Karl Marx’s second eldest daughter, Jenny Laura Marx, and her husband, Paul Lafargue, committed suicide together in 1911. They spent most of their adult lives doing revolutionary work, including translating Karl Marx’s works into French. When she was 66 and her husband 69, they decided they no longer had anything to give to the cause to which they had devoted their lives.
In a letter, Paul Lafargue wrote, among other things, the following by way of explanation: “Healthy in body and mind, I end my life before pitiless old age which has taken from me my pleasures and joys one after another; and which has been stripping me of my physical and mental powers, can paralyse my energy and break my will, making me a burden to myself and to others. For some years I had promised myself not to live beyond 70; and I fixed the exact year for my departure from life. I prepared the method for the execution of our resolution; it was a hypodermic of cyanide acid.”
It’s an unpleasant subject for sure. Old man or woman thinks they are no longer useful, or can no longer make a contribution, so the end is hastened. Would governments and companies that have to make increasingly high pension pay-outs to people living longer and longer be enthusiastic about such an idea? Who knows.
Still I think: Imagine yourself 70 years old. You are single, or a widow or widower. You have no children or grandchildren. You don’t have much of a pension either, and you no longer feel like working.
Then you hear about a program with a name like “Dignified Last Journey”.
Before you enter the program’s facility for the last mile of your journey, a consultant helps you settle your affairs, sell or give away your last possessions, say goodbye to your remaining friends or acquaintances, and so on.
Then your last few days arrive. You eat tasty but healthy food – you don’t want to experience unpleasant consequences in your last days. Convenience is of utmost importance. You also start getting daily doses of morphine. You sleep well, and longer every day. On Day 7, when you get your final injection, you don’t think anymore. You’re in dreamland.
Imagine you’re in your early thirties. You want to live – I repeat, want to live – in at least the same province as your family so you can see them once or twice a month, and you want to live in the same city as at least half a dozen old friends with whom you can hang out regularly. Imagine yourself wanting to be in a serious relationship, with perhaps a child or two. You want to be established in your work, with a satisfying social life.
Now imagine you actually find yourself in a foreign country on the other side of the globe. You see your family maybe once every two years. You have a few friends, but don’t see them often. You’re single, with no relationship in the pipeline. Your work is not fulfilling, and you often remind yourself, or are reminded, that time is running out to establish yourself in a profession.
To complicate things, you are not stuck in a situation where you can just resign and book a plane ticket back home. You have an apartment full of books and furniture and wall hangings and ornaments with sentimental value. Your income is sufficient to eat well and sleep comfortably, but you don’t have enough savings to survive for more than a few months if you go back to your own country.
Of course, you can leave all the furniture, the wall hangings, and a few ornaments behind and go back home, and hope everything works out. Problem is, you did exactly that a few years before when you were in a similar situation in another country, and let’s just say, it didn’t work out.
What do you do?
You can’t go home because you’re already at home?
Just accept it, and push ahead?
What did I end up doing?
I had no desire for packing up and trying my luck again in South Africa. So, I straightened my shoulders and kept walking.
And kept writing:
sinking
everybody runs away, the rats are fleeing
he is … like his ship, sinking
with solemn respect comes the salutation
middle finger held up high
pulls a recorder from his pocket
plays a death hymn, stops
with his forehead the smashing waves
calm flushes the depths
lives the fountain of abundance
manna, quail, island silence
in wisdom he bites, with razor-sharp teeth
into the sweet flesh of second life
so come on traitors!
creep closer mocker crowd!
one by one you’ll have to face reality
and if your eyes can’t see, and your ears can’t hear
then let me shout it out to sink it in:
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE LIFE!
even for the single survivor.
* * * * * * * * * * *
storm
storms urge me on
my grotesque frame too large
for a nice tight keyhole fit
a closet too small and cramped
a golden cage too fine and much too cold
I rush forward at furious pace
with walking stick and day-old beard
* * * * * * * * * * *
grind
shuffling wordless in dusty spaces
filling ashtrays one upon the other
full and empty again; cups full of coffee
fresh bottles of tea from the all-night cafe
old chairs give way
the weight of evening air sours
in the face of absent light
I rock back and forth, back and forth
it seems you have sometimes
to pull your claws from the mud of time
be more philosophical
about waiting for things to turn on their heel
so, if it can’t be avoided
I’d have to calculate yet again:
one thousand seven hundred and eighty
five one thousand seven hundred
eighty-four, one thousand seven hundred
eighty-three, one thousand …
nights without you
* * * * * * * * * * *
geography
new housing draws
lines across my plans
my eyes narrowing, looking
through other windows at neighbours’ walls
suppose I know about more
than just life and death and pipes full of mice
if I had memorised the sermons of old
I’d have learned too much about retirement homes
sometimes I look too deep into the bottle of time
write notes on floors with pencil and chalk
sometimes I bite a little too much
off rules brittle and yellow from age
sometimes one must move to new housing
the work of a man like a woman ever not done
but I keep writing my lines and shutting my mouth
my eyes peeled until tomorrow, or next month, or next year
(Sunday, 14 September 2003)
* * * * * * * * * * *
(untitled)
I feel myself
irresponsibly close to you
less than your presence
unconditionally close to me
I feel, what’s more
myself untouched
while I live within you
* * *
forty tons of events stay mum
numb my love as it were
shall I ever, as long as I live, discover the axe
that’s been chasing me for so many years?
* * * * * * * * * * *
shoes
on your way to a 7-Eleven, you see it again:
a desert, in the middle of the sea
you want to sneak closer, crawl, aim for the other side
but time and place are shoes that squeeze
you think about coffee, then you buy tea
talk about holding out, holding on, then you give in
want to say “No” in confusion, then nodding “Yes”
wink apparently cool, then fleeing again in a daze
sometimes I say you give in too easily
too few see courage and daring as talent
vagabonds like to pitch a tent at night
clapping whips against trees on the break of dawn
say you want to go together, say you want to sleep
say you’ve had enough, please for once say “Yes”
suspect a little, believe, weigh things up again
because this time and place squeeze far too much
* * * * * * * * * * *
(another) night poem
I’m working my ass off, but
the night remains a bottomless pit
like a miner of a cleaner nature
I dig for words, light, figures, and signs
apt metaphors spoiled by pretence
stand like saints over my open grave
while I’m earnestly looking for dawn
the pick breaks, then the spade, then the lift to the light
and I remain
still
caught up
in yet another night poem
* * * * * * * * * * *
place
i
tumultuously burns the form
leaves the contents fresh, untouched
clothes from another century
hang upside down in my crumbling closet
look carefully at the streets, the markets
poke around in towns and cities
sneak barefoot through half-lit alleyways
wrap yourself in a transient’s blanket
too many preach about proverbs long forgotten
sing false psalms about damned old ideas
reconcile dogma with new science
steal slyly overnight, words from a dungeon library
ii
dozens of descendants, ancestors in front
portraits against faded walls, half-heartedly shining on
books full of museums and ancient buildings
sketches in a thousand corridors full of thoughts
remind only, sing melodiously without stop
priests dance with animal hides draped
over shoulders hanging under the weight
fifty thousand years of searching for a truth
continue to dictate in mumbling chant:
that place and knowing
not only are where you belong
but in truth
is where the soul ultimately ought to be
When I went to Europe in March 1995, I only had enough money for about two weeks of cheap accommodation.
I landed at Orly airport, about ten kilometres south of one of the most beautiful cities in Europe – Paris. It was at the beginning of March, so when I left Cape Town, it was still warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt. The moment I got off the plane and the 2º Celsius air hit my face, I thought I was going to freeze to death before I saw the Eiffel Tower.
Remains of a plane ticket
I took a bus to the city. From the window I saw caricatures of France: a man with a fat moustache with a baguette under his arm; a taxi driver with a fat moustache who explained with exaggerated hand gestures that the man in the other car was wrong; an attractive woman in a red dress and loose, wavy hair, who I was sure smelled of perfume.
I got out when I figured we were more or less in the centre of town. The bus stop was a few blocks from the Seine, and on the other side of a large park was the Les Invalides – where a few days later I would see a trench coat with mud stains from the First World War.
View from the apartment
I sat down on a bench next to the bus stop and smoked a Paul Revere, and considered myself very fortunate.
Then I started looking for my accommodation – a one bedroom apartment of an acquaintance from high school. The only clues I had were the cryptic notes of a mutual friend who had spent a few nights there a year before. It took me about seven hours to track it down. By late afternoon I had spent my first franc at a supermarket in the neighbourhood – on a piece of cheese, a pack of macaroni, and two cans of Czech beer.
Source of cheese and cheap beer
The first week I was alone in the apartment. I walked for miles every day – to the Eiffel Tower, to the Place de la Concorde, to the Père Lachaise cemetery, to the Moulin Rouge, and up and down the Champs-Elysées. One day I also took the train out of the city to the palace in Versailles – a definite highlight.
Apartment of high school acquaintance in Paris
At the end of the week, my acquaintance returned to his apartment. I stayed a few more days, and then bought a bus ticket to Amsterdam. Here I visited the Anne Frank House … and not the Van Gogh Museum because it was too expensive.
The plan from the beginning was to get some kind of job to keep myself alive and every now and then to travel to interesting places. In Paris it was not possible because of the language. In Amsterdam I went to a McDonald’s and asked about work. The application form indicated that if I was not a citizen, I had to be able to prove that I was a refugee. I also met the son of a friend of a university professor. He had vague ideas about knocking on doors to offer your services as a cleaner, or something like that.
Next stop, London: The capital of illegal work for anyone from anywhere in the world. I found a bed in a room with six or seven other men in a small hotel not far from Victoria Station. Quickly made friends and walked around for a few days – had a photo taken of myself with Tower Bridge in the background and visited the Imperial War Museum and the British Museum, but I didn’t really look for work. One night on the news there was an item about a man from Nigeria who had been working illegally. The police came looking for him where he lived. He was startled, jumped out of the window, and fell to his death. Another South African who also stayed in the hotel talked about construction work, and that it helped if you had a working holiday permit.
Hotel in LondonBridge and tourist on a sunny day in London
Friends of mine spent six months in Britain the previous year on working holiday permits. No surprise that it seemed like a more attractive option than running from the police.
Red light district in Amsterdam
I decided to go back to Amsterdam, from where my flight was booked back to South Africa – actually not until months later, but I had the option of changing it. Someone talked about cheap youth hostels in the red-light district where you could get free bed and breakfast if you helped clean and did laundry. I found a place in a hostel in a room that smelled of dirty socks and unwashed bodies. I inquired about work, and they said they would think about it (to check if you were trustworthy, I later learned). However, I only had enough money left for a few days, so on the third day I called the airline and booked a place on the earliest flight back to South Africa. A day before I was to fly, the manager informed me that they could use my services if I was still interested. However, by that time I had less than the equivalent of ten euros left.
Hands in the pocket, but broke
Of course, today I think back on opportunities I didn’t take. Why didn’t I apply for a work permit before I went, knowing full well what benefits it would bring? Fact is, I tried, but the travel agent said it would take something like two weeks, and I didn’t have two weeks. Only later did I find out it only took a day or two. The two weeks in Paris, though I didn’t pay for accommodation, also ate into my finances. Why didn’t I find out about the free bed and breakfast if you work at the place in the first week in Amsterdam? Don’t know. Why wasn’t I actively asking around London for opportunities? Lack of confidence? Lack of motivation? The man who jumped to his death would probably have made an impression on anyone, but after all there were thousands of other people who worked illegally in London or elsewhere on the islands. And why not take the job in the hostel and see if I survived for a few weeks until something else happened? Probably thought my plan to go back to South Africa, apply for a work permit, and then come back made more sense. And it was safer.
Making friends on a napkin
Would it have helped if I had a partner there who said: “Let’s do it! Let’s take a chance!”?
Yes, it would have made a difference.
A few weeks after I got back to South Africa, I applied for a work permit, and got it. Beautifully it graced my passport for six months, and then it expired. Never got together enough money for a second plane ticket to Europe.
Right around the time the work permit expired (end of 1995), I saw an advertisement for “Teaching in Korea” in the Cape Times. What happened next is the timeline of my real life over the past quarter century.
How many alternative timelines did not cross each other in those few months of 1995?
Can one say with certainty that everything would have worked out differently if you had changed one thing years ago, said yes to something, said no to something else, taken a later flight, walked in a different direction, took a bigger chance? Do you wish things had turned out differently?
I am happy with my current life, and with how my life has developed the last 27 years. But if I closed my eyes and the alternative lines were revealed to me, would I see a more interesting life than the one I’ve been living? Would it have been more dream than nightmare, or the other way around?
Scott Adams in Episode 1800 of his YouTube Livestream (54:42): You find meaning in your life when what you do most closely aligns with your biological design. (Not a direct quote because I wanted to make it a little clearer.)
One example is someone whose body and brain are best suited to raising children. If this person tries to find meaning in something else, the experience will be less positive than if they are involved in the process of raising a child.
Adams sees himself as a “Tribal Elder” for the international community of people who regularly tune in to his livestreams, and who read what he writes. So, if he is talking about how he sees things – right or wrong, smart or ignorant on a particular subject, or if he is giving advice on how to overcome certain obstacles, he is doing what he sees as most suitable for his biological design. Like most people, he also wanted to procreate at one time, but in the end the need weighed less on him than the motivation to be an Elder. Other people are more suited to fight physically for other people’s lives – people who serve in fire brigades are one example.
I didn’t have to think long about what gives me the strongest awareness of a meaningful existence. I’ve known for most of my adult life that writing fills me with … I might almost go as far as to say … euphoria. Of course, it is stronger with certain pieces, and less so with others. But nothing else fills me with such a strong consciousness that I am doing what I am supposed to do. The idea of biological design is just the latest way of expressing it.
Is that different from saying it feels right? I reckon it’s in the same neighbourhood, if not more or less the same thing.
Any serious person is taught not to trust feelings as much as reason and critical thinking. But let’s say you find yourself ten or twenty or thirty times in a situation where you have to look after children or where you express yourself creatively in some way, or where you teach other people things. Every time there is a feeling of contentment and happiness that is not present in other situations, or that, according to your own subjective measure, does not manifest so strongly. After the first few times, you eliminate food you ate or pleasant weather or company as the source of the feeling. You may have gotten the feeling even when you were hungry, or when you ate something that didn’t sit well with you. You got the feeling on days that were uncomfortably hot, and on days that were bitterly cold. And you got the feeling with or without company. Should the feeling still be ignored, or is your body trying to tell you something?
Say you have a neighbour. He is a devout Muslim, but no supporter of the more radical movements that people associate with violence in the Middle East and Europe. He’s a local businessman – owns a small shop in a busy area.
As a devout Muslim, he believes he is better than unbelievers – which includes you, his neighbour.
You’ve had deep conversations with him on several occasions about gods/God, reality, faith and religion, and how you know what you know. You are convinced that he firmly believes that a Muslim is superior to a non-believer.
You search around a bit on the Internet and get the following from Wikipedia about delusion: “A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs are able to change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. However: ‘The distinction between a delusion and a strongly held idea is sometimes difficult to make and depends in part on the degree of conviction with which the belief is held despite clear or reasonable contradictory evidence regarding its veracity.’”
So, your neighbour thinks he’s a better person than you because he follows a certain set of beliefs.
You think he’s suffering from delusion.
Nevertheless, you recently celebrated your birthday and decided to invite a few people over for dinner. You also invite your neighbour, and he accepts.
The evening is quite pleasant. Everyone enjoys the food, and the discussions are interesting and varied.
At the end of the evening, your neighbour thanks you for the invitation. You thank him for coming.
He still thinks his faith makes him better than you, and you still think he’s suffering from delusion.
* * *
Some people are filled with absolute confidence in their delusions.
It is also a common phenomenon that people who suffer from serious delusions about the nature of reality can nevertheless function in diverse situations and different environments without much difficulty.
Just think of the millions of Christians who are firmly convinced that Hindus and Muslims and people of other faiths will burn in Hell forever after their death, but otherwise these Christians function perfectly well in society. Think also of Muslims and Hindus and people of other faiths who are firmly convinced people who do not believe like them and do not perform the rituals that affirm membership to a particular symbolic reality, are ignorant fools who will one day pay the price for their stubbornness. At the same time, these Muslims and Hindus and people of other faiths have no problem facing the most advanced challenges in their social and professional lives.
Not only can you suffer from severe delusion and function perfectly well in the community, you can also make a particularly positive difference to other people’s lives, leaving an extremely positive legacy.
* * *
Actually part of another discussion, but I must table the question: Are religious beliefs necessarily delusions? I believe, no. Not if you acknowledge that what you believe in cannot necessarily be proven, and that your faith is a personal choice to believe in something you hope to be true. It is, in other words, not delusional to say, “I know what I believe in may not be true.”
(By the way, this piece is not really about religion.)
