Gravitas and Existentialism
Of course Nero didn't fiddle while Rome burned: it was A.D. 64 and the violin didn't show up until about 1500 years later.
No, it's said he sang. Or played the lyre. No matter how he celebrated, he had his jubilee as he looked on at the destruction. I'm sure he had his reasons; maybe it was a nihil obstat preparing the way for his construction plans. Maybe he needed a 'fund raiser' for his campaign against the Christians. Or in a more philosophical mindset, he pondered that perhaps Rome was so far-gone that it needed a reboot.
For my part, in times like these, I think that if humans are involved, things always end in fire. And that they don't end.
One of the strengths of the human soul (I'm using the term as a generic collective term, you rascally theists out there) is its ability to abide and otherwise countenance internal inconsistency and even paradox. If humanity lived on logic and reason alone, they'd have foundered on the rocks of realism a long time ago and never bothered to reach for anything at all. As I said, this is a strength—up to a point.
Before it reaches said point, the human soul can ponder existence, ponder death, ponder beginnings without endings, and endings without beginnings. It can ponder that which lies beyond reach, beyond touch, beyond reason and still make its way back to a quotidian world where there must be bread on the table, a roof over one's head and money in one's account.
But that's a difficult thing to live with for some of us. For most of us, I might even say. How to reconcile an expansive, ultimately ununderstandable universe with hand-to-mouth biological need? For many, it seems they choose to forget—ahh, another of those strange paradoxes—the other while they're living inside the current one. A mental setting-aside of the infinite, or a physical setting-aside of the mundane in order to soar amongst finespun thoughts, depending.
Depending. Interesting term for a fundamental orthogonality. Yet another paradox. We do rack them up rather quickly, don't we?
Anyhow, it's all quite difficult when that threshold of irreconcilability is crossed—in either direction. Quite often we have—at least I do—a nasty crash into a bad spell of Existentialism. Why bother with the two? And if I am capable of holding both in my head, why bother with anything at all? Why bother?
That which had a beginning must suffer an inevitable end, right?
These plummets into existentialism (capitalize the 'e' if you choose) can bring abject disconsolateness that one may never return from—resulting from fear.
Ironically, it's a fear of never recovering that keeps most people from recovering from such a fall.
The natural response to fear is avoidance. The old fight or flight instinct. And after you've decided you can't win, flight is the only option. Like I said: avoidance.
Avoid the context switch from the ethereal (spirit) to the concrete (letter) or vice versa because that's where you get into trouble. Stay in one and never consider both. That's the safe course.
If you've chosen the spirit world, like the moralists in this country have, you avoid the context switch by remaking the concrete world in the image of your own god; if you're a letter-of-the-law kind of person, you wave Thor's hammer at heaven in an attempt to dissipate the godly fog.
If you choose the dominance of neither spirit nor letter, you must cope with the mind-body, wave-particle duality as a full-time gig. And as if life inside a brain so active isn't bad enough, the spiritists and the letterists, properly suspicious of you, add to the difficulty of your choice.
Moralists in aphorist clothing want to kick your legs out from under you and them blame you for not growing an angel's wings. Spoilers and other naysayers will clip your wings and claim you never had them in the first place.
Interestingly, however, there is a shortcut for a stalwart dualist, if you're willing to be clever about it. The key is labels.
Labels. Or rather, avoiding labels. The spiritists will want to pigeonhole you—the theists among them shove a square god into a round world with abandon all the time, and if they're willing to pigeonhole the infinite, why not do it to you, too? The letterists believe in nothing new under the sun, so how could you have a new point of view?
Fingers point, tendrils tangle, they line up on either side of you with weapons until they form a circle. Oh, they'll miss the mark, because you're simultaneously there and not there. You refuse to accept the bullets of realism and the raygun blasts of Jesus. The doggerel and obsequiousness set the world ablaze and there's nothing to stop it.
Weapons are discharged and the circle of fools will fall in fire. But if you realize that the fire is just part of the cycle of human affairs and not a punctuated ending, you can stand back and smile at the naturalness of it all.
And why the hell not pick up a fiddle to pass the time until the fire burns itself out?
Comments
Philosophers are apparently the only people left who can look closely at the human condition and conclude that we can, in an existential moment, abstract ourselves from the vagaries of everyday life. Existentialism is a last desperate grasp at the promise of self-definition, independent of the judging gaze of the Other or the informing narrative of Culture.
We cannot help but to see ourselves through the eyes of others. It is part of the human condition. So we need to invent means of protecting ourselves from the opinions of others by dividing the world into a tight circle or circles of opinion holders that matter to varying degrees and those that don't. This not only ensures the protection of the Ego from the judgments of the Other, but also from the Self. By locating Evil outside the Self and identifying it with Others, the Ego safely disconnects itself from guilt and often the consequences of one's own actions (or inactions.)
Religion both locates the causality of pain and suffering elsewhere (or gives us a sense that we have an avenue of remedy through prayer), and divides for us those whose opinions count from those who don’t, believers vs non-believers. But Existentialism is no less an adaptation by denying the efficacy of externalities to the mind – others, culture, environment and biology. It is a retreat into the self and from the dangers of things like labels.
Reason, as pure as we are able, is itself a process of abstraction and differentiation. It describes and categorizes the quotidian to give us a sense of understanding and hope of control. Yet, in itself, it is indifferent to faith and disbelief, entanglement and existential angst. It stands apart from experience yet does not predetermine the ways in which we cope with experience.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I realize that you posted this in the wee hours, but if you’re going to get all philosophical, don’t be surprised if someone responds in kind.
Posted by: JimG | December 12, 2004 09:57 AM
From W. Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"
Existentialism is a ruse, so long as the ponderer is there to do the pondering. He is his own Externality.
I am not arguing against Other or against Culture. In fact, I'm not arguing a specific point at all save for one: comes a time when gratification replaces happiness and religious and atheist alike subscribe to it.
Posted by: GodOfBiscuits | December 12, 2004 12:09 PM