tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-260366508747251912024-03-14T05:33:29.187-04:00Who is the absurd man?Ruminations on the meaninglessness of it allUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger242125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-60581639791093160202012-03-01T09:30:00.006-05:002012-03-01T10:47:50.420-05:00So long, and thanks for all the fish...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf7XYkeE03UrQRdj5txDkp2mQkdqKH9qy7wQlIZDJdkFRCGS3fbOWkArrCUs90eQai5kyAG9VzCHDZ3anNWG9Bdsv64twVLXEzbMe3CK0Wo8R1QROyvbX3PWNbrRo2WhLfSgcp4yN3wSU/s1600/goodbye-cruel-world.jpg" style="font-style: normal; "><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 343px; height: 360px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf7XYkeE03UrQRdj5txDkp2mQkdqKH9qy7wQlIZDJdkFRCGS3fbOWkArrCUs90eQai5kyAG9VzCHDZ3anNWG9Bdsv64twVLXEzbMe3CK0Wo8R1QROyvbX3PWNbrRo2WhLfSgcp4yN3wSU/s400/goodbye-cruel-world.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5714939796936766690" /></a><br /><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">"This is the end, beautiful friend...the end." Jim Morrison</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">"And then we came to the end." Joshua Ferris</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">"Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs." Philip Larkin</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; "><br /></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">Attachments, we have come to believe, are the ultimate curse. As Tyler Durden so eloquently put it, "The things you own...end up owning you." And to what are we more attached than identity? Indeed, our very existence is a never-ending slog to preserve this fantasy, that our thoughts and actions "matter" in some external sense, and thus our life is not some flyspeck of nothingness in an uncaring infinite void, but rather a purposeful, meaningful exercise that makes some contribution, however small, to the betterment of...something.</div><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">What a load of crap.</div><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div>The funny thing is, no matter how much we (or others) rail against this insanity, the very act of living <i>by definition </i>counteracts our words. For the actions we take to survive are simply not compatible with the belief that nothing matters. Eating, drinking, seeking shelter (to say nothing of procreating) - all presuppose the world is better off with us in it than not. Why choose to eat over not eating? Well, we would die. And?</div><div><br /></div><div>We have enjoyed our time, nevertheless, and would like to say thanks to the members of this blog for helping us explore these thoughts. (Well, <i>most </i>members...) While Bomstein and Montoya will be no more, we will leave the blog - our own little slice of immortality!</div><div><br /></div><div>To quote Patrick Swayze--we'll see you in the next life!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-72459447840356351932012-01-30T13:18:00.004-05:002012-01-30T15:02:54.371-05:00The Trouble With "I"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHZSJHaLahKKIZRc5i8KZeGxFHNDjqHQM9MNdbW6ApHNdMYeffh9IuhMTRu7bJwFlLpoL2ukA8KcJ25NEqk5Qt8ouDVG3vNseGvb9LeDMlL7e1ylOyaXhLh4FM3Eoen5UxCiesyX9rnCo/s1600/identity+2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 314px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHZSJHaLahKKIZRc5i8KZeGxFHNDjqHQM9MNdbW6ApHNdMYeffh9IuhMTRu7bJwFlLpoL2ukA8KcJ25NEqk5Qt8ouDVG3vNseGvb9LeDMlL7e1ylOyaXhLh4FM3Eoen5UxCiesyX9rnCo/s400/identity+2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703517903027356738" /></a><br /><div><i>"Of things some are in our power, and others are not."--</i>Epictetus</div><div><br /></div>Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the absurd is its capacity to grant one absolute power over one's emotions.<div><br /></div><div>Think about that for a minute. <i>Absolute </i>power. Sounds fantastic. And indeed, we used to laugh off even the prospect of such a thing. For example, many years ago we read of a study that asked people to rate how satisfied they were with their life on a scale of 1 to 10, and were amazed that some people...answered "10"! What, we wondered, was their secret? Were they all married to supermodels? Lottery winners? Preternaturally-gifted athletes?</div><div><br /></div><div>We were literally flummoxed as to how anyone could be <i>completely </i>satisfied with his life. Was there nothing these people regretted? No path they wished they had (or hadn't) taken? No loves that got away? How could everything have turned out exactly as they wanted?</div><div><br /></div><div>The answer, of course, is to focus on what <i>is</i>. This was the genius of the Stoics, who made the critical distinction between things in one's control (a remarkably short list, mainly having to do with one's mental state), and everything else, including our bodies, possessions, and "success." Unfortunately, the vast majority of people worry far more about the latter group.</div><div><br /></div><div>It sounds trite, but the truth is that <i>anyone </i>can be satisfied with his current lot in life. <i>Anyone.</i> (Yes, Occupiers, even you!) The great lie of humanity is that things (possessions, experiences, relationships) make one happy; in fact, it is quite the opposite. For once one cedes contentment to external forces, the game is lost. </div><div><br /></div><div>By contrast, he who accepts his current condition...has already won.</div><div><br /></div><div>The paradox of the I is that this illusion, which drives people to "great" things (Steve Jobs may have fashioned himself a Buddhist, but he was awfully concerned with his legacy), is also responsible for the unhappiness and emptiness felt by so many. It is the I that wants, that desires, that is never satisfied for more than a moment, <i>no matter what the circumstance. </i>By contrast, for one who can view himself objectively, as not only one human among seven billion, but one temporary arrangement of atoms among an infinite number...well, let's just say life's struggles are a bit easier to bear.</div><div><br /></div><div>On a side note, we have been alternately amused and saddened by those who sling invective at us for our presumed "success," and how it, and it alone, must explain our relaxed view on the world. Our favorite was the recent commenter who exhorted us to "pass the caviar!" </div><div><br /></div><div>To borrow a phrase...let us be perfectly clear. The true irony of the Occupy movement is that by demanding a more equal distribution of wealth, Occupiers tacitly accept the premise that more "stuff" is the key to happiness. Said a different way, those who presume to throw off the shackles of giant corporations and the culture of consumption...have unwittingly locked the chains!</div><div><br /></div><div>Regardless of your current status in life, we guarantee you there are many miserable people with "more" (possessions, friends, or lovers), and fully contented people with less. </div><div><br /></div><div>Until next time...</div><div>RB</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-78005494572484766092012-01-18T10:25:00.005-05:002012-01-18T10:37:40.465-05:00To be...or not to be?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqMY2_J5YgC2I6wCA8LW9W14yLxSV-jwEeHbWglzQau0IY0b0bV2rMvVjZ1NTEuRLdp6k9T3ckWAVNsGuk8E0k1wCUhu5Qtp0X6FAkzo47yVroknbTA2dNvsMU07VjBVjLGJN-xk0_ePE/s1600/car.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 255px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqMY2_J5YgC2I6wCA8LW9W14yLxSV-jwEeHbWglzQau0IY0b0bV2rMvVjZ1NTEuRLdp6k9T3ckWAVNsGuk8E0k1wCUhu5Qtp0X6FAkzo47yVroknbTA2dNvsMU07VjBVjLGJN-xk0_ePE/s400/car.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5698995869316534562" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3v0uaNmmP4eALaOYciJGsLr2Fd-dWkN44Us1pZfsO9xllyX6dqjEItT7Cy_ij-xVno616DHp_kKS567DSDO6ALrjYjkSJkxli8Zek0NtkVcaJuB84wZmdtEC6_eIImjUCTJ7d8Uzjkk/s1600/fish.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 212px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3v0uaNmmP4eALaOYciJGsLr2Fd-dWkN44Us1pZfsO9xllyX6dqjEItT7Cy_ij-xVno616DHp_kKS567DSDO6ALrjYjkSJkxli8Zek0NtkVcaJuB84wZmdtEC6_eIImjUCTJ7d8Uzjkk/s400/fish.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5698995768930171202" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div>We apologize profusely for our two-month post drought. No--the world has not become less absurd...but perhaps we have become even lazier (who would have thought it possible!). With that in mind--and because we so often find that things we discover and find revolutionary...have generally been said better by others before us--this post has been shamelessly lifted from the inestimable Walker Percy, whose novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moviegoer-Walker-Percy/dp/0375701966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326900514&sr=8-1">The Moviegoer</a> we just finished (and highly recommend).</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Thought Experiment: A new cure for depression.</b></div><div>By Walker Percy</div><div><br /></div><div>The only cure for depression is suicide.</div><div>This is not meant as a bad joke but as the serious proposal of suicide as a valid option. Unless the option is entertained seriously, its therapeutic value is lost. No threat is credible unless the threatener means it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The treatment of depression requires a reversal of the usual therapeutic rationale. The therapeutic rationale, which has never been questioned, is that depression is a symptom. A symptom implies an illness; there is something wrong with you. An illness should be treated.</div><div><br /></div><div>Suppose you are depressed. You may be mildly or seriously depressed, clinically depressed, or suicidal. What do you usually do? Or what does one do with you? Do nothing or something. If something, what is done is always based on the premise that something is wrong with you and therefore it should be remedied. You are treated. You apply to friend, counselor, physician, minister, group. You take a trip, take anti-depressant drugs, change jobs, change wife or husband or "sexual partner."</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, call into question the unspoken assumption: something is wrong with you. Like Copernicus and Einstein, turn the universe upside down and begin with a new assumption.</div><div><br /></div><div>Assume that you are quite right. You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other two million species which inhabit the earth--and who are luckily exempt from depression--would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age--more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Begin with the reverse hypothesis, like Copernicus and Einstein. You are depressed because you should be. You are entitled to your depression. In fact, you'd be deranged if you were not depressed. Consider the only adults who are never depressed: chuckleheads, California surfers, and fundamentalist Christians who believe they have had a personal encounter with Jesus and are saved for once and all. Would you trade your depression to become any of these?</div><div><br /></div><div>Now consider, not the usual therapeutic approach, but a more ancient and honorable alternative, the Roman option. I do not care for life in this deranged world, it is not an honorable way to live; therefore, like Cato, I take my leave. Or, as Ivan said to God in The Brothers Karamazov: if you exist, I respectfully return my ticket.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now notice that as soon as suicide is taken as a serious alternative, a curious thing happens. To be or not to be becomes a true choice, where before you were stuck with to be. Your only choice was how to be less painfully, either by counseling, narcotizing, boozing, groupizing, womanizing, man-hopping, or changing your sexual preference.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you are serious about the choice, certain consequences follow. Consider the alternatives. Suppose you elect suicide. Very well. You exit. Then what? What happens after you exit? Nothing much. Very little, indeed. After a ripple or two, the water closes over your head as if you had never existed. You are not indispensable, after all. You are not even a black hole in the Cosmos. All that stress and anxiety was for nothing. Your fellow townsmen will have something to talk about for a few days. Your neighbors will profess shock and enjoy it. One or two might miss you, perhaps your family, who will also resent the disgrace. Your creditors will resent the inconvenience. Your lawyers will be pleased. Your psychiatrist will be displeased. The priest or minister or rabbi will say a few words over you and down you go on the green tapes and that's the end of you. In a surprisingly short time, everyone is back in the rut of his own self as if you had never existed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, in the light of this alternative, consider the other alternative. You can elect suicide, but you decide not to. What happens? All at once, you are dispensed. Why not live, instead of dying? You are like a prisoner released from the cell of his life. You notice that the cell door is ajar and that the sun is shining outside. Why not take a walk down the street? Where you might have been dead, you are alive. The sun is shining.</div><div><br /></div><div>Suddenly you feel like a castaway on an island. You can't believe your good fortune. You feel for broken bones. You are in one piece, sole survivor of a foundered ship whose captain and crew had worried themselves into a fatal funk. And here you are, cast up on a beach and taken in by islanders who, it turns out, are themselves worried sick--over what? Over status, saving face, self-esteem, national rivalries, boredom, anxiety, depression from which they seek relief mainly in wars and the natural catastrophes which regularly overtake their neighbors.</div><div><br /></div><div>And you, an ex-suicide, lying on the beach? In what way have you been freed by the serious entertainment of your hypothetical suicide? Are you not free for the first time in your life to consider the folly of man, the most absurd of all the species, and to contemplate the cosmic mystery of your own existence? And even to consider which is the more absurd state of affairs, the manifest absurdity of your predicament:lost in the Cosmos and no news of how you got into such a fix or how to get out--or the even more preposterous eventuality that news did come from the God of the Cosmos, who took pity on your ridiculous plight and entered the space and time of your insignificant planet to tell you something.</div><div><br /></div><div>The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning:</div><div><br /></div><div>The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.</div><div><br /></div><div>The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-45409754045782194052011-11-10T10:56:00.004-05:002011-11-10T13:28:31.375-05:00The Trouble With Prosperity<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRMD5wOrgWptBuyX8Zb5HKpUx-aej-xEBX_YJZNDCUUThjVw8KWVFny78jJVDCg0wMhZoTa2Tr5blVpYItxGg74sW9IIkNovywnSFC7LCmFOd-ces88NP7l2ToL7hIfPIwmu2ecxVW4g/s1600/prosperity.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRMD5wOrgWptBuyX8Zb5HKpUx-aej-xEBX_YJZNDCUUThjVw8KWVFny78jJVDCg0wMhZoTa2Tr5blVpYItxGg74sW9IIkNovywnSFC7LCmFOd-ces88NP7l2ToL7hIfPIwmu2ecxVW4g/s400/prosperity.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673411823065676834" /></a><br /><i>Unlike birds, who keep building the same nest over thousands of years, we tend to forge ahead with our projects far beyond any reasonable bounds."--</i>W.G. Sebald, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Austerlitz-Modern-Library-Paperbacks-Winfried/dp/0375756566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320949651&sr=8-1">Austerlitz</a></i><br /><div><br /></div><div>As our day job is in the financial markets, we have spent the past several months watching the slow-motion train wreck in Europe with a mix of fascination and bemusement. (If you are wondering how we can possibly find such a difficult situation "bemusing," well...welcome to our blog!) Indeed, it is not just the Europe debacle we find interesting, but also the "Occupy" camps that have sprung up around the world. <div><br /></div><div>We find ourselves wondering...how can so many current human beings, the majority of whom (particularly in the developed world) have luxuries unimaginable to the richest kings of a few centuries ago, be so unhappy? How do we square the unprecedented abundance of "stuff" with increased angst...and even anger? We read a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/business/how-a-financial-pro-lost-his-house.html">story </a>this morning of a well-paid US financial advisor who got so far in over his head (even as he advised others on what to do with their money) that he couldn't figure out how to get "connected to the simple ordinary stuff of my family’s life." Meanwhile, one of the more surreal quotes we have seen from the Occupy protests featured a protester angry about her <i>$5500 laptop </i>being stolen. (We were not even aware such an expensive machine existed...)</div><div><br /></div><div>Again, the question is...how is it that the most privileged group of creatures in the history of this planet...is so freaking unhappy?!? Consider that up until about 100 years ago, humans did without electricity, medical care, mechanized transportation, and any sort of safe food delivery system. Human life was indeed "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Forgot about iPhones--for the vast majority of humans, life was, as it remains for other animals, a constant struggle for survival, preoccupied exclusively with acquiring food and protecting oneself from predators.</div><div><br /></div><div>Had you queried such people about the prospect of a world where food is not only readily available, but so plentiful that one of the biggest problems is <i>over</i>eating; where transportation from city to city can be accomplished within hours, if not less, and travel halfway around the world takes about half a day; where one can communicate instantly with people worldwide on a device that fits in one's pocket, and is affordable to large swaths of humanity; well, we dare say they would have predicted a virtual utopia, with people not only spending much of their time relaxing and enjoying a life of leisure, but free of the tensions and anxieties that consume one when there is <i>not enough to eat</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mystifying as this seems, we have a theory. Indeed, it is a remarkably simple one--freed of the daily struggle for survival, humans find themselves at a loss for how to do something "meaningful," due mainly, if not exclusively, to the nagging suspicion it is all futile anyway. Other animals--which do not, so far as we know, imagine their own deaths--do not suffer such existential angst, which explains why it is far more common to see a content lion than a content human.</div><div><br /></div><div>Interestingly, it seems the wealthier people become, the more problematic this is, as they spin ever more elaborate wheels designed to distract from the one thing that "matters"--i.e., that none of it does. Thus, we have friends who speak fondly of their younger years, when they had far lower incomes and much less stuff, even as they spend and spend and spend, and work and work and work...all in pursuit of some mythical brass ring. As Chuck Palahniuk put it so eloquently in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fight-Club-Novel-Chuck-Palahniuk/dp/0393327345/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320943601&sr=1-1">Fight Club</a>: "you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This, we would argue, is the fundamental paradox of human nature--our sentience frees us from the worries of <i>daily </i>survival, only to supplant them with fears of our <i>eventual </i>demise. A cruel joke, indeed...</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-10210366130387344472011-10-23T11:42:00.004-04:002011-10-23T11:51:27.828-04:00The Path to the River<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFQpYWzFMU1kciCkpQm9_DxoFCKgpyv2DnkcTpNVtMzJvIQGex82lhlwtTnNF-uOBUeYCiYEKRDHcX8KTyDBx4EO3CZCpqnv10voSBHiNvqUzQBPaXJL_0Xrb3pNKOPb8eBYbPkOEM-g/s1600/autumn-9.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFQpYWzFMU1kciCkpQm9_DxoFCKgpyv2DnkcTpNVtMzJvIQGex82lhlwtTnNF-uOBUeYCiYEKRDHcX8KTyDBx4EO3CZCpqnv10voSBHiNvqUzQBPaXJL_0Xrb3pNKOPb8eBYbPkOEM-g/s400/autumn-9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666715244831824162" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) wrote a beautiful essay titled “The Path to the River.” Written when he was 63 years old, the great author, thinker and social critic reflects on growing old. “My most astonishing realization is that I have lost a great deal of luggage,” he writes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Not physical luggage, but metaphorically speaking. Nock finds that much of the cares and worries he carried as a younger man no longer interest him. Here is a great passage:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I discover that my interest in many matters which I thought were important, and that I would still say, offhand, were important, no longer exists; interest in many occupations, theories, opinions; relationships, public and private; desires, habits, pleasures, even pastimes. I can still play good billiards for instance, and if anyone asked me, I should reply unthinkingly that I enjoy the game; and then it would occur to me that I have not played for months running into years, and that I no longer care – not really – if I never play again. As an item of luggage, billiards has gone by the boards, though I do not know when or how; and many matters of apparently great importance have gone likewise.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ah, this is very interesting! We have had such conversations with Bomstein before, lingering over beers at our favorite alehouse, which we’ve dubbed Absurd HQ. We, too, have noticed a more disinterested view of things that before concerned us greatly – and we have also, almost reflexively chalked it up to age. (We are nearing our 40<sup>th</sup> birthday and we can’t help but notice certain changes taking place). We have recognized for instance our gradual disinterest in sports, both in watching and playing. Like Nock, if asked, we would answer without hesitation that we play golf and enjoy the game. And then on reflection, it would occur to us that we haven’t played for months. And yet… we don’t miss it. Not really. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Likewise, we enjoy watching sports, so we think. But then we haven’t been to a game of any kind in years. We watch games on TV. Sometimes. And when we don’t, we don’t really miss it. Not like we would have years ago. It’s a strange thing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">This may seem a trivial matter. But we find the same phenomenon with other interests and topics as well, things you might think more important – such as politics, work, whatever. It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that the concern has reached a level of disinterest. We still enjoy certain things very much. But our relationship to these things is more detached than before. It is hard to explain. Let us turn to Nock again:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Awareness that this process of unconscious sifting and selection has been going on is presumably final evidence that one is off the main road and well on the path to the river. It is called, rather patronizingly, ‘the acquiescence of age’: but may not that mean no more than an acquiescence in matters which has in the long run proven themselves hardly worth troubling one’s head about? ‘The fashion of this world passeth away,’ said Goethe, ‘and I would fain occupy myself with the things that are abiding.’ If that be the acquiescence of age, make the most of it.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Indeed. That is it. And, instead of ‘acquiesce of age’ might this not be ‘acquiescence of absurdity’? The path to the river is a path to the absurd. And yes, we agree with Nock: Make the most of it! There is much in the world that societal pressures tell us are important things. But they are not. They are all equally unimportant.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">We were thinking of these ideas on our walk recently. It was a bright fall morning. The sun still low and rising in the east, the grasses shimmering with dew and the air crisp with the woody smell of damp earth and rotting leaves. We walked amid towering oak, maple and pear trees alight in autumnal colors – fiery red, blazing orange and gold. A breeze rustled the trees and sent a gentle shower of leaves down around us. It was quiet, save for the rustling trees, the twitter of birdsong in the distance and the crunch of dead leaves beneath our feet. It was an enchanting scene. It was magical and wonderful. And we thought, reflecting afterwards, how nothing mattered in that instant. We were in the moment as much as we could ever be. We cared for as little then as at any time ever. And we thought about Nock and his words about aging. Might the acquiescence of age also stem from a growing awareness of the absurd? Unconsciously, over time, we arrive at this stage by degrees, as concerns fall from us as a snake sheds its skin. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Or, to use Nock’s analogy, we are like travelers who go through life picking up all kinds of luggage… and then, we find, somewhere and somehow along the way, we have lost a great deal of it. And yet, we are not concerned. In fact, we don’t miss it at all. Then we realize we are well off the main road… and on the path to the river, or absurdity.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">P.S. You can find Nock’s essay in the book The State of the Union. It is a worthy introduction to the work of Albert Jay Nock and his silky smooth prose.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-77615716107019656322011-10-06T15:04:00.003-04:002011-10-06T15:55:03.101-04:00The Paradox of Steve Jobs<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy37bZI_tk-S5VYxSJ4Z56Hwx8Ngfn7kyX8U9-N3Vp2GLrqC5Ih6FxafNqC89KVORhn1Jfcl3IP9nSe_IPZXefQ7ZCepuAvr2ffrrkcG0xVvBFQy40k64essvdLqqXSGDN-GVUkNLXrXw/s1600/stevejobs.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 376px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy37bZI_tk-S5VYxSJ4Z56Hwx8Ngfn7kyX8U9-N3Vp2GLrqC5Ih6FxafNqC89KVORhn1Jfcl3IP9nSe_IPZXefQ7ZCepuAvr2ffrrkcG0xVvBFQy40k64essvdLqqXSGDN-GVUkNLXrXw/s400/stevejobs.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5660470107876836690" /></a><br />Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple and the creator of numerous innovative technology devices, died yesterday. Within minutes of his death, we hear, the Internet filled up with tributes to him and the legacy he apparently left behind. (Twitter reportedly almost crashed due to the overwhelming number of messages.) Bill Gates, for example, said "The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come."<div><br /></div><div>This is quite a statement. And indeed, on first blush who can argue? Jobs certainly changed the way people live and work, and for millions of people life would be well-nigh unthinkable without his products, none of which they realized their "needed" until he invented them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hmm. In fact, this plays into something we have been thinking about lately, which is essentially the problems created, paradoxically, by our current excess of abundance. As we see it, there are two related issues. First, the world has never seen the sheer number of "comfortable" people who exist today. In the US, for example, the vast majority of "poor" people have such extravagant luxuries as air conditioning, cell phones, and cars; in fact, there is little question the average welfare recipient in the US enjoys a far superior quality of life--measured in terms of access to food, possessions, etc.--to the richest medieval king.</div><div><br /></div><div>Second, the instant availability of "stuff" has led to a virtual absence of delayed gratification, and consequent annoyance when such delays are imposed. We find ourselves wondering why the book we ordered from Amazon has not arrived--after all, we ordered it last week! Not that we were planning to read it right away, but what kind of operation are they running, anyway?!?</div><div><br /></div><div>In short, as we have collectively moved up the "quality of life" ladder, not only has happiness not shown much particular progress (countless studies show happiness more or less levels off after basic needs such as food and shelter are met), but in adjusting to this new, more prosperous way of life, we have exposed ourselves to huge risk of disappointment when things do not go as expected.</div><div><br /></div><div>What does this have to do with Steve Jobs? Well, consider how much easier his products make certain tasks. When we were a teenager, we had a mishmash of records, cassette tapes, and eventually some CDs, as well as a Walkman that played cassettes and the radio. In other words, it was not at all simple to make sure we had exactly the song we wanted, when we wanted it. Sometimes, we had to make do (gasp!) with whatever we had.</div><div><br /></div><div>Similarly, we had an extremely simple computer that was basically a word processor. There was no Internet, no Facebook, and no Google. No Twitter, either--it's hard to remember how we expressed condolences back then...</div><div><br /></div><div>Tangentially, we have always found one of the early scenes of Scarface instructive--the scene where Tony Montana runs into his best friend Manny Ribera in the Miami slums. It is interesting because the two friends are surprised to have found each other; 30 years ago (only 30 years!), if you lost touch with someone it was conceivable you might never see them again. Again, there was no Internet, no smartphones--if someone disappeared, they might well be gone for good. Now, by contrast, we are constantly being told by friends about the 4th-grade classmates they have "reconnected with" on Facebook.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, if we are no happier, but have become increasingly reliant on an ever-complex societal and technological system just to maintain that happiness (what do you mean you don't have environmentally-friendly Salmon?!? This is an outrage!!!), it seems we have, in financial parlance, more downside risk than upside reward. In other words, while ever more efficient and technologically-advanced stuff seem unlikely to make us much happier, as we will quickly adjust to our new reality, the loss of even a fraction of our current "status quo" could be devastating.</div><div><br /></div><div>Peter Whybrow, a neuroscientist and the author of American Mania, argues that the instant gratification culture in our society, most prevalent in the US, is something for which our reptilian brains are particularly ill-suited. In short, Whybrow's argument is that putting a piece of chocolate cake in front of someone on a diet is asking for disaster--while we may intuitively understand the tradeoffs involved, we are almost always going to choose to eat the cake rather than exercise self-control. Quoted in a recent article, Whybrow says "We’ve created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of the society. The $5 million you get paid at Goldman Sachs if you do whatever they ask you to do—that is the chocolate cake upgraded."</div><div><br /></div><div>So what to think of Steve Jobs? Well, of course it goes without saying that Jobs didn't "exist" any more or less than anyone else--that is to say, he was an illusion as we all are. But ignoring that, we are honestly not sure what to think of his impact. We use an iPod when we walk our dog, but we don't find ourselves feeling a whole lot different about the walks than we did before. We do not have an iPad, but our wife often spends long hours on the computer at night--is this preferable to when we lacked this option?</div><div><br /></div><div>This is not some Luddite argument that technology is bad and we should all go back to living in caves. But we cannot ignore the paradox that despite all the wealth humans have created in the past couple of centuries--the lives of unimaginable luxury so many lead, even compared with a few decades ago--the levels of human happiness have barely budged. And now that happiness rests, or so it would seem, on ever-thinner reeds of more and more stuff.</div><div><br /></div><div>A paradox indeed...</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-37477307203401401382011-09-17T21:25:00.003-04:002011-09-17T21:57:10.035-04:00Everything is Meaningless<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilGfRcmAVmaTc6FbFvGqJPFJiqyxQLXo4sVT4AaDLoPNdwliPzXGXFGpFB1F7PmLP13aHccBryQuNXFCP0Pog_St8kxS7dr6RCPMKo9c2JGXrQHY7xdRqrXU_ciamlbeH25Ecph2ljeA/s1600/Ecclesiastes-530x662.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilGfRcmAVmaTc6FbFvGqJPFJiqyxQLXo4sVT4AaDLoPNdwliPzXGXFGpFB1F7PmLP13aHccBryQuNXFCP0Pog_St8kxS7dr6RCPMKo9c2JGXrQHY7xdRqrXU_ciamlbeH25Ecph2ljeA/s400/Ecclesiastes-530x662.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5653512717695730002" border="0" /></a><br /><br />We were at a funeral last weekend. Funerals bring out lots of absurd thoughts. There we all were, looking at a dead man in a coffin. And we knew for sure that one day we will meet the same fate. One day, blood will no longer run through our veins and our touch will grow cold.<br /><br />People have different reactions to this line of thinking. They worry about dying or fear death. But for us, it reminded us of the absurdity of life, the futility of it, and the thought always makes us feel light and airy and humbled and carefree.<br /><br />We wonder, if that man in the coffin could stand here with us for a few moments, what would he think and say? What advice might he offer? Would he see with some special clarity the absurdity of it all?<br /><br />Most appropriately, given our thoughts, the minister read from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which we reproduce below. We think it is a poetic statement of the absurd and so we share it here. 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mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <h4 style="background:white"><span style="mso-fareast-Times New Roman"; font-family:";color:black;" >Ecclesiastes 1</span></h4> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="mso-fareast-Times New Roman";font-family:";color:black;" > <sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17317">1</sup> The words of the Teacher,<sup></sup> son of David, king in Jerusalem: </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="mso-fareast-Times New Roman";font-family:";color:black;" > <sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17318">2</sup> “Meaningless! Meaningless!”<br /> says the Teacher.<br />“Utterly meaningless!<br /> Everything is meaningless.” </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="mso-fareast-Times New Roman";font-family:";color:black;" > <sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17319">3</sup> What do people gain from all their labors<br /> at which they toil under the sun?<br /><sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17320">4</sup> Generations come and generations go,<br /> but the earth remains forever.<br /><sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17321">5</sup> The sun rises and the sun sets,<br /> and hurries back to where it rises.<br /><sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17322">6</sup> The wind blows to the south<br /> and turns to the north;<br />round and round it goes,<br /> ever returning on its course.<br /><sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17323">7</sup> All streams flow into the sea,<br /> yet the sea is never full.<br />To the place the streams come from,<br /> there they return again.<br /><sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17324">8</sup> All things are wearisome,<br /> more than one can say.<br />The eye never has enough of seeing,<br /> nor the ear its fill of hearing.<br /><sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17325">9</sup> What has been will be again,<br /> what has been done will be done again;<br /> there is nothing new under the sun.<br /><sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17326">10</sup> Is there anything of which one can say,<br /> “Look! This is something new”?<br />It was here already, long ago;<br /> it was here before our time.<br /><sup id="yiv656394749en-NIV-17327">11</sup> No one remembers the former generations,<br /> and even those yet to come<br />will not be remembered<br /> by those who follow them. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-22446221876146197242011-09-02T11:39:00.003-04:002011-09-02T12:28:07.072-04:00On the Arbitrariness of Identity<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_eeDEyJ0Y5NaihNDSIxlgravVP5TMM8VPaVUZZyjA6YQCWp6af8ze7OCNuTM9Uwq6cdX7xsmoVEad1p-bmq0EevgmUP8Hmc8UOakKrXWJT41SNACVb9cVELeDg1XWZMaIt9Wtr8uJEY/s1600/jeckyll+and+hyde.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 193px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_eeDEyJ0Y5NaihNDSIxlgravVP5TMM8VPaVUZZyjA6YQCWp6af8ze7OCNuTM9Uwq6cdX7xsmoVEad1p-bmq0EevgmUP8Hmc8UOakKrXWJT41SNACVb9cVELeDg1XWZMaIt9Wtr8uJEY/s400/jeckyll+and+hyde.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647799853320320626" /></a>
<br />We yelled at our son this morning. According to our wife, we were standing over him, pointing, and yelling for him to "KNOCK IT OFF!" In other words, the very antithesis of the absurd man we ramble on about in these pages. Yet now, a few short hours later, we sit in mystified contemplation of the morning's events, nonplussed and a bit embarrassed at the way we acted. Indeed, we felt similarly a mere 20 or 30 minutes after the incident. Which raises an interesting question. <div>
<br /></div><div>Which individual--the ranting, unhinged father, or the calm, contemplative thinker--better represents our true identity? Were we acting out of character then...or are we now? Or are both versions somehow pieces of the same whole? But before we get to that, let us pose another question.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Consider a man about to have sex. (We speak of men because we have no knowledge of whether the same is true for women. As an aside, we recently heard that one of Goethe's primary goals was to understand how it felt to be a woman. This has seemed more and more interesting the more we have thought about it...) For a man in the throes of passion, having sex is the most important thing in the world. Bombs going off, floodwaters rising, bottom of the ninth...nothing else matters. And yet, <i>after </i>sex, the exact opposite is true. Sex now holds zero interest for him - suddenly, the top of the fifth seems a lot more enticing.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>So...which is the "real" man? Said a different way, how can an individual's value system shift so completely (taking sex from the top to the bottom)...in a fraction of a second?!? </div><div>
<br /></div><div>Our answer, as you may have guessed, is that this is an empty question, akin to asking what rocks think about. The reason we can seemingly be "different" people not just over the years, but from day to day and moment to moment, is that we <i>are </i>different, as physical changes occur and alter who "we" are. However, while sometimes these changes are radical (eg someone who has a stroke), most of the time they are minor enough to fit into our established personal narrative. Thus, while we are clearly a "different person" from 20 or 30 years ago, this is far less obvious, at least most of the time, over very short periods.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>What we call identity, then, is simply a convenient fiction we establish to try to make sense of our life, with no more meaning than the arrangement of fallen leaves under a tree.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>The odd thing is, even as we sit here writing about how foolishly we acted this morning, we have no doubt such experiences will occur again. (Although we should note they seem to occur with far less frequency the more we have embraced the absurd; further, our "recovery time" from such events is significantly shorter. Not that it matters, of course...;-) </div><div>
<br /></div><div>And this brings us to another Goethe quote we find remarkably insightful:</div><div>
<br /></div><div>"Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again."</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-44421939309073433652011-08-28T10:02:00.004-04:002011-08-28T10:28:14.247-04:00Absurd flotsam & jetsam<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSBO5u0vX2aCL50fzn8PoFYTxaGRiBj76YaGyGH9K6GMqi5EVCy56b3wIvn-OJVzGEuRiybmCiaQFaJjAZnR6dL74xTui1ckagMvN25a4OciOPACtyYnvVTlWEsVDzmhlxdl4o27naeQ/s1600/sherman.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSBO5u0vX2aCL50fzn8PoFYTxaGRiBj76YaGyGH9K6GMqi5EVCy56b3wIvn-OJVzGEuRiybmCiaQFaJjAZnR6dL74xTui1ckagMvN25a4OciOPACtyYnvVTlWEsVDzmhlxdl4o27naeQ/s400/sherman.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5645907732325176210" border="0" /></a>
<br /><a href="http://www.slagoon.com/">Sherman's Lagoon</a> is one of our favorite strips. It tickles our absurd sensibilities every now and then, as the one above does today.
<br />
<br />Here, it gently pokes fun at the common and widely accepted notion that we are all special, unique individuals - a notion that one can believe only by ignoring a lot of evidence to the contrary. But the absurd man doesn't shy away or sulk at the counterclaim of insignificance. Instead, he finds the idea freeing and embraces it! He is a man without chains.
<br />
<br />Another bit of absurdity floated in from the week just past...
<br />
<br />Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple. The news reminded us of Jobs commencement <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html">speech </a>in 2005, which had many absurdist overtones. We particularly like this part:
<br />
<br /><blockquote>"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. <p>Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Wonderful words of wisdom and very germane, too, given our recent posts on the idea of a deadline. Life gets easier when you embrace the idea of that looming deadline.</p><p>We might have more to say on all of this, but as we are fundamentally lazy and disinclined more than usual to do much of anything on this Sunday morning, we'll stop here and let this assorted flotsam and jetsam of ideas float around in our brains awhile.
<br /></p><p>Stay absurd.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-57057423325228625412011-08-18T12:23:00.002-04:002011-08-18T12:59:33.402-04:00Desire of OblivionWe ran across the following poem by Philip Larkin the other day, titled "Wants":<div>
<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; ">Beyond all this, the wish to be alone
<br />However the sky grows dark with invitation cards
<br />However we follow the printed directions of sex
<br />However the family is photographed under the flagstaff
<br />Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.<p>Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
<br />Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
<br />The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites
<br />The costly aversion of the eyes from death---
<br />Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs. </p><p>There is also a terrific reading of it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0LqD9X7kDY">here</a>.</p><p>And so we wonder...what keeps people from choosing oblivion? Is it simply the biological programming that wires us to fear and abhor death? Given what we we explored in our previous post--namely, that imminent death is often comforting--and the fact that so many live in a state of perpetual unhappiness...<a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-not-end-it_11.html">why not simply end it</a>?</p><p>To be honest, we don't have a great answer. The evolutionary/Dawkins answer would surely be that individuals who chose to die would not leave offspring, QED. But this is unsatisfying. Perhaps we should phrase the question differently. </p><p>Why, after years spent suffering through the torturous cycle of fulfilled desires that leave us wanting ever more, after climbing a ladder that, we now see, stretches on to the sky, after<a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2009/09/fallacy-of-achievement.html"> climbing the mountain</a> only to discover its utter barrenness, why do we continue to put ourselves through this? </p><p>It is more than passing strange that for all we can know what ails us, discuss and write about it endlessly, joke about its absurd consequences (e.g., Arthur Dent's discovery that Earth will be destroyed tomorrow for an intergalactic highway),<i> we nevertheless continue to play the game. </i>We often discuss with Inigo the paradoxical nature of our relationship with the absurd--for all that we understand, believe, and appreciate it, we still like to get together for beers at our favorite watering hole. But why? Surely, as we have banged on endlessly in this blog, such a meeting is no more meaningful than any other state of existence. And yet.</p><p>So is Larkin right? We have a sneaking suspicion that he is. For despite our exhortations that absurdity makes the world a fascinating and curious place, and that we have no desire to leave, we cannot deny our current comfortable circumstances may well play a role in this feeling. If so, then the apparent comfort provided by the absurd is itself an illusion.</p><p>The counter to this, of course, would be the well-documented cases of content people who have very little. And perhaps we are selling short our (and others') adaptive capacities. But the issue is really a broader one--if there is some state of life which we feel is absolutely worse than death (and how many can honestly deny this?), the rest is just rearranging deck chairs.</p></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-49768101727197934472011-08-11T13:59:00.005-04:002011-08-11T14:06:10.102-04:00That deadline again<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB1fqMI7OZUHZzyueu53LL843dCwd5epwHobpDnow5UoAvestnix7npimvIYyKVP57NGWBitJneL-jbGGN-4BJYHmwM32UoLtPF-JIp9dzHQdJq9uljlV2vfb_O81HyGPLYPJFTXwbuw/s1600/dunk.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 260px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB1fqMI7OZUHZzyueu53LL843dCwd5epwHobpDnow5UoAvestnix7npimvIYyKVP57NGWBitJneL-jbGGN-4BJYHmwM32UoLtPF-JIp9dzHQdJq9uljlV2vfb_O81HyGPLYPJFTXwbuw/s400/dunk.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5639660056823563346" border="0" /></a>
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<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_James_Banfield">Edmund James Banfield</a> <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(born in 1852) was a newspaper editor and had a part interest in the business. In 1897, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was on the verge of a nervous collapse. His doctors gave him one year to live, at most.
<br />
<br /><p class="MsoNormal">So, he resigned from the paper, sold his interest and sold many of possessions. He and his wife then moved to Dunk Island, off the northeast coast of Australia. There he expected to live out what was left of his days in relative peace and tranquility. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">They built a temporary abode and raised a small garden. They enjoyed the leisure of the simple island life. In particular they enjoyed the natural wonders around them, the abundant and diverse plant and animal life. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Time was running out, though, like sand in an hour glass. Banfield knew his last day would arrive soon. But he was living the life he wanted to live and was happy, at peace with the world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then, of course, something unexpected happened. He got better. He winded up living 23 years on Dunk Island.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When death finally came in 1923, his wife commented, “I had no idea death could come so peacefully.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We are fascinated by this idea of how a “deadline” affects people. As Bomstein wrote in his <a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2011/08/setting-deadline_6163.html">post</a> about another man given a deadline on his life: “The certainty of death has granted him the luxury of living without worry, secure in the knowledge he will die soon and thus doesn't need to concern himself with long-term issues.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And so we see it here again with Banfield. He was living a certain life, in which he was a frazzled newspaperman. But when told he had only a year left, he changed it completely. The certainty of death made him free in a way he wasn’t before – or rather, it made him free in a way he did not perceive was possible before. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of course, we all have these same deadlines. We just don’t know what they are yet. And so why can’t we live just as free of worry and care as these men who know their deadlines? </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Banfield was obviously a happy and contented man on Dunk Island. We have only read snippets of his stuff. Banfield is most famous for a book titled <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=koUTAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=confessions+of+a+beachcomber&hl=en&ei=WRlETqPBD6Po0QGryMH1CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Confessions of a Beachcomber</i></a>. We have not read this book, but we’ve ordered it. And we’ll report back should we find the absurd thoughts we suspect might lie in Banfield’s memoir.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">But the point is, the absurd man ought to be able live with the same equanimity even though his deadline is a mystery (assuming he chooses not to set one himself). And this doesn’t mean he has to jump off to an island (though that option always tempts us). He can, in effect, create that island wherever he is by adhering to his easy-going “nothing matters” worldview and in his secure knowledge that his deadline will come soon enough.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-6674021790623586202011-08-09T15:37:00.003-04:002011-08-09T15:49:31.944-04:00Setting a Deadline<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGS9nQgm3OaVRXZifnFclQDWOZiUjHw3MY49e9pHGD2re6KUvZW3LACmFi-4aT_MRjbbljqJYT8YD80okUGExW9XqvemdEr5E3tXyBRFYzQlWC5VQGjQWfpdqUsYxJVriOk0WzQabSrc/s1600/deadline.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 224px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGS9nQgm3OaVRXZifnFclQDWOZiUjHw3MY49e9pHGD2re6KUvZW3LACmFi-4aT_MRjbbljqJYT8YD80okUGExW9XqvemdEr5E3tXyBRFYzQlWC5VQGjQWfpdqUsYxJVriOk0WzQabSrc/s400/deadline.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5638945735765677762" /></a>
<br /><i>To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence--</i>Joseph Conrad, <i>The Mirror of the Sea</i><div><i>
<br /></i></div><div><i>Dying is easy. It's living that's hard.--</i>Gregory House, MD</div><div>
<br /></div><div>We posed a question to a non-absurd acquaintance the other day. What is, we asked, you were given the option of living a short but prosperous life, and a longer but destitute one. Which would you choose?</div><div>
<br /></div><div>He chose the short life, and we suspect this is not unusual, which raises an interesting question--if people do assign subjective qualities of life based on material well-being (and most do), then why not set a deadline for one's own life and live large until then? (Or at least "larger" than one could live without retirement savings, etc.) In fact, we suggested this to our friend, and he was flummoxed as to why it would not be preferable to do so.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>As absurdists, of course, we do not believe any states of existence to be preferable to others (although we admit it doesn't always <i>feel</i> this way), but this exercise is useful in pointing out one of the main flaws in "normal" (i.e. non-absurdist) thinking--namely, that it not only matters how (and how long) we live, but <i>how we die.</i> Consider--if you do not believe in an afterlife, then why not simply set a deadline and live life to the fullest? Think of the problems you could solve in one fell swoop! No more retirement planning! No worries about chronic illness! Who cares what the world will look like in 50 years! Indeed, with this one simple step you could banish most of your anxiety-inducing uncertainty...for good.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>The House quote above comes from an episode where Wilson (an oncologist) has mistakenly given a fatal diagnosis to a patient. However, when given the "good news," the patient reacts with dismay--he has already sold his house, said goodbye to loved ones, and made final arrangements. In short, the certainty of death has granted him the luxury of living without worry, secure in the knowledge he will die soon and thus doesn't need to concern himself with long-term issues.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Hmm...</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-26284546979649938202011-07-22T11:14:00.002-04:002011-07-22T11:45:25.378-04:00Constructing a NarrativeWe recently read a fascinating book titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307377334/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311347715&sr=8-1">Incognito</a>, written by neuroscientist David Eagleman (who also wrote the terrific little book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sum-Forty-Tales-Afterlives-Vintage/dp/0307389936/ref=bxgy_cc_b_img_b">Sum</a>). In short, the book is about consciousness, and the remarkably minor a role it plays in our brain's activities. Incognito refers to all the action that goes on underneath, of which we are neither aware nor able to consciously influence. The whole book is well worth a read, but there was one part in particular that resonated with us--the concept that what we see as "reality" is nothing more than a carefully constructed narrative presented to our conscious mind by the inaccessible parts of the brain.<div><br /></div><div>To illustrate, Eagleman recounts the story of an illuminating experiment. To give you context, one area that has interested brain researchers for some time has been the fact that while our brain processes things as different speeds (sound faster than vision, for example), we are not consciously aware of this. Thus, when we see a batter hit the ball (assuming we are at close enough range), while we perceive the sight and sound simultaneously, the sound is actually available several milliseconds ahead of the visual. In essence, our brain "holds" the sound so it can present the two events together, thus constructing what it views as the most consistent narrative of reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>So far, so good. Well, what Eagleman did was to set up an ingenious experiment to trick the brain, and in so doing expose this little ruse for what it is--simply another illusion presented as "reality." In the experiment, when subjects pressed a button a flash of light immediately appeared. At some point, the experimenters introduced a small lag effect, so the dot appeared a tenth of a second after pushing the button. However, after a few times the brain "learned" the delay, and the events once again appeared simultaneous. Then, the experimenters once again made them simultaneous, <i>which caused the subjects to perceive the flash of light before pressing the button</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>At first, this may seem a small issue--after all, who cares if our brains delay things by a tenth of a second here or there to make things more comprehensible? But this is only the tip of the iceberg (again, read the book...). Eagleman also talks of people who go blind but still fervently insist they can see, those who have mixed up senses (eg, they "experience" colors as tastes ), and an individual who developed a sudden and inexplicable interest in child porn that turned out to be due to a brain tumor (when they removed the tumor his interest went away; when he became interested again a couple of years later, it turned out they had missed some of the tumor).</div><div><br /></div><div>The bottom line is that, for as solid as the "I" feels, and as much as we want to believe we are experiencing what is "truly" out there, such beliefs are nothing more than convenient fictions; lies, in fact, made vastly more believable since <i>we tell them to ourselves</i>.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-257757428040334012011-07-08T14:02:00.005-04:002011-07-08T14:08:36.190-04:00Life is a gamble<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" 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</w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:.2in; mso-para-margin-bottom:0in; mso-para-margin-left:.2in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]-->We have been trying to learn Spanish and to this end our profesora sometimes has us read bits of Spanish poetry or pithy sayings to keep things interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’ve warmed up to the Spanish philosophers of the anti-scholastic tradition, who seem to have some absurd elements in their worldview.<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal">They resisted the urge of their northern neighbors to rationalize and explain everything. They tended to view the world as chaotic, unpredictable and unreliable. As author Deborah Bennett put it: </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:.4in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.4in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> “Their position runs roughly as follows: Nature and we humans conspired in creating a difficult and largely intractable environment. Spanish philosophy has tended to keep reason in its place. It inclines to see reality, or at any rate that part of it that constitute the setting for human life, as chaotic, incoherent, pervaded by disorder. Life is precarious…. In all our doings and undertakings, we humans give hostages to fortune.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">They advised that people be flexible and prepared to play many roles. In fact, Spanish literature offers up the model of el picaro, a sort of chameleon, “a person who manages to attune himself to the requirements of moment.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Versatility, adaptability and an inclination to eschew grand plans…. These were parcels of the Spanish anti-scholastics. And we find they ring true with the absurd man and inspire absurd thoughts. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of course, these Spaniards weren’t really absurd, because they had all kinds of maxims about what’s important and what isn’t and essentially were moralists of a certain stripe. (See Balthazar Gracian, for instance). <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But they had a good premise.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This desire to check reason and keep it in its place is particularly practical. Often we find people (including ourselves) trying to rationalize different actions and things. Why do I like this and not that? Why did I do that and not this? </p> <p class="MsoNormal">We’ve found it helpful to check such thinking. This compulsion to constantly explain oneself is something that we find anti-absurd. First, it reinforces the ideas that you are important, which you are not. (Nor is anybody else!) Second, it reinforces the illusion of a unique self that is seemingly in control of what’s going on, which it isn’t. And third, who cares! Really, life is absurd, to be lived in the moment, with no regrets, accepting what card comes from the deck with equanimity. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">In fact, Gracian favored comparing life to card games, where chance played a big role. He said, “In this life, fate mixes the cards as she likes, without consulting our wishes in the matter. And we have no choice but to play the hand she deals to us.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">True. But we can choose to play the hand in an absurd manner – with adaptability, flexibility and indifference as to the outcome of the bets!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-1207966183971468662011-06-20T14:16:00.002-04:002011-06-20T14:20:33.542-04:00Wisdom of the Heart<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwidxvhC-IKlCrUC_AM29m3SPgQH_KktryEoQ0uXJ1quNZzvgLCtlzaZ1DfO-HrJ_AxWJwB6NFRJCcHLtT_lQ-p78KrYj9ATEPTlQ1TRVbRPJrwnVZS80fwAPj6jVkzq2W0jtHlaPqhg/s1600/heart-wisdom-c2a9-susan-morrison-sims.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwidxvhC-IKlCrUC_AM29m3SPgQH_KktryEoQ0uXJ1quNZzvgLCtlzaZ1DfO-HrJ_AxWJwB6NFRJCcHLtT_lQ-p78KrYj9ATEPTlQ1TRVbRPJrwnVZS80fwAPj6jVkzq2W0jtHlaPqhg/s320/heart-wisdom-c2a9-susan-morrison-sims.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620368358039117826" border="0" /></a><br />It was late at night and all was quiet and we were in our home office just thinking and looking through our bookshelves randomly. We pulled down a copy of Wisdom of the Heart by Henry Miller and opened it up to the title essay. And we came across the following passage:<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:.4in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.4in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> “In his present fearsome state man seems to have but one attitude, escape, wherein he is fixed as in a nightmare. Not only does he refuse to accept his fears, but he fears his fears. Everything seems infinitely worse than it is, says Howe, ‘just because we are trying to escape.’”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">That last phrase stuck with us – ‘just because we are trying to escape’ – and we thought about it for quite a while afterwards. We think it is profoundly true and speaks directly to the fears and anxieties people have.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We thought of some of them. Fear of death. Fear of failure. Fear of poverty. Fear of loneliness. Fear of imprisonment. Fear of boredom. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Some of these we’ve written about before on the blog, particularly fear of death. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Miller’s essay, which is mainly a review of the ideas of E. Graham Howe, is brilliant in many respects and we lingered over choice passages. But this idea of things being worse because we fear them brought to mind a key part of the absurd – which is acceptance. Utter acceptance of everything. That means you accept life and death. You accept successes and defeats. You accept what comes, whatever comes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is extremely difficult, but it seems the pinnacle of wisdom. It is, as Miller writes, recognition that “life’s problems are fundamentally insoluble and accepts the fact graciously.” It is a lenient view of life… forgiving, open, calm.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">You cannot be afraid of death if you accept it as part of life, part of the process. You cannot fear failure if you look at it as just another experience, with as much indifference as success. You cannot fear poverty if you accept it as a natural outcome, no different than riches, as natural as the sun and the sky. It is something that happens and it is neither good nor bad. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">You can apply this idea to small things in life, too. Life is lived in the details, after all. You get stuck in traffic. So you are stuck in traffic! Accept it. So you stained a favorite shirt! So it rained on a day you wanted to go to the pool!</p> <p class="MsoNormal">You make them worse by trying to escape. You make traffic worse by stewing and getting angry and trying to get around your fellow drivers. You make the stain worse by pouting over it and rubbing it and cursing. You make it worse by moaning about the weather and shaking your head and feeling sorry for your bad luck and thinking dark thoughts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Instead, accept it all. Try to think of these things as no more important or meaningful than any other outcome. They are all equally unimportant and equally meaningless. Relax in traffic. Wear the stained shirt (or not). Enjoy the rain. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0in">For whatever other benefits such a worldview confers, we can attest that the absurd has helped our golf game, which we started playing again after a year hiatus. What does it matter if I make this par putt on 18 or not? And so we relax more deeply than we ever have on a golf course. We enjoyed the warm sunshine and soft breeze, the weight of the club in our hands and the curve of the green. And oddly, or perhaps not, the putt went in.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0in">But even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered. Life is absurd. Rather than run from that idea, or try to fight it with mental contortions of meaning and purpose, we accept it as it is and whatever life may bring, in things big and small! </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-70404067774142839052011-06-06T14:44:00.003-04:002011-06-06T15:27:00.553-04:00More on murder, etc.A commenter named Garak raised an interesting objection to our recent post on the issue of murder. In sum, he argued that societies need laws because without them, "'<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; ">negative' behavior would become more common and extreme." </span>Well, this may very well be so - after all, we must assume that at least part of people's reluctance to commit crimes is their desire not to go to jail. Indeed, our entire justice system is based on this principle (well, that and the also-human nature urge to punish people for bad behavior, which explains why so many are eager to send the current version of <a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2009/12/roman-polanski-absurd-man.html">Roman Polanski </a> to prison for actions of the 1977 version). <div><br /></div><div>But back to Garak's point--this is certainly a consensus view, but does it hold water? In fact, we are not so sure... Indeed, one of the oft-discussed areas of philosophy over the years has been the issue of altruism - why does it exist, and does it confer any evolutionary benefits? There are several views and we will not get into them here, but we can surely say that not only do humans have a capacity for empathy, but they also seem to genuinely care about the well being of other people. So we do not view it as a fait accompli that fewer (or no) laws would lead to an outbreak of "bad behavior"; indeed, one could argue just the opposite - that without specific laws to guide them, people might think more carefully about their actions. (This is very similar to the unfounded arguments many make against libertarianism - that without laws society would devolve into some twisted version of Mad Max. It is based on the same flawed premise - that people are inherently evil, and only restrained by threat of punishment. In our opinion this is a sad and pathetic view of humanity.) Said a different way--one who worries purely about getting caught is surely more likely to commit a crime than one who views it as "wrong." </div><div><br /></div><div>Further, consider other animals, which do not have "laws" as such, and yet somehow manage not to kill themselves off in a frenzy of orgiastic murder. How can this be? Think about it...</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, getting back to the original point of the piece...no matter how "wrong" certain behavior seems to us, the absurd view (that all is physical, and thus nothing "matters") is simply not consistent with the concept of morality. Consider an individual who captured other people and animals, bound them thoroughly, and spent days or weeks feasting on their still-alive remains. Horrible, no? And yet, our children have been watching a spider do this outside one of our windows for the last few weeks. Is the spider evil? Mentally unbalanced? Should we incarcerate it and try to "re-educate" it? If it escapes, should we pursue it and seek to jail it whenever we happen to catch it?</div><div><br /></div><div>We are no different from spiders (or eels, or cow dung, or even a slab of granite), despite the fact that our self-reflective brains make us view such a statement as beyond ridiculous. We may, as humans, seek to live in ways that make us feel better, and more comfortable, and that (crucially!) maximize our chance for genetic reproduction. But we should not fall into the all-too-easy trap of believing our actions, emotions, and "beliefs" are in any way different from other physical processes--one might as well ascribe meaning to sea tides or cloud formations.</div><div><br /></div><div>But while the absurd man recognizes this fact, it is inaccurate (and misguided) to assume he will simply act with impunity. In fact, the opposite is far more likely. As the philosopher Derek Parfit once said about his recognition of the absurd:</div><div><br /></div><div>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; ">My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness...When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; ">For those interested, Parfit's new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Matters-I-Derek-Parfit/dp/0199572801/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b">On What Matters</a> publishes tomorrow - we are eagerly awaiting our copy...</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-41694764768182586222011-05-18T15:20:00.003-04:002011-05-18T16:22:57.279-04:00A Bone to Pick with You, CamusWe have in the past discussed the "problem" of murder for the absurd; i.e., if nothing matters, then what's to stop one from going on a killing spree, and clearly that is wrong, ergo the absurd is not a valid (or at least not consistent) philosophy. Our response has been to cite Camus' own rejoinder to this, discussed at length in The Rebel, which is basically that once one chooses to go on living (rather than commit suicide), one has thus adopted at least a minimum set of values (that life is preferable to death), and cannot impose a separate value judgment on others (by taking their lives).<div><br /></div><div>However, something about this always nagged at us. While we liked the elegance of the theory, there was a part of us that felt it was a bit of smoke and mirrors; a trick of the light, if you will. Moreover, we have made a separate argument against killing elsewhere--namely, in order to choose to kill (and here we are talking about premeditated, or at the very least willful actions) one must believe one's own state of affairs will be improved by the killing, and this is clearly inconsistent with the absurd.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, it now occurs to us, given the second reason, what need have we for the first? In other words, the question is not whether the absurd man is "free" to commit murder, but rather why one who believes all to be meaningless would ever feel the urge to commit such an act. Indeed, the true absurd man should not view others as separate and distinct from "himself," but rather as equivalent beings. One could even argue the absurd man should, insofar as he recognizes the futility of life and others do not, place others' wants and needs <i>above </i>his own.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now that we have got over our own mental hurdle--basically, that we were so desperate to avoid advocating murder that we accepted what seems now like a clumsy and half-baked theory--it seems apparent that to adopt Camus' view here is to invalidate much, if not all, of the absurd itself! For how can one argue that it is permissible to kill all animals except humans, unless one holds that humans are someone "better" than other animals? And isn't the point that such a view is incompatible with the meaninglessness of existence?</div><div><br /></div><div>Ah ha! you say, haven't we simply laid a trap for ourselves? For since we have just argued, much as Camus did, that the absurd man would not commit murder, then how can we eat meat (or step on an ant)? Isn't all life equal? Are we, or are we not, drawing the same inconsistent conclusion?</div><div><br /></div><div>We are not. Instead, we are arguing something likely far more troubling to some--that the idea of human "morals" are an illusion, as <i>we are animals like any other</i>, no more or less culpable for our actions than a mosquito, ant, or vulture. Notice the distinction here - we are not saying it is "wrong" for the absurd man to kill, but rather that we cannot conceive of a circumstance where the absurd man would feel any interest in this act, at least in part because he can empathize with the pain and emotions of other humans, even as he knows such things are illusory. But to kill a cow in order to eat seems no more "wrong" than a spider trapping insects in its web. <i>It is only our illusion of consciousness that gives us the false belief our actions "matter" more than those of other animals</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>To address the obvious rejoinder--yes, we are saying it would not be wrong to kill and eat another human in the absence of other food. But nor would it be wrong to do so with abundant supplies of food--the concepts of right and wrong, while compellingly seductive, are simply not compatible with the view of existence as illusory and meaningless. </div><div><br /></div><div>What do you know - looks like we're nihilists after all...</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-74331099951487956832011-04-11T10:26:00.002-04:002011-04-11T10:35:22.117-04:00Estoy Contento<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTfpLmke0hCj58k1L5EYyJyOr_txmrbGIHa3Unu2C3zsagJ28lwF4k1vvaA3IKFG5v0oUshHl9ZvNT_gdQvLLITPCXX3dtCilITXiiUgQxrShH8kCuII11kZsNTF3DDC2NdnU1Fky-zg/s1600/antonio_machado.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 260px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTfpLmke0hCj58k1L5EYyJyOr_txmrbGIHa3Unu2C3zsagJ28lwF4k1vvaA3IKFG5v0oUshHl9ZvNT_gdQvLLITPCXX3dtCilITXiiUgQxrShH8kCuII11kZsNTF3DDC2NdnU1Fky-zg/s400/antonio_machado.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594333020150889922" border="0" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal">It means, “I’m happy.” We’ve been taking Spanish since Thanksgiving. We thought it would an entertaining and useful thing to try and take up a second language. And it has been. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Our teacher recommended we read Spanish poetry to help us appreciate the rhythm and beauty of the language. We chose Antonio Machado since he wrote one of <a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2009/12/walker-there-is-no-road.html">our favorite poems</a>, which we find quite absurd. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">We picked up <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=0hlfAAAAMAAJ&q=machado+borders+of+a+dream&dq=machado+borders+of+a+dream&hl=en&ei=CBGjTZ7xNMTG0QHu-LiSBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA">Borders of a Dream</a>, a bilingual edition of collected poetry translated by Willis Barnstone and proceeded to read.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This edition features some biographical commentary in the beginning and we warmed up to Machado immediately. John Dos Passos writes of him: “He gave the impression of being helpless in life’s contests and struggles, a man without defenses… Long ago he accepted the pain and ignominy of being what he was, a poet, a man who had given up all hope of reward to live for the delicately imagined mood, the counterpoint of words, the accurately recording ear.”</p>Juan Ramon Jimenez writes: “A poet of death, Antonio Machado spent hour after hour meditating upon, perceiving and preparing for death… All our life is usually given over to fearing death and keeping it away from us, or rather, keeping ourselves away from it. Antonio Machado yielded to it in large measure…” <p class="MsoNormal">And finally, Barnstone writes that of the Spanish poets of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, Machado is “the least pretentious.” Also, that “the poet read and loved philosophy.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It shows in many thoughtful poems: </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Learn to wait. Wait for the tide to flow,</p><p class="MsoNormal">as a boat on the coast. And don’t worry</p> <p class="MsoNormal">when it buoys</p> <p class="MsoNormal">you out. If you wait, you will know </p> <p class="MsoNormal">victory,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">for life is long and art a toy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And if life is short</p> <p class="MsoNormal">and the sea doesn’t reach your galleon, stay</p> <p class="MsoNormal">forever waiting in port,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">for art is long, and never matters anyway.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Or this:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“In my solitude</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have seen very clear things </p> <p class="MsoNormal">that are not true.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Or this:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“One day we sat down by the road to wait.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Our life is time and now our only care</p> <p class="MsoNormal">is all these desperate poses we must bear</p> <p class="MsoNormal">waiting for her. But she won’t skip the date.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Or this absurd snapshot:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Empirical faith. We’re not nor will be.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">All our life is on loan. We brought nothing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">With nothing we leave.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Machado’s poetry drifts over dreams and the blurry line between them and memories of experience, of the temporal nature of both… of landscapes, remembered and imagined, as allegories of human existence and emotions. And there many poems around traveling and wandering along roads.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The greatest of these is the one that begins simply, </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">“Caminante, son tus huellas </p> <p class="MsoNormal">el camino, y nada más;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">caminante, no hay camino…”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2009/12/walker-there-is-no-road.html">“Walker, your footsteps are </a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2009/12/walker-there-is-no-road.html">are the road, and nothing more.</a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2009/12/walker-there-is-no-road.html">Walker, there is no road…”</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-35070299149065480612011-04-11T08:11:00.002-04:002011-04-11T08:17:04.165-04:00Who is the “real” you?<a 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class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Yesterday’s Financial Times carried a review of <a href="http://grantabooks.com/page/3012/The+Ego+Trick/1540">The Ego Trick</a> by Julian Baggini. We’ve not read the book, but it seems to raise many absurd questions and touches on many absurd themes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The reviewer begins, “The problem of self-understanding is a perennial one. But even before you tackle it there is a prior problem: making sense of selfhood itself. What is a ‘self’?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is there is a physical part of you that makes you, you? No, there is no physical “seat of personal identity.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is there is some transcendent self, some kind of soul? “Whatever stuff you are made from,” the author writes, “is the same kind of stuff that everything else is made of.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then there are more interesting questions such as the effect of brain tumors that destroy the “self,” along with severe head injuries, dementia and the like. What do these say about who the real self was or is? And then there are life-transforming experiences that alter self, such that the person that was is very different from what that person is after the event.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Baggini argues that self is achieved through an ego trick. “Namely,” the reviewer sums up, “that of constructing a strong sense of connectedness and continuity out of fragmented experiences… by our fashioning an autobiography for ourselves.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The self is essentially an illusion – a powerful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The reviewer calls it “one of the best, most readable and most stimulating introductions yet written about this intriguing topic.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">As we say, we’ve not read it and may never get to it, but we highlight it here as tackling a fascinating line of thought. If you’ve read it, let us know what you think by posting your comments on the book and its conclusions below.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-40870097422177997432011-04-08T14:26:00.005-04:002011-04-08T14:35:45.281-04:00The Power of Mother Nature<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKKzpBSsf1maYXe-WKQE2Yf6URj0Q2Wb5xBb6qeWZ60gEyVos6IEKXL7kvjc3MB1FLYfFTtVj1uFcXRk0Dop3H4qaHQ2SYZkwrs9xtlqPcI2RFD0kNLuGd20EfxytjVHa3fpAGnecaNw/s1600/KeefeM20051016.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 249px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKKzpBSsf1maYXe-WKQE2Yf6URj0Q2Wb5xBb6qeWZ60gEyVos6IEKXL7kvjc3MB1FLYfFTtVj1uFcXRk0Dop3H4qaHQ2SYZkwrs9xtlqPcI2RFD0kNLuGd20EfxytjVHa3fpAGnecaNw/s400/KeefeM20051016.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593282854839278226" 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mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:.2in; mso-para-margin-bottom:0in; mso-para-margin-left:.2in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--></a><br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >“When you are in a huge, empty waterworld you gain a new perspective on life and the universe and that sort of thing. The antics of violent men seem absurd and irrelevant on a planet where nature casually demonstrates the power to sweep us all away.”</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:.45in;mso-add-space:auto; text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;font-size:12.0pt;" ><span style="mso-list:Ignore">-<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >Gavin Bell, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Somewhere over the Rainbow: Travels in South Africa</i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >Yes, nature is powerful and awe-inspiring and it makes humanity look like a small trifling matter… which it is, of course.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >The quote from Bell up top comes from a book of travels we’re reading on South Africa. Bell takes a ship from Tilbury and the comment comes after passing within 100 miles of a war zone in Sierra Leone. At night, he sees flashes from heavy artillery – and at that distance and with perspective, he sees the comical and ridiculous nature of it, “as if a mischievous god was playing around with a galactic light switch,” he writes.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >This got us thinking, too, of the Japanese disaster…</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >We’ve not commented on the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, though we might be expected to. After all, doesn’t this disaster show us in stark terms how tiny a human life is in the grand vastness of the universe? As historian Will Durant supposedly quipped, “Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.” Do these things not bring an absurd epiphany (at least for some)?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >Of course, they do. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >All of these things remind us how we’re barely here at all in a geologic or cosmic sense. They remind us how we could be dead any minute. They remind us of our smallness. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >But… while these things bring about feelings of the absurd, they are not what make life absurd.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >We used to think otherwise, but Thomas Nagel has since set us straight on this point:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >“For suppose we live forever; would not a life that is absurd if it lasted seventy years be infinitely absurd if it lasted through eternity? And if our lives are absurd given our present size, why would they be any less absurd if we filled the universe (either because we were larger or the universe was smaller)?”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >Indeed… Our mayfly-like existence has nothing to do with it. If we lived forever, our lives would still be absurd. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >The absurd is something deeper; it is when we step outside of ourselves and look at our lives from a perspective apart from the minutiae of living it. It’s when we ask “why”? Why do we do the things we do? Why do we bother fretting over a crease in our pants? Why do we care that the jackass in front of us cut us off? Why do ponder over what brand of peanut butter we prefer? These are “small” things… but the “big” things also don’t escape such doubt… Why do we care about our family? Why do we save for retirement? Why do work hard? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" >Unable to satisfy these doubts, we live on anyway. “The absurdity of our situation,” Nagel continues, “derives not from a collision between our expectations and the world, but from a collision within ourselves.” </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" Times New Roman","serif";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Mother Nature, in all her power, may heighten that sense that life is absurd, but it is this clash that goes on in our minds, between the inescapable seriousness with which we pursue our lives and the realization that it is all for naught, that makes life absurd.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" ><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-21535206749170737522011-04-06T14:55:00.003-04:002011-04-06T16:18:07.596-04:00The urge to be king...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHJqGSbEREW0icr-sHUisO1VFy41PNdJVZFkdczLQIY6TFkwGCwiTy6JNkPrYU1mFKMc3LYuf_Cn6DxsZsp21jQod_gnje1ip1ZzuE6NatzHy4tVlxrzQZz3xDNsR_7klwadfKzy3gwGU/s1600/yertle+2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 275px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHJqGSbEREW0icr-sHUisO1VFy41PNdJVZFkdczLQIY6TFkwGCwiTy6JNkPrYU1mFKMc3LYuf_Cn6DxsZsp21jQod_gnje1ip1ZzuE6NatzHy4tVlxrzQZz3xDNsR_7klwadfKzy3gwGU/s400/yertle+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592567447304136338" border="0" /></a><br />We stumbled on this bit of absurdity today - a NY City Councilman has introduced a bill that would "restrict toys to meals that contain fewer than 500 calories and 600 milligrams of sodium, and in which less than 35 percent of the calories come from fat (making exceptions for nuts, seeds, peanut butter or other nut-based butters). In addition, the meal would have to contain a half a cup of fruit or vegetables or one serving of whole-grain products."<br /><br />Clearly the bill is aimed at McDonald's Happy Meals, and indeed the Councilman, Leroy Comrie, "said that he was motivated in part by his experiences with his own children, who are now 17 and 13. 'Both are fast-food aficionados, and it’s my fault,' he said. 'I’m not healthy. I’m the typical parent with no time and limited options, so you’re grabbing whatever is going to make your child happy. My wife has yelled at me repeatedly for grabbing Happy Meals.' Mr. Comrie, who admitted that he was 'seriously overweight,' said he hoped to 'beg and cajole' enough supporters to pass it."<br /><br />So let's see if we've got this straight - Mr. Comrie has trouble controlling his urge to eat unhealthy food, and as a result wants to restrict others' right to do so.<br /><br />Now, as we have often said, this is not a political blog, although we think our leanings (such as they are) are fairly apparent (and consistent with the absurd) - put simply, live and let live. Indeed, as we have discussed in the past, one of the more frequent rejoinders we get from people--if nothing matters, what's to stop you from just killing people?--is ridiculous on the face of it. The question should rightly be turned around - if nothing matters, how can you justify taking such actions? The only logical reason to kill people would be if you felt it improved "your" life in some way...but if nothing matters this is a meaningless proposition.<br /><br />Similarly, we have been (and continue to be) surprised that there seems to be a correlation between the absurd and a "liberal" mindset (liberal as currently defined, not the classical liberals who believe more or less what we do). The rationale seems to be that "liberals" are compassionate, and seek to better others' lives through government.<br /><br />But...............there is a world of difference between being compassionate in one's own dealings, and forcing others to behave in a similar fashion. Thus, we find it mildly amusing that so many believe (as we do) that nothing matters, and yet also believe in the "rightness" of forcing others to behave as they see fit.<br /><br />We should note that this is a bipartisan affliction - indeed, when we sent the above piece to Inigo, his response was "Pathetic, but not surprising… It’s that kind of mentality that permeates all the big gov’t types, left and right."<br /><br />Indeed. And here is where we can bring this full circle. For what can possibly explain this urge that possesses the vast majority of humankind? Why would anyone ever presume to tell another what to do, except in the rarest of cases (one's own life being threatened, for example)? Particularly when one considers people for whom adequate shelter, food, and clothing have been acquired, this behavior seems downright mystifying...<br /><br />And unfortunately, the only answer we can come to is that such individuals are not, in fact, absurd. For the only reason to behave in such a manner is, as with achievement, or acquiring material objects, or even stockpiling facebook friends...to chase, however unconsciously, the chimera of immortality. (E.g., he was such a good man - he helped so many people.)<br /><br />To give of oneself is compassionate, and reflective of the lack of self. To <span style="font-style: italic;">force </span>another to give is another matter entirely...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-7092505107142912962011-04-05T11:15:00.004-04:002011-04-05T11:31:41.029-04:00Charles Addams, absurd cartoonist<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg7OFYKFL91df4R5HID0mi5HcnJ0Djd2QUu36dxja5YQiDixi8Ke7Ui91W3vVNYK7uMNMXTvBTYsXlAws5n7apJyV9wPfjPglLB7s9rvOOILTs0jFfHYEU3klkdOp2JsDIWI7PBQo4Cw/s1600/Addams.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg7OFYKFL91df4R5HID0mi5HcnJ0Djd2QUu36dxja5YQiDixi8Ke7Ui91W3vVNYK7uMNMXTvBTYsXlAws5n7apJyV9wPfjPglLB7s9rvOOILTs0jFfHYEU3klkdOp2JsDIWI7PBQo4Cw/s400/Addams.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592119506666796130" border="0" /></a><br 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<w:dontvertalignintxbx/> <w:word11kerningpairs/> <w:cachedcolbalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathpr> <m:mathfont val="Cambria Math"> <m:brkbin val="before"> <m:brkbinsub val="--"> <m:smallfrac val="off"> <m:dispdef/> <m:lmargin val="0"> <m:rmargin val="0"> <m:defjc val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent val="1440"> <m:intlim val="subSup"> <m:narylim val="undOvr"> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:";font-size:100%;" >“Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive!”</span><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Calibri;font-size:100%;" ><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><br />-<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:";font-size:100%;" >Caption from cartoon above, by Charles Addams</span> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >Today it is raining. It is a dark overcast day. People say it is a gloomy day. </span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >But why should it be gloomy? It is a natural occurrence, as natural as the sun and the wind, as days and nights and the turning of the seasons. </span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >Now maybe there is some chemical reaction in our brains that makes us feel less cheerful on dark days. But our guess is that we can change our perception by changing how we think about the world.</span> </p><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >We’ve made a conscious effort over the years to buck this natural tendency to impute some kind of emotional content in the weather. When we hear someone say “What a miserable day!” we immediately think to ourselves, “Nope… it’s just a day like any other.”</span> </p><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >In fact, we’ve managed to go further and enjoy the weather, whatever it may be. Rain is wonderful. Feel the water dribble down the back of your neck and moisten your face. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span> </p><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >Our thoughts on weather today made us think of the Addams family. Yes, the Addams family.</span> </p><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">They were the cartoon creations of Charles Addams. We have his first collection of cartoons from 1942, “Drawn & Quartered.” The vast majority of the cartoons appeared in the New Yorker in the 1930s and 40s. Of course, the Addams family has since gone on to the world of TV and movies. If you know the Addams family at all, it is likely through these mediums, not Addams’ original cartoons. </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >We loved the TV show as kids and remember watching re-runs. Some years ago we sought out the original cartoons. They are quite an achievement of wit and black humor. They give you a window to a bizarre world where our darker sides enjoy a little fun. (And not all the cartoons involved the Addams family.)<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >As Edward Rothstein wrote in the New York Times:</span></p> <p style="margin-left: 0.2in; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">“We enter a world so perverse even wind-up toys commit suicide, bitter matrons ask in department stores to be directed to “blunt instruments,” and beams of light bearing divine illumination stream from the heavens only to shine on television antennas… One of the strange characteristics of contemporary bourgeois life is the sheer pleasure we take in inverting it. Uncomfortable with its promised comforts and disbelieving its reassurances, we maintain its manners but stand it on its head.”</span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >Addams was brilliant. If the absurd has a cartoonist, we’d nominate Addams. For his gift was to turn traditional perception on its head. Invert, he did, with charm. He takes familiar scenes and makes them absurd, both in the philosophical sense and in the sense of making life ridiculous.</span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >In the world of Addams, death is ever present. Suicide is an ongoing theme and the hangman’s noose a regular touchstone. But Addams treats these subjects lightly, without judgment. He makes death something to laugh at, something to accept. </span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >One cartoon has a caption that reads: “In a rut, men?... Discouraged?... Life look hopeless?” And there on a street is a man selling hangman’s nooses, as casually as if he were hawking watches.</span> </p><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Or the boy scout who walks in on his father who is standing on a chair ready to hang himself… the caption reads, “Hey Pop, that’s not a hangman’s noose.” </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ></span> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >Then there are the cartoons that deal with the Addams family itself.</span> </p><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" >You surely know these characters by now… Morticia, Gomez, Lurch, Wednesday, Pugsley, Grandmama and Uncle Fester, not to mention a small constellation of relatives and pets.</span> </p><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">One thing that always struck me about the Addams family is that they were nearly always happy and accepting. It didn’t matter what others thought of them, they continued on their merry way. They had all kinds of oddball interests that they indulged enthusiastically (Gomez's love of destroying toy trains, Morticia's enthusiasm for meat-eating plants, etc.) And life for them always seemed a kind of game. </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ></span> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >We think there is much that is absurd in Addams’ worldview. It makes us smile to think of his cartoons. And it makes us look out of our window, at the rainy, windy, dark day in a different way, in an absurd way… Today is a day like any other.</span></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT5lczrpyO94Kc1i87JmbhZWdGh-zyplagSyhdjyineL0ev6iWPQsScICUECnfxsCy9hEH7gL7gG6Q8cO8_CkkEwkhOJEFMuWQY8UO6z9gfFQMo4ZMCjYcM2PNpkJdNhp-Mr953ljfkg/s1600/addams+graveyard.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 296px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT5lczrpyO94Kc1i87JmbhZWdGh-zyplagSyhdjyineL0ev6iWPQsScICUECnfxsCy9hEH7gL7gG6Q8cO8_CkkEwkhOJEFMuWQY8UO6z9gfFQMo4ZMCjYcM2PNpkJdNhp-Mr953ljfkg/s320/addams+graveyard.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592119932731747378" border="0" /></a><p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman","serif"font-size:100%;" ><br /></span> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-20756599399729987972011-03-31T14:30:00.002-04:002011-03-31T15:08:13.837-04:00Random thoughts while sitting in a cab...Medical advances mean life is no longer fragile, so rather than treating it as fleeting and temporary, we instead seek to prolong it as long as possible (maybe forever?). Death, rather than a normal part of life, has been relegated to back rooms, alleyways, and sterile hospital rooms, discussed only in terms of sadness and tragedy. Never joyful, never inevitable, never simply what is and what must be...but always tragic and unfortunate.<br /><br />Is that why we rush around, seeking to do, and create, and achieve, more, more, ever more? For it cannot be for the joy of doing - no, these fires that burn within the human ego yearn for eternal consequence, a sense that all has not been--as it so clearly has been--in vain. To do less would be to...what? To acknowledge our own insignificance, impermanence, complete and utter pointlessness? Well, yes...<br /><br />"He had a good life." What does this mean. How can one define it? Is it intended for the dead or the living? If the former, he can't hear you, but if the latter, what of it? Good life means nothing. Life means nothing. Nothing. Is it wrong to to define life as an illusion, trapped forever in an infinite eternity of nothingness?<br /><br />Hyperbolic? Sure, but that's the point. Can you argue? Where am "I"? Where did I come from, and where will I go?<br /><br />Not forever, you say - life is definitely not forever. But is it not? Can you imagine a world without..."you"? Sure, you say - I study history, I dream of the future. But who is the observer? If not you, then...who? Life is forever...for you. Even if you don't actually exist...<br /><br />The easy thing to say is that there are no answers. But that's not it. The answer is right in front of us, stalking us, making us squirm. All this could be a figment of some alien dream, or a "test" by some all-powerful deity...or maybe "reality" is just as we imagine it. Doesn't matter. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And the big wheel keeps on turning...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-82120584805463011202011-03-21T15:36:00.003-04:002011-03-21T16:28:46.132-04:00The never-ending tug of warWe have not posted in some time, due not to lack of ideas, but more from a general sense that everything we consider posting, we have already said. In short, we will have some insight, then begin to develop it (either on paper or in our head), only to wind up at a conclusion we have come to before. While we recognize the value in posting such thoughts anyway--the human grasp of the absurd is nothing if not fleeting--we have nevertheless shied away from treading the same paths over and over.<br /><br />However, we recently realized that rather than a random collection of absurd thoughts, our ideas have of late had a remarkably consistent theme--the never-ending tug of war between our rational and instinctive brains. Said a different way, while we strongly believe the absurd point of view, the fact is that no matter how hard we try, how many <a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2011/03/totems.html">totems</a> we own, how simple a life we may live...we simply cannot jettison our human desires and emotions. We can, of course, exert some sort of control over reactions, and we have often discussed with Inigo the fact that our "recovery time" after getting upset has improved dramatically in recent years; yet, we still get upset.<br /><br />What to make of this? Should we lament the fact that we will likely never shake these human tendencies? Or alternatively, should we shrug off the absurd when it suits us (say, when we are enjoying sex, food, or quiet reflections), and invoke it in more unpleasant circumstances?<br /><br />The first option is easily dismissed. After all, if nothing matters (and this we know we have said before), then it doesn't matter if we know nothing matters; similarly, to wallow in self-pity--for <span style="font-style: italic;">any </span>reason, but in this case, for frustration at our inability to live as if nothing matters--seems the antithesis of the absurd.<br /><br />The second idea is a bit more complicated. And indeed, we sometimes feel we are living in just this manner--after all, when life is good what need is there to remind ourselves it's all an illusion? But before we explore this, allow us a quick digression.<br /><br />As Inigo explored in his <a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2010/03/gone-bamboo.html">Gone Bamboo post</a>, it is easier to live as if nothing matters when one surrounds oneself with very little in the way of possessions, family, or obligations; it is easier to "just live" when there are few demands on one's time. Now, of course, all such demands are self-imposed; nevertheless, it is easier to sit and watch the sunset when one's children are not screaming, or the phone ringing, or one's wife asking when the in-laws can come to visit.<br /><br />But while it is unquestionably easier to live the "absurd life" when one has fewer commitments, is this because such an individual finds it easier to embrace the absurd...or has less need to do so?<br /><br />We had a conversation recently with a colleague who told us she "could not do her job" if she lived as if life were absurd--the implication, of course, being that she would be unable to accomplish anything if she believed it were all pointless. But this is to miss the point entirely! Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the absurd is that it actually allows one to be <span style="font-style: italic;">more</span> productive...if one chooses to live that way. After all, when one sheds worries about the future and past, it is much easier to focus on work in the present.<br /><br />To bring this full circle, the question under review is whether, since people with fewer commitments have less "need" of the absurd, it should be viewed as a "crutch"--a tool used to shrug off disappointment, but eschewed in happier times.<br /><br />The answer, of course, is an emphatic NO! Indeed, to even consider such a stance would be to misunderstand the absurd on a very fundamental level, and to mistakenly conflate happiness with contentedness. The latter is also something we have discussed before, and we find it to be more and more relevant as we consider different aspects of the absurd. In this case, the mistake is in assigning a value judgment to certain sets of circumstance, when all experience is equal.<br /><br />Now, we of course realize such a sentiment is easier to say than to live...and thus the title of this post. What we have come to appreciate these past few years is that this constant tug-of-war between what we <span style="font-style: italic;">think </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">feel</span> is not some sort of refutation of the absurd, or an argument in favor of using the absurd to boost our happiness. Instead, it is quite simply an unavoidable consequence of being human.<br /><br />You can deconstruct sex all you want--the fact is it still feels really, really good. Conversely, few if any would choose to be tortured by electric shock. The fact that we ardently believe such experiences to be equivalent (in our rational brain), does not change our visceral reaction that they are radically different and one is clearly to be preferred over the other. But to take the view that the absurd should be viewed as a tool to help ease the pain of the latter, but ignored in the former, is difficult if not impossible to defend. For to do so is to acknowledge a belief that one is indeed preferable to the other, and this is clearly incompatible with the absurd.<br /><br />That's enough for today--we're headed home to a nice glass of wine. The tug-of-war continues!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26036650874725191.post-71900929731661084172011-03-18T16:22:00.003-04:002011-03-18T16:41:50.657-04:00Totems<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEaDj2Ql2J-udCbXTwlfo3yJeM4PsKMNV7R7X6Mos85l1taPtor9G3J6knc4Go5WLTPa1D9lA1noGZLZmQ_2fHEYur59pCeqzsLIZp9vhL8I0Op65oPW7sI52hh8gzA6c0xBPlPYIhuw/s1600/IMG_2086.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEaDj2Ql2J-udCbXTwlfo3yJeM4PsKMNV7R7X6Mos85l1taPtor9G3J6knc4Go5WLTPa1D9lA1noGZLZmQ_2fHEYur59pCeqzsLIZp9vhL8I0Op65oPW7sI52hh8gzA6c0xBPlPYIhuw/s400/IMG_2086.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585518336767396706" border="0" /></a>“Sisyphus is the absurd hero…” <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.45in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">-<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">We recently watched the movie <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception">Inception</a>, which deals with various absurd ideas. Christopher Nolan wrote, co-produced and directed the film, which was inspired by the idea of <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><a href="http://whoistheabsurdman.blogspot.com/2010/06/lucid-dreaming.html">lucid dreaming</a> (where you are aware you are dreaming) and the blurry lines between reality and dreams and time. (No worries, we won’t give anything away).</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The characters in the film sometimes have a hard time separating what is a dream and what is real. (And in fact, one character in the film loses all touch with what is “real” and what is a “dream” – and the movie delightfully plays with these boundaries, such that viewers too will start to wonder what the difference is between the two… and if it even matters). And then are dreams within dreams, where someone is in a dream and has another dream. Things get murky, as you can imagine.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The characters in the film that can enter other people’s dreams are called “Extractors” because their mission often involves extracting information from a person’s subconscious.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">One of the neat ideas in the film is the idea of “totems.” The Extractors all carry their own unique totems which serve to help them distinguish when they are in the “real world” and when they are in a “dream.” For example, the main character, Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) carries a top which he spins. In the real world, the top eventually stops spinning and falls over. But in the dreamworld, it keeps spinning.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s an entertaining film and we would recommend it. But, what inspires this post is that idea of a totem, because we happen to have recently purchased something of an absurd totem. You can see the picture of it at the top of this post. It’s a watch with a little man pushing a rock around and around and around… Inside the face of the watch is the word “Sisyphus,” repeated in a spiral to the center.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">What a great idea! We should have thought of it…<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus">The Myth of Sisyphus</a> you may well know and we’ve sprinkled this blog with references to the old Greek myth. In essence, Sisyphus – as a form of punishment - pushes a rock up a mountain only to have it roll back. He descends the mountain and pushes again, only to have the same thing happen. He repeats this endlessly, pushing his rock over and over again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">To Albert Camus, Sisyphus is the absurd hero because he knows his task is meaningless and futile and yet he continues anyway. Sisyphus teaches us that a meaningless existence can lose its power over us once we recognize it and accept it. The struggle itself is enough. As Camus writes, “[Sisyphus] too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sisyphus is not a despairing figure at all in Camus’ absurd worldview. Instead, he is a figure of stubborn happiness. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” he writes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The watch, then, is our absurd totem. It reminds us that life is absurd. We look down at our wrist and see that little fellow pushing that rock and we can't help but smile. Life is absurd and all is well. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">(If you are interested in where we got ours, you can find it here, animated even:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.philosophersguild.com/index.lasso?page_mode=Product_Detail&cat=watch&skip=6&item=0261">http://www.philosophersguild.com/index.lasso?page_mode=Product_Detail&cat=watch&skip=6&item=0261</a>)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">An absurd totem doesn’t seem a bad thing. We have a laughing Buddha that sits on our desk, too, as a kind of reminder to laugh off the world’s troubles. Another sits on our nightstand, greeting us every morning and wishing us sweet dreams every night. We’d encourage you too to find something, however simple or small, to remind you of that perspective.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And imagine what a great conversation starter this watch will make. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“What’s that watch you have there?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> 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mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:.2in; mso-para-margin-bottom:0in; mso-para-margin-left:.2in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> </p><p class="MsoNormal">“Well, it’s Sisyphus pushing his rock. Let me explain. You see…”</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6