On September 11, 2001, I was scheduled to fly from South Bend, Indiana, to Augusta, Georgia for my grandmother's 80th birthday celebration. I was driving to the airport when the world changed. I headed to the University of Notre Dame campus instead, where I was a graduate student, and slowly realized that no one would be getting on a plane for quite some time.
My mentor encouraged me to get in my car and drive instead. Somewhere along the way I picked up two small American flags and attached them to my windows. I did so in spite of my growing discomfort with conspicuous patriotism in light of all I had learned about my country's history and the way that the rest of the world perceived us. I did so out of solidarity. As I drove south and east, truck drivers honked and gave me the thumbs-up, and I felt reconnected to the blue-collar segment of the population I had grown up in and among. There were dire predictions of shortages and price-gouging, but all I encountered along the way was communal caring, suffering, and consolation.
I remember feeling like the world was upended, and that nothing would ever be the same again. I remember being comforted by my father, who himself remembered World War II, the upheavals of Vietnam, and a time of public assassinations. We will go on; life will resume.
During the two days of that drive, and the ensuing time with my extended family, it was easy to believe that in our sorrows we would find the best part of ourselves, that we would reach out to and take care of each other. And to some degree we did. But then violence always begets violence, and we are all still suffering from the effects of our own violence in the face of intense, all-consuming fear.
We are now facing another crisis, of a quite different sort. The aggressor is a pathogen, and we have no idea what to do with our fear of it. It is easy to minimize the importance of this violent emotion, but it has been behind so much destruction, so much suffering, and so much failure to make reasoned decisions in the face of dire need. It seems to me that we all need to be attending to three of its particular effects right now.
Xenophobia: It is not surprising that with a microscopic enemy, we look around for a bigger one. But the novel coronavirus is not a "Chinese" virus, nor an Asian virus. It is just a virus--one of nature's marvels, in a way. It is an equal-opportunity pathogen, and we have no time or energy to waste fearing the other or stigmatizing whole groups of people who may in fact be our fellow citizens and are most definitely our fellow human beings. We are all equally vulnerable and equally responsible for doing whatever we can to mitigate the damage, without adding to the suffering through ignorant cruelty.
Exponential Burdens on the Already Burdened: Threats to physical health and the health of the economy are both harder on those whose lives are already hard, especially the poor. When those of us who are relatively privileged find an empty space on a grocery shelf, we probably still have enough food in our cupboards to keep our families well-fed for weeks. But what is this like for the family buying just what they can to get by, day by day? When colleges and universities send their students home, it is the socio-economically disadvantaged students who cannot access online learning or sometimes familial support to continue their education at a distance. When we shut down public events and spaces, it is the workers without steady salaries or benefits who lose not just recreation but livelihood. Of course we may still need to shop for emergency supplies, move away from face-to-face instruction, and limit public gatherings. But we must do so with full awareness of these costs for those for whom the costs of living are already so high, and try as best we can to stitch together a safety net that we have failed to plan for.
Trauma to the Constitutionally Vulnerable: Fred Rogers is famous for telling children that in moments of crisis they should "look for the helpers." His idea was not that adults would have all the answers, but that children needed not to be responsible for taking care of themselves, improving the situation, or processing it alone. We need to remove this burden for our children, let them talk about their fears, and do our best not to increase them. We also need to pay special attention to those with anxiety disorders, and those whose age, health, or other circumstances make it impossible for them to exercise agency in response to this crisis.
Of course, as we are all human, we are all constitutionally vulnerable. But some of us won the lottery by being safe and protected as children and by remaining healthy as adults. We can afford to take some of the weight from our neighbors' shoulders.
Yet we should also, I think, resist the temptation of the strong to overestimate their strength. We are being encouraged to distance ourselves socially for the common good. But we can mostly still hug those closest to us, and if our need to protect ourselves or them precludes even this, tell them of our continued love. These small gestures are great and powerful weapons against the most intimate fears, which remain some of the most dangerous. They can still help us access the best parts of ourselves, enable us to take care of one another, and provide a small glimmer of hope in the face of our stubborn refusal to learn from history.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Speaking Truths to Ourselves--On Charlottesville
I have hardly been able to look at the images from my home
state this last week. I grieve for what we have become, and I don’t understand
how we have gotten here. I could tell a story about that path, but there are
too many stories, and this is not a moment to get lost in the multiplication of
complexities. Fifty years after the height of the Civil Rights Movement, we
have somehow reached a place where the ugliest ideas of the past centuries have
a renewed following that we can no longer ignore.
W.E.B. DuBois once described Atlanta as “south of the north,
yet north of the south.” This has seemed to me an apt description of Virginia,
especially Richmond, where I was born and raised. I have grown tired of
explaining to people that it had never occurred to me to think of myself as anything
other than a Southerner. This was the milk on which I was nursed, the roots
that I could never deny, however my sentiments shifted about them over the
years. Behind all of my ambivalence, I fear there was always a kind of pride. I
was taught that there was a Southern ethos, a delicacy, something lilting in
our mode of life that put Yankees to shame. But we did not, natives of the
Commonwealth, share in the distaste for learning or the scorn for nobler things
that we saw portrayed in caricatures of Southerners in national media. Southerner
I always was; redneck or Bible Belter, never.
It took me far too long to see that the stories of heritage
were at best self-deception and at worst downright lies. That you cannot
separate a flag that waved over those who fought for their right to trample on
the rights of others from that ugly history, that disposition to tyranny. That
no matter what ideals individual people might associate with that flag, black
Americans could not but associate it with fear, hatred, and centuries of being
treated as subhuman. No person’s heritage or ideal could possibly make up for
so much pain. It is an insult to even place it in the balance.
I fear that the pictures of
angry, pathetic white men brandishing torches are distracting us from some difficult truths. This is not aberration. It is an extreme version of something that
some of us can usually ignore from day to day: the ongoing, systematic oppression
of a whole group of people whom we categorize by the myth of separate races. It
is an oppression that has been carefully documented with statistics and
powerfully portrayed in film. But its counterpart, perhaps its source, lies
within the breast of many individual people, most of whom would swear that they
are not racists.
Moral indignation at being accused of racism is the order of
the day among a certain set. Ironically, there is considerable overlap between
this set and those who make fun of others for being offended by vulgar
stereotypes and the languages of shame. In response, others have tried to point
out that one can very well be racist in subtle ways, and that we may have
racist attitudes and not even be aware of them.
The indignant often respond with questioning the testing,
about which there are some real scientific problems, that seeks to quantify
this “implicit bias.” These same problems do not affect numerous other data
sets that show, for instance, that you can change an applicant’s interview
chances simply by changing the name at the top of a resume to something that
sounds like it might refer to a non-white person. But I don’t need implicit
bias tests anyhow. All I need to frighten myself about my own attitudes is an
old-fashioned—indeed, ancient—method. It is the method of self-reflection, part
of the way in which some of us try to obey the adage to know ourselves.
In implementing this method, I have caught myself with
passing sentiments of frustration based on the race of the person before me. I
have seen myself noticing “patterns” that the wiser, more scientifically-minded
part of myself knows are not there. We are not natively good at noticing
patterns. We see them too quickly, and we infer things from them with far, far
too little warrant.
This self-reflection is a tiny, pathetic first step. It is
nothing by itself, except a caution against hubris. But it is an absolutely
necessary first step for those who are quite sure that they are not racist.
There is a deeper level of reflection that is called for,
which asks questions about our explanations for real patterns. We know that
there is a socio-economic gap between the races: how do we explain this? Do we
think it’s likely that “biological differences” explain this gap? Then we are
racist, because we believe that one race is naturally inferior to another.
Those who like the biological difference explanation may well throw John Stuart
Mill at me and demand that I exercise my mental capacities by considering every
possible argument, however disgusting I may find it. But as much as I admire
Mill, I fear this ideal fails to take some important factors into
consideration.
Our commitment to freedom of speech demands that we not
imprison people for considering such arguments, or even for defending them
vociferously. But it does not demand that we take all arguments equally
seriously. That first step of self-reflection ought to teach us that we are
likely to find some arguments more attractive than others. They serve our lower
needs better. Why have I been so fortunate while others have languished?
Because I have worked hard and they are lazy/incompetent/not quite as smart? It
is such a beguiling answer. And precisely because of this, we ought to work as
hard as we can to find another. Plenty of alternative answers are readily
available, each too simple to explain the whole. But when we are engaged in
this search, it is a moment for multiplying complexities.
But there is another level of mendacity here, more brazen
than the squirrely self-deception involved in never paying attention to
fleeting racist thoughts or reaching for the most flattering explanation for
social inequalities. And here is where I must return to that bizarre world in
which I was raised, south of the north, yet north of the south.
As I child, I heard many adults tell me that they were not
racist, and even that racism was wrong. And then they told me what sort of
people to avoid, and why it was still unwise for nice white girls to date black
boys. They made jokes using the n-word and wrung their hands when black
families moved into their neighborhoods. In the Southern world, people have
long known what they could get away with saying in public and what they could
say among themselves. Not all of my Southern friends and family were like this.
Some were as disgusted by it as I should have been then and now am. And many of
those who were like this were also capable of loving-kindness and noble acts;
some even fought for civil rights for all. But their privately-public racism
was the edge of an angry cancer. We are now seeing that cancer break out of its
previously-contained bonds. What happened in Charlottesville is not only a
Southern problem; would it be wrong to wish it were? But we lie to ourselves
again if we pretend that we Southerners have not nourished that problem with
our own special food for many, many years.
And so I grieve for my state, for the university I didn’t
attend but always admired, and for the raw wounds that all of this inflicts on
so many who are so much more affected by it than I am. This is a time, above
all, to speak truth to power—to tell our children and our fellow citizens that
there is no moral equivalence between Nazi ideology or white supremacy and the
ideals of Heather Heyer and her brave partners in protest. But is also a time
to speak truths to ourselves. We can no longer afford not to.
Friday, May 8, 2015
Some Thoughts about Anger and Oppression
"Male and female stand opposed within a
primordial Mitsein, and woman has not broken it. The couple is a
fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of
society along the line of sex is impossible." (Simone de Beauvoir,
Introduction to The Second Sex)
Lately, a few unrelated causes have made me think
about gender issues in the academy and the workplace in general. Beauvoir makes
the above claim to explain why women have, for millennia, not rebelled
against oppression. As I understand her, she is not advocating that
we attempt to break the community between men and women, or even lamenting that
such a cleavage is impossible. She is simply observing that some of the means
available to other oppressed groups have not been available to women.
I agree, but I am worried today about a less
dramatic cleavage--the cleavage that might occur when women (or members of any
underrepresented group) become frustrated, angry, and finally exasperated at
the barriers they still face working on equal footing with men. Let me be
very clear from the beginning: I believe anger can be a healthy, appropriate
response to injustice, and I have zero interest in denying the validity of such
anger.
That said, I also worry about anger, for three
reasons. First, expressing it can hurt our cause. It is, unfortunately, still
true that women who express anger in the workplace are more likely than men who
do so to be perceived as emotionally overreactive and irrational. (And
yes, that is infuriating. You see the difficulty here.) Second, anger takes a
toll on the person bearing it. People have different tolerances for negativity,
and I can't speak for others. But my own tolerance is pretty low. I don't
like how I feel or act when I'm angry. After the fact, the expression rarely
seems to have been worth it. Finally, anger distorts. It narrows our vision and
primes us for confirmation bias, which means that when we are angry, we risk
being unjust ourselves. Raw skin inflames at even a gentle touch.
So what can we do? I suggest the following strategies,
but I'd love to hear others' ideas for more.
•
We can try to remember that we are guilty too.
Oppression is about power, and anyone in a position of power over anyone else
is in danger of abusing it. Nietzsche was probably right, moreover, that people
who feel weaker than others can be particularly aggressive when the tables are
turned. I want to become more aware of any tendencies I have to lord power
over my students, for example. Moreover, men are not uniquely guilty of bias
against women. How many women undermine all of us by tearing down other
women? And even if we avoid such explicit expression, we may
still have sexist (or racist) attitudes of which we are unaware.
(Harvard's implicit bias tests can be a helpful exercise in self-knowledge: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.)
Any part of our anger mixed with self-righteousness should probably not survive
self-exploration.
•
We can direct our energy to helping others who
experience discrimination. We can mentor our juniors, search with hope for
young people who need encouragement, and support their efforts with
enthusiasm. Here we may be able to counteract the negativity I spoke of above
with one of the best kinds of pleasure.
•
We can speak publicly, calmly, and generally
about the real problems still facing underrepresented groups. If we feel
destructive anger taking over and becoming bitterness, it might be that we
have been holding in too much. Of course, oppression makes one afraid of
speaking truth to power. But we can overcome some of this fear by remembering,
again, that many men (and women) are simply unaware of these issues as they
play out in day-to-day life and would by no means want to contribute to the
problem if they were aware. Since no one likes to feel attacked or accused,
general and public statements may be more effective than private conversations.
If someone brings a problem to my attention in a public forum, I feel much
freer to consider whether or not I am among the sources of that problem than if
that same person accuses me individually.
Again, these strategies may be too little in some
cases, and I cannot speak for what might work for minority groups or
people in different environments. Nothing I say here seems to have any
relevance for people whose safely or lives are in danger because of their
race, gender, or religion.
In other situations, however, women are
surrounded by both men and women who sincerely want to nurture Mitsein--that
"being-with" that means that we cannot deny that our own flourishing
is inseparable from that of others with whom we live and work. They may still
be completely clueless about how to promote that flourishing, and again, that
can be infuriating. Sometimes anger is all we have, and it can be powerful.
Given its potential dangers, however, I want to be very cautious about
drawing the conclusion that any particular moment is one of those times.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Can we be sad anymore?
"Sorrow is the ultimate type both in Life and Art. Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask." (Oscar Wilde, De Profundis)
I am wondering--in this cold, comforting winter evening--if we know how to be sad anymore. A strange question, that. Are we not a nation, a people, a world--in the grip of an epidemic of depressive disorders? Have we not stared into the face of existential angst and grinned, spat, screamed, and run away? Do we not have a severely over-taxed social services system trying and failing to deal with the sadness of millions and their consequent "coping" behaviors?
But I am not talking about clinical depression or philosophical anxiety. I am talking about being sad--sadness that is not floating free but is a direct and reasonable response to loss, disappointment, or wounding. This is a passion, among the many passions we flash all over social media, that seems shameful. We hide it; we sublimate it; and we joke about it. Thus, those "coping" behaviors are actually evidence that I am onto something.
I have no studies to cite nor even explanations to offer. I only notice that the Hebrew Bible saw fit to include a book of Lamentations, perhaps so that people had some words in which to address their sorrow to the Divine, amongst their fellow sorrowers. And we have Facebook. I see far more people joking about needing another drink, or a weapon, than I see people honestly saying, "I am sad." Speaking out of the ugly roots of my own experience, I fear that this is how we deal with sadness now. Perhaps we seek medication or therapy, or perhaps we medicate ourselves. Or perhaps we stuff it all down into the narrow little pressure cooker that is anger. The first solution can be appropriate, in certain contexts and for certain disorders. Sorrow, however, as a response to a reasonable cause, is no disorder. Yet even of this sorrow, I fear, we run away in fear.
Spinoza defined sadness as the passion by which the mind passes to a lesser perfection. When we are sad, he believed, we feel our power of acting decreased. This is undoubtedly true: to be sad is to feel weak and vulnerable, as if the hard shell of armor one has spent a lifetime building has been ripped away by violence. Here, perhaps, is an explanation of our fear. But if the armor can be ripped off--and this must be possible if one is to be human--then it was really illusory to begin with. Sadness therefore shows us something profound and true about ourselves, and about those other people we have been protecting ourselves against. Invulnerability in human life is a lie, and its sentimental accoutrements are more often than not cruel. In embracing sorrow, we embrace an emotion that the youngest children and oldest survivors share. Mass hiding of a feeling does not make it disappear. So, passing through sorrow--feeling its wounding, crippling attack--might actually increase our power of acting in the long run, insofar as it brings us closer to that most helpful of creatures--other human beings.
I take it this was part of Wilde's point. "Clergymen," he says, "and people who use phrases without wisdom, sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation. One discerns things that one never discerned before. One approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. What one had felt dimly through instinct, about Art, is intellectually and emotionally realized with perfect clearness of vision and absolute intensity of apprehension."
Such apprehension is precious. Perhaps we ought to resist the urge to flee from it. It is not really so frightening. Sorrow has a natural lifespan. As Montaigne says, "evils have their life and limits, their sickness and their health." Should sorrow attempt to usurp the time of our whole lives, that is when to seek help of a different kind. But it is not in itself an illness, and it will not alone destroy us. It may be time to step out of costume, and let ourselves feel an emotion that wears no mask.
I am wondering--in this cold, comforting winter evening--if we know how to be sad anymore. A strange question, that. Are we not a nation, a people, a world--in the grip of an epidemic of depressive disorders? Have we not stared into the face of existential angst and grinned, spat, screamed, and run away? Do we not have a severely over-taxed social services system trying and failing to deal with the sadness of millions and their consequent "coping" behaviors?
But I am not talking about clinical depression or philosophical anxiety. I am talking about being sad--sadness that is not floating free but is a direct and reasonable response to loss, disappointment, or wounding. This is a passion, among the many passions we flash all over social media, that seems shameful. We hide it; we sublimate it; and we joke about it. Thus, those "coping" behaviors are actually evidence that I am onto something.
I have no studies to cite nor even explanations to offer. I only notice that the Hebrew Bible saw fit to include a book of Lamentations, perhaps so that people had some words in which to address their sorrow to the Divine, amongst their fellow sorrowers. And we have Facebook. I see far more people joking about needing another drink, or a weapon, than I see people honestly saying, "I am sad." Speaking out of the ugly roots of my own experience, I fear that this is how we deal with sadness now. Perhaps we seek medication or therapy, or perhaps we medicate ourselves. Or perhaps we stuff it all down into the narrow little pressure cooker that is anger. The first solution can be appropriate, in certain contexts and for certain disorders. Sorrow, however, as a response to a reasonable cause, is no disorder. Yet even of this sorrow, I fear, we run away in fear.
Spinoza defined sadness as the passion by which the mind passes to a lesser perfection. When we are sad, he believed, we feel our power of acting decreased. This is undoubtedly true: to be sad is to feel weak and vulnerable, as if the hard shell of armor one has spent a lifetime building has been ripped away by violence. Here, perhaps, is an explanation of our fear. But if the armor can be ripped off--and this must be possible if one is to be human--then it was really illusory to begin with. Sadness therefore shows us something profound and true about ourselves, and about those other people we have been protecting ourselves against. Invulnerability in human life is a lie, and its sentimental accoutrements are more often than not cruel. In embracing sorrow, we embrace an emotion that the youngest children and oldest survivors share. Mass hiding of a feeling does not make it disappear. So, passing through sorrow--feeling its wounding, crippling attack--might actually increase our power of acting in the long run, insofar as it brings us closer to that most helpful of creatures--other human beings.
I take it this was part of Wilde's point. "Clergymen," he says, "and people who use phrases without wisdom, sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation. One discerns things that one never discerned before. One approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. What one had felt dimly through instinct, about Art, is intellectually and emotionally realized with perfect clearness of vision and absolute intensity of apprehension."
Such apprehension is precious. Perhaps we ought to resist the urge to flee from it. It is not really so frightening. Sorrow has a natural lifespan. As Montaigne says, "evils have their life and limits, their sickness and their health." Should sorrow attempt to usurp the time of our whole lives, that is when to seek help of a different kind. But it is not in itself an illness, and it will not alone destroy us. It may be time to step out of costume, and let ourselves feel an emotion that wears no mask.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
An Exquisite Contradiction
“He burns with spiritual intensity—and he desperately wants to be something in the eyes of the world. An exquisite contradiction, because what lurks near the center of his spiritual life, but without actually living there, is the thought that he should desire and expect to be nobody and nothing to the world.”
In my experience, this quotation fits nearly everyone* who teaches at a church-related university, or preaches to a public, or posts about faith on Facebook, or blogs about it. I make no exception for myself.
Fellow teachers, preachers, posters, and bloggers, I would love to know what you think. If you're moved to post in the comments here, or on your own preferred forum, you will have my admiration—and I do not mean that ironically.
*There is a class whom the quotation does not describe. This is the cynical "pragmatist" who burns with no spiritual intensity at all. But he has learned that if he simulates such a person, playing a role, he can acquire power for himself by exploiting those who do feel the contradiction.
In my experience, this quotation fits nearly everyone* who teaches at a church-related university, or preaches to a public, or posts about faith on Facebook, or blogs about it. I make no exception for myself.
Fellow teachers, preachers, posters, and bloggers, I would love to know what you think. If you're moved to post in the comments here, or on your own preferred forum, you will have my admiration—and I do not mean that ironically.
*There is a class whom the quotation does not describe. This is the cynical "pragmatist" who burns with no spiritual intensity at all. But he has learned that if he simulates such a person, playing a role, he can acquire power for himself by exploiting those who do feel the contradiction.
Friday, March 21, 2014
On Speaking in Code
I recount to you a fable, told me lately by a friend.
The meeting had been called to discuss a Technique. Strictly speaking, techniques serve external ends, and this was no exception. Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in 1981 that participants in the dominant culture avoid evaluating ends, knowing only how to reason about means. Over Three decades later, we have overcome such thinking, having now figured out how to avoid evaluating means as well. It is so simple. We just designate them "best practices." Like any good candidate for a term with mesmeric force, this one has long outlived its roots, which no doubt fed in a soil of rigor, scientific study, and dedication to efficiency.
So, the people came together to discuss the Technique, which they were sure was a Best Practice, well designed to achieve its Ends. But it turns out that the attendees also had ends of their own.
After long discussion, a young woman offered a contribution. She was frustrated with the Technique, she said. She had never been wholly satisfied with her attempts to implement it, and she felt that perhaps it did not serve its Ends very well.
An older man volunteered a reply, in a congenial tone. "Do not worry, Young Woman. After years of implementing the Technique, I too have had frustrations. You must have confidence that, in time, and with practice, your use of the Technique will improve."
The young woman failed to switch codes. As a result, two people did not achieve their ends.
Hers included: (1) arguing that the Technique should itself be questioned, or perhaps even abandoned, and (2) accomplishing (1) without offending her colleagues. She succeeded with the second part of (2) but only at the expense of failing completely with (1). Although she had said that the Technique might not serve its ends, her senior colleague had fixated on her expressions of frustration and humility, and he had assumed that she was in distress, asking for help.
His ends included (1) helping a junior colleague in an empathetic way, and, presumably, (2) not sounding condescending. His is the tragic case: he failed in both.
It was at some point in graduate school that I realized that I spoke in a code that my male peers did not understand. Any expression of self-doubt, or hesitation, or polite demurring--they took to be expressions of incompetence or ignorance. Few of these men were jerks. They just had never learned the code that women use so naturally (though it be our second nature) with one another. And to be fair, we didn't know their code either. We assumed that their expressions of self-confidence were signs of insufferable arrogance, when they were more likely just moves in an intricate game.
At the peak of my frustration over the obstacles meeting women in a male-dominated field, I was advised repeatedly not to write about such things--at least not yet. And I sympathized with the advice. Not only did I see the ways in which such writing might keep me from being "taken seriously," I agreed with Simone de Beauvoir that the topic of women can be irritating, especially to women.
But watching interactions that resemble my friend's familiar fable have convinced me: charity requires speaking out about such things. Otherwise these poor people will never understand, will remain forever blind, will never achieve even the noblest of ends.
If women are to play the game with those who cannot hear us, we must, at least in limited contexts, learn to codeswitch, even if I much prefer the gentler tenor of our own code. But many men can and truly want to hear us. To effect this end, the codes cannot remain secret, and women cannot remain silent about themselves. Understanding silence, after all, itself requires immersion in the most advanced of codes. It is often too much to ask.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
The Quantified Self: Some Thoughts from the 17th Century
We geeks love to track stuff, and put numbers on the stuff we track. We humans love to think about ourselves. So, it should be no surprise that human geeks have invented the "quantified self" movement, which promises to improve our health, our self-control, and our very lives, by making us aware of every aspect of what we are doing every moment of the day and night.
First, let me be clear: tracking information about the self certainly has its benefits and its place. Self-monitoring makes us aware of habits we would love to ignore, which is invaluable if we have a habit we need to overcome. And it can reward us for overcoming: there is something bizarrely satisfying about writing down a success, however small. Some of us are not above writing things on a to-do list that we've already done, just for the pleasure of checking it off.
But notice the funny mixture of reason and absurdity here: we may reasonably track our exercise habits, for instance, to serve an important and attainable health goal. But we are not above playing silly tricks on ourselves to encourage this reasonable enterprise.
When I started running, I put gold stars on a calendar every time I made it out the door for a run.
I was an adult.
Thus we come to Pascal, expert on dualities of reason and absurdity. Lest we think that we have finally invented something new under the Sun, it is worth noting that a contrary Frenchman diagnosed all of the central problems with self-quantification in the 17th century. To wit:
Its Conceit: "Because they failed to contemplate these infinities, men have rashly undertaken to probe into nature as if there were some proportion between themselves and her. Strangely enough they wanted to know the principles of things and go on from there to know everything, inspired by a presumption as infinite as their object. For there can be no doubt that such a plan could not be conceived without infinite presumption or a capacity as infinite as that of nature" (Fragment 199).
Again, we can learn much about ourselves through tracking our vital statistics, but we may become far more ignorant in a Socratic sense, as we proceed to convince ourselves that we know things that we cannot possibly know. There are apps, I understand, that actually presume to tell their users when they will die. Putting aside the misleading implication that medical science has evolved to a state at which it is able to predict life expectancy with such precision, fortune has a nasty way of giving the lie to these kinds of predictions. The healthiest of habits are tragically no match for drunk drivers, new diseases, or acts of violence.
Its Obvious Danger of Producing Anxiety: "Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical" (Fg 21).
Those who ignore reasoned medical advice, who never think about how their behavior affects their well-being, indeed play a silly roulette with their lives. But those who have experienced serious illness--or who have feared that they or a loved one might be experiencing such an illness--know all too well the danger of believing that information can cure. The relentless search for information, without experience or wisdom to help one process it, is a very bad healer. It is excellent, however, at exponentially increasing one's misery, as the pleasures life still has to offer fall victim to its imaginary, specter-like predictions, fears, and insistent drive to feed on itself; which brings us to . . .
Its Excellence at Diverting One from Life: "We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching. . . . Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so" (Fg 47).
Once again, I am sure there are people involved with the quantified self movement who manage to track all their information, put it in a little box, and move on with their productive, well-adjusted, and optimized lives. But the details of what one can track are a little disturbing. Evidently, it is now possible to analyze your own excrement, electronically inform your computer when you are having sex, and moreover publicize this information online for the world to see. This is all, of course, evidence of our own brilliance--not only in inventing the devices that make such things possible, but in doubling and trebling our experiences into the moment, the record of the moment, and its faint, eternal, electronic trace. Unfortunately, we have not yet invented a device that allows us to do this without sloughing off the intensity of the original. This is a marvelous anesthetic if one does not wish to feel life very intensely, but the fulfillment of such a wish can only be a sadly mixed blessing.
One might well reply that Pascal himself was no happy character--that he was tortured, obsessive, and no model for the flourishing life. With this retort, I cannot disagree. But what does this mean? That he knew suffering profoundly, from the inside, and knew very well what did not cure it. To read Pascal in a time of despair is to lift the veil of isolation and destroy the infinity between one and none that Nietzsche found between having one friend and utter solitude. It is to know, in other words, that no human being must suffer alone, because at least one other has suffered from the very depths. This sort of consolation, so much worth seeking, cannot be quantified. We need not share all of Pascal's commitments to find in him this kind of friend, and to suspect that, particularly in his gentler moments, he had some insight to share.
Its Conceit: "Because they failed to contemplate these infinities, men have rashly undertaken to probe into nature as if there were some proportion between themselves and her. Strangely enough they wanted to know the principles of things and go on from there to know everything, inspired by a presumption as infinite as their object. For there can be no doubt that such a plan could not be conceived without infinite presumption or a capacity as infinite as that of nature" (Fragment 199).
Again, we can learn much about ourselves through tracking our vital statistics, but we may become far more ignorant in a Socratic sense, as we proceed to convince ourselves that we know things that we cannot possibly know. There are apps, I understand, that actually presume to tell their users when they will die. Putting aside the misleading implication that medical science has evolved to a state at which it is able to predict life expectancy with such precision, fortune has a nasty way of giving the lie to these kinds of predictions. The healthiest of habits are tragically no match for drunk drivers, new diseases, or acts of violence.
Its Obvious Danger of Producing Anxiety: "Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical" (Fg 21).
Those who ignore reasoned medical advice, who never think about how their behavior affects their well-being, indeed play a silly roulette with their lives. But those who have experienced serious illness--or who have feared that they or a loved one might be experiencing such an illness--know all too well the danger of believing that information can cure. The relentless search for information, without experience or wisdom to help one process it, is a very bad healer. It is excellent, however, at exponentially increasing one's misery, as the pleasures life still has to offer fall victim to its imaginary, specter-like predictions, fears, and insistent drive to feed on itself; which brings us to . . .
Its Excellence at Diverting One from Life: "We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching. . . . Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so" (Fg 47).
Once again, I am sure there are people involved with the quantified self movement who manage to track all their information, put it in a little box, and move on with their productive, well-adjusted, and optimized lives. But the details of what one can track are a little disturbing. Evidently, it is now possible to analyze your own excrement, electronically inform your computer when you are having sex, and moreover publicize this information online for the world to see. This is all, of course, evidence of our own brilliance--not only in inventing the devices that make such things possible, but in doubling and trebling our experiences into the moment, the record of the moment, and its faint, eternal, electronic trace. Unfortunately, we have not yet invented a device that allows us to do this without sloughing off the intensity of the original. This is a marvelous anesthetic if one does not wish to feel life very intensely, but the fulfillment of such a wish can only be a sadly mixed blessing.
One might well reply that Pascal himself was no happy character--that he was tortured, obsessive, and no model for the flourishing life. With this retort, I cannot disagree. But what does this mean? That he knew suffering profoundly, from the inside, and knew very well what did not cure it. To read Pascal in a time of despair is to lift the veil of isolation and destroy the infinity between one and none that Nietzsche found between having one friend and utter solitude. It is to know, in other words, that no human being must suffer alone, because at least one other has suffered from the very depths. This sort of consolation, so much worth seeking, cannot be quantified. We need not share all of Pascal's commitments to find in him this kind of friend, and to suspect that, particularly in his gentler moments, he had some insight to share.
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