Assorted Notes

SATURDAY, 5 JUNE 2004

The past year I vacillated a lot between business and free creativity, free creativity and business; more business, less creative work; more creative work, less business …

What I am saying now is that, for me, the optimal target is free creative work.

Some would suggest that that may mean one would have to spend eight hours a day or even more in a dull, uninspiring environment to earn a salary if you don’t earn a sufficient income with your creative work. Would it not be better then to try harder to make some money with your creative endeavours?

My answer: If your creative work is free and you can still make a profit from it, then great. But if you have to compromise the free expression of your creativity in order to profit from it, then you are losing too much.

Then I say, if you cannot avoid it, do your eight hours a day for a salary in an environment where you wouldn’t have been if it were not for your financial needs. If the result is that your creative work is free expression, it would be worth it.

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None, or few notes do not mean I am not working. I’ve been busy the past few days … I did have the insight yesterday that people, if you consider them one-by-one, are only defenceless animals who try their best to stay alive and perhaps taste a little happiness between all the disappointments and failures and all the things that are not working out quite as they would have liked them to work out. (And then there are the “vulnerable” criminals, the “vulnerable” corrupt politicians, the “vulnerable” oppressors and exploiters of other defenceless animals …)

***

In March, I thought 4 June was going to be D-Day. It would be the end of the Commercial Dictatorship, and close enough to the beginning of my life back in South Africa.

The real 4 June was eventually dominated by the fact that my printer wasn’t working, so I couldn’t produce twenty copies of my collection of poetry that I had wanted to hand out to friends and family. So come and go the days of our lives …

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TUESDAY, 1 JUNE 2004

Self-knowledge, identity and the Dalai Lama

The “current” Dalai Lama was born Tenzin Gyatso. Six decades ago he was enthusiastically busy being just an ordinary boy when one day some monks arrived to tell him he is not who he thinks he is, but rather the umpteenth incarnation of someone else. Imagine that.

WEDNESDAY, 2 JUNE 2004

[My conversations, real or otherwise, with the Mormon missionaries go back to my first year in Taiwan when two young, well-dressed, clean-cut Americans visited my apartment every Thursday evening for a few weeks. Their visit was by invitation – I saw them one night while I was smoking a cigarette on my porch, and since there weren’t that many Westerners in the area to talk to, I seized the opportunity for a little theological chit-chat. Our discussions took the form of question and answer: I asked questions, they tried to answer, I replied with fresh questions to their answers, and when they no longer wanted to answer or when they longer had an answer, I came up with possible answers on their behalf. After a few weeks, the two decided to part ways with me.

On the particular Wednesday of this piece I was heading back to Fengshan by train when two Caucasian men entered my field of vision: young, wearing black pants, white short-sleeved shirts with name badges on the one breast, cleanly shaven, short hair. I began to wonder what I would say, were they to target me for conversation. The trip lasted only about ten minutes; the discussion would therefore have been short, and to the point.]

Conversation with Mormon missionaries on the train

(That did not take place on Wednesday, 2 June 2004)

“Hi.”

I nod.

“Are you a teacher?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Couple of years.”

“Have you heard of the Church of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ?”

“There’s no point in me having this conversation with you.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t know who you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you know your names, and you know to which religious organisation you belong. But these are mostly things that you’ve been told about yourself during the first two decades of your lives. You haven’t really made any personal choices that would indicate to me that you truly know who you are.”

“We’ve chosen to follow Jesus Christ.”

“How could you have chosen something if you’ve never had any choices? Where did you grow up? Utah? Salt Lake City? If you were an Arab who grew up in a Muslim environment, with all the environmental data that would have given you an identity in that context, and you then chose the Church of Latter Day Saints above Islam … then you would have made a choice. So far you’re nothing but a human body carrying around a lot of data about yourself. These things – your physical appearance, your name, your language, where you come from, your nationality, and the fact that you are missionaries of a particular church – are all identifying marks that tell you and anyone else how you fit into your environment.

“You, sitting there, cannot tell me anything that you haven’t been told. Have you ever had an experience that could possibly undermine your beliefs? How can you know the truth about yourself or anything you believe in if you’ve never questioned the validity of the facts that you’ve been fed? What are your criteria for telling truth from a lie?

“I cannot have an intelligent conversation – about religion no less! – with someone who is nothing more than an emulator of other people in order to know how he should function as a human being.”

“How do you know what we think, or what we’ve experienced? I experience God every day …”

“Yes, you have experiences, and I’m sure you’ve been told how to interpret them. And the words you use to give expression to these experiences … are words that you did not invent, am I right?

“My station’s coming up. Listen, I cannot, in the final instance, judge the validity of your experiences. I do not claim to possess the powers of mind or spirit which would certainly be required to either confirm or refute the source of your experiences.

“If I made certain assumptions about you that are incorrect, please accept that I did so to make a point that might be applicable to your life, or it might not be. If my assumptions cannot in entirety be dismissed, then please consider it for a minute or so. Either way, have yourselves a good day.”

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FRIDAY, 28 MAY 2004

People who think I like being alone should have their minds read. But what alternative is there for a person for whom being alone is a daily reality but to confirm his value as an individual according to his own standards?

This person will try to establish his value as an individual in a society where membership in a group is one of the most prestigious awards an individual can claim for himself.

To be one member of an intimate two-member group is however held in particularly high esteem since it implies inter alia that each of the two members is sexually attractive to at least one person. This in turn influences the esteem of these two members in the larger social group in which they move, and also in the wider community, for sexual attractiveness (and the accompanying satisfaction of another person’s need for pleasure) is one of the main factors that determine an individual’s value in the world we live in – the other being financial or economic prowess.

If you are not a valued member of a social group, and your sexual attraction is not of such a nature that people desire physical communion with you (in ways clear to other people), there remains but a single possible label for your person: SINGLE-LONER. (If, however, as SINGLE-LONER, you possess visible financial prowess, you will surely attract people who desire the delightful benefits your financial status entails.)

Being a SINGLE-LONER, especially one without visible financial prowess, is naturally not as enjoyable as being with another person. It also has absolutely no calming effect on any existential anxiety you might experience. It is also a condition that occasionally leads to nasty attacks on your dignity, that once again emphasise your consciousness of differentness, which diminishes your chances even further of being taken seriously in any social context.

What should one do? Jump in front of a train? Bore other people with your self-pity? What you do, is you confirm your value according to your own standards that will sometimes be in conflict with the standards of the community that view loners with suspicion and that encourage membership to social groups. A critical view of some of the community’s standards is therefore to be expected.

By the way, for whom do I make these notes? The mere possibility that it is just for myself is unbearable.

And I know where this latest piece of social criticism is coming from: It feels bad to be alone, so now I weave a whip out words with which I can punish the community (or a whip I can crack a safe distance from the nearest picnic table – I don’t want to completely ruin any chances of some communion with other people).

I am not taking back a single word of what I said in the preceding paragraphs, but it is once again important for the sake of intellectual honesty to admit that I know what is fuelling my criticism.

I am in a difficult situation. The gap between how I see myself and how the “community” views me – as manifested in the reactions of people on what I am doing with my life and on the utterances I sometimes can’t help making in polite conversation – is becoming increasingly unbridgeable.

Two possibilities: a) I have to get the recognition from the community that I believe I deserve, or b) I will continue to treat the community with increasingly vicious contempt. (It must necessarily be so – if “they” are not with me, then I am against them. And the insane asylum or the prison creeps ever closer …)

Do I hold the community responsible for my loneliness? No. I am already guilty of cynicism; I cannot afford to be stupid as well.

[…]

But as you sometimes beat the grass to startle a snake, I believe my own lack of regular intimate contact and my isolation from the community is the medium through which I gain certain insights into the position of the individual in society. The bitterness with which I sometimes write merely confirms it is not just an interesting subject I approach with the objectivity of an academic. I know what I am talking about.

Again, I can declare that I know who I am. Again I can ask of people who avoid time on their own as much as possible if they know who they are – apart from the combination of imitations they employ to successfully function within a particular social community.

I can also declare that who I am is not always good, and certainly not always pleasant. One also sometimes wonders what is so good about extensive self-knowledge if the result of this is that you spend your days and nights alone …

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TUESDAY, 18 MAY 2004

The SELF.

“What is a home, the place where you feel you belong, other than a place where you know who you are?”

That was last night. Today I ask, what does it mean to “know who you are”? It means that you know your place among other people with whom you share a particular environment at a particular time. It means that you are aware of your own value in this environment. You also have a rough idea how you are viewed by others in the vicinity.

Interesting for the above definition of “home” is that I did not know five years ago who I was in context (having only recently arrived in Taiwan). I can continue and say that it has taken me about five years to know who I am in context (particularly among “others like me”, namely other South Africans in Taiwan); also that I wanted to go “home” shortly after I had developed more certainty about who I am in context. It can also be argued that I can also know who I am in context in a different place, although it will again take time.

In one word, what defines who you are? I would say, more than anything, relationships with other people.

* * *

Incidentally, Nietzsche did not believe that there is a fixed self that can be “discovered”. He wrote, “WILL a self and thou shalt BECOME a self.” [Own emphasis]

* * *

Is there such a thing as a core self that can be discovered, upon which the person who you want to be, develops? Can this core self in its earliest form be seen as pure and undefiled, something that is then corrupted by exposure to the environment outside the womb? Or is the core self something that may already be compromised in the root because of genetic composition, something that may then be damaged and corrupted even further by early experiences, years before it is “discovered” by the person?

* * *

Nietzsche, therefore, reckons that the self cannot be found but that it should be defined and then become. (What would he say about the idea of a core self that can be discovered?)

It almost seems as if I am back at the beginning: Who am I and where do I belong? Interesting thing is that Nietzsche’s view almost compels one to ask, instead: Who do I want to be? And, where do I want to belong?

How does one define the “self” (who you are/who you want to be)? And how do you define “your place” (your home/where you belong)?

(I have to remove myself from the rest of humanity and their sometimes tragic lives, and only become selectively involved.)

If the environment is such a critical factor in knowledge about the SELF (to know who you are, or what it means to be “you”), is it possible to have a universal “I”? If “I, in Fengshan City, Taiwan” am not quite the same as “I” in some industrial town in South Africa, who am “I” then? And if it changes, then it is impossible to know a universal “I”, or to be one! Then to be a functioning, particular “I” in the environment in which you find yourself at the present moment, and to be a similar person to a degree in any other environment, is the best you could ever hope for!

It follows that self-knowledge is relative to your environment. What you do have if you radically change location (Fengshan, Taiwan to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), or if your situation undergoes radical change, are reference points. You know how you acted in the other environment, or when your situation was different, or you can imagine how you would have acted. This knowledge then provides you with a frame of reference within which you can work out how you should act in the new environment or changed circumstance to remain roughly “the same person” – if it is appropriate at all that there should be consistency.

Can you ever fully know yourself? And considering the vital role that the environment plays in the “knowledge” of who you are, WHO ARE YOU REALLY?

THURSDAY, 20 MAY 2004

Application of a theory/The SELF and environment

So I don’t want to leave this place because I know who I am here. Which also means if I leave to go live in a place like Pretoria or Bronkhorstspruit and I define who I am there, I would also eventually be reluctant to leave there, for the same reason.

You won’t want to leave a place unless you are unsatisfied with who you are in that place. Dissatisfaction of this nature will result in you continuing to leave places until you find a place where you will not only know who you want to be, but where you can be who you want to be.

[The principle: If you know who you are in a particular place and you are satisfied with who you are in that place, if economic and other factors in that place are furthermore of such a nature that your chances of survival are better than in another place where you can also establish yourself in theory, it is understandable and reasonable that you will want to stay right where you are.]

TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2004

Identify your SELF – and how it is identified to you

The SELF – how the person identifies his own SELF to him- or herself, and how the person identifies his or her SELF to the community. The latter is not a one-way conversation – the language in which the individual identifies his or her SELF to the community was not invented by the individual, but is used with compliments of the community, as it were, of which the individual is a member. (Examples of language concepts that are used include “husband”, “wife”, “strong”, “smart”, “leader”, “author”, “rich”, “poor”, “intellectual”, “atheist” and “Christian”, to name a few.)

In my case, a community that consisted mainly of white Afrikaans-speakers identified my SELF to me. Currently I identify myself as an adult to another community – Asian, Chinese – using a language that I am still mastering and through other data that I have become aware of through personal experience.

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