I flip on a sit-com. Then I count the seconds before the onset of sexual innuendo, allusions, and the like.
We are concupiscent from the ground up. And this by (fallen) nature. Our natural condition is exacerbated by the sex saturation of contemporary society.
I played my game most recently the other night when I watched the beginning of "Hot in Cleveland." 'Hot' says it all. But what's hot today will be stone-cold tomorrow.
Awareness of our limits suggests that we are beyond them. But it is an impotent transcendence that leaves us stuck with them.
If we are just animals, why aren't we content to be just animals?
. . . some of them might read like this.
Professor X was a good teacher and colleague. Affable and self-effacing, he was well-liked by all. He was quick with a joke and to light up your smoke — at least back in the good old days when some of us smoked in our offices and the American Philosophical Association hosted a 'Smoker' at their annual conventions. But as the years wore on, Professor X, bereft of the stimulation of first-rate minds, became lazy and given to resting on his laurels. An early book, based on his dissertation, showed considerable promise, but a fair judge would have to conclude that he buried his talents rather than using them. He published nothing in the professional journals, sometimes opining that no one read them anyway. Like many, he became too comfortable. Tenure, often advertised as a bulwark of academic freedom, became in his case, as in so many others, an inducement to inactivity. He never progressed much beyond the level of his dissertation.
His real life was elsewhere, in family and friends and such hobbies as woodworking. Once, emerging from a year-long sabbatical cushioned on both ends by long summers with no teaching, he had nothing to show for his release time except a fine bookcase he had built. Like many of the long-tenured and unproductive, he was given to professional envy. When the distinguished philosopher Y came and read a paper for a paltry $200 honorarium, X questioned whether Y was worth so much especially given that this was a paper Y had read before other departments. X's scholarly inactivity was not for the sake of service elsewhere in the academic community: he had a knack for avoiding administrivia and such other academic chores as commenting on papers at conferences.
But now he has passed from our midst, and who among us does not have faults and limitations? Professor X's kindness and collegiality will surely remain in our memories. He will be missed.
Clearly friendship can survive deep disagreement if it is over some abstruse topic in the philosophy of language, say. The question I intend, however, is whether friendship can continue among those who find themselves in profound disagreement over matters that touch us 'existentially.' Politics and religion supply plenty of examples. Here too friendship can survive and even thrive. It may be worth reminding ourselves of this in these dark times.
In an optimistic piece entitled "The Value of Unexpected Friends," K. E. Colombini cites examples of prominent ideological opponents who were on friendly terms. The case that surprised me was the friendship of Ruth Baader Ginsburg with the late Antonin Scalia.
When Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia passed away unexpectedly in February 2016, perhaps the colleague who mourned the most was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. While they differed greatly in their day jobs, they formed a surprisingly deep friendship based on mutual respect and interests. [. . .]
“From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies,” Justice Ginsburg’s statement reads, in part. “We disagreed now and then, but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. He was a jurist of captivating brilliance and wit, with a rare talent to make even the most sober judge laugh. It was my great good fortune to have known him as working colleague and treasured friend.”
[. . .]
One of Scalia’s more famous quotes, shared often in social media these days, was given in a 2008 interview on 60 Minutes: “I attack ideas, I don’t attack people—and some very good people have some very bad ideas.”
[. . .]
Separating ideas from people, like hating the sin but not the sinner, is a challenging act, but it is one that is ultimately valuable. Taking the time to get to know someone—even the person we battle with—opens doors that help us understand not only the debated issue, but also ourselves, better.
While there are cases of ideological opponents who remain on good terms, there are even more cases in which they don't.
Colombini article here.
It is an evil state we are in, ignorant as we are of the ultimate why and wherefore.
The topic of birthdays came up among some friends. I said I don't celebrate mine: my birth befell me; it was not my doing. A female companion replied that life is a gift to which my response was that that is a question, not a given. It is not clear that life is a gift or even a good. Equally, it is not clear that it is a mistake (Schopenhauer) and something bad.
Human life is a problem the solution to which we do not know. One can only have faith that life is good, and I do. It is a reasoned not a blind faith. But that I lack knowledge and need faith is itself something evil. There are far worse evils, of course.
The issue of procreation — pun intended — makes the question concrete. To procreate deliberately and responsibly is to act on the conviction that conception, birth, and the predictable sequel are good. But that is not known given the powerful counter-evidence that pessimists provide.
So again one is thrown back on faith. To need faith is to lack knowledge and by my lights this lack is a privatio boni and insofar forth evil.
Readers will of course disagree with me and disagree among themselves as to what merits disagreement. This is just further evidence that our predicament is suboptimal.
If you want to think about the problem of evil in its full sweep you ought to include the evil of ignorance in all its forms. And you ought to bear in mind that evil is not a problem for theists alone.
You don't really want to go to that Christmas party where you will eat what you don't need to eat, drink what you don't need to drink, and dissipate your inwardness in pointless chit-chat. But you were invited and your non-attendance may be taken amiss. So you remind yourself that self-denial is good and that it is useful from time to time to practice the art of donning and wearing the mask of a 'regular guy.'
For the step into the social is by dissimulation. Necessary to the art of life is knowing how to negotiate the social world and pass yourself off under various guises and disguises.
Monks come in two kinds, the cenobites and the eremites or hermits. The cenobites live in community whereas the hermits go off on their own. Eremos in Greek means desert, and there are many different motives for moving into the desert either literally or figuratively. There are those whose serious psychological conditions make it impossible for them to function in modern society. Chris Knight is such a one, who, when asked about Thoreau, replied in one word, "dilettante." That's saying something inasmuch as Henry David was one monkish and solitary dude even when he wasn't hanging out at Walden Pond. Somewhere in his fascinating journal he writes, "I have no walks to throw away on company."
Others of a monkish bent are wholly sane, unlike Knight, so sane in fact that they perceive and reject the less-than-sane hustle of Big City life. Some are motivated religiously, some philosophically, and some share both motivations. I have always held that a sane religiosity has to be deeply philosophical and vice versa. I think most of the Desert Fathers would agree. Athens and Jerusalem need each other for complementation and mutual correction. Some of the monkish are members of monastic religious orders, some attach themselves as oblates to such orders, and some go it alone. Call the latter the Maverick Variation.
And of course there are degrees of withdrawal from society and its illusions. I have been called a recluse, but on most days I engage in a bit of socializing usually early in the morning in the weight room or at the pool or spa where a certain amount of banter & bullshit is de rigueur. I thereby satisfy my exiguous social needs for the rest of the day. Other mornings, sick of such idle talk and the corrrosive effect it can have on one's seriousness and spiritual focus, I head for the hills to traipse alone with my thoughts as company. But I am not as severe as old Henry David: I will share my walk with you and show you some trails if you are serious, fit, and don't talk too much.
I am a Myers-Briggs INTP introvert. Must one be an introvert to be a hermit? No. The most interesting hermit I know is an extrovert who in his younger days was a BMOC, excellent at sports, successful at 'the chase,' who ended up on Wall Street, became very wealthy, indulged his every appetite, but then had a series of profound religious experiences that inspired him to sell all he owned and follow Christ, first into a cenobium, then into a hermitage.
A tip of the hat and a Merry Christmas to Karl White of London for sending me to this Guardian piece which profiles some contemporary monkish specimens.
Time flattens the peaks of emotion and fills the valleys of despond. Tormentors from the past are now shades pale and insubstantial, too weak to haunt. Absence wins out over presence. One needn't work at the purgation of memory: time does the work for us.
It angers us that what angers us does not anger others.
The standoffish are not liked. The obsequious are not respected. Tread the middle path.
People are astonishingly suggestible. But is suggestibility always bad? Belonging to a community of believers reinforces one in one's belief. If the belief is true and life-enhancing, then so is the suggestibility that promotes it.
Live life to the full to appreciate that it is empty.
We need those distorting mirrors called other people to achieve self-knowledge. For a distorting mirror, while it distorts, also mirrors.
You know the type. The one whose lack of understanding of a subject is no barrier to his talking about it.
