One of the diseases of our spectacle-riddled culture is that we forget that the invisible life has all the human splendor of the visible one, and often more. I have had in mind all along, and have appealed to where possible, the humble bookworm, the amateur naturalist, the contemplative taxi driver. If you, like me, are naturally drawn to achievement, collect examples of ordinary thinkers — human beings whose splendor is known only to a few, their family, their neighbors, their coworkers. Settle back in awe from time to time, as I do, in thinking about the vast treasury of thought and experience that will never be available to us.
I like to assume that my audience consists of precisely this type of anonymous foolosopher. You could be thumbing your phones or keeping up with the Kardashians, but instead, you choose to seek out random, uneven thoughts from an ordinary joe about books, current events, and life in general. That makes you pretty special, if a little odd.
The choice was put to them whether they would like to be kings or kings’ couriers. Like children they all wanted to be couriers. So now there are a great many couriers; they post through the world and, as there are no kings left, shout to each other their meaningless and obsolete messages. They would gladly put an end to their wretched lives, but they dare not because of their oath of service.
—Kafka, “Couriers”
There are many interpretations of this parable, but the meaning seems clear and obvious to me: Once upon a time, the blog was the ne plus ultra of social media, or “Web 2.0,” as it was then called. Each blogger ruled hizzorher own kingdom, issuing edicts, jeremiads and stemwinders according to whim. Then came the great enclosure, when we forfeited our kingdoms to move into the gated pens of Facebook and Twitter, where self-expression is limited to primitively reacting to whatever trending “news” is carelessly dumped into the feeding trough. Deleting one’s accounts would seem to be the only logical choice, but doing so would give Zuckerberg and Dorsey the legal right to harvest your organs as a result. (Always read the fine print in the terms of service.) Frankly, I had no idea Kafka was such a prescient visionary. I might have to read him more closely.
I have noticed a hundred times, and do not doubt that many of my readers must have noticed a hundred-and-one or a hundred-and-two times, that books with an arresting, imaginative title are seldom worth much. It is to be presumed that they were invented before the book itself, frequently perhaps by someone else.
A snappy title does not a book make, it’s true. But for us lesser scribblers, the title might be the snowball we need to get the creative process rolling. It’s a writing prompt I’ve used many times: I come across an interesting phrase (often a song lyric—I never claimed to be a highbrow), and think, “If I had a post titled Such-and-Such, what would it be about?” Then I sit down and reverse-engineer it into existence. I’m not ashamed to say that there are many posts in the archives here whose best part is the title. The fact that many writers and authors don’t get to choose the titles of their articles or books is one of the many reasons why I could never write anywhere else. If I can’t amuse myself with obscure references or inside jokes, well, what’s the point in writing at all?
The buried.— We withdraw into concealment: but not out of any kind of personal ill-humor, as though the political and social situation of the present day were not good enough for us, but because through our withdrawal we want to economize and assemble forces of which culture will later have great need, and more so if this present remains this present and as such fulfills its task. We are accumulating capital and seeking to make it secure: but, as in times of great peril, to do that we have to bury it.
It would be flattering to think that my reclusive nature was due to latent genius, but no, I’m pretty sure it’s just personal ill-humor. The political and social situation of the present day just isn’t good enough for me. It’s not me, it’s you.
Most people can’t be reached, of course, because you can’t reason someone out of a belief that he wasn’t reasoned into.
Apparently this venerable saying originates with Jonathan Swift. Is it true, though? How many of us form our bedrock beliefs through reason? None, I’d say. And yet how many of us change our minds later, whether grudgingly or willingly, upon being presented with alternatives? I’ve certainly reasoned myself out of ideas and behaviors that were impressed upon me early in life, and I’m sure I’m not unique in that. I think this is a case of the neatness of the rhetorical technique tricking us into accepting the truth of the assertion.
When affairs get into a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says “All right,” and goes to sleep in his arm-chair.
The Lady of the House will be quite amused to learn that she is the avatar of philosophy, the word of wu wei made flesh. Though I have grown in that direction myself, I still have a competitive spirit which bristles at being forced to alter my plans. I have a tendency to take setbacks as a personal insult, a slap with a glove. I am ready to duel with Reality itself to satisfy my honor, or at least to pummel it into submission. How many times do I emerge victorious? Not the point. What’s important is to fight well.
A few hours of mountain climbing turn a rascal and a saint into two pretty similar creatures. Fatigue is the shortest way to Equality and Fraternity–and, in the end, Liberty will surrender to Sleep.
— Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
I suppose mountain climbing would indeed work, especially in the Swiss Alps, but I can vouch for the fact that unloading nearly a thousand boxes by hand off of two shipping containers also serves in a pinch, especially if you add in a two-hour time limit before the truck driver needs to get moving. By around box 935, one has achieved, if not Zen-like calm detachment, a single-minded focus on endurance. Beyond good and evil lies…exhaustion, it turns out.
Yes! among books that charm, and give wings to the mind, will my days be spent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with such experience will I charge my mind to the full.
— Max Beerbohm, “Diminuendo”
The year in reading has felt a bit subdued. Maybe it’s just the general malaise of 2020 coloring my sense of things, but it feels like there haven’t been many titles to happily anticipate. However, November has brought forth new books from Kevin Williamson, John Gray, and Rolf Dobelli, all of which I’m looking forward to. And best of all, the first library sale since last December is happening this week! Nature is healing.
It would be a good idea if at the end of each year a tribunal was held on the conduct of the newspapers: perhaps it would make the people who write in them more circumspect…Two or more opposing papers would be compared with one another, and all of them with the actual course of events. Thus some assessment of political journals in general would in the end be arrived at…
Truly, it was a more genteel time back then. Nowadays, thanks to the ambassadorial efforts of English football fans in particular, residents of that noble island are known by a different term, at least among the French. From Geoffrey Hughes’s An Encyclopedia of Swearing:
I wish that were so, but Kristian Niemietz has been making the counterargument for some time that “Twitter is the real world,” and I’m afraid he may well be right. To paraphrase Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of monomaniacal fanatics can change the world.”
Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its own luxuriance, are the writers who take advantage of present incidents or characters which strongly interest the passions, and engage universal attention. It is not difficult to obtain readers, when we discuss a question which every one is desirous to understand, which is debated in every assembly, and has divided the nation into parties; or when we display the faults or virtues of him whose publick conduct has made almost every man his enemy or his friend. To the quick circulation of such productions all the motives of interest and vanity concur; the disputant enlarges his knowledge, the zealot animates his passion, and every man is desirous to inform himself concerning affairs so vehemently agitated and variously represented.
Anyone else just feel… bad… after this debate? Not talking about an outcome, which I can’t even make sense of. I just feel down about how much Americans seemingly hate each other based on politics.
An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels its votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more and more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous anger to the next.
Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring.
The Lady of the House knows a married couple. Each of them has a personal therapist, and then they have a marriage therapist for them both to see together. (I wonder if, when they have kids, each child will have his or her own therapist, as well as a whole-family therapist…) These are what we would call, in the idiotic parlance of our times, “privileged” people. The lack of any obvious problems is apparently itself a problem requiring professional consultation. It reminds me of pets who start chewing holes in the furniture or their own fur just to have something to do with their bored energy. If I may offer a rejoinder to Socrates, perhaps the examined life can be powerless to halt its own momentum. As for John Stuart Mill, how would he know what it’s like to be a satisfied pig?
Gnostic posturing is an understandable temptation. Who wouldn’t like to imagine themselves free of the zeitgeist by virtue of their superior sensibility? But there is no escape from one’s own time, and ceding territory to the barbarians is cowardly. If you accept the blessings, you should endure the curses, too. You might as well have the audacity to set a good example, come what may.
I have never subscribed to a newspaper, but I do check in with multiple blogs each day. What can I say? I’m more inclined toward pantheism than otherworldly asceticism. Just because I don’t want to interact with most people doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy observing them from a distance. The world, with all its folly and frivolity, still deserves some love, and as Lou Barlow sang, hypocrites like us deserve a little trust along the way.
