Gross Adequacy

As Summer approaches, I can’t help but feel a strong sense of giddiness coming on, an involuntary rush of hopefulness and adventure. I’m positively embarrassed by it, the corniness of it, the obtuse and carefree joy that only children were supposed to possess. No, I’m not disparaging this too, I’m not; It’s just, you know, something ridiculous, something to laugh at from the receding mire of self-indulgence and logical skepticism.  It makes one wonder, looking down the full length of a person—from the oblivious joy of childhood, to sullen and spiteful youth, down the pragmatic spine of adulthood, finally tracing towards the contentment and refinement of old age—which one of these seemingly compulsory stages ought we regard in earnest? 

I’ve never been one to see my being as one, unified, coherent whole.  Yes, I see similarities throughout myself that cannot be dissolved by changes, no matter how dramatic, in my consciousness and form.  I feel these, and with vain and self-affectionate sentiment, conclude that this must be my real self; my soul, my heart (if there ever was one).  Perhaps some find this comfort in every piecemeal habit, throughout every chapter of life, in every word. I do not, and have never wished to.  It has always seemed clear to embrace change, to slowly become a new person, and to hope to, again and again. In fact, the opposite has always been a source of terror in me; to remain dully and solemnly the same, spinning the same webs of thoughts and dreams; living in one, flat, world. 

Perhaps this is the source of my giddiness, my infinite expectation.  I have, would you believe it, spent the better part of two years stuck, as it were, in the same web.  Spinning, and spinning but never to metamorphosis (are the analogies wearing on your with their corniness? Yes! That is exactly what that were meant to do, what I mean to). The thing is, some days you wake up, and you feel a sudden, enormous, transcendent shift.  The seasons, I think, can assist in this (again, to my intense embarrassment). 

And well, take this as you will, but I must insist that this isn’t a gleeful declaration of emerging from despair into the bright and welcome glow of “happiness” (although the imagery might lead one to that). No, no, I don’t believe in happiness.  This shift I’m trying to corner (and dissect), it just so happens that the last time I felt it was at the height of what I can objectively call the darkest and most painful period of my life (and yet it was not!).  Alright though ,so I affirm happiness too, I do, yet I can never say so because of the false images it conjures.  Of everlasting peace, and love, and nothing bad happening.  I say that not only does such a thing not exist, but that a life as such would be seldom worth living.  Much as a movie where nothing goes wrong, no conflict arises, is seldom worth watching. So life IS a movie you see?

And here, though this long oscillating tube that is life, I can’t help but wonder if every state, every shift, is just as valuable as the next and that before it. That in every partition, down to this very second, we know something true that we have never known, nor will never know again. 

Well, there you have it folks, the meaning of life. 

Fyodor Dostoevsky - “Notes From Underground,” Ch. 2

                                                    II

   ”I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness — a real thorough-going illness. For man’s everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century, especially one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional town on the whole terrestrial globe. (There are intentional and unintentional towns.) It would have been quite enough, for instance, to have the consciousness by which all so-called direct persons and men of action live. I bet you think I am writing all this from affectation, to be witty at the expense of men of action; and what is more, that from ill-bred affectation, I am clanking a sword like my officer. But, gentlemen, whoever can pride himself on his diseases and even swagger over them?

   Though, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves on their diseases, and I do, may be, more than anyone. We will not dispute it; my contention was absurd. But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease. I stick to that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute. Tell me this: why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is “sublime and beautiful,” as they used to say at one time, it would, as though of design, happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly things, such that … Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps, commit; 

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                                                   -54-

but which, as though purposely, occurred to me at the very time when I was most conscious that they ought not to be committed. The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was “sublime and beautiful,” the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether. But the chief point was that all this was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as though it were bound to be so. It was as though it were my most normal condition, and not in the least disease or depravity, so that at last all desire in me to struggle against this depravity passed. It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last — into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.

   And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to 

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                                                     -55-

blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel. But enough…. Ech, I have talked a lot of nonsense, but what have I explained? How is enjoyment in this to be explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That is why I have taken up my pen….

   I, for instance, have a great deal of amour propre [self-respect]. I am as suspicious and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon my word I sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in the face I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it. I say, in earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that a peculiar sort of enjoyment — the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position. And when one is slapped in the face — why then the consciousness of being rubbed into a pulp would positively overwhelm one. The worst of it is, look at it which way one will, it still turns out that I was always the most to blame in everything. And what is most humiliating of all, to blame for no fault of my own but, so to say, through the laws of nature. In the first place, to blame because I am cleverer than any of the people surrounding me. (I have always considered myself cleverer than any of the people surrounding me, and sometimes, would you believe it, have been positively ashamed of it. At any rate, I have all my life, as it were, turned my eyes away and never could look people straight in the face.) To blame, finally, because even if I had had magnanimity, I should only have had more suffering from the sense of its uselessness. I should certainly have never been able to do anything from being magnanimous — neither to forgive, for my assailant would perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature, and one cannot forgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it were owing to the laws of nature, it is insulting all the same. Finally, even if I had wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had desired on the contrary to revenge myself on my assailant, I could not have revenged myself on any one for anything because I should certainly never have made up my mind to do anything, even if I had been able to. Why should I not have made up my mind? About that in particular I want to say a few words.”

 Actually, I have a few words to say, if I can. Let me confess that I’ve never read anything that has resonated so soundly and startlingly with the way I see myself (like when a great comedian tells a joke, and its so funny because you think to yourself “I’ve thought that!” Except, of course, they said it better). I’m always vainly curious about how others see me, but if you want to know how I conceive of me, then study the above text. Even pretend that I wrote it, if that’s possible.

I’ll Believe In Anything

Do you ever think about the origins of what you believe?  And I don’t mean your parents.  Much deeper than that is a history, a thicket of opposing and complementary ideologies, all springing from what we vaguely identify as “Western Civilization.” It’s interesting to see, equipped with an especially modest understanding of some basic models of belief, how people carry ideology around so conspicuously, while apparently unaware that they espouse anything at all. 

The first example that comes to mind is the set of widely held assumptions inherited from living in an advanced Global-Capitalist society; specifically that everything is naturally competitive, self-regulating, and driven by individuals.  Apart from those who study and champion this position, I feel as though, simply by being a part of a society identifying itself as such, people generally reflect the stances most dominant throughout.  (A friend recently told me that “all innovation is driven by competition.”  We were talking about skateboarding, mind you.)

The point is, dominant ideologies become seemingly imbedded in society as a whole.  What I’m mainly referring to is the notion that certain ideologies “slip behind the curtain,” or however you would put it.  Exiting the stage of social scrutiny, whereby beliefs are judged in accordance with what is right and good and just—ideologies can transcend appearance, instead becoming part of the scale on which “right and good and just” are defined.

Another quick, and to me sort of cryptically telling, example: the phrase “the marketplace of ideas,” used to defend the idea of freedom of speech and Democracy as a whole.  The basic message here (at least by my reading) is that free ideas are analogous to a free-market: through competition and innovation, the cream always rises; in other words, Democracy is good because of the qualities it shares with Capitalism, which we know is good.  Today, in our society, it makes the most sense if we use economic terminology to demonstrate the validity of democratic ideals.  This is fascinating to me, even though I think it should be the other way around.

As a rule, I try very carefully not to be arrogant, or judgmental, or superior.  So, “look at these lemmings, all spewing some agenda without even realizing they’re doing it”, is far from my mind.  Well, not always; but I expect someone to be thinking the same thing about me, and that’s fine.  When I try to think from the position of someone whose beliefs I find completely irreconcilable with my own, then maybe some of those darker, self-indulgent thoughts will surface.  But let’s be honest with ourselves.  Peel-back the waxy surface of vicious self-assurance, and what do we get: empty words. We can effortlessly brush away the beliefs of others, yet all we’re really saying is, “you believe what you believe because of blind conformity; I believe what I believe because of logic and morality.”

This conclusion leaves something to be desired, to say the least.  Really, thinking that way (something I’ve been guilty of, to be sure) calls my beliefs into question more so than whoever was accused of mindless adherence.  Here, I’m the one making the grand, universal claims—significantly, without examining how/why these “True” beliefs have made their way to me (and not others).

My first attempt to rectify this—a tear in the fabric of an objective, logical world, which though direct experience I have come to possess a valid system of knowledge (what is/isn’t real/true)—was to suggest that, being social animals, we are taught the most coherent/useful way to believe in any given physical/social/political context (i.e., the one we each grew up in).  That really makes sense to me.  It helps to explain, though social geographies, why some people think one way, and other people don’t (look at rural/urban worldviews, for contrast).  The explanation: different environments invariably produce different beliefs.

Imagine my frustration when it occurred to me that this explanation was subject to the same kinds of ideological assumptions that it attempted to resolve.  “Humans are a social animal,” might seem like a less-than-controversial claim, but is it?  The imbedded-ness of ideas like “man is competitive, self-reliant, and motivated by his own profit,” would suggest otherwise.  Man is social? That depends on who you’re talking to.  Some would tell me that it was man’s ability to work together, reciprocate, share ideas freely, and care for one-another, that allowed the species to slowly become what “he” now is.  Someone else would contend that it is man’s constant drive for survival, his mastery of competition, his will to improve on the work of others, and his unwavering self-interest that has resulted in today’s “selfish animal.”  But it’s this very incongruity—reaching even the rationale we use to justify why and how we are, including our “natural” identity—that makes this seem like an unanswerable puzzle. 

You can’t justify your own beliefs using any tool that you don’t believe in.   

 At most, you can lean on whatever consensus you find, which is certainly what we do today (the “news” as in “this is what happened in the world today,” depends on which station you watch.  They’re literally selling us alternate realities.)

The alarming part, the overlooked part, is that in order to create a social-space where you are (by and large) surrounded by people you can agree with, it becomes necessary to prune-off the rest.  This is nothing new, of course.  Over the course of history, social affiliation was typically cemented though conflicts with other groups.  This first happened though tribes; then religions; now, nations. 

Of the many possible implications of this is an undoing of what many consider (through consensus, no less) to be positive and significant social achievements; the loosening of stringent group identities that continue exist in an exclusive, inequitable way.  If someone ever wondered how the deeply-rooted, seemingly inflexible historical divisions among people—race, creed, gender, sexuality, country, and so on—had begun to unravel in recent years, then it would be of equal wonder that they seem to be tightening up again.

Maybe that’s not a particularly safe statement to make.  Since the Civil Rights Stuff happened, it feels like further social progress is considered inevitable (continuous innovation/progress. Why does that sound familiar? Ha!). Anyways, nothing can be said to disparage the significant strides made in advancing civil liberties and social justice, some of them very recent.  God, that sounded like a flyer or something. 

Whatever.  You get me. Things are getting better in many respects, I know.  My suggestion, however, is that as we become more and more ideologically polarized (embedded, even), we grow more reliant on the conceptual “Other,” which serves to both exemplify what NOT to be/think, and create insulation for us to sit comfortably with people we like.  Think about the way enemy soldiers are portrayed in just about any action movie: fucking soul-less, brainwashed, evil puppets.  That’s what Others are for.  “You’re not real, so neither is what you believe.”  And now we’re doing that to each other, which, it’s bad enough when we do it to poor, oppressed people from other countries.

If we jettison the ideas which disrupt our calm, orderly world, we might know that they’re out there, but not having to see them is nearly as good as them never existing in the first place.  Let’s face it, “the world,” to each of us, is only what registers across the relatively tiny screen of our consciousness.  You know germs?  They didn’t exist before the microscope.

In all, belief seems like an extremely violent act.  We all know, to varying degrees, where our ideological foundations lie.  The question then ceases to be whether or not these foundations are sound, but to what extent these models align and coalesce in the greater world.  Whose world are you living in, other than your own?  Irrespective, it takes a special kind of arrogance, a kind we don’t really acknowledge, to believe in anything.  Even if you’re the most wishy-washy, “everybody’s right” kind of person—to believe that, you still have to reject the entire worldview of the guy who thinks there’s just ONE right way to do everything.  Right? It’s negation.  And it makes us all arrogant pricks. 

Equally, it’s impossible to say anything without being arrogant, in one respect or another.  Who am I to write something down for other people to see?  What do I think I know that you don’t, that you ought to? 

Mandatory-post.

Yeah, I needed to end this dry spell of mine.  Its been, I don’t know, a few months since I’ve put anything up here (longer if you exclude my last post, which was a drunken rant).   Let’s count that though, because who cares if anything anyone says on here is intelligent or profound or legible?  It’s not really about that.  It thinks it is, but its not. Its about pouring-out some of that excess liquid in our brains, making room for more.  

That’s the way I think sometimes.  That every word we think/speak/write, is progress. And heck, maybe the dumbest, most cliche, completely tired and lame, things we can think to say are the things that propel us the most.  This runs counter to, I guess, common sense, which tells us that if we think stupid things, we’re bound to get stuck thinking that way. Perhaps, perhaps.  

But think about how we’re here, today.  I can’t speak for you, but me, I grew out of ignorance, wonder, and stupid questions.  The first, most obvious things we ask are from complete blindness.  Gradually, we piece the world together.  Is this because we’re told the answers? I don’t think so.  At least I don’t feel so. It feels like there are never answers, only more questions.  Or then the answers are just veiled questions beginning with an ‘if.’  So that’s how we’re here, by being a part of an endless procession of “if then, if then, if then…” Ad infinitum.

This might not be remotely true, but ‘if’ it is, ‘then’ all we can do is keep this circulation going.  Never shut it down.  This would be pretentious.  If we stop, it means we think we’ve arrived somewhere we can sit comfortably, somewhere we can pretend to know.  I don’t know anything, ok? Well, not in any fixed state.  My experience with knowledge has been like watching the ebb of a stream; but when I reach out to grab it, to keep it and hold it for myself, it slips away, right back in. Corny analogy, I know. But that’s the point.  That’s exactly it. 

You can’t stop. When you stop, maybe out of uncertainty—or worse, certainty—you’re really forfeiting everything instead of possessing it.  So let’s keep that Kool-Aid jug inside our head fresh.  When it gets stale and diluted, pour it out, try some Berry Blue. 

The gist (as much for me to remember than anyone else), is to stop caring if something you say, do, express, and so on—is going to be interpreted how you want it to be, is going to be taken exactly how you meant it, and, (critically) means what you think your audience wants it to mean. Forget about it. What matters is that you did it. 

Once its out there, it will be taken, flipped, shoehorned, torn to pieces, and whatever anyone who reads it wants to do with it.  Let it go. See if it has any legs.  Not that it matters if it does. 

See? I feel better, regardless. Now I can say something else. 

I’ve been waiting, ever so patiently, for that resounding solution, that answer which allows me to take this world in my fist. The one thing that makes it tangible, real. I mean that, real. Because I’m not sure its ever been. Its been like playing a card game you don’t know the rules of, and everyone but you seems to be catching on. That sounds too glum, doesn’t it? Not that there’s anything wrong with being glum, but that’s not what I am. I’m confused, not really morbid or depressed in the conventional sense. Just like, “what the fuck is going on here?”

Oh, and by “taking the world in my fist,” I don’t mean anything psychotic or dictator-y either. To be clear, I’m just searching for a grasp, anything. Somewhere that I feel like I know what the fuck I’m doing, for once. Doesn’t seem like a helluva lot to ask.

The solutions you’ll offer are even more discouraging, believe it or not. “You just have to pick yourself up, take reign of your life, and good things will come.” Fucking seriously? Now THAT depresses me; all these clowns who think they’ve arrived at some sort of success because they followed a yellow line on the pavement, without ever thinking about where they were going, without ever questioning why they would want to go there. I mean, Shiiiiiiit.

Its not as if I feel so blessed to think that I know something these folks don’t—its more like I see the fact that they place values on things that I, personally, am disgusted with.

And it all boils down to the sad truth that, whatever social process that led them to this empty meaning, has also led me to mine (as in whatever I place value on). If they learned theirs, I learned mine. Right? So I’m forced to believe that there’s no pot o’ gold at the end of their rainbow but for me, I’m in for a treat!

Let’s switch to a Peter Pan mentality: its only real if you BELIEVE. No, I’ve actually believed that all along, which affirms itself. I guess there wasn’t any point in fretting in the first place…