Arguments presented here are -- er... shall we say -- disarmingly naive. Their caliber reminds one of the statistic that the higher the IQ the lower the chance of being religious. Thus, for instance, neither lady appears to understand the debate regarding the concept of the "selfish gene".
Ladies: the gene is "selfish" not because it makes us selfish but because it is only interested in propagating itself (it is itself "selfish", but as it is an unthinking thing, that's only a metaphor, ok?). Now, in order to propagate itself, the gene may need us, its unwitting carriers, to behave altruistically from time to time; which, please, believe me, all of us do, the religious and the irreligious alike, although, I suppose, if one wanted to be mean about it, one could argue perhaps that religiously motivated altruism isn't really altruistic, but a self-interested pursuit of salvation? This would mean that only we atheists can be truly altruistic?
(By the way, it seems to me that the whole brouhaha regarding the altruism puzzle exaggerates greatly the frequency of the phenomenon: cases of altruism are highly notable precisely because they are so... rare. Sorry).
The final notion of the review that atheists lack spiritual life -- "long, long conversations with oneself" -- is untrue, untutored and -- intentionally offensive. It is calculated to put atheists on defense ("prove to me you have an internal life!"). And it is silly. What is spiritual about "and He shall smite them with a rod of iron"?
Jul 4, 2010
May 24, 2010
How John's mind works
John H. of Bronte Capital writes a good financial blog -- one of the best out there, when he has the time to write it, that is, which, to our chagrin is not often enough. It is also a task from which, alas, he has lately allowed himself to be diverted to make the sort of blog entries of which the blogosphere has far too many already: you know, the sort that sport millions of hits and tens of thousands of comments, but whose point is something windy along the lines of "all Japanese/not-all Japanese are Nazis" or "Hillary wears/does not wear army boots". (The basic publicity concept being: if you violently stir the beehive, the bees will fly).
His most recent beehive-stirring-post is an exercise in political sermonery -- of which, we should think, the internet already had more than enough -- and true to the sermon genre -- it is copiously tinged with self-loathing.
The sermonery upbraids the Thai middle classes for denying the poor their vote and then -- shooting them.
(Fair enough, I suppose, about the shooting bit, though in their defense, I suppose, it could be said that the Thai government was acting in defense of private property, a principle which a financial adviser like John should not take lightly if he values his job. But John wheezes on the voting: he mistakes the right to vote for a moral principle. The view is unexamined -- a surprising thing in a man who examines so well the books of banks. I mean, can there really possibly be a natural universal human right to vote? The answer should be plain: voting is a practical mechanism we resort to because it works, not because it is somehow divinely instituted. In Thailand it has not worked for quite some time: what could possibly be the point of voting yet again?)
But I don't wish to debate any of that. Rather, I am moved by something else: when he condemns the Thai middle class, he speaks of people like me. His point is this: in the course of researching an investment idea he'd talked to a lot of Thai middle class, liked them and -- is now riven with self-loathing for having liked them -- now that they have rejected the results of the ballot box (he says) and have shot at demonstrators. I feel moved to reassure John: there is no need for self-loathing: he bears no responsibility for the crimes of the Thai middle class, whether real or imagined. They are people like him in some way; but all people are like him in some way.
John's Thai outburst is interesting in many ways. First, it is interesting to see how compartmentalized his mind is: a cool, rational, skeptical financial man can turn out to be a hot, passionate, "principled" political animal; "principles" in this context meaning something rather special: i.e. "strongly held beliefs of uncertain universality". The more uncertain a principle, the stronger the emotional commitment required to hold on to it.
Second, the post underscores the surprising proximity of moral opprobrium and self-loathing: John was inspired to write his post by the fact that he had identified with Thai middle class. Was John equally firebrand about the Burmese military shooting monks three years ago? Probably not, I imagine: he'd not identified himself with the Burmese military; therefore, there was no temptation for self-flagellation; therefore there were no condemnatory articles. Moral opprobrium would seem a kind of narcissistic navel-gazing, then.
And third: it shows that the best of minds are never safe from the rhetorical temptations of demagoguery (says Lord Vader: "the dark side... is easier... faster"). John can discuss dispassionately aspects of silicon wafer production; but disagree with his political views and you are confronted by cheap rhetoric. "Should we shoot people because they make less than $500 a year?", he asks at one point. How can we convince John that he is obliged to live up to a higher standard of discourse? That for someone of his stature this kind of discourse is simply not allowed?
His most recent beehive-stirring-post is an exercise in political sermonery -- of which, we should think, the internet already had more than enough -- and true to the sermon genre -- it is copiously tinged with self-loathing.
The sermonery upbraids the Thai middle classes for denying the poor their vote and then -- shooting them.
(Fair enough, I suppose, about the shooting bit, though in their defense, I suppose, it could be said that the Thai government was acting in defense of private property, a principle which a financial adviser like John should not take lightly if he values his job. But John wheezes on the voting: he mistakes the right to vote for a moral principle. The view is unexamined -- a surprising thing in a man who examines so well the books of banks. I mean, can there really possibly be a natural universal human right to vote? The answer should be plain: voting is a practical mechanism we resort to because it works, not because it is somehow divinely instituted. In Thailand it has not worked for quite some time: what could possibly be the point of voting yet again?)
But I don't wish to debate any of that. Rather, I am moved by something else: when he condemns the Thai middle class, he speaks of people like me. His point is this: in the course of researching an investment idea he'd talked to a lot of Thai middle class, liked them and -- is now riven with self-loathing for having liked them -- now that they have rejected the results of the ballot box (he says) and have shot at demonstrators. I feel moved to reassure John: there is no need for self-loathing: he bears no responsibility for the crimes of the Thai middle class, whether real or imagined. They are people like him in some way; but all people are like him in some way.
John's Thai outburst is interesting in many ways. First, it is interesting to see how compartmentalized his mind is: a cool, rational, skeptical financial man can turn out to be a hot, passionate, "principled" political animal; "principles" in this context meaning something rather special: i.e. "strongly held beliefs of uncertain universality". The more uncertain a principle, the stronger the emotional commitment required to hold on to it.
Second, the post underscores the surprising proximity of moral opprobrium and self-loathing: John was inspired to write his post by the fact that he had identified with Thai middle class. Was John equally firebrand about the Burmese military shooting monks three years ago? Probably not, I imagine: he'd not identified himself with the Burmese military; therefore, there was no temptation for self-flagellation; therefore there were no condemnatory articles. Moral opprobrium would seem a kind of narcissistic navel-gazing, then.
And third: it shows that the best of minds are never safe from the rhetorical temptations of demagoguery (says Lord Vader: "the dark side... is easier... faster"). John can discuss dispassionately aspects of silicon wafer production; but disagree with his political views and you are confronted by cheap rhetoric. "Should we shoot people because they make less than $500 a year?", he asks at one point. How can we convince John that he is obliged to live up to a higher standard of discourse? That for someone of his stature this kind of discourse is simply not allowed?
Mar 7, 2010
On Beauty (2)
Some observations on Taiwan and the Taiwanese
The food at my breakfast place is great; so is its bustling atmosphere. But what impresses me most is the speed with which the food is cooked, served, and paid for. The workers do all the math in their heads, at lightening speed: take, pass on, and fulfill orders, wrap, bag and serve, and calculate what was consumed, total due, change to be made. Instantly. What a difference with Thailand where everything is slow and where adding two two-digit numbers requires repeat use of calculator (since so often mistakes are made on its first use, one has to calculate and then -- recalculate: 55 + 22 = 77; I am not making this up).
So: this is my first observation: these people are smart. It could be genetic -- the settlement of Taiwan was a gene-selecting process, the dummies, one assumes, stayed behind; or perhaps just didn't make it in the scramble of the settlement (throughout 17th and early 18th centuries there were about 8 men to every woman here, presumably the women preferred the smart guys and the dummies failed to reproduce); or it could be cultural -- Taiwanese, being Chinese, believe in education and rote learning; my sister's daughter must memorize the Mendeleyev chart for her high school entrance exam (do I hear you ask: what is Mendeleyev?); or it could simply be the function of a better government which provides better schools; which in turn insist on students memorizing the multiplication table. Whatever the causes, god save the Thais if they ever have to compete with the Taiwanese on anything like a level playing field.
(To some extent, they already do: prices -- other than of real estate -- are about the same in both countries; yet wages in Taiwan are about five times higher. If the difference is due to higher productivity, then Taiwanese breakfast places should be expected to serve food five times as fast. Direct observation bears this out).
The second observation: these people are ugly. The women have neither breasts, nor hips, nor buttocks. All faces are flat, all buddies tubby, all legs short -- the calves especially. The skin is often dull and mottled. This is not to condemn them: my best friends are ugly and I find their ugliness endearing; it is to state the obvious fact. Among South East Asians, Taiwanese stand out for their marked absence of good looks. This has nothing to do with racial prejudice: all Asians can see this obvious fact -- the Taiwanese themselves included. "If you see an ugly, poorly dressed girl, she's Taiwanese", they themselves say. Yes, as everywhere, some people are better looking than others, but generally, the standard is low. Good looking Taiwanese are almost always waishengren -- usually northern Chinese, but there are a few chaozhouren, too; unless they are aborigines. You can walk safely Taipei's streets: you will not be struck by sudden passion at first sight.
The causes of this deficit of good looks are mysterious. Was Taiwan (Fujian?) subject to differential migration? (Did pretty people find it easier to survive on the mainland and therefore experience less pressure to migrate?) Was there -- in an environment of arranged marriages -- a breeding preference for health, intelligence, and brawn which discounted value of good looks? (Since Mommy didn't care if her son's bride is good looking? Indeed, perhaps preferred one who isn't?)
The second suggestion -- that beauty has been bred out of the Taiwanese -- seems to have some evidence in its favor: the Taiwanese are not just ugly; they also lack the most basic aesthetic skills. It is as if they were... beauty-blind. They normally do not dress up; but when they do -- such as when they go to national theater -- the results are so bad that they are -- funny. My dearest friends live in ugly apartments, sit on indifferent furniture, wear non-descript clothing, and when we all go shopping for porcelain together, they appreciate high price ("this stuff is expensive") and a good bargain ("I haggled 35% off this thing!"); they notice neither the color nor the shape nor the workmanship.
As a result, when the Taiwanese do make a fortune, as many do, their standard of living does not improve: they may move to a bigger house, and that house may be in a better neighborhood, but it will be just as uncomfortable and as ugly-furnished as the one before.
Yet, the second suggestion -- that sensitivity to beauty has been bred out of the Taiwanese -- cannot be entirely true: the Taiwanese are not blind to human good looks. Which is my third notable observation about the Taiwanese. All foreigners like to visit Taiwan because the Taiwanese are so famously hospitable. (This virtue was common among all Chinese prior to the cultural revolution; Russell's famous description of the hospitality of Penkingese ca. 1930 still applies to the Taiwanese, even if it does not to the Pekingese anymore). But the good-looking foreigners -- even the mildly so -- are loved to death here: wined and dined, served, cared for and entertained. Seeing one, the Taiwanese will exclaim: oh, he is so good looking! He looks like a movie star!
It is as if, in the arms race which goes on among men, the Taiwanese have decided to specialize entirely in intelligence and hard work to the exclusion of good looks; and they have invested all their assets there. For all this, there remains with them the ability to perceive good looks in others; they have not managed to breed out the mechanism of beauty perception; when they see human beauty, they do recognize it; indeed, they are struck by it; and they then set out to secure through their native great charm and profligate gift-giving.
So: this is my first observation: these people are smart. It could be genetic -- the settlement of Taiwan was a gene-selecting process, the dummies, one assumes, stayed behind; or perhaps just didn't make it in the scramble of the settlement (throughout 17th and early 18th centuries there were about 8 men to every woman here, presumably the women preferred the smart guys and the dummies failed to reproduce); or it could be cultural -- Taiwanese, being Chinese, believe in education and rote learning; my sister's daughter must memorize the Mendeleyev chart for her high school entrance exam (do I hear you ask: what is Mendeleyev?); or it could simply be the function of a better government which provides better schools; which in turn insist on students memorizing the multiplication table. Whatever the causes, god save the Thais if they ever have to compete with the Taiwanese on anything like a level playing field.
(To some extent, they already do: prices -- other than of real estate -- are about the same in both countries; yet wages in Taiwan are about five times higher. If the difference is due to higher productivity, then Taiwanese breakfast places should be expected to serve food five times as fast. Direct observation bears this out).
The second observation: these people are ugly. The women have neither breasts, nor hips, nor buttocks. All faces are flat, all buddies tubby, all legs short -- the calves especially. The skin is often dull and mottled. This is not to condemn them: my best friends are ugly and I find their ugliness endearing; it is to state the obvious fact. Among South East Asians, Taiwanese stand out for their marked absence of good looks. This has nothing to do with racial prejudice: all Asians can see this obvious fact -- the Taiwanese themselves included. "If you see an ugly, poorly dressed girl, she's Taiwanese", they themselves say. Yes, as everywhere, some people are better looking than others, but generally, the standard is low. Good looking Taiwanese are almost always waishengren -- usually northern Chinese, but there are a few chaozhouren, too; unless they are aborigines. You can walk safely Taipei's streets: you will not be struck by sudden passion at first sight.
The causes of this deficit of good looks are mysterious. Was Taiwan (Fujian?) subject to differential migration? (Did pretty people find it easier to survive on the mainland and therefore experience less pressure to migrate?) Was there -- in an environment of arranged marriages -- a breeding preference for health, intelligence, and brawn which discounted value of good looks? (Since Mommy didn't care if her son's bride is good looking? Indeed, perhaps preferred one who isn't?)
The second suggestion -- that beauty has been bred out of the Taiwanese -- seems to have some evidence in its favor: the Taiwanese are not just ugly; they also lack the most basic aesthetic skills. It is as if they were... beauty-blind. They normally do not dress up; but when they do -- such as when they go to national theater -- the results are so bad that they are -- funny. My dearest friends live in ugly apartments, sit on indifferent furniture, wear non-descript clothing, and when we all go shopping for porcelain together, they appreciate high price ("this stuff is expensive") and a good bargain ("I haggled 35% off this thing!"); they notice neither the color nor the shape nor the workmanship.
As a result, when the Taiwanese do make a fortune, as many do, their standard of living does not improve: they may move to a bigger house, and that house may be in a better neighborhood, but it will be just as uncomfortable and as ugly-furnished as the one before.
Yet, the second suggestion -- that sensitivity to beauty has been bred out of the Taiwanese -- cannot be entirely true: the Taiwanese are not blind to human good looks. Which is my third notable observation about the Taiwanese. All foreigners like to visit Taiwan because the Taiwanese are so famously hospitable. (This virtue was common among all Chinese prior to the cultural revolution; Russell's famous description of the hospitality of Penkingese ca. 1930 still applies to the Taiwanese, even if it does not to the Pekingese anymore). But the good-looking foreigners -- even the mildly so -- are loved to death here: wined and dined, served, cared for and entertained. Seeing one, the Taiwanese will exclaim: oh, he is so good looking! He looks like a movie star!
It is as if, in the arms race which goes on among men, the Taiwanese have decided to specialize entirely in intelligence and hard work to the exclusion of good looks; and they have invested all their assets there. For all this, there remains with them the ability to perceive good looks in others; they have not managed to breed out the mechanism of beauty perception; when they see human beauty, they do recognize it; indeed, they are struck by it; and they then set out to secure through their native great charm and profligate gift-giving.
Mar 5, 2010
Beauty is a totalitarian tool
Beauty is a tool of totalitarian power. It controls minds; and is rare enough to be easily monopolized.
Feb 6, 2010
Talking with Chris (or the virtues of loneliness)
Chris is 60, thrice divorced, and, since a year ago, single for the first time in his life. I say "for the first time" because he'd never until now experienced any extended period in which he lived by himself. He'd moved from Mom's straight to his first wife's, from her to his second, and so forth. But now he is alone. To his surprise, he's discovering it is a nice way to live.
Feb 5, 2010
On beauty (1)
On beauty and injustice
"He... has beauty which... makes me ugly", says Iago about Cassio. Beauty -- not penis -- envy drives one of our literary canon's most diabolical intrigues.
Here, in a nutshell, is our modern aesthetics, too. The thesis that beauty is relative is pronounced most strongly by those who know themselves to be ugly. The same people produce ugly works demanding that we appreciate them. The plot is Iagonian: to overthrow what makes them look ugly. The strategy is two pronged: on the one hand, active vandalism, on the other -- verbal denial.
Democracy perhaps makes the success of the plot inevitable. At most 20% of us are good looking, the rest -- are at best plain: the theory that the beautiful are not at all beautiful but only seem that way is bound to be a smash hit.
Good old feudal injustice did not have to deny beauty: the powerful did not have to deny beauty since it was attainable: they could have it through force of arms (Yudishthira: "The cause of all war is beauty") or expenditure of resources (His Holiness to Michelangelo: "Thou shalt paint for no other man but me"). Why, by acquiring beautiful females they could in successive generations become beautiful themselves. (The looks of the ruling class over time approach its aesthetic ideal). But democracy limits the rulers' ability to sequester beauty; and it gives voice to those who can never dream of achieving it.
Beauty being unjust -- so few of us can have it -- can perhaps only be formally highly regarded in unjust societies; any society which is even remotely egalitarian will have to pretend that beauty is not important; or, as we have recently started to do, that it does not even exist.
Here, in a nutshell, is our modern aesthetics, too. The thesis that beauty is relative is pronounced most strongly by those who know themselves to be ugly. The same people produce ugly works demanding that we appreciate them. The plot is Iagonian: to overthrow what makes them look ugly. The strategy is two pronged: on the one hand, active vandalism, on the other -- verbal denial.
Democracy perhaps makes the success of the plot inevitable. At most 20% of us are good looking, the rest -- are at best plain: the theory that the beautiful are not at all beautiful but only seem that way is bound to be a smash hit.
Good old feudal injustice did not have to deny beauty: the powerful did not have to deny beauty since it was attainable: they could have it through force of arms (Yudishthira: "The cause of all war is beauty") or expenditure of resources (His Holiness to Michelangelo: "Thou shalt paint for no other man but me"). Why, by acquiring beautiful females they could in successive generations become beautiful themselves. (The looks of the ruling class over time approach its aesthetic ideal). But democracy limits the rulers' ability to sequester beauty; and it gives voice to those who can never dream of achieving it.
Beauty being unjust -- so few of us can have it -- can perhaps only be formally highly regarded in unjust societies; any society which is even remotely egalitarian will have to pretend that beauty is not important; or, as we have recently started to do, that it does not even exist.
Jan 13, 2010
Talking with Chris (or what to do about boring girls)
Chris has worked all his life to build up a good gene-investment portfolio. He has six well-made children (healthy, good looking, intelligent) by three different, quality women (healthy, good looking, hard working, filial) of every different genetic stock (some European, some Asian). Should a disaster -- a flu epidemic, say -- strike the general population, at least some of his genes should survive while mine are headed directly for extinction.
Chris feels defensive about it, explaining why his women left him, and how he is not to blame. But one wonders: is there something going on here even Chris does not realize?
It's been 9 months since his last wife left him, and 7 since he's picked up a new girlfriend. She's much like his last wife: good looking, decent, hard working, and filial. Because she is filial, she won't move in with him, which is what he's complaining about. Chris is 60, but, if the girl were to move in with him, I think he'd reproduce again, diversifying even further his gene portfolior. I want to share my life with someone, he says. He means: I want to keep diversifying my gene portfolio.
His advice for me is to stay away from whores. There are so many nice girls around, he says.
There are.
The problem with the nice girls is that they all want ""relationship": they want someone to spend inordinate amounts of time with them, holding their hands, and talking to them, and this I cannot do. These girls are simply too boring -- all conversations with them are for me one way -- me talking, them listening because I know that nothing new can ever emerge out of their mouths.
This bores me; but, well, I am a generous fellow and, I suppose, could put up with boredom if the sex were great. But -- worse -- this situation irritates them. You are so intelligent, they say at first, full of amazement at my brains, but then, gradually, but not all too slowly, they begin to resent the fact that all the talking is one way, as if it were my fault that they had nothing original to say. They don't only want someone to hold their hand, they also want someone to listen to their drivel.
God.
It gets worse, of course. Few people are naturally happy and free of personality foibles; these last often emerge only in the close proximity of cohabitation; getting used to them, or "ironing things out", as people say, takes a long time and requires hard work. So, for me, any relationship is bound not only to be boring but also require hard work. Then the sex peters out. What could possibly be the point? Why not just pay for the sex instead and be done with it?
Chris's way to deal with the problem is to engage in serial monogamy: marry a girl for 10 years, play at mom and dad, and then, when he gets bored and the sex peters out, quit and move on. I wish I had his patience for personal foibles; and I wish I were not so well read and so easily bored with the untutored opinions of the uninformed. I wish girls didn't bore me to tears.
Chris feels defensive about it, explaining why his women left him, and how he is not to blame. But one wonders: is there something going on here even Chris does not realize?
It's been 9 months since his last wife left him, and 7 since he's picked up a new girlfriend. She's much like his last wife: good looking, decent, hard working, and filial. Because she is filial, she won't move in with him, which is what he's complaining about. Chris is 60, but, if the girl were to move in with him, I think he'd reproduce again, diversifying even further his gene portfolior. I want to share my life with someone, he says. He means: I want to keep diversifying my gene portfolio.
His advice for me is to stay away from whores. There are so many nice girls around, he says.
There are.
The problem with the nice girls is that they all want ""relationship": they want someone to spend inordinate amounts of time with them, holding their hands, and talking to them, and this I cannot do. These girls are simply too boring -- all conversations with them are for me one way -- me talking, them listening because I know that nothing new can ever emerge out of their mouths.
This bores me; but, well, I am a generous fellow and, I suppose, could put up with boredom if the sex were great. But -- worse -- this situation irritates them. You are so intelligent, they say at first, full of amazement at my brains, but then, gradually, but not all too slowly, they begin to resent the fact that all the talking is one way, as if it were my fault that they had nothing original to say. They don't only want someone to hold their hand, they also want someone to listen to their drivel.
God.
It gets worse, of course. Few people are naturally happy and free of personality foibles; these last often emerge only in the close proximity of cohabitation; getting used to them, or "ironing things out", as people say, takes a long time and requires hard work. So, for me, any relationship is bound not only to be boring but also require hard work. Then the sex peters out. What could possibly be the point? Why not just pay for the sex instead and be done with it?
Chris's way to deal with the problem is to engage in serial monogamy: marry a girl for 10 years, play at mom and dad, and then, when he gets bored and the sex peters out, quit and move on. I wish I had his patience for personal foibles; and I wish I were not so well read and so easily bored with the untutored opinions of the uninformed. I wish girls didn't bore me to tears.
Jan 5, 2010
Some thoughts on filial piety
My aunt came and stayed for four days around new year's.
I had invited her because the new year's is the anniversary of her son's death and she said she didn't want to be alone during that time. Out of desperation, and acting on past experience, I refused to put her up at home and instead arranged for her to stay in a hut next door: that way at least at night -- and in the morning, until, driven out by hunger I emerged from my bedroom -- I could be left in peace. Even so, she came over at daybreak and laid a siege to me till late at night, talking at me incessantly.
Most of the talk may have seemed harmless enough: she mainly repeated old jokes and anecdotes (all of which I had heard countless times already) or recounted to me major news events she heard on the radio or read in the press (which, of course, by then I had heard or read myself); but she disturbed my work -- she'd talk to me even though she could see I was doing something; and, worse, disturbed my peace -- those moments when I sat outside to enjoy the balmy weather and the peace and quiet of my garden.
It would have been alright, I suppose, if I had been allowed to ignore her words -- tune them out, somehow; but my aunt expected me to hear her words, process them, and make a reply, doing which placed on me a tremendous amount of pressure. I had spent years of sacrifice and hard work to cut myself off from people who bore me. Why must it be my duty now to be bored by my own aunt?
It is a truth generally held that it is my filial duty to help my aunt; the logic of this argument says that I owe her, in her gradually more and more helpless old age, the care she'd given me when I was a helpless child. Very well, then: I am happy to help her financially; and, further, I am prepared to sacrifice a great amount of my time in just helping her accomplishing ordinary life tasks -- drive her places, help her shop and move things, arrange her drivers, show her how to pay her bills, etc. But does it really need to be my duty to suffer her incessant talking?
Can there really be such a thing as right to be entertained? Or the corresponding duty to entertain?
More importantly: why does my aunt need somebody to talk at in order to feel better?
It's worse of course when she offers life advice: it is she who needs my help, not I who needs hers; what makes her think that I am remotely interested in her advice? Or wish to explain anything about my personal life?
I had invited her because the new year's is the anniversary of her son's death and she said she didn't want to be alone during that time. Out of desperation, and acting on past experience, I refused to put her up at home and instead arranged for her to stay in a hut next door: that way at least at night -- and in the morning, until, driven out by hunger I emerged from my bedroom -- I could be left in peace. Even so, she came over at daybreak and laid a siege to me till late at night, talking at me incessantly.
Most of the talk may have seemed harmless enough: she mainly repeated old jokes and anecdotes (all of which I had heard countless times already) or recounted to me major news events she heard on the radio or read in the press (which, of course, by then I had heard or read myself); but she disturbed my work -- she'd talk to me even though she could see I was doing something; and, worse, disturbed my peace -- those moments when I sat outside to enjoy the balmy weather and the peace and quiet of my garden.
It would have been alright, I suppose, if I had been allowed to ignore her words -- tune them out, somehow; but my aunt expected me to hear her words, process them, and make a reply, doing which placed on me a tremendous amount of pressure. I had spent years of sacrifice and hard work to cut myself off from people who bore me. Why must it be my duty now to be bored by my own aunt?
It is a truth generally held that it is my filial duty to help my aunt; the logic of this argument says that I owe her, in her gradually more and more helpless old age, the care she'd given me when I was a helpless child. Very well, then: I am happy to help her financially; and, further, I am prepared to sacrifice a great amount of my time in just helping her accomplishing ordinary life tasks -- drive her places, help her shop and move things, arrange her drivers, show her how to pay her bills, etc. But does it really need to be my duty to suffer her incessant talking?
Can there really be such a thing as right to be entertained? Or the corresponding duty to entertain?
More importantly: why does my aunt need somebody to talk at in order to feel better?
It's worse of course when she offers life advice: it is she who needs my help, not I who needs hers; what makes her think that I am remotely interested in her advice? Or wish to explain anything about my personal life?
Dec 31, 2009
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.
*
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.
Dec 17, 2009
More on loneliness
.
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.
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.
Dec 15, 2009
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.
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.
Dec 14, 2009
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.
Dec 12, 2009
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.
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.
Dec 10, 2009
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.
Dec 9, 2009
Reading Mourad with trepidation
.
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:
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.
Cover art: John Frederick Lewis (1805-1876)1, Lilium Auratium;
the vase is an Iznik (?) Imari2
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.
Dec 1, 2009
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.
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.
Nov 29, 2009
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 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.
Nov 27, 2009
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.
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.
Nov 9, 2009
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.
Nov 7, 2009
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.
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.
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