You Probably Wouldn’t Remember, I Probably Couldn’t Forget

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Patrick Kurp:

Msgr. Ronald Knox begins his essay “Birmingham Revisited,” collected in Literary Distractions (1958), like this:

“It is alleged by a friend of my family that I used to suffer from insomnia at the age of four; and that when she asked me how I managed to occupy my time at night I answered ‘I lie awake and think of the past.’”

Knox, a Roman Catholic priest and son of an Anglican bishop, is one of the last century’s unacknowledged masters of English prose. Like Max Beerbohm, Knox calibrates his words until they attain the precise edge of irony he seeks. The passage above arouses in this reader pensive amusement with a hint of sadness. The notion of a four-year-old even having a past to contemplate is funny – and poignant. We’ve all known boys and girls who carry the gravitas of old men and women. They seem to inhabit two ages and have access to precocious wisdom.

Lewis Hyde, in A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past, writes:

In Chinese myth, Old Lady Mêng sits at the exit from the underworld serving the Broth of Oblivion so that all reincarnated souls come to life having forgotten the spirit world, their former incarnations, and even their speech (although legend has it that occasionally a miracle child is born talking, having avoided Lady Mêng’s broth).

Similar stories abound throughout Indo-European myth, as well as in modern pop culture. I’m not a believer in immortal souls, afterlives, or reincarnation, but I do find the myth interesting. My mom, who does believe in those things, likes to tell a story of me, at age three or four, bursting into tears as she played the soundtrack to Zorba the Greek. When she asked me what was wrong, my answer was, “It hurts to remember!” Funny enough, even though I have a better-than-average memory, I don’t recall this at all. When I finally listened to the soundtrack again as an adult, it didn’t unveil any memories, traumatic or otherwise, from past lives or from toddler-hood. Have I forgotten something that I once knew? Forgetting seems like a curse, especially in the extreme form of dementia, but too much memory would also feel suffocating. The slow drip-drip-drip of individual memories into the dissolving flow of time over a lifespan seems to be the best any of us can hope for.

But You Know You Can Look Inside for the Garden

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Temma Ehrenfeld:

Both the Stoics and the Epicureans understood that some good things are better than others. Thus you necessarily run into choices, and the need to forgo one good to protect or gain another. When you make those choices wisely, you’ll be happier. But the Stoics think you’ll be acting in line with a grand plan by a just grand designer, and the Epicureans don’t.

It must be Epicurus Day or something. Not fifteen minutes after reading this, I discovered a new book due in September that I’ll have to read:

Epicureanism has a reputation problem, bringing to mind gluttons with gout or an admonition to eat, drink, and be merry. In How to Be an Epicurean, philosopher Catherine Wilson shows that Epicureanism isn’t an excuse for having a good time: it’s a means to live a good life. Although modern conveniences and scientific progress have significantly improved our quality of life, many of the problems faced by ancient Greeks — love, money, family, politics — remain with us in new forms.

I often wish that new books about philosophical topics written for a popular audience didn’t have to present themselves as how-to manuals with “lessons” for us to apply to our daily lives, but I realize that’s just the nature of bringing products to market. Authors want to create artistic meditations; publishers want to move units. So it goes. I enjoy reading books like these not because I want to learn “how to be” an Epicurean — I was already well aware of my philosophical temperament while reading about How to Be a Stoic, ironically enough — but because, as Patrick Kurp says, a lot of people in everyday life inhabit small worlds filled with cinematic blockbusters and other forgettable touchstones. Sometimes, the only kind of conversation about Epicurean philosophy that one can have is through the silent medium of the printed page. Many of my favorite conversations have been with people who don’t know I exist, whose voices I’ll never hear. But we’ve “thought together” for a while about perennial questions and themes, and that’s good enough.

The Circle Has Been Broken, It’s Always Been This Way

By in extraordinary popular delusions, political philosophy No Comments

Adrian Kreutz:

But can’t we be both tyrannical and interconnected? Buddhist practice could help us overcome the evil aspects of our nature and promote the compassionate side within us. The socioeconomic system of Compassionate Marxism could be the breeding ground for compassion, and compassion the motor of a socioeconomic system with low duḥkha. Working on the inner Tyrannosaurus would benefit those suffering from Capitalism, which, according to Marx and Buddha, is everyone. The problem with Left-activists is that they see the evil as being exclusively caused by the socioeconomic system (this was Marx’s problem too), without understanding how these factors operate within us. ‘Social change requires inner change – becoming less selfish,’ says the Dalai Lama. The question is not who we are – we are malevolent creatures, as far as I can tell. The question is who we want to be.

I know, I know, that’s a strange excerpt to present without further context. Don’t worry, I’ll elaborate a bit. According to his author bio, Mr. Kreutz is a graduate student in philosophy. (This seems like a relevant time to mention that philosophers are renowned for demonstrating the lack of any necessary connection between theoretical smarts and common sense; see also the guy behind the Existential Comics website.) And so, as philosophers are wont to do, Kreutz wonders: what if we could combine Buddhist ethics with Marxist socioeconomics to create a better world? Hence, Compassionate Marxism, an oxymoron to rule them all.

There are, as you’d expect, several thousand words of theoretical plumage obscuring the scrawny meat of the matter, but that’s what hyperlinks are for, in case you’re into that sort of thing. As for me, like Samuel Johnson, I prefer to refute idealist fancies by kicking the rock of historical experience: you can’t reform the nature of Marxism through good intentions. The totalitarian conclusion follows neatly from the theoretical premises, a fact that should be of interest to philosophers. Most interestingly, though, Kreutz professes a belief in the truth of original sin, if not by that particular name. “Humanity is not evil because the economic system is; the economic system is evil because humanity is.” “All signs indicate that we don’t have the capacities for universal benevolent compassion, uncontaminated by a proclivity to evil, hatred and competition.” And yet he wants to believe in the possibility of species-wide harmony of desire and action, conducted by the guiding hand of philosophy. It’s fascinating to watch someone straining every muscle to square this circle. If he should manage to retain his intellectual integrity, I suspect he’ll discover what so many others have — we have a lifetime’s work to do in trying to be consistently virtuous individuals without the added delusion that any of us are fit to arrange society’s affairs for the greater good.

As it happens, I’m currently reading George Will’s new book, The Conservative Sensibility, where he writes something coincidentally relevant to our discussion:

In its attempt to equalize “well-being,” progressivism came to exalt one virtue: compassion. Which is a passion. And compassion is a capacious concept. It can mean the prevention or amelioration of pain, of discomfort, of insecurity, or even of sadness. However, the frustration of desires is uncomfortable and can make people sad. So compassionate government must toil for the satisfaction of all desires. If a desire unfulfilled is painful, or even discomforting, fulfilling that desire is a duty of compassionate government. Such government believes that the pain of unfulfilled desires makes fulfilling the desires necessary. So the desires are upgraded to necessities. People suffering disappointed desires are therefore necessitous people, and, according to Franklin Roosevelt, they are not free. What moderation, what temperance, what restraint can there be in government animated by the idea that freedom, understood as emancipation from necessity, is the gift of comprehensively compassionate government?

It seems to me to be essential to the nature of Buddhism to recognize the futility of trying to satisfy all desires (as well as the futility of desiring to stop desiring), which separates it profoundly from a materialist philosophy which sees the satisfaction of all desire as both possible and necessary. But then again, I only took a few semesters of philosophy.

Thursday Throwback

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[Originally published Sep. 15, 2011]

That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose. Try it sometime.

— Holden Caulfield

I spent a pleasant morning hiking up a small mountain to a steep overlook from a rocky outcropping. The fog was too thick to take any good pictures, but I didn’t mind. It was overcast and breezy, hinting at rain, just chilly enough to let you know that fall would be here soon. I only passed four other people along the way, so for most of the walk, there was nothing to listen to but the susurrus of the wind through the trees and the first leaves beginning their gravitational pilgrimage. After an hour, I got to the top and sat for a while to eat a banana and sip a thermos of coffee flavored with vanilla cha’i. The fog was thick enough to be vertiginous; if not for the rock underneath me, I could have just as easily imagined myself lost at sea.

So after sitting and meditating for a bit, I headed back down, only to see something etched on the rocks that I had missed on the way up:

Alas, ol’ Holden was right. But it made me wonder: what kind of person makes the arduous trip up the mountain, surrounded by all that natural beauty, with enough hate in their heart to make that the crowning achievement of the journey? There were worse defacements, many with spraypaint, but this was the only one I saw that was so angry. Not an affirmation of their existence, but a rejection of yours. Not a vain plea for attention and validation from indifferent strangers and an uncaring universe, but a denial of everyone else’s. This was the distilled essence of our unknown author’s eloquence, the depths of his or her poetic soul revealed to us, perhaps even to be found millennia from now by future archaeologists studying the collapse of Western civilization. A textual middle finger of salutation offered to the world.

As I pondered Caulfield’s words, I was inspired to a similar vision of being a protector of innocence. I wanted to do my part to shield unsuspecting children from having an enjoyable day in the mountains sullied by profanity etched into the splendor of the forest. I wanted to help preserve this little enclave of peacefulness for those who came out here to get away from the madness of day-to-day life.

So when I saw a small group of twenty-somethings coming up the trail, talking loudly, texting away on their phones, I became suspicious. Maybe I’m guilty of profiling, but it seemed to me that here we had a perfect example of the kind of people most likely to declare their eternal love for each other with a Sharpie on a rock, or a carving in a tree. These were likely the kind of people who left the empty beer can, ziplock bag and mismatched pair of socks I had passed on the trail below. Could I take a chance that the forest would be defiled further, right under my nose?

Of course not. So I waited for them to get directly underneath me before pushing one of the larger rocks loose, down onto their heads. One of the guys was only dealt a glancing blow on the shoulder, though, so to my severe annoyance, I had to give chase for a while through the undergrowth before I caught up to him. Luckily, his shrieks of terror and labored breathing made it easy to find him in the fog. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t about to lug his heavy carcass back to his companions, so he had to be buried separately. And to top if off, I got a really painful scratch on my calf! But at least I could rest easy, having done my duty as a vigilante park ranger.

It occurred to me as I was heading back to my car that I had apparently mixed my memories of Catcher in the Rye with Lord of the Flies, but please, let’s not quibble over the minutiae of classic literature.

They Bloat the Present With the Undigested Past

By in books, crime and punishment, nietzsche No Comments

In Sophocles’s play that bears her name, Electra speaks of her father’s murder as a sorrow (or evil) that cannot be forgotten and describes her own passion (or anger) in similar terms, though in this case the Greek for “not forgetting” (our láthei) might better be translated from its root meaning—”it does not escape notice,” “it is not hidden.” The image is of anger as a thing that the mind cannot bury, cannot help being aware of. Electra’s passion won’t let her alone. It’s intrusive. It bugs her. We do not control the unforgettable; it controls us.

The spirits of such unforgetting are called the Furies, the Erinyes. They cling to the memory of hurt and harm, injury and insult. Their names are Grievance, Ceaseless, and Bloodlust. Their names are Grudge, Relentless, and Payback. They bloat the present with the undigested past. “Most dreaded of the forces of insomnia,” they harry the mind, demanding for its release a ransom paid in blood.

— Lewis Hyde, A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past

New caution.— Let us stop thinking so much about punishing, reproaching, and improving others! We rarely change an individual, and if we should succeed for once, something may also have been accomplished, unnoticed: we may have been changed by him. Let us rather see to it that our own influence on all that is yet to come balances and outweighs his influence. Let us not contend in a direct fight — and that is what all reproaching, punishing, and attempts to improve others amount to. Let us rather raise ourselves that much higher. Let us color our own example ever more brilliantly. Let our brilliance make them look dark. No, let us not become darker ourselves on their account, like all those who punish others and feel dissatisfied. Let us sooner step aside. Let us look away.

— Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Content Creator

By in the statusphere, walking No Comments

Michael Lapointe:

As I sampled the genre, as well as countless articles and ads attesting to the creative effects of walking, I began to feel uneasy about the proselytizing mission. Is membership in the “Order of Walkers” quite the liberation it seems? Even those lucky enough to belong to its ranks might ask themselves how undistracted solitude and untethered mind-wandering can prosper when walking is constantly justified in terms of productivity. The 21st-century walking revival may have begun as a political critique, but it has found itself co-opted by the very forces it seeks to resist.

…Much of this essay was conceived while I was walking. Sometimes I would deliberately set out to inhabit solitude, hoping my ideas would cohere. At other times, I found myself mulling over paragraphs like this one as I went about my day—strolling to the coffee shop or grocery store. Somewhere along the way, I realized that as a writer, I never walk without working. On Wordsworth’s better soil, I’ve built an office. In Kagge’s inner silence, my keyboard chatters away. I don’t need to buy anything from LifeSpan, because I already walk upon an invisible treadmill desk, constantly channeling the powers beneath my feet into the next paycheck. What would it mean, for once, simply to walk and say nothing about it?

Well, for one thing, it would devastate the entire online content-producing ecosystem. Millions of people would start exhibiting symptoms of what would soon be diagnosed as a new, digitally-derived form of delirium tremens, their thumbs reflexively jabbing the air as they attempt to provide meaning to their strange sensory experience the only way they know how, by filtering it through a social media platform for the approval of others. But most importantly, should you actually pursue this almost-adolescent ideal of pure activity or contemplation for its own impractical sake, you would quickly find it to be excruciatingly boring and retreat to the world of commerce, status-seeking, and mixed motives, where the cycle of dissatisfaction would start over again. As a long-time, deeply-amused observer of the way in which walking, of all things, has become a trendy way to signal depth of mind, nobility of soul, and a modern Romantic opposition to the dark Satanic homogeneity of popular culture and mass transportation, I’d suggest our tortured artist should just learn to love the absurd spectacle rather than bewail it.

Lapointe is described here as a writer and critic from Toronto. He additionally might want to look up a fellow Torontonian who could enlighten him as to the inevitable fate of any type of movement or lifestyle that presents itself as explicitly anti-consumerist.

Bridge of Theseus

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We’re replacing the planks in our bridge. Philosophers can debate the paradox of whether it can be said to be the same bridge now. I just think it’s funny, the things to which memory attaches itself. For a moment, I reflected on the fact that these planks predate my arrival here. Everyone who has ever arrived here has crossed them — long-time residents, one-time visitors, and others in between, some forgotten, some dead. There’s some kind of compelling significance about physical reminders of an increasingly distant past.

Yesterday, I took an old t-shirt out of the closet to wear while working. It has holes in it, it’s rather shapeless, and it’s a generic sort of heather/beige color. Nothing striking about it at a glance. For a moment, I wondered why I still have it, and how it had survived the occasional purges of old clothing. I remembered, as I always do when I think about it, that I had been wearing it when one of my dogs had been put to sleep. For some reason, that’s one of the details of that day that stand out vividly in memory. I also recalled that I still have the hat and overshirt I was wearing, both very well-worn. The pants and hiking boots which completed that day’s ensemble are long gone. I don’t remember getting rid of them. Did I pause for a mournful moment’s reflection before doing so? I don’t remember that either. Why should I feel slightly more sentimental about the upper-wear anyway? What does holding on to it accomplish? There’s no rational explanation for it, of course. Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.

In his wonderful book of brief meditations on memory and forgetting, A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past, Lewis Hyde writes in reference to Proust:

More striking still is the scene in which Marcel, revisiting the seaside resort of Balbec, bends to unbutton his boots and suddenly recalls the time when his grandmother had helped him with that simple task. With that memory, he finally knows fully that his grandmother has died, and he weeps.

Such are the “nows” that pass. Odette’s love has passed, Gilberte’s love has passed, his grandmother’s life has passed. The forgetting that has held each of these facts at bay might best be described as a species of dissociative amnesia. “That didn’t happen!” the mind declares, walling itself off from the painful real, refusing its proper burial. But then an apparently trivial trigger—a snatch of music, an overheard remark, a simple gesture—eludes the guardian amnesia, and of a sudden comes the understanding that the “now” of the past has truly passed, the memory recovered from the far side of oblivion revealing the self to be contingent, mortal, a creature of time.

It’s foolish, of course, to be overly tenacious in holding tight to the past. Even if we were able to successfully pull the brakes on the passage of time, the world of stasis that would result would be just another form of death. And yet, we can’t simply lie back like a branch on a stream and calmly surrender to the flux of time either, without seeming to dissolve something essential to our humanity. As Sam Hamill wrote in his poem “A Rose for Solitude,” we still need to reach for people, places and experiences as they flow past, to hold them for a moment, to look them in the eye, to recognize the significance of the fact that, however briefly, we met, and it mattered.

And if, as I pass,
I should look you in the eye,
do not be afraid. I want
only to glimpse the emptiness
at the center of your heart,
I want to reach for you
because I know,
as you do,
we might never have met.

Thursday Throwback

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[Originally published Jul. 20, 2012]

Dear Michel de Montaigne: I sometimes feel despondent over what I see as the Internet’s tendency to broaden one’s intellectual horizons while simultaneously, and ironically, facilitating the most rigid groupthink. It’s almost as if the sheer oceanic volume of information available to anyone with a broadband connection causes people to band together even more tightly around shared interests and beliefs for fear of completely losing their identities. Even some of the most interesting, thought-provoking writers attract a large number of puerile, sycophantic commenters and allow the echo chamber of praise to reinforce their prejudices and weaken their mental rigor. Am I wrong to think that an earnest truthseeker should strive after contrary voices in order to avoid being lulled into complacency by the flattery and easy companionship of the like-minded?

Montaigne Responds: I enter into conversation and argument with great freedom and facility, since opinions find in me a soil into which they cannot easily penetrate or strike deep roots. No proposition astounds me, no belief offends me, however much opposed it may be to my own. There is no fantasy so frivolous or extravagant that it does not seem to me a natural product of the human mind. Those of us who deny our judgement the right of making final decisions look mildly on ideas that differ from our own; if we do not give them credence, we can at least offer them a ready hearing.

Contradictions of opinion, therefore, neither offend nor estrange me; they only arouse and exercise my mind. We run away from correction; we ought to court it and expose ourselves to it, especially when it comes in the shape of discussion, not of a school lesson. Each time we meet with opposition, we consider not whether it is just, but how, wrongly or rightly, we can rebut it. Instead of opening our arms to it, we greet it with our claws. I could stand a rough shaking from my friends: ‘You are a fool, you’re talking nonsense.’

In good company, I like expression to be bold, and men to say what they think. We must strengthen our ears and harden them against any weakness for the ceremonious use of words. I like strong and manly acquaintanceships and society, a friendship that prides itself on the sharpness and vigour of its dealings. I like love that bites and scratches till the blood comes. It is not vigorous and free enough if it is not quarrelsome, if it is polite and artificial, if it is afraid of shocks, and is constrained in its ways: ‘for there can be no discussion without contradiction’ (Cicero, De Finibus, I, viii).

When I am opposed, my attention is roused, not my anger. I go out to meet the man who contradicts me and corrects me. The cause of truth ought to be a cause common to us both. How will he reply? The passion of anger has already struck down his judgement; confusion has usurped the place of reason. It would be useful if a wager were to hang on the result of our disputes, if there could be some material mark of our losses, so that we might keep a record of them. My man could then say to me: ‘Your ignorance and stubbornness on some twenty occasions last year cost you a hundred crowns.’

I welcome and embrace the truth in whosoever hands I find it. I cheerfully surrender to it, and offer it my vanquished arms as soon as I see it approaching in the distance. And provided that I am not treated with too imperious and magisterial a frown, I am glad of any criticisms upon my writings. Indeed I have often made changes in them, more out of politeness than because they were improved by it. For I like, by yielding easily, to gratify and foster the freedom to find fault with me, even at some cost to myself.

It is, however, difficult to induce men of my time to do this; they have not the courage to correct because they have not the courage to stand correction; and they never speak frankly in one another’s presence. I take so much pleasure in being judged and known that it is almost indifferent to me whether I am admired or criticized. My mind so frequently contradicts and condemns itself that it is all one to me if someone else does so, especially as I only give his criticism such authority as I choose.

Dear Michel de Montaigne: I agree with Maria Popova’s ideas about the combinatorial nature of creativity. But then I wonder if I’m only justifying my own lack of talent and original insight. In your esteemed opinion, is originality a prerequisite of valuable thought, or does it have more to do with fashion and a petty desire for distinction?

Montaigne Responds: Truth and reason are common to all men, and no more belong to the man who first uttered them than to him that repeated them after him. It is no more a matter of Plato’s opinion than of mine, when he and I understand and see things alike. The bees steal from this flower and that, but afterwards turn their pilferings into honey, which is their own; it is thyme and marjoram no longer. So the pupil will transform and fuse together the passages that he borrows from others, to make of them something entirely his own; that is to say, his own judgement. His education, his labour, and his study have no other aim but to form this.

Let him conceal all that has helped him, and show only what he has made of it. Plunderers and borrowers make a display of their buildings and their purchases, not of what they have taken from others. You do not see a high-court judge’s perquisites; you see the alliances he has made and the honours he has won for his children. Nobody renders a public account of his receipts; everyone displays his profits. The profit from our studies is to become better and wiser men.

Dear Michel de Montaigne: People say I’m crazy doing what I’m doing. They give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin. When I say that I’m O.K., well, they look at me kind of strange. “Surely you’re not happy now you no longer play the game?”

People say I’m lazy, dreaming my life away. They give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me. When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall, “Don’t you miss the big time, boy, you’re no longer on the ball?”

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round. I really love to watch them roll. No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go. Should I be more ambitious, more concerned with my reputation, or is it enough for me to be content with tending to the bonsai tree of my life, happy to be forgotten by the world and left alone?

Montaigne Responds: Our life, said Pythagoras, is like the great and crowded assembly at the Olympic games. Some exercise the body in order to win glory in the contests; others bring merchandise there to sell for profit. There are some – and these are not the worst – whose only aim is to observe how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of other men’s lives, in order to judge and regulate their own

Dear Michel de Montaigne: I don’t know if I can believe any longer in the hope of salvation within linear time, whether of the religious sort or the scientific/technological alternative. But how can I possibly live in a world that holds forth no promise of evil’s eventual vanquishment? Why, then, resist the embrace of nihilistic oblivion?

Montaigne Responds: One must learn to endure what one cannot avoid. Our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrarieties, also of varying tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked one sort only, what effect would he make? He must be able to employ them together and blend them. And we too must accept the good and evil that are consubstantial with our life. Our existence is impossible without this mixture, and one side is no less necessary to us than the other. Any attempt to kick against natural necessity will be to copy the foolishness of Ctesiphon, who tried a kicking-match with his mule.

From What Stars Have We Fallen Together Here?

By in books, marriage, montaigne, nietzsche No Comments

Though Montaigne had some affection for his wife, Françoise de la Chassaigne, he did not ultimately judge that he was right to have married her. Though common people with “simple plebeian souls” might be suited for marriage, “men with unruly humors like me, who hate any sort of bond or obligation, are not so fit for it.” The problem is not that he chose a bad wife, but that he married at all. Looking back, he writes: “Of my own choice, I would have avoided marrying Wisdom herself, if she had wanted me.” Regarding the possibility of a bon mariage, the sentence which contains that phrase’s final occurrence in “On Some Verses of Vergil” summarizes Montaigne’s verdict: “That man knew what it was all about, it seems to me, who said that a good marriage was one made between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”  True friendship or good sex—do not expect that marriage will furnish either. Moreover, as the image of the deaf husband suggests, do not expect good conversation from marriage.

To grasp the depth of the contrast with Nietzsche, consider this stunning aphorism from Human, All Too Human:

Marriage as a long conversation. When entering into a marriage one ought to ask oneself: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman up into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation.

By itself, this aphorism does not establish that Nietzsche believes in the possibility of a good marriage. But when read in conjunction with the aphorism holding that “the best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship,” it seems difficult to deny that for Nietzsche, unlike Montaigne, “good marriage” names a genuine (if not frequently instantiated) human possibility. Whereas Montaigne does not think that the highest friendship is possible with a woman at all, let alone in marriage, Nietzsche does not hesitate to speak of “the higher conception of marriage as the soul-friendship of two people of differing sex.”

— Robert Miner, Nietzsche and Montaigne

I re-read Human, All Too Human a couple months ago and was pleasantly surprised by that aphorism, among many others (the book overall was better than I remembered it). Sue Prideaux, in her recent biography of Nietzsche, provides a lovely description of a fateful climb he made with Lou Salomé up Monte Sacro in the Italian Alps a few years after writing it:

Both of them described how similarly they thought and felt about things, and how words tumbled between them. They took words, like food, from each other’s mouths. Individual command melted as they finished each other’s thoughts and completed each other’s sentences. When they came down the mountain, he said to her, quietly, “I thank you for the most exquisite dream of my life.”

It was a short-lived dream and ended badly, but the experience was no less powerful for its brief duration.

The Lady of the House and I were lengthy-email-correspondents for over a year before we ever heard each other’s voices, and phone-friends for most of another year before we ever met in person. I recall a lazy Sunday in February, not on a mountain peak, but on the phone from early morning until late evening, with words tumbling between us and individual command melting. I hope it goes without saying that I don’t say it boastfully; I only want to testify to the truth of that vision, that possibility, of a relationship as a long, fruitful conversation, extending, with any luck, into old age.

Pride Groweth Into an Industry

By in animals, the geist of the zeit, the statusphere 1 Comment

I saw this the other day in town. The fact that “rescued” is in a slightly larger font made me wonder: is the pride supposed to be in the dog or the rescuer? I fear that pets have become yet another staging ground for barely-disguised moral preening, along with farmer’s markets, hybrid vehicles, and screen-free living.

To be clear, I also eat healthier than most. I’ve owned a Prius. I use my smartphone mainly for work, otherwise as a glorified music storage/playback device. And I spent many years being unofficially involved in pit bull terrier rescue — taking unwanted dogs from backyard barrels and veterinary clinics, nursing them back to health and socializing them at home, and often adopting them out to new owners. I have no quarrel with any of these things, but I also consider them mostly incidental to my character. I wouldn’t be much different if I ate fast food, drove an F-150, and bought dogs from a neighbor’s litter, nor would I be measurably adding to or subtracting from the world’s total quantity of well-being. Perhaps it’s not for me to judge, but I like to think that I manage to keep my ego from bleeding over into all of my possessions and activities.

I’ve seen a different paw-print sticker that reads, “Who Rescued Who?” Again, I love animals and am nowhere near above acting silly and playful with them. But that just strikes me as mawkish self-absorption. Do you honestly think of yourself primarily as a broken mess of a human being, capable of being made whole only by the unconditional love of an animal? Why would you advertise that about yourself to any stranger within sight of your rear bumper? If encouraged, egoistic self-regard corrodes any restraining barrier it encounters until it reaches the sea level of being noticed for any reason. “You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” Orwell imagined the ultimate totalitarian state, in the form of O’Brien, threatening to impose this from without. Ironically, the more comfortable and saccharine life has become, the more we’ve birthed it from within.

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