Category: Post Untitled, volume two

SUNDAY, 9 JANUARY 2005

15:18

“Why should there necessarily be a purpose to human life?” someone may ask.

Looking at the natural world, everything from cloud to water to air to the antennae of a cockroach, it seems that everything has a purpose. Why on earth would the entire planet be filled with purpose and reason, yet there is no purpose and reason for a human being’s existence?

For me the question is rather: WHAT?

[05/01/12: The legs of a chimpanzee serve a clear purpose. But what is the purpose of the chimpanzee? Do each animal and each species really serve a purpose? Mosquitoes spread viruses and parasites that keep the populations of certain species in check … yet mosquitoes and the cargo they carry are regarded in the modern world as an abomination that must be eradicated.

The demand for purpose is certainly hot for contemplation and discussion. I am fully open to the possibility that we simply attach purpose and meaning to what we observe in the physical world, including our own lives. Yet it seems the whole world is pervaded by this-thing-do-this and that-thing-does-that.

My intention is not to end up with a theological argument. For me it is rather a case of an assumption that if a pattern can be found throughout the whole visible world, that human life must certainly also serve a purpose. [[25/05/15: Can a human life really be compared to something like the paws of a chimpanzee or a human eye? Is the former not too abstract to have a purpose?]]

And just to complicate things, one should perhaps also wonder whether individual chimpanzees serve a unique purpose they unknowingly pursue …]

[26/12/12: It is like a hierarchy: this cell serves a purpose; this collection of cells serves a purpose; this collection of several groups of cells forms a “foot”, which serves a purpose; the “foot” is attached to a “leg”, which serves a purpose … but the overall organism to which the foot and the leg and the eye and the head and the hand etcetera are attached serves no purpose? Or “purpose” is just a figment of our imagination?]

16:11

For the record, what do I mean by “conventional life”? I mean income-generating work (full-time professional career, or something else), finding a partner, starting a family, pursuing a stable life, doing things in your “free time” that make you happy (or happier in some cases).

If someone proposes to me, now, after all these years, that I should simply dedicate my life to that, I will be very sincere in asking the person, “Are you out of your mind?”

* * *

“Families have been torn apart. Whole communities have disappeared. In countries where religion, spirituality and culture lie at the heart of human existence, places of worship have been wiped out. The very things that define people’s identities and values have been swept away.”

Kofi Annan, at the Tsunami Summit (from the China Post, Friday 7 January 2005)

* * *

Says the sixty-year old woman in The Shipping News:

“Thought I’d never come back here [to Newfoundland] but the older you get … there’s an ache, a pull, something you’ve got to figure out, like you’re a piece in a puzzle …”

What? You do that only when you’re sixty? What do you do then between the ages of 18 and 33?

______________________

FRIDAY, 7 JANUARY 2005

00:25

Human beings, like other animals, use senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell – to know who they are, and to find their place in the world, time and time again.

12:55

1. Many people say they have dedicated their lives to their children – or they are currently doing so.

2. People do not have children in the first place for the children’s sake, but to satisfy their own deep desires.

3. Many people have children to improve their roles and sense of self-worth at the particular time and in the place where they live out their lives.

Conclusion: Planned pregnancy is a calculated step people take to give more value to their own lives, to play other, more fulfilling roles than the roles they have been playing up to that specific point in their lives, and to dedicate their lives to something “better” than their own survival in a world filled with suffering, disappointments, pain and sometimes unbearable boredom.

(Question: Why would I want to have children? For the same reasons …)

17:27

Data is processed from the moment of self-awareness …

One of these pieces of data that has run chills down my spine since my childhood is that of mortality – the idea that people perish, sometimes unexpectedly at a very young age, and sometimes after enough decades to count on both hands. Another truth that cannot be denied: even if the actual moment of mortality strikes at a ripe old age, after a long and fruitful life, it is preceded by age that plough the face full of wrinkles year after year, that makes the full mane of the young lion fall out until nothing but a shiny scalp with a few tufts of hair covers the skull, that makes organs fail and that weakens the muscles, and that causes the bones to become brittler by the day.

SATURDAY, 8 JANUARY 2005

People marry whom they marry because they believe that specific person can give them what they need at that stage of their lives. In many cases, the rest of their lives are marked by a struggle to reconcile themselves with the choice they had made.

______________________

WEDNESDAY, 5 JANUARY 2005

10:14

Intimate love, and the warm body of another person is not a panacea for all pain, disappointments, and the unbearable boredom that is sometimes part of our daily existence. It can however not be denied that it enables millions of people to endure pain, disappointments and boredom on a daily basis. Is also true that if these things are endured, we don’t always do anything to improve what needs to be improved … which brings us back to the positive aspects of celibacy and being on your own … The point, however, that I wanted to make is about the benefits and value of being with someone else.

12:40

I am full of enthusiasm for this year. Why? Because I am alive … and I know no one makes it out in one piece, but until then I am alive. And that means I can apply every day of my life, every hour, every week and month, and also my hands, my feet, my brain, my eyes and my ears to something, to projects, to things I will be able to look back at and say, “That’s good.”

And as for the inevitably less positive? Well, life is a struggle, and as long as you keep standing, you’re not falling down.

16:45

Can the core of a person’s personality be changed?

I believe not, because it is to a large extent a given genetic disposition. It also depends on how change is defined. I believe the essence of a particular personality can be modified, and that it can be applied in certain ways according to will and choice. But whether or not the core can be changed, that is another question.

[According to Mental Health and Illness, “some facets of our personality are inherited”.]

[What do I mean by “core”? In what way is the core separate from the “rest” of the personality? Is there even something like a core of a particular personality, or are there simply aspects? Or are there more dominant aspects of a personality that can arguably be treated as the core?]

THURSDAY, 6 JANUARY 2005

14:42

Every person is aware of him- or herself.

The question is, is this consciousness good? If not, why not?

Does your current consciousness have to do with given birth data, or with appearing in a particular place? If the former, what can be changed? If the latter, what can be changed? Also, do you absolutely have to appear in that particular place?

21:06

The point is to develop a personal vocabulary that defines your existence, that defines who you are and what you are doing with your life. A large part of my writing over the past few years has been about exactly that: building up a particular vocabulary.

______________________

TUESDAY, 4 JANUARY 2005

Why do people have sex?

Put another way, why is sex so important to so many people? (I will restrict my question to sex between people who do not love each other, but who are sexually attracted to each other to a bare minimum degree.)

The answer: certainly not to ensure offspring, but for the pleasure of it!

Okay, I know anybody old enough to know what two dogs are doing on the pavement and who know that people occasionally do something similar (hopefully not on the pavement), know about the pleasure aspect. So what is my point? A question of course: why is pleasure so important? Pleasure is so important because it makes life bearable: the pain, disappointment and sometimes unbearable boredom that is part of so many people’s daily lives.

A further point is that if pleasure is the primary motivation behind the whole loveless sex story, it can certainly be said that to a large extent this motivation cannot so much be suppressed as channelled into other activities.

“Like what?” someone may ask.

Stamp collections, to name one possibility. And then of course everyone can fill up their own list with dozens of other personal projects that would make the pain, disappointment and unbearable boredom more bearable.

Personal projects also have the added benefit that it can promote a sense of self-worth, and it can even confirm your identity, as well as your place and relative value in the Greater View of Things.

Sex can certainly do the same things. But stamp collections, or any other personal projects, tend not to interfere unnecessarily with the delicate rhythm of the heart. Plus, your stamp collection will understand if you want to enjoy some breakfast on a Monday morning before you go to work …

______________________

SUNDAY, 2 JANUARY 2005

“What Larry means is, if you look at it from the standpoint of why we’re here, what we are is more important than who we are.” ~ Danny de Vito’s character (“Phil”) in The Big Kahuna to “Bob” after “Larry” (Kevin Spacey) noted that there aren’t really people at the convention, there are only functions.

[10/01/05: Naturally who we are influences to a large extent and for all practical purposes and appearances what we are, including at conventions.]

“God created women to be mirrors, so a man could see what an ass he is. When you talk to me about souls … a man does not know what his soul looks like … hasn’t any idea … what his soul looks like until he gazes into the eyes of the woman he is married to. And then, if he’s any kind of a decent human being, he spends the next couple of days throwing up. Because no man … no honest man, can stand that image.” ~ “Phil” to “Bob” in The Big Kahuna

* * *

The point of free will is this: you can do anything you want … as long as you are willing to bear the consequences.

MONDAY, 3 JANUARY 2005

To a large extent it comes down to how well you use your brain, not only in general, but for any specific period of, say, fifteen minutes.

If you have used your brain for fifteen minutes to decide how you are going to arrange the living room furniture … then that’s all well and good, but then those fifteen minutes are used up, they’re gone, you can never recover them. The same with the next fifteen minutes, or any other quarter of an hour of your life.

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