The Experience of Living

‘Baby, I’ve been waiting,

I’ve been waiting night and day

I didn’t see the time,

I waited half my life away

There were lots of invitations

And I know you sent me some

But I was waiting

For the miracle, for the miracle to come’

(Leonard Cohen)

 

Years ago, I read Samuel Beckett’s dirge Waiting For Godot. The book is about two homeless men sitting around talking about their experiences whilst they are waiting for Godot. The book is utterly tedious but maybe that is the point, to show how life happens whilst we are waiting for something that never comes and instead of waiting for the miracle/Godot we should focus on the day to day.

 

I recently read a new biography of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Whilst I was reading the book, with my previous knowledge of his work, I started to realise the paradox which is the life of Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard was concerned with how to live not only as a Christian but also as a person. He was engaged to be married but broke it off as he, in my opinion, could not reconcile the notion and reality of marriage. How would it impact his life? Would it consume him? Ironically it was the breaking of the engagement which consumed his whole life, not helped by seeing the lady whom he scorned in the streets and at church regularly. Whilst Kierkegaard thought long and hard about it, trying to find justifications for his actions (which he put into his writings) painting himself as being heartless or too devout etc., Regine overcame the public shamed of having her engagement broken and got married, or in other words, lived her life.

 

I know you really loved me

But, you see, my hands were tied

And I know it must have hurt you,

It must have hurt your pride

To have to stand beneath my window

With your bugle and your drum

And me I’m up there waiting

For the miracle, for the miracle to come

(Cohen)

 

And herein lies the paradox of the life of Kierkegaard. Whilst he was spending his time trying to understand what it would mean to live, to be alive, he was not living.

 

Advertising signs that con you

Into thinking you’re the one

That can do what’s never been done

That can win what’s never been won

Meantime life outside goes on

All around you

(Dylan)

 

The paradox of Kierkegaard, and many others who try to understand the phenomena which we call life, is that ‘I know it looks like I’m movin’ but I’m standin’ still’ (Dylan) or as Kafka, another one whom one might say spent too much time trying to understand life and not living it, said, to paraphrase, if life is a ladder mine is the stutter before the first rung, is that one might be ceasing one’s own life experience  (‘You can withdraw from the sufferings of the world — that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature — but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.’) and thusly not living.

 

Ah I don’t believe you’d like it,

You wouldn’t like it here

There ain’t no entertainment

And the judgments are severe

The Maestro says it’s Mozart

But it sounds like bubble gum

When you’re waiting

For the miracle, for the miracle to come

(Cohen)

 

One thought which played on Kierkegaard’s mind is that life is understood backwards, in that life happens and as we reflect upon what has just happened, we understand, or even recognise, our experiences and thus denote that we are alive/living/experiencing. And one, from a psychological, biological etc. viewpoint must see this as being undeniable and as Schopenhauer said:

 

‘What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, ‘to kill time’, i.e. to escape boredom.’

 

Which again creates another paradox. If one is busy ‘becoming’ who they are then such things as holidays are not part of their lives as all of there energies are spent on trying to formulate one’s own existence. Once one reaches the level they desire/can manage then they settle down and cease ‘becoming’ in the active sense, ‘I know it looks like I’m movin’ but I’m standin’ still’, and when one stops becoming one starts to go and thus we have one of the greatest problems that has ever faced anyone (literally in the sense of the 19^th + centuries when our lives have ceased to become a struggle just to survive) how to find the balance between being and living.

 

And to leave you with the words of Bob:

 

‘Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn

Suicide remarks are torn

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece

The hollow horn plays wasted words

Proves to warn that he not busy being born

Is busy dying’

 

‘till next time

Ethics and History

One topic which is brought up ad nauseum is the tendency to reappraise history from a modern (our time i.e. 20/21^st Century) standard and the pass judgement.

 

We see this all of the time with monuments, statues, women’s rights, race and so on and so forth. The conversation, for me, always seems lacking, not only because we live in bubbles which echo our thoughts back to us and keep out any other thoughts that we might run the risk of hearing, but because the conversation seems clouded by the absolute notion of black and white.

 

One of the signs of this age, maybe of every age, is the tendency to put things into single concept categories- it is good or bad, it is right or wrong and thus a binary state is created. Whilst the divide between the two sides seems to be widening on issues such as Trump, Russia, Brexit, plastic, race and so on and so forth, maybe it has always been this wide, the arguments are moving further and further away from the realms of discourse and more and more towards an absolute state of ‘I’m right and you are wrong’. Any challenges to our assuredness that we are right are met with hostility stemming from insecurity. If we were confident in our views then the words of others could be digested within ourselves and within conversation and who knows what the outcome may be- maybe a change of opinion, maybe a reinforcement of our original opinion, after all the whole point of having an opinion is to challenge it for only then can one grow.

 

Slavery is an issue which has been debated extensively in the last couple of years with neo-Nazi marches and people screaming hysterically in the streets about the evils of an inanimate lump of metal (to fully disclose my bias, I think both sides are, well, stupid). The real issues are never discussed so let’s try to have a brief look at them here.

 

• You cannot judge previous cultures by different times.

 

This notion is 100% correct for each culture/civilisation is a product of its times (and vice versa). If it was culturally acceptable to have slaves in the US, Rome, Greece, Asia etc. then to have a slave would not be a cultural anathema, it would just be part and parcel of the times. The other day, someone was ranting about how the bible has very few women in. The correct response would be- it is a book 2/4 thousand years old, there are very serious problems happening now or, if you really want to pick apart the book, why not mention a God to whom human life is nothing more than a device to obtain praise from or to squish. The bible itself is a product of its times and even if it is literal, we lack the knowledge (context) to understand the times in which David could let his concubines/mistresses die and get patted on the head by God as being good. This just illustrates how we cannot reassess a past time by modern (or just different) standards.

 

• Ethics are not cultural, they are human.

We are all human (if you are not, then congratulations and please get in contact, I’d love to hear from you and learn from you!) and thusly have the same inherent value. My life is worth as much as yours and yours as much as a slave’s and a slave’s as much as a Queen. Human life contains the same value, thusly when one considers slavery one must say that, although we cannot judge the culture, one can judge the people. Who would deem themselves superior to another? How can slavery not exist if a culture is too demented to understand that all human life (easy now, just saying human for the purposes of this piece) is of equal value? Then again, with health care being taken away from the poor, with footballers raping girls and then saying ‘I thought she would be happy’ (see the BBC news site), with millions starving to dearth and so on and so forth, it is easy to see the crimes of the past are still prevent in our blood and minds and we still are not placing an equal value on human life. There is, in all respects, no difference between us Egyptian slave owners et al.

 

Many of the arguments are revelatory as we cannot deny that all human life has and inherent equal value and those who claim otherwise are, probably, the kind of people who would want to rule an empire or own slaves and have some half-baked cock-and-bull (I’ve never use that phrase before! A real first!) story to justify why, under the name of liberty, that one should be able to remove or deny the inherent value of another. So, to summarise, no you cannot judge a different time and culture from your own times but yes you can judge other people, and yourselves, from the most basic of measures: do I value the inherent value of all human life equally.

 

Well, do you?

 

‘till next time

Suffering and Beauty

 

Two of, in my opinion, the greatest authors ever (‘I say it so it must be so’ -Dylan) are Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky and Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust. What sets these two apart from many others of the great novelists (Sartre, Balzac, Hesse, Sagan et al) is that their work contains an element which transcends the confines of literature and becomes something of great significance.

A little on each author- Dusty was arrested when a meeting of revolutionaries was raided (although there is no evidence that I have seen which suggests that he was ever an active member) and sent to a Siberian camp for four years (see my entry on Suffering for more information). Dusty was led out in the snow, naked, and lined up against the wall, with others, to be executed. Just before the commander laughed (in my imagination) and said ‘sorry boys, we’re just kidding, the ruler was changed last night and you have all been set free,’ the shock and the cold caused Dusty to develop epilepsy. Dusty also spent the last years of his life fleeing from debt collectors given his gambling addiction (see his novel The Gambler for a greater understanding of the pitfalls of gambling). The German philosopher, Nietzsche, said that Dusty was the only psychologist that he had ever learnt anything from.

Proust spent the later years of his life in bed suffering from a life-long chronic illness, in between he wrote À la recherche du temps perdu, a book which spans the entirety of one’s existence in self and in society (note: when he was in his early 20s, the physicist Robert Oppenheimer went on a trip in the mountains. He recounted that he had had his first great love affair whilst there which experts now believe (given his lack of female companions) refers to reading Proust by torch light as the others slept). But what is it, other than beauty of prose, that sets these two apart (note: this is not a subjective analysis (as much as it cannot be) as I would say others are my favorites such as Poe but is attempting to be objective, the irony of which you will see soon)) is their depth and understanding of not just psychology but also of emotion.

The Czech writer Franz Kafka wrote in his letters to Milena Jesenska (with whom he had an affair by letters (mostly)), ‘nobody sings with such pure voices as those in Hell, what we take for the song of angels is their song’, or in other words, those who suffer most sing with the most beauty in their voices, maybe linked to the notion of Michel de Montaigne who said that ‘The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene’ as though they have risen above their clouds of suffering. (Note: this thought is often expressed in popular culture through the unknown quote, ‘The loneliest people are the kindest. The saddest people smile the brightest. The most damaged people are the wisest. All because they do not wish to see anyone else suffer the way they do’)

Both Dusty and Proust suffered greatly however, I believe that the cause for their suffering was actually what hurt them. The work of both is very sensitive and they see all people, no matter how heinous they may be, as being complete and beautiful in themselves, not weird or absurd, but themselves. This could be an example of Martin Buber’s I-Thou where one sees another as being complete in their self and not as an extension of the one looking and through this both Dusty and Proust see the humanity and it must be said, that others (‘Hell is other people’- Sartre) are the greatest of all burdens, to take unto yourself the whole entirety of another is something which must only be reserved for the strongest spirits (‘The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge–a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.’ Nietzsche).

 

So, to summerise, I believe that the reason for the greatness of the work of the likes of Dusty and Proust comes from their ability to take in the subjectiveness of others and present it in an objective manner whilst still displaying the humanity which enables them to see and feel what many others can’t (see the irony now?). from this we can conclude that which we often call genius is in a large part having a great sensitivity and the ability to transform this into something which is both personal and universal (hey, more irony!).

 

‘till next time

 

Note: I would be remiss not to recount the story of Beethoven is this regard. Beethoven suffered from what we now call Asperger’s Syndrome, making most social interaction painful and his senses heightened. Whilst he was starting to go deaf, a gentleman approached him saying that someone he was intimate with had lost a child at birth and had closed off to the world. Beethoven, suffering greatly, went to the lady’s house and played for you pieces he would improvise each time. Eventually, after a few weeks, he seemingly found the scale of which she was emotionally attuned and she broke down in sorrow for the loss of her child, from that point onwards she was better.   

CIPping from the Cup of Life

 

The other day, I was speaking to a director of the National Health Service (NHS). The director, Mr X, was telling me about his plans for the next financial year (19/20).  The biggest topic for him, this year, is his Cost Improvement Programme (CIP), or in other words, how to reduce spending to reduce deficit. If he met his targets in the coming year the government would give a £2.8 million ‘grant’ to write off all debt and, in theory, make the Trust revenue neutral going forward. You may not be surprised to hear, given the number of people in the UK, the number of health problems, many self-inflicted from alcohol and drug abuse (to admit one person to A&E (Accident and Emergency) costs £10,000), that since its first year, the NHS has been at ‘crisis point’ (you can check the old microfiche yourselves) and probably always will be, but the question must be, why is this?

 

One of the best measures of the greatness of a country (or a person for that matter) is how they treat those whom they arbitrarily deem to be ‘inferior’ (you know, the folks who are too dumb to be born to wealthy parents) and the fact that something, which should be a fundamental right to all, namely, life, is such  a high political issue should be deeply concerning. When one thinks of the NHS from without one imagines a company which is run with the only issues coming from rising health costs and budget restrictions. This could not be further from the truth. The NHS operates on public money which means that it can only plan 5-10 years in advance and in that time each Trust has to tender (apply for with an application, presentation and great expense) for a contract to provide health care in the area for the next period. This might sound like good business, but health care should not be a business, it should be a fundamental right (note: the NHS is not ‘free’ or ‘socialist’, it is free at point of use but the cost comes from taxes and prescriptions. Also, what many people call ‘Socialism’ is really just to the right of centre. We have never seen a real socialist experiment therefore we cannot speak of it as being a ‘real’ thing). Although business is an abstraction, the lives it deals with are not.

 

Mr X remarked that it is not just the lives of patients but also the staff with high numbers of staff being signed off sick with stress- physical and mental. But, you may be thinking, this is business, and you may well be right (‘We live in a political word/love don’t have any place’ – Dylan). Business is the crowning jewel of civilisation but if one is to look at it closely, one would see that it is wholly superfluous as it does not fit into anything which would fit into a natural definition of nature, rather, as I have said before, humans conquered their basic needs- food, shelter- and then were bored and decided to start enterprise, of which the most mass produced product is neurosis.

 

In his meditations, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a man with whom I admittedly have a problem- how can write about ethics, values, virtutes and the temporality of life whilst butchering and conquering half the world is beyond my comprehension, unless of course he was employing Robert Lifton’s notion of doubling where one extols, to themselves, their virtue to hide, from themselves, their own nastiness, writes:

 

‘From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations.’

Or in other words, don’t skimp on matters of humanity for business.

Another problem that Mr X said was common is that often managers will refuse to follow expert advice as it is not what they are used to doing themselves. This, undoubtably, puts their staff in an unpleasant situation and adds to the general malaise of negativity.

 

The NHS is a great institution but with the Government promising to get ‘more involved’, and poor management, it seems that things will get worse before they get worse. But that is ok, after all it is only the poor and sick who suffer.

 

As I was leaving, I saw a public bench, on the grounds, with a sign on it that read ‘refrain from using this public bench, it has been reserved for the use of T only’.

 

‘Sometimes I wonder what it’s gonna take to find dignity’ (Dylan)

 

‘till next time