“I am congenitally unable to take much interest in other people.”
Why? Just lucky, I guess.
I have tried insofar as possible to avoid getting involved in the sordid complications of human beings. I have been afraid of being sucked down into their bottomless whirlpool.
Does what we do here count?
There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes.
I'm beginning to sense a gist here...
The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is the individual.
See, I told you.
I'm going somewhere where there aren't any women.
Unless, of course, you count Astro Cat.
I had learned bit by bit the art of meeting people with a straight face—no, that’s not true: I have never been able to meet anyone without an accompaniment of painful smiles, the buffoonery of defeat. What I had acquired was the technique of stammering somehow, almost in a daze, the necessary small talk.
“I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.” Raymond Carver
Just out of curiosity, does that make sense?
“Knowing that you want to die makes you less scared.” Nick Hornby
Duh?
“I'm sure we all have dreams of leaving at some time in our lives, but when we reach the bottom, most of us go running home.” Deborah Curtis
Or they hang themselves.
“One time, two years ago, I took a draught of morphia, meaning to end my life. My mother found me before the life was ended, the doctor drew the poison from my stomach with a syringe, and when I woke, it was to the sound of my own weeping. For I had hoped to open my eyes on Heaven, where my father was; and they had only pulled me back to Hell.” Sarah Waters
Thanks, Mom.
“If, when I woke up in June, life still wasn't worth the trouble, I would end it. I would jump. This was the deal I made.” Ottessa Moshfegh
Woke up in June?
“'Oh no!’ replies Monsieur Tuvache indignantly. ‘We’re not murderers, you know. You have to understand that’s prohibited. We supply what is needed but people do the deed themselves. It’s their affair. We are just here to offer a service by selling quality products,’ continues the shopkeeper, leading the customer towards the checkout.” Jean Teulé.
“The famous atheist Christopher Hitchens once declared that ‘You’re expelled from your mother’s uterus as if shot from a cannon, towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks.’ Presumably that was what he had in mind when conceiving his three children.” Quentin S. Crisp
God's will?
“This rock has seen billions of years of living organisms and will see many more once we die and turn to dirt. Our life is but one tiny, brief, insignificant piece of this vast universe. So, why, the nihilist argues, do people really think that it is important to be a “good person”, get good grades, or get a good job? What difference could that possibly make to anything?" Jon Morrison
A new thread, perhaps? Examining the gap between essential meaning and existential meaning?
Again.
"Nihilism is an honest evaluation of what a universe without God would look like. Nietzsche was right about that. Where he went wrong was in thinking this was true of the actual universe.” Jon Morrison
The actual universe. Anyone here got a handle on that yet?
“Jam jamming,” Meghan chanted in a sing song voice. “I like the idea, the feel. I KNOW what you are getting at. Where does a sound end? Has the Earth been pumping billions upon billions of horrendous noises into the depths of space since the time primates began walking? Can you imagine all the noisy concerts, explosions of war, and thundering of bombs, all drifting endlessly into empty darkness? Can you imagine? For infinity? Frozen glaciers, devoid rocks, suddenly illuminated to be crushed by all that deafening din, waking the inhabitants of other planets. Jamming alien satellite signals. If there is life out there, it wants to destroy us...I must be really stoned to see this so clearly” Jaime Allison Parker
Or not stoned enough?
“I didn’t belong to myself anymore. I had no mouth or eyes or thoughts. I didn’t need anything to change or be different... The hole inside me was filled...and I was a part of things that couldn’t be seen. I don’t know how long I was there. There was no time.” Sofie Laguna
Let's just say I'm working on that.
“By engaging with film illusions both actively and passively – as I attempt to do in this book – we strengthen the capacity of our minds to reason, imagine and think through ideas in a way unrestrained by some static conception of objective Truth. In so doing, the nihilistic gap existing between the real world and the whole variety of film worlds perhaps widens, but it also serves to offer a free, open space into which our interpretations may spill, mingle and propagate in uninhibited, nihilistic liberty.” John Marmysz
Sven Haakanson Jr.: He tried to act like a bear, and for us on the island, you don't do that. You don't invade on their territory... For him to act like a bear the way he did, to me it was the ultimate of disrespecting the bear and what the bear represents.
Werner Herzog: But he tried to protect the bears, didn't he?
Sven Haakanson Jr.: I think he did more damage to the bears... when you habituate bears to humans, they think all humans are safe... If I look at it from my culture, Timothy Treadwell crossed a boundary that we have lived with for 4,000 years.
Uh, conflicting goods?
Timothy Treadwell: I've always wished I was gay, it would have been a lot easier. You know, it's just Bing! Bing! Bing! - gay guys, no problem. They go to restrooms and truck stops and perform sex, it's like so easy for them and stuff. But you know what? Alas, Timothy Treadwell is not gay. Bummer!
Uh, tell that to the bears?
Timothy Treadwell: I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals.
Two words: Amie Huguenard.
Timothy Treadwell: Oh my gosh! The bear, Miss Chocolate, has left me her poop! It's her crap! It was just in her butt and it's still warm! This is a gift from Miss Chocolate!
So, a "condition"?
Sam Egli: Treadwell was, I think, meaning well. Trying to do things to help the resource of the bears. But, to me, he was acting like he was working with people wearing bear costumes out there, instead of wild animals. Those bears are big and ferocious and they come equipped to kill you and eat you and that's just what Treadwell was asking for. He got what he was asking for. He got what he deserved, in my opinion. The tragedy of it was taking the girl with him. I think the only reason that Treadwell lasted as long in the game as he did, was that the bears probably thought there was something wrong with him, like he was mentally retarded or something. That bear, I think, that day, decided that he had either had enough of Tim Treadwell or that something clicked in that bear's head that he thought 'Hey, you know, he might be good to eat.' My opinion, I think Treadwell thought these bears were big, scary looking, harmless creatures that he could go up and pet and sing to, and they would bond as children of the universe or some odd. I think he had lost sight of what was really going on.
A true story?
[first lines]
Timothy Treadwell: I'm out in the prime cut of big green. Behind me is Ed and Rowdy, members of an up-and-coming sub-adult gang. They're challenging everything, including me. Goes with the territory. If I show weakness, if I retreat, I may be hurt, I may be killed. I must hold my own if I'm gonna stay within this land. For once there is weakness they will exploit it, they will take me out, they will decapitate me, they will chop me into bits and pieces. I'm dead. But so far, I persevere. Persevere.
“I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.” Jules Renard
Amen.
“The world takes us to a silver screen on which flickering images of passion and romance play, and as we watch, the world says, “This is love.” God takes us to the foot of a tree on which a naked and bloodied man hangs and says, “This is love.” Joshua Harris
Cue Mel Gibson?
“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting "Gotcha". It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.'
'Why not?'
'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.” Douglas Adams
Next up: your God person.
“There is nothing more important than your eternal salvation.” Kirk Cameron
See, we told you.
“If you understood him, it would not be God.” St. Augustine of Hippo
Lucky for Him, right?
“God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.” Paul Valéry
“That's what I hated thinking about the most. Oblivion. Nothing. Forever. As unfathomable as the universe around us stretching endlessly, impossibly big, horrible, terrifying... Being alive scared the shit out of me most of the time, but being dead would be so much worse.” Maria Ingrande Mora
See what I mean?
“I could have been someone else, but then it would be someone else questioning herself about her self.” Simone de Beauvoir
No, really, think about that.
“I know there's no heaven. I know it all turns to nothingness. But I fear there will be some remnant of me left within that void. Left conscious by some random fluke. Something that will scream out for this. That one speck of my soul will still exist and be left trapped and wanting. For you. For the light. For anything” Drew Magary
Being optimistic?
“Existence takes punished precedence in a world ailing with the agonies of consequence and misfortune. Once something becomes aware of its existence, once something is born to nothing, it cannot compel itself to cease except by cruelly wishing with futility for deliverance.” Jacob H. Kyle
Your existence might be different.
“It occurred to me anyway one more Sunday was over … that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.” Albert Camus
Essentially as it were.
“Over time, existentialism gave way to hedonism as I made pleasure into my God. Using pleasure to fill the gap that my empty worldview created. Even though I said I was my own authority and I acted like the world revolved around me, my actions revolved around whatever gave me pleasure. My feelings were the real authority of my life.” Michael J Heil
“I can tell you good news, but it will be false. I can tell you bad news, but it will be true. Make a choice!” Abhaidev
Or, sure, flip that coin.
“People are funny. I don't get people like I don't get most things. I get myself, but not them. You would've thought that because I was a person if I got myself, I would get them. But nobody seems to get each other, and everybody seems to get me even less.” Santosh Kalwar
Of course, I don't even get myself. Or, rather, not where it counts most.
“Sisyphus will vote. The Government promised to put electricity on top of the hill.” Ljupka Cvetanova
Some other Sisyphus obviously.
“The increase in the price of electricity will not affect the poorest. Their electricity has already been cut off.” Ljupka Cvetanova
If they aren't already evicted from their homes.
“Many people know the power of speech. They are silent.” Ljupka Cvetanova
Here? Any day now.
“I don't understand models. They starve to stay thin so that they can feed themselves..” Ljupka Cvetanova
Philip Edwards: Perhaps you find in books what I try to find in people.
Elena Hood: That sounds vaguely like an insult.
Philip Edwards: Oh, my, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way at all. Perhaps I meant it simply as a - a provocation
We know better though, don't we?.
Ben Hood: Well, that's the whole point of the holidays, Paul. So you and your sister can mope around the house, and your mother and I can wait on your hand and foot, while the two of you occasionally grunt for more food from behind the hair in your faces.
Of course: the postmodern family.
Paul Hood: Your family is the void you emerge from, and the place you return to when you die. And that's the paradox: The closer you're drawn back in, the deeper into the void you go.
He's only paraphrasing the Fantastic Four, of course.
Mikey Carver: Because of molecules we are connected to the outside world from our bodies. Like when you smell things, because when you smell a smell it's not really a smell, it's a part of the object that has come off of it, molecules. So when you smell something bad, it's like in a way you're eating it. This is why you should not really smell things, in the same way that you don't eat everything in the world around you because as a smell, it gets inside of you. So the next time you go into the bathroom after someone else has been there, remember what kinds of molecules you are in fact eating.
He's only paraphrasing Marilyn vos Savant, of course.
Paul Hood: To find yourself in the negative zone, as the Fantastic Four often do, means all every day assumptions are inverted. Even the invisible girl herself becomes visible and so she loses the last semblance of her power. It seems to me that everyone exists partially on a negative zone level, some people more than others. In your life, it's kind of like you dip in and out of it, a place where things don't quite work out the way they should. But for some people, the negative zone tempts them. And they end up going in, going in all the way.
You first.
Wendy Hood: I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” Bertrand Russell
Fuck dying for any beliefs, he insisted.
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?” George Orwell
Cue the rats.
“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.” Epictetus
Sieg Heil?
“Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.” Philip K. Dick
Let's throw dasein into that, okay?
“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” Niccolò Machiavelli
Noting as well how many of them are already doing time.
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” Robertson Davies
Harold S. Kushner from When Bad Things Happen to Good People
“I believe in God. But I do not believe the same things about Him that I did years ago, when I was growing up or when I was a theological student. I recognize His limitations. He is limited in what He can do by laws of nature and by the evolution of human nature and human moral freedom. I no longer hold God responsible for illnesses, accidents, and natural disasters, because I realize that I gain little and I lose so much when I blame God for those things. I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it, more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die, for whatever exalted reason.
Some years ago, when the "death of God" theology was a fad, I remember seeing a bumper sticker that read "My God is not dead; sorry about yours." I guess my bumper sticker reads "My God is not cruel; sorry about yours.”
So, IC, is this Jew now writhing in Hell?
If we want to be able to pick up the pieces of our lives and go on living, we have to get over the irrational feeling that every misfortune is our fault, the direct result of our mistakes or misbehavior. We are really not that powerful. Not everything that happens in the world is our doing.
And then, of course, we can't leave out the Devil.
...it is one thing to explain that mortality in general is good for people in general. It is something else again to try to tell someone who has lost a parent, a wife, or a child, that death is good. We don’t dare try to do that. It would be cruel and thoughtless. All we can say to someone at a time like that is that vulnerability to death is one of the given conditions of life. We can’t explain it any more than we can explain life itself. We can’t control it, or sometimes even postpone it. All we can do is try to rise beyond the question “Why did it happen?” and begin to ask the question “What do I do now that it has happened?
Blah, blah, blah?
Perhaps that is the only cure for jealousy, to realize that the people we resent and envy for having what we lack, probably have wounds and scars of their own. They may even be envying us.
How seriously would we take person who said, "I have faith in Adolf Hitler, or in John Dilinger. I can't explain why they did the things they did, but I can't believe they would have done them without a good reason." Yet people try to justify the deaths and tragedies God inflicts on innocent victims with almost these same words.
Furthermore, my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is not scandalized by an innocent person's pain, that condones human pain because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of esthetic value. If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be?
The fool!
The idea that God gives people what they deserve, that our misdeeds cause our misfortune, is a neat and attractive solution to the problem of evil at several levels, but it has a number of serious limitations. As we have seen, it teaches people to blame themselves. It creates guilt even where there is no basis for guilt. It makes people hate God, even as it makes them hate themselves. And most disturbing of all, it does not even fit the facts.
Master Sergeant Vernon Waters: Army's not for my son. See, when this war is over, things are gonna change. I want him to be ready for it. I'll send him to some big white college. Let him rub elbows with the whites. Learn the white man's language, how he does things.
Sergeant Washington: White don't rub off.
Master Sergeant Vernon Waters: Well, what are we gonna do? Stay behind in everything? Hell, you can see it in the Army. The white man's running rings around us.
Private Wilkie: Lot of us ain't had the chance them white boys had, Sarge.
Master Sergeant Vernon Waters: That ain't no excuse.
Well, maybe sometimes it is.
Private First Class Peterson: You ain't got to come in here calling us names.
Master Sergeant Vernon Waters: The Nazis call you "Schwarze". You gonna complain to Hitler that he hurt your little feelings?
Missing the point, right?
Master Sergeant Vernon Waters: Got everybody on the post thinking he's a strong, black buck. White boys envy his strength. His speed. Power in his swing. Then this colored champion lets those same white boys call him "Shine" or "Sambo" and he just smiles. Can't talk. Can barely read or write his own name and don't care. He'll tell you they like him or that colored folks ain't supposed to have but so much sense.
Fast forward to...when exactly?
Lieutenant Byrd: Don't blame me. God's the one who made you black, not me, boy.
God it is then.
Master Sergeant Vernon Waters: You're just like the rest of them, Wilkie: ignorant, scared. Stop thinking like a n*****!
Any of that thinking going on here?
Colonel Nivens: This thing has been blown all the hell out of shape. This is the Army's business. Not the NAACP. Not the Negro press. Not those paper-shufflin' desk jockeys in Washington.
Juliette [to a mute grandfather who reads all day]: In prison, I'd put books by my pillow. Their presence reassured me. A sort of rampart against the world. A world without me.
[pause]
It got along fine without me.
And her son?
Gerard [after a dinner party discussion of Rohmer]: Well, Juliette, what do you think? Juliette says nothing. Juliette observes us, judges us. Just who is Juliette? Mysterious Juliette. Etheral Juliette.....Let's find out why Lea hid her ravishing sister from us so long. Where was Juliette? What was Juliette up to? Was she far away? Mad at Lea? In a convent?
Luc: You're a boor.
Gerard: In a Swiss convent? A bear handler in the circus? A Mossad secret agent? Amnesiac? Tell us, Juliette.
Lea: Shut up, Gerard!
Gerard: Let her speak. For once I have a real literary heroine. I want to hear her. I want the truth. Juliette disappears, reappears. Beautiful Juliette. Juliette! Juliette! Juliette!
Juliette: I was in prison for 15 years, for murder.
[The guests burst out laughing...they think she is joking]
No joke. And it was for murdering her son.
Juliette: The worst prison is the death of one's child. You never get out of it.
The mystery deepens...the plot thickens.
Lea [teaching her class]: That's only true of Raskolnikov. You can't extend the notion of redemptive guilt to mankind, and say that every murder contains its own redemption.
Student: But the novelist always seeks to reconstruct the world. Dostoyevsky was no different.
Lea: The novel's narration is impersonal and incomplete, as he refused to give one world view. He knows it's mutiple, that intentions are multiple as are truths.
Student: It was written in first person.
Lea: So?
Student: Maybe his initial aim was to present a soul to give an intimate yet universal portrait of the murderer.
Lea [obviously thinking about Juliette, her sister]: Nonesense! Nonesense! What do you know anyway? What do you know about murderers? What did Dostoevsky know? What did Dostoevsky know about murder? Nothing! Nothing at all! Masterpieces are just hypotheses! Simplistic constructions. Nothing compared to real life! Stop treating books as bibles!!
Of course we already know what the students know not.
Lt. Segral: You report to me from now on. I'm replacing Captain Faure.
Juliette: So, he's gone to the Orinoco?
Segral: If that's what you call shooting yourself through the mouth...
That was a stunner...
Lea: We were there. Didn't we matter?
Juliette: Do you think others matter then? That one cares what they think and do? You were all alive and well! You belong to the kind of world one comes to hate for the mere fact that they are there.
Lea: Why didn't you tell us? Why? I was there! We could have helped you!
Juliette [in anguish]: Helped me in what way? What could you have done?
[pause]
When he screamed out in pain...when his limbs started writhing and when he was choking, when he was choking to death, what could you have done?! WHAT COULD YOU HAVE DONE?!
Later...
Juliette [who had been a doctor before going to prison]: From the beginning, I knew. From the first symptoms. I did the tests myself in the lab. And one night, Pierre [her son] took the paper to write a poem. He was so proud when he gave it back. Little fella...
[long pause]
He was so handsome, so happy. And I saw the little corpse he would become. I felt inside me a pain, like a big hand ripping out my stomach and heart, which kept rampaging inside me. So, I took him with me. They said I kidnapped him. It's true, I kidnapped him. I kidnapped my own son. One night we had a big party at the Greeen House. By then, he could barely move. We sang and we laughed. I read him all his favorite stories. Then I laid him down. I said I loved him and was going to inject him. I stayed right up against him till morning.
[pause]
Nothing mattered anymore. I wanted to go to prison. Either way, I was guilty. I'd given birth to him and condemned him to die. And I had nothing to say. Explain. Explain what? To whom? Explaining is looking for excuses. Death has no excuses.
“But now, when he thought how regularly things went on, from day to day, in the same unvarying round; how youth and beauty died, and ugly griping age lived tottering on; how crafty avarice grew rich, and manly honest hearts were poor and sad; how few they were who tenanted the stately houses, and how many of those who lay in noisome pens, or rose each day and laid them down each night, and lived and died, father and son, mother and child, race upon race, and generation upon generation, without a home to shelter them or the energies of one single man directed to their aid; how, in seeking, not a luxurious and splendid life, but the bare means of a most wretched and inadequate subsistence, there were women and children in that one town, divided into classes, numbered and estimated as regularly as the noble families and folks of great degree, and reared from infancy to drive most criminal and dreadful trades; how ignorance was punished and never taught; how jail-doors gaped, and gallows loomed, for thousands urged towards them by circumstances darkly curtaining their very cradles’ heads, and but for which they might have earned their honest bread and lived in peace; how many died in soul, and had no chance of life; how many who could scarcely go astray, be they vicious as they would, turned haughtily from the crushed and stricken wretch who could scarce do otherwise, and who would have been a greater wonder had he or she done well, than even they had they done ill; how much injustice, misery, and wrong, there was, and yet how the world rolled on, from year to year, alike careless and indifferent, and no man seeking to remedy or redress it; when he thought of all this, and selected from the mass the one slight case on which his thoughts were bent, he felt, indeed, that there was little ground for hope, and little reason why it should not form an atom in the huge aggregate of distress and sorrow, and add one small and unimportant unit to swell the great amount.” Charles Dickens
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...
“I will not let myself get sick, go mad or retreat like a child into blubbering on someone else's shoulder. Masks are the order of the day-and the least I can do is cultivate the illusion that I am gay, serene, not hollow and afraid. Someday, God knows when, I will stop this absurd, self-pitying, idle, futile despair.” Heather Clark
How's that going for you?
“This though...I'm pretty sure that it's the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, anywhere. Ever. I think it's the worst thing that can happen, the theoretical upper limit of suffering. Despair and agony. Absolute. Unending.” Scott Hawkins
This...what?
“No moon. No stars. No certainty that dawn would come, and no eagerness to see what might arrive with it.” Dean Koontz
Stay tuned.
“Faith is the conscious surrender that turns your despair into lessons of divine transformation.” Troy Hadeed
Or, as Lennon suggested, a concept by which to measure our pain.
“Each of us has only one life, unique from every other, and we all have reason to ask, “Why me?”, not in bitterness or despair but in awe and gratitude.” Shawn Davis
Nothing was so hard for me to understand, so baffling, and at the same time so filled with menacing overtones as the commonplace remark, “Human beings work to earn their bread, for if they don’t eat, they die.”
That's actually still true, isn't it?
Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is a struggle between one individual to another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything. ‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals.
Of course, that's only until the worlders of the world unite. And, no, not around Trump this time.
Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves?
We don't call them the Randroids here for nothing, right?
I despised him as one fit only for amusement, a man with whom I associated for that sole purpose.
Not only that but he and his ilk thrive here.
And yet, in some instances… No, I don’t even know that… The more I think of it, the less I understand. All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? I don’t know.
We can't know. And he's long gone.
I wonder if I have actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in Hell.
