Delight Springs

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Sic transit, wabi-sabi, and the far shore

LISTEN. Back from Fall Break and a long-overdue reunion with Older Daughter. She's in her element, has found her community, and knows where to find all the good food and fun. Plus, she lent me her high-energy pup for invigorating strolls along the LA River. It's not exactly Montaigne's strolling meditation "in the beautiful orchard" but she definitely pulled me "back to the walk"...

Today in CoPhi it's report presentations, analysts, positivists, and existentialists: Did Russell, Ayer, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus walk with dogs? Russell did. For most it's the answer (to the ultimate question, of course, about life, the universe, and everything).

Sartre, though, liked cats. 

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LISTEN (10.'20). Our discussion of Falter and the end of the "human game" yesterday in Environmental Ethics turned to questions of meaning and its possible loss in a technologically transformed future. Todd May's Stone conversation with George Yancy does too.

...I believe, with some of the existentialists, that we're not here for any particular cosmic reason or purpose. We just show up, live our lives, and then die. This doesn't mean, of course, that I don't believe in things like morality; rather, I ground morality and values in another way... our death threatens to sap meaning from our lives. Why is this? We live oriented toward our future. Our most important engagements — career, relationships, hobbies, etc. — presuppose future development. Death would cut us off from those developments and thus some of the meaning of our engagements. And it is important to note that because we can die at any time that threat is a constant one. We live under the shadow of death.

...we must engage in forward-looking projects and engagements, because that's inevitable for almost all human beings. A life without ongoing engagements is, for most people, an impoverished one... we must try to live as best we can within the moments of those engagements. Instead of solely looking forward, we should enjoy the present of what we do in the knowledge that at any moment the future could disappear. It's a kind of stereoscopic vision that seeks to orient toward the future while immersing in the present.

I don't think that doing this is easy. For my own part, living more fully in the present is difficult for me. But I have gotten to the stage in my life where I can see its far shore much more clearly than the shore I set out from, and so I am trying to do that with greater urgency... (continues)

He's right, properly focusing a meaningful present with an altered onrushing future while retaining what's valuable from the past is a difficult balancing act. Young people who can't quite see their own far shore so vividly may feel less urgency, but this isn't just a question of personal meaning. It's existential for our species, and our life on Earth. 

On the personal front, though, May's approaching shore reminds me of Northern Exposure's radio deejay philosopher Chris Stevens. "Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon." And, you are here right now. Don't just "snuggle up to your fiber optics baby and bliss out." Connect. Chris quoted Einstein to that effect too, in a nice riposte to Ayn Randian hyper-individualist libertarianism.

“Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we’re here for the sake of others, above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends; and also for those countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by bonds of sympathy.”

We'll talk about that today in CoPhi, beginning with Bertrand Russell's youthful discovery of John Stuart Mill's father's answer to the Big Question about God and the First Cause, then consider Freddy Ayer's youthful positivistic impudence and the brush with mortality that his wife said made him so much nicer "after he died," then Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus on freedom, absurdity, and the perpetual reconstruction of what we call our human and personal natures. 

If Sisyphus was really happy, btw, he'd have had friends helping him with that rock. And he'd have taken more moral holidays, when not working from home during the pandemic. [More Sisyphus cartoons]

Among today's Fantasyland fantasies we consider the incipient early-60s counterculture of Students for a Democratic Society, the culture of gun fetishism and our epidemic of gun violence, The Force, The Pill, and our national obsession with perpetual youth. 

That last topic is a good teaser for our next read, Why Grow Up?, which we'll open after we close How the World Thinks. We're about to do that, after today's chapters on Transience and Impartiality and next time's concluding thoughts. 

The acute Japanese sensibility to the fleeting seasons is one angle on transience. Those revered cherry blossoms are magnificent, and no small part of their magnificence is due to their rapid entrances and exits. They are a natural production of performance art. And tea can teach too. "Teaism is the noble secret of laughing at yourself... the smile of philosophy." 

And take a little wabi-sabi with your tea, to enjoy "the bitter-sweet pathos of things" and find "beauty in imperfection and consolation in impermanence."

Now, maybe I'm ready to go stand in line and vote this morning. 

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