wisdom or consolation. Either a person understands why she had to suffer or she ceases to be aware of her suffering.
We long for the perfect, cannot have it, and suffer through our distance from it. Yet, some people still strive for better than the good they currently possess. This "still striving" causes additional suffering as striving always brings with it exhaustion and potential for mistakes. Nevertheless, the suffering is redeemed by the greater good that follows. Those people who willingly suffer to abide by their principles and instantiate the human equivalents of their ideals are therein redeemed through suffering.
Redemption is an act of sublimation: we pursue that which we disdain in order not to be defeated by that which we disdain. We discipline ourselves, which is painful, in order to be spared worse, more dangerous pain. We turn the opposition into an ally and in so doing we win the war by conceding the battle.
Compromise is efficacious in the natural world. An effective strategy for containing forest fires is to light others. Firefighters shape the fire through man-made controlled burns. They lead flames away from valuable sites by setting less valuable sites ablaze. The first fire cannot proceed past the area already burned by the second because the fuel it needs has been consumed. Thus, firefighters are able to set boundaries to unmanageable fires by managing fires they start. A similar tactic is used in medicine. Immunizations introduce small amounts of nefarious bacteria, viruses, and allergens into the body. The body wards off these injected intruders and learns the best tactics for defense in the process. Should these foes return in greater numbers later, the body is prepared.
Can we spot the ripples of a similar movement upon the moral sphere? Consider courage. A courageous person confronts danger to avoid greater danger. Fear mixes with wisdom to create courage. We judge it better to risk bodily injury than to be healthy in body and shackled. We judge it better to risk bodily death than to be exterminated by an invader. If a tyrant enters our land, we can fight (courage), submit (prudence), or extricate ourselves from his control and take our lives (cowardice). The courageous person fights in order to not fight. The courageous person does not let the perfect (safety) get in the way of the good (justice). The courageous person does not do evil (suicide) so that good may come (freedom).
Is this not the way we are told to pursue everlasting life? For a person looking to live, he needs to partially die. He must conscript what he wants to evade (suffering) in order not to be overwhelmed (death). We cannot outrun our wrongdoings. If by evasion we feign to avoid the taint of evil, we run into the forest of a crippling moral crisis. We either cease trying to be worthy or assume we naturally are. It is pride that makes us flee and the strength of our pride will snap us asunder.
***
Like a cat with a ball of yarn, I have gotten ensnared in my own curiosity. I have lead us far away from where we began and beg your pardon. Allow me to tie the whole discussion into a bow so that you may take your leave and judge for yourself.
We have witnessed another episode in the tug-of-war between black and white versus gray, exacting versus understanding, purity versus mixture. We surveyed the relationship between 1 and 2. The fulcrum on the see-saw between them is a matter of intention. The person who wants to abide by both, contrarily oriented imperatives, needs to harness the proper motivation. Compromise must be forged--when it should be forged--by a spirit of reverence to perfection. It is a matter, too, of language and conceptions. What is good and what is evil make all the difference. If good and the perfect are equivalent or if suffering is evil, we cannot tether the two imperatives together.
Our musings began with a picture and shall end with a question about a painter. Your answer will help you decide whether you should spend time criticizing as we have done here or whether you should stay out of the museum of thought. Does an artist ennoble the subject of his artwork by reproducing it or does he defame it by hemming it into the confines of the frame?
If we continue with the metaphor, it continues to be fruitful. When looking closer at textiles, we see they do not consist of parallel threads. No. Cloth made in that fashion would fall apart. There are innumerable points where the strands intersect and wind around each other. Is it not the same with our picture of moral fabric? Are there not crossroads where the principles meet perpendicularly to each other? These intersections are the locations of human drama and human tragedy. Conflict and tension are what bind our lives together, and yet they also blind us to the truth. Moral quandaries exist because our vision cannot see past the knots. When two principles lead us in different directions: what then? How can both be true when each outcome is opposed?
Do not be dismayed. I am not implying these principles, which can run counter to each other, cannot be a part of one and the same string. I am not interested in passing judgment on the picture as a whole. It helps us understand morality, even if morality is something more. I will merely state the conflagration of principles and their collisions suggests they are substantial. Alas, substance is often indicated by opacity. Their being woven makes it difficult for light to shine through.
Here I want only to tug on a couple strings. Those same philosophers who paint this vision of morality will offer you various principles they think are a part of the fabric. Let us here examine examples of moral imperatives. Let us pull on two such principles to see whether and how they are connected. You will be free to consider their applicability on your own and how much that conclusion should bear upon the critique of the image as a whole.
***
1. 2.
Consider the following moral imperatives.
1: Never do evil so that good may come.
2: Do not let the perfect get in the way of the good.
The first is found in many moral texts and is attributed in its earliest written formation to the Apostle Paul. The second is heard in many political debates and is often attributed to Voltaire.
Both imperatives present commands of omission. Agents are not to do some act in order to be moral. Considering much of the good life consists in abstaining, this form of command follows. Beyond formal appearances, are the two equally strong parts of the presumed cloth?
If morality is universally applicable, then the rules it consists of must be like natural laws. They must be indisputably true through all circumstances.
Observe the truth functions of 1 and 2.
1: Always true. Evil and good are contradictory. Doing one precludes doing the other. Whoever wants to be moral--to do good--ought not to do non-good first (or ever).
2: Contingently true. If the perfect can be done and you should do what is best, then the perfect should be done and the imperative is false. In that case, the perfect is better than the good and should, therefore, "get in the way." If the perfect cannot be done and you should avoid doing anything, then the imperative is false. In that case, the greatest "gets in the way of" the less great. In this scenario, adulation for the unattainable (the best) prevents idolization for the attainable (the good). If the perfect is not achievable and if we should do something, then the imperative is true. In that case, perfection is not an impediment to human possibility. Thus, recognition of our limitations provides for realistically envisioned courses of action and gives us reason to pursue them.
It is now evident 1 and 2 are not a part of the moral fabric in the same way. 1 is absolute. 2 is contextual. While 1 is completely enmeshed in truth, 2 only partially is. 2 is like a loose string, connected on one end and dangling limply on the other. 2 requires further thought to determine whether it applies to a given case.
***
1 and 2
1 warns against compromise; 2 warrants it. Is this apparent conflict insurmountable? Let us consider possible definitions of our terms.
Both 1 and 2 use the term "good." When a good is compared against the best, a good appears evil. We know this truth of relativity when we concede that "second is first loser." If this is the totality of our understanding of the relation between perfection (best) and imperfection (a good), then we have reached an impasse. Not letting the perfect get in the way of the good entails doing a good act despite its limitations. Some of these shortcomings--that the good is not a panacea or a silver bullet--present like evils. The good at times is a half-measure and a mixed blessing. A good act may go to perpetuate the parasitic evils present in the situation while it furthers the good. If this makes the good act evil, then we would be unable to avoid doing evil so that good may come.
But is that all that is to be said? If perfection is a state and imperfection is spectrum, there is a way to abide by both imperatives. Could we not retort that it is better to be second than third, better to do a limited good act than to do nothing? If one cannot win on one's own, is it not laudable to lose as little as possible? If the good as it exists for us varies in its purity, then one is free to compromise within the range, provided the outcome is a greater good and the compromise does not involve perpetrating evil. Evil, on this view, would be circumscribed to the lowest depth.
If we consider who is acting--agents who are complex and frail--then, for them, the perfect is untenable. Imperfection is not always the intention, but is always a byproduct. Someone who does the less than ideal may not be doing evil so that good may come, but may be doing good so that better may come.
***
1 then 2
Let us apply these principles. Below, I have summarized a prevalent--if unstated--view on a moral topic.
Scenario A:
Self-sacrifice entails suffering.
Self-sacrifice is good.
Suffering is evil.
Never do evil so that good may come.
Therefore, never self-sacrifice.
Are we living in Scenario A? What an outcome we have gotten using a true moral principle! Never self-sacrifice? I shudder to think of the world where morality requires no such act. The scenario recognizes self-sacrifice is good, and yet we are prohibited from doing so. Is this an exception to 1? Where have we hit a snag?
Although a person may be tempted to believe suffering is evil, the true situation requires more subtle interpretation. Suffering, in itself, is not evil. Supplement Scenario A with 2, and we can craft a more accurate summary of the topic. Within 2, we find the possibility of redemption in suffering--the point where suffering is not evil--and thus disprove the proposition that suffering is evil pure and simple.
Redemption is an act of taking what one has and relinquishing it to be improved upon. A person redeems a coupon in order to have the discounted price. The coupon is worth its face value only after it has been relinquished.
When a person's suffering is redeemed, he releases it in order to have peace. Peace can come from wisdom or consolation. Either a person understands why she had to suffer or she ceases to be aware of her suffering.
We long for the perfect, cannot have it, and suffer through our distance from it. Yet, some people still strive for better than the good they currently possess. This "still striving" causes additional suffering as striving always brings with it exhaustion and potential for mistakes. Nevertheless, the suffering is redeemed by the greater good that follows. Those people who willingly suffer to abide by their principles and instantiate the human equivalents of their ideals are therein redeemed through suffering.
Redemption is an act of sublimation: we pursue that which we disdain in order not to be defeated by that which we disdain. We discipline ourselves, which is painful, in order to be spared worse, more dangerous pain. We turn the opposition into an ally and in so doing we win the war by conceding the battle.
Compromise is efficacious in the natural world. An effective strategy for containing forest fires is to light others. Firefighters shape the fire through man-made controlled burns. They lead flames away from valuable sites by setting less valuable sites ablaze. The first fire cannot proceed past the area already burned by the second because the fuel it needs has been consumed. Thus, firefighters are able to set boundaries to unmanageable fires by managing fires they start. A similar tactic is used in medicine. Immunizations introduce small amounts of nefarious bacteria, viruses, and allergens into the body. The body wards off these injected intruders and learns the best tactics for defense in the process. Should these foes return in greater numbers later, the body is prepared.
Can we spot the ripples of a similar movement upon the moral sphere? Consider courage. A courageous person confronts danger to avoid greater danger. Fear mixes with wisdom to create courage. We judge it better to risk bodily injury than to be healthy in body and shackled. We judge it better to risk bodily death than to be exterminated by an invader. If a tyrant enters our land, we can fight (courage), submit (prudence), or extricate ourselves from his control and take our lives (cowardice). The courageous person fights in order to not fight. The courageous person does not let the perfect (safety) get in the way of the good (justice). The courageous person does not do evil (suicide) so that good may come (freedom).
Is this not the way we are told to pursue everlasting life? For a person looking to live, he needs to partially die. He must conscript what he wants to evade (suffering) in order not to be overwhelmed (death). We cannot outrun our wrongdoings. If by evasion we feign to avoid the taint of evil, we run into the forest of a crippling moral crisis. We either cease trying to be worthy or assume we naturally are. It is pride that makes us flee and the strength of our pride will snap us asunder.
***
Like a cat with a ball of yarn, I have gotten ensnared in my own curiosity. I have lead us far away from where we began and beg your pardon. Allow me to tie the whole discussion into a bow so that you may take your leave and judge for yourself.
We have witnessed another episode in the tug-of-war between black and white versus gray, exacting versus understanding, purity versus mixture. We surveyed the relationship between 1 and 2. The fulcrum on the see-saw between them is a matter of intention. The person who wants to abide by both, contrarily oriented imperatives, needs to harness the proper motivation. Compromise must be forged--when it should be forged--by a spirit of reverence to perfection. It is a matter, too, of language and conceptions. What is good and what is evil make all the difference. If good and the perfect are equivalent or if suffering is evil, we cannot tether the two imperatives together.
Our musings began with a picture and shall end with a question about a painter. Your answer will help you decide whether you should spend time criticizing as we have done here or whether you should stay out of the museum of thought. Does an artist ennoble the subject of his artwork by reproducing it or does he defame it by hemming it into the confines of the frame?
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Orientation
Those of us who know the human psyche well (and who are, nonetheless, still ensnared by its machinations) know that at its steepest pitch opposites are juxtaposed. At the height of passion--the most quivering energetic passion--contraries are consecutive. Love and hate, joy and despair are side by side. The human heart is like a compass, where a single degree distinguishes its bearing. Due west and due east are far apart, but they are tepid--neither moving up nor down. But at its greatest heights--north by northwest and north by northeast--the direction is nearly indistinguishable! The closer one's bearing is due north, the more difficult it is to tell whether a traveler is occidental or oriental. At the top of the compass, we are splitting hairs. Because of this, we can understand how an enemy can more easily be granted clemency than a luke-warm ally. We can also explain how crimes of passion are carried out against loved ones.
I know myself well and know that I am horribly lost. I have a low-tolerance for imperfection. You may even call it an allergy given that I swell with contempt whenever I am exposed to it. I do not like smudges. I frown at a frayed shoelace. I cringe around squeaks. I lose sleep over a watch that keeps poor time. These errors are associated with me. They are mine--in my very home! How could I bear to keep such company?
So much stomach acid and obsessive thoughts I have generated in response to these annoyances that I have begun to worry for my own health. While most people might lose sleep over a dripping faucet, I have lost waking productivity. I will ruminate on the cursed plumbing and curse the ruinous plumber who feigned to fix it. The conniving weasel, the disingenuous swindler! How dare he enter my house and perpetrate such a vile act! How dare he use me for his own unjust gain! I spend hours lamenting this broken fixture and decry its every drop as a personal offense against me. Try as I might to pluck such lamentations out of my mind, they sneak back like weeds in a lawn. As soon as I stop reminding myself to breathe deeply and let it go, I hyperventilate and draw it near. There is ample fodder for discontent when one feeds on flaws.
This preoccupation tarnishes the rest of my daily experience. I become short-tempered and incorrigible over these trifles. Surely these damaged items are trivialities, and yet I easily fixate on them. I am enthralled with them and enjoy in a twisted way heaping scorn upon them. Why can I not let this rest? Perhaps there is a quota in every person's heart beyond which no more brokenness can be tolerated. My bar may be set low. Wouldn't that be honorable?
If only it were that simple! It is not, however, the full story. Here I will come clean. These offenses are not isolated outside of me. I openly admit I am also frustrated with myself. It is true I abhor my own company. I hate myself so thoroughly because I know how wretched I am. I err constantly. I have worn well the path of anxiety over my missteps. This frailty does not change. At times its consistency is the cause for my distraction. I am no more likely to notice wrongdoing than to notice room temperature. It is as though I have moved on, as though I am past the point of reflexive frustration. What can change--what I am thereby apt to notice--is something near me that does not work. Could that explain it all? I hold these objects in boiling contempt because I am already hot under the collar with my own self-loathing. They become the last-straws of my back-breaking solitude.
My situation is still more complex, though. I cannot leave the topic like that and let you think I am simply a misguided fool who is "his own worst critic." No, that would still be a truncated version of my story. You might pity me then, and to let you do so would be unfair. I cannot allow you to squander your empathy. It would be disingenuous to suggest I am only self-loathing. I feel I must--to be honest--offer the additional and contrary explanation.
I must confess pride may be causing me to rebel against seemingly minor blemishes on the countenance of my surroundings. Perhaps there is a quota of desserts in every man's heart below which no more brokenness can be tolerated. My bar may be set low. When I am handed a shoddy gift, a paltry recompense, I cry I worked harder than this! I am a good and honest person and I should not be burdened with these base inconveniences! I want nothing to do with this trash. I refuse this refuse! Yes, these too are stumbling blocks of thought upon which I trip. I cannot take it any longer. I am miserable.
Something must be done to point myself in the right direction. "Let it go," I hear you say. Yes, yes, fine and well. I will gladly let it go. But how can I be rid of it when it is gripping me? I have tried to release myself from it, but they cling to me. I go about my day, and everything is fine, and then something happens--a pen is out of place or a door won't lock--and my hatred is reignited. "Then let it go again," you insist. Bah! That is not easy. Should I count to ten like a child in timeout?! Should I leave the room like an infirmed person who has to purge?! The ignobility of it all! I should not have to resort to such hackneyed tactics. They are beneath me. A man should be able to vanquish his own mind!
Now I would laugh at myself if I weren't so weary. You have caught me in the act as it were. Yes, my pride has gotten in the way once more. How turned around we become when we are by ourselves! Let it go again: I will have to try that. Yours is tough love, but it's love all the same. I do not want to take my medicine. It is bitter. If I am really as feverish and dismayed as the above indicates, I need to take my medicine. I need to rest. If only it would stop this topsy-turvy place from spinning!
I know myself well and know that I am horribly lost. I have a low-tolerance for imperfection. You may even call it an allergy given that I swell with contempt whenever I am exposed to it. I do not like smudges. I frown at a frayed shoelace. I cringe around squeaks. I lose sleep over a watch that keeps poor time. These errors are associated with me. They are mine--in my very home! How could I bear to keep such company?
So much stomach acid and obsessive thoughts I have generated in response to these annoyances that I have begun to worry for my own health. While most people might lose sleep over a dripping faucet, I have lost waking productivity. I will ruminate on the cursed plumbing and curse the ruinous plumber who feigned to fix it. The conniving weasel, the disingenuous swindler! How dare he enter my house and perpetrate such a vile act! How dare he use me for his own unjust gain! I spend hours lamenting this broken fixture and decry its every drop as a personal offense against me. Try as I might to pluck such lamentations out of my mind, they sneak back like weeds in a lawn. As soon as I stop reminding myself to breathe deeply and let it go, I hyperventilate and draw it near. There is ample fodder for discontent when one feeds on flaws.
This preoccupation tarnishes the rest of my daily experience. I become short-tempered and incorrigible over these trifles. Surely these damaged items are trivialities, and yet I easily fixate on them. I am enthralled with them and enjoy in a twisted way heaping scorn upon them. Why can I not let this rest? Perhaps there is a quota in every person's heart beyond which no more brokenness can be tolerated. My bar may be set low. Wouldn't that be honorable?
If only it were that simple! It is not, however, the full story. Here I will come clean. These offenses are not isolated outside of me. I openly admit I am also frustrated with myself. It is true I abhor my own company. I hate myself so thoroughly because I know how wretched I am. I err constantly. I have worn well the path of anxiety over my missteps. This frailty does not change. At times its consistency is the cause for my distraction. I am no more likely to notice wrongdoing than to notice room temperature. It is as though I have moved on, as though I am past the point of reflexive frustration. What can change--what I am thereby apt to notice--is something near me that does not work. Could that explain it all? I hold these objects in boiling contempt because I am already hot under the collar with my own self-loathing. They become the last-straws of my back-breaking solitude.
My situation is still more complex, though. I cannot leave the topic like that and let you think I am simply a misguided fool who is "his own worst critic." No, that would still be a truncated version of my story. You might pity me then, and to let you do so would be unfair. I cannot allow you to squander your empathy. It would be disingenuous to suggest I am only self-loathing. I feel I must--to be honest--offer the additional and contrary explanation.
I must confess pride may be causing me to rebel against seemingly minor blemishes on the countenance of my surroundings. Perhaps there is a quota of desserts in every man's heart below which no more brokenness can be tolerated. My bar may be set low. When I am handed a shoddy gift, a paltry recompense, I cry I worked harder than this! I am a good and honest person and I should not be burdened with these base inconveniences! I want nothing to do with this trash. I refuse this refuse! Yes, these too are stumbling blocks of thought upon which I trip. I cannot take it any longer. I am miserable.
Something must be done to point myself in the right direction. "Let it go," I hear you say. Yes, yes, fine and well. I will gladly let it go. But how can I be rid of it when it is gripping me? I have tried to release myself from it, but they cling to me. I go about my day, and everything is fine, and then something happens--a pen is out of place or a door won't lock--and my hatred is reignited. "Then let it go again," you insist. Bah! That is not easy. Should I count to ten like a child in timeout?! Should I leave the room like an infirmed person who has to purge?! The ignobility of it all! I should not have to resort to such hackneyed tactics. They are beneath me. A man should be able to vanquish his own mind!
Now I would laugh at myself if I weren't so weary. You have caught me in the act as it were. Yes, my pride has gotten in the way once more. How turned around we become when we are by ourselves! Let it go again: I will have to try that. Yours is tough love, but it's love all the same. I do not want to take my medicine. It is bitter. If I am really as feverish and dismayed as the above indicates, I need to take my medicine. I need to rest. If only it would stop this topsy-turvy place from spinning!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Sacrifice or Suicide
I had for many years been grateful never to have been placed in that terrifying position of choosing to take my life rather than have it taken from me. The fear of such a choice developed into a mild strain of pyrophobia. I did all I could to avoid elevators and refused to reside anywhere higher than the second floor. I abstained from owning candles, spurned fireplaces, and went so far as to avoid barbecue pits. In effect, I had taken all due care to fireproof my surroundings. I neglected to anticipate the inherent combustibility of human affairs.
Life is a process of investing onself into oneself, other people, and/or projects. We exchange our resources, time and energy, for the chance to have our aspirations met. I will accelerate my story by stating that I had heavily invested myself in a losing venture.
For as far back as I can remember, I have thought of myself as a good man. I would not so far as to use the word 'great'. That would be overstating the case. My talents and the fervor of my devotion never allowed me to presume greatness. Still, I considered myself beyond all reasonable reproach because I had a good heart. Never had I thought to myself, "I know this is wrong, but I'll do it anyway," or "I know that will ruin someone else, but I'll opt to benefit myself regardless." I did not indulge in the popular forms of debauchery and was sure to keep my rap sheet empty.
By frequently recalling my clean conscience, I lionized myself. On a theoretical level, I could do no evil. Everyone makes mistakes, true enough, but is the attribution of blame appropriate? In my case, at least, it seemed improper. Evil is such a strong word. If one never concedes the possibility of being guilty, one becomes practically blameless. I had inoculated myself against contrition. So it was that I incinerated my life, not by striking a match but failing to turn the gas off.
"There must be something more to a good man than thinking he is without fault. What else makes a man a good man?" you wonder. Yes, I did not hang my hat solely on self-approbation. I did more than that. I was resolutely committed to self-improvement. To become smarter, wiser, more skilled, more artful, more loving--all are ways towards that goal. With all those avenues, opportunities for improvement are abundant. Yet here as elsewhere, too many options disorients people. We lose focus and disintegrate.
I was no different. Along the way, I developed a nasty habit of switching between avenues whenever the one I was following became trying. When I was stumped, I told myself there is wisdom in knowing one's limitations. When I was faced with an insuperable ethical quandary, I would abandon it altogether and delve into a project. When I ran into a demanding task--something beyond my current capabilities--I would go watch an art house movie or listen to music. When I was confronted by a confounding image, I would leave it and spend time with my girlfriend. Whenever my girlfriend annoyed me, I would compute, read, build, or sketch--anything but love. I created a system of escapes. In taking flight from this, that, and the other, I separated myself from everything. All the while, I told myself I was a good man and I was making something of myself. Who needs anything more than self-approbation?
I realized how poor my position was in a college history course. We were learning about mid-twentieth century oppression when my professor played a clip to illustrate. The grainy black and white footage contained a man in a delicate robe sitting cross-legged on pavement. With precise motions, he poured gasoline on himself. He struck a match and dropped it into his lap. He sat motionless while being incinerated until life left him. Then his body toppled over, no longer being held in balance. Fire danced along his charred corpse. The lights in the classroom went up. After collective wonder at the feat of self-control and a discussion of the monk’s political efficacy, I wondered again about the act of stepping forward to meet death. What is more unconscionable: to passively be consumed or to actively disperse yourself? Those dangling moments I recalled from my youth were the embodiment of our condition. Could it be that there is a need for death? This monk's self-immolation was the enactment of one man's answer.
How was this man's act other than suicide? Suicide is both active and passive. It is active insofar as it stops what would otherwise have continued. Without taking one's life, one sees a future restrained by the shackles of depression, anxiety, and despair. One accordingly cuts the future off at the pass of the present. Suicide is passive insofar as the act of stopping is initiated by a prior overwhelming circumstance. One who commits suicide concedes he has already been overcome; the act is tacit recognition of powerlessness. This monk, however, died to defeat something else. He gathered himself up to hurl himself at a momunment to human cruelty. It was a sacrifice rather than a suicide. Sacrifice seeks to motivate another; suicide seeks to mollify the self.
How endicting was that brave man! What was I doing with my life? I was dying, but what was I dying for? Here I was, exerting all of this energy, but in a spray rather than a stream. I was living intensely, but with mild purpose. I could not bear to unify my will and opted instead to retreat whenever challenged beyond a comfortable level. I was convicted by that monk whose death made me question my innocence and retreated to my dormroom to reflect.
***
Life for us is not as simple as life for oblivious creatures. While bacteria and plants can only die in one sense, we can die in at least two. We are at once animal and rational, body and soul, physical and mental, material and immaterial, corporeal and ethereal—and it is on account of this truth divided by a blurry border that we die more than once. Each side of the line has its own demise. In the obvious way, that monk died. What of the hidden way?
As we age, we devlop the ability to watch ourselves. First, the child becomes physically discerning in front of a mirror. One has control over a region of the visual field--the region which corresponds to our body--in a way unlike the rest of it. What is seen on the surface of the looking glass is related to what one is, but is not identical to it.
With age, we watch ourselves in new ways. The initiation into the second, hidden life is involuntary. One accumulates more control as bodily urges are tamed to make them amenable to human schedules and environmental possibilities. The youth becomes aware of her power over her self. She is still excited by what excited her prior to her self-observations, but the stimulation become less overwhelimg.
The reflective life is the second life. In self-consciousness, we distance ourself from stimuli and look upon the inside world. One recognizes inclinations may be opposed. In this power of assessment dwells freedom, the unique trait of the second life. The situation of maturity is like the man who wakes up in a taxi. He is already en route. He would arrive at some previously determined destination without further instruction. Not wanting to be delivered where he has not choosen to be, he asks the driver to pull over and let him out. He is not so independent and powerful that he does not require help to be freed, yet he is not so dependent and weak that he cannot stop the progress of circumstance and momentum.
As one can be more or less healthy in body, so too can one's reflective life be more or less vital. I was sick with ignorance. I lacked concentration and thereby lacked self-knowledge. I lost myself in the moment so regularly that I become lost in the entire sequence. In my disorientation, I was dying.
The death of the animal is well known. It was assumed after those memorable victims dropped out of the frame of that high-rise shot. We have ceremonies to mark our bodily departure. What is it, though, for the other side to die? What is it to die this second death?
The second death is a drastic alteration of the person. When this alteration is involuntary, it is suicide. When this alteration is wilfull, it is sacrifice. Unlike suicide, which aims to end consciousness, sacrifice aims to end what is diseased within consciousness.
***
I subsequently learned the observation we can die in various ways has old origins. The ancient Greeks thought the philosophical life was an exercise in dying. This death was the dying to all interior disorder. It sought the proper configuration of human life, placing the rational capacity at the top, above the passions, senses, and the appetites. Religion also calls its adherents to die. Christ said, "whoever wants to save his life, will lose it.” Thus a certain sort of death is necessary and salvational. This death was to universal disorder. It sought the proper orientation of human life, placing the Creator above the creature.
In both sorts of sacrificial death, one is called to restructure one's priorities. To prioritize: is there a more simple task for the living? The abundance of options warrants organization prior to choosing among them. The most weighty, complex, elaborate, and strenuous fields of reflective life strive to arrange the various priorities within all people.
The philosophical and religious deaths are similar. Both involve a great emphasis on self-control that comes after admission of the need to be controled. There is in both deaths explicit acceptance of the proposition that the natural bend of our psyches does not produce beneficial results. In this way, we automatically malfunction: we want peace and are prone to war. If uncontrolled, we war with self, war with others, and war with the world. Philosophy and religion enter to disarm the factions and to instantiate a just order.
On the surface, philosophy and religion speak differently and often about different subjects. Interiorly, they both console. There is no greater consolation than the truth because there is no other consolation. Lies, errors, and falsehoods anesthetize; the truth pacifies. What else is wisdom but the understanding of those truths that pacify most? What else is worship but the adoration of the truth?
***
So it was that I began to feel remorse, not by doing something wrong but seeing someone else do something right. I saw my own significance and how my lack of focus contributed to it. My motivations were impure. I was pursuing some hazy end that amounted to self-righteousness. I took great pleasure in myself. I was not giving and did not live by a pure will. That monk showed me how indebted I was. I was making something of myself, but something insignificant. I thereafter sought to consolidate my purpose and apologized for my covert cowardice.
Life is a process of investing onself into oneself, other people, and/or projects. We exchange our resources, time and energy, for the chance to have our aspirations met. I will accelerate my story by stating that I had heavily invested myself in a losing venture.
For as far back as I can remember, I have thought of myself as a good man. I would not so far as to use the word 'great'. That would be overstating the case. My talents and the fervor of my devotion never allowed me to presume greatness. Still, I considered myself beyond all reasonable reproach because I had a good heart. Never had I thought to myself, "I know this is wrong, but I'll do it anyway," or "I know that will ruin someone else, but I'll opt to benefit myself regardless." I did not indulge in the popular forms of debauchery and was sure to keep my rap sheet empty.
By frequently recalling my clean conscience, I lionized myself. On a theoretical level, I could do no evil. Everyone makes mistakes, true enough, but is the attribution of blame appropriate? In my case, at least, it seemed improper. Evil is such a strong word. If one never concedes the possibility of being guilty, one becomes practically blameless. I had inoculated myself against contrition. So it was that I incinerated my life, not by striking a match but failing to turn the gas off.
"There must be something more to a good man than thinking he is without fault. What else makes a man a good man?" you wonder. Yes, I did not hang my hat solely on self-approbation. I did more than that. I was resolutely committed to self-improvement. To become smarter, wiser, more skilled, more artful, more loving--all are ways towards that goal. With all those avenues, opportunities for improvement are abundant. Yet here as elsewhere, too many options disorients people. We lose focus and disintegrate.
I was no different. Along the way, I developed a nasty habit of switching between avenues whenever the one I was following became trying. When I was stumped, I told myself there is wisdom in knowing one's limitations. When I was faced with an insuperable ethical quandary, I would abandon it altogether and delve into a project. When I ran into a demanding task--something beyond my current capabilities--I would go watch an art house movie or listen to music. When I was confronted by a confounding image, I would leave it and spend time with my girlfriend. Whenever my girlfriend annoyed me, I would compute, read, build, or sketch--anything but love. I created a system of escapes. In taking flight from this, that, and the other, I separated myself from everything. All the while, I told myself I was a good man and I was making something of myself. Who needs anything more than self-approbation?
I realized how poor my position was in a college history course. We were learning about mid-twentieth century oppression when my professor played a clip to illustrate. The grainy black and white footage contained a man in a delicate robe sitting cross-legged on pavement. With precise motions, he poured gasoline on himself. He struck a match and dropped it into his lap. He sat motionless while being incinerated until life left him. Then his body toppled over, no longer being held in balance. Fire danced along his charred corpse. The lights in the classroom went up. After collective wonder at the feat of self-control and a discussion of the monk’s political efficacy, I wondered again about the act of stepping forward to meet death. What is more unconscionable: to passively be consumed or to actively disperse yourself? Those dangling moments I recalled from my youth were the embodiment of our condition. Could it be that there is a need for death? This monk's self-immolation was the enactment of one man's answer.
How was this man's act other than suicide? Suicide is both active and passive. It is active insofar as it stops what would otherwise have continued. Without taking one's life, one sees a future restrained by the shackles of depression, anxiety, and despair. One accordingly cuts the future off at the pass of the present. Suicide is passive insofar as the act of stopping is initiated by a prior overwhelming circumstance. One who commits suicide concedes he has already been overcome; the act is tacit recognition of powerlessness. This monk, however, died to defeat something else. He gathered himself up to hurl himself at a momunment to human cruelty. It was a sacrifice rather than a suicide. Sacrifice seeks to motivate another; suicide seeks to mollify the self.
How endicting was that brave man! What was I doing with my life? I was dying, but what was I dying for? Here I was, exerting all of this energy, but in a spray rather than a stream. I was living intensely, but with mild purpose. I could not bear to unify my will and opted instead to retreat whenever challenged beyond a comfortable level. I was convicted by that monk whose death made me question my innocence and retreated to my dormroom to reflect.
***
Life for us is not as simple as life for oblivious creatures. While bacteria and plants can only die in one sense, we can die in at least two. We are at once animal and rational, body and soul, physical and mental, material and immaterial, corporeal and ethereal—and it is on account of this truth divided by a blurry border that we die more than once. Each side of the line has its own demise. In the obvious way, that monk died. What of the hidden way?
As we age, we devlop the ability to watch ourselves. First, the child becomes physically discerning in front of a mirror. One has control over a region of the visual field--the region which corresponds to our body--in a way unlike the rest of it. What is seen on the surface of the looking glass is related to what one is, but is not identical to it.
With age, we watch ourselves in new ways. The initiation into the second, hidden life is involuntary. One accumulates more control as bodily urges are tamed to make them amenable to human schedules and environmental possibilities. The youth becomes aware of her power over her self. She is still excited by what excited her prior to her self-observations, but the stimulation become less overwhelimg.
The reflective life is the second life. In self-consciousness, we distance ourself from stimuli and look upon the inside world. One recognizes inclinations may be opposed. In this power of assessment dwells freedom, the unique trait of the second life. The situation of maturity is like the man who wakes up in a taxi. He is already en route. He would arrive at some previously determined destination without further instruction. Not wanting to be delivered where he has not choosen to be, he asks the driver to pull over and let him out. He is not so independent and powerful that he does not require help to be freed, yet he is not so dependent and weak that he cannot stop the progress of circumstance and momentum.
As one can be more or less healthy in body, so too can one's reflective life be more or less vital. I was sick with ignorance. I lacked concentration and thereby lacked self-knowledge. I lost myself in the moment so regularly that I become lost in the entire sequence. In my disorientation, I was dying.
The death of the animal is well known. It was assumed after those memorable victims dropped out of the frame of that high-rise shot. We have ceremonies to mark our bodily departure. What is it, though, for the other side to die? What is it to die this second death?
The second death is a drastic alteration of the person. When this alteration is involuntary, it is suicide. When this alteration is wilfull, it is sacrifice. Unlike suicide, which aims to end consciousness, sacrifice aims to end what is diseased within consciousness.
***
I subsequently learned the observation we can die in various ways has old origins. The ancient Greeks thought the philosophical life was an exercise in dying. This death was the dying to all interior disorder. It sought the proper configuration of human life, placing the rational capacity at the top, above the passions, senses, and the appetites. Religion also calls its adherents to die. Christ said, "whoever wants to save his life, will lose it.” Thus a certain sort of death is necessary and salvational. This death was to universal disorder. It sought the proper orientation of human life, placing the Creator above the creature.
In both sorts of sacrificial death, one is called to restructure one's priorities. To prioritize: is there a more simple task for the living? The abundance of options warrants organization prior to choosing among them. The most weighty, complex, elaborate, and strenuous fields of reflective life strive to arrange the various priorities within all people.
The philosophical and religious deaths are similar. Both involve a great emphasis on self-control that comes after admission of the need to be controled. There is in both deaths explicit acceptance of the proposition that the natural bend of our psyches does not produce beneficial results. In this way, we automatically malfunction: we want peace and are prone to war. If uncontrolled, we war with self, war with others, and war with the world. Philosophy and religion enter to disarm the factions and to instantiate a just order.
On the surface, philosophy and religion speak differently and often about different subjects. Interiorly, they both console. There is no greater consolation than the truth because there is no other consolation. Lies, errors, and falsehoods anesthetize; the truth pacifies. What else is wisdom but the understanding of those truths that pacify most? What else is worship but the adoration of the truth?
***
So it was that I began to feel remorse, not by doing something wrong but seeing someone else do something right. I saw my own significance and how my lack of focus contributed to it. My motivations were impure. I was pursuing some hazy end that amounted to self-righteousness. I took great pleasure in myself. I was not giving and did not live by a pure will. That monk showed me how indebted I was. I was making something of myself, but something insignificant. I thereafter sought to consolidate my purpose and apologized for my covert cowardice.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Functional Definition
(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)
A sensation of lightness rose within Josh and Ryan as the elevator they shared descended. Both stared ahead at their golden reflections in the elevator doors. Neither were certain of how to proceed in conversation. After a final electronic tone, the doors opened onto the lobby. Both exited. Josh looked down at the maroon carpet slightly in front of his feet as he walked; Ryan watched the pedestrians passing beyond the glass front of the downtown building.
"How can mornings be so long?" Josh asked.
Ryan put his hand on the bar on the revolving door. It resisted. Ryan felt weak. With additional effort, the door began to spin. Josh followed behind, awkwardly jumping into the next cross-section at the last possible moment. The cool fall air felt the same but smelled different than the air inside the building. "Didn't you have something to work on?" Ryan inquired in response.
"Yeah. Data to enter, as always. I haven't written a report in a while. I'm frankly looking forward to taking the last cup of coffee, so that I have to make a new pot."
The two wove through the median of the foot-traffic. Their aenemic city left them plenty of space to travel.
"Sounds rough."
"Yeah. Real rough."
Josh glanced at Ryan, whose stern countenance emminated dignity. "How do you go on?"
"How do you mean?"
"You do the same stuff as me, more or less. You've been doing it for a few months longer than I have. It doesn't seem to phase you."
"What other option do you have?"
Josh considered the question briefly. "No viable ones that I can find. That's part of the problem."
"That you have to work?"
"No, that you have to do crap work like this. I know. I know. We're both lucky to have jobs, but they could be done by computers...should be done by computers, really. It's completely mindless. Bodiless, too, for that matter. Just the fingers, wrists, and a little eye ball movement. It is a miserable existence and I am pretty much stuck with it."
"If you think about it, it's miserable." Ryan scanned the street for approaching cars and promptly jaywalked. He drew tepid satisfaction from breaking the law. Josh intentionally stomped on a cigarette butt that leaked a ribbon of smoke. "What can you do?" Ryan added.
"Didn't you hear me? There's nothing I can do. I said that was part of the problem."
"Part of the solution, too."
"What? How so?" Josh squinted and shielded his eyes from a blade of sunlight that stabbed between the high-rises.
"Well if there's nothing to do, don't give it another thought."
"You think I am trying to? I don't court these feelings. But if you take a moment to consider what you are doing for hours upon hours...the feelings come on their own. Type, type, type. Click, click, click. It wears on you. The clock moves so slow and when the whistle blows, you feel like you haven't done a single significant action all day."
Ryan shrugged. "That's work for you."
"Shit, Ryan. Some help you are."
Ryan glanced over the light blue fabric covering his shoulder at Josh. "Who said I was a helper? We're co-workers, not soul mates. You've gotta stiffen your lip sometimes."
Josh looked up to accuse Ryan with a stare. Ryan was eying the placard in front of their destination. He surveyed the happy-hour prices and thought he should return one evening. Josh was surprised by Ryan's response. He decided not to speak any further. Having reached the cafe, they entered and fell into line. The din from the lunch crowd careened off the walls.
After deciding what he would order, Ryan thought he would put an end to Josh's complaints. He pointed to the menu. "You see that? There before you is approximately one quarter of the purpose of life. One part eating, one part sleeping, one part copulation, and one part...tending to miscellaneous necesities--shelter, clothes, and the like. In twenty minutes, you can check one of those boxes off your list. That's what we get up to do everyday, check off boxes. Doesn't that make you feel better?"
"Are you serious?"
"Yes. Of course. That's how I get by. I have a simple understanding of my life and what I am to do. Jobs don't matter, so long as they let you keep checking off those boxes everyday. Anyone who's looking for more than that is looking for trouble."
Josh's mind hopped from objection to objection against Ryan's position. He was hesitant to respond and realized he had opened up to the wrong person. The two shuffled forward as the line advanced. Josh flinched at the sound of a plate dropping to his right. He turned towards the source of the noise. No one else paid attention to the accident besides another woman at the nearby table who was trying to console her clumsy companion. Josh resumed the discussion, unable to bear the offense of Ryan's version of simplicity. "Well, that's a bleak outlook."
"Mine? Bleak? I'm as happy as a clam. I eat, punch in, punch out, eat, punch in, punch out, eat, if I'm lucky...copulate a little later, and sleep. So what if there's some typing in there. How I make my money doesn't matter. Nearly every day of the week for...twenty good years years...I have the opportunity to be contented. And, you know as luck would have it, the things we need to do are delightful. I enjoy all of them. I look forward to them everyday. So I've got to spend a few hours toiling to get there. That's a small price to pay for so much satisfaction." Ryan interrupted his speech to scratch behind his ear. "Have you tried the pad thai here? It's scrumptious."
Josh thought he was living through his reason for not socializing with anyone else at his office. He resigned to silenc and felt wholly alien. Now even the lunch hour, the solitary bastion of work-week relief, had been spoiled.
Ryan spied a young woman in a pencil skirt getting up to discard her trash. They connected gazes while she tipped her tray. He smiled the half-smile he presumed women found charming. She blinked and Ryan faced forward in disgust.
Josh had watched the scene play out. It occurred to him there was nothing keeping him tethered to this oaf. He could leave without any predictable negative consequences. Ryan likely would refrain from mentioning it later in order not to concede his pride had been damaged. In the short-run, interactions may be cold. In the long run, they probably would diminish. "I'm going to go," Josh muttered. Ryan turned to see him depart, said nothing, and began counting the money in his wallet.
As Josh was exiting, a group of suits were entering. He slid past them and merged onto the familiar sidewalk. Instinctively he headed towards his office building and began to consider his options.
Where to now? Not hungry. Still have...fourteen minutes. The bank's courtyard again? Might as well.
The courtyard was one of the city's secrets. Josh inadvertantly discovered it on one of his early expeditionary missions. Heading north on Broadway from his office, the pattern was: building, street, building, alley, building, building, trees and fountain, street, etc. Dropped in the midst of aging steel and glass structures was a dollop of soil and greenery. Presumably designed for the bank's employees, the public was granted access during normal lunch hours.
To whittle the meaning of life down to four basic actions...that was tempting. But there's more than that. Ryan was way off. Simplifying is good, but not reducing. Simplifying leaves be what matters. Life cannot be reduced to a few physical requirements because those don't matter enough. I'd trade a full stomach for a full heart. And still, I feel empty all over. I am empty.
Upon arrival, Josh fumbled with the latch on the wrought-iron gate. As he had the previous two times he stopped by, he hesitated for a moment. Push or pull? Josh wanted to pull, but felt anxious about making the same mistake for the third time. He bucked his intuition and opted to push. The gate did not move. Josh looked up to see if the woman on a bench eating a sandwhich noticed his fumbling. Thankfully, she had not. He pulled and the gate squeaked. The woman continued chewing, unabated. He estimated he could sit for five minutes before needing to return. Josh selected the same molded concrete chair in the shade he had on his first visit.
I have always done what I was supposed to do--leapt through every hoop raised near me--and this is what I wound up with! My job is dehumanizing. It is a worthless way to pass my time. I am swapping half of my waking life for a paltry hourly wage. I'm practically getting paid to waste away.
The maintenance of the courtyard had been neglected. The bleached mulch was speckled with weeds. The tan husks of last year's annuals hunched in evenly-spaced piles along the building's facade. Rusty water gathered in a pool at the bottom of the fountain. Only the garden's ginko trees retained their vitality. In waves, they swayed with the breeze. Josh looked through the branches as he pondered.
Why am I so upset? I shouldn't be. Ryan was partially right. What can I do? Nearly everybody has a less-than-grand job. That's the breaks. You can't hire yourself. Employers aren't concerned with the satisfaction possible within positions they create. They want efficiency and efficiency goes up as thinking goes down. Thinking takes time and time is money. That invisible hand punches most of us in the gut. Has it always been that way? What did people used to do? Most of them farmed. What if I were a farmer a few generations back? I bet an old farmer never despaired. All that sweat and toil and so little control over the end result--that required resilience. Maybe your fields produce so much it rots. Maybe it doesn't rain and all that work goes for nothing. They were kept from daydreaming by their dependence upon nature. They knew their vulnerability from the start. I spent an awful lot of my days dreaming of an important career. That's the culprit for all of this disappointment: the proposition that one's worth comes from what one does. One's subsistence, sure. But worth? Couldn't be.
Josh interrupted himself to consult his watch. It was time to go. He stood up, tucked in his shirt, and went to the gate. He felt relieved as it swung open with the push of his hand. The one o'clock sun soaked the back of his navy blazer and for a moment Josh was happy. It may not be clean air, but it's moving. That's good enough. Soon, he was draped with the shadow of his building.
Josh tried to reassure himself once his feet were on the maroon carpet again. I need to stop expecting too much from my job. This is something I just have to endure. The up arrow flashed by one elevator; he waited infront of it. The doors slid open and an empty space invited Josh to join. Moments later, his shoulders dropped from the ascent.
The office receptionist did not raise her head when Josh came through the doors. He turned and traveled down a bank of cubicles and through a cloud of hushed rhythmic tapping until he reached his own pocket of space.
Josh's desk was distinguished by its unusually tidy appearance. There were no personal accoutrements save for the stark-white coffee mug with a brown stain from where he drank. He spun his chair around and slunk into his seat. He flexed his fingers, stretched his wrists, and blinked his eyes. He was ready to work.
A sensation of lightness rose within Josh and Ryan as the elevator they shared descended. Both stared ahead at their golden reflections in the elevator doors. Neither were certain of how to proceed in conversation. After a final electronic tone, the doors opened onto the lobby. Both exited. Josh looked down at the maroon carpet slightly in front of his feet as he walked; Ryan watched the pedestrians passing beyond the glass front of the downtown building.
"How can mornings be so long?" Josh asked.
Ryan put his hand on the bar on the revolving door. It resisted. Ryan felt weak. With additional effort, the door began to spin. Josh followed behind, awkwardly jumping into the next cross-section at the last possible moment. The cool fall air felt the same but smelled different than the air inside the building. "Didn't you have something to work on?" Ryan inquired in response.
"Yeah. Data to enter, as always. I haven't written a report in a while. I'm frankly looking forward to taking the last cup of coffee, so that I have to make a new pot."
The two wove through the median of the foot-traffic. Their aenemic city left them plenty of space to travel.
"Sounds rough."
"Yeah. Real rough."
Josh glanced at Ryan, whose stern countenance emminated dignity. "How do you go on?"
"How do you mean?"
"You do the same stuff as me, more or less. You've been doing it for a few months longer than I have. It doesn't seem to phase you."
"What other option do you have?"
Josh considered the question briefly. "No viable ones that I can find. That's part of the problem."
"That you have to work?"
"No, that you have to do crap work like this. I know. I know. We're both lucky to have jobs, but they could be done by computers...should be done by computers, really. It's completely mindless. Bodiless, too, for that matter. Just the fingers, wrists, and a little eye ball movement. It is a miserable existence and I am pretty much stuck with it."
"If you think about it, it's miserable." Ryan scanned the street for approaching cars and promptly jaywalked. He drew tepid satisfaction from breaking the law. Josh intentionally stomped on a cigarette butt that leaked a ribbon of smoke. "What can you do?" Ryan added.
"Didn't you hear me? There's nothing I can do. I said that was part of the problem."
"Part of the solution, too."
"What? How so?" Josh squinted and shielded his eyes from a blade of sunlight that stabbed between the high-rises.
"Well if there's nothing to do, don't give it another thought."
"You think I am trying to? I don't court these feelings. But if you take a moment to consider what you are doing for hours upon hours...the feelings come on their own. Type, type, type. Click, click, click. It wears on you. The clock moves so slow and when the whistle blows, you feel like you haven't done a single significant action all day."
Ryan shrugged. "That's work for you."
"Shit, Ryan. Some help you are."
Ryan glanced over the light blue fabric covering his shoulder at Josh. "Who said I was a helper? We're co-workers, not soul mates. You've gotta stiffen your lip sometimes."
Josh looked up to accuse Ryan with a stare. Ryan was eying the placard in front of their destination. He surveyed the happy-hour prices and thought he should return one evening. Josh was surprised by Ryan's response. He decided not to speak any further. Having reached the cafe, they entered and fell into line. The din from the lunch crowd careened off the walls.
After deciding what he would order, Ryan thought he would put an end to Josh's complaints. He pointed to the menu. "You see that? There before you is approximately one quarter of the purpose of life. One part eating, one part sleeping, one part copulation, and one part...tending to miscellaneous necesities--shelter, clothes, and the like. In twenty minutes, you can check one of those boxes off your list. That's what we get up to do everyday, check off boxes. Doesn't that make you feel better?"
"Are you serious?"
"Yes. Of course. That's how I get by. I have a simple understanding of my life and what I am to do. Jobs don't matter, so long as they let you keep checking off those boxes everyday. Anyone who's looking for more than that is looking for trouble."
Josh's mind hopped from objection to objection against Ryan's position. He was hesitant to respond and realized he had opened up to the wrong person. The two shuffled forward as the line advanced. Josh flinched at the sound of a plate dropping to his right. He turned towards the source of the noise. No one else paid attention to the accident besides another woman at the nearby table who was trying to console her clumsy companion. Josh resumed the discussion, unable to bear the offense of Ryan's version of simplicity. "Well, that's a bleak outlook."
"Mine? Bleak? I'm as happy as a clam. I eat, punch in, punch out, eat, punch in, punch out, eat, if I'm lucky...copulate a little later, and sleep. So what if there's some typing in there. How I make my money doesn't matter. Nearly every day of the week for...twenty good years years...I have the opportunity to be contented. And, you know as luck would have it, the things we need to do are delightful. I enjoy all of them. I look forward to them everyday. So I've got to spend a few hours toiling to get there. That's a small price to pay for so much satisfaction." Ryan interrupted his speech to scratch behind his ear. "Have you tried the pad thai here? It's scrumptious."
Josh thought he was living through his reason for not socializing with anyone else at his office. He resigned to silenc and felt wholly alien. Now even the lunch hour, the solitary bastion of work-week relief, had been spoiled.
Ryan spied a young woman in a pencil skirt getting up to discard her trash. They connected gazes while she tipped her tray. He smiled the half-smile he presumed women found charming. She blinked and Ryan faced forward in disgust.
Josh had watched the scene play out. It occurred to him there was nothing keeping him tethered to this oaf. He could leave without any predictable negative consequences. Ryan likely would refrain from mentioning it later in order not to concede his pride had been damaged. In the short-run, interactions may be cold. In the long run, they probably would diminish. "I'm going to go," Josh muttered. Ryan turned to see him depart, said nothing, and began counting the money in his wallet.
As Josh was exiting, a group of suits were entering. He slid past them and merged onto the familiar sidewalk. Instinctively he headed towards his office building and began to consider his options.
Where to now? Not hungry. Still have...fourteen minutes. The bank's courtyard again? Might as well.
The courtyard was one of the city's secrets. Josh inadvertantly discovered it on one of his early expeditionary missions. Heading north on Broadway from his office, the pattern was: building, street, building, alley, building, building, trees and fountain, street, etc. Dropped in the midst of aging steel and glass structures was a dollop of soil and greenery. Presumably designed for the bank's employees, the public was granted access during normal lunch hours.
To whittle the meaning of life down to four basic actions...that was tempting. But there's more than that. Ryan was way off. Simplifying is good, but not reducing. Simplifying leaves be what matters. Life cannot be reduced to a few physical requirements because those don't matter enough. I'd trade a full stomach for a full heart. And still, I feel empty all over. I am empty.
Upon arrival, Josh fumbled with the latch on the wrought-iron gate. As he had the previous two times he stopped by, he hesitated for a moment. Push or pull? Josh wanted to pull, but felt anxious about making the same mistake for the third time. He bucked his intuition and opted to push. The gate did not move. Josh looked up to see if the woman on a bench eating a sandwhich noticed his fumbling. Thankfully, she had not. He pulled and the gate squeaked. The woman continued chewing, unabated. He estimated he could sit for five minutes before needing to return. Josh selected the same molded concrete chair in the shade he had on his first visit.
I have always done what I was supposed to do--leapt through every hoop raised near me--and this is what I wound up with! My job is dehumanizing. It is a worthless way to pass my time. I am swapping half of my waking life for a paltry hourly wage. I'm practically getting paid to waste away.
The maintenance of the courtyard had been neglected. The bleached mulch was speckled with weeds. The tan husks of last year's annuals hunched in evenly-spaced piles along the building's facade. Rusty water gathered in a pool at the bottom of the fountain. Only the garden's ginko trees retained their vitality. In waves, they swayed with the breeze. Josh looked through the branches as he pondered.
Why am I so upset? I shouldn't be. Ryan was partially right. What can I do? Nearly everybody has a less-than-grand job. That's the breaks. You can't hire yourself. Employers aren't concerned with the satisfaction possible within positions they create. They want efficiency and efficiency goes up as thinking goes down. Thinking takes time and time is money. That invisible hand punches most of us in the gut. Has it always been that way? What did people used to do? Most of them farmed. What if I were a farmer a few generations back? I bet an old farmer never despaired. All that sweat and toil and so little control over the end result--that required resilience. Maybe your fields produce so much it rots. Maybe it doesn't rain and all that work goes for nothing. They were kept from daydreaming by their dependence upon nature. They knew their vulnerability from the start. I spent an awful lot of my days dreaming of an important career. That's the culprit for all of this disappointment: the proposition that one's worth comes from what one does. One's subsistence, sure. But worth? Couldn't be.
Josh interrupted himself to consult his watch. It was time to go. He stood up, tucked in his shirt, and went to the gate. He felt relieved as it swung open with the push of his hand. The one o'clock sun soaked the back of his navy blazer and for a moment Josh was happy. It may not be clean air, but it's moving. That's good enough. Soon, he was draped with the shadow of his building.
Josh tried to reassure himself once his feet were on the maroon carpet again. I need to stop expecting too much from my job. This is something I just have to endure. The up arrow flashed by one elevator; he waited infront of it. The doors slid open and an empty space invited Josh to join. Moments later, his shoulders dropped from the ascent.
The office receptionist did not raise her head when Josh came through the doors. He turned and traveled down a bank of cubicles and through a cloud of hushed rhythmic tapping until he reached his own pocket of space.
Josh's desk was distinguished by its unusually tidy appearance. There were no personal accoutrements save for the stark-white coffee mug with a brown stain from where he drank. He spun his chair around and slunk into his seat. He flexed his fingers, stretched his wrists, and blinked his eyes. He was ready to work.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Hunt
What a difficult thing to understand--a human heart! That being, itself imperceptible, causes such public obscurities. How mysterious the mechanism that, when given the same input, generates diverse output. How confounding the beings who contain it, they who are both different from and the same as one another. How fluid one such being is from moment to moment! How can you pin down a liquid?
Notice the discord between the heart and the mind. The mind investigates the heart, trying to discover the secrets for calibration. It sniffs along the trail of sentiments and values the heart leaves behind, but the heart is always one step ahead. The heart is even one step ahead of itself. It knows not where it is going and is often confused about where it is. It simply goes, tumbling along the course carved before it.
The mind is tenacious. It takes to scheming in order to flush the heart out. It plants mines of guilt ahead, trying to alter the heart's road. Perhaps it constructs barriers of composure where it thinks the heart will go. It may grab a shovel of austerity and dig a trench to lead it away. Alas, the mind is never as affective as it it presumes. The heart may be on a different path, at any moment vulnerable to being whisked away by a flood or tossed by an earthquake.
The confusion compounds when a pair of hearts and minds are chasing. Who can chart the course between two people? Who can lure another one to that hallowed common ground? Communication is like try to hit a moving target. Where are you heading, my breathing clay pigeon? I have you in my sights, but-curses!-I am on the move as well. Who can get a bead on a person? Is it any surprise that many give up the hunt and settle for shooting at shadows?
When you look at me, what do you see? I know you are hunting as well. Are you on my scent? While we perform this rite, who else is looking at us? Are we setting up to be blindsided? Might not one lose all semblance of balance trying to track you down? What a trecherous environment we find ourselves in!
Notice the discord between the heart and the mind. The mind investigates the heart, trying to discover the secrets for calibration. It sniffs along the trail of sentiments and values the heart leaves behind, but the heart is always one step ahead. The heart is even one step ahead of itself. It knows not where it is going and is often confused about where it is. It simply goes, tumbling along the course carved before it.
The mind is tenacious. It takes to scheming in order to flush the heart out. It plants mines of guilt ahead, trying to alter the heart's road. Perhaps it constructs barriers of composure where it thinks the heart will go. It may grab a shovel of austerity and dig a trench to lead it away. Alas, the mind is never as affective as it it presumes. The heart may be on a different path, at any moment vulnerable to being whisked away by a flood or tossed by an earthquake.
The confusion compounds when a pair of hearts and minds are chasing. Who can chart the course between two people? Who can lure another one to that hallowed common ground? Communication is like try to hit a moving target. Where are you heading, my breathing clay pigeon? I have you in my sights, but-curses!-I am on the move as well. Who can get a bead on a person? Is it any surprise that many give up the hunt and settle for shooting at shadows?
When you look at me, what do you see? I know you are hunting as well. Are you on my scent? While we perform this rite, who else is looking at us? Are we setting up to be blindsided? Might not one lose all semblance of balance trying to track you down? What a trecherous environment we find ourselves in!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Correspondence 7
(For a newer draft of this letter within the completed series of letters, click here.)
Dear Sophia,
I apologize for not asking you sooner about your subsequent past. I intended to do so. It is difficult for a person so lost in his own past to maintain curiosity about another.
As usual, you are right in your criticism. Perhaps you can live my life for me. Ah, but that would not work either, would it? I suspect you are not immune to the commonplace form of ignorance that so easily afflicts us all. I will never understand how unaware we can be about our own motivations. What does it say about self-absorption that, for all of the attention, we know less about who we are afterwards?
I will never understand how we can at once be so free and so out of control. What paths would we take were it not for the light other people cast on us? I think you're the only person I have every taken seriously. You actually prompt me to wonder about what's inside you.
Have I told you how weary I have become of the trail of my life? To find my way back, I need only follow the blunders I have made which dot the course more frequently than mile markers. I am a sick man and cannot seem to get much better on my own. What is the difference between self-help and self-medication? I have started to consider the possibility that there is something more dysfunctional about me than these particular missteps.
Look at what I am doing. I am lying another trap for myself. Enough of all this. Forgive me for being so slow to right myself.
I agree with your course. Let's move on. Let's be friends, ask questions, and tell stories. We would both be benefitted by that, right?
The other day I was washing my hands in the lavatory at my workplace. As I was rubbing my fingers into my palms to lather, the building custodian entered. I knew what he looked like, but did not know his name. He never said anything. He had a couple rolls of toilet paper tucked under his arms. He was checking the supplies. He was bashful and cast his eyes down upon registering my presence. He darted from stall to stall. While he riffled through the keys on his large key ring, I greeted him. He turned towards me with a suprised look. "Good afternoon," he replied with a little hesitation. Not knowing what to add and thinking it too obvious to compliment him on the cleanliness of the facility, I asked him instead about his plans for the weekend. He smile and looked more at ease. His shoulders sagged a bit. He told me he was taking his wife and child to the local amusement park to celebrate his son's good grades in school. I told him that sounded swell and wished him a good time. He smiled again and returned ot his duties. I watched him grab an orphaned wad of paper from the ground and flick it into the trashcan. He told me to have a good evening. The jingle of his keys followed behind him and reminded me of the sound of a cowboy's spurs. As I discareded my papers towels into the recepticle, I thought about what had transpired. It seemed as though in an unplanned moment I had involved myself in a situation that feature two of the topics from your last letter. At once, I was a participant in a conventional conversation and was helping someone (albeit in a nearly insignificant way). I know it helped me. Small, congenial human interactions go a long way. I think we managed to care for each other a lot more than the people who ask me what I do for a living while looking past me to see if someone else more important has been freed up for conversation.
What's new with you? Do you have any stories you'd like to share?
Alan
Dear Sophia,
I apologize for not asking you sooner about your subsequent past. I intended to do so. It is difficult for a person so lost in his own past to maintain curiosity about another.
As usual, you are right in your criticism. Perhaps you can live my life for me. Ah, but that would not work either, would it? I suspect you are not immune to the commonplace form of ignorance that so easily afflicts us all. I will never understand how unaware we can be about our own motivations. What does it say about self-absorption that, for all of the attention, we know less about who we are afterwards?
I will never understand how we can at once be so free and so out of control. What paths would we take were it not for the light other people cast on us? I think you're the only person I have every taken seriously. You actually prompt me to wonder about what's inside you.
Have I told you how weary I have become of the trail of my life? To find my way back, I need only follow the blunders I have made which dot the course more frequently than mile markers. I am a sick man and cannot seem to get much better on my own. What is the difference between self-help and self-medication? I have started to consider the possibility that there is something more dysfunctional about me than these particular missteps.
Look at what I am doing. I am lying another trap for myself. Enough of all this. Forgive me for being so slow to right myself.
I agree with your course. Let's move on. Let's be friends, ask questions, and tell stories. We would both be benefitted by that, right?
The other day I was washing my hands in the lavatory at my workplace. As I was rubbing my fingers into my palms to lather, the building custodian entered. I knew what he looked like, but did not know his name. He never said anything. He had a couple rolls of toilet paper tucked under his arms. He was checking the supplies. He was bashful and cast his eyes down upon registering my presence. He darted from stall to stall. While he riffled through the keys on his large key ring, I greeted him. He turned towards me with a suprised look. "Good afternoon," he replied with a little hesitation. Not knowing what to add and thinking it too obvious to compliment him on the cleanliness of the facility, I asked him instead about his plans for the weekend. He smile and looked more at ease. His shoulders sagged a bit. He told me he was taking his wife and child to the local amusement park to celebrate his son's good grades in school. I told him that sounded swell and wished him a good time. He smiled again and returned ot his duties. I watched him grab an orphaned wad of paper from the ground and flick it into the trashcan. He told me to have a good evening. The jingle of his keys followed behind him and reminded me of the sound of a cowboy's spurs. As I discareded my papers towels into the recepticle, I thought about what had transpired. It seemed as though in an unplanned moment I had involved myself in a situation that feature two of the topics from your last letter. At once, I was a participant in a conventional conversation and was helping someone (albeit in a nearly insignificant way). I know it helped me. Small, congenial human interactions go a long way. I think we managed to care for each other a lot more than the people who ask me what I do for a living while looking past me to see if someone else more important has been freed up for conversation.
What's new with you? Do you have any stories you'd like to share?
Alan
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Magic
It is granted the eyes play tricks on the mind. How much more so does the man play tricks on the mind? The eyes are passive in what they see. The man is active in what he does. Indeed, it is the man who directs the eyes towards that which deceives. Lament, then, the traps of illusions but lament more the tricks of the greatest illusionists. While the illusion brings other to err, the greatest illusionists brings himself to believe in his own deceptions. For in this life we are performers and all performers have themselves as part of the audiences. See the tragedy of the self-loathing performer who cripples his performance with doubt and the self-loving performer who cripples himself with confidence. The former stutters; the latter feigns with such transparent passion he becomes a caricature rather than a character.
Take the man who consciously tries to serve two masters. Both require his services, yet he can only in truth serve one. What is he to do? He can quit one or trick himself into thinking he serves both. Given enough time, the man will see himself split where there is only one. In the hall of mirrors that is his mind, he will notice nothing unusual.
Picture his situation. The masters always ring their bells for service. Constant is their need. Our ambitious man, excited by the noise, thinks, "I will serve one and then the other." He goes first to his true master, tends to the master's need, and then sets off to serve the other. Alas, in the midst of his jaunt across the stage he hears the bell again behind him. Could it be the master requires still more? He thinks, "This will only take a moment. I know what he wants by now and can complete the task more swiftly than before." He alters his course and reverts back to his true master. Again, our ambitious man tends to the master's need. Thinking himself finished, he takes his leave to answer the other bell. The sound of his footsteps is interrupted again by the jingle of a bell behind him. How can this be? I was on my way to the other, and yet my master wants still more. "I must not leave things unfinished. I will wrap up my loose ends first. Then, I can freely go to the other." He returns, peforms his service, bows, and departs. As this loop repeats and repeats, our illusitionist--if he is worthy of the title--begins to craft the illusion. He trains himself in mental slight of hand.
He is uneqivocally committed to both masters--he says as much himself. Yet, to the best of the audience's recollection, he only serves the one. Does this not rend his heart? Is the audience not horrified at his hipocracy? Do not some in the audience laugh at our ambitious man's portrayal of the fool? Oh--the disappointment of frustrating the other master is too great and our ambitious man cannot abide it! Rather than tender his resignation with the other, admit that he is but a man and can only serve one at a time, he starts to see himself as over on the other side of the stage. He imagines himself serving the other. At first the audience is confused. Is our man derranged? They watch in disbelief as our man recites mid-route, "Look at me, fool that I am! Here I am in the middle and am headed in the wrong direction. I hear the bell behind me and yet I am walking in the opposite direction. I must have just served the other and got turned around in my return. Yes, I served the other. How else did I wind up here in the middle? Silly man that I am, I must have been daydreaming and become disoriented. I will turn around and answer hat call first, and then go back to the other." Through the confidence of the illusionist, the illusion is created. At first, the audience question's the performer's credulity. Upon unwaivering repetition, they begin to question their own.
By this trick on the mind, our man starts to see himself in to discrete and disparate places successively. He does not need a puff of smoke or a closet to walk in to, but only deceit--and he can travel from one side of the stage to the other in the blink of an eye. Our ambitious man takes the act of departing from his true master as a sign of his service rendered to the other. He takes the ticket he holds to be evidence of his arrival when it only shows his unsubstantiated intention to depart.
As this continues, the illusion develops and thickens. He needs to go less and less towards the other to satisfy his conception of obligation to the other. His ear starts to hear the other bell less and less, thinking it is only the echo of his true master's. The further he actually is from the other, the nearer he becomes in his own mind. For his final trick, he ammends his language and alters the course of his thoughts. Serving the other is incorporated into his identity--"I am a servant to two masters." He tells himself that service to the other is included within the service to his true master--"By helping the one, I help the other." He puffs himself up and the audience--mesmerized by his assertions--believes. "How good I am at juggling!" he crows. "The balls seem to converge in my mind. All I need to do is focus on the one in my hand and the other is kept aloft, as though my will can act apart from my body. I, who tend to both, see only one. Praise be my powers of conventration and focus! I can give myself fully to many and yet be so envoloped as to know only the one at any time." The audience, enraptured and entertain, praises as commanded. They stand and applaud. They yell to one another over the din of the theater, "I don't know how he does it!" Truly, they do not know he does it and neither does he. Precisely because he does not do it does no one know how. But that is of no consequence; everyone is entertained. The trick is complete and the curtain falls upon our ambitious man who has trained himself and convinced his audience to see two where there is only one.
Take the man who consciously tries to serve two masters. Both require his services, yet he can only in truth serve one. What is he to do? He can quit one or trick himself into thinking he serves both. Given enough time, the man will see himself split where there is only one. In the hall of mirrors that is his mind, he will notice nothing unusual.
Picture his situation. The masters always ring their bells for service. Constant is their need. Our ambitious man, excited by the noise, thinks, "I will serve one and then the other." He goes first to his true master, tends to the master's need, and then sets off to serve the other. Alas, in the midst of his jaunt across the stage he hears the bell again behind him. Could it be the master requires still more? He thinks, "This will only take a moment. I know what he wants by now and can complete the task more swiftly than before." He alters his course and reverts back to his true master. Again, our ambitious man tends to the master's need. Thinking himself finished, he takes his leave to answer the other bell. The sound of his footsteps is interrupted again by the jingle of a bell behind him. How can this be? I was on my way to the other, and yet my master wants still more. "I must not leave things unfinished. I will wrap up my loose ends first. Then, I can freely go to the other." He returns, peforms his service, bows, and departs. As this loop repeats and repeats, our illusitionist--if he is worthy of the title--begins to craft the illusion. He trains himself in mental slight of hand.
He is uneqivocally committed to both masters--he says as much himself. Yet, to the best of the audience's recollection, he only serves the one. Does this not rend his heart? Is the audience not horrified at his hipocracy? Do not some in the audience laugh at our ambitious man's portrayal of the fool? Oh--the disappointment of frustrating the other master is too great and our ambitious man cannot abide it! Rather than tender his resignation with the other, admit that he is but a man and can only serve one at a time, he starts to see himself as over on the other side of the stage. He imagines himself serving the other. At first the audience is confused. Is our man derranged? They watch in disbelief as our man recites mid-route, "Look at me, fool that I am! Here I am in the middle and am headed in the wrong direction. I hear the bell behind me and yet I am walking in the opposite direction. I must have just served the other and got turned around in my return. Yes, I served the other. How else did I wind up here in the middle? Silly man that I am, I must have been daydreaming and become disoriented. I will turn around and answer hat call first, and then go back to the other." Through the confidence of the illusionist, the illusion is created. At first, the audience question's the performer's credulity. Upon unwaivering repetition, they begin to question their own.
By this trick on the mind, our man starts to see himself in to discrete and disparate places successively. He does not need a puff of smoke or a closet to walk in to, but only deceit--and he can travel from one side of the stage to the other in the blink of an eye. Our ambitious man takes the act of departing from his true master as a sign of his service rendered to the other. He takes the ticket he holds to be evidence of his arrival when it only shows his unsubstantiated intention to depart.
As this continues, the illusion develops and thickens. He needs to go less and less towards the other to satisfy his conception of obligation to the other. His ear starts to hear the other bell less and less, thinking it is only the echo of his true master's. The further he actually is from the other, the nearer he becomes in his own mind. For his final trick, he ammends his language and alters the course of his thoughts. Serving the other is incorporated into his identity--"I am a servant to two masters." He tells himself that service to the other is included within the service to his true master--"By helping the one, I help the other." He puffs himself up and the audience--mesmerized by his assertions--believes. "How good I am at juggling!" he crows. "The balls seem to converge in my mind. All I need to do is focus on the one in my hand and the other is kept aloft, as though my will can act apart from my body. I, who tend to both, see only one. Praise be my powers of conventration and focus! I can give myself fully to many and yet be so envoloped as to know only the one at any time." The audience, enraptured and entertain, praises as commanded. They stand and applaud. They yell to one another over the din of the theater, "I don't know how he does it!" Truly, they do not know he does it and neither does he. Precisely because he does not do it does no one know how. But that is of no consequence; everyone is entertained. The trick is complete and the curtain falls upon our ambitious man who has trained himself and convinced his audience to see two where there is only one.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Correspondence 6
(For a newer draft of this letter within the completed series of letters, click here.)
Alan,
My tone was stern. I admit I turned the screw too far. I apologize for that. Let us both calm down and take stock of the situation. You are somewhere between proud and miserable. I am somewhere between angry and concerned. Let's both commit to struggling to make way towards the better side of our Janus-faced hearts. In order to do that, you need to stop thinking about deserts and I need to stop considering you my responsibility.
I think you are completely right in your dissatisfaction regarding the standard mode of personal identity. We are all much more than our job titles. Still, social convention demands it and has a way of simplifying what would otherwise be needlessly complicated. If we could not draw upon a set of stock questions to ask at dinner parties and church meetings, how much more awkward would introductions be? Moreover, one can gain understanding about a person from know how she spends a third of her waking hours. It would be wrong to assume that is the best she was capable of doing, of course. To know how she reconciles herself to the role would be informative. Granting a concession to convention, I would applaud that original person who would ask what I did this morning instead of where I work.
Speaking of question asking, I'd like to make you aware of a possibility. You could ask me about myself sometime. That would be original, wouldn't it? You could ask me what I have done with myself the last five years. I would then tell you how, after we parted ways and I went through the requisite mourning process, I decided to pick up anchor and set off for this metropolis. (I assume my mother was kind enough to forward you my address. She always was incorrigibly fond of you.) My experience here has been, all in all, refreshing. It is at once easier to lose yourself and to be found in a big city. I appreciate the anonymity it provides, although being in close proximity to so many other people increases your chances of meeting a loon. Everything here is faster. There is no time for pleasantries, yet there remains just enough for rudeness. Even then, the city proves ambivalent. Provided the offender is not a neighbor, the odds are against ever running across the same villain. It is safer to turn your cheek here as a result, since it is improbable to be struck twice. Wouldn't it be nice that I could say all this and it would appear we were interacting rather than alternately acting? But I am getting ahead of myself, imagining as I do.
I hope you are better now. Do yourself a favor and search out someone to help in whatever small way you can find.
Sophia
Alan,
My tone was stern. I admit I turned the screw too far. I apologize for that. Let us both calm down and take stock of the situation. You are somewhere between proud and miserable. I am somewhere between angry and concerned. Let's both commit to struggling to make way towards the better side of our Janus-faced hearts. In order to do that, you need to stop thinking about deserts and I need to stop considering you my responsibility.
I think you are completely right in your dissatisfaction regarding the standard mode of personal identity. We are all much more than our job titles. Still, social convention demands it and has a way of simplifying what would otherwise be needlessly complicated. If we could not draw upon a set of stock questions to ask at dinner parties and church meetings, how much more awkward would introductions be? Moreover, one can gain understanding about a person from know how she spends a third of her waking hours. It would be wrong to assume that is the best she was capable of doing, of course. To know how she reconciles herself to the role would be informative. Granting a concession to convention, I would applaud that original person who would ask what I did this morning instead of where I work.
Speaking of question asking, I'd like to make you aware of a possibility. You could ask me about myself sometime. That would be original, wouldn't it? You could ask me what I have done with myself the last five years. I would then tell you how, after we parted ways and I went through the requisite mourning process, I decided to pick up anchor and set off for this metropolis. (I assume my mother was kind enough to forward you my address. She always was incorrigibly fond of you.) My experience here has been, all in all, refreshing. It is at once easier to lose yourself and to be found in a big city. I appreciate the anonymity it provides, although being in close proximity to so many other people increases your chances of meeting a loon. Everything here is faster. There is no time for pleasantries, yet there remains just enough for rudeness. Even then, the city proves ambivalent. Provided the offender is not a neighbor, the odds are against ever running across the same villain. It is safer to turn your cheek here as a result, since it is improbable to be struck twice. Wouldn't it be nice that I could say all this and it would appear we were interacting rather than alternately acting? But I am getting ahead of myself, imagining as I do.
I hope you are better now. Do yourself a favor and search out someone to help in whatever small way you can find.
Sophia
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Correspondence 5
(For a newer draft of this letter within the completed series of letters, click here.)
Dear Sophia,
Please forgive the tardiness of my response. I'm sure you can understand the delay when you consider the extent of your criticisms. I am wounded, but I cannot say I did not deserve it. You have me dead to rights and have continued to know me better than myself.
You asked what I wanted specifically. If I were able to tell you that, I would be a rare sort of person. Do you presume to know what it is you want specifically? I can see that frustration and despair follows from not being clear headed on the topic, but what can I do? I have always had a keener sense for what affronts me. I can, for instance, assuredly assert that I do not want to be here. I do not like my lowly position. I have tried and tried and tried to take care of myself, to maneuver and advance--for nothing! I am in a pool of quicksand. I am sinking into the slop of false accusations and disrespect. The ignominy of it all! Have you ever been lambasted by a 'superior'? The only thing superior about him is his paranoia and stupidity! Oh, the conniving bastard! How can it be that power is so haphazardly invested in blockheads! Enough of these ravings. I do not want to court more reproaches.
I confess I feel frail and prone to rambling. I am exhausted by my interior volleys. I was proud, am wretched, and dart between the two sides every minute. In the social sphere, I have fallen--rightfully so. But in my livelihood--here I am an innocent victim. The shame of it all! At least now I do not have to introduce myself as a salesman, not because I'm not one but because no one asks. Why is that the first question out of everyone's mouths? "What do you do?" I do a lot of things. This morning I awoke, made my bed, at breakfast, watered my house plants, dressed, brushed my teeth, and shaved my face. I packed a lunch and drove my car--all before 8 a.m. mind you. "But what do you do?" I am paid to squander my time, if you must know. Isn't that how it always is? How tired I am of all of it.
Am I so conceited, Sophia? I think not and that concerns me. Can self-loathing and hubris coincide in one person to such a degree? I fear the surest sign of a prideful heart is a lack of remorse. How is it that a man can try to do no wrong and yet transgress the boundaries of error often? You do not hold these mistakes against me, merciful creature that you are, and yet I feel as though pinned. Somewhere in my mind I always wanted to love you, but I never succeeded. I am a changed man, a child awakening. Like a child, I am tired and irritable. I cannot carry on with this. I am confounded by what I expected from this correspondence as what I expected from this life. I am sorry for dumping this refuse upon your porch.
Yours,
Alan
Dear Sophia,
Please forgive the tardiness of my response. I'm sure you can understand the delay when you consider the extent of your criticisms. I am wounded, but I cannot say I did not deserve it. You have me dead to rights and have continued to know me better than myself.
You asked what I wanted specifically. If I were able to tell you that, I would be a rare sort of person. Do you presume to know what it is you want specifically? I can see that frustration and despair follows from not being clear headed on the topic, but what can I do? I have always had a keener sense for what affronts me. I can, for instance, assuredly assert that I do not want to be here. I do not like my lowly position. I have tried and tried and tried to take care of myself, to maneuver and advance--for nothing! I am in a pool of quicksand. I am sinking into the slop of false accusations and disrespect. The ignominy of it all! Have you ever been lambasted by a 'superior'? The only thing superior about him is his paranoia and stupidity! Oh, the conniving bastard! How can it be that power is so haphazardly invested in blockheads! Enough of these ravings. I do not want to court more reproaches.
I confess I feel frail and prone to rambling. I am exhausted by my interior volleys. I was proud, am wretched, and dart between the two sides every minute. In the social sphere, I have fallen--rightfully so. But in my livelihood--here I am an innocent victim. The shame of it all! At least now I do not have to introduce myself as a salesman, not because I'm not one but because no one asks. Why is that the first question out of everyone's mouths? "What do you do?" I do a lot of things. This morning I awoke, made my bed, at breakfast, watered my house plants, dressed, brushed my teeth, and shaved my face. I packed a lunch and drove my car--all before 8 a.m. mind you. "But what do you do?" I am paid to squander my time, if you must know. Isn't that how it always is? How tired I am of all of it.
Am I so conceited, Sophia? I think not and that concerns me. Can self-loathing and hubris coincide in one person to such a degree? I fear the surest sign of a prideful heart is a lack of remorse. How is it that a man can try to do no wrong and yet transgress the boundaries of error often? You do not hold these mistakes against me, merciful creature that you are, and yet I feel as though pinned. Somewhere in my mind I always wanted to love you, but I never succeeded. I am a changed man, a child awakening. Like a child, I am tired and irritable. I cannot carry on with this. I am confounded by what I expected from this correspondence as what I expected from this life. I am sorry for dumping this refuse upon your porch.
Yours,
Alan
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Communication
I recently found myself frustrated during a conversation with a friend. He was dejected for a variety of reasons, one of which I suspected was a side-effict of his self-inflicted exile from others. I brought up the topic of human sociability. I spoke to a desire people had towards being accepted. "It's good to be accepted--assuming it is with the right sort of crowd, of course," I observed. My friend, skeptic that he is, asked me to explain what it was to be accepted. Off the cuff I replied, “People treat you well regardless of what you do. They want you to be around. The group you are being accepted into is considerate of your needs, sometimes moreso than you are.” My friend sat and looked at me, uninspired. He insisted sociability was beneficial for some and not for others. I had failed. I could not help but think he had the easier side of the debate. This was another data point along a disturbing trend I had noted before: it is difficult to discuss uplifting things.
Did I misspeak? No. The description was accurate, if a bit truncated. Can I claim I communicated the truth of the experience? No, I did not. How poorly words shine in comparison to acceptance lived! To enliven it, one could bring it into relief. One would need to portray the depraved state of rejection in order to bring the vitality of acceptance into full view. Why the need for all of this explanation? If I wanted to discuss rejection instead, all I would need to say was something like, "They didn't think I listened to the right sort of music. You know the type." Immediately, my friend would have made all necessary connections and filled in all the gaps. We would have been on the same page quickly.
The power of words suffers a diminution the greater their proximity to goodness. Is there something in the nature of goodness that eludes our language? The question is all the more puzzling when we consider the effectiveness of words in the description of evil. A person who lies about lying still says something about it, whereas a person who lies about the truth only goes to make his error more egregious. To what should we attribute this change?
I must clarify that I am not here equating goodness with happiness and evil with sadness, still less with pleasure and pain. Goodness and evil pertain to existence apart from humans. Happiness and sadness are human sentiments. The excitement of sentiments depends upon the constitution of a person. Constitutions of people are never perfectly attuned to truth, even if they are committed to virtue. It follows that the presence of a good may make a person sad and the presence of an evil may make a person happy and, conversely, the absence of a good may make a person happy and the absence of an evil may make a person sad. With that said, back to the discussion at hand.
Note how the awesome welcomes and the awful repels. What better way to invest ourselves than to act rather than merely contemplate? The invitation of goodness requests our companionship. We want to be with the good, we want to incorporate it--make it a part of ourselves. I imagine a couple embracing in silence, filled with contentment. Either party could say to the other, “Let’s not muck up this moment by talking. Let’s simply be still and quiet. Let’s think in half sentences that flit about one after another, always circling around what we know now and enjoying our company.” It suffices to be present in the midst of something good.
When we are mired in evil, however, we want to take our leave. Suffering is too repulsive. By discussing evil, we distance ourselves from it. It is taken out of immediacy and placed into the safer plane of contemplation. We benefit from this as a wound benefits from the completion of the injury. Only after the laceration is over can the body successfully mend. For the whole person, witness the healing power of counseling, discussion, and confession. We bring pain out of the recesses of our minds into the light of day and it begins to evaporate.
But there is a lure in the pleasure that follows convalescence. We can indulge in the pity of being victimized, the self-righteousness of judging an evil and implicitly not being evil ourselves, and the indignation in protesting against the evil fact For the sake of these benefits, we communally belly-ache and bemoan trifles. In this way, we court evil by contemplating it incessantly. It takes root in our minds and, though we disavow it as cruel, unjust and wanton, it succeeds in preoccupying us. Evil thus proliferates. The contemplation of evil brings us closer to the living of evil as we become calloused, prideful, and rebellious. So we find ourselves resting where peace is not.
Look where our discussion has brought us. These last considerations suggest the inadequacy of language lies more in the speaker than in what is spoken. How closely related the two are and how the one affects the other! Thought makes language; language makes thought. Thought makes the person; the person makes the thought.
Could it be that darkness is more readily accessible than light and that even the most amateurish attempt will find something keen to say in regards to a depressing fact?
If evil becomes a preoccupation, then we develop an expertise for expounding upon it. People speak to evil more because to do so requires less effort. Note how easily criticism flows and how genuine appreciation trickles. Observe the number of songs communicating sadness and frustration against those communicating elation. How many sob stories are there for every truly happy ending?
To illuminate with a flashlight in broad daylight—is that not the task of the person desiring to speak about goodness? Life is a great good in itself; it is a condition of goodness. It is basic, a presupposition. It surrounds us without being noticed. Most who attempt to capture the lofty only impotently light up the sidewalk. The skilled orators know to lure their audience into the shadows and to strike a match there. In order to be credible, the speaker needs to infuse his speech with enough pain, suffering, and depravity to bring the listener to take it a livable possibility. Caution is necessary, however, lest too much evil becomes a distraction.
Now I have disoriented myself still further as the possibilities continue to multiply. What if the linguistic discrepancy was neither what was spoken nor the skill of the speaker, but is found simply the disposition of the speaker? Upon further consideration, the quantity of words spoken about good seems to be more disproportionate to the number regarding evil than the respective qualitative inequality.
What is it about us, then? How are we pressed upon by those sights we witness and events we live through? The trail of evil is memorialized by scars. When one is touched by goodness, what mark is left? There is nothing to point to. The memory is more apt for learning lessons in order not to make the same mistake again than recalling moments of joy. Focus is required to keep joy in our minds, whereas misery always seems to find us.
Our tendencies toward self-preservation and self-righteousness blur our vision to the point of blinding us. There are more pessimists because pessimism keeps you alive while optimism only promises to keep you living well.
Then could it be that the efficacy of language speaking to goodness is accounted for by our depravity? Why do so many good things strike us as vapid? We would take as incredulous the man who found contentment in the picturesque vitality of an open field. What a dreamer! What an idiot! He must be fooling himself. Few of us could relate to such a juxtaposition of loftiness and simplicity. Men of that sort are vulnerable. The world will eat them up and we can not allow for that to happen to us. Better to live of this world than die to it, right?
Whatever the origin, for my part, I would rather keep quiet than attempt to describe goodness. The limitations of words offend a person with an intuition of goodness. They appear paltry relative to the experience. What is worse, more harm than good is done to the good cause by sappy, sentimental, or cliché accounts of a poignant event, a radiant truth, or a beautiful object. It is better not to besmirch good’s good name by a poorly phrased remark. A listener may rightly scoff and thereafter think more of the means of the communication than the end. The attempt at communication fails. Rather than being edifying and inspirational, it is distracting. What is remembered is that the people who love goodness are glassy-eyed dopes, Pollyannas, or Panglosses. I would rather not taint that which I love.
Still, I am impelled to push on. One can only rest for so long before becoming restless. So I raise questions and try to turn heads towards something better than I could ever make.
Did I misspeak? No. The description was accurate, if a bit truncated. Can I claim I communicated the truth of the experience? No, I did not. How poorly words shine in comparison to acceptance lived! To enliven it, one could bring it into relief. One would need to portray the depraved state of rejection in order to bring the vitality of acceptance into full view. Why the need for all of this explanation? If I wanted to discuss rejection instead, all I would need to say was something like, "They didn't think I listened to the right sort of music. You know the type." Immediately, my friend would have made all necessary connections and filled in all the gaps. We would have been on the same page quickly.
The power of words suffers a diminution the greater their proximity to goodness. Is there something in the nature of goodness that eludes our language? The question is all the more puzzling when we consider the effectiveness of words in the description of evil. A person who lies about lying still says something about it, whereas a person who lies about the truth only goes to make his error more egregious. To what should we attribute this change?
I must clarify that I am not here equating goodness with happiness and evil with sadness, still less with pleasure and pain. Goodness and evil pertain to existence apart from humans. Happiness and sadness are human sentiments. The excitement of sentiments depends upon the constitution of a person. Constitutions of people are never perfectly attuned to truth, even if they are committed to virtue. It follows that the presence of a good may make a person sad and the presence of an evil may make a person happy and, conversely, the absence of a good may make a person happy and the absence of an evil may make a person sad. With that said, back to the discussion at hand.
Note how the awesome welcomes and the awful repels. What better way to invest ourselves than to act rather than merely contemplate? The invitation of goodness requests our companionship. We want to be with the good, we want to incorporate it--make it a part of ourselves. I imagine a couple embracing in silence, filled with contentment. Either party could say to the other, “Let’s not muck up this moment by talking. Let’s simply be still and quiet. Let’s think in half sentences that flit about one after another, always circling around what we know now and enjoying our company.” It suffices to be present in the midst of something good.
When we are mired in evil, however, we want to take our leave. Suffering is too repulsive. By discussing evil, we distance ourselves from it. It is taken out of immediacy and placed into the safer plane of contemplation. We benefit from this as a wound benefits from the completion of the injury. Only after the laceration is over can the body successfully mend. For the whole person, witness the healing power of counseling, discussion, and confession. We bring pain out of the recesses of our minds into the light of day and it begins to evaporate.
But there is a lure in the pleasure that follows convalescence. We can indulge in the pity of being victimized, the self-righteousness of judging an evil and implicitly not being evil ourselves, and the indignation in protesting against the evil fact For the sake of these benefits, we communally belly-ache and bemoan trifles. In this way, we court evil by contemplating it incessantly. It takes root in our minds and, though we disavow it as cruel, unjust and wanton, it succeeds in preoccupying us. Evil thus proliferates. The contemplation of evil brings us closer to the living of evil as we become calloused, prideful, and rebellious. So we find ourselves resting where peace is not.
Look where our discussion has brought us. These last considerations suggest the inadequacy of language lies more in the speaker than in what is spoken. How closely related the two are and how the one affects the other! Thought makes language; language makes thought. Thought makes the person; the person makes the thought.
Could it be that darkness is more readily accessible than light and that even the most amateurish attempt will find something keen to say in regards to a depressing fact?
If evil becomes a preoccupation, then we develop an expertise for expounding upon it. People speak to evil more because to do so requires less effort. Note how easily criticism flows and how genuine appreciation trickles. Observe the number of songs communicating sadness and frustration against those communicating elation. How many sob stories are there for every truly happy ending?
To illuminate with a flashlight in broad daylight—is that not the task of the person desiring to speak about goodness? Life is a great good in itself; it is a condition of goodness. It is basic, a presupposition. It surrounds us without being noticed. Most who attempt to capture the lofty only impotently light up the sidewalk. The skilled orators know to lure their audience into the shadows and to strike a match there. In order to be credible, the speaker needs to infuse his speech with enough pain, suffering, and depravity to bring the listener to take it a livable possibility. Caution is necessary, however, lest too much evil becomes a distraction.
Now I have disoriented myself still further as the possibilities continue to multiply. What if the linguistic discrepancy was neither what was spoken nor the skill of the speaker, but is found simply the disposition of the speaker? Upon further consideration, the quantity of words spoken about good seems to be more disproportionate to the number regarding evil than the respective qualitative inequality.
What is it about us, then? How are we pressed upon by those sights we witness and events we live through? The trail of evil is memorialized by scars. When one is touched by goodness, what mark is left? There is nothing to point to. The memory is more apt for learning lessons in order not to make the same mistake again than recalling moments of joy. Focus is required to keep joy in our minds, whereas misery always seems to find us.
Our tendencies toward self-preservation and self-righteousness blur our vision to the point of blinding us. There are more pessimists because pessimism keeps you alive while optimism only promises to keep you living well.
Then could it be that the efficacy of language speaking to goodness is accounted for by our depravity? Why do so many good things strike us as vapid? We would take as incredulous the man who found contentment in the picturesque vitality of an open field. What a dreamer! What an idiot! He must be fooling himself. Few of us could relate to such a juxtaposition of loftiness and simplicity. Men of that sort are vulnerable. The world will eat them up and we can not allow for that to happen to us. Better to live of this world than die to it, right?
Whatever the origin, for my part, I would rather keep quiet than attempt to describe goodness. The limitations of words offend a person with an intuition of goodness. They appear paltry relative to the experience. What is worse, more harm than good is done to the good cause by sappy, sentimental, or cliché accounts of a poignant event, a radiant truth, or a beautiful object. It is better not to besmirch good’s good name by a poorly phrased remark. A listener may rightly scoff and thereafter think more of the means of the communication than the end. The attempt at communication fails. Rather than being edifying and inspirational, it is distracting. What is remembered is that the people who love goodness are glassy-eyed dopes, Pollyannas, or Panglosses. I would rather not taint that which I love.
Still, I am impelled to push on. One can only rest for so long before becoming restless. So I raise questions and try to turn heads towards something better than I could ever make.
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