Getting existential

When I was 20, I got bit by a bug that wouldn’t let go. It could go dormant for years, but symptoms would eventually reemerge.

The bug was existentialism, a philosophy popular in the post-World War II era but long since out of fashion.

It wasn’t really a school of thought. Thinkers associated with it generally denied the label and disagreed with each other. They spanned a century and were all over the place politically. Some were religious, others atheistic. Some were authors and artists more than philosophers. People associated with it include Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvior, Karl Jaspers, Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, Frantz Fanon and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

It was more mood than system, but one theme is that we are thrown into this world (to echo The Doors) without being consulted about it (to echo Kierkegaard). Then we have to improvise.

Other animals have more of a genetic script. Our lives would be easier if that were the case. We’d spend less time wondering about what we’re going to do next.

We’re here first and then have to figure out what to become within the limits of our situation. To get fancy, our existence precedes our essence — hence the term.

In other words, we have a kind of freedom. For existentialists, this isn’t freedom as in, “you can do or be whatever you want,” but more like a weight, as in, “you will always bear the burden of your decisions.”

For Sartre, “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Here’s a simple example. I’m a longtime runner, although these days it looks more like walking (my rule: you’re running when you think you are).

Imagine we’re running a 15K (9.3-mile) local race, like the Poca River Run or the Dirty Dog Trail Run. You start out. It’s cold. Your lungs hurt. Ditto legs, feet and body. Part of you wants to cry or quit or walk, speaking from experience. What to do? If you quit, you must ask if you could have kept going. Could you have gone any faster? Should you have stopped to avoid injury?

It’s a decision you must make. There’s no external coercion.

That’s a mild example. But existentialists remind us that we make our decisions in the context of mortality. We are fragile and, at some point, we’re going to die. As for what, if anything, happens after that, there are beliefs but no certainty. It is our finiteness and mortality that make our decisions matter.

In an essay published shortly after the end of WWII, Sartre wrote: “We [the French people] were never more free than during the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to talk. Every day we were insulted to our faces and had to take it in silence. Under one pretext or another, as workers, Jews, or political prisoners, we were deported en masse. Everywhere, on billboards, in the newspapers, on the screen, we encountered the revolting and insipid picture of ourselves that our oppressors wanted us to accept. And, because of all this, we were free.”

He meant that people were responsible for their decisions of whether to resist or collaborate with the Nazis at whatever cost.

He went on to say: “Exile, captivity and especially death (which we usually shrink from facing at all in happier times) became for us the habitual objects of our concern. We learned that they were neither inevitable accidents, nor even constant and exterior dangers, but that they must be considered as our lot itself, our destiny, the profound source of our reality as men. At every instant we lived up to the full sense of this commonplace little phrase: ‘Man is mortal!’ And the choice that each of us made of his life and of his being was an authentic choice ...”

It’s when we hit these “limit situations,” in an expression of Jaspers, that we realize the burden of our freedom, our choices and our decisions — which brings us back to our current situation in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

At this moment, rich or poor, lucky or unlucky, mainstream or marginal, we are all facing a limit situation. (Actually, we’re always in one but mostly choose to ignore it.) We don’t know how long it will last, how bad it will get, who will be next, who will die or who will recover. Outbreak or not, we’re all temporary problems. But the things we think, say and do matter now.

Here’s the question: Knowing that we’re just here for a little while, what do we do with the time we have?

I can’t think of anything more shameful than to have to say at the end, “I spent my life making lots of money while making life worse for other people.” Or “I devoted my career to taking away health care from millions of Americans.” Or “I stood in the way of people taking meaningful action about catastrophic climate change.” Or “I spread hatred and fear of people who were different.”

That’s true whether we die to God, to karma or to nothingness. Our decisions matter.

We own them. And they own us.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Gazing into the abyss

It’s comforting to think that good and evil people are completely different, and that “our” side, whatever that is, is all good, while evil belongs exclusively to the other.

Too bad this is a dangerous illusion.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it in “The Gulag Archipelago,” his study of Soviet punishment camps:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. ... During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.

“One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.”

He quotes a Russian proverb that, “From good to evil is one quaver,” noting it works the other way, too.

That’s a good summary of social science on how ordinarily good people sometimes do terrible things.

Someone who explored this field for decades is Philip Zimbardo, creator of the infamous Stanford Prison experiment and author of “The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil.”

He argues that we tend to attribute evil actions to the individual dispositions of people who do them but ignore the powerful forces situations exert on individuals. Further, powerful people create systems that put decent people in situations in which they do things they otherwise never would have.

He warns that we often have a dangerously inflated notion of our ability to resist evil influences.

“For many, that belief of personal power to resist powerful situational and systemic forces is little more than a reassuring illusion of invulnerability,” he wroted. “Paradoxically, maintaining that illusion only serves to make one more vulnerable to manipulation by failing to be sufficiently vigilant against attempts of undesired influence subtly practiced on them.”

Two powerful toxins that can unleash the beast in any of us are dehumanization and deindividuation.

Zimbardo: “Dehumanization is one of the central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil. Dehumanization is like a cortical cataract that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see those others as enemies deserving of torment, torture, and annihilation.”

Dehumanization happens at an individual level, but it is most dangerous when the powerful create systems that label and target some groups as being less than human.

When we dehumanize others, another process that kicks in is what social psychologist Albert Bandura called “moral disengagement,” when we convince ourselves that some people are unworthy of empathy and compassion.

Then it’s on.

Deindividuation happens when we identify so closely with a group that we lose our sense of individual responsibility. This happens in organized or informal ways. When countries send people off to war, the warriors are often deindividualized with shaved heads, uniforms and drills that emphasize following orders and acting as a unit. It can also happen in informal groups like mobs and gangs. Things like masks and hoods can add to the effect.

This is most dangerous at the systemic level, particularly when it goes hand in hand with dehumanizing some vulnerable group via ideology and propaganda. Throw in our tendency to conform and obey authority, and you have a pretty lethal brew. Signals from above give permission to abuse those below.

The scary side to group behavior has long been recognized. Sigmund Freud noted that, in groups, emotionalism rises while rationality falls (think political rallies, rock concerts, some sporting events).

He believed that when groups fall under the spell of a charismatic authority, the people in it regress to a more primitive mental state. He wrote, “It is not so remarkable that we should see an individual in a group doing or approving things which he would have avoided in the normal conditions of life.”

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr even titled one of his books “Moral Man and Immoral Society.” He didn’t have any delusions about the flaws of individuals, but rather noted that, “In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.”

After all, most individuals have consciences. But often the conscience of a group is a dissenting minority accused of disloyalty.

We live in are dangerous times. Polarization runs high. There are calls for dehumanization coming from high places around the world. America may be on its own dark journey, although it’s unclear how far it will go. I’m consoled by the thought that many other nations have gone through dark times and come out on the other side.

I hope we step back from the edge of the cliff and resist the temptation to see the other, whoever it may be, as some kind of monster.

As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

(This ran as an op-ed in the Gazette-Mail a day or so ago.)

One more for the road

Yesterday's post highlighted one of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's great nuggets. A few people really enjoyed that. Fortunately, there are plenty more where that one came from. Here's one that is sadly all too true all too often:

"How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we are marching into battle against an enemy."

 And speaking of bad reasons and bad things generally, here's a look at what House and Senate Republicans are proposing about the federal budget.

More of a tweet really

One of things I love about Nietzsche is his ability to pack a whole essay or maybe even a book into a single sentence. One of my favorites is about how our sincere attachment to bad or false ideas can do more damage than deliberate falsehoods. Think Bush building up to Iraq invasion, European war plans in 1914, tinkle down economics, utopias induced by violence, etc. etc. etc.

Here's the passage:

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Kant believe it

It's been a few days since I was struck by a news item from Russia, but I'm finally getting down to blogging about it. It seems that two young men there struck up a conversation about the philosophy of Immanuel Kant that degenerated first into a fist fight and then into gun shots.

News reports did not specifically identify which aspect of the 18th century philosopher's work set off the quarrel.

I have a pet theory. It would be supremely ironic if the argument turned out to be over which of Kant's two main formulations of the ethical categorical imperative was best. Maybe it went down something like this:

Person 1: I believe that one should "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction."

Person 2: That's bull***t. One should "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."

Person 1: I got your end right here, you Bozo...

And so it goes. At least nobody was killed. All I can say is it's a good thing they weren't arguing about Nietzsche.

OVER COMING AN OBSESSION. How about that Pope, anyway?

SPEAKING OF WHOM, Francis would consider cutting food stamp benefits for poor Americans to be supremely tacky. Some friends of mine in WV made some noise about that yesterday.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The Honored Dead: Breece Pancake

This past weekend, during a work trip that involved flying, I had the chance to re-read the first and last book of someone I consider to be West Virginia's finest writer, Breece Pancake. His book is the posthumously published The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake. The book was published posthumously because he committed suicide at around the age of 27 back in 1979.

I'm prejudiced here. Breece and I are from the same town, which shows up in his book as Rock Camp. He was around the age of my older brother. His dad and my dad had an issue or two in common. And I worked with his mother Helen at the Milton library for several years, including the time from Breece's death until after his book was first published. Helen and I spent just about every Tuesday evening and every other Saturday together for several years and became very close.

We talked constantly about Breece, getting new stories published, how the book was coming together, poring over reviews, taking people on "the 10 cent tour" of Milton and the sites in the book.

I admit that I hesitated a good while before actually reading the book the first time. Then I sat and read it through in a sitting. It was painfully riveting and I felt the same feeling of awe at the end that I did when I read things like Othello or the tragedies of Aeschylus. In the years since, I have felt like the keeper of some private shrine in his honor.

This Saturday the Milton library is hosting an all day symposium on his work. Here's a bit about Breece from the Atlantic, the first major magazine to publish his work. There's only one error in it (no mining in Milton and not much timbering either). I could find no errors in this piece from the Oxford American. In fact, I found something new, a letter from the late great Kurt Vonnegut to Breece's friend and teacher John Casey, himself a winner of the National Book Award.

In the letter, Vonnegut said,

"As for Breece D'J Pancake: I give you my word of honor that he is merely the best writer, the most sincere writer I've ever read. What I suspect is that it hurt too much, was no fun at all to be that good. You and I will never know."

I think Vonnegut was on to something. I always felt that Breece tried to make himself hard enough to say what had to be said without flinching or breaking...and didn't succeed.

As I write this, I can't get some lines from Nietzsche out of my mind: "What matter thyself, Zarathustra? Say thy word and break into pieces!" Except it did matter and the loss was even greater than the word.

The uses of adversity?

Wu prefers to sleep through hard times, which may not be a bad idea.

It is an article of faith in some circles that going through hard times brings out the best in people. In many myths, books and films, the hero or heroine must undergo an ordeal to achieve greatness. There are all kinds of popular sayings to the same effect, as in "no guts, no glory" and "no pain, no gain."

I do not entirely agree. Misery, as they also say, loves company. The world is full of unnecessary or preventable suffering, which usually only leads to more of the same. Given the choice, I'd rather get rid of it.

Then there are those who seek for some deep and perhaps cosmic purpose in human suffering and insist that it is all somehow for the best. Voltaire did a great job of skewering that viewpoint in his hilarious little novel Candide, and far be it from me to try to improve on that masterpiece.

I find that kind of cosmic optimism to be a real downer. For the record, I can't imagine a more depressing thought than the idea that this is "the best of all possible worlds."

Still there are some bullets that can't be dodged. In such cases, tenacity can be a virtue. And it really is sometimes true that going through tough periods can build a kind of endurance. Nietzsche famously said "What does not destroy me makes me stronger" (although the evidence often leans in the other direction). Sometimes telling yourself that can help a bit.

So can having some kind of goal or purpose, as Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl argued in Man's Search for Meaning (search the Goat Rope archives in the upper left hand corner for an earlier series here on his ideas). To quote Nietzsche again,

He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.

WORKS FOR ME. In the wake of the financial bailout, the union SEIU has proposed organizing bank workers.

HARD TIMES have sparked a boost of interest in WV's historic New Deal sites.

I COULD HAVE TOLD THEM THIS. Scientists have discovered that dogs have what seems to be a sense of fairness and are capable of envy. Perhaps they might have discovered this sooner if they'd have tried the novel experiment of giving food or treats to more than one at a time. My theory is that they can even do a kind of canine arithmetic in which they quantify the goodies and express disappointment if the balance doesn't add up.

I COULD HAVE TOLD THEM THIS ONE TOO. Research indicates that aging brains may be easily distracted. What was their first clue? And what were we talking about, anyway?

IN OTHER URGENT NEWS, vampires are cool again (or still).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: DISTRACTED

LET JUSTICE ROLL DOWN LIKE WATERS

El Cabrero has been thinking about the uses of history lately. This seems like a fitting topic on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had some interesting things to say on this topic in his essay "On the uses and disadvantages of history for life" in his Untimely Meditations.

As the title of the essay suggests, Nietzsche wasn't interested in history as a social science or academic discipline but rather in how people can make use of history for their own purposes, and specifically to enhance human vitality.

The essay begins with a quote from Goethe:

"In any case, I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity."

Thinking about history has some risk since life requires both remembering and forgetting and we can suffer from both a scarcity and a surplus of historical awareness. We can get lost in the past to the detriment of the present.

Nietzsche identified three ways in which history could serve to enhance human life:

*There is a need to revere, conserve and treasure those things of the past that give people a sense of identity. He called this the antiquarian approach.

*For oppressed people, there is at times a need to "break up and dissolve a part of the past...bringing it before a tribunal, scrupulously examining it and finally condemning it..." He called this the critical approach.

*For those who aspire to making their own mark on history, the past can contain inspiring examples of the deeds of others. From these, we learn "that the greatness that once existed was in any event once possible and may thus be possible again..." He calls this the monumentalistic conception of history.

In the context of remembering the life and work of Dr. King and the tens of thousands of others who made huge gains for civil rights and social justice, the latter approach can be most useful to our life today. It would be tragic to allow this huge struggle to simply become a pious memory instead of a goad to action.

Here is one way to think about the legacy of Dr. King and others in Nietzsche's monumentalistic manner:

Once upon a time not too long ago, a relatively small number of people, in spite of all their human limitations, made a huge difference to the nation and the world against all odds. The fact that it was done is proof that it can be done.

That's the awareness we need to bring to the struggle for a living wage for working people. As Dr. King wrote in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?,

There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer.

That's the awareness we need to bring to the struggle to restore the rights of workers to organize, a struggle for which King literally gave his life in Memphis.

That's the awareness that we need to bring to the struggle to end the unnecessary war in Iraq and reshape America's domestic and foreign agenda. As King said,

There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.

In other words, don't just remember the past, use it as an inspiration. Other people, who were just as screwed up as we are, did pretty damn good. It's our turn.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED