After I had stated that I was intending to leave the brethren, I had many dark warnings about the cold hard world outside, telling me that there was nobody caring, that everybody was, at base, selfish and nasty, and ready to use me for what they could get and treat me as disposable afterwards.
Up until now, I've been amazed at the kindness and general humanity I have found at every turn. Which makes it all the more shocking to come across vindication of those dark warnings from the last source I should expect.
It has made me think - not an uncommon reaction with me, you might say.
What am I doing? What is the point of me as a person? Should I crawl under a rock and pretend to the world I'm not really here? Is it really vanity that keeps me posting my thoughts to the wider world, and not a combination of record for the future and resolve-stiffener for the present, as I have been telling myself?
I have been reading instead of writing, and going over some old notes, which I have found to be quite reassuring.
The first quotation is from the wise and humane Isaiah Berlin:
Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.
That, folks, makes sense to me. Yes, there are things in the world which need attention, evils to be addressed. Yet it seems to me to be unhealthy to be dominated by those evils, as though the burden of them is sufficient that they have won the fight before it's joined. To have as one's highest goal the destruction of something, however bad it may be, is to devote one's life to negativity. It is surely preferable to look at life as it could be, see the gains that could be made before they exist, and aim to change the world for the better in every small way one can. In other words, not to demolish the thing one objects to but supplant it with something better.
That's not always possible. Maybe not even often. But I, for one, think my life is happier for looking at it positively. And who says every purpose must make sense or be achievable as long as there's gain to had from the pursuit?
Next up is Marcel Proust:
"There is no man, however wise," he said to me, "who has not, at some time in his youth, said things, or even led a life, of which his memory is disagreeable and which he would wish to be abolished. But he absolutely should not regret it, because he can't be assured of becoming a sage - to the extent that that is possible - without having passed through all the ridiculous or odious incarnations that must precede that final incarnation."
Which is a long way of saying (as is Proust's wont) no regrets. I have a strange background. I have believed odd things. My life has been spent a peculiar way. But here I am, and all that has shaped me. If I wish it hadn't happened, not only am I wishing myself away, but I am losing the opportunity to learn from it all. Some people I have recently come across seem to feel deprived by their pasts, and rake over them with increasing bitterness rather than face the future squarely with the benefit of knowing how not to proceed.
I can't find the provenance of the next one, but I think it's relevant:
We most hate those who are most like us, but with their faults uncorrected.
This is quite a deep insight, I think, and those who have to do with the many varieties of brethren and ex-brethren can see how true it is. To an outsider, the differences are so slight as to be indistinguishable, but the little details that are not as they should be when perceived by a different group seem to fan hatred. I think it's as well to catch oneself in the tendency, and realise that if I'm looking at someone with hate, then they are more like me than I care to admit. The uncorrected faults are reason for pity, maybe, if I've corrected them in myself, but not more.
Some people appear to think that having been wrong in the past qualifies them as uniquely right in the present, and waste no opportunity of instructing others.
Finally, one that inspires me, and reminds me of the difference between my past life and the one ahead, from Jean Prevost by way of Clive James:
But my soul is a fire that suffers if it doesn't burn. I need three or four cubic feet of new ideas every day, as a steamboat needs coal.
Now there's something to live for.
All this is feeble philosophising as practised by a rank amateur. But it helps me, at any rate.
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4 comments:
Il faut avoir assez de musique au cœur pour faire danser sa vie. (Céline)
Please translate for this peasant!
I support your proposition, survivor, that directing your life to the pursuit of positive outcomes is more appropriate than simply fighting evil.
Don't be disheartened by what you see as an attack from a source you expected to be supportive.
One aspect of the world which brethren fear is that the healthy environment of robust debate is often hurtful and threatening.
It is also true however, that the most effective solutions come from the clash of strongly held views just as the best steel comes from the hottest fire.
Irvin Yalom, one of my favourite authors, talks about four ultimate concerns of life being death, freedom, existential isolation, and meaninglessness.
The need for meaning in human lives is often met by religion.
If, as is the case for many of us in this secular world, religion does not meet this need, the seeking out and embracing of other ways of filling our lives with meaning is more challenging; but ultimately more satisfying than having it handed down from the shelf.
As I have stated elsewhere I am not particularly impressed by Clive James.
It seems likely to me that you are attracted to him because you have a similar mind in the sense that it churns through a great many more ideas before breakfast than most other mortals.
However, in my view he falls into the group you have yourself criticised in that he spends his considerable talent astutely observing his world in a critical and cynical way rather than putting his shoulder to the wheel of progress and reform.
I hope for you that you are able, in due course to rise above that and make a contribution worthy of your talent.
I believe Survivor is already operating far above the level of critical and cynical observation, and is already making a contribution worthy of his talent. His acutely perceptive analysis of the EB phenomenon and its critics has been of great value to me in shaping my ideas about how best to undo the damage that I once contributed to.
Keep up your philosophising, Survivor and others. Philosophy is often accused of trying to answer unanswerable questions, solve insoluble problems and pursue unattainable goals. But as Survivor said, “Who says every purpose must make sense or be achievable as long as there's gain to had from the pursuit?” Whole books could be written on that topic.
Céline loses something in translation, but he says you need enough music in your heart to make your life dance.
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