The Island of the Absurd, Part I

We are, you might say, island enthusiasts. We recently read a good book by Robert Dean Frisbie, a man who spent many years on a coral atoll in the South Pacific, which relates many absurd insights and observations.

The absurd’s core ideas of a meaningless existence, acceptance of eventual death and all its corollaries seem to come out more readily when one is on a remote island. There is something about the islands that teach us much about the absurd nature of our existence.

This is what we aim to explore here, perhaps inspired by our own vacation, in which we spent many days lulled by the sound of waves and seagulls, fanned by salty sea breezes, under a bright and warm sun…

The island literature is expansive… We have read Robert Louis Stevenson’s account of his experiences amid the palm shades and trade-winds of the South Pacific, on the Marquesas, Paumotus and Gilbert Islands. (Just to say the island names seems magical.) We’ve read the tales of Defoe and Melville and Gauguin and others who spent time on those little worlds surrounded by sea. We’ve devoured such stories since we were boys.

As adults, the lure of following in their footsteps, of going bamboo, remains. We have had the pleasure of spending many days on tropical islands. Growing up, we’d spend weeks hopping Caribbean islands when we visited our grandparents. And in our position today, we have ventured to islands from the South Pacific to the Indian Ocean all the way to the Tasman Sea.

We think that being a good bit removed from the patterns of our daily lives, modern society’s futile efforts come out in more stark relief. This is not say, as we’ve pointed out before, that one can’t be absurd anywhere. But we’ve come to appreciate that certain environments make it easier to be absurd (and the see the absurd) than others. As more than one reader has pointed out, perhaps if we were less comfortable, we’d find it harder to say nothing matters. Perhaps they are right, though we like to think we can maintain our sense of equanimity in the face of life’s vicissitudes.

In fact, it may be that life’s trials bring out the absurd in someone who otherwise was comfortable. That was the case with Alexander Selkirk.

Defoe found inspiration for his Robinson Crusoe in the real story of Alexander Selkirk; a Scottish seaman marooned for four years between 1704 and 1709, on Mas a Tierra, an island 400 miles off the coast of Chile.

At first, Selkirk was miserable. His depression lingered for 18 months. He’d have crying fits. He thought about killing himself.

But eventually Selkirk began to make the best of it. He learned to hunt game – the island had goats – and fish. He cooked up stews of goat flavored with native berries. He boiled lobster. He made clothes from goatskins. He found ways to entertain himself, hunting for fun and releasing his catch. Selkirk read aloud from his Bible to maintain his ability to speak and he found ways to write.

After awhile, Selkirk becomes relatively content. He writes how “he never had a moment heavy” and that his life was “one continual feast.” He also did a lot of thinking…

Selkirk had an epiphany – a realization shared by the absurd and certain other philosophies and cultures. He came to believe that “all our discontents” sprang “from the want of thankfulness for what we have.” He thought living on the island, removed “from all the wickedness in the world” helped him realize the folly of his past life, filled with work and striving and worry for some elusive success as defined by social conventions. The island, though it would appear very confining, was more liberating. Though it might seem lonely, he found his existence there contemplative.

The island taught Selkirk how little the old world mattered, how ridiculous it all seemed as viewed from a distance. He accepted his marooned circumstances, despite their apparent difficulties. (And we are, in a sense, all marooned here on this spinning planet).

In part II, we'll look at the experience of Robert Dean Frisbie, a lone trader on a South Sea Atoll, through an absurd lens. On the atoll, Frisbie finds a people with many absurd traits, including some refreshing views on death...

Self-delusions

Well I've searched and I've searched
To find the perfect life-
A brand new car and a brand new suit
I even got me a little wife-
But wherever I have gone
I was sure to find myself there-
You can run all your life
But not go anywhere

-- Social Distortion, Ball and Chain

We have been on vacation the past couple of weeks (although as we pointed out last year at this time, the concept of "vacation" is a bit of a misnomer to the absurd man), part of which included a visit with an uncle who is a devotee of "mindfulness," the Buddhist tradition that encourages adherents to live in each moment, neither regretting the past nor worrying about the future. Clearly this is a philosophy that has much in common with the absurd (with the rather notable difference that Buddhism assumes an interconnectedness of all things--a kind of universal consciousness, if you will), and we have discussed it in the past in this blog.

We were surprised, therefore, when our uncle, in the midst of a discussion of such matters, mentioned that his life at the moment was well-nigh perfect, and he wished he could freeze things as they were. (For context, he is in his mid-60s, lives quite comfortably in Northern California, and has three children in their 30s who have recently married, two of whom have small children.) We were taken aback, to say the least--isn't the whole point of living in each moment to avoid the impact of such externalities? We were further surprised when he attributed our own sense of contentment to our relatively secure job and family.

This, to us, is one of the more frustrating aspects of the absurd--individuals who come right to the brink of understanding...but can't follow through. It is mystifying to us how such people can understand so much, yet not see the contradiction they ultimately embrace. It truly is an all or nothing proposition - either everything matters...or nothing does. If one's family matters (the reason why we harp on family, by the way, is because it seems the one area where seemingly rational people come to a brick wall), then so does everyone else's family, and everything they do, and everything that caused them to exist in the first place, ad infinitum.

This is why we have devoted so much time and space on this blog to the chimera of "personal meaning," which many see as an out to what they view as the bleakness of the absurd. In short, the universe may be meaningless, but that doesn't mean I can't create my own little island of meaningfulness while I'm here. This sounds incredibly seductive and logical, particularly for those who view the absurd as bleak. (As an aside, perhaps we should not have been too surprised by our uncle's comments, since a few months ago he responded to a note we sent about the absurd by saying: "Existential angst!!--Yikes, can't get through a day feeling too much of that.")

But as we have noted, we view the absurd as anything but bleak. Rather, it is the most liberating feeling imaginable. Imagine...this "I" we have been carrying around since early childhood, which wants, and needs, and never seems sated...is nothing more than a fantastic illusion! We can be as content sitting on a park bench staring into space (as our old nemesis Jack Sparrow once mocked us) as living the high life of a billionaire.

But there is another reason for highlighting our uncle's comments here, and that is their "wolf in sheep's clothing" nature. For despite their seeming banality, such attitudes open the door to all sorts of unpleasant realities. To begin with, while our uncle professes to be happy because he lives in the moment, he is in fact happy only because his current circumstances conform to what he views as "good." Thus, he is vulnerable to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" to which we are all subject.

Further, this attitude that his family is important by necessity means others must be viewed as less so. Consider what he would choose if given the option to end the life of one grandchild...or 1000 African children. Is such a scenario ridiculous? Of course. And we don't pretend that we wouldn't have similar misgivings were one of our family members involved. The difference is...we know the misgivings are all part of the illusion, while he thinks they are real. He honestly believes his family is "more" valuable than others, even while he preaches the virtues of mindfulness. Think about that...

The difficult wisdom of the absurd

“Living an experience… is accepting it fully,”
- Albert Camus

We’ve often noted here how embracing the absurd can change your day to day life. It’s this interest in the practical aspects of the absurd that really drives our interest, as opposed to idle philosophy.

Over beers at our favorite local watering hole, which we’ve dubbed Absurd HQ, we often swap stories about how our absurdist ways helped us sail past shoals that would’ve snagged people who take themselves more seriously.

In our experience, the absurd has had a definite impact on how we deal with everyday life. Most recently, we returned from a big conference held by our employer. It’s a week-long event and very busy for all concerned. Most of our co-workers go on their summer vacations immediately after it is over, because it is so exhausting. And we thought it was exhausting, too. At least, we used to think so before the absurd soaked into our thinking.

This year, we were completely at ease. We felt like we were walking on air each day, without cares or worries. Perhaps another way to put it would be that we felt “light” – as if our minds were not carrying a load of concerns. And when the conference was over, we felt no such exhaustion.

We think it was because of our mental attitude during the whole event. In short, we kept the absurd in mind.

We lived in the present. “The present and a succession of presents before a constantly conscious soul is the ideal of the absurd man,” the great absurdist Albert Camus wrote. We did not wish we were someplace else. We were here and not there and that was all. We did not think of it as working. We looked at each day as it were just another day. It just so happens we were at this conference. And finally, we looked at the whole enterprise – including our role in it – as ridiculous and meaningless.

Camus wrote eloquently about these ideas:

“Before encountering the absurd, the everyday man lives with aims, a concern for the future or for justification (with regard to whom or what is not the question)... He still thinks that something in his life can be directed. In truth, he acts as if he were free, even if all the facts make a point of contradicting that liberty. But after the absurd, everything is upset.”

After the absurd, one accepts a meaningless universe and revels in it. It is freeing once you accept it. The absurd man feels totally comfortable with the idea that all is for naught. Again, from Camus:

“To work and create ‘for nothing,’ to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries – this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions.”

Difficult wisdom, indeed, and so counter to the flow of mainstream cultural thinking.

We wonder sometimes… We’ve written often about the absurd here. Sometimes, we feel we are repeating ourselves. And yet, there are also times where we wonder if we have yet to find the right words to express just what we feel. We are having those feelings now… but to try to sum up this post, we’d say: When one embraces the idea that our lives are no more significant than those of the grasshoppers – and just as fleeting – then life’s burdens seem to lift.

Free to choose?

As we touched on in our last post, the concept of free will is fraught with difficulties, perhaps most significantly the fact that it seems clearly inconsistent with our central premise that all is physical. However, for some reason this insight is nigh impossible to incorporate into our daily lives. As we said to Inigo the other day: "It's just the logical extension of everything we've been saying (everything is physical), but it feels like a whole new level of strangeness to say the brain decides something before 'we' realize it..."

Thus, we were fascinated to come across this interview with philosopher Galen Strawson where he discusses this exact issue. We highly recommend reading the whole piece, but here is a preview:

"There is an undeniable human tendency to see ourselves as free and morally responsible beings. But there’s a problem. We also believe—most of us anyhow—that our environment and our heredity entirely shape our characters (what else could?). But we aren’t responsible for our environment, and we aren’t responsible for our heredity. So we aren’t responsible for our characters. But then how can we be responsible for acts that arise from our characters?

There’s a simple but extremely unpopular answer to this question: We aren’t. We are not and cannot be ultimately responsible for our behavior. According to this argument, while it may be of great pragmatic value to hold people responsible for their actions, and to employ systems of reward and punishment, no one is really deserving of blame or praise for anything. This answer has been around for more than two thousand years; it is backed by solid arguments with premises that are consistent with how most of us view the world. Yet few today give this position the serious consideration it deserves. The view that free will is a fiction is called counterintuitive, absurd, pessimistic, pernicious and, most commonly, “unacceptable,” even by those who recognize the force of the arguments behind it. Philosophers who reject God, an immaterial soul, and even absolute morality, cannot bring themselves to do the same for the dubious concept of free will—not just in their day-to-day lives, but in books, and articles and extraordinarily complex theories."

Bemelmans visits San Simeon

Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) is one of our favorite writers. There is a joie de vivre about him mixed with a certain acceptance of things as they are that appeals to our absurdist sensibilities. On a recent plane trip we read To the One I Love the Best. In this book, there is a chapter called San Simeon. It reaches some fairly absurd conclusions and includes a cheerful insight into the pursuit of happiness.

Bemelmans once visited William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon sometime in the 1950s. Hearst’s home in San Simeon is known today as Hearst Castle. Back then Hearst called it the Enchanted Hill.

As Bemelmans describes it:

“It is a mixture of a cathedral and a Spanish hilltop city with a piece of California suburb placed at its feet… It has all the characteristics of monuments built by man to the glory of himself and God.”

Bemelmans spends some days there amidst all this grandeur. There is a living room half the size of Grand Central Station with a grand fireplace that reaches the sixty-foot ceilings. There are statues of marble, intricate woodwork, drapery and art work. In short, the place is spectacular and seems to have everything one could want.

However, after spending several days there, our correspondent has a revelation on his drive home. He finds Hearst’s world mostly sealed off from the rest of the world. He finds Hearst has shut himself off from genuine human contact and with life more broadly by building himself this bubble. As Bemelmans writes:

“During the long drive in the blue haze of morning I came upon a truth, which, like all revelations, is simple as stone and as heavy. I had met in Hearst the most lonesome man I have ever known, a man of vast intelligence, of ceaseless effort, and all he had done was to make of himself a scaffold in which a metronome ticked time away… The revelation is that you cannot protect yourself, you must take a chance on being hurt…”

It is easy to fall into a cliché here and say that the rich are miserable and, therefore, find some consolation in one’s relative poverty. That’s not what this is about. Bemelmans saw a man who invested his persona in things. Apparently, Hearst never sold any of his art or antiques or other things. He clung to them as if they gave him life. And indeed he may have thought so. Hearst was always building, adding to the castle. At one point, Bemelmans quotes an aid as saying: “As long as he builds, he thinks he won’t die.”

Bemelmans describes another encounter:

“I walked with Mr. Hearst and the architect along a two-mile stretch of trellised columns, fruit trees, and grape arbors. At one point Mr. Hearst stopped. “I want a terrace here,” he said.

It was a tough terrain, it would take a lot of underpinning and work, the architect explained, and he made the mistake of asking the King why he wanted a terrace there.

Mr. Hearst pointed to a scrubby tangerine tree growing across from where he stood and said in his high voice: “I might want to pick one of those tangerines.”

“I’ll never ask him again why he wants to do anything,” the architect said later.

In the end, Bemelmans finds the Hearst Castle an unhappy place. It’s a place where people do things to please Mr. Hearst, who seems cannot be pleased. He seems a hollowed-out human being, worn from the years, unsure what to do with his money, unsure of what makes him happy. A life of pursuit, of fruitless pursuit…

Bemelmans concludes, ending with a wonderful little bit of poetry that smacks of absurdity and the futility of the chase:

“The egotist loses everything. You cannot live for yourself. The pursuit of pleasure does not bring it [happiness]. But all this has been said, and better – for example, by Bert Brecht in the Three-penny Opera:

Ja, renn nur nach dem Gluck,
Da rennst Du nicht allein,
Sie renne alle nach dem Gluck,
Das Gluck rennt hinten drein.

[You, go – run after happiness!
You’re not alone, you’ll find.
They all run after happiness –
Which runs along behind.]"

Our endless, pointless, futile, and ultimately destructive quest to define ourselves

Yes, that's a long title. But it's something we find ourselves coming back to lately, this relentless human urge to define oneself. Why? Why the need to believe that we are anything more than this conglomeration of atoms stuck together at this particular moment?

We were having a conversation with our wife the other day that turned to an old acquaintance - in fact, a mutual acquaintance who first introduced us. Thus, without this individual's involvement, we would both be leading separate, and perhaps dramatically different, lives. We have been pondering this, as it gets to the root of this whole chimera of identity with which we are all so obsessed.

There is a branch of physics that holds there are a virtually infinite number of universes (the multiverse), with a new one created each time anything could go one of two ways. Thus, the universe in which we find ourselves, rather than representing "reality," might simply be one among a countless number of other realities. Whether or not this is true (and even among those who believe this, there is resignation it could never be proved), it introduces an interesting way of looking at things. In short, perhaps we are free to choose which of these universes we inhabit merely by adjusting our future choices.

On the other hand, perhaps the whole concept of being free to choose is itself an illusion. We came across a fascinating piece the other day by John Derbyshire, in which he recounted a conference on consciousness:

"The disciplines most prominently on display at Tucson were neuroscience and philosophy. These two fields had collided quite sensationally in 1985, when Benjamin Libet published his discovery that the subjective experience of willing an act is preceded by the brain activities required to initiate the act. The measured gap between unconscious initiation and conscious decision-making was less than a second in Libet's experiments, but later researchers have since pushed it back to seven seconds.

Seven seconds! Your brain starts up the neural processes necessary for you to push a button. Seven seconds later you experience the wish to push that button. You then push the button. Where is free will? Where Schopenhauer left it, perhaps. Loosely translated: "We can do what we want, but we can't want what we want."

Well. This is truly bizarre stuff. If this is to be believed, then our "desire" to write this post occurred after some sort of neural event in our brain that created the desire.

Interestingly, while these views seem like polar opposites at first glance, they in fact lead one to the same conclusion with regard to identity--namely, that it is an illusion. In the first case, the concept that there are a countless number of "ourselves" coexisting in parallel universes is a pretty clear refutation that there is any reality to what we consider the self, while the second suggests that even our arguments against the self are mere physical manifestations of underlying neural processes - in other words, we don't actually "decide" to do things, but instead react to firings in our brain. (To clarify, we're not sure what to think about the first, and think the second seems pretty logical. But we don't spend much time dwelling on it...)

So where does this leave us? Living in the moment, laughing at our human foibles, and trying to be compassionate to others. Was all that decided by some chemical event in our brain seven seconds ago? Maybe so. But at least we didn't try to unravel the even more bizarre mystery of non-locality...

You'll Get Nothing And Like It...

It is the great myth of humanity that one can be both pleasure seeking and content. Notice that this is different than saying pleasure will not lead to contentment; this is also true, but we are making a stronger statement. We are saying the act of seeking pleasure is inconsistent with living a content life; not only does pleasure not bring contentment, but the two are, in fact, mutually exclusive.

We admit, it took us some time to appreciate the distinction here. And don't misunderstand us--we still "enjoy" things like good food and wine. But (and this is the critical distinction) we don't expect anything from them.

Let us explain.

One of the most common objections we hear to the absurd is from people who simply refuse to believe their family does not matter. While they have sympathy for the concept in general, the concept that their wife and kids are no more important than dust mites is simply a leap too far. So let's unpack this a bit.

First, it is of course true (as we have argued many times) that the reason we believe family is important is purely biological--as gene replication machines, our primary "objective," as it were, is to protect and promote our own genetic code. It really is that simple. (As an aside, we have an absurd friend who has a great line about why his kids "matter"--"They're just so cute!")

However, we are concerned with something else here--the issue of dependence and its corrosive effect on contentedness. Consider the following situation--you have a fight with your spouse that is not quickly resolved. This results in a terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach that you simply cannot shake. Now we ask...how should one best handle this situation?

Well, let's break it into its components. Why, you must ask, does it bother you that your spouse is upset. One popular answer is that you care about her, and do not want her to be unhappy. Hmm...This sounds awfully good; who can argue with such a selfless, egalitarian concern?

Horseshit! Not only is such a position untenable, but it is doubly corrosive for attempting to fob off our own unhappiness (or non-contentedness, if you will) on another. What does it mean that you "care" for your wife? That you want her to be happy? All right...why? Because her being happy makes you happy.

Think on that for a minute...

All right, here's the nub of the issue. When we rely on external things--be they people, events, or objects--for our happiness, we abandon any pretext of living a content life. This is no less true with family than with anything else--the self-proscribed "family man" may be looked on more favorably by society than a rock collector, but both rely on external forces to complete their quixotic quest for internal peace.

The difference with family is it is easier to hide our true motivations. We want our children to be happy, we tell ourselves (and others) for their own good. No! We want them to be happy because it makes us feel good. If not, then why do we care more for their happiness than another child down the street? What about starving children in Uganda? Our "concern" for our family is nothing more than a socially-acceptable trick that allows us to mask pure biological self-interest (gene replication) with compassion and selflessness.

Consider again the words of Epictetus:

"As on a voyage when the vessel has reached a port, if you go out to get water, it is an amusement by the way to pick up a shell-fish or some bulb, but your thoughts ought to be directed to the ship, and you ought to be constantly watching if the captain should call, and then you must throw away all those things, that you may not be bound and pitched into the ship like sheep: so in life also, if there be given to you instead of a little bulb and a shell a wife and child, there will be nothing to prevent you from taking them. But if the captain should call, run to the ship, and leave all those things without regard to them. But if you are old, do not even go far from the ship, lest when you are called you make default. Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life."

Expect nothing. It's the only way to get what you want.

Throw your stuff away!

It’s amazing how a simple task can suddenly illicit absurd thoughts.

We were cleaning out our home office the other day. We go through probably 50-60 books a year – both for work and pleasure – that span all kinds of topics and disciplines. And so if we don’t go through our bookshelves every once in awhile, we’d be buried by them.

So, as we usually do, we went through them and pulled out books we thought we’d never look at again, or that weren’t all that good to begin with, etc., etc… We put them in a box, which we then donate to the library or sell at the local used book shop. We usually have no problem filling a box with thirty or so books.

We always have a good feeling after we do this. Usually, we also clean out our files, too – we are old school and still maintain actual newspaper clippings and the like – filling up a wastebasket with paper. We feel somehow rejuvenated and clean, like stepping out of a shower. It feels good to get rid of stuff.

And then we had the sudden urge to throw all of our books out… Really, we wondered, what does it matter that we keep any of this stuff?

It doesn’t matter – and it shouldn’t matter, to the absurd man.

We didn’t do it, but we were tempted. There are practical reasons to keep them, we told ourselves (perhaps in lame justification). We make our living here and ours is a working library for the most part, though there are books here whose mere spines gazing back at us, inspire.

But we thought to ourselves if we lost it all, we could and would get on just fine. And so it brings us to an important absurd point – to shun attachments, and not just material things either. It could be ideas or a sense of personal meaning.

“Our attachments are our diseases,” Henry Miller said. And he was right. It is these things that need care and feeding. They require our attention. We wrap our sense of self and surrender our equanimity when we invest in things, physical or otherwise.

This is quite a challenge for most people.

Thoreau warned long ago when he wrote it would be better if men never inherited houses and barns and land. For these things become chains. It is hard to live merrily and without care when you have these things that demand time and money and management.

Or as Tim Krieder humorously puts it, many of us fall victim to “the usual tragedies: careers, marriage, mortgages, children.” Not that the absurd man can’t do or have any of things… it’s just his mental attitude toward them is different. There is a sense of detachment.

We like what Picasso once said, “I want to live like a poor man with lots of money.” This is to say, he wanted to be relatively care-free with his money and he didn’t want to fall for the trap of having lots of things make demands on him that he would otherwise not entertain.

Tom Hodgkinson, the editor of Idler, writes approvingly of this idea: “This unmaterialistic attitude can be achieved on any income. What we need is not to care. How I love people who don’t care, those free souls, the bright of eye...”

And, we add, those absurd men…

But...but...last time I did not receive a piece of cake...

We have not posted in a while, partly because we felt the debate regarding the existence (or lack thereof) of personal meaning had grown a bit stale. Indeed, one of the interesting parts about this blog has been that, while there are seemingly endless topics that relate to the absurd, in many ways the stories are all the same. However, one interesting divide we think worth exploring is the issue of what is "real" versus the best way to live a contented life.

Now, we have argued ad nauseum that the self is an illusion, and the only way to logically believe in such an entity is to also believe in some "other" aspect to the world beyond the physical. This, to us, is not debatable. However, it is also the case that we cannot dismiss the notion of this "other" world out of hand. In fact, given that all experience is filtered through our human senses, we cannot ever know if we are simply brains in a vat (akin to The Matrix), or if "reality" is the work of a single consciousness (ie, solipsism).

So...we are not so interested in "truth," per se. Do we believe the self to be an illusion? Yes. But we cannot (now or ever) prove this to be the case, much as we can never prove God to be non-existent. Absence of evidence, as the saying goes, is not evidence of absence.

Thus, we are left with pursuing the best way to live a contented life. And it is here that we find the recent debate over personal meaning to be most revealing. As the defenders of personal meaning argue, the absence of universal meaning is irrelevant to their conception of individual meaning, in which they find joy and significance in their own lives. Family, comfort, good food and wine...these are some examples of things one can find personally meaningful, even if one accepts the futility of existence.

Well, as Lee Corso might say, "Not so fast, my friend!" We recently read David Foster Wallace's famed "cruise ship essay," and for those who have not read it we cannot recommend it highly enough. The nub of the piece is that the cruise ship industry is selling something tremendously alluring but ultimately undeliverable--the promise to satisfy all our desires. As he puts it:

"For this-the promise to sate the part of me that always and only WANTS-is the central fantasy the [cruise ship] brochure is selling. The thing to notice is that the real fantasy here isn't that this promise will be kept but that such a promise is keepable at all. This is a big one, this lie. (It might well be The Big One, come to think of it.) And of course I want to believe it; I want to believe that maybe this ultimate fantasy vacation will be enough pampering, that this time the luxury and pleasure will be so completely and faultlessly administered that my infantile part will be sated at last. But the infantile part of me is, by its very nature and essence, insatiable. In fact, its whole raison consists of its insatiability. In response to any environment of extraordinary gratification
and pampering, the insatiable-infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible dissatisfaction."

This--the insatiability of human appetites--is the problem with personal meaning. Personal meaning, by definition, is wanting certain things over others; preferring certain states of affairs; imposing some arbitrary notion of meaning based purely on our animal instincts and prior experiences. It is the root of human unhappiness, and the source of all conflict. To want is to be unhappy; to desire is to try to control things one cannot control; to impose a hierarchical structure on things and experiences is to set oneself on a never-ending treadmill that leads only to despair.

Let us also say, to head off one obvious objection, that we of course feel such things. However, we recognize such feelings for what we believe them to be (manifestations of our physical nature), rather than seeking to imbue them with meaning. We get frustrated, angry, hungry, aroused...but we don't dwell on it. Instead, we move from moment to moment, free of the self-imposed yoke of worry and regret.

None of this is new, of course, and we close with a quote from Epictetus' 2000-year-old Enchiridion, which we also highly recommend:

"Of things some are in our power and others are not. In our power are opinion, desire (movement towards a thing), aversion (turning from a thing); and in a word, whatever are our own acts. Not in our power are the body, property, reputation, offices (magisterial power); and in a word, whatever are not our own acts. And the things in our power are by nature free, not subject to restraint or hindrance. But the things not in our power are weak, slavish, subject to restraint, in the power of others.

Remember then that if you think the things which are by nature slavish to be free, and the things which are in the power of others to be your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will blame both gods and men. But if you think that only which is your own to be your own, and if you think that what is another's, as it really is, belongs to another, no man will ever compel you, no man will hinder you, you will never blame any man, you will accuse no man, you will do nothing involuntarily, no man will harm you, you will have no enemy, for you will not suffer any harm.

If then you desire (aim at) such great things, remember that you must not (attempt to) lay hold of them with small effort. You must also leave alone some things entirely, and postpone others for the present. But if you wish for these things also (great things), and power (office), and wealth, perhaps you will not gain even these very things (power and wealth) because you aim also at these former things (great things)... But certainly, you will fail in those things through which alone happiness and freedom are secured.

Straightaway then practice saying to every harsh appearance: You are an appearance, and in no manner what you appear to be. Then examine it by the rules which you possess, and by this first and chiefly, whether it relates to the things which are in our power or to things which are not in our power: and if it relates to any thing which is not in our power, be ready to say that it does not concern you"

Death - again...

“No man can be ignorant that he must die, nor be sure that he may not this very day.”

- Cicero: De senectute, c. 78 B.C.

“We pass away out of the world as grasshoppers.”

- II Esdras IV, 24, c. 100

Well, our grandfather died after a four-month long bout with cancer. The experience and conversations we’ve had around this event inspire many absurd thoughts.

For instance, death, we know, is a natural thing. It is a door that we all must walk through. We expect it. We write about it here often. Awareness of the inevitable end is a core part of the absurd. And yet, it is not something one can experience nor is it something we see much of.

Albert Camus wrote eloquently on this point. “What is blue, and how do we think “blue”? The same difficulty occurs with death,” he writes. “I tell myself: I am going to die, but this means nothing since I cannot manage to believe it and can only experience other people’s death.”

We think Camus is on to something. We have been expecting our grandfather’s death, yet when it happened, it felt… strange.

Or our mother put it, “It’s surreal… It’s like one day he is here and then, he isn’t anymore.” The sentiment begs all sorts of absurd questions – such as who was he exactly? What was he? The self, we’ve contended often, is a powerful illusion. In death, the illusion shatters like a crystal vase dropped on a hardwood floor. There is no “self,” only a body. And soon even that will disappear.

Our grandfather in his semi-absurd ways, wanted no funeral or service. He wanted to be cremated and his ashes tossed into the ocean. No headstone. Nothing. This does not sit so well with our mother. But as she says, “He was not a religious man. He believed when you died, you were dead and that’s that. He never understood why families spend so much money and time on things like a casket and a funeral.” This sounded rational to us, we thought.

There are things he left behind, of course; evidence of a life, of choices made – a closet full of clothes, old shoes and personal knickknacks of all kinds. But these are just things. The true ephemeral nature of life is starkly clear.

As Bomstein said over wheat beers and brats at Absurd HQ the other day, people are defined by their connections to other people. Our grandfather now exists as a memory only among those who knew him. Thinking of this reminds us of our own fragile existence.

His death also brings other absurd feelings more to the surface. For example, our mother gave him a watch for his birthday. It needed adjustment. Our grandfather took it to the jeweler where our mother bought the watch. They wanted to charge him something for the service unless he had the receipt. So he goes home and asks our mother for the receipt. She sends it in the mail. In the interim, he falls ill. The watch is never adjusted.

It is but a small example of one of life’s small tasks left undone. In view of his death, the triviality of the task is absolutely clear. It really does not matter now… but did it matter even before? The absurd has us answer definitively that it never mattered.

It makes us think… Think of all the things in a life that would remain undone if you were to disappear tomorrow. The garbage would not go out. The lawn would go without mowing. And that coupon you meant to use would expire.

Death casts all such things in a ridiculous light. This is not a bad light, necessarily. This is one area where people misconstrue the absurd. We are not saying the absurd man never mows the lawn or performs the day-by-day tasks of everyman. The absurd man simply knows in his mind how meaningless it all is – not just the day-to-day tasks and concerns, but the whole enchilada of life.

This doesn’t prevent him from enjoying himself. Quite the contrary, as we’ve said many times before. The absurd man finds comfort in this knowledge that all is temporary and nothing matters. He finds it freeing. It gives his life a sense of lightness and air.

This is the power of the absurd in our view. As Camus put it: “What is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? And what more legitimate harmony can unite a man with life than the dual consciousness of his longing to endure and his awareness of death? At least he learns to count on nothing and to see the present as the only truth given to us…”

Reasons and Persons

"There are some people who believe that our identity must be determinate, though they do not believe that we are separately existing entities, distinct from our brains and bodies, and our experiences. This view I believe to be indefensible. What explains the alleged fact that personal identity is always determinate?...There are other people who believe that, though we are not separately existing entities, personal identity is a further fact. These people believe that personal identity does not just consist in the different kinds of physical and psychological continuity. This is another view that I believe to be indefensible. If we are not separately existing entities, in what could this further fact consist?...We cannot defensibly believe that our identity involves a further fact, unless we are to believe that we are separately existing entities, distinct from our brains and bodies." --Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons.

We have written several times about Douglas Hofstadter's book "I Am a Strange Loop," which was arguably the book that "pulled it all together" for us. In it, Hofstadter strongly recommended Derek Parfit's book "Reasons and Persons," a near-600 word philosophical tome that has sat, largely unread, on our bedside table for the past few years. We pulled it out the other day after seeing it referenced in a comment on a fascinating NY Times piece on whether this should be the "last generation," sent to us by a reader.

Let us put this as simply as possible. Get the book. Read it.

To be honest, the book starts with a tedious technical discussion of logical ethics that can probably be skipped. (It was this section that dissuaded us from reading further on previous attempts.) But beginning with Part II, which discusses issues of time and identity (e.g., why should one care if something happens in the past or future, or to one's self or another), the work is a masterpiece. It methodically and thoroughly debunks any and all attempts to create a vision of self-hood without reliance on some otherworldly realm, and lays out some very interesting implications for how one "should" act in the face of such facts.

We will not spoil the surprise here, in large part because this is a book that must be read to be truly understood. While some of the conclusions will come as no surprise to readers of this blog, others seem highly counterintuitive at first glance - we have found ourselves re-reading passages several times in the past few days - and the depth of the arguments is something readers should experience directly.

None of us actually exist. There is no "there" there. And yet, in an incredible cosmic accident, we find ourselves possessed of the ability to comprehend and study this truly incredible world we inhabit. A reviewer once described the late David Foster Wallace as someone who had a "tendency to explore the experience of living even as he’s living it" - this, in a nutshell, is the wonder of the absurd.

Mencken on the meaning of life

H.L. Mencken is one of our heroes.

And yes, absurdists can have heroes, if only for inspiration, if only – as the great Hunter Thompson put it – to show that the “tyranny of the rat race is not yet final.” That there are those who have broken through the conforming mold of society, and all its self-importance and made up meanings, to carve out their own large life, well lived, fully aware of the absurdity of that life.

In the course of writing this blog, we’ve assembled our own wall of the absurd, filled with characters absurd or semi-absurd – Henry Miller, Ludwig Bemelmans, Jim Harrison – among others.

H.L. Mencken is one of those. Whether he’s cutting through the inanity of religion or skewering myths about politics, Mencken’s pieces are full of sharp little edges that horrify those who take themselves seriously.

We’ve been reading Mencken on Mencken, a new collection of previously uncollected autobiographical pieces written by the Sage of Baltimore. What inspires us to write today is a piece titled “The Meaning of Life,” in which he gives absurdity some play.

Reading H.L. Mencken today, one is hard-pressed not to think about how public discourse has changed over the years. Mencken’s writings in the first half of the 20th century would not find a publisher in today’s warmed-over mainstream media. Yet in his day, he was a titan, holding down a spot at the Baltimore Sun, editing mainstream magazines and writing books, most of which sold well.

Take his view on religion:

“The act of worship, as practiced by the Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves groveling before a being, who if he really existed, deserves to be denounced rather than respected. I see little evidence in this world of the so-called goodness of God. On the contrary, it seems to me that, on the strength of his daily acts, he must be set down a most stupid, cruel and villainous fellow.”

Imagine seeing that in today’s Washington Post or New York Times!

On why Mencken does what he does – which is mostly write – he says, “I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs… Life demands to be lived.” A simple absurd view unspoiled by a belief that the work is important or meaningful, which is how a writer today likely answers that question. There must be a moral cause, an urge to make the world a better place.

Mencken would have none of that. In reading about his views on life, you’ll find no sentimentality or wishfulness about wanting or having an eternal soul, nor will you find a craving for meaning of any kind.

“I do not believe in immortality,” he writes, “and have no desire for it. The belief in it issues from the puerile egos of inferior men. In its Christian form, it is little more than a device for getting revenge upon those who are having a better time on this earth.”

And then he concludes his rumination on the meaning of life with a perfect absurd statement, truly wise in many respects.

“What the meaning of life may be, I don’t know: I incline to suspect that it has none. All I know about it is that, to me at least, it is very amusing while it lasts. Even its troubles, indeed, can be amusing… When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness. No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever.”

Good old Mencken, absurd man!

The Trouble With "Personal Meaning"

"It’s the Kantian sublime, what you’re experiencing. There’s your life, and then you get a glimpse of the vastness of the unknown all around that little itty-bitty island of the known.”--from the short story "The Entire Northern Side Was Covered with Fire," by Rivka Galchen.

"I want to do what I want to do!"--George Bailey, It's a Wonderful Life.

Almost from the moment we started this blog (or so it seems), we have been engaged in a debate about whether one can legitimately draw a distinction between universal meaning (i.e., that there is something beyond the physical, and thus some underlying purpose to human life), and so-called "personal meaning," essentially something that has value only to the individual in question. Those who espouse personal meaning generally claim they simultaneously reject universal meaning, at least so far as one can do so--such a point is, of course, unprovable either way.

As one recent commenter put it: "In the example of the father gathering up his little girl in his arms, the minute mechanical description is the circumstance, the sublime feeling is the significance that transcends the simple act...So when I say meaning I am implying a significance that goes beyond sectioning off a certain class of human (gene-replicating) desire, which would simply be the circumstance."

There are several issues here worth exploring. First, as we have discussed before, the concept of personal meaning is reliant on a non-physical "self," and thus cannot be so easily separated from universal meaning. What is the entity that experiences this meaning? Does it exist independent of its physical processes? If so, then we are talking about something non-physical; if not, then such "meaning" is analogous to (and no more significant than) the shifting of sand on a beach.

Second, we are continually mystified by people who claim the above statement is incompatible with living a content and compassionate life. In fact, we would argue just the opposite--it is belief in the self, in the concept that "I" have independent thoughts, needs, and desires, that leads to all strife and conflict. This may seem counterintuitive at first; indeed, one of the most common objections we get to such a position is: "Well, then, what's to stop you from becoming a mass murderer?" In short, if nothing matters, then surely it is irrelevant whether one hurts others?

But this is to miss the deeper point of irrelevance. In short, the idea that causing harm is somehow justified by the lack of meaning is ridiculous--what is the entity that "enjoys" subjecting others to pain? The fact that one's actions are meaningless is not enough--one must consider why one would prefer to act in such a manner, and the only legitimate answer is belief in a self. Succinctly put: show us a man who accepts the self is an illusion, and we'll show you a man who is truly content.

Finally, as we have noted before, we are not so much seeking "truth" as a lifestyle best suited to what we believe is an utterly pointless existence. And it is here that we find the concept of personal meaning most misleading. Simply put, personal meaning seems a way to have one's cake and also eat it--one can reject the concept of transcendent meaning, while at the same time assigning a sort of "temporary significance" to one's own desires.

Unfortunately, as with most things that sound "too good to be true," this (admittedly seductive) idea contains the seeds of its own demise. For how does one define this personal meaning? As noted, calling it significant only to "me" is a circular argument, as it requires existence of a non-physical self, which forces one to reconsider the universal meaning one has already rejected. It is not, in other words, a consistent belief system, but rather an "out" for those who accept the absurd theoretically, but nevertheless shrink from its true implications.

And yet...it is those very implications that hold the key to the content life! It is only when one embraces the meaningless and arbitrary nature of existence that one is free to live truly free from worry and regret, no longer seeking ephemeral pleasures and suffering inevitable disappointments, but rather living moment to moment, knowing one's actions are no more significant than leaving falling from trees, or dinosaur droppings, or even the bits of matter that scientists tell us come into being every so often in empty space, only to vanish the very next instant...

Deathbed Scenes

We’ve been traveling widely again and will spare you the itinerary, save that we are now on an island that rims the Caribbean Sea. We’ve come to say our goodbyes to our grandfather, who is on his deathbed.

Thoughts, thoughts… absurd thoughts, perch on our shoulders. It is hard to organize how we feel.

Seeing him thus brings home the absurd in a tangible way. We think about all the moments in a life, the things one might change, the worries one might shed, if – if – one truly believed the deathbed scene was a fate unavoidable.

As much as it seems obvious, and as much as people would admit that they will die someday, their actions betray them. If you truly and deeply knew it would end, would you worry as you do? Would you behave as you do today?

It’s easy to think back on a life for moments you thought were greatly important, only to realize how trivial they were years later. A pitch swung on and missed that ended a game seemed a big deal at the time and is now hardly remembered. A pot roast burned. A train missed. A favorite shirt ruined. A watch lost. Upsetting at the time, but clearly trivial now…

It’s harder to think back on a life and realize that all moments were equally unimportant. This is the absurd view – and it does not come naturally.

We use this line of thinking often however, questioning ourselves in the present as if we were thinking back on this moment in the future. If we are upset that the floor is so dirty or the kitchen a mess, we think of the deathbed scene. We doubt we will say then, “Gee, we wish we had washed the floor and cleaned the kitchen on that Sunday afternoon back in oh-ten.”

In fact, we doubt we will remember much of what’s passed. Disappointments, anger, envy – all seem to dissolve in time, like an antacid pill in water. Knowing this is helpful in maintain one’s sense of equanimity in the present.

We find it helpful when we are irritated – or annoyed or worried or whatever – to stop and ask ourselves why, and to really try to pinpoint exactly what burr is under our saddle. Is it something specific hanging over our heads that we must do? Is it something else?

Whatever it is, we identify it. Or if there is more than one item, then we list them in our heads. And with each one we trivialize it – no matter how important it might seem! We tell ourselves it isn’t important and it doesn’t matter. We recall the deathbed scene.

Then, we feel better almost immediately. It works for us. Try it and see. It may work for you, too. It helps us see the world in a more absurd light – and restores that sense of equanimity.

To paraphrase some old Scotch proverb – better to enjoy our living moments, for we are a long time dead!

Lucid Dreaming

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laugh, sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away
Dream On...Dream On...Dream On
Dream until the dream comes true

--Dream On, Aerosmith

Have you ever had a lucid dream? We had one once, a long time ago, and the memory lingers. Not the memory of what transpired--like all dreams, this one has dissolved in the fog of the past--but the memory of the intense feelings it evoked. Namely, we woke feeling invigorated, with a burning passion to do that again!

Lucid dreams, of course, are dreams in which you realize you are dreaming, and are thus able to control your actions and (more importantly) everything about your environment. Want to fly? No problem. Sex with Megan Fox? Done. In short, a lucid dream is essentially a movie in which you not only star, write, and direct, but are not subject to the rules of the physical world. In many ways it is akin to the "training module" in The Matrix (or, to be honest, the Matrix itself, at least for those able to recognize it...)

Try as we might (which essentially consisted of reading a few articles about lucid dreaming and experimenting with a couple of methods, such as "watching" ourself fall asleep), we were unable to replicate the experience. However, it occurred to us recently that the only difference between lucid dreaming and what we think of as "reality" is the aforementioned control over our environment (well, that and physical laws). In other words, what is to stop us from treating life as a lucid dream?

We have been experimenting with this for a few weeks and it has been an interesting experience. The concept is similar to the notion of playing a role, but with a key difference--when you treat life as a lucid dream it has the liberating effect of eliminating the illusion that others "exist."

Let us explain. In the cult classic "The Family Man" (all right, perhaps a classic only to us...), there is a scene where Nicolas Cage, freshly installed in his new "role," is asked by his 5-year-old daughter if he is really her father. No, he explains, he works on Wall Street ("with the big buildings"), and this is only a "glimpse" of an alternate life. "Well," the little girl asks, seemingly on the verge of tears, "where's my real dad?" This brings Cage up short--good question! This little girl in an alternate universe wants to know where her daddy is...and he has no idea!

But consider why this is unsettling to Cage. He is assuming the little girl exists in some sense, and that the absence of her"real" father is upsetting her. This, then, makes Cage feel bad, as he is the proximate cause of her distress.

Alternatively, think how the scene might play were Cage having a lucid dream. (First, he wouldn't be changing a diaper...) In a lucid dream there is no point in caring what others think, since they do not exist anyway, but are mere creations of our own mind. We know neither they or we are "real," and thus do not spend time worrying about what they might be thinking. We live purely in the moment, thinking neither of consequences nor past grievances.

(To head off an obvious rejoinder here, let us address the issue that such a viewpoint encourages one to cause harm to others, since it doesn't "matter." While this seems to logically follow, in fact it does not--one who renounces the self has no more desire for violence against others than to put out his own eye. In fact, it is the pernicious notion of the self that instigates and perpetuates such acts; one who has no self sees his physical incarnation as akin to sand on the beach. If there is no self then one is part of everything, and even the concept of violence ceases to make sense. Think about it...)

This brings us to the concept of playing a role, which, valuable as it is, has a flaw we only recently recognized. Put simply, while an actor in a play knows his actions do not "matter," and the people he interacts with are also playing roles, underlying this is the latent belief that he (and others) have some sort of "true nature." The "real" Nicolas Cage, for example, is apparently a chateau-loving fool on the verge of bankruptcy. But why do we differentiate this from other roles he has played? What if The Family Man were a long-running soap opera? For that matter, what about soap operas themselves? Imagine an actor that played a role on a soap opera from the age of 3 through death--who is the "real" person? What about The Truman Show?

Our point, of course, is to expose the fraud of the self for what it is--a diabolical illusion to which we are genetically in thrall, and our obsession with which has led directly and inexorably to the conflict, strife, and extraordinary unhappiness that define the human race.

Camus in China

We’ve had a long absence from the blog. Well, we’ve been traveling in China for work and frankly barely had time to do much of anything. We zipped hither and yon from morning to night, crashing at the hotel in the wee hours of the morn only to arise hours later with a serious baijou-induced hangover and begin again.

(Those Chinese don’t do business without some serious baijou drinking – sort of like the Russians and their vodka. The stuff is worse than drinking tequila straight…)

We did think about the absurd quite a bit. It was hard not to. China is a strange and wonderful place with all kinds of experiences you’ll not likely find at home. It’s like a shot of… well, something… and we had a half of mind to just wander off in the hinterlands and never return.

Except that we don’t speak Mandarin… And that we were stopped by police officers more than once wondering what we were doing – we were in places where they don’t see foreigners much – which means we probably wouldn’t get far before we’d be spending the night in some Chinese jail.

Not that it would matter or that any of this matters, which is the point of this meaningless blog…

Always when we travel our mind sometimes wanders on the various ways in which we might die and never see our front door again. Most people find that depressing, we suppose, but we are fairly comfortable with the idea that one day we’ll die. It’s a matter of how.

Besides, as a passenger on China’s back roads, we saw lots of ways we could die and narrowly avoided a few, we think. We thought for sure that truck was going hit us and how we avoided it we can only chalk up to the improbable skills of our shurfu. (We think that means driver, but we’re not sure and too lazy to look it up.)

We sometimes take notes when we travel, carrying a little black notepad with us to jot down absurd thoughts and other ideas as they occur. We jotted down an interesting conversation we had with a fellow who makes chewing gum and buttons – don’t ask us how the two are related. He was fairly introspective about life in chaotic China… and somewhat absurd.

We met him at a local restaurant in a little town (by China’s standards), the kind of place where you pick what you want for dinner out of water tanks (for the fish and eels and whatever else). Then you sit down, smoke cigarettes, drink horrible alcohol and wait for them to bring your food, which come surprisingly fast. We’ve never had such fresh seafood…

Anyway, our man begins, after lighting what must be his 40th cigarette…

“It seems to me that life is a matter of routine… No matter where you are, you get settled into a routine. You do the same @#$# over and over again and you don’t think about it. I’ve always hated that.

“I left my village at an early age in search of adventure. I started my own business. But even still, I get stuck in the same routines… The same @#$#@$ every day… and I realize that you can’t escape it.

“Maybe somewhere someone has figured out a way to keep from falling into routines and falling into prisons of fixed ideas… I don’t know. Sometimes I think happiness is simply a matter of accepting whatever comes your way and not giving a @$#@ about it one way or the other.”

Well, we heard this little monologue and thought it a good time to offer up the absurd. He seemed mostly there. So we began to tell him our story, about how we stumbled around wondering what life was all about, and how we came to find absurdity in bits and pieces and how Camus put all those pieces together for us…

Since life has no meaning or purpose, we went on, we are really free – it’s as if life is a game that you can’t win or lose, that you only endure and accept… Then we stopped. Our host had a quizzical look on his face. Perhaps we had given him too much at once and his head was going to explode or, more likely, perhaps we rambled nonsensically.

”This Camus,” he said, taking another drag from his cigarette and then putting it at his temple in deep thought, “is he Chinese? I think I know this man…”

Terry Francona - Absurd Man?!?

"He's day-to-day. Just like the rest of us."--Terry Francona, Boston Red Sox Manager, on injured catcher Victor Martinez.

The absurd in a single cartoon

Trapped in the "I"

We came across an interesting piece in the Washington Post the other day, in which the author (Kathleen Parker) described the efforts of NPR religion reporter Barbara Hagerty to find "proof of God." According to Parker:

"In her book, "Fingerprints of God," Hagerty tries to answer a question that has plagued her for years: Is there more than this? She couldn't accept mainstream science's answer that we are 'a collection of molecules with no greater purpose than to eke out a few decades.' Instead, she sought out spiritual virtuosos (people who practice prayer, religiously), as well as neurologists, geneticists, physicists and medical researchers who are using the newest tools of science to discern the circumstantial evidence of God.

Her research led to some startling conclusions that have caused no small amount of Sturm und Drang among those who believe theirs is the one true way. She found that whether one is a Sikh, a Catholic nun, a Buddhist monk or a Sufi Muslim, the brain reacts to focused prayer and meditation much in the same way. The same parts light up and the same parts go dark during deep meditation.

Apparently, we have a 'God spot' and 'God genes.' And though some are more generously endowed than others, spiritual experience is a human phenomenon, not a religious one. Different routes to the same destination.

Understandably, these are not glad tidings to some. Centuries of blood have been shed for the sake of religious certitude. But transcending the notion that only some prayers are the right ones might get us closer to the enlightenment we purportedly seek."

So far, so good. Indeed, this section could easily pass for content on this very blog, so closely does it hew to the notion that religion is simply an illusion created by humans to divert their gaze from the meaninglessness (and capriciousness) of reality.

However, the next sentence literally left us agog: "Hagerty is optimistic that science eventually will demonstrate that we are more than mere matter."

Honestly, we sat staring at the page, mouth hanging open, for more than a few seconds. Here was someone who devoted a significant portion of her life to searching for an answer to this question (including taking a leave of absence from her job to research and write a book about it!); yet, when all the evidence (not 75%, or 80%, or even 99.99%) pointed to one inescapable conclusion, she...dismissed it. Good. Freakin'. Lord.

Let's be clear. This is not some discussion of opinion, this was a woman who embarked on a planned and scientific expedition, theoretically in search of the "truth." But when all the evidence points to one (and only one) conclusion, she...decided to ignore it. As she put it: "I have concluded that science cannot prove God--but science is entirely consistent with God." Ah.

To be fair, we have not read the book (and have no plans to do so). However, it seems fairly clear that Hagerty (who was raised a Christian Scientist and now considers herself merely a Christian) was not, in fact, looking for truth, but rather to advance her own point of view. No harm there, of course, but we do find it fairly consistent with regard to people's reaction to the absurd.

The question is, why? The answer, as we see it, is that to deny the existence of God (ie, something beyond the physical) is to also deny the existence of the self. If there is no afterlife, no greater power, no "other," then the concept of the self simply fades away into ridiculousness.

This is actually a pretty simple concept to understand. In fact, we had an interesting window into it a few years back when our dog died. We "adopted" her when she was six weeks old, so she essentially lived with us for her entire life, and she was a wonderful dog--sweet and playful, if not particularly obedient...So where, we wondered, did this personality go when she died?

See, this is the thing. The illusion of the self is so powerful, so all-encompassing, so vital to people's ability to function, that most people simply cannot conceive of life without it. Thus, we invent ever more elaborate schemes to justify our belief in something for which there exists not one shred of empirical evidence. This, of course, is what religion has always been about--believing something for no good reason (i.e., "having faith") to make ourselves feel better.

This is why Hagerty's "project," to be frank, bothers us (yes, smart-ass, we realize we don't exist either...) - she was basically attempting to put a scientific sheen on religion, and when that failed (when she could not, in other words, come up with a single thing to which she could point and say "See!"), she simply redefined the terms of the game. Oldest trick in the book, actually (God works in mysterious ways...), but others should not fall for this transparent (and, ultimately, kind of sad) sleight of hand.