I sit here at my desk isolated, protected, safe, able without difficulty to speak with my sister and my younger son in Southern California, to my older son and his family in San Francisco, to communicate with all of you scattered around the world, as good news, very good news, very bad news, terrible news, and horrific news comes to me electronically, news about which I am capable of doing virtually nothing.
I have spent my life having and expressing opinions about
all manner of things philosophical, economic, and political. For a long time a good deal of my attention
was focused on finding an audience for those opinions and when I did so that
seem to be an accomplishment. But in a world awash with opinions, was there
really any need for mine?
As I sit here, preparing to drive my wife to an appointment
with one of her doctors, I await the Senate vote on the infrastructure bill. It
looks increasingly as though the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package will also
be enacted into law before the year is out. These are political triumphs at a
time when the Congress is so narrowly split and I ought to be celebrating the
dramatic impact that the measures in these bills will have on the lives of
hundreds of millions of Americans. So much for the good news and the very good
news.
At the same time, a virus for which, miraculously, effective
vaccines have been developed rages pandemically among the half of the
population that has insanely, stupidly, criminally refused to protect itself.
That is the very bad news.
The terrible news is that America is very close to a fascist
coup that will put an end to such democracy as we enjoy.
The horrific news is of course that the entire world is
going through the early stages of changes in the climate that will completely
upend the current distribution of population, transform the production and
distribution of food, and dominate life in the decades that will follow my
death.
It seems feckless to respond to all of this by offering more
opinions. At least the quartet that played on the deck of the Titanic as it
started to sink was producing beautiful music.
And to make it worse, I find myself as I lie in bed writing
blog posts on subjects I have already quite recently discussed in this space.
Last night I spent a little time sketching a possible post on the Covid
disaster keyed to the 19th century practice followed by private fire
companies of distributing plaques to their subscribers, only to find when I got
up this morning that barely two months ago I had written a much commented on
post on precisely that subject. I mean, to have nothing to offer to the world
but opinions and then to recycle them as well seems a trifle pathetic.
Perhaps this is simply a melancholy induced by the loss of
our cat. I have been very touched by the stories many of you have posted of
your own beloved cats. My thanks to all of you for those stories.
29 comments:
None of us are superman and none of us are going to change the world singlehandedly.
I had the impression that you enjoyed writing about politics and philosophy and it's clear that many of us enjoy reading what you write.
If you repeat yourself from time to time, politics isn't dada. If you're into originality, try avant garde art or literature. How many times has Bernie Sanders said exactly the same thing in almost exactly the same words in the last few years?
I love what s. wallerstein wrote. There is no shame in repeating yourself. A quick Google search tells me Mozart composed more than 600 pieces of music in his 35 year life, and I would guess even he played the same thing twice on occasion.
I have grieved more deeply at the loss of my pets than at many of my human relatives. Melancholy feels appropriate at this time I believe.
I am very happy to have you posting again after your time off.
Another example: Noam Chomsky.
He's interviewed several times a week through zoom and basically he says almost the same thing to almost the same questions every time. And people line up to interview him: there's a long waiting list to interview Chomsky.
As Kierkegaard said, repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life. I recall having read that when Georg Lukács was briefly imprisoned after the failed Hungarian Revolution, he commented: "Kafka was a realist." Your post suggests rather that it was Beckett's Endgame is the exemplary piece of contemporary realism, and not just for Hamm's famous saying: "Ah the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!"--Say what you will; it's always interesting and worth reading.
Pets will do that, I suppose. I was looking through some old photos, and as [X] as it was to see all my family and relatives and childhood scenery... I have to say I was probably touched above all by the photos documenting my friendship with Kitty, from elementary through high school.
(X = placeholder for some feeling I can't name, let alone in a single word; something involving nostalgia, tenderness, but also an unsettling sense of the passage of time)
Climate change is very bad news indeed. I think Russell somewhere mentions the fact that his moral concern does not extend to civilized humans "a million years hence" (just a psychological fact - I forget the philosophical point he was discussing). I envy him for having been able apparently to take it for granted that there would still be civilized life at that point. (And Russell, according to his correspondence (6/23/1946), would envy me for not having any children.)
This helpful book makes a point to mention pre-traumatic stress in relation to the climate crisis. Where I am in that process (apart from simply unconscious denial) would be comparable to a person being visited by a traveler from the near future, and informed by this traveler that their loved one or child - or anyone to whom they have professed to dedicate their life - is not simply going to die, but is going to die at a tragically young age. I'm pretty much rehearsing in advance all the consolations I imagine people to offer at the funeral of a deceased teenager - but applying these points to humanity at large.
Hume in the Dialogues states that "study and society" are "the two greatest and purest pleasures of human life" - so, on a brighter note, I do want to thank you for the role that your efforts have played and continue to play there.
For those who would like to reflect philosophically on the point just made about the pre-traumatic stress in relation to the climate crisis, I would strongly recommend the outstandingly original and thought-provoking recent work of Samuel Scheffler, especially the book of his Tanner Lectures entitled Death and the Afterlife, with commentary by Harry Frankfurt et alia and Scheffler's response. Scheffler therein reflects on the question of what difference it would make to our lives now if we thought that there would be no long-term collective human life after our deaths.
Chris,
Even when Mozart was writing new music, he wasn't always writing new music. Compare the second theme of the first movement of the Piano Concerto K. 467 at about 3:55 in this recording
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgY0QcUjtYE&ab_channel=Precipotato
with the Horn Concerto K. 447 at about 1:50 in this recording
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnMmxOuCnOQ&ab_channel=olla-vogala
One of my favorite YouTubers, Plastic Pills, recently put a new video together about Cybersocialism and Allende in Chile that is very good. It's still exclusive to patreon, but will be public soon.
Anyway, I originally signed up for the Patreon to listen to his analysis of In Defense of Anarchism. It's about an hour long podcast with a few other philosophy nerds. I don't see many people talking about RPW outside of this blog.
I thought I'd share it here if anyone was curious about that or happened to know the Plastic Pills YouTubers already. It's quite critical of In Defense of Anarchism, but ultimately kind to the author :)
https://mega.nz/file/z6glQIgK#_EAGnHiNuTp8CX16nrFgp1UJb5kDi3mKhIqSHp79Sf4
One of my early modern friends, Robert Burton (1577-1640), a “good-humored pessimist” as he has been called, once described music as a “sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy.” I think with this comment he was speaking without irony, although much of his writing is deeply ironical. His classic, The Anatomy of Melancholy, has helped a bit these days (along with Boccaccio). The trick is to recognize a sweetness in melancholy, not everyone’s cuppa (nor is reading Burton), but an interesting take on living in interesting times and one that plays to brooding sensibilities. Here’s a sample:
Methinks I hear, methinks I see,
Sweet music, wondrous melody,
Towns, palaces, and cities fine;
Here now, then there; the world is mine,
Rare beauties, gallant ladies shine,
Whate’er is lovely or divine.
All other joys to this are folly,
None so sweet as melancholy.
Still, one can only make it work so far. It’s doubly ironical and problematic: music provides us a social remedy against despair, yet in an age of social distancing and isolation the remedy itself lies beyond our pale and we despair for the want of it.
I was always intrigued by the references to Burton's, "Anatomy of Melancholy", in Boswell's, "Life of Johnson", but I never followed up. The Dr. is recorded as saying that Burton's book "was the only one that took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise".----This from a notoriously late riser. Johnson was a melancholic to the end, notwithstanding the pomp and bounce of his conversation. But nevermind for now Boswell's, "Life of Johnson". If you want to have some really distracting fun in these dispiriting times, read Boswell's, "Journals". Start from 1763. A more engaging combination of prose and humor is seldom to be found.
Being new to this blog I appreciate the repetition. I think we should welcome the democratization of opinions that social media represents even if we feel submerged by it. As philosophers we should wade into the fray to help make those opinions and discussions worthy. Professor Wolff maybe illuminating the "form" that their arguments take is a way to assist those using social media, rather than the content of your or their opinions.
Three years ago friends of mine adopted a 14 y.o. cat which meant that instead of likely dying in a shelter cage she had three very good years in a home. If you walk through a shelter, a cat will pick you.
As far as global warming goes, the last two days have been smoky and I'm on the coast with the nearest fire over a hundred miles away.
https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES17/ABI/SECTOR/pnw/GEOCOLOR/20212230141_GOES17-ABI-pnw-GEOCOLOR-2400x2400.jpg
Your opinions are as sweet music.
I, for one, would love to read you recite articulate thought as we drown.
Professor Wolff, it is because you have internalized a profound insight about teaching that you repeat yourself: hardly anyone remembers what they have been told exactly once.
Once again, my condolences on having to euthanize your cat. If only humans were as humane to each other. I spoke about my cat, my intellectual equal (he considered me less than that), who suffered from an inoperable meningioma. He died young, just shy of eight years old. The finality of it stops me in my tracks.
John Rapko: Many thanks for the book recommendation. Definitely looks like a worthwhile read - I can't say I know of any philosopher who goes into that topic: human extinction as imminent, versus human extinction as indefinitely postponed. Here is a short interview (w. transcript) with the author, if it helps to whet anyone's appetite...
I'll be interested in Scheffler's take on the afterlife as well. He seems confident that there is none. Having been raised Catholic, I find it hard psychologically to get there. And for me, the conflict between "scientific certainty" and "wishful thinking" is perhaps somewhat moot, as I'm not really sure what the least objectionable possibility would be - I'm not really sure what I should be wishful for.
Oblivion? The pros are obvious (cessation of pain and suffering), but there's a catch: You don't even get a moment of closure and vindication, as in, "I see that I'm dead now, and it turns out it's fine!" You're just wiped out. I think in certain (foggy!) moods I can accept that as a minor gripe, but it does from time to time invite the spooky question, "Why wait?"
Survival? Then, one of the main questions is that of continuity with your Earthly self:
If you do experience the afterlife as a continuation of your Earthly career, then it seems you'll have to experience time as you presently do: in which case, your future is either limited (i.e., you'll die in the afterlife, too) or unlimited - and in the "unlimited" case, there's obviously the threat of endless boredom: It's hard to resist thinking you'll get tired of living after a few millennia, only to have everlasting life ahead. Almost makes the threat of damnation redundant. (Thomas Nagel, IIRC, seems unbothered by this, as he seems to think we cannot fail, under normal conditions, to be delighted at the prospect of a few additional days of life.)
But if you don't experience the afterlife as a continuation of your Earthly career, e.g., if you're absorbed into some kind of timeless universal consciousness, then really, your Earthly self is annihilated. (Part of having an Earthly self is having no idea what a "timeless consciousness" would actually be.) In which case, you could now pose the question to the Divine Mind, "I guess it's nice that you get to enjoy eternal bliss (somehow), but where does that leave me?"
I think Charles Hartshorne, for one, would describe spiritual maturation as learning to outgrow the "where does that leave me?" question.
Michael,
You ask if there's no afterlife, "why wait?"
I'm a complete atheist, was even as a child and do not believe in life after death.
Here's a simple test: imagine someone holds a sharp knife to your throat and asks you, "why wait?".
Even in my most depressed moments, when I imagine that situation, my will to live asserts itself. The will to live, in my experience, is as instintual as the will to eat (hunger) or to drink (thirst).
I don't know you and I don't mean to be invasive, but if after taking that simple test, you still ask yourself "why wait?", I'd suggest that you are severely depressed and should seek help.
I appreciate the suggestion, and don't find it invasive. FWIW, I'm well into the process of therapeutic treatment; I'm pretty sure I am depressed, but ~98% of the time it's "functionally depressed." (Compare Freud's distinction between "hysterical misery" and "common unhappiness.") And I'm with you on the value of therapy - I'd honestly advise anyone who's severely depressed (and probably most people who are less-than-severely depressed) to leave aside the Camus and Schopenhauer etc. until after attaining to a place of psychological stability.
That aside, it isn't obvious to me that the "why wait?" doesn't have any strictly philosophical force. I pretty much grant (metaethical quibbles aside) that life has value, that most people's existence and well-being makes an important difference to several other people, whose lives are also valuable - and this is almost always enough to get me through the day, and make me want to stick around. But it does seem possible and not totally illegitimate, philosophically ("sub specie aeternitatis"), to wonder if this value is "more-or-less negligible" in light of the apparent fact that it does not make an important difference to the "overwhelming" majority of existent individuals throughout space and time. (What might "negligible" and "overwhelming" really mean here?)
If there isn't a philosophically satisfactory answer to this question, then, IMO (on most days), it's simply yet another question to which there isn't a philosophically satisfactory answer: That goes for practically every philosophical question. But we clearly aren't philosophical beings ("rational animals") through and through, IMO... A while back I mentioned Hume delighting himself at the billiards table. :)
Michael,
I'm glad to hear that you're taking care of yourself.
My guess would be that if you didn't wait, your leaving would cause horrible guilt feelings in those around you, that for the rest of their lives they'd feel guilty that they had let you down, that they hadn't done enough for you and that they would be miserable. Those guilt feelings would arise even in those for whom your living has little daily importance.
In concrete terms, your leaving would be an act of aggression against those around you.
I'm assuming from what you've previously written that you're a relatively young person in good health, that I'm not talking to someone my age (75) or older suffering from a horrid form of terminal cancer.
Betrand Russel writes somewhere: I owe the happiness of my old days to the increasing tendency in my life to think less and less about myself. ( maybe Bertrand :) )
Why wait? Because, damn it, I still haven't figured out what all this fuss is about.
I don't really care about being declared a naive epistemological optimist with this claim in my luggage. If I keep up my claim, and the feeling that carries it, long enough, then maybe in the last second the huge disappointment comes, or in the next moment. But until then...
What do we really know about the "out there" and "in here"? Strange enough that one can ask oneself questions without being motivated by the expectation of an answer.
How would I answer the question: why wait? when the tendency to want to know collapses? I really don't know. Maybe like this:
In the last months of my wife's life, before she died of cancer at the age of 42, she spoke of this deep melancholy of having to leave something very precious behind. A few days before her death, she asked me to drive her to a nearby hill from which one can see far into the country and down into the river valley. After a short time she said, it is ok. Honestly, there is this duty to wait.
'America is very close to a fascist coup'
I think you need a moment to reflect on actual fascism and political atrocity.
s. wallerstein: Your assumption is pretty much accurate - I'm 35, in good physical health, but currently (?) limited to part-time work due to disability.
I'm not sure if you meant to generalize rather than strictly address me, but "aggression" isn't going to be the right word in every case, IMO. You're clearly right about the devastation that suicide causes to one's survivors, but the motivation, presumably, is rarely to hurt them. It seems fair as a rule to suppose that a person who dies of suicide, is someone who's so overtaken by pain, suffering, and feelings of hopelessness that they just don't have the resources to survive.* That's not the same as "weakness" (a term of blame and condemnation); it's simply tragic.
Anyone reading this who also has to deal with any degree of depression: I wish I could offer more hope and wisdom beyond the simple reminder that you're not alone. Sometimes it's good to wallow and ride out your feelings, but as extraordinarily difficult as it may be to bear this in mind, feelings are transient* - and sometimes, e.g. in my case, contingent (maddeningly!) on mere digestive conditions. (Russell once attributed his happiness to two daily bowel movements.)
*With some debatable exceptions, e.g. assisted suicide, honor suicide - these are not what I primarily have in mind, of course.
**Years ago I was struck by this quote from Voltaire: "The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week." Interviews with people who survive their own suicide attempts are consistent with this, from what I've seen - I've heard of survivors' mid-air epiphanies that came while they leapt from the Golden Gate Bridge.
'It seems feckless to respond to all of this by offering more opinions.'
Aside from how it seems, someone feckless is lacking in feck. I think feckless and cunt are due for the etymological treatment. In the past, *feckful* made an occasional appearance. But in this case, the weak has outlived the strong.
Popularized by Carlyle, but feckless is so hot right now as in, the GOP is filled with feckless cowards etc. This has no relation to, like, a minced oath? As in, 80-proof FECKiN Irish Whiskey? Is very feckful indeed. The four cows in "Cold Comfort Farm" are called Aimless, Graceless, Pointless, and Feckless. The bull is Big Business.
'I pretty much grant (metaethical quibbles aside) that life has value'
tou·ché.
Gah, screwed up the "footnotes" - the single asterisk on "transient" should be **
Hello Michael,
My apologies. I shouldn't play psychotherapist online with people I don't know.
Basically, I sensed a certain distress on your part and wanted to convey my solidarity and support.
This shouldn't be further discussed in a public blog. If you want to talk, my email is
vivepablo@gmail.com
No apologies needed. I appreciate the kindness, and may take you up on that e-mail some time. Always enjoy your contributions to the conversations here.
I feel a bit silly, as I didn't mean to make this thread more morbid and unsettling than it had to be. Really, in that afterlife comment, I was going for more of a dark/neurotic humor sort of thing...but I guess some additional stuff came through, haha. (This YouTube seems relevant: "Study: Average Person Becomes Unhinged Psychotic When Alone In Own House.")
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