There is a gigantic hole in the middle of my philosophy

Over the last eighteen months or so I have been working out a new approach to life. Not new in general terms, as there have been plenty of misanthropes before, but one new in relative terms, because... one new to me. In short, I have decided to stop wasting my time on human contact. The strategy is undemonstrative: I am not going to move onto an uninhabited island or into a tree; as far as the outside world is concerned there won't seem to be any difference: I continue to be friendly and polite; I say hello to my neighbor and to my fish monger; I attend some new year and birthday parties; and I answer -- briefly, but not by any means coldly -- the correspondence I continue to receive; I am still prepared to run small errands or lend money. But, unlike before, I put no psychic energy into any of these interactions; and I limit my investment in them to the bare minimum: I smile, I say Happy New Year, and Fine, thanks!, send a card, and -- move off. In other words, the way I used to handle my interaction with 98% of the human kind -- polite but stand-offish -- I now apply to 100% of them. No more intimate conversations, no more bosom friends, no more lovers. I now live my life totally alone, in silence, between myself, my books and music, my journal and the occasional blog entry -- whose only reader I am. The only person I ever talk to about anything important is the only person who has ever had anything interesting to say to me -- myself.

*

The theory has been that since no one I have ever met in the flesh (including all the commentators on all my blogs past and present) has had anything interesting to say to me (and with good reason, most being less intelligent than I am, less well-read, less well-informed and less well-traveled); and since most of those I have met though their books have likewise proven undeserving of my intellectual attention (vast majority of books having been a disappointment); indeed, even many of those who have written great books -- books which I consume with passionate pleasure -- Thomas Mann, for example -- have likely been dull in personal contact; I would simply be better off not wasting my time on any of them. And, so far, it's working. The most difficult aspect of the plan, I had expected, would have been the absence of women in my bed, but even that I do not seem to miss. I no longer have disappointing conversations, I am not bored, I do not have to stoop to low intellectual levels, I do not have to unravel hidden agendas, I do not have to please. There really is such a thing as zhu-che, it turns out, self-sufficiency.

The success of this plan has led me to entertain a kind of extreme philosophical position: that the existence of other people is totally indifferent to our happiness.

But, of course, that is not true.

A typical happy day in my life will be filled with two kinds of experiences: nature and culture. Nature -- sunbathing, riding a motorbike in the mountains, watching reflections in the water, sitting through a sunset, dusk and nightfall while listening to birds and breathing in the perfume of tropical flowers wafting on the evening breeze, strolling in my garden in the moonlight or at day-break -- seems to prove the point: in those experiences the fewer people around the better, zero being the ideal number. But culture disproves it. Opera, film, drama, ballet, painting, calligraphy, philosophy, architecture -- all of these take up at least half of my time; without them my life would not be as rich or as happy as it is; and they are, alas, the work of -- men. Not the sort of men I have known, or ever can; and, if Thomas Mann is any guide, not the sort of men one would want to talk to in person any way, but men all the same.

So, it proves, that men are essential to my happiness.

And that is a very disappointing thought.

More on loneliness

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1.


My aunt – an elderly childless widow living in exile – feels lonely and phones me up to chat. "What are you doing today? And what did you eat for lunch?" I stifle my benign yawn, put aside the book - or perhaps the porcelain cup, or the snuff bottle, or the Ten thousand li of mountains and streams - and humor her: I am nothing if not filially pious, and if this sort of verbalization eases her loneliness, then I am glad to provide the outlet – be her receptacle, so to speak, when she needs to go. Yet, I do not have the slightest clue why or how this act of conversation should serve to make her un-lonely: I, for one, do not usually derive much spiritual gratification from learning that others have had, say, an oyster pancake for lunch. Do you?

A friend also feels lonely – despite having good, frequent relations with her family, gobs of friends whom she meets several times a week, and a job where she interacts with dozens of customers everyday. Frustrated, she’d overcome her loneliness, she is sure, if she only had a man to live with her. Taking walks together, she thinks, would splendidly do the trick.

But this is far from certain, as the case of yet another friend proves: he is married: he has a wife with whom to take his walks, a wife with whom, he says, he is intellectually compatible. Yet, he too, feels lonely, complains about his inability to connect (with her and others), and remembers wistfully some occasion on which he exchanged glances with a stranger; and another on which he told some insignificant other how he felt about this or that, stuff, he says, he couldn’t have told wife. "We connected then”, he continues downcast, as if that exchange of glances could possibly have meant a damned thing; and as if he could not have confessed his innermost feelings to a cat, or a fish, or a wall with the same result.


2.


Loneliness is one of the most basic concepts in popular psychology: it is used as self-diagnosis, as explanation for the actions of others, as a mechanism for successful business plans (e.g. Friend Finder et al.), of political ideologies even ("alienation"). It might seem therefore that we all understand it -- the term being so ubiquitous and so easily used by everyone; but the truth is that -- we don’t. The term’s dictionary definition -- “absence of others” -- how very Aristotelian of the Webster! -- seems weak. Furthermore, it does not appear to have an antonym, meaning that it is unfalsifiable (and thus, some might say, nonexistent): “presence of others” means nothing, certainly nothing good, and sure as hell does not cure the disease: as every other pop song will tell you, one can feel desperately lonely in the midst of the thickest crowd.

(OK, pop songs do not use big words like “desperately”. Still, you get the point).

The truth is that the term “loneliness” is used automatically, mindlessly, out of habit, to cover every instance of unease and discomfort for which we do not have some other, immediate explanation. If we have not eaten, we are hungry; if he have not drunk, we are thirsty; if we lack money, we are poor; if we want to take a holiday, but can’t, we are burnt out; if we experience sexual desires but have no release, we are frustrated; if we break our leg, we are in pain; but if we feel a kind of unspecific blah – well, then, we say, we must be lonely. It is a catch-all term, and like all catch-all terms, it means perfectly nothing.

"Loneliness" is a word we use out of intellectual sloth: when we do not feel like peering deeply into our souls to see just what it is that is really wrong with us.


3.


Watching The Wire (it may well be the best drama produced for TV ever) in the company of a pop-psychologists (i.e. every normal person) is instructive: observing the frustration, the drinking, the desultory sleeping around, the catastrophic marriages of the heroes and heroines, the couch pop-psychologist, if s/he gives it a thought at all (which s/he almost never will), will say:

"These people are -- oh -- so lonely".

And, having said that, s/he will get a chorus of appreciative murmurs all around from all the other pop-psychologists couch-assembled:

"Yeah, dude! Lonely!"

But the pop-psychologist is of course bullshitting us -- and himself (or herself): these people are not lonely, they are dumb. They work a frustrating, exhausting job -- in itself enough to make anyone unhappy and which therefore they should quit forthwith and god only knows why don't; but, as if it were not enough, crucially, when they are done with it, they don’t know what to do with themselves; a problem which could easily be solved if they learned how to read, for example. Really, would not an evening with Dem Zaubergberg be more satisfying than drinking and whoring and feeling miserable afterwards?

Alright, perhaps reading is not their forte, maybe they are dyslectic, or just not verbally minded -- they do all seem to know but four words of English (though they conjugate them rather well). But are there no other options? How about chess, for crying out loud, or Argentinian tango, or pickling cabbages, or collecting bottle caps?

Contentment, says Czikszentmihalyi, comes from performing an absorbing activity; but in order to discover what that activity is for us, we must be what he calls autotelic -- i.e. capable of setting ourselves our own goals ("telos"). The Wire illustrates what happens to people who can’t -- which is everyone around, it seems.

To call this problem “loneliness” is thus not just to misdiagnose it – which is bad enough, since a misdiagnosed disease is per force maltreated; it is also pathetic: an attempt to blame other people for these people's own failures. It is to say: "These folks do not feel bad because they are stupid and do not know what to do with themselves" (which comes down to saying, in simple terms, "they are so damn boring that they bore themselves"); "Oh, no! They feel bad because they are lonely!", which is to say, if you parse it with the help of the same Webster: "because nobody loves them". There: it is their parents’ fault, their wives', their girlfriends', their siblings', their colleagues’; everyone’s. Poor little unloved they. What did they do to deserve this, eh?

The maltreatment of the condition which follows from this misdiagnosis is the prescription of a relationship – usually understood as romantic love – as cure; which is bound to failure: take two bored, helpless, unhappy people, who have no inkling as to what to do with themselves, put them together and – presto! – you get... happiness? How is that supposed to work?

But the prescription is eternal: people have always and everywhere sought happiness in love -- without any proof positive that it is to be found there.

Says a philosopher: when someone tells us “I love you”, the correct reaction is to ask “what do you want?” Cute, but not especially insightful. After all, it is not necessary to ask. We know what they want. They want us to un-bore them.

Loneliness

I found myself this morning explaining to my old acquaintance why it is that I do not plan to acquire spoken fluency in any of the three languages which I am currently learning. To illustrate the point I described the party I went to last night: there was not a single person there whose thoughts or opinions about anything I was interested to hear; or who would have understood the least bit of what I had to say has I chosen to say it. So we talked about going bald, hair cuts, and the sexual habits of our hairdresser. (Blah). Arguably, the conversation would have gone more smoothly if they (Dutch speakers to a man) spoke better English, or German, or French, or Chinese, or Japanese, or even Italian; but it would have been exactly as contentless, empty, and dull. I had known this before I set off for the party. I only went to be polite; and conversed to be polite; and then, feigning work, left early but also, I hope, politely. Had these not been my neighbors with whom I have to deal daily, I would not have gone and I am relieved to think that I shall not have to go again until New Year's Eve.

Loneliness is something people oft complain about in their lives; and the motivation commonly ascribed to their actions: meeting with the lads for beers, moving in with him or her, attending parties of last night's sort -- it is all explained by loneliness and the need to overcome it. But loneliness cannot be overcome: think about it: there is no adjective that describes its opposite, because its opposite does not exist. Loneliness is the essential human condition and the only way to deal with it is the way T. E. Lawrence dealt with his match trick (he lit a match and held it between his fingers until it burnt into a cinder, burning his fingers in the process). Ouch, said someone to him, having tried the trick and burnt himself. What's the trick?! The trick, old man, answered Lawrence, is not minding that it hurts.

Avon says

I had proposed to Brianna four or five meetings a year in various exciting and exotic locations: Paris, Istanbul, New Delhi; I said I'd cover all expenses and on each occasion give her a nice parting gift; and in between, I said, we could stay in touch by internet and phone every day. (Over the last several months I offered her plenty of emotional support and intellectual entertainment that way, which she seemed to appreciate, having no one else at the moment to do that). Now, you'd think a girl of her looks and prospects would jump at the offer. But no: she'd thought about it for a long time and at long last said that she can't meet me four of five times a year for a week or two; she needs, she says, to be emotionally involved for sexual intimacy to take place. That can't be quite true since she also says that what happened to us on her parents' couch was a one-night stand, she never thought it would repeat, and she was OK with that -- which all goes to say that emotional involvement is not really necessary. No, she admits, but she adds that for more, for anything regular, she needs to be emotionally involved. When I ask what that means, she names hugs and conversations; but what she really means is cohabitation: she wants someone full time, all the time. In other words, she wants -- everything. She'd rather have less of a man, less of financial security, less travel, less interesting life, and no gifts, but have that less full time; indeed, she'd rather take the risk of having nothing at all (as seems the likely outcome) than to have what I offered. How strange.

More Mourad

Though Mourad tries to sound funny, her description of her childhood does with time begin to sound whiny, and from time to time borders on that famous (and tiresome) anger of modern liberated women.

Whence does this anger come?

Perhaps her lack of understanding of her Indian family offers us a clue. Their -- Indian -- lives may be dull, enslaved even, but they are orderly: they know what to expect and how to behave in most situations; but Mourad -- a modern European woman -- is free and -- without a clue how to use that freedom. She has no access to the old models of being a woman; and the new models which she wishes to follow are incomplete, they are a work in progress, largely informed by ideas of justice and equality, they have not been sufficiently tested by life. We do not know whether they will work, or even whether they can. Many may not, especially the ones which assume that to be truly the equal of men a woman must be like a man in all ways, which probably can't be right, but which further assume in a simplistic manner that men are like this rather than like that, an assumption which is often insufficiently grounded in empirical observation, or at best based on poor sampling.

As a result the lives of modern women -- lives lived by the lights of the new ideologies -- are a work in progress, a living experiment; there are insufficient clues to know which experiments are likely to pay off and which will not; failures are frequent and painful; and the worst of it is that, given how short our lives are, and the irreversible nature of some experiments (such as having children), a failed experiment has a huge cost. Are modern women as a result more or less happy than women were in former times? Who knows; the truth is, that modern life is hard and full of pain and failure and disappointment.

And then there is the anger, intentionally released by feminist ideas, to be used as a weapon against oppressive males. It is a double edged sword: anger hurts the angry as much as it hurts those against whom it is intended to turn -- perhaps hurts the angry even more.

As was to be expected

Cette pense m'a long perturbee --

writes Mourad a little further, describing how, in the midst of the Second World War in Europe, by near-miracle she was saved from public orphanage and taken into a well-off family after her mother's death --

qu'avais-je de plus que de milliers d'autres enfants abandonnees, envoyees a l'Assistance publique ou les plus faibles mouraient? Sinon le fait d'etre une petit princesse?

Est-ce pour cela quel'on m'a gardee? Qui donc aimait-on? Ou etait-je, moi, dans tout cela?

The note is wrong -- in as many sentences -- on three accounts:

first: true princes (and princesses) do not bewail the injustice of their elevated social status, but see it rather as a call to duty (noblesse oblige, to whom much was given, etc.): our good fortune is supposed to give us a titanium moral spine, miss Kenize;

second: there is no such thing as "moi-meme" -- a person, an individuality -- apart from being the prince or princess that we are; one does not love a princess the way one may love any other girl; no princess who expects to be loved like any other girl deserves to be one; why: no such girl is one; and,

third: what is this base whining (in itself bad enough) to one's social inferiors (ie. the general public) about being unloved and unappreciated?

You are not a princess, Mme Mourad. I don't recognize you.

Reading Mourad with trepidation

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Cover art: John Frederick Lewis (1805-1876)¹, Lilium Auratium;
the vase is an Iznik (?) Imari²

Kenize Mourad, granddaughter of the last Sultan of Turkey, and daughter of the former Raja of Badalpur, comments early in her book³, while describing her father's obsequies in the old family seat somewhere "near" Lucknow:

De compassion, aucun de ces paysants n'aurait l'idee d'en eprouver pour cette homme qui fut leur maitre mais sut aussi les proteger, les aider dans l'infortune et accompagner leur vie non sans bonte, les exploitant moins qu'il n'est coutume. Car ceux qui exercent le pouvoir ne sont plus consideres comme des humains, de par leur puissance ils appartiennent a l'univers des dieux. Et qui aurait pitie des dieux?

Suddenly I am seized by fear and foreboding: what does Kenize Mourad, raised and educated in France-egalite, know about divine kingship of the feudal society? In her first chapter she discusses frankly her emotions: anger at the family for not having notified her earlier of her father's critical condition, grudges at her brothers for having been brothers (and thus more important in her father's eyes), at her father for -- as yet we do not know what.

But do we -- do I -- want to know?

Mme Mourad sounds like a modern French woman: confident, proud, and prepared to bare her emotional entrails which she is convinced are important and deserving of universal knowing. (Georges Sand comes to mind). Modern French women are no doubt interesting in their own right; but there seems to be just one way of being a modern French woman, and we already know what that is... More importantly, can one expect them to tell us anything truly insightful about the lives and minds of real kings and princes of another time and place, even if they should be their own flesh and blood?

I will read on Kenize Mourad, but gingerly and with trepidation. I have already heard everything westerners -- especially women westerners -- have had to say about Indian divine kingship, religion, love and family relationships, and I am sure I do not want to read it yet again.

*

This is just the gist of my misunderstanding with Angelica, too. I had told her that the emotions and the inner states of knights are a closed book to pretty much everyone knights ever meet in the modern world. She did not believe me: "If you behave in a certain way, she says, people will always understand it". But then -- how could she possibly believe me?

Akhila has known me longer and closer; she is also older and more perceptive: "I don't get you", she says with a winning smile. That, of course, is what one aims to achieve: since to be known is to be available: to be scrutable is to be common.


¹ Lewis was a so-called Orientalist, and long dead and forgotten before that term was thrown into opprobrium. In fact, the fortunes of his art revived suddenly in the 1970's, just about the time when the infamous essay by Edward Said was being hatched; from nothing his works quite suddenly began to command seven figure prices. (Indeed, was Said perhaps responding to Lewis's reviving fame?) I'd like to read more about how Lewis was revived. Anyone can recommend a book?

² To this day the most popular style of pottery decoration in Morocco is a kind of homw-grown variation on Imari. Is this the case across the Arab world?

³ Le Jardin de Badalpour, not, apparently, available in English, though, like the Kawabata-Mishima letters, you could read it in half a dozen other European languages any day of the week.

On sharing

(This post is obliquely related to my post on the feelings of connectedness).

Someone has recently extolled to me the deep satisfaction which followed upon his having shared with someone -- a rather emotionally distant acquaintance as it turned out, but (perhaps not insignificantly) one of opposite sex -- his feelings in the matter of the impending birth of his first child. "I could tell her", he tells me, "things I could not tell my wife".

When I probed further in order to to establish just what was so great about the experience, I learned that the person of opposite sex in question (shall we say, "the receptacle of the sharing activity"? or perhaps "the sharee", for short?) did not really have anything significant to contribute in return, and that her entire role consisted of nothing other than having heard out the sharing verbiage and then responded "adequately" to my acquaintance's sharing activity (which was, it seems, something along the lines of: "oh, that's wonderful, thank you for sharing", or: was it "I know, I know!"?) When probed further, my acquaintance admitted that the whole experience was not a matter of him learning anything interesting in return for his sharing efforts, but a matter of, er, "emotional intercourse" (as he described it, though his formulation resorted to significantly cruder terminology).

When he then, in the course of our conversation, accused me of not sharing -- being "closed", as he put it, or "secretive" -- as a matter of character, he said -- I answered that I simply saw no point in it. Bland drivel like "That's wonderful, thank you for sharing" (or "I know! I know!") has no therapeutic effect on my soul; I prefer my titillating interactions with members of opposite sex to be more consciously erotic in nature on both sides (even if it leads nowhere); but, most crucially, I can never ever ever expect any sharee of mine to have anything in the least interesting to contribute to any description of my internal states. This is, in part, because of my seven languages and nine countries (and forty-six years) on three continents (I do not know anyone who can match this sort of experience); and because of my vast reading in numerous fields (how many people do you know who read 1200 pages of non-fiction a week?); but mainly because everyone I ever speak to appears to follow the same age-long thought models which I have long since discovered to be false.

(These models assume all sorts of wrong things about the reality that surrounds us: such as that human beings search for love, that love is selfless, that parents selflessly love their children, that religion develops in us a high moral tone, blah blah blah).

Thus, in my last engagement on the subject of sharing, I described to someone my efforts on behalf of my aunt, who needs to find an apartment, a telephone, a computer, etc., all in a strange Asian country and tongue and who relies for all these things on me. Now, I genuinely like this aunt of mine, even though she bores me to tears with her conversation: I engage in that conversation, all the same, I told my interlocutor, with the sense of filial piety: yes, I am bored, but, what the heck, let her have it, I think to myself.

Replying to this, the sharee in question observed that my aunt being the only member of my family to give the least care about me, I better feel filial towards her. This, as far as I was concerned, exhausted our conversation: I had no intention of telling the sharee that human motivations are a mysterious tangle of all sorts of threads, and that not even Confucius himself could ever hope to disentangle just the extent to which my aunt actually cared for me for my own sake and to what extent she simply needed my help in her new, strange home.

Nor was I going to tell him that there was not a damn thing I ever wanted from my aunt, nor could I think of anything I might want from her, my aunt having very little of practical nature to offer; and that therefore I was indeed acting out of pure, unalloyed filial piety: not because she cared for me, as he put it, or more accurately speaking, was nice to me, but because I am generous and kind and filial and loyal. Which are, all of them, things that I am because I am a chivalrous knight.

Which is something no one I have ever met -- no living person -- seems ever to know diddly squat about.

Which is another reason not to bother sharing: what is the point of dumping on a sharee whose mental capacities are guaranteed to be exceeded by the dumping action?

Angelica says people will read the way one behaves and treat him accordingly; Angelica is mistaken: the so called people, having no conception of knighthood, cannot possibly treat me according to my behavior because they have not the brain capacity to understand it. To them I am merely odd.

That life is the enemy of philosophy

With a regularity which is no doubt statistically meaningful (and thus calls for an explanation, a master's thesis anyone?), conversations among the unreproduced turn to the topic of their relationship with the reproduced. Upon such occasions two things are invariably observed:

1. That the reproduced desire us to reproduce. Usually they do this nicely, telling us how nice and worthwhile is the experience, or, less nicely, how we are missing out (every PR man knows that fear of missing out is the single most powerful cattle-prod in his toolbox), but sometimes not nicely at all, as when they suggest that not reproducing is unnatural ("That's what we're here for"), or even immoral ("Why should you have it easy while we labor in childbirth and child-rearing?");

and

2. How their reproduction robs us. It robs us of our friends because those who have been our favorite conversation companions on topics which interested us (which is why we picked them as friends in the first place) now suddenly prove incapable of talking of anything other than their progeny's exalted status as the ultimate blessing upon the multiverse. Which is, of course, while the progeny remains in the initial (sausage) stages (and for a very long time afterwards) both laughable and dull in the extreme.

No more Heidegger for us, or Proust, or anything; the quality of the progeny's evacuation preempts all topics now.

*

This second topic is part of a more sinister aspect of reproduction which is that, unless the parents have sufficient financial resources to

a) hire domestic help in order to insulate themselves from the duller aspects of child-rearing (i.e. nappies, school pick ups, part-dates) and thus preserve for themselves a reasonable amount of free time in which to continue being themselves as they have been earlier; and,

b) more broadly speaking, have resources sufficient to assure that the arrival of the offspring does not ruin them financially and chain them to the tiller till their dying day;

then the arrival of the progeny means the end of their life as their life. They become little more than an adjunct to the progeny's life: its foot servant, its cotton-picker, its babysitter, its driver, and its slave-tutor all in one.¹

They are no longer their own.

Mysteriously, they don't deny it: they readily admit that their life has but one purpose now -- to assure the best possible future for their offspring -- and are mystified by our objection to this fact. Why would you not want, they seem to want to ask, to give up all you have for the sake of your children? And already the s²-word is already lurking in the background.

*

Now, there is a sense in which the unreproduced are held by the reproduced to be pupae of a sort: that is, unfulfilled human beings, imperfect and incomplete; ones assumed to be merely waiting to reproduce; indeed, ones who have failed to reproduce; and thus objects of pity in the manner in which one might pity a failed athlete.

The truth is that while there are perhaps some unreproduced who are like this -- desiring to reproduce and unable to -- there are also others who are hardened career criminals: we have no intention of ever reproducing, not for five minutes, and look upon our reproduced friends, now chained to the tiller for the rest of their lives, with silent but profound pity. Silent because it would be too cruel to tell them the truth that, in our eyes, they have mocked up, messed up, and thrown away their lives. Cruel because what could possibly be the point of revealing to them their own misery in all its stark terror -- if there is nothing they can ever do about it?

So we smile benignly and pretend that the sausage-like thing in the pram is indeed the eighth wonder of the world (and its evacuation extraordinary in every measure), that we do wish for one ourselves (or at least for more of the same for them), and that we are sorry that we have not attained to our reproduced friend's exalted status as Mom or Dad. It is out of pity for our friends that we do not tell them that the miracle that they deem to have achieved was no miracle at all; that the act is an ordinary act: baboons can do as much and as well; and so can chickens; and that their joy at the arrival of the munchkins is morally suspect: parents invariably talk of "their" children and are proud of their parental authority; but the children are not their children, or at least ought not to be; they will only naturally want to be their own, not their parents, which is what parents, even the best meaning ones, always, invariably forget; while authority is something to be earned over our equals, not something to be imposed by default over defenseless little things.

*

I suppose one could divide all adult life into ante-reproductionis and post-reproductionis; the ante-reproductionis is characterized by many things -- free time, disposable income, higher frequency of the experience of happiness and pleasure (there are incontrovertible statistics to prove this last point but the reproduced labor incessantly to deny their truth, or at least to disbelieve it); and -- by a certain sense of searching for something. This sense is mostly quite mild, or at any rate intermittent, in most; but it can be quite powerful in some, leading them variously into religious pursuits or debauchery or extreme sports; it is sometimes described as searching for answers; and by some deemed the proper concern for philosophy.

A certain popular cultural franchise proposed once that our whole species were no more than a kind of computer devised by a higher civilization to find these answers. Being young and as yet unreproduced one can easily identify with this view. And though the franchise then proposed, rather meanly (and thoughtlessly), that the questions to which the answers are to be found are themselves unknown, and thus the whole search is a kind of confused head trip³, the truth is the opposite: the question is but one, and always the same, and very clear: how should we live our lives? What should I, Joe Blow, do with my forty or fifty years here? The resource -- life -- is finite and wasting. There is a desire, a natural economic instinct, to deploy it most efficiently: to make the most of it, and now, before any part of it wastes away, gone never to come back.

And there is that sense that the endless cycle of birth and death and birth and death, as a good Buddhist might put it, or a life lived earning a living and then eating it; a life amounting in the end to no more than a tombstone, or a Wikipedia entry if we're lucky (as some consider it) -- that such a life does not amount to anything; that it is some preposterous waste of unknown possibilities which must surely be greater, more meaningful, more satisfying.

(I do not wish to argue here that this thought process is in some way right; it is enough for the sake of my argument to observe that it commonly happens with the young).

Now, this search is naturally time consuming. Let me illustrate: Angelica, when I took her for a motorcycle trip in the hills, exclaimed at the end of the day:

"My goodness, this is wonderful, so this is what I have been missing!"

And then, being the thinking girl that she is, reflected:

"It is not easy to know what one likes, or to guess what one might like, is it? And one needs so much free time to find out!"

And she was right: one does need a lot of time to find out how one can live one's life to one's own satisfaction; especially since so many seem hell-bent on diverting us in our search to their own purposes, telling us things like "Plastics!" or "Hold up the flag!" or, most commonly, "Having your own children is the most wonderful experience you can ever have."

But, for most of us, before we can make much progress in this regard, there comes reproduction and stops our research dead in its tracks. We now no longer have the time to try different things, or the energy, or the money; and most importantly, we no longer even want to, having suddenly transformed into breathless worshipers of our progeny's magnificent poop . The question how to live our lives, the central question of philosophy (at least in the way in which the ancients saw it), becomes irrelevant; it has been answered for us by life itself; life turned us into that into which it had always intended to turn us: slaves of the species reproductive process. In accepting this role, we agree not to question it. And thus there are no more questions which need to be answered. The way we ought to live our lives is this, it turns out: we ought to reproduce. Philosophy ends.

Then, as our progeny grows it will eventually become human (i.e. acquire a mind of its own) and almost as soon as it does it will, invariably, turn to the immortal question: how should I live my life? (Thus raising philosophy back from the dead). But it's question, too, will go unanswered, because, the progeny too, will end up reproducing and abandoning the search incomplete as a result. Philosophy's quest is thus doomed to failure.

Which is how I have illustrated my point: that life is the enemy of philosophy⁴.


Footnote:

¹ Given the direction public education is taking, less and less the last, since the public appears eager for us not to educate our progeny ourselves but to desire us instead to slave breathlessly to support a child whose mind then a total stranger -- a goobment appointed "teacher" -- will pervert without reference to our desire or opinion; this last means that, really and honestly speaking, once our children leave for school, at the tender age of five or six, we are no longer rearing it.

² As in self-centered, egoistical, parsimonious, miserly, self-seeking, ungenerous, small-minded. You catch the drift.

³ It will be apparent from what follows that the authors of this BBC series were very likely already reproduced at the time of writing its script.

⁴ I have suggested elsewhere that the history of philosophy -- everywhere, East and West -- could be seen to follow this pattern: that philosophy begins with the attempt to figure out how we should live our lives, from which attempt it promptly strays into meaningless drivel like debating "intentionality" or "causation". The number of excuses which philosophers can think up in order to flee philosophy's fundamental question is vast and potentially unlimited. They are all reproduced, of course.

A report from Chiang Mai's red light district (Loi Kroh Road)

The whores here are all uniformly ugly. Not old -- I'd say average age here is perhaps around 30 -- but ugly: they have misshapen bodies and ugly faces; the best looking are the ones which make no impression at all -- indifferent, inert. This is perhaps specific to this place: I have seen pretty whores elsewhere in Thailand (Pattaya had some pretty girls, as I remember, whores in Chiang Klang Road looked better, too).

In many ways they are like all Thai women: they are sweet to be around with, full of compliments and kindnesses and praises and agreeable noises; they are good cuddlers; this is all very heartwarming, even if they do keep asking for more money (one shouldn't take that personally, it's part of the job description). And, like all the Thai women I have ever had (all but one) they are awful in bed: they have low libido, low stamina, poor apparatus, mental reservations, and non-existent -- or at best fumbling -- technique.

Makes me wonder about all the men who keep coming back for more; and those who claim that Thai whores are great in bed. It is, I suppose, like Nahedeh said: most people simply have no idea about what sex could be. (Or else are easily satisfied). Nearly every porn-flick confirms the suspicion: every time I see one, I think to myself: they do this wrong: this cannot possibly feel good.

Relationships versus places, again

My Angelica tells me, constantly, repeatedly, that a relationship is what all women want; and how content she is in hers; etc. but then on the day of her departure she tells me that her lover is the main reason why she cannot leave the place where she lives, which is what she really wants. My dear Angelica does not know my theory that it is places, not people, who make us happy; and she is too young to know that most men's plans -- one day we will move to Thailand and live on the beach, one day I will make a killing in the stock market -- never happen. Life, says the old adage, is what happens while we make other plans; the adage is hackneyed, but its truth is eternal.

That women should marry while virgin

Under the heavy shawl of tropical night (embroidered densely with the clanging thread of cicadas) an older man and a young woman sat clapped in intense conversation.

He told her how it is when we had had that special lover, lost her, and then spend the rest of our life looking -- in vain -- to find another who could equal her.

How sad, she said, and, in return, she told him what she thought was a similar story: about that intense feeling of being alive which her first lover had given her -- and none has since; and how very nearly she came to throwing over everything she had when, after some years' absence, he suddenly turned up again; nearly thrown it all up for the sake of the memory of that special feeling.

This made him remember that his special she had once said the same thing -- used the same words, in fact -- "you make me feel intensely alive"; and that she, too, had been, on their first time, a virgin. He then remembered that, more broadly, all his virgins have loved him madly and forever afterwords; have been like putty in his hands; would have done for him anything he'd ever asked; and that all have remained intensely loyal to him, long after he'd left them.

And remembering this, he understood suddenly, and then most eruditely quoted the words of the very great womanizer specialist, Tanizaki, that there is no love like the love of a virgin; and seeing his interlocutor's face turn pale at these words, in a flash he understood it all and burst out: "Perhaps that is why the ancients recommended that a woman remain a virgin until she marry?"

"Perhaps yes", she said, in that quiet, barely perceptible voice in which important truths are sometimes spoken; and the quiet of the voice was confirmed by the intensity of the brief flash in her blue eye.

Such brief flashes are the stuff of life, rarer than nickel, more precious than uranium; and if there has been a gain in the quality of life of middle-aged men as a result of the last hundred years of change in European customs regulating the mutual conduct of them and young, beautiful women, it is this: Don Fabrizio could never have seen such a flash in Angelica's eye.

But then, he was able to waltz with her, so there has been a loss, too; and who knows who was the better off.

On love and unhappiness

.

1. Happiness: People versus places

When N and I became lovers, her husband asked her: why doesn't he move here in order to be near you?

This amused me, the here in question being Houston, Texas, and thus about the last place on earth I would ever set my foot in (except perhaps for Khabarovsk, Siberia, and Borkou, N'Djamena); let alone live there.

You see, my life where I was then -- living on the beach within the confines of a national park -- was simply too good to compromise for a day in order to be close to any woman: it is my considered opinion that we can derive much more pleasure from agreeable surroundings -- a nice apartment, a beautiful city -- than we ever can from the presence of another person in our lives, however wonderful. (Proof: when we find ourselves in nice surroundings, other people suddenly matter to us less: just consider how often we forget to send that post card).

For this reason, it is the first requirement of happiness to find a beautiful, agreeable place to live.

(And, indeed, I might add, the second requirement may well be to limit our dependence on other people, other people having several nasty habits, among the nastiest being the tendency to turn out to be less than we had thought them, to betray us, to leave us, and -- in the end -- to die).

2. How our lovers cannibalize our own happiness to assure their own

In time, the husband's question became symbolic of our whole relationship: N lived a life she hated, in a place she hated, surrounded by people she hated and filled with duties which made her dull and at times suicidal, while I lived an interesting life of leisure and adventure, not without its risks, and certainly not easy, but definitely not dull and definitely not unhappy. I liked meeting her, when we did -- she usually came to see me -- but I did not like being with her enough to want to compromise my interesting and beautiful life; it was always understood that she would have to go back to her miserable life at the end of each visit; I made it clear that I would never follow her there.

In time our partings became tiresomely tragic: about 48 hours before her departure she'd begin to grow somber and the pitch of her emotions gradually rose to tearful despair. I will miss you so much, she would say, sobbing; but that was, of course, only part of the truth; the rest, the thing she did not say, was that having tried my life, she simply could not bear thinking about going back to hers. Perhaps she didn't see it, either: perhaps she really did believe that if only she could have me in her life in her dull, vulgar, ugly and hostile Houston, everything would be fine: the city would seem prettier, more cultured, more interesting, and even the duties of her everyday life lighter.

And maybe so they would, but, of course, at what cost to me! And, importantly, they would only seem that way: that would still be the same hopeless, helpless life she's always lived, only that I would be miserable by her side.

3. How unhappiness is often the result of sloth

Now, on occasion, sadly affected by the story of her misery, I offered her some advice from my perspective; and good advice, too, because, after all, it was not very difficult to see what she needed to change in her life to improve it: move, if you can, redecorate, change the nature of your duties, do less of x and more of y, take more time off, etc.

Pretty much all my advice she deftly deflected: x was going to be impossible, y too difficult, z too tiresome and t -- well -- t was simply not done. If ever I tried to press the point, she bristled. Attempting any changes in her life seemed to her simply too formidable a challenge; to think about it alone was distressing. Her standard line was: I am in such a bad way, I have no energy left to change it.

I have since observed this phenomenon in my other lovers: unhappy with their miserable life, yet they would not only do nothing to change it but whenever our conversation turned to the topic they would go on and on and on about how there was nothing they could do and how all attempts to change it would be in vain, or naive, or impossible.

I don't quite understand this psychological mechanism; it strikes me as sloth; perhaps it is really a disease, a kind of mild depression. (The Matthew's effect?)

4. The usual

These other lovers have ever done as N has: doing nothing to change their lot, they instead launched onto affairs with me, seeking to find in love a balm for their misery. But this was always problematic: I will simply never sacrifice my own happiness in order to make someone else's life less miserable for the simple reason that the math does not make sense; and because I know that if I do, the sacrifice will only be temporary -- unlike most people, it would seem, I am not made to suffer a miserable life for any stretch of time, and sooner or later, usually sooner, rebel; and, finally, because I know that as a result of taking such a sacrifice I will only come to resent the object of such self-sacrificing love; and why would I knowingly want to do that?

So this is how it has ever gone since: the lovers reach out to me in the hope of improving their lives; I do offer them a chance to do so by giving them good advice and offering help if they follow it; but they don't, instead expecting me to make them happy by sharing more of their crap life, instead. And when I don't, they are bitterly disappointed, call me selfish, and worse; invariably, things come to an end in the usual recriminations, so well known to me that I know exactly every next word that is about to issue from their lips.

Come to think about it, every woman I have met these twenty years has been unhappy and miserable. I should wonder, perhaps, if there is something wrong with the way I pick them; or perhaps with the market: perhaps only unhappy women make themselves available for affairs. Or perhaps that is simply the way life is: perhaps with the few exceptions like myself, people really are by definition living dull, miserable, hopeless, unhappy lives.

Think about it.

A fable with a moral point

Several years ago, through hubris, foolishness, and lust I brought upon myself a disaster: my financial position suffered a severe set back, I became ill and severely depressed. In that darkest hour, I turned for help to friends and they all, to a man, refused. (Good honest friends, perfectly sensible logic: one does not back a losing horse).

Gradually, laboriously, I worked my way up from the depression; my health improved; and then, in the recent panic, I staked all on a wild opportunity. Like a hero in French nineteenth century opera, with blood-shot eyes and a sweaty brow, I gambled all -- and I won -- all.

O Fortuna, Imperatrix! Following on my darkest days, my best days have come. My health is not what it once was, but my life is comfortable, beautiful, and happy. It is a life of leisure in a beautiful place with a breathtaking view in one of the world's most magically beautiful cities; I eat and drink deliciously; surround myself with art and culture; and, in the afternoons, sit in stylish cafes amid blooming trees talking about love to young pretty things. Sometimes I pinch myself: am I not perhaps dreaming? But the pinch smarts: I am awake.

The best of it is this: had my old honest friends come to my aid in my darkest hour, I would now owe them in proportion to my subsequent success, ten or twelve-fold, a hundred-fold. But they didn't and I don't and my fortune is entirely my own.

I am unencumbered.

I am debt-free.

Mystery solved

One has always known that the IQ distribution in the society follows the Gaussian curve, but not knowing the size of the sigma, one didn't realize just how steep the curve is. It's steepness isn't much publicized, wikipedia for instance says nothing about it. Perhaps because it is a politically-correctly charged topic: wikipedia authors fall, I would guess, by and large in the 120+ bracket and simply don't want to be seen stating what that means. Perhaps, even, they don't want to even be reminded of it.

Well, I now realize why: because it turns out that it means rather a lot. The 120+ make up 2.5% of the population, which is small enough. But now, get this, the curve keeps falling from there: the 145+ are deemed 0.1% of the population. This means that by the time you reach 146, you have excluded 96% of all those who rank over 120. If you are 146, 96% of all over-120's are dumber than you.

Think about it.

Some cultural news from the BBC

Some East End gallery specializes in up and coming artists (buy it for a penny, sell it for a pound); some of these artists are then interviewed: one makes large installations of planes locked up in ice which then slowly melts (yeah, duude, cool, pass the sheesha); the interviewer asks her: you wear a chador (‘conservative’) but you make such modern works! She doesn’t have a damn clue, does she?

Meanwhile at the White House the What's-their-names are assembling a collection of borrowed art; it’s all modern (i.e. post-1950) of course, and American (probably has to be), including someone’s mediation on the square (!); except a DAY-ga (American enough when you pronounce it that way); except this last is judged risque (shhh… legs); but the former first lady was also cultured, we are told: she owned a de Koenig (along with hyper-realist representations of West Texas landscape). Ah, the uncultured me: who de hoeck was de Koenig?

Ah... upon consideration, don't tell me, I don't want to know.

An Algerian band in France plays, lousily, electric oud. You play such a mix of traditional and modern! gushes the interviewer. Huh?

Sorry, I don’t understand this language, though everyone around me seems to speak it.

Here, for instance, is Florian Zeller (who?) invited to speak at a kind of book fair in Egypt (probably because no one better would go), offering his cultural gems:

if the Islamic world generally had difficulties with the novel, it was because it was living to a large extent in an era that belonged to the period before modern times, bogged down in archaisms that were by their essence incompatible with the foundations of the novel: freedom, fantasy, complexity, the ambiguity of all truths and the suspension of moral judgement. In this respect, the novel could easily become the battle ground between two civilisations.

Freedom, fantasy, complexity, the ambiguity of all truths and the suspension of moral judgement? Has Zeller ever read any archaic poetry, either Islamic or -- European? And if so, which part of his anatomy does he use to think (and speak) about it?

The terrible thing: he thinks this drivel actually means something; and – oh, emperor’s new clothes! -- his Egyptian colleagues believe him! How's that for conversation: you pretend you say something meaningful, they pretend they make a meaningful response.

How do you explain to these grunts that the language they speak –which happily interchanges modern, western, good, inevitable, free, and sexually liberated is incoherent, that it is broken, that it means nothing, that it is impossible to say or think in it anything that makes any sense at all and that by speaking it they just bury themselves in some horrendous dark hole of the mind?

But then -- why would anyone even try to explain?

*

We have not seen each other two and a half weeks. When she asked how I have been, lost for something to say, I told her about Salwa, what a huge impact her book had had on me: the emotional turbulence I feel when I read her; the long pensive silences into which I fall when I do not. I spoke the truth: everything else which has happened in the last two and a half weeks has been by comparison -- irrelevant, immaterial.

She asked me why and only then I realized that I cannot explain it to her; and that therefore I should not have mentioned it in the first place.

salwa dit

le penseur m'a ecrit une lettre. une lettre d'amour. je me suis dit: comment peut-il employer le mot amour? je l'evite autant que je peux. avec lui comme avec les autres. je ne connais pas l'amour, je connais le desir. l'amour appartient a un au-dela qui me depasse, et je me refuse a lui courrir apres. le desire, le mien et celui de l'autre, je le connais, je le touche, je le vois, je le sens, je vis ses effets et ses metamorphoses. lui seul me prend par la main pour me conduire par vers mes espaces inexplores.

Lying about sex

Salwa al Neimi is the first woman I come across to speak the voice of Nehadeh; which is also my voice. (Perhaps Marguerite Duras also does, but I have not read her). Al Neimi likes sex, finds fulfillment in it, seeks it, and does not let other things interfere -- her whole life seems to be lived so as to maximize her sexual pleasure. (Love -- she says -- I don't understand what that word means; but desire, yes, I understand it).

(This does not mean that she's a slut: people like us -- sex-maniacs -- have a such a hard time finding good partners that we tend to want to hang on to the ones we have found -- firmly, and loyally, if not always exclusively. I know).

My past attempts to speak this kind of language with my lovers have invariably led to trouble: even with the really good lovers -- those not only adept but also clearly fulfilled in the act; they often seemed to have had that amazing frame of mind in which their ability to do it well and enjoy it somehow cohabited with the strong belief that the sex was not important, merely a means to an end, the end being e.g. lazy afternoon walks in the sun to nowhere in particular, for instance (i.e. comfort of being together). Hearing me speak that language, the language of Al Neimi, they were usually offended: I was somehow not respecting -- perhaps even castrating -- a part of them that was to their minds the truer and more important part of them -- the non-sexual part. Not to mention, also, that I was proving myself base, vulgar, and -- of course, the usual -- typically male.

Beh.

It is of course preposterous to me: lazy walks in the park can be done with a dog, one does not need a well-matched lover for it. I don't want a woman for lazy walks in the park; in fact, I do not want any woman who does not want me first and foremost in that way.

Stumbling upon Al Neimi has a perverse result on me: instead of delighting me with the discovery that there do exist other people who think, feel and talk like me, I am overwhelmed by the stifling, depressing, crushing majority of those who do not; with whom one cannot be honest; with whom one has to dissimulate.

Amore nella vecchiaia

"Non faccio tanto come essere cresciuta", Akhila ha detto a me sopra una bicchiera di qualcosa nella tonalità scura e scura di grande albero di bo: un albero di bo enorme e silenzioso come una chiesa.

(Albero di bo, pensa appena!)

"Perche -- anche se la mia madre (chi ora ha 57 anni) dice a me 'che desidero avevo conosciuto alla tua età che cosa conosci a la tua' -- la verità è che questa conoscenza -- è una... tragedia . La verità è, il mio vecchio amico, che la saggezza prematura è… amara..."

"Sì, è utile conoscere con chiarezza perfetta appena che cosa motiva tutto intorno me... e così come premere i loro tasti… e così come maneggiarli efficientemente nel fare che cosa voglio... il me rende efficace allo sguardo di affari… guarda: la mia casa tutto pagata prima de eta di 32 anni… E sì, è buono da sapere per non attendersi dalla gente qualche cosa più di tanto -- da se conservare così tanto disappunto non intrattenendo le aspettative sciocche…

"Ma, è -- deludendo, dopo tutto, suppongo -- noioso -- con acuto -- per sapere che la gente è tali creature semplici; che tutto nella vita è così -- prevedibile; così -- non-romantico; così -- meccanico; così -- mercenario… tutti di esso… Che tutto è appena come tutto altrimenti… quel tutti vogliono le stesse cose… e che si può fidarsi di nessuno affatto e mai mai sperano affinchè chiunque li sorprendano…"

"Quando ora penso a questo proposito, realizzo appena quanto non lo gradico: ci è una parte di me quale desidera non ho conosciuto; una parte di me quale desidera de essere sorpresa, a occhi spalancati, stupida. Voglio credere che la vita sia un mistero. Voglio essere nell'amore -- sì, suppongo che voglio essere nell'amore -- quale è, alla mia mente, ad una sensibilità del darsi a qualche cosa di più grande e migliore di me… di credere nella bontà e nell'amicizia e -- pozzo! -- amore."

"Ma, naturalmente, tutto questo è impossibile; alla nostra età sappiamo più meglio... abbiamo la conoscenza perfetta... la visione perfetta... abbiamo illusione -- zero."

*

Le parole della signora Akhila non me sorprendono.

Anche loro sono prevedibili: sono parole del medio evo.

Joe Campbell ha detto la stessa cosa: "quando avete quaranta anni, conoscete che cosa una persona sta andando dire prima che la apra la sua bocca; conoscete tutto; tutto lo incontrate avete incontrato già in un'apparenza differente… tutto qualcun'altro dica avete sentito… siete pronto per -- un intero nuovo filme."

E, naturalmente, questa è stata la mia esperienza, ugualmente: lo stesso-vecchio; stessi-vecchi; ancora e ancora e ancora.

E sono io, come Akhila, stanco ed annoiato di esso.

La differenza è che Joe Campbell ha avuto 52 anni quando lui pronunciato quelle parole; ed io o avuto quaranta quando le ho capite; ma Akhila ha… trentadue! Come terribile deve dovere essere disillusa alla sua età.

Io, alla sua età, ero ancora abbastanza stupido da cadere nell'amore -- per che cosa sarà, certamente spero, l'ultima volta.

*

Ci sono, dico a lei, due sensi di affare con il problema.

Il primo non è di diventare cinico.

Cinico, pensano i miei amici, è non credere chiunque che ci incontriamo; ammettere loro assolutamente il più male; ed allora soltanto attendendere per vedere quanto abbiamo raggione nella nostra valutazione iniziale; aspettanderli per rivelarsi de essere appena che cosa abbiamo pensato che erano in primo luogo.

Ma quello non è corretto; quello non è il significato allineare dell'essere cinico. Quello soltanto sta essendo realistico, pratico, allineare alla nostra conoscenza di natura allineare della gente e del mondo. La gente è difettoso; la gente è merde assolute.

Questo è la propria verità del dio.

È un fatto di vita.

Ma essere cinico non è conoscerla, ma è accosentiree da essere come loro.

Che è la unica cosa che non dobbiamo fare. Soltanto perché X è una merda, perché dovrei io essere lo stesso? Se X viene a mancare come amico, perché dovrei io venir a mancare? Il mondo è una cosa de merda, certamente; ma quello non significa che anche io dovrei la essere.

Così i miei amici possono contare su me anche se io non posso -- e non faccia -- contare su loro. Sono merde; merde quadrati, spesso; ma io -- io sono un cavaliere nobile, in armatura brillante, su un cavallo bianco.

Nessuno lo interferiranno mai che sono una merda.

*

Ed il secondo senso di affare -- e probabilmente il migliore -- poche preoccupazioni per i rapporti ed il carattere tra persone in esso, certamente pochi disappunti -- è interessarsi all'arte.

Ogni tecnica artistica -- se sta tessendo, o terraglie, o pintura, o la metallurgia -- è un genere di lotta contra le limitazioni tecnologiche del mezzo; all'interno di ciascuno ci sono numerosi racconti storici dei progetti di ricerca multigenerazionale dirette al raggiungimento di un risultato particolare. Nella pintura, questa può essere la lotta per rappresentare lo spazio tridimensionale su una superficie piana; o per rappresentare la superficie stessa-- vetro di luccichio, pelliccia lanuginosa, stoppia; in terraglie cinesi, tali progetti hanno compreso la ricerca per il colore di sangue de boeuf; o per il crackle perfetto del celadon.

A seguito di questi progetti di ricerca è intellettuale affascinante; ma la loro obiettivo è sempre fresca e nuova: lontano è rimossa dal usuale lo stesso-vecchio-stessi-vecchi; quale è perché gli artisti le hanno seguite in primo luogo, io suppongo. Anche loro hanno trovato il ciclo infinito della seduzione e del tradimento doloroso; estremamente doloroso. Anche loro hanno provato fugare della mancanza di speranza di vita... e ringraziamenti a loro ora anche noi possiamo fugare, quanto seguiamo i loro percorsi.

Love in old age

I do not much like being grown up and wise, Akhila said to me over a glass of something in the dark, dark shade of the great Bo tree: a Bo tree as huge and as silent as a great gothic church.

(A Bo tree, just think!)

For, although my mother, now 57, says to me "I wish I had known at your age what you know at yours", the truth is that this knowledge is -- a burden. The truth is, my old friend, that premature wisdom is... bitter.

Yes, it is useful to know with perfect 20/20 clarity just what motivates everyone around me, and thus how to press their buttons... and thus how to manipulate them efficiently into doing what I want. It makes one effective at business... look at the house all paid off at 32... And yes, it is good to know not to expect from people anything beyond that -- one saves herself so much disappointment by not entertaining silly expectations...

And yet, it is -- disappointing, after all, I suppose -- tiresome -- dull -- to know that people are such simple creatures; that everything in life is so -- predictable; so -- unromantic; so -- mechanical; so -- mercenary... all of it... That everyone is just like everyone else... that they are all after the same things... and that one can trust no one at all, and never ever hope for anyone to surprise us...

When I think about it now, I realize just how much I do not like it: there is a part of me which wishes I did not know; a part of me that wishes to be mystified, wide-eyed, amazed. I want to believe life is a mystery. I want to be in love -- yes, I suppose I do want to be in love -- which is, to my mind, a feeling of giving oneself to something bigger and better than oneself... of believing in goodness and friendship and -- well -- love.

But, of course, it is impossible; at our age we know better; we have the perfect knowledge; the 20/20 vision. Zero illusion.

*

My lady Akhila's words do not surprise me.

They, too, are predictable: it is the voice of the middle age.

I once hard Joe Campbell saying the very same thing: by the time you are forty, you know what a person is going to say before they open their mouth; you know everything; everyone you meet you have met already in a different guise... everything someone else says you have heard... you are ready for -- a whole new movie.

And, of course, this has been my experience, too: same old, same old.

And, like Akhila, I am tired and bored of it.

The difference is that Joe Campbell was 52 when he pronounced those words; and I was forty when I understood them; but Akhila is... thirty-two. How terrifying it must be to be disillusioned at her age.

At her age I was still stupid enough to fall in love -- for what will be, I certainly hope, the last time.

*

There are, I say to her, two ways to cope.

The first is not to become cynical.

Cynical, think my friends, means not believing anyone we meet; assuming absolutely the worst about them; and then merely waiting to see how right we were in our initial estimation; waiting for them to prove themselves to be just what we thought they were in the first place.

But that is not correct; that is not the true meaning of being cynical. That is merely being realistic, practical, true to the our middle-age knowledge of people and the world. People do suck; they are absolute shits. It's god's own truth, it is.

A fact of life.

But being cynical is not about knowing it, but about agreeing to be like them.

This we must not do. Merely because x is a shit, why should I be the same? If x fails me as a friend, why should I fail him? The world sucks, surely; but that does not mean I should suck, too, does it now?

So my friends can count on me even if I cannot -- and do not -- count on them. They are shits; often shits squared; but I -- I am a noble knight, in shining armor, on a white horse.

No one will ever catch me being a shit.

*

And the second way to cope -- and probably the better one -- fewer concerns with interpersonal relationships and character in it, certainly fewer disappointments -- is to take an interest in art.

Every artistic technique -- whether it is weaving, or pottery, or painting, or metalworking -- is a kind of struggle with the technological limitations of the medium; within each there are numerous histories of multigenerational research projects each directed at the attainment of a particular result. In painting this may be the struggle to represent three dimensional space on a flat surface; or to represent texture -- glistening glass, fluffy fur, stubble; in Chinese pottery such projects included the quest for the color of sangue de boeuf; or for the perfect celadon crackle. Following these research projects is intellectually fascinating; but their ends are always fresh and new: they are far removed from the usual same old same old; which is why the artists followed them in the first place, I suppose. They, too, found the endless cycle of seduction and betrayal painful and -- dull. They, too, tried to get away -- and thanks to them now we can, too, by following them down their paths.

Versuch Eins

Liebe B

Ich kann's nicht in meinem Herzen finden, um Sie, zu lieben zu stoppen, obwohl offensichtlich wenn Stoß komm zu schieben, ich Sie nicht überhaupt zählen kann.

Weil ich Sie für so viele Jahre geliebt habe, können wir fortfahren zu entsprechen, folglich; und Sie können auf mir immer zählen -- obwohl ich nie auf Ihnen zählen soll.

(Sicher, ist Ihr Ausfall kein Grund, damit ich auch ausfalle).

Weiter, können Sie im sicheren Wissen auch dich entspannen, dass ich nie noch einmal versuchen sollte, um eine Bevorzugung von Ihnen zu bitten.

Ich sollte auch zuschprechen, daß unsere neue Erfahrung von allen meinen Erfahrungen mit Ihren Landsmännern typisch gewesen ist. O, wie ich wünsche, daß meine Eltern die Vernunft gehabt hatten, ein anderes Land auszuwählen, um mich dort zu verbannen -- irgendein anderes Land, wirklich. Dann nach 25 Jahren, konnte ich Freunde dort haben; wer weiß, möglicherweise ich konnte erlernen sogar (apage satanas) den Platz mein Haus zu nennen?

Jetzt, muss ich das schwerste und schwierigste Vermächtnis meines Eltern beschäftigen: die Sprache. Ich bin kaum in sie in der literarischen Richtung vernarrt -- abgesehen von Shakespeare mag ich nicht wirklich irgendwelche seine Literatur lesen; jedoch, trotz dies, habe ich von ihr mein Hauptwerkzeug vom Gedanken und vom Ausdruck hergestellt.

Nun, als Werkzeug des Gedankens, ist es nicht ein schlechtes Mittel; aber als Werkzeug des Ausdrucks trägt es eine Hauptbeeinträchtigung: indem ich es verwende, bin ich pro Kraft zu an Leute wie Sie sprechend; welches, selbstverständlich, eine Zeitverschwendung ist: Sie Amerikanern weder konnten verstehen noch wunschten verstehen; noch möchte ich besonders von Ihnen verstanden werden. Wenn solch ein Wunder geschieht -- sehr selten -- Sie Amerikanern gewinnen etwas, aber ich -- ich gewinne nichts.

Die idiotische Anmerkungen, die ich vom Besten von Ihnen auf meinem ehemaligen Blog empfangen habe, sind der lebende Beweis der Tatsache. Ich benötige eine andere Sprache: fast jede mögliche andere Sprache würde vorzuziehend scheinen.

Aber dies wird an meinem Alter hart sein; und es wird Zeit nehmen. Und die Sprache -- es sein sollte... was?

Deutch?

***

Nah, Deutsch does not work.

Either French or Italian then.

Prova I

Mia Cara B

Non posso trovarlo nel mio cuore per smettere di amarla, malgrado il fatto che, ovviamente, quando la spinta viene a spingere, non posso contarla affatto. Poiché ho amatola per tanti anni, oggi possiamo continuare a corrispondere, quindi; e voi potete contare sempre su me -- benchè non conti su voi.

(Certamente, il vostro guasto non è qualcuno motivo affinchè me venga a mancare).

Più ulteriormente, potete anche distenderla nella conoscenza sicura che io ne dovrei provare mai ancora a chiedergla un favore.

Dovrei aggiungere che la nostra esperienza recente è stata tipica di tutte le mie esperienze con i vostri connazionali. Ohime, come desidero che i miei genitori avévano avuti il buon senso selezionare un altro paese per esiliarmi -- qualunque altro paese, realmente. Allora, dopo 25 anni, potrei avere amici là; chi sa, forse io persino impara (apage satana!) denominare il posto una casa mia?

Nel frattempo, devo occuparmi dell'eredità più pesante e più difficile della questa scelta di miei genitori: la lingua. Sono a malapena affettuoso della nel senso letterario -- oltre a Shakespeare realmente non gradico leggere de la letteratura inglese o americana; ma, tuttavia, malgrado questo, ho fatto di esso il mio attrezzo principale di pensiero e dell'espressione. .

Ora, come attrezzo di pensiero, non è un mezzo difettoso; ma come attrezzo dell'espressione ha uno svantaggio principale: lo usando, per forza mi rivolgo alla gente come voi; quale è, naturalmente, una perdita di tempo: voi Americani nè potreste capire; nè volere capire. Né voglio io particolarmente essere capito da voi. Quando un tal miracolo accade -- molto raramente -- voi Americani guadagnate qualcosa, ma io -- io guadagno niente nel ritorno.

Le osservaizoni stupide che ho ricevuto dal meglio di voi sul mio blog precedente sono la prova vivente del fatto.

In breve, ho bisogno di un'altra lingua: quasi qualunque altra lingua sembrerebbe preferibile. Ma questo sta andando essere duro alla mia età; e sta andando richiedere tempo.

E che la lingua dovrebbe esso essere?

Italiano?

(Il mio dio! poichè una letteratura italiana, questa, io sono sicuro che deve essere il literaratura più difettosa mai scritta; ma ascolti appena esso, mai non si occupano di che cosa dico: non è la lingua che suonante la più bella che abbiate sentito mai? che gioia per produrre questi suoni incredibili da nostra propria bocca, che gioia per sentirsi sentire!)

Essai I

Chere B

Je ne peux pas le trouver à mon coeur pour cesser de vous aimer, malgré le fait que, évidemment, quand la poussée viennent pour pousser, je ne peux pas vous compter du tout.

Puisque je vous ai aimé pendant tant d'années, nous pouvons continuer à correspondre, donc ; et vous pouvez toujours compter sur moi -- bien que je ne compte pas sur vous.

(Sûrement, votre échec n'est pas aucune raison de moi d'échouer).

De plus, vous pouvez également étendre que je devrais jamais encore essayer de demander une faveur de vous.

Je devrais ajouter que notre expérience récente a été typique de toutes mes expériences avec vos compatriotes. Comment je souhaite mes parents avaient eu le bon sens de sélectionner un autre pays pour m'exiler -- tout autre pays, vraiment. Puis, après 25 ans, je pourrais avoir des amis là ; qui sait, peut-être apprenner moi même (apage satana!) à appeler l'endroit une maison de moi même?

Pendant qu'il est, je dois traiter le legs le plus lourd et le plus difficile de la choix de mes parents: la langue. Je ne suis à peine fanatique d'elle dans le sens littéraire -- indépendamment de Shakespeare, je n'aime pas vraiment lire de sa littérature ; mais, néanmoins, en dépit de ceci, j'ai fait de lui mon outil principal de la pensée et de l'expression.

Maintenant, comme outil de pensée, ce n'est pas un mauvais milieu; mais comme outil d'expression il porte un inconvénient principal: en l'employant, je suis par force s'adressant aux gens comme vous; ce qui est, naturellement, une perte de temps: vous Américains ni ne pourriez comprendre ni vouloir à ne comprendre; ni je veux particulièrement être compris par vous. Quand un tel miracle se produit -- rarement -- vous gagnez quelque chose, mais je -- je gagne rien en échange. Les commentaires idiots que j'ai reçus du meilleur de vous sur mon ancien blog sont la preuve vivante du fait.

Donc, j'ai besoin d'une autre langue : presque n'importe quelle autre langue semblerait préférable. Mais ceci va être dur à mon âge ; et va prendre du temps.

Et qui la langue devrait il être ?

Français ?

On switching languages

Dear B

I cannot find it in my heart to stop loving you, despite the fact that, obviously, when push come to shove, I cannot count you at all. Because i have loved you for so many years, we can continue to correspond, therefore; and you may always count on me -- though I shall not count on you (surely, your failure is no reason for me to fail); further, you can also relax in the secure knowledge that I should never again try to ask a favor of you.

I should add that our recent experience has been typical of all my experiences with your countrymen. How I wish my parents had had the good sense to pick another country to exile me to -- any other country, really. Then, after 25 years, I might have friends there; who knows, perhaps I'd even learn (apage satanas) to call the place a home?

As it is, I have to deal with the heaviest and most difficult legacy of my parents' choice: the language. I am scarcely fond of it in the literary sense -- apart from Shakespeare I do not really like reading any of its literature; yet, despite this, I have made of it my principal tool of thought and expression.

Now, as a tool of thought, it is not a bad medium; but as a tool of expression it carries one major drawback: by using it, I am per force addressing myself to people like you; which is, of course, a waste of time: you Americans neither could understand nor want to; nor do I especially want to be understood by you. When such a miracle happens -- rarely -- you fellows gain something, but I -- I gain nothing in return. The idiotic comments I have received from the best of you on my former blog are the living proof of the fact.

I need another language: almost any other language would seem preferable. But this is going to be hard at my age; and it is going to take time.

And which language should it be?

French?

Giorgiana

I suppose this is supposed to be based on this.

But anyone who has read the book would be astonished to hear so.

Giorgiana, you see, was a socialite, a celebrity, a queen of fashion, a salon mistress, and an important political figure (even if she could not vote or become an MP herself). But the film presents her as nothing other than -- a wronged wife. I suppose this is what we have to expect from Hollywood - more of the same-old-same-old -- a narrow focus on sexual relations -- as if they were the only relations we ever had, and this in turn reflects the audience, I suppose (Hollywood being very good at serving the demand) -- the audience does not care whether Giorgiana was a queen of fashion and a huge influence on party politics in London, it cares only for one thing: did she have good sex and was there sufficient after-play?

Now, look around you: the people in the street -- the woman who has just past you (Hollywood clients are 70% female) -- care for only one thing: getting laid well.

Gaad.

Not sleeping with Akilah

Do you want to sleep with me? she asked.

It's the usual woman-question, of course, even if it is usually framed differently, such as "what do you want from me?" or "who am I to you?", or some other the like. Its point is not to put us men on defense by brutally exposing our embarrassing, duplicitously veiled, filthy carnal intents -- even if it is bound to feel that way to us folks -- because, in fact, women don't really mind sleeping with us, and sometimes actually want to anyway, regardless of our answer.

The question is really about everything else: how much do I invest fin this, what more can I expect from you beyond x, etc.

Etc.

Old hat.

*

Now, some men would probably lie here. But I don't: years of practice have given me the opportunity to develop an established formula for answering the question and it almost always works: no love and no marriage, darling, but friendship forever, yes, willingly, till death to us part, etc.

(Besides, I do not lie in these matters... for the simple reason that to lie would be a sign of weakness; a condescension of power to the person lied-to; invariably, people lie out of fear, and, I suppose, I am either not especially fearful or too proud to admit/recognize my own fear).

In any case, what I say is no lie because I always mean it. (Like Genji, I mean to, and do, take care of my women).

Most women accept this line, though many, perhaps most, only on the face of it, hoping, perhaps not consciously, in time to turn no love into love after all.

Duplicitously, that is.

Etc.

Etc.

No matter.

*

No matter because -- because the way the question was asked set me on another train of thought altogether, and it is my topic here.

For indeed --

-- indeed

-- indeed

-- indeed

-- do I want to sleep with her?

...

Hmmm...

I suppose the answer could be yes -- she's good looking; and, being temperamental and adventurous, probably would not be a disappointment in bed.

Besides, why would a man say "no" to a woman he genuinely likes and whose company he enjoys this much? Friendship and sex slip into each other for men without mutating; I suppose that was the nature of the Greek gymnasium homosexuality. (We're friends, well, yes, we do, er..., but no, we are not gay, etc.)

(Not that I would know the first thing about it; I have never played team sports; aged 9 and 10 I played with girls, earning from the boys the jeering title of "women's king" -- I wonder if those boys have had since then the chance to -- er -- realize that we pick up no girls in the rugby field).

All true, old man, but -- a man of Zobenigo's age is not the sexual omnivore he once was.

(If ever he was? Even aged twenty-two Zobenigo turned down so called opportunities on various grounds -- honor, self-respect, etc., thinking beforehand, with hesitation, is not a new development to him at all; and perhaps is an evolved mechanism, as it has its genetic uses: do not risk an encounter whose potential genetic benefits are low -- i.e. do not sleep with women who are not at least close to being your equal and therefore a good genetic bet).

So, old man, indeed, do I want to sleep with her?

*

Until she asked the question, it did not really exist in my mind: I merely enjoyed being in her company. If I gave the possibility any thought, it was always brief: a remote possibility, too remote to entertain. It might happen, yes, I thought, but there was no plan to make it happen.

If it does, I thought, it will; but if it does not, well, no amount of planning will make the least bit of a difference.

*

Yet, I answered her -- somewhat sheepishly perhaps -- "yes, I would like to".

Without much conviction, I am afraid -- and mainly because it seemed too rude to say something like "I am not sure"...

You see...

I was too afraid to offend.

"There is no greater sin, says Zorba the Greek, than when a woman calls a man to bed and he does not come".

And in Wharton's Reef, the well-bred, virtuous heroine resents that her suitor does not try to take advantage of her. "Who am I to him?", she asks herself, thinking that somehow she must be to him less than the women he has actually pressed himself upon; and her pride is wounded as a result of his demurrement to make an assault on her honor; and all the while, of course, he thinks the precise opposite -- that she is more to him than all the women he has ever slept with and that -- precisely -- is why he does not press himself upon her.

Weird... Do we -- men and women -- really have this thing on backwards and upside down? Is it the women who want to get laid and us, chickens, who look for relationships?

*

Now, Akilah is certainly my equal; her genes are as good as mine (if not better). The benefits and risks of a coitus are therefore, genetically speaking, in favor of my DNA. The risks are small -- she's probably healthy, her husband is probably not dangerous, she has money of her own; and the potential payoff is phenomenal: there are her beautiful, sensitive, intelligent boys to prove what her womb can do.

That is not the issue, then.

The issue is -- well -- for one...

age?

Fifteen years ago I would have enthusiastically gone to bed with her. But today I am riven by doubts.

Such as: would she be good in bed?

I mean, would it be hedonistically worth it? or would I discover seven -- or thirteen -- or thirty -- minutes into the act that I would rather not, after all? For, although I firmly hold (as a sort of feminist) that a woman's performance in bed is a function of the man's skill at leading her where he wants her, half the women in the world aren't... trainable, it seems.

This gives a whole new meaning to the old Polish saying -- dating back to our horseback days -- "if you fall off a horse, make sure it's a white one".

(A moment of reflection here on the duties placed upon us by our glorious past
and our more than glorious ancestors: noblesse oblige).

*

Further, and more importantly:

Am I exposing myself to the usual unpleasantness which inevitably follows any (relatively short, in my opinion) sequence of sexual encounters -- that I do not live up to, or have commitment issues, or do lot long sufficiently ardently, or do not call often enough, or do not write, etc., nor otherwise wither while she is absent, thinking about her all the time, and such.

And: we are such good friends; and we talk so well -- six hours at the last meeting -- six hours, now -- what is up with that? -- would I really want to ruin that? It seems so much easier to continue being friends, no?

It is so dangerous to play with that fiery stuff -- a danger younger men have not had the chance to learn. The danger that -- it is never free.

So, why not have a bottle of Borba D.O.C. 2008 instead? The pleasure is perhaps not as great as good sex, true, but the downside is minimal: a little headache in the wee hours.

The risk-return odds are just better stacked.

On giving it up for free

My dear

You say that what you have given me during the last visit -- the sex, that is -- was your free, unencumbered gift, given without calculation, merely because you felt like it.

That is a very beautiful and moving interpretation placed on what happened, and, of course, in line with the official womens-lib interpretation of sex, which is: a woman, being exactly and in all ways like any man, may feel lustful and indifferent about the object of her lust. As long as men are free to indulge their lust, therefore, so should the woman be free to do the same. You pass the femdom test with your colors flying.

Or do you?

I am of course flattered to hear that you should have been driven by nothing other than lust to take me. Repeatedly, too -- and at my age, this is quite a recommendation. (I'd like to put that in my CV).

But is it quite true?

I am very suspicious of all claims of un-mercenary-ness: my mother used to say that she loved me wholly, completely, and without any concern for a pay back; she said it repeatedly, over the years; and in the end -- it proved a dirty lie. And so in this case, too, I think the suspicion is well founded: when the sex was all finished and done with, you became angry with me because I would not huddle and kiss afterwards; or fall asleep in your arms; or promise everlasting love or propose cohabitation; or otherwise resort to any of the million other tricks of subterfuge resorted to by cheap Don Juans over the centuries.

Which means only one thing, my dear, that the afterplay is what you wanted in return for the play itself. Which means that there was a price after all.

And what may thar price be if it is not -- a quid pro quo?

The truth is, my dear, that you, ladies of the west, live in denial of the basic facts of life, which are that everything in it is done for a price, in expectation of reward. This is a blindlingly clear fact to anyone -- really, anyone -- who is, not in the throes of ideological need to uphold feminism -- and condemn prostitution. Love of God is offered in exchange for something, too, you know (i.e. heaven). (This has often made me wonder why God shoud want to be loved).

Prostitution, is the official party line, is bad because in it women sell sex; selling sex is bad; therefore we - the enlgihtened modern women -- may only have sex under circumstances in which it is absolutely clear that nothing at all is expected in return.

This seems silly to me. How is it supposed to be good for the gender to offer for free what has been its strongest asset over the millenia? To deprive it, that is, of its single greatest asset?

Not to mention that the requirement seems to put an extraorinary psychological demand on you ladies: to deliver goods for nothing. I should say, that not suprisingly in my experience, none of you has come out well under this challenge (though, to be fair, some have come out better than others). It is hard to give anything for free.

And, for crying outloud, why should we?

At any rate, the truth of what happened to us -- you and me -- during your last visit seems to me to be this: you gave it, but in the end found yourself short-changed: instead of hugs and kisses -- a lie, a pretense, a false promise of something impossible -- i.e. love -- which was your true aim -- you got good dinners, evening walks, rides on tram 28, views of the sea at sunset, and some forcks and baubles.

Your complaint, therefore, would appear to be not that I have treated you like a prostitute - giving you things and experiences bought with money -- but that I did not pay you as much as you had wanted; not that I paid, in other words, but that I paid not enough.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Bye 2

A rising market lifts all boats and -- since importance of social networks is inverse-proportional to one's bank account -- deflates relationships. As in any bear market, the bear market in social networks means that the beta-trades -- the more iffy, more junky, more dangerous, more speculative stuff -- falls more precipitously than the alpha stuff; and some can now be gotten rid of at no expense at all.

I have been getting rid of -- left and right.

Here is a fragment of a letter to an acquaintance of twenty years -- twenty years! -- American, of course, how else -- who has refused to hold my mail presumably because doing so would expose her to all sorts of legal liabilities (how does it feel to live in a police state?):

As I see it, we are either Friends (朋友) or we are nothing. As my Friend, you would know that when I ask you a favor and say that this is very important to me and that you must help me, then I really do mean it - and there is no need to find out why; and also you would know that as your Friend I would not ask you to do anything that could possibly expose you to any sort of liability as a result of doing so. Further, as my Friend, you would do as asked immediately, no questions asked. But none of the three applies here, which means to me that we are not Friends but -- friends, which is an American category, and a very cheap one at that: tens of thousands of friends can be had by merely signing up on Facebook. I have never wanted to have friends, because friends are a useless waste of time; and if anything has changed in my life in the last twenty years it is that I want to have friends even less now; and since you are clearly only my friend, not my Friend, then, I am afraid, this is the end of the road for us, and a much belated one at that.

I shall not be calling you on August 7th, or any other August. Have a nice day.

Strong words?

Not as strong as the offense. The woman is half-Asian, was raised in Korea, a Confucian nation par excellence, and speaks Chinese fluently. It is impossible for her not to understand what 朋友 means. Which means that she knows what it means but excludes me from the category. Severing all ties is the least punishment she deserves for having misled me to think otherwise.

*

Facebook is an interesting case. Facebook -- as i understand it -- is where one signs up in pursuit of people who agree to be one's "friends"; there is a kind of competition for having the largest number of friends. ("I don't quite remember who he is, but he is my friend.")

Bill Gates has recently tried it and given up: "Ten thousand people wanted to be my friend," he confessed, "and I found myself asking myself: do I know this person? do I know this person?"
Note the repeat of the question. Do you know why he repeated it? He repeated it because he was actually going to say: "do I know this person? do I want to know this person?" but as he began to mouth the second sentence he realized that it would be perceived in America -- the land of friends -- as not nice: an American wants to be nice and friendly (i.e. friends) to all; to refuse to be friends with anyone is deemed a hostile act; Bill Gates has enough image problems as it is; he is too smart to offend the official party line, even if he does not practice it himself.

But clearly, Bill Gates did not want to be friends with the ten thousanf Facebookers who accosted him; and -- why? -- could it be possible? -- being smart as he is -- could it be that he did not want to be friends with them because he realized that there was no benefit to having "friends"?

Which makes an interesting point about the millions upon millions who sign up for Facebook in prusuit of that very asset -- "friends"; they are fools chasing after fools' gold. It has always been thus: the rich getting richer and the poor staying poor. For a reason, I might add: clearly, the poor are not especially smart.

A friend -- not a Friend -- and a friend no more (see Bye 1) did ask when I will finally get on Facebook. I said never.