"When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." Twain / "I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of these contradictions out for myself." Montaigne / "I write because I have found no other means of getting rid of my thoughts." Nietzsche / "Writing is an integral part of the process of understanding." Arendt / "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." Asimov.
CW: As the title suggests, there will be discussion of death and dying and some mention of suicide in this post.
I thought nothing of following up my last post on Irvin Yalom on the meaning of life with Yalom on the meaning of death, until I started writing here. The very reality of being a bit wary of broaching the subject reveals the strength of societal taboos against admitting that we’re all going to die. Until it’s staring us in the face, we delude ourselves into thinking we will get better and better, mentally and physically, despite that our brain starts to shrink in our 30s, and our joints and organs will start to give out not so long after. We work hard to keep death clean and sanitized so the reality doesn’t seep in too much, and we try to do all the right things to keep death at bay: exercise, various special diets, wearing masks to avoid viruses. We can fix some evidence of erosion with meds and surgeries, sometimes miraculously, but some people even hope to keep their brain going long after their body dies.
I forgot to post this from last month - my monthly posting at 3 Quarks Daily:
A student asked, "How many bad actions does a good person have to do before becoming a bad person?"
The notion of good and bad people raises the image of final judgment at the pearly gates. We have a scale somewhere with our actions added incrementally to one side or the other until there's a tipping point, or sometimes there's just that one unspeakable act that slams one pan to the ground requiring an inconceivable effort to budge it.
It's possible that an infinite number of bad actions doesn't make a person bad. I like to think that we're all greater than the sum of our worst actions. We're all just works in progress doing our best in this world, and it's never too late to change our path. It sounds nice. But then I started to consider some real people who appear to have unlimited selfishness as well as a cold indifference to the suffering they cause to others. Can we call them bad people until we see some movement towards redemption?
This is a post about cycling further than ever before, but first, a bit about boredom:
"Boredom may lead you to anything. After all, boredom even sets one to sticking gold pins into people...one may choose what is contrary to one's own interest...one's own fancy, however wild it may be...desire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid - simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is rational...this caprice of ours....preserves for us what is most precious and most important - that is, our personality...the whole work of man seems really to consist in nothing but proving to himself continually that he is a man and not an organ stop." - Dostoevsky
"We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom...A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vial impulse slowly withers, as though they were cut flowers in a vase." - Bertrand Russell
Some people assert their own will by choosing naturopathy over doctors to treat their cancer, or by quitting their satisfactory marriages and careers to seek out a new mid-life adventure. I hope to make slightly more reasonable choices or certainly less self-destructive ones. According to Dostoevsky, I'm sucked into the western ideals of individuality over community, of standing out, which can make us foolish. Melting into the crowd isn't an easy option. Being one with the universe is a task for later when I've figured out how to sit still. And for Russell, who hit puberty in Wales as the Russian was drawing his lasts breaths, being able to endure boredom is essential for happiness. Seeking out excitement to avoid boredom just makes our pleasures less easily felt. He warns,
"pleasures which are exciting and at the same time involve no physical exertion, such, for example, as the theatre, should occur very rarely...certain good things are not possible except where there is a certain degree of monotony."
In art, we'd call that degree of monotony an area of restraint necessary for the eye to relax. It's why some beautiful gardens have an expanse of grass. But mine doesn't. I lean towards chaos.
I get antsy when I don't have a project. The house can be a mess while I deliberate what new task to take on next. My backyard took over for a couple years, and I have ideas of an off-grid home a few years off, but then what now? For better or worse, I'm obsessed with doing, finishing, accomplishing.
So I set as a project to find the limits of my cycling abilities - or, more specifically, the limits of my lungs and heart and other organs and muscles in a body as old and untrained as mine. I'll tell you from the get-go that I failed. But I'll get to that.
Before an annual camping trip with neighbours, I considered having my packed rental car, complete with youngest child, driven by a fellow camper so I could cycle the 137 km to the site. The longest I had ever biked before was 60 km, and I wanted to see how far I could actually go in one trip. I didn't train or prepare in any useful way - that would take the challenge out of it. But having a driver coming up my rear helped because I could bail at any time. It was about seeing how far I could get, not about getting to the end. That was key to the entire adventure. That, and a cell phone to call for help if needed.
This was a decision fraught with a ridiculous amount of anxiety. I tried to keep Epicurus in mind as I was deluged with worries: If pain is not occurring right now, then it’s not bringing pain except for tumults created by imagination, right? I am bringing myself pain, which is ridiculous! So stop worrying about flat tires, swerving trucks, strong wind gusts tossing me into traffic, some crazy guy attacking a lone female, heat stroke, complete organ failure, random loss of appendages, the list goes on. And there's always the old standby concern that, if I leave the house for any significant duration it will burst into flames. From time to time I was struck with absolute terror at the though of being killed in traffic and picturing my children coping with my death. I'd have to actively "X" out the thought and replace it with a vision of biking without incident. Thanks CBT. The fact that many worries are unfounded doesn't seem to lessen their intensity. At all. I actively ignored the looming date, and second-guessed my choice of directions - later to be intensified by many geographical advisors after-the-fact "Why didn't you go this obviously better way?" serving to prove my instincts for direction weak.
So I said nothing to anyone about my hopes to attempt the journey until the last minute; I knew I would be easily swayed to give up before I started. I waited until two days before to ask a neighbour to drive and was almost deterred by her husband's concern about wind, and the night before, I told my kids and then immediately become openly worrisome and neurotic. It's like talking about it tapped the keg of concerns. And it was going to be a windy ride: 20 km/h headwinds until the final 30 k.
It's curious, in areas of insecurity, how much other people's attitudes can affect us. The support of that one comrade, and my son's insistence that, "of course you can do it" were paramount to my leaving the house that morning. I have lots of people in my life - I'm sure we all do - who tell me why I can't possibly do this or that. I ignore the lot of them most of the time, but physical exertion is a weak spot for me, so their voices loomed louder than usual and took some effort to drown out. Some told me I couldn't join a women's ride group because I'm too slow, and others refused admittance to a guy's casual riding group because I don't have the necessary equipment provided by mother nature. I'm not recognized as a cyclist. Even the physiotherapist helping with my aging knees questioned me about my regular trips to Bamburg, a local marker of a hilly 40 k loop from our city:
"Oh so you drive there and then bike around."
"No, I don't have a car."
"Oh, so you live near there."
"No, I live a block from here."
Awkward silence. I just don't look like someone who moves quickly.
So I bike alone.
Armed with a banana, some nuts and raisons, water, my phone and wallet, brand new lights on my bike, and quality bike shorts, I kissed my kids good-bye and set off before dawn hoping to beat the heat of the day. I played music in my head to keep me pumped - possibly a skill developed in only those raised in the pre-walkman era. This one kept my cadence up:
Some think it's nutty not to train formally before a big ride - as if we'll fall to pieces if we don't work towards our goals gradually, but there are too many times the fear of being unprepared stops us from action. We think we can't do this or that because we're not quite ready. Then we dilly dally about doing prep work forever and never actually getting to the thing we actually want to do. I channelled Laura Secord who didn't train for her marathon bushwacking experience. She just got out there and started running through fields and forests.
I didn't wear any fancy duds or pimp out my ride either. I did get a pair of good bike shorts because, since about 40, my butt fat has all gravitated around the corner to my belly - and, just my luck, just in time for a big booty to be in style too. Extra padding was necessary there, but then I just threw on a t-shirt and sandals and my stand-by helmet. And I thought of Marathon Man, and Dustin Hoffman copying Abebe Bikila's run without shoes. But Secord and Hoffman's character were running for their lives. I was creating a situation as if it were a necessity knowing full well it was a luxury. I had to convince myself of an importance for it in order to develop any motivation to go.
For me, the point of cycling is to go places. It's not to work out and live longer because we could die any minute. And it's not to work out to match the current beauty standard because we could be hated anyway regardless our quest for physical perfection. For me, it's all about getting off our fossil fuel addiction. If a middle age woman without any know-how can do over 130 k in a t-shirt and sandals, with a crappy bike, then maybe you can bike to work. Amiright?!
I was once told by a colleague that I could never be a department head because I don’t have a car, but people don't understand that we can get almost anywhere without a car. And we can bike dressed in our everyday clothes. Granted I still used a car to transport my camping gear and daughter, but with more of us cycling, we could definitely use fewer cars. We need to move under our own steam whenever we can.
The trip was also about finding my boundaries, but part of it was about getting over my fear of biking further from home alone – the fear of having an accident, but more a fear of boogie men out to attack me. People are mainly nice and helpful. There are some odd ducks, but the odds are in my favour. And, with the exception of a brief trek on a major highway, everyone moved over a lane to give me space. I was completely safe.
Part of the journey was because I turned 50. I'm in a hurry to do stuff because it gets a little clearer that any day could be my last. I'm still stuck on having a leave-behind, a legacy, even though I'm pretty convinced there won't be generations to come to remember any of this. With climate change, there’ll be no leave-behinds. Having kids or writing a book or erecting a statue will have no impact on future generations if there ARE no future generations because the planet has become largely uninhabitable by our species. This death is a final death.
But some thing can still make me feel like a kids again. When I listen to certain songs, I'm 17 again. And when I’m on my bike, I’m 10, riding to the corner store in my bathing suit with a nickel in my hand for a freezie.
Just beyond the half-way point, at 70 k in, my legs and lungs were fine, but my eyes started getting weirdly blurry, so I took that as a sign to re-fuel. I stopped briefly to stretch, eat, and drink. I just had 23 k to get to the next city where I could sit in a Tim's to wait for the car if I needed to.
I was surprised that it wasn't the hills that got me but the long flat parts where there wasn't anything to mark the passage of time. I watched this in my head as I pedalled:
The music and videos come to me of their own accord, but cycling distances alone takes me to that wonderful zoned-out place where I often come up with entire concepts I couldn't possibly find in my hectic kitchen. Like if it's a coincidence that Rex Harrison played mentor to Eliza Doolittle then later played Dr. Doolittle. Weird. It's a state that can't be as easily achieved with another cyclist there - if they try to have a conversation or if I feel pressure to keep up or have to wait at every turn. That modicum of attention somehow destroys access to the internal world.
And then there's the beauty of the scenery with light filtering through the trees, and the cows cheering me on up the hills. Montaigne said,
When I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me.
Prolonged activity allows time to get sufficiently bored to actually start paying attention to the details of the world. Those magnificent details!
But the trip was also about reaching a goal even if I didn't want it to be. My mom died in her 60s of cancer, and my sister got cancer in her 40s. I always expected to die young, and I've been ever impatient to finish things because I might be dead tomorrow. I update my will regularly and leave behind instructions in case I die whenever I leave for a trip. It's not the case that I'm living fearful of death, but that I'm living authentically recognizing that it’s right around the corner for all of us. My son sometimes asks me if I’m afraid to die, and I worry mainly, as a single mom, if they’ll all be okay without me – it’s been my primary worry for the past 21 years. Not just financially, but will they have someone to go to when they feel misunderstood by the world. But other than their future, I think I'm okay with it.
And the trip was also about sheer endurance. We need to suffer in order to grow. We need a bit of adversity in our lives - challenges, and since we've had it easy for so long in this time and place, we sometimes need to create personal challenges. Nietzsche wrote about wishing difficulty on others so they can find the strength to fight. It's not about training to cycle, but about training to get in there. Staying in there for that hill creates the means to stay in there to keep on about climate change and injustices and politics even when most people seem completely apathetic.
And then I saw the sign for the campsite and started singing:
And suddenly I was Rocky at the top of the steps, and Sarah Conner bein' badass in T2.
I felt completely fine at the end. I wasn't sore at all, but I was tired of doing the same thing for so long - almost 7 hours of riding plus a lunch break on top: that's a full work day!
I made it the whole way without being rescued, so I still haven't found my limit.
There will be time....
A hawk hanging out at our campsite.
***
It's curious... actually it's not at all curious... but I posted my bike trip from Runkeeper on Facebook, and I also updated my profile picture that was ten years old. The profile change got 12 times the likes as my journey. Being able to keep my casing reasonably smooth trumps actually being capable or useful. So if you want to impress others, stay skinny, smooth, and symmetrical. Doing stuff carries a more personal reward.
I watched the first episode of the new season of Sherlock last night. There's a sub-plot with NO spoilers here: John Watson gets engaged to Mary. Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, is shocked that he's engaged to a woman since he and Sherlock were obviously so "close" - and so soon after his passing and all. John vehemently objects to the insinuation that he is now, or ever was, gay.
In class before the break I read a bit about Montaigne's affection for La Boétie, and the very first comment I got from a pretty enlightened group was, "He was obviously gay."
And then one of the essays I marked contained a discussion of the openness of sexual ethics today compared to historic restrictiveness. And I commented on the paper that I don't think we've come nearly as far as we think we have, even if we just focus on this part of the world.
Our sexual ethics have changed, for sure - over the relative short term in particular. I've lived long enough to see an unbelievable change in our respect for same-sex relationships, from killing them to revering them in my short lifetime. Now homosexuality is in fashion to the point that some people want a gay friend or two to make them more interesting by association. The same goes in some circles for polyandry. But we're still messed up about sex. And we don't understand our history on this enough to see our trajectory.
Romance as the end all and be all of relationships is a relatively new idea - maybe 200-years-old or so. Previously, passion towards one person was seen as a social problem - look what it did to Romeo and Juliet. That wasn't written as a romance to emulate - the way most remakes will have it, but as a cautionary tale. It's a tragedy after all.
For centuries, people could bond with the same sex without an assumption of sexual tension. Now that homosexuality is accepted in these parts, it seems to be a looming perception in the background of close friendships. This is part and parcel of a view that a relationship with sex is the ideal - an accumulative view - which is the real problem. As long as a sexual relationship trumps any other kind of dynamic, we have a greater potential to lose a variety of connections with others.
Why is it so hard to believe that Montaigne and La Boétie loved each other but didn't have sexual feelings for each other? I think it's because we can no longer imagine closeness without sexuality - which is repressive. It restrains our freedom to have close, non-sexual relationships. It's legal and overtly acceptable, but there's a subtle social pressure that suggests it's not quite right.
Friends can be close, but not too close. If any two people spend too much time together, they must be having sex - or they should be; they need to take it to the next level (as if it's a sign of progress). Or, if they shouldn't be having sex, then they shouldn't be spending so much time together! We've lost the idea of best friend, of companion without a sexual flavour. Everything is coated in nuance.
I had a 15-year friendship with a guy that ended because of the number of people who insisted either we should be getting it on, or we actually were. His girlfriend couldn't take it and gave him an ultimatum. He picked her. And lengthy conversations with men at parties are always suspect. I have to stick with the women in the kitchen to avoid provoking the stink-eye (and that kitchen-thing still happens too).
We still approach love and connection fearfully and possessively.
We've created a new normal that's no less constricting our experiences. It seems that it's not the case that restrictions leave as we become more accepting, but that they just change and become less physically harsh. Nobody is beaten for their desires (except pedophiles, that's still right out), but coersive social forces are no less a barrier to living comfortably with who we are and what we like. There's a subtle social means of encouragement to stay within unnecessary and nonsensical boundaries.
And that's not the only bit of sexual repressiveness of our times.
I recently saw Blue is the Warmest Color and was surprised to see, in full detail, that women shave or wax their pubic hair right off even in France. In the U.S. one study found that 60% of women 18-24 get rid of everything - and that it's really harmful! Check out this video for a healthier perception of pubes (with puns galore). Beyond that, the rise in labioplasty convinces women that natural isn't beautiful unless it's perfect. Looking the way we do naturally has always been an issue, but now it's gone further to include the bits that almost nobody ever sees.
Fetishes are still taboo. People can talk about them on sensationalist TV shows, but, however kindly the host speaks to them, that they're there reveals them as freaks. It's still not a conversation for social settings where other sex tales might be parlayed. And, similarly, people who just aren't into sex that much keep it to themselves. Any talk of either is met with concern and doctor suggestions. It's seen as unhealthy not to desire sex with another person.
Liking it too much or too varied is also a problem particularly for women. Slut shaming isn't going away. And the fact that people feel shameful about sexual encounters makes rape that much easier to get away with since victims are loathe to report.
What keeps it all going, also, is the notion that talking about sex is somehow beneath us as intelligent people. It's trivial and base. So these issues aren't getting the attention they deserve. As Freud said almost a century ago in Civilization and its Discontents,
The demand for a uniform sexual life for all, which is proclaimed in all these prohibitions, disregards all the disparities, innate and acquired, in the sexual constitution of human beings, thereby depriving fairly large numbers of sexual enjoyment and becoming a source of grave injustice.
There's no evidence that Montaigne was gay, something he makes clear in "Of Friendship," but the suggestion of such is evidence that we still haven't grown enough as a culture to completely accept a variety of relationships including strong and lasting non-sexual friendships. That's a shame.
Facebook bombarded me with everyone's highlights of 2013 this morning, and I was struck with the urge people have to track the value of time spent by listing stuff they did. It's all trips and big events. When I consider all I had done this year, what came to mind first is a whole lot of sitting around. I'm really good at that, and it's my favourite thing to do.
I sit around reading a writing and watching movies, but the highlight of my time sitting is always the kitchen table talks I have with whomever's at my table. It's mainly the kids and I, and we often comment that we should set up a hidden camera and try to forget about it, because we are seriously funny people! If we could capture our conversations for YouTube, we'd be rich! But I also have friends that come and sit and drink and play music and tolerate my singing.
Like cutting Samson's hair, if you clean it, it loses its magic!
But in my time sitting, I also did a whole lot of fretting about the world (social justice and environmental erosion mainly), and about my work. I'm going to consider a different approach to the world crap because what I've been doing is neither particularly useful nor enjoyable. Maybe tomorrow.
As for work, we started the year in strike action, and we ended it with some questionable micro-managing from the province. I'll say no more on that for the same reason I deleted most of my work posts: apparently being perceived to be publicly complaining about the policies of my board or school can be grounds for termination, but I can complain about the Ministry of Ed documents all I like. I understand this idea in principle - if I owned a small business and an employee tweeted negatively about it, I'd definitely call them out on it. But, somehow this feels a little different. And who's to say when my complains about ministry mandates are a bit too close to being about board mandates? Nuff said.
Sitting around doesn't look like anything, but it's a lot. When I was in university, writing essays at the kitchen table all day, my partner at the time, a tinner, would come home from work to find me in the exact same place as he left me. As he peeled off his dirty work clothes, he'd often question how I could just do nothing all day long. That I finished a 20-page essay didn't count. And, 25 years later, that I wrote my thoughts on books and philosophers and political thinkers all year isn't fodder for facebook lists. Thinking, talking, and writing about things just isn't share-worthy.
Which is a shame.
Is it because it's too commonplace or too uncommon? Or because the ideas come and go without making it on snapchat? Instead of listing the trips and events, wouldn't it be cool if people spent New Years Day considering all the new ideas they deduced or considered or solidified over the year? I think it would make for a far more interesting bunch of facebook statuses to wake-up to at the very least.
Here's what I thought about mostly:
* It's amazing what we can do when we go for it balls-out even though we don't know what we're doing (I built a studio!). But we all have limits. It's not the case that you can be or do anything you set your mind to do. But, without trying you'll never know where your limits are.
* Bureaucracies suck the intelligence out of everything.
* Mainstream media is eroding body image and self-esteem, but we don't have to play with them.
* The planet's ability to continue to maintain life is so far gone, and so few care, it's likely unfixable. As much as I abhor government intrusion in personal choices, I can't imagine what else could possibly turn this all around.
* Maybe we're screwed not because we're too greedy, but because we're also too compassionate. Or maybe it's just greed as a species that we want every human in the world to live well (well enough that we don't have to see them suffer at least).
* Rape isn't going away nearly fast enough. In fact, it feels like it's getting so much worse. We still have a good, long fight on our hands on this one.
* Stoicism and Taoism are two of the best philosophies for coping with tragedies beyond our control.
* I still haven't been swayed from my agreement with Marxist economic strategies. It's not about paying everyone the same, but ensuring nobody's being exploited.
* Art and music and dance and film (and cats) are phenomenal means of celebrating the world and distracting ourselves from its devastation. I have unbridled enthusiasm for it all that won't be contained. Even if someone points and laughs.
* Teaching is the best means to develop ideas (mainly by stealing them from the brilliant kids I teach).
* Cycling has to be safer if we actually want people to ditch the car at home, and working with the city sometimes actually gets us somewhere!
* We need some good role models - and fast. Chomsky and Hedges and Monbiot and Suzuki are awesome, but they don't have the style or charm or something enough to sway the masses. We need activists that can affect the people the way Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr did, because people will blindly follow someone who can sell them what seems like a good idea. We have people in droves who do that for the oil industry, etc., but far too few on the other side.
As an exercise, it clarifies how mundane bare-bone ideas are! And, unfortunately, as a facebook status or a tweet it would likely look something like this:
2013 was AWESOME! I thought about the world and stuff!! Going to be a hard one to top! Happy New Years everybody!
There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.” ―Montaigne
At first I was worried about normal things.Plane crashes.Theft. Okay, maybe kidnapping and prostitution rings entered my mind a little, but
I get carried away sometimes.It’s not
that I don’t trust the people of Thailand and Cambodia.I don’t trust anyone around a young woman in
an unfamiliar country.And I never trust
airplanes.
I dropped her at the airport in the wee hours, and we cried
a bit.That was unexpected.Neither one of us is the emotional type.But we were both tired and run-down from the
prep work of travel.It was enough to break
our resolve.
“You can have a few drinks on the plane now!”
“Nope.Drinking age
is 21 in the states and 20 in Thailand.”
“Well, have a quick one before you leave Canada then.”
In my last post, and elsewhere over the years, I went all Agent Smith and suggested that humans are a virus that can't be contained. All other animals work within their environment to regulate their population. As long as people don't mess things up by moving animals around (like bringing rabbits to Australia where they have no predators), animal populations decrease when food is scarce so their populations never reach overwhelming numbers. Nature is amazing and everything can work so well if we let it. But when human numbers rise, we just keep invading other places until we use up all the resources everywhere. We're going to Mars now, for crying out loud! It's just a matter of time before we kill off our host and die out ourselves.
But recent conversations in my class have me thinking of things from a different angle.
Maybe the problem isn't our invasiveness, but that we are too compassionate to allow people to just die the way those other, more callous animals do. Because we have such big brains, and because we have mirror neurons that cause us to feel pain when we watch others suffer, we have found ways to help millions of people survive during famines. And we can help sickly infants survive that wouldn't have stood a chance 20 years ago. And we can keep elderly people going for a few more decades. It's awesome! Except now we're at seven billion people which might be too much for the earth to sustain.
I've been reading way too many articles about the Sandy Hook massacre followed by an unbelievable number of inane and hurtful comments: "Cars kill more people than guns, and cars pollute too. So we should ban cars before we ban guns." "If God were allowed in the schools, He would have been there to protect the children." "If we ban guns, then only criminals will have them, and we won't be able to protect ourselves!"
You get the idea.
Until a few days ago, it was legal to carry a concealed weapon in all but two areas of the U.S. But then, by a two to one vote just last week, it was deemed unconstitutional to ban people from carrying a concealed weapon in Illinois. Now the only place so restrained is Washington, D.C.. Curious. But state to state, there are still different levels of restrictions on guns, and different types of guns that can be bought and sold, and, according to one study, that has a clear link to the safety of that state.
At the end of Luc Ferry's A Brief History of Thought or Learning to Live: A User's Manual (same thing), he suggests that we can get salvation and transcendence outside any religious belief system by being elevated through a singular love. The rest of the book is a chronology of philosophy epochs, and I might think more on that later, but I'm mainly interested in his own ideas about love saving the day.
Luc Ferry was the Minister of Education in France for a few years, and I looked him up to see how that went. A philosopher in government - how Platonic! I tried to find out what policies he implemented or proposed, but could only find scandals about him working at a university but never teaching and then refusing to refund his salary when they asked. Apparently his response to this was to sue accusers for libel. And then, to make his case about the importance of privacy, he told TV reporters about a former minister who sexually abused some children, and he refused to tell the public his name because personal privacy is that important (or maybe because libel laws are so strong suggesting they're a bad thing, but then why would he sue for libel himself?). Something like that.
I don't think personal privacy trumps the safety of children. Just sayin'. But from all the reports, I don't entirely understand his full intentions when he threw that out there on national television.
I recently read Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve, a book about the hiding and finding of the 1st century poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, which is a tribute to Epicurus and his philosophy. Lucretius writes of Epicurus, "When 'human life lay groveling ignominously in the dust, crushed beneath the grinding weight of superstition' one supremely brave man arose and became 'the first who ventured to confront it boldly'" (72). I'm not sure the poem ushered in the modern world when it was unearthed in the 15th century, as Greenblatt suggests, but the book is quite provocative nonetheless. And then I read Luc Ferry's A Brief History of Thought - a trip through the major western philosophies, which almost completely ignores Epicurus. Curious. I'll get to Ferry's book another day.
Epicurus' philosophy was developed about 300 BCE, and a few centuries later people attempted to destroy it as it was totally incompatible with the Christian way of life - particularly the bits about all things being made of atoms (adopted from Democritus). If everything's made of atoms, then nothing is better than anything else, so the entire hierarchy of the church is a problem as is our insistence that human beings are superior to all other creatures. Also, it means we don't stay together as one being when we die, so the possibility of an afterlife falls apart (and the hopeful justice measured out in rewards and punishments to be found there). And choosing a life of pleasure over pain? That's just going way too far for many old school Christians .
I had a couple stop-and-think-about-it-for-a-few-days episodes reading The Swerve (these are off the beaten path from his general thesis):
"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living." - Thoreau
Tony Shin sent me this info-graphic and asked if I'd add it to my blog. Of course I have a few things to say about the 1% first.
Paul Feldman did a study in the 80s with bagels being sold on each floor of an office building using an honesty jar and price list. He tracked who paid the right price for the bagels. The people in the lowest floor - the mail room - paid about 95%, but as they went up the floors, and up the corporate ladder, the sales were worse and worse. The richest people paid the least.
Toby, at A Piece of Coffee, wrote an interesting post on Woody Allen and the meaning of life. In particular, he discusses Manhattan to talk about Allen's need for art and music to give his life meaning rather than Hannah and Her Sisters or Midnight in Paris which I recently gushed over. But, as he says, this is a common theme with many of Allen's films: the purpose of life is to enjoy the richness of it, the beauty of art, music, architecture, and people, "to be part of the experience" (HaHS).
Toby says of art, "We distract ourselves constantly, we refuse to think about the meaning of our existence, we skirt around the inevitable." I think art can be a huge distraction, both in the viewing and in the creating. But it can also be a means towards reflecting on and delving into the depths of the ultimate meaninglessness of our lives, particularly if we include writing as an art form. We can be both pragmatically distracted from death and immersed in it as we ponder the very subject enough to make the words that fit together to communicate our ideas. Eh?
I’ve seen a ton of excellent movies this summer, many new releases, but also some films I’ve missed over the years too. There are three in particular that affected me in such a way that I felt I was a slightly different person having seen them.
It all started with the first, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which has Owen Wilson about to get married to a mundane, superficial woman when he more or less finds a portal to the past, a place rife with passion for art and architecture and literature. When I left the theatre, the street looked different to me. The film reminded me to notice little things: how some old chairs were arranged on a porch, the slant of a roofline, initials scrawled on the corner of a brick. It reminded me of the importance of paying attention to aesthetics in our everyday life (further emphasized by this article yesterday). It also reiterates that we should never settle when it comes to marriage.
I cannot believe how deeply affected I am by the death of Jack Layton yesterday though I've never even met the man.
This is the time to take solace in philosophy, but it's hard. There's Epictetus' "death is nothing dreadful" path, but this isn't about my own fear of death, or death itself being a worry. It's about the death of this one specific man. It's not really about coping with death at all, but coping with loss, and not just of a person but the loss of hope that we've got riding on him.
Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, oft times live as merrily as other folk.
When we fear losing our stuff or status, we can’t really enjoy either. And isn’t that a waste. Epicurus agrees that we can only really enjoy pleasures when we’re free from worry.
There’s an old Zen story about a great warrior who had a favourite teacup. He almost dropped the cup, and was shocked by his own fearfulness and anxiety over it. He had faced thousands of armed men, but never did he feel so frightened as when he almost broke his cup. So he smashed it and lived happier for it.
I think the same story could be told of a leader fearing his loss of position.
On yet another urging recommendation, I finally read The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. But I didn't read it well. I'm a picky reader. I can immerse myself in difficult philosophy readings, but this was a struggle. I happily read all about Montaigne's thoughts on mindfulness, but I was trying to read this mindfully instead of expediently. I found it repetitive, and ended up doing much of the reading in front of a movie just to get through it.
He cautions against following philosophical doctrine:
"If one clings merely to a system of concepts, one only becomes stuck. [Instead we must] penetrate reality in order to be one with it, not to become caught up in philosophical opinion or meditation methods....The finger which points to the moon isn't the moon itself."
Uh oh. That's totally me, stuck following doctrines instead of... doing that other stuff.
Okay, I'm still not there. I really appreciate contemplating on Taoist and Buddhist thought, but I can't bring myself to set aside the time and attention necessary to live it as thoroughly as this book suggests. Even trying to do breath-work for a minute a day is a struggle for me. And I hate yoga. Part of the reluctance might be that I was really into it all as a teenager, so doing it now feels like I'm trying to be a kid again. I feel like I should be past all that now. But I still got something out of my superficial reading of the book:
The whole book and theory is about maintaining awareness of the present. If you're not present right now, then you're not really alive right now. There was a Tolstoy story that I loved. The moral is that the most important time is now, and the most important people are whomever you're with, and the most important thing to do is to bring joy to the people you're with - even if it's your enemy. In the story, the person learning the lesson ends up saved by unwittingly helping an enemy. It's similar to other Tolstoy stories. Don't bother with revenge, just don't add any more evil to the world.
Thich Nhat Hanh suggests we don't look at life divided into parts that you give to others, at work, with kids, etc. Each moment you spend with others is your own time that you get to spend with others. You have unlimited time for yourself. It's all for you. That's a useful perspective to keep in mind when I feel like people are draining me because I have something else I'd rather be doing. I'm impatient whenever I'm not really here right now.
It's all a matter of perspective. When my kids were babies and up all night sick, as I'd walk the halls jiggling and patting the little one, I'd tell myself that this is a great opportunity to hug my kids. When they're older, they probably won't let me hold them for hours and hours (and hours). It really helped me to appreciate the time instead of becoming bitter or complaining.
Once I took my then 3-year-old to the dentist. She wanted to walk, so we left the stroller at home. On the way back home after a stressful afternoon of waiting and all the excitement of a new experience, she wanted to be carried and promptly fell asleep in my arms. While I carried her the many blocks home, I imagined I was running a marathon with fans cheering me on at the edges of the sidewalk. That fantasy helped me carry on, to feel strong, proud and grateful for the exercise I got instead of miserable from the burden of a heavy child. It was a useful delusion.
There was a good little parable about lettuce. If the lettuce doesn't grow well, we don't blame the lettuce. We blame the sun or rain or soil or rocks or bugs or rabbits. We should be as compassionate with people when they "are still imprisoned by false views, hatred, and ignorance and continue to create hatred, and ignorance and continue to create suffering for themselves and for others." And we should have compassion for ourselves too, of course. Take "care for one's self, not being preoccupied about the way others look after themselves, a habit of mind which gives rise to resentment and anxiety."
Montaigne suggests we maintain mindfulness by writing about what's happening right now, and just by really paying attention to what we see and hear. That's doable for me. It's a start. But I'm still going to mentally multitask from time to time, still going to think about life and ideas while I do dishes instead of just doing dishes. And that's okay. I can try to really be with people when I'm with people, but the dishes are less affected by my attitude. And I like to think.
If you haven't heard the story of Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen yet, these two heroes were camping and heard shots coming from across the lake on the Island of Utoya in Norway where kids were being targetted by a lone gunman. They got in their boat and made several trips in order to save 40 people who were trying to swim to safety. They were shot at and found bullet holes in their boat, but they kept going back to save more lives.
Many people questioned why this part of the story wasn't made pubic sooner, and concluded that it has something to do with the fact that they're both women and a married couple. That messes with our idea of what a hero looks like. It's also bizarre how much of the immediate media was filled with claims of ties to Islamic terrorists. Now the killer's being branded as not a real Christian.
We like to distance ourselves from anything disagreeable. But that is to deny the reality of any group of people. An individual is a microcosm of a group. We each have potential to cause harm - maybe not murder, but certainly meanness. If we deny that's part of us, we risk acting on it all the more because we're only allowing ourselves to see our sparkling persona. It seems like it's almost necessary for evil to be acted out somewhere. Are there any pious groups without at least a trickster in their midsts, or a liar or manipulator? We can only try to be virtuous as often as possible. We'll always be drawn into the fray surrounding us from time to time. Like the priest in this video:
According to Montaigne, and the Stoics, and Epicurus, and Aristotle, and the Tao, one way to try to stay on the straight and narrow is to find good people out there and follow their lead. I think, because of the potentially nefarious nature of humanity, we can't blindly follow one person's lead. Some people do wonderful things, but aren't always wonderful. As exhausting as it may be, we still have to think for ourselves all the bloody time!
Some people follow Jesus or Muhammad, but they stray from the original words and stories to following other followers who are misleading at best, and horrifically cruel at worst. Both of these prophets generally suggest we should be nice to one another - mainly, but the metaphorical stories makes the details a bit muddy. So people have used religion to back up their own nastiness for centuries. And everyone likes to pick and choose a bit to determine the philosophy that fits them best - as they should. A friend once commented that Islamic doctrine is clearly more violent than Christian doctrine, but I suggested she forgot about some of the claims made in the Book of Revelation in which Jesus will judge and wage war and strike down the nations and all that jazz. She said, "My church doesn't really believe in that part of the Bible." Just as well.
There are plenty of examples of virtuous people who walk among us like Dalen and Hansen, and we should follow their incredible courage and persistence, but yet if we follow all their acts believing they are the Good incarnate, they're bound to stray and lie or act thoughtlessly or something from time to time. It happens. We have to consciously follow the right actions and attitudes, not the right people. And this particular instance makes it clear that we shouldn't just look for virtue in the typical places. Our stereotypes around who is likely to be good can really throw us off the mark.
While I was in the middle of re-watching season one of Arrested Development yesterday, someone came to my door wanting a donation for an initiative she was creating. This happens every other day or so. I'm often very patient listening to people's plea for financial help with their new business or for me to buy their service that they claim I can't live without. It's the new version of the door-to-door salesman. But yesterday? Not so much. I interrupted her with, "Sorry, I'm just not interested," and walked away.
I felt badly afterwards, but rationalized that her intro was just too long for sustained attention. She needs to get her pitch down to two-minutes tops! Also, there are many people on my street that will listen to her at length, so I can free-ride on their kindness. If my reaction upset her, I know the woman two doors down would build her back up. Right?
But then I wondered if the T.V. show I was watching wasn't affecting my judgment and subsequent behaviour.
I gravitate to shows with snarky, selfish, morally-corrupt characters like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Weeds, and Community. There's likely something in me that appreciates that kind of humour - maybe it's because I typically repress all that in my regular life, so I like to watch it on T.V. I think I'll go with that. But to what extent does watching the corruption affect my behaviour and make me even more corrupt than otherwise?
Does media reflect or affect society? I think it's both.
An interesting study was done that found that "educational media exposure was correlated with future observed relational aggression." Researchers looked at the connection between the content of non-violent cartoons and verbal aggression, and found a strong correlation. Shows like Arthur or Franklin, or Magic School Bus are non-violent, but the content is full of anti-social behaviours: snarky, whiney kids who complain and tease and berate one another. Another study found that 96% of all children's programming includes verbal insults and put-downs, averaging 7.7 put-downs per helf-hour, and 84% of the time, there was no reprimand or correction, only laughter or nothing at all. Even though the final moral of the story is positive, the kids watching pick up and directly copy the behaviours seen throughout.
T.V. producers have spent so much energy on taking out all the physical aggression in shows like Road Runner, or Bugs Bunny, that they didn't see they had replaced it with verbal aggression. Conflict of some type is integral to a story. Everyone getting along is boring and doesn't entertain beyond the early years.
That physical aggression of dropping anvils on characters or punching them until they have little birds circling their heads are strongly disapproved of in our culture. Kids know that. We watched the shows without copying them - much. At the very least if we copied them, we did it secretively because we know we'd get in trouble if we got caught. But subtle verbal nastiness is almost socially sanctioned, particularly if it entertains us in class or at the dinner table. We might say, "That's not very nice," but with a hint of a smile that suggests it's okay anyway.
We all know hitting and biting is wrong. But we seem to have forgotten that teasing and belittling and whining is problematic. These behaviours have become socially acceptable on T.V. shows and in our lives.
But is it immoral to hurt someone's feelings in order to get a laugh or because we're feeling impatient with them? Is it just an etiquette issue? Etiquette is much more relative and culturally determined. We were taught to keep our elbows off the table and never wear a hat indoors back in the day. Most of us ignore these rules now with no ill effects, and people who maintain them strictly may be seen as old-school. But the difference between these examples is the harm caused.
Knowingly causing harm to another for personal gain is immoral. Often instead of altering our behaviour to reduce harm (by not teasing for example), we try to alter our belief in the effect ("She doesn't mind if I tease her") or the receiver's belief in the effect ("Oh, lighten up!"). We rationalize our behaviour to try to convince ourselves and others that we're not really causing harm simply because it's entertaining to us to cause exactly this kind of harm. And it's a bit of a power-trip. Of course sometimes teasing really doesn't cause harm. But we typically know where that line is, and we often ignore it.
I hate censorship. And I think that's not necessary for the big kids anyway. I think we can watch the shows, but perhaps should pay just that much more attention to our behaviour to ensure we're not blindly copying the very funny but very cruel attitudes and actions we're watching. We can laugh at the fools so long as we don't turn them into our role models. For our children, it's a matter of monitoring when they're able to think before they act before they should watch such anti-social programming, and then discussing the programs with the kids as they watch. Maybe they can watch some nature shows until then!
And when Montaigne says we need to work against evil in order to actually be virtuous, he might be happy to know that in today's society those opportunities to consider an immoral act but choose to be virtuous are more plentiful than ever!
AND let's not forget it IS possible to be funny without being a jerk:
Montaigne's essay "Of Cruelty" speaks more to virtue than evil. He's sorting out what it means to be virtuous. In a nutshell he says, "What I have in me of good, I have by chance." Being virtuous has to be more than just the good we do that we would have done even if it wasn't considered good. Virtuous acts are those that take a bit of struggle.
I like to think of myself as moral by choice - by the sheer strength of my willpower to resist temptation. But lately I've decided it's just my dumb luck that I tend to do things that seem virtuous at this time and place.
I have allergies to fragrances. I go on and on about the harm caused by phthalates, but truth be told, I couldn't wear perfume or make-up if I wanted to. I can't even walk down the detergent aisle at the grocery store. I'm a canary in a coal-mine. My irritations make me seem a good feminist and a good environmentalist.
And I'm oblivious to details. My mom had significant facial hair, but I didn't notice that was unusual until I was 12 when a friend's dad made fun of it. A few years back I met up with an old boyfriend on the street. He thanked me for having dated him in high school. I was hot for him and baffled by the gratitude.
"I used to be really overweight."
"Oh, I don't think so."
"No really. I've lost 150 pounds since then."
I didn't notice a difference. I didn't say that because it might be taken as an insult. I'm just kinda spacey about that kind of stuff. But instead of getting called on being a basket-case, I seem non-judgmental and open-minded and accepting and all those other nice things.
The smell of cars makes me sick, and I also get horrible motion-sickness. So, of course, I'm a strong cycling advocate. I'm good for the planet not because of my moral fiber, but because cars make me barf.
And I'm left to wonder, if I wasn't such an easily-sickened space-cadet, would I be as virtuous? And since my virtue seems personality-dependent, or just my inclination, can I take any credit for it?
According to Montaigne: nope.
Virtue is "other and nobler than the inclinations toward goodness that are born in us." A virtuous act requires some measure of vice to work against and overcome. Virtue requires a struggle for goodness. We're virtuous, I take it, when we act against our desires, not with them. Good acts are still good I suppose, but not nearly as commendable as virtuous acts. I can buy that. It's easy for me to live without a car, so it's not as praiseworthy as if I gave up a car I loved for the sake of the environment. And if I seek praise for such an easy act, then I'm being kind of slimy.
He goes on,
"For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular action, we are to consider the circumstances, and the whole man by whom it is performed, before we give it a name.
To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my friends call that prudence in me, which was merely fortune; and repute that courage and patience, which was judgment and opinion; and attribute to me one title for another, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise."
I'm pretty honest which is sometimes a virtue, but I'm often unaware of the affect my words and actions will have on others. Years ago when I brought my newborn baby to work for a visit, I immediately handed it off to a colleague who loves babies. Later another colleague told me that that was so incredibly nice of me. The guy holding my baby has schizophrenia. But I didn't see him as someone with a disorder then make a moral decisions to do the right thing. I just saw him as a person who loves babies, and I didn't hesitate to hand mine over. It was an act of innocence, not virtue.
But honesty works against me too. Again at work, I once casually mentioned that I wouldn't be caught dead in a blazer, and apparently offended a whole room of blazer-wearers. They thought I was so cruel to say such a thing. But that wasn't my intention, only the effect. So, if I take no praise in the first case, then I should take no blame in the latter either, right? I apologized anyway.
In both instances I was being honest and oblivious, but neither kind nor cruel. If we consider the whole person before we cast judgment, that suggests that intention matters more than effect. But we still have to take responsibility for the effect we have on others. It seems to come down to getting the blame but not the praise. Montaigne doesn't actually suggest we get no praise for our goodness, just not as much as for our virtuousness.
I have had perhaps a few moments of virtuousness. When I was first pregnant with no desire to marry, several people advised me to abort. They didn't typically use those words though (although a few did). The words were closer to, "You can't be pregnant and single and teach in a high school, and you can't marry the dad, so...." Then they'd trail off for me to come to my own conclusions. I'm pro-choice, but not for my own convenience. It was clear to me the right thing to do was defy public opinion and custom and have the baby. I stood up to the masses and did the right thing. BUT it's also what I wanted to do, so I think it was actually a good act, but not a virtuous act even though there was significant internal struggle involved.
I'm down to only one really clear example of virtue. This past March I wanted to sell a rental property. I asked around if anyone wanted it, and I offered $320,000 as the price - a very reasonable estimate given the area and a realtor assessment done the previous fall. A neighbour jumped at it the day before I was about to give up and have realtors look at it. He couldn't have an offer ready for a few days. I wanted to go ahead with the realtors in case he couldn't get the money together, but I promised him that my word was good, that I'd take $320,000 regardless what the realtors said. They said $450,000.
Ouch.
I sucked it up and accepted the neighbour's offer. It was virtuous in that I had to struggle with it, and the right answer was not the easy answer, not what I desired by a long shot. BUT, I will be left to wonder, would I have been so virtuous if it wasn't a neighbour that I had to see regularly. AND since it's the case that if I had raised my price by 100,000, I would have felt sick every time I walked past his house, isn't it still an inclination to act that way? That I would be internally tormented if I hadn't done it seems to suggest it was an act more natural than intentional. I think the struggle and the ill feeling I also have when I think of the lost cash means it was actually indeed a virtuous act.
Can I feel virtuous now?!
Finally Montaigne gets to the cruelty bit of his title. He, like most of us, has "naturally a horror for most vices." It makes us uncomfortable to watch people in pain. Most of us have empathy, and he doesn't understand people who don't. He says,
I could hardly persuade myself, before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found souls so cruel and fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; would hack and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to invent unusual torments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit, and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a man dying in anguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can arrive: "That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only for the sake of the spectacle." (Seneca)
That he despises cruelty by inclination makes it an act of goodness or innocence, not virtue. But, does it follow then that people without such an inclination are merely bad, and not evil? The effect is the most evil acts ever committed, but the intention may be merely to clean up the neighbourhood.
And I also wonder, if Montaigne was a guard in Zimbardo's experiment, where random students were assigned to be guards or prisoners for six days and nights in a wing of the university, would he have tormented the prisoners until they were rocking in a corner like the other guards did? This would be a perfect event necessary for the expression of virtue: going against the crowd and inclination in order to do the right thing. But would he have done it?
I've never liked Eckhart Tolle. My primary arguments have been that he stole from other places without giving credit, and that the people he stole from were better writers and thinkers in the first place.
On the first concern: Maybe it's because I'm a teacher, but I'm all about primary sources. Yet don't we all steal from one another, re-work it a bit, then call it our own? I'm not sure it's really that big a deal that the ideas he espouses aren't at all new. Maybe it bothers me just because I've done the work of reading the original sources, and I feel like people are cheating by relying on Tolle. But maybe that's a bad argument.
On the second concern: This one has more merit. Years ago I found a site comparing Tolle quotations to a philosophers - but I can't remember the philosopher (Aristotle? Plato? Lao Tzu?), and I can't find that site. But suffice it to say that in a quote-to-quote comparison, Tolle falls short by a mile. His axioms are pithy and often of little substantial meaning. And he falls into a few serious fallacy traps. Essentially, he presents information not in a way that we can contemplate and deliberate, but in a way that makes it impossible to disagree. One blogger called this the "three cards 'mindfuck' trick." I can't find the originally author (anon), but I found the following here:
"(1) The Higher Level Card (i.e. Sorry, it's just over your head). Sorry, but you're just not smart enough to realize I am smarter than you, because you're on a lower (less divine) level.
(2) The Projection Card (i.e., I know you are, but what am I). By criticizing me, you are really just criticizing yourself, because any problem you see in me is just a projection of a problem in yourself.
(3) The Skillful Means Card (i.e., it's all your own fault, dickhead). The most potent card of all! It's not abuse; it's not pathetic or ridiculous or wrong; it's a crazy-wise teaching. You know, like Zen stuff. So when I call you a dickhead, it's not because I'm a dickhead, it's because you have a dickhead-complex that you need to evolve past, and I'm here to help you see that.
They are designed to end all discussion, and they are used only when folks know the actual substance of their beliefs has run, or is running, dry.... In other words, these 'cards' are used to create a situation where actual problem solving, critical thinking and good philsophizing... cannot be done."
From comments on many Tolle-philic sites, it appears he suggests we all work towards enlightenment, but doesn't say how. If you can't do it, you're doing it wrong, but he won't say what's wrong. Maybe it's just not in you right now to do it.
The thing is, in other writings written hundreds of years earlier, there are specific techniques you can use to have a happier, more peaceful life, the type of like Tolle suggests you could have by reading his books. Check out what Montaigne has to say:
* Try to stay in the present (cultivate mindfulness) by maintaining an amazement at each instant of experience both outside and inside yourself. He did this by writing, in detail, about everything around him and contemplating his thoughts. Writing forced him to pay attention, but anything that keeps you involved in what's happening right now will work. Some people need to be hit with a stick from time to time. Whatever works. He says,
"When I walk alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me."
* Don't let the world bring you down. If you're upset, keep in mind how much worse it could be. If your kids are irritating, imagine you just got a call that they all died in a tragic accident in order to shift your perspective so that you're suddenly grateful for their annoying little lives. If you're tired of your stuff, imagine having nothing, and how happy you'd be to have it all after contemplating losing it all in a fire. If the kids complain about dinner, remind them of how bad it would be if they lived in an impoverished country. They should be overjoyed to be eating spaghetti yet again. These are old tricks my parents taught me, but Montaigne suggests them too. You can talk this further to imagine that this is the last hour of your life. What really matters, and what can you brush off now?
* Keep in mind how insignificant you and your problems are compared to the grand scheme of things. Seneca said,
"Place before your mind's eye the vast spread of time's abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity."
Another advocate of this view in the Monty Python organ donor skit (starting at 3:45 in particular):
* A lot of Montaigne (and Tolle) is reminiscent of the Tao Te Ching, particularly when he suggests we would be better off contemplating ideas than memorizing facts. This one is a real relief in an age where there just seems too much to know. Montaigne says, "Forget much of what you learn." And Lao Tzu says, "The more you know, the less you understand." Facts aren't as firm as we give them credit for being. Suspend judgment on all these facts thrown at us. Who knows what's real.
* To keep me in mind of morality, my mom always said, "Don't do anything you wouldn't want published on the front of the newspaper." Seneca and Epicurus and Montaigne all suggest finding someone admirable and acting always as if that person is watching us.
* Distract yourself from what bothers you, particularly what you're unable to control. If that jerk at work makes you nuts, don't carry the annoyance home, but leave work with a mind to do something entertaining that will help you forget your troubles. This is a welcome break from the idea that if someone bothers us, we should delve deep into why it's such a problem for us, often going back into family of origin crap to determine if we're projecting our stuff on him, until the jerkiness is no longer so bothersome to us. Whew! I like that distraction idea much better.
Montaigne, and several older philosophers, say that generally, the secret to happiness is not to let your emotions get the better of you. These are ways to help you do that: Pay attention to right now, compare yourself to those worse off to feel better, keep the big picture in mind, don't obsess over details, act as if your idol was watching you, and distract yourself if you start losing it. The trick is, these are things to think about not just one or twice, but all the time. But, it is inevitable we will be sucked back into the drama of human desire and suffering surrounding us. That's okay. Just get back into it next time you remember and you'll feel much better.
You can't do the pure-being-ball-thing all day (from I (Heart) Huckabees):
