Other people are mirrors in which we perceive distorted images of ourselves. But in these distortions truths lie hidden which we do well to discern.
Category: Human Predicament
Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold
Living as I do in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, I am familiar with the legends and lore of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. And out on the trails or around town I sometimes run into those characters called Dutchman Hunters. One I came close to meeting was Richard Peck, but by the time I found out about his passion from his wife, Joan, he had passed away. Sadly enough, Joan unexpectedly died recently.
Joan had me and my wife over for dinner on Easter Sunday a few years years ago, and my journal (vol. XXI, pp. 34-35, 28 March 2005) reports the following:
Joan's dead husband Rick was a true believer in the Dutchman mine, and thought he knew where it was: in the vicinity of Weaver's Needle, and accessible via the Terrapin trail. A few days before he died he wanted Joan to accompany his pal Bruce, an unbeliever, to a digging operation which Bruce, a man who knows something about mining, did not perform. Rick to Joan, "I want you to be there when he digs up the gold."
Via the wonders of the Internet I found a Time Magazine article, "Adventure and the American Individualist," dated 19 November 1965. On p. 4, we read about Richard Peck:
Richard Peck, 44, is a Princeton graduate, the father of three children and the owner of a Cincinnati advertising agency. He has spent the past 16 months trying to find the famed Lost Dutchman gold mine in Arizona's barren Superstition Mountain range. "The more I read about the Lost Dutchman," he recalls, "the more I kept coming back to it. Finally, I was sure I knew where the Lost Dutchman was. I was going to tear this thing open. I thought I was going to have it wrapped up in two weeks." So far his search has cost him $80,000. "I had to try something like this because it was so impossible. But if this mine is ever found it's still going to hurt in a lot of ways. Something is going to be lost out of this world."
What a story! A successful, educated, 44 year old man, possibly in the grip of a midlife crisis, spends 16 months and $80,000 grubbing around in wild and unforgiving (but not "barren"!) country searching for an almost certainly nonexistent mine. Unlike Adolph Ruth, another white-collar type who sought adventure in them thar hills, Peck came out of the mountains alive. And that was back in the '60s. Peck, whose name was shortened from 'Peckstein' according to Joan, lived on for another 40 years or so. It thus appears that the quest for the lost gold was the main passion of his life. He believed in its existence until the end of his life.
As I write this, I look out my window at Superstition mountain wreathed mysteriously in low-lying clouds and reflect that to live well, a man needs a quest. Without a quest, a life lacks the invigorating "strenuosity" that William James preached. But if he quests for something paltry such as lost treasure, it is perhaps best that he never find it. For on a finite quest, the 'gold' is in the seeking, not in the finding. A quest worthy of us, however, cannot be for gold or silver or anything finite and transitory. A quest worthy of us must aim beyond the ephemeral, towards something whose finding would complete rather than debilitate us. Nevertheless, every quest has something in it of the ultimate quest, and can be respected in some measure for that reason.
A Contrarian I Once Knew
I once knew a highly contrary fellow. But he was intelligent and interesting and I enjoyed talking with him on occasion. If I asserted proposition p, he would more likely than not assert not-p. If I asserted not-p, then I could expect to hear the assertion of p.
One day I said, "You know, John, you are a really contrary fellow!"
He shot back, "No I’m not!"
Independent Thought About Ultimates
Such thinking is not in the service of self-will or subjective opining, but in the service of submission to a higher authority. We think for ourselves in order to find a truth that is not from ourselves, but from reality. The idea is to become dependent on reality, rather than on institutional and social distortions of reality. Independence subserves a higher dependence.
It is worth noting that thinking for oneself is no guarantee that one will arrive at truth. Far from it. The world is littered with conflicting opinions generated from the febrile heads of people with too much trust in their own powers. But neither is submission to an institution's authority any assurance of safe passage to the harbour of truth. Both the one who questions authority and the one who submits to it can end up on a reef. 'Think for yourself' and 'Submit to authority' are both onesided pieces of advice.
You thought things were easy?
How the World is Like Chess
A wise saying about chess, often attributed to Goethe, but apocryphal for all I know, goes like this. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."
Something similar is true of the world. The world is is too real, too much with us, for us to detach ourselves from it easily; but it is too deficient in being to satisfy us. One cannot take it with utmost seriousness, and one cannot dismiss it as a mere game either. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."
Give In or Stand One’s Ground?
Should we give in to others or stand our ground? It depends on the circumstances. It is foolish to try to conciliate or accommodate someone who will be made worse by our conciliation, someone who will be emboldened in his wrongdoing. Conciliation in such a case becomes appeasement. There were bullies in the schoolyard who deserved and were improved by the punches we threw. Criminals, for a second example, must be opposed to the point of killing them if necessary. And the same goes for terrorists. Oppose them, and oppose them resolutely, even unto killing them en masse, but with detachment. We will recall that Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita enjoins the warrior to kill with detachment.
But in other cases one should give in and not insist, not even on one's rights. One should seize the opportunity for self-denial. Thereby one profits oneself and sets a good example for others. "The last shall be first and the first shall be last."
Who knows which case is which? The one with good judgment knows.
You’re So Vain, You Prob’ly Think This Post is About You
But it isn't! Permit me to explain.
I've been at the blogging game for going on six years now, and on at least a dozen occasions I have had people say or suggest that a certain post was directed at him or her. Well, we are all vain, and we all take the measure of events in their relation to our dear old selves. So you read one of my posts and you think, "Is he trying to get back at me?" But I'm an idea man, not a people person, and so my posts are about ideas always and primarily and about people only sometimes and secondarily. And if they are about specific people I say so.
Just so everything is perfectly clear, my title is a takeoff on the refrain of a quasi-eponymous Carly Simon number from the early '70s. I am not saying de re of any particular person, Tom, Dick, or Mary, or anyone, that he or she is vain. I am saying de dicto that all of the seed of Adam are vain sons-of-bitches.
The Company You Keep
You will be judged by the company you keep ___ and the company you keep away from.
Compensations of Advancing Age
You now have money enough and you now have time. The time left is shrinking, but it is your own. There is little left to prove. What needed proving has been proven by now or will forever remain unproved. And now it doesn't much matter one way or the other. You are free to be yourself and live beyond comparisons with others. You can enjoy the social without being oppressed by it. You understand the child's fathership of the man, and in some measure are able to undo it. You have survived those who would define you, and now you define yourself. And all of this without rancor or resentment. Defiant self-assertion gives way to benign indifference, Angst to Gelassenheit. Your poem might be:
Brief light's made briefer
'Neath the leaden vault of care
Better to accept the sinecure
Of untroubled Being-there.
You enjoy the benefits of a thick skin or else it was never in the cards that you should develop one. You have been inoculated by experience against the illusions of life. You know that the Rousseauean transports induced by a chance encounter with a charming member of the opposite sex do not presage the presence of the Absolute in human form. Less likely to be made a fool of in love, you are more likely to see sisters and brothers in sexual others.
The Grim Reaper is gaining on you but you now realize that he is Janus-faced: he is also a Benign Releaser. Your life is mostly over, but what the past lacks in presentness it gains in necessity and certainty. What you had, though logically contingent, now glistens in the light of necessitas per accidens: it is all there, accessible to memory as long as memory holds out, and no one can take it from you. What is over is over, but it has been. The country of the past is a realm of being. Kierkegaard's fiftieth year never was, yours was. Better has-been than never-was. Not much by way of compensation, perhaps, but one takes what one can get.
You know your own character by now and can take satisfaction in possessing a good one if that is what experience has disclosed.
A Double Standard
The wrongs done us seem so real, so inexcusable, so unjust. But the wrongs done others by ourselves and by others appear in a less unfavorable light: not that important, excusable, and horribile dictu __ entertaining.
Intellectual Hypertrophy
Weight lifters and body builders in their advanced states of muscular development appear ridiculous to us. All that time and money spent on the grotesque overdevelopment of one's merely physical attributes ___ when in a few short years one will be dust and ashes. But isn't the intellectual equally unbalanced who overdevelops his logical and analytical skills to the neglect of body, emotions, and spirit? Is the intellectual wrestler all that superior to the physical one? Is one kind of hypertrophy better than another? What good is discursive hypertrophy if it is paid for in the coin of mystical and moral and physical atrophy?
Radix Omnium Malorum
One often hears that money is the root of all evil. But this cannot be true, since money is an abstract form of wealth, wealth is a good thing, and the root of all evil cannot be something good. Perhaps it is the love of money that is supposed to be the root of all evil. But this too is false. Given that money is a good thing, a certain love or desire for its acquisition and preservation is right and proper. To fail to value money would be as foolish as to fail to value physical health. Well then, is it the inordinate love of money that is the root of all evil? Not even this is true. For there are evils whose root is not the inordinate love of money. The most we can truly say is that the inordinate love of money is the root of some evils.
Neither Angel Nor Beast
Blaise Pascal, Pensées #329:
Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.
The first half of the thought is unexceptionable: man is indeed neither angel nor beast, but, amphibious as he is between matter and spirit, a hybrid and a riddle to himself.
The second half of Pascal's thought, however, is unfair to the beasts. No beast can act the beast the way a man can. No beast is bestial in the way a man can be bestial. The difference is that while the beast acts according to his nature, man freely degrades himself contrary to his nature. Having done so, he allows his freely indulged passions to suborn his intellect: he constructs elaborate rationalizations of his self-degradation.
It is not our animality that corrupts us but our free misuse of our animality, a misuse that derives from our spirtuality.
Gerede
Conversation about trivial matters can be idle and useless, and usually is. But the same is true of conversation about 'deep matters.' In some moods, intellectual and spiritual conversation is more offensive to me than mundane chit-chat. Talk can degenerate into profanation. We need periodic recuperation from it in the form of entry into silence.
Politics and Religion Over Thanksgiving Dinner?
Here is a dilemma some of you will face. You are eating dinner with relatives, and one of the merry crew displays signs of Palin Derangement Syndrome. If you are a conservative, what do you do? Sit there and listen to the drivel? Or stand up for what's right? Start a food fight, literally or figuratively?
It's a dilemma in the strict, as opposed to the Dr. Laura, sense of the term: a situation in which there are exactly two alternatives, both of which are unacceptable. If you let the cretin escape, you do truth and justice a disservice. But if you oppose him or her, then you may ruin the conviviality of the occasion — to put it mildly.
You will have to work this out for yourself. The problem won't arise for me. My dinner party will consist of me, my wife, and my cat. Any offensive opinions will emanate from the television, against which I will be well-armed: fork in one hand, remote control in the other.