foolosophy

The Clouds Should Know Me By Now

By in foolosophy, identity, science

“You,” Grand argues, “are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.”

Eh. I agree with the basic idea, but the way it’s worded here still seems to imply some sort of mysterious, immaterial essence. “You” are a combination of the stuff of which you are made, the form it takes, and the time and place in which it exists, how’s that?

An M.C. to a Degree That You Can’t Get in College

By in education, foolosophy, santutthi, work

Louis Menand:

If you are a Theory 1 person, you worry that, with so many Americans going to college, the bachelor’s degree is losing its meaning, and soon it will no longer operate as a reliable marker of productive potential. Increasing public investment in higher education with the goal of college for everyone—in effect, taxpayer-subsidized social promotion—is thwarting the operation of the sorting mechanism. Education is about selection, not inclusion.
If you are friendly toward Theory 2, on the other hand, you worry that the competition for slots in top-tier colleges is warping educational priorities. You see academic tulip mania: students and their parents are overvaluing a commodity for which there are cheap and plentiful substitutes. The sticker price at Princeton or Stanford, including room and board, is upward of fifty thousand dollars a year. Public colleges are much less expensive—the average tuition is $7,605—and there are also many less selective private colleges where you can get a good education, and a lot more faculty face time, without having to spend every minute of high school sucking up to your teachers and reformatting your résumé. Education is about personal and intellectual growth, not about winning some race to the top.
…It’s possible, though, that the higher education system only looks as if it’s working. The process may be sorting, students may be getting access, and employers may be rewarding, but are people actually learning anything? Two recent books suggest that they are not. They suggest it pretty emphatically.
I would have surely loved the intellectual environment of college. But I’ve found that certain technical work, the kind you do with your hands in the outdoors, can possibly net you between one and two thousand dollars a week. My brother was telling me that some of his friends are promising him that a plum bartending job can get you even more than that. Even so, I’m casting an appreciative eye on the possibility of sharing a house with two or three other people, all of us making roughly four hundred a week, which would take care of everything we need and most of what we want, while allowing plenty of time and energy for things like, well, a genuine passion for intellectual pursuits. (Another friend was telling me that working an overnight stocking job allows him far more leisure for his writing than he ever would have had in academia.) A good life is very much in reach, even – especially – if you do an end run around the system.

You Wasted Life, Why Wouldn’t You Waste the Afterlife?

By in extraordinary popular delusions, foolosophy, science

Sean Carroll:

Adam claims that there “simply is no controlled, experimental[ly] verifiable information” regarding life after death. By these standards, there is no controlled, experimentally verifiable information regarding whether the Moon is made of green cheese. Sure, we can take spectra of light reflecting from the Moon, and even send astronauts up there and bring samples back for analysis. But that’s only scratching the surface, as it were. What if the Moon is almost all green cheese, but is covered with a layer of dust a few meters thick? Can you really say that you know this isn’t true? Until you have actually examined every single cubic centimeter of the Moon’s interior, you don’t really have experimentally verifiable information, do you? So maybe agnosticism on the green-cheese issue is warranted. (Come up with all the information we actually do have about the Moon; I promise you I can fit it into the green-cheese hypothesis.)
Obviously this is completely crazy. Our conviction that green cheese makes up a negligible fraction of the Moon’s interior comes not from direct observation, but from the gross incompatibility of that idea with other things we think we know. Given what we do understand about rocks and planets and dairy products and the Solar System, it’s absurd to imagine that the Moon is made of green cheese. We know better.
We also know better for life after death, although people are much more reluctant to admit it.
You don’t even need to understand anything about physics to grasp this; many Buddhists have been reasoning their way to an understanding of the incoherence of the idea of a personal soul for thousands of years. The tragic thing about the belief, to me, is that it does nothing to alleviate a much more pressing issue — that of people drifting through the life they’re actually living with no curiosity, no deep appreciation of what they have; their thoughts mired in the future or the past, oblivious to the present. I don’t even mean that a life well-lived has to be devoted to manic thrill-seeking, just that a sense of “magic” is perfectly attainable through mindful awareness. Some would have you believe that the concept of souls and afterlives are necessary to give life meaning; I would counter that metaphysical beliefs can just as easily act as narcotics, or as incentive to procrastinate. Why make the most of this life if you think you’ll have endless chances for more? Why face up squarely to the fleeting impermanence of the most important relationships in your life and the imperative to not take them for granted when you can just assure yourself you’ll meet up again at some point down the road? People talk big about all the things they’d like to do before they die, but look at the reality of how most people live day to day, and tell me why they think they need an indefinite extension at the end. What did you do with the several decades you already had?
I think the science in cases like this needs to be paired with something like therapeutic reasoning, though. Not that it’s not vital to point out the nuts and bolts of why something like a soul couldn’t exist, but it’s probably more useful to try to show people why believing in one doesn’t actually enhance their life anyway.

What Do I Want? What Do I Need? Why Do I Want It? What’s In It For Me?

By in foolosophy, psychology

John Tierney:

As the investigation of happiness proceeded, Dr. Seligman began seeing certain limitations of the concept. Why did couples go on having children even though the data clearly showed that parents are less happy than childless couples? Why did billionaires desperately seek more money even when there was nothing they wanted to do with it?
And why did some people keep joylessly playing bridge? Dr. Seligman, an avid player himself, kept noticing them at tournaments. They never smiled, not even when they won. They didn’t play to make money or make friends.
They didn’t savor that feeling of total engagement in a task that psychologists call flow. They didn’t take aesthetic satisfaction in playing a hand cleverly and “winning pretty.” They were quite willing to win ugly, sometimes even when that meant cheating.
“They wanted to win for its own sake, even if it brought no positive emotion,” says Dr. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. “They were like hedge fund managers who just want to accumulate money and toys for their own sake. Watching them play, seeing them cheat, it kept hitting me that accomplishment is a human desiderata in itself.”
…So what should be measured instead? The best gauge so far of flourishing, Dr. Seligman says, comes from a study of 23 European countries by Felicia Huppert and Timothy So of the University of Cambridge. Besides asking respondents about their moods, the researchers asked about their relationships with others and their sense that they were accomplishing something worthwhile.
…In his 2008 book, “Gross National Happiness,” Dr. Brooks argues that what’s crucial to well-being is not how cheerful you feel, not how much money you make, but rather the meaning you find in life and your sense of “earned success” — the belief that you have created value in your life or others’ lives.
Hmm. I like to think of it being about contentment rather than happiness. I’m content even while I’m not cheerful or energetic or getting shit done. I’ve done things that I know have mattered and created value in other people’s lives, and I’m glad for it. But at the same time, things like writing and making music are essential to my contentment (and happiness), and I enjoy them regardless of whether anyone else appreciates the result. It certainly enhances the enjoyment to have other people get something from it. But I’m also fine with being useless in the Taoist sense of the concept — useless to the wider world. Part of my contentment is in being able to just stop and do nothing important at all without feeling existential angst about it.

The Fire Within Us

By in foolosophy, moralizing, nietzsche, psychology, solitude, the madness of crowds

Scientists now know that, while introverts have no special advantage in intelligence, they do seem to process more information than others in any given situation. To digest it, they do best in quiet environments, interacting one on one. Further, their brains are less dependent on external stimuli and rewards to feel good.
As a result, introverts are not driven to seek big hits of positive emotional arousal—they’d rather find meaning than bliss—making them relatively immune to the search for happiness that permeates contemporary American culture. In fact, the cultural emphasis on happiness may actually threaten their mental health. As American life becomes increasingly competitive and aggressive, to say nothing of blindingly fast, the pressures to produce on demand, be a team player, and make snap decisions cut introverts off from their inner power source, leaving them stressed and depleted. Introverts today face one overarching challenge—not to feel like misfits in their own culture.
On the surface, introversion looks a lot like shyness. Both limit social interaction, but for differing reasons. The shy want desperately to connect but find socializing difficult, says Bernardo J. Carducci, professor of psychology and director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. Introverts seek time alone because they want time alone. An introvert and a shy person might be standing against the wall at a party, but the introvert prefers to be there, while the shy individual feels she has no choice.
But extensive internal dialogue, especially in response to negative experiences, can set off a downward spiral of affect. And indeed, anxiety and depression are more common among introverts than extraverts. In general, says Robert McPeek, director of research at the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, introverts are more self-critical than others—but also more realistic in their self-assessments. Call it depressive realism.
In the united states, people rank happiness as their most important goal. That view has a special impact on introverts. Happiness is not always their top priority; they don’t need external rewards to keep their brains in high gear. In fact, the pursuit of happiness may represent another personality-culture clash for them.
There’s really too many good parts to excerpt them all, but those are some of my favorites. I wish that phrase “A Pathway to Success?” didn’t appear up there, though. I don’t want “success” as conventionally defined. That’s a large part of what being introverted means to me. I don’t want what you want. I don’t feel like you feel. I just want to be left alone to do my own thing with the few people whose company truly adds something to my life besides distraction and chatter.
The more we think about all that has been and will be, the paler grows that which is. If we live with the dead and die with them in their death, what are our ‘neighbors’ to us then? We grow more solitary, and we do so because the whole flood of humanity is surging around us. The fire within us, which is for all that is human, grows brighter and brighter – and that is why we gaze upon that which immediately surrounds us as though it had grown more shadowy and we had grown more indifferent to it. But the coldness of our glance gives offense!
– Nietzsche
I don’t feel limited by introversion and haven’t since I was a teenager; I take a perverse pride in being a taciturn square peg in round social holes. But one interesting thing I’ve noticed is that you still have to beware of the way in which social convention can embolden people to try to bully those who are understood to be deficient by society’s standards in some way.
My brother, as I’ve said before, is one of the most negative complainers I know. Always looking for something to gripe about, always looking for a chance to take a sneering cheap shot at someone else, especially when they aren’t around to defend themselves. And yet, he is as convinced that I’m the one with an attitude problem as he is that the sun rises in the east. I stand in a room, rarely saying a word to anyone, just doing my task and moving along so I can go home and spend time doing the things I love. He comes in with his mouth already running and starts right in with his pissant remarks. I try to appeal to reason and ask him: which type of person would you rather be around in general? It’s to no avail. He’s absorbed it from the cultural atmosphere, the idea that people who don’t go out of their way to fill the air with their voice are deserving of contempt, mockery and abuse. No one ever had to tell him explicitly, it’s just an unspoken understanding that anyone who deviates from some mythical golden mean of personality type (or body type, or sexual habits, or entertainment preferences, etc.) is fair game. It may be senseless and unfair and irrational, but stupid people in large groups are still a powerful force to be reckoned with, and they will often try to destroy you, sometimes just for their sheer thoughtless amusement.

Nepenthe (Slight Return)

By in foolosophy, philosophy

Quinn O’Neill:

As an atheist, I sometimes get asked if I’m afraid of what’ll happen when I die. Naturally, I’m not afraid of going to Hell or any other supernatural place and I’m not afraid of being dead, but admittedly, there is something that scares me. I’m afraid that I could someday exist in (or as) another body.
…While quantum hypotheses may reflect progress in our understanding they remain controversial. For the moment, at least, subjective consciousness doesn’t seem to be well enough understood to rule out the possibility of recurrence. Not knowing exactly what material entities or neurophysiological processes give rise to a unique subjective consciousness, we can’t affirm that it won’t arise again at some point in the future.
I find this possibility of recurrence frightening. Being somewhat cognizant of recent events around the world and the conditions in which some people live, I realize how lucky I am to have been born in a stable, developed country to parents who could feed me and send me to school. If my subjective consciousness were to arise again someday, I probably wouldn’t be so lucky.
While I don’t believe in a supernatural Hell, human suffering can certainly reach hellish proportions on Earth. If the threat of going to Hell after death is enough to inspire moral behavior, the possibility that one’s subjective consciousness might someday recur should be a powerful impetus for improving circumstances for people on earth. We might even want to rethink our treatment of animals – at least until we can be sure that we won’t someday see the world through the eyes of a circus elephant or a beef cow.
Ha. I used to worry about that as a kid, given that my mom made reincarnation seem like an accepted fact. But what would it even mean for “my” subjective consciousness to recur? What’s the difference between “me” in another body at another time in another place with no memory of my former experiences, and a different subjective experience of consciousness altogether? None that I can see. Memory is what gives us a sense of a coherent, singular, personal narrative, despite what we know to be the fact that every cell in our body has died and been replaced over the last decade or so. When your memory is gone, so is your particular experience of being a solid “I” standing still in the middle of life’s constant flow. You should want to improve circumstances for people and animals on earth not out of a narrow concern for your own particular consciousness, but because consciousness in general will endure long after you stop experiencing it in the context of your unique and unrepeatable circumstances, and recognizing what it is to experience life as a conscious being should make you feel empathy for all the others who do so.

Le Bon David

By in foolosophy, philosophy

Morgan Meis:

David Hume was — at least on the matter of death and dying — a Socratic man. Even in his most canonical works, A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume was largely preoccupied with establishing limits. The way Hume saw it, our brief lives, crowned by unavoidable death, are unlikely to put us in touch with any grand absolutes. On the other hand, the human mind is an indubitably powerful tool and its powers of reasoning have penetrated many an enigma. Hume was as amazed by human knowledge as the next guy. He simply wanted us to be honest about its failings and limitations. Most of the things we know come from observing what happens around us and making the reasonable inference that what happens one day will continue to happen the next. The sun will rise, dropped objects will fall, harsh words will bite, etc. We don’t know the greater “why” of such things, suggested Hume, and there is no reason to think we ever will.
Hume always found himself astraddle those two great pleasures, study and society. When he spent too much time studying, the mechanisms of human reason would take flight, leading him into seemingly logical conclusions that defied his actual experience of the world. Thinking hard in his study, Hume would reach the conclusion, for instance, that there is no such thing as causality. Then he would step outside and go about the business of daily life in the full assurance that cause and effect operates just as we’ve always experienced it. Everyday experience would do its work, grounding him again in reality. That contrast between reason and experience never failed to amuse, trouble, and delight Hume.
I always loved that about Hume, the way he could follow his reason and intellectual conscience to the absolute starkest conclusions, but still know when to shrug and go enjoy a game of backgammon. When one of the most relentlessly reasonable mofos that ever strode the earth tells you that “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” you might want to sit up and take heed. You don’t have to grasp after metaphysical delusions in the absence of rational, philosophical justifications for life, you just have to trust that ordinary life has a rhythm and pattern of its own that will carry you along when you need it to. When you can’t figure out why or how to live, just do it anyway, without worrying overmuch about perfect intellectual consistency, and something will likely come along to alter your perspective soon enough.

That Which Was

By in foolosophy, identity

I was talking to my dad the other day about business and the job search. It’s strange, noticing how our relationship is in the process of changing in such a short period of time.
I’ve never minded working for the family business, never felt confined or desperate to prove anything completely independent of them. I’ve done all the things a supposedly mature adult is expected to do as a productive member of society, and I’m still young enough to look forward to being a little more selfish now that some of those obligations and responsibilities are passing. No complaints.
It wasn’t always easy, especially when I was a kid. My dad is such an intense, domineering presence. Hot-tempered and sharply opinionated, not to mention highly intelligent, driven and successful, it was very easy to always feel intimidated, like I was being judged and found wanting, even though he’s never been belittling. It was just something I’d sense, in the way he’d listen to something I’d say and pause for a moment before responding while staring deeply at me, as if waiting in vain for me to come up with a little something extra to truly impress him. He just exuded such a forceful, impatient persona that you felt compelled to step up or quickly scurry out of the way. Whatever I was doing never felt good enough; he would always have an idea to slightly improve anything I was doing, from schoolwork to personal choices. Trying to develop my own personality as an adolescent, especially one that directly contravened many of his values, often felt like trying to walk against a ferocious headwind. I now appreciate that it tempered me and forced me to be more sure of myself, but there were many times I didn’t believe I’d ever feel confident enough to stand in front of him without feeling a compulsion to stammer or make excuses for my thoughts or actions.
My parents are taking an early retirement now. Listening to him the other day was unlike any other conversation I’ve had with him. Disappointed and slightly stunned at how quickly the bottom fell out of the business, he’s been worrying himself sick over how he’ll be able to help my brother and I if we should need it, with no regular income of his own now. He even admits that flat-out, which makes me realize that I don’t ever recall seeing him act unsure or anxious about anything. Even when I reached the age where you no longer blithely assume that your parents know everything and have all the answers, even when I began to consciously disagree with him, it always seemed like he believed he had all the answers. No more. Now he just seems like any other borderline-elderly man, unsure of his bearings, who did his best and worries it wasn’t good enough. I told him not to worry anymore, that he’d done fine, I appreciated it all and that I’d be okay, and I meant it. It felt like the last little bit of growing up I had to do.
Rilke:
• His caring is a nightmare to us,
and his voice a stone.
We would like to heed his words, but we only half hear them.
The big drama between us
makes too much noise
for us to understand each other.
We watch his lips moving, shaping sounds that die away.
We feel endlessly distant,
though we are endlessly bound by love.
• Does anyone love a father?
Doesn’t one leave a father’s worn-out words
to old books that are seldom read?
Is his heart not a watershed
from which one flows away,
toward passion and suffering?
Isn’t the father always that which was?
Used-up years with their odd ways of thinking,
outmoded gestures, old-fashioned dress,
pale hands and ashen hair.
And while in his time he may have been a hero,
he is a leaf that, when we grow, falls away.

Tathāgata

By in foolosophy, language, mythology, psychology

Shanna and I were talking about myths and archetypes, tarot, horoscopes and other woo-woo recently, especially about the use and abuse thereof. How far can we go in framing reality to suit our personal perspective while still maintaining intellectual integrity?
Anyway, when you started talking about the world being all mystical it made me think of Jungian archetypes, which you don’t approve of. So I’m wondering why you draw the line of artistry at constructing a narrative. It’s alright to admire, to compose paeans and songs, but not stories? Why? I’ve always felt you don’t approve of the stories people tell themselves, as if constructing a narrative in order to self-soothe was somehow an act of weakness. But what I see here is simply a variation of degree, not of type.
Given that most people cannot resist (nor want to) their own pattern-making capabilities, I think my approach is most useful for those people who don’t desire the rigour of Zennish ascetism.
That’s always been my beef with Buddhism. I don’t need the capital-R real, capital-T truth. I don’t actually think it exists, and even if it did, I honestly don’t think it’s useful, in a pragmatic, day-to-day reality. It’s kind of like pure science. I acknowledge that it’s useful, perhaps even necessary, but applied science is really where that action (and my interest) is.
In brief, I responded that art, poetry and music was to me a way of celebrating that sort of mystical joy we’re occasionally lucky enough to find, that sense of having a cosmic place for everything, and everything in its cosmic place, ourselves included, without clinging to it. Relating to archetypes, though, talking about your life in terms of mythic generalities, makes it too easy to overlook the particulars of your life that don’t conform to the hero’s journey or the hermit’s quest. I said that some Buddhist writer I can’t recall (Brad Warner? Stephen Batchelor?) used the analogy of a pretty outdoors scene painted on a window pane. Why not just wipe the pane clean and see the one that’s already out there?
I thought of all that again while reading this fascinating post from Julia Galef. Seriously, I love this stuff:
We instinctively graft abstract concepts like “time,” “theories,” and “humor” onto more concrete concepts that are easier to visualize. For example, we talk about time as if it were a physical space we’re traveling through (“We’re approaching the end of the year”), a moving entity (“Time flies”) or as a quantity of some physical good (“We’re running out of time”). Theories get visualized as structures — we talk about building a case, about supporting evidence, and about the foundations of a theory. And one of my favorite metaphors is the one that conceives of humor in terms of physical violence. A funny person “kills” us or “slays” us, witty humor is “sharp,” and what’s the name for the last line of a joke? The “punch” line.
Interestingly, a lot of recent research suggests that these metaphors operate below the level of conscious thought.
Associating the future with the forward direction and the past with the backwards direction seems pretty harmless. But cases like “morality equals cleanliness” start to suggest how dangerous metaphorical thinking can be. If people conflate dirtiness with immorality, then the feeling of “Ugh, that’s disgusting” becomes synonymous with the judgment, “That’s immoral.” Which is likely a reason why so many people insist that homosexuality is wrong, even though they can’t come up with any explanation of why it’s harmful — any non-contrived explanation, at least. As the research of cognitive psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown, people asked to defend their purity-based moral judgments reach for logical explanations, but if they’re forced to admit that their explanation has holes, they’ll grope for an alternative one, rather than retracting their initial moral judgment. Logic is merely a fig leaf; disgust is doing all the work.
So far I’ve been discussing implicit metaphors, but explicit metaphors can also lead us astray without us realizing it. We use one thing to metaphorically stand in for another because they share some important property, but then we assume that additional properties of the first thing must also be shared by the second thing.
Since our ancestors’ genetic fitness depended on their sensitivity to each other’s mental states, it feels very natural for us to speak about plants or inanimate objects as if they were agents with desires, wills, and intentions. That’s the kind of thinking we’re built for. In fact, even the phrase “built for” relies on the implication of a conscious agent doing the building, rather than the unconscious process of evolution. Metaphors are so deeply embedded in our language that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to think without them. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as we keep a firm grasp — metaphorically speaking — on what they really mean.
There’s nothing wrong with framing your life’s experience as a story with a progression, either. There’s a sense of reassuring continuity to think that whatever the individual details, you’re on some sort of path that countless others before and after you have been on. But that same feeling of treading a well-worn path to a preordained goal can help you switch off your conscious attention to everything that’s happening right now that doesn’t fit a neat storyline. And I say this as someone who loves words. Absolutely loves ’em. I spend more time than almost anyone I know wallowing in words and other abstract representations of reality. Pattern-seeking creatures that we are, I doubt it’s possible or even desirable to exist in a permanent state of non-abstract thinking.
But for me, on the occasions when I manage to set aside all the intermediaries between me and direct perception, it’s intense and overwhelming in a (good) way that metaphors can never capture. I only humbly suggest: don’t spend too much time talking about what your life is like. Just experience it for what it is. Your life isn’t valuable or meaningful because of how similar it is to countless ones that have come before, it’s because of the fact that you occupy a unique, unrepeatable moment in space/time. Stop reaching for words every so often and just twirl a flower.

…That, When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again

By in foolosophy, psychology

Most of the time, I don’t have the sort of dreams that make the slightest bit of sense or relate to anything going on in my life at the time. But last night, I dreamed about one of my dogs. It was like I walked into a room, and all of my dogs jumped down off the bed to greet me, and when they did, I saw he had been lying behind them, hidden in the covers. I whispered hoarsely, “Hey, big bear (one of his dozens of nicknames), where have you been? Come here, buddy.” He laid his ears back like he did when he was happy, mouth wide in a dog-smile, wagging and starting to get up. Then I was suddenly awake in the dark, heart jackhammering in my chest, breath hitching in my throat, eyes brimming with tears.

What is it about dreams that make them feel so much more real than any other kind of abstract thought? How do they connect so much more strongly with emotions? I’ve thought about him countless times since he died, but there’s always been a slight awareness of the difference between memories and immediate experience that acts as a barrier, keeping me from feeling completely overwhelmed with sensations. As upsetting as it can be to spend time reflecting, I’m always aware that I am reflecting; it never resonates as if I’m literally seeing him in front of me again. I’ve thought about him enough since then that I can usually cover all that ground again without getting too upset, but this still haunts me and leaves me with that gut-punched feeling all over again.
Dreams cast such a shadow over your mind in a way that conscious thought doesn’t. It’s even stranger, given how fragmented and surreal they often are. What’s going on in the brain when we’re asleep that accounts for the difference? What is it exactly that consciousness does to keep all those intense emotions under a tight lid when we’re awake? I’ve never read much of anything about it before, so I’m just wondering.

Then I Went Down Into the Basement Where My Friend, the Maniac, Busies Himself with His Electronic Graffiti

By in foolosophy, writing

J.E.H. Smith:

But here is the thought that makes death formidable again: it is the moment after which I will never post to my blog again, after which I will never write another Facebook status update, I will never again tweet. My soul cries out: “But I can’t live without doing these things!” And death answers back: “No. But you can die.”
This is to say that my life is wrapped up with an activity from which I will have to leave off at death. But it is also the activity, I am increasingly coming to think, of actively constructing my self, and this activity, when it leaves off in death, will leave an accurate and vivid trace of a life. My online activity is, as I already put it, both mask and gravestone at once.
This may not be an entirely different experience than the one Robert Burton had when he brought out the fourth and fifth and sixth editions of The Anatomy of Melancholy. But the immediacy of blogging, and its lack of finality, make it much more like life itself than a book ever could be, with the backlogged publishers who promise it and the slow-churning presses that produce it. There is no publisher to blame if my blog is not sufficiently far along in its perfection at the moment of my death, no editorial wrangling or grinding production process. There is only me, and what I hope might be a mirror of me, diffused then through the Web of my culture by means I don’t understand: a mirror of me mirroring the world by sitting in a chair and looking at a screen and, every now and again, out the window.
Blogging as self-creation rather than the more typical sense of self-expression; that’s a pretty cool way to think about it. I’ve said before that I feel much more complete as a person since I started systematically writing my thoughts down like this. My brain feels more alive, my ideas feel more substantial. At times when kismet arranges for an abundance of stress and work to align with a paucity of time and inspiration for writing, as was the case earlier this week, I can feel seriously low and empty (as the angelic Shanna, who graciously takes on the thankless task of trying to cheer me up, can attest). This has done more to shape and sculpt different aspects of my personality than anything I’ve done in my adult life, I think. It’s what mainly provides a sense of dynamism and prevents me from feeling stagnant. I wonder what kind of person I’d be if I had started doing this as a teenager?
My mom was trying to give me helpful advice about fleshing out my résumé the other day, telling me to add in anything extracurricular that might be interesting. “What about writing? Do you do any? You know, so-and-so always said you had real talent…”
No, I said, I don’t do any writing. There’s only a few people who know that about me, and I have incriminating photos of all of them to ensure their silence. This is one of the absolute most important activities in my life, and I prefer to keep it a secret and do it just for fun. Maybe that’s what defines me as a hermit more than anything.

Bounded in a Nutshell, a King of Infinite Space

By in foolosophy, the big sleep

Peter Lawler:

Will indefinite longevity be the secret to human happiness? Well, there’s no denying that people would rather not die at any particular time, and that there’s a lot of misery in being governed by the scarcity of time. Time, we can’t help but notice, ruins or undermines at least most forms of human enjoyment. That’s why, we can say, that human beings have always longed for immortality, to be freed from the miserable constraints of their self-conscious mortality. When thinking about immortality, we can’t help but begin with the Greek gods—who were self-conscious but didn’t die. They were, in other words, in many respects like our vampires.
But the immortality of the Greeks gods was even meant to make sense or be a realistic possibility. The poets invented them—like today’s poets employ the Vampires–to show that immortality isn’t only impossible but undesirable. And so if we thought about who we are, we’d actually chose the mortality with which each of us stuck anyway. Our longing for immortality is best satisfied by accomplishments that stand the test of time—the immortal glory of the great political deeds or of the enduring beauty and wisdom of works of art or literature–although even our fame, we really know, doesn’t last forever. And we can achieve a kind of immortality through our minds, through knowing the eternal truth about natural necessity, through philosophy. Everything great that we do—from having children to writing THE REPUBLIC –depends on being mortal. The polymorphous human eros that animates us, in other words, depends upon death. Only mortals know what it means really to fall in love.
Good stuff, preach it, true dat, but I must beg to differ with one of his lines above — time is the necessary boundary marker that defines most forms of human enjoyment. The passing of time is what gives us the impetus to act at all. Without the need to take advantage of a unique, unrepeatable opportunity to act on a possibility that may never present itself again, why bother to do anything but daydream about limitless potential?
I’ve often thought that my late forties or early fifties would be enough living for me. It’s not so much a statement of desire or intent to be dead within the next ten or fifteen years as it is a way to force myself to live mindfully in the meantime. If you didn’t have a vague expectation of living for another several decades, becoming a doddering, senile husk of a person, what might you do differently now? How much more vivid might so many experiences seem in light of that perspective? I’d rather take the decade-plus of focused, intense awareness than the somnambulant daze that so many people spend their long lives in.

Those Who Help Themselves

By in books, foolosophy, philosophy, spiritual-not-religious

De Botton promised his series would be “a ground-breaking experiment”, offering rigorous self-help books that hark back to the days when – in the hands of Epicurus and Seneca – such tomes were highly valued, rather than the much-ridiculed genre of today. “We need self-help books more than ever before,” he said. “In the age of moral and practical confusions, the self-help book is crying out to be redesigned and rehabilitated.”

Well, I’m interested to see what this will be like. I’ve always enjoyed de Botton’s writing, though others disagree:
Is there a sniffy faction within the world of philosophy that takes a dim view of attempts to make the subject more widely accessible?
“Oh, I’m absolutely sure of it. But I also think that attitude has moderated considerably over time. Ten to 15 years ago, when I started to try to do this, I’m pretty sure there was a lot of sniffing going on.” He does a bit of his own sniffing, though, a moment later, when I mention the popularity of bestselling writers whom he has described as quasi-philosophers.
“Hmm, yes, the [Alain] de Bottons and so on,” Grayling murmurs rather sorrowfully. “He’s a perfectly nice fellow, but it’s not philosophy. It’s cream-puff stuff. What worries me is that someone will go to it thinking, ‘Ooh, this is an opportunity to think and find out something’, and then they find that it’s actually very shallow and doesn’t have deep roots. And I do think that people who do this kind of thing should really have done some work and got engaged in something serious, and then they won’t make too many mistakes when it comes to trying to introduce others to it.”
I’m not aware if de Botton’s books have been marketed as philosophy per se, but I also don’t remotely care. I’ve read a lot of “deep, serious” philosophy that I found useless. You already know I hold Plato directly responsible for at least half of the stupidest ideas underpinning Western culture. Hegel was a human hot-air balloon. Descartes’ mind/body dualism still plagues otherwise intelligent people. De Botton just strikes me as an intelligent guy who uses readings of philosophy to make sense of everyday life. Philosophy in the sense of “how to live” as opposed to an academic discipline. Give it whatever taxonomy you want. I’d enjoy shooting the breeze with him.
Besides, if self-help books were good enough for David Foster Wallace…

A case can be made that U.S. society is very much obsessed with “self-help,” which involves thinking a whole lot (too much, even) about yourself and your own problems, seeing everything only as it relates to the self, rather than seeing oneself as a valuable part of a larger valuable whole; this is one of the themes of The Pale King.

Yes, exactly. I see it as being similar to spiritual-not-religiousness in that regard; reinforcing rather than challenging the very egotism that causes so many problems. Hopefully that’s what de Botton wants to rehabilitate about the genre.

We’re All Alone in Time, Someone Has Cut the Line

By in foolosophy, religion, spiritual-not-religious

Tom Jacobs:

It may be the foundation of modern biology, but fewer than 40 percent of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution. While frustrated scientists sometimes blame religion for this knowledge gap, newly published research suggests the key factor isn’t faith per se but rather a benefit it provides that Darwin does not: A sense that our all-too-short lives have meaning.

Okay, but why, then, do Europeans and Japanese manage to accept (not “believe”; accept, goddamnit) evolution and still find a reason to get up in the morning?
I’m also reminded of something Pascal Boyer wrote:

The common shoot-from-the-hip explanation—people fear death, and religion makes them believe that it is not the end—is certainly insufficient because the human mind does not produce adequate comforting delusions against all situations of stress or fear. Indeed, any organism that was prone to such delusions would not survive long. Also, inasmuch as some religious thoughts do allay anxiety, our problem is to explain how they become plausible enough that they can play this role. To entertain a comforting fantasy seems simple enough, but to act on it requires that it be taken as more than a fantasy. The experience of comfort alone could not create the necessary level of plausibility.

It seems to me that the problem is in the fact that we’ve been made to believe that meaning resides “out there”, independent of us, a basic preexisting characteristic of existence itself, and our job is to uncover it rather than create it ourselves. You know who I blame, so I won’t say it again.
Slightly related, while looking in Boyer’s book for that part, I saw this interesting one too:

Reassuring religion, insofar as it exists, is not found in places where life is significantly dangerous or unpleasant; quite the opposite. One of the few religious systems obviously designed to provide a comforting worldview is New Age mysticism. It says that people, all people, have enormous “power”, that all sorts of intellectual and physical feats are within their reach. It claims that we are all connected to mysterious but basically benevolent forces in the universe. Good health can be secured by inner spiritual strength. Human nature is fundamentally good. Most of us lived very interesting lives before this one. Note that these reassuring, ego-boosting notions appeared and spread in one of the most secure and affluent societies in history. People who hold these beliefs are not faced with war, famine, infant mortality, incurable endemic diseases and arbitrary oppression to the same extent as Middle Age Europeans or present-day Third World peasants.

Is It Fate, or Is It Just a Cold Heart?

By in foolosophy

So I’m through with saving you
A gift unto myself
A tired savior, a wasted favor, I’m lucky I’m alive

— Pantera

I just got done talking to the woman who would have been my mother-in-law, had I been married to my ex-girlfriend. Since she and I split almost six years ago, her parents have inherited the unenviable job of trying their best in a likely futile attempt to keep her from total self-destruction. So her mom calls me regularly when she needs a sympathetic ear, since no one knows better than me what sort of tiger she has by the tail.

Over these past several years, my ex has systematically used up and tossed aside everyone that has tried to help her, friends and family alike. Tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours of effort and goodwill, all for naught, not even counting what she put me through financially and emotionally. She had been sharing a house with the last friend of hers patient enough to try to help her get back on her feet, and now that’s come to an acrimonious end amid the usual accusations of lies and theft that follow her everywhere she goes. She venomously disowned her mother in a hateful letter a couple years ago, so this all gets to her through the grapevine. A devout Christian with deep reserves of generosity and patience, even she’s given up on her daughter, calling her crazy and hopeless. In debt, unable to hold a job or domestic arrangement for long, and with a toddler to care for; no one at this point would be surprised if she’s soon homeless, or even dead.

I only briefly enjoyed epicaricacy at her expense, shortly after we broke up, but even that started to feel cruelly gratuitous before too long, as it became clear what sort of avalanche she’d unleashed on herself with a series of astoundingly stupid decisions, which have only compounded themselves since then. I suspect she’s untreated bipolar, and said as much to her while we were still together, but she’s never sought treatment for it. I also suspect she might be a genuine sociopath, as she only seems to see other people as tools to be manipulated and disposed of as she sees fit. Kindness is a weakness to be exploited, not a gift to be appreciated.

I have to work hard at dredging up memories enough to genuinely feel any hate for her, and it’s almost never worth the effort anymore; there are much better uses for my time. The only reason I’m having phone conversations about her now is because of having to get involved to prevent her eldest son from becoming the latest victim of her machinations, but in general, she’s long gone from my life and I just count myself lucky to be as well-off as I am.

As I hung up the phone, though, in what has become the common ritual after these calls, I just stared out the window for a while, feeling sad about the sheer pointless, irrational stupidity of it all. I know she’s had far more chances to get her life together than most of us will ever get (or need). I know she doesn’t “deserve” any sympathy, as far as people usually reckon such things. I know she needs the kind of help, probably involving therapy and medication, that no one will ever be able or willing to give her, even if she were able and willing to ask for it. I know she’s just one of countless such people living miserable lives, dragging others down with them. It’s just deeply saddening to see such mindless, compulsive self-mutilation. It’s like watching someone in a frenzied rage, throwing themselves violently against the bars of a cage they created themselves. I see the apparently inexorable process that led to this point, but sometimes I still can’t help but wish for it to suddenly, magically just stop.

Is this compassion? Because it’s not really all it’s cracked up to be.

Jain’s Addiction

By in animals, foolosophy, herbivory, moralizing

Eating 90% less meat than the average American and reallocating the money I would have spent on factory-farmed meat to buy much smaller portions of ethically and sustainably raised animal products seems like a worthy and attainable goal. Yes, meat production is environmentally expensive. So is iPod production, yet many vegans own iPods. Unless you want to argue that we should all be maximally ascetic in every aspect of life, it seems unfair to single out the occasional grass-fed steak as an unacceptable extravagance. What matters is your total footprint. If you really want a steak, or an iPod, find somewhere else to cut back.
I agree with Lindsay, and not just because she generously gave me my first couple links as a hatchling blogger that resulted in my first couple hundred visitors all those years ago. I’ve been vegan before, and I still consume a lot less animal products overall, including dairy and leather, than almost anyone else, but I just can’t get into the metaphysical belief in an end to all suffering for all beings. I remember reading vegan zines back in the day and shaking my head at the zeal with which some of them would attempt to eliminate all personal connection to suffering, down to the tiniest molecule. Of course, taking the imperative to do no harm that seriously almost leads inexorably to the logical necessity of suicide, and even your remains will feed the insects or the scavengers, who will in turn be devoured by the occupants in the next link of the chain, and on and on the cycle goes. You can’t surgically remove your own ego – an illusion, at any rate – from the entire process. The Buddha was right: life is suffering. And we are all life, every one of us together. There is no escape from it. Even if humans, all six or seven billion of us and counting, became totally committed to never harming another animal unnecessarily, they do it to each other and will continue to do so long after our likely self-destruction, assuming a meteor doesn’t do us in first.
Minimize suffering as much as you can. But don’t get caught up in believing that it can ever disappear entirely. Life is a sexually transmitted disease that’s 100% fatal. Don’t take it too seriously.
«‹ 34 35 36 37›»