The Wisdom of Mirth

Friedrich Nietzsche.  Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None.  Trans. W. Kaufmann.  New York: Modern Library, 1995.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Random House, 2012.  ISBN: 1400067820.

It was mere coincidence that I happened to read these two books together, coincidence that almost makes you believe in deity (since they go together so well, with Taleb even recommending Nietzsche's writings as containing some of the clearest anticipations of his ideas that he has uncovered). There is much I could say about either book, and maybe later I will try, but here I just want to talk about one thought that I have after finishing both.

It seems to me that the take-home message from both is that people cannot control outcomes, individually or collectively, but that they can and should aspire to own (and embrace) their destiny.  I cannot control whether I get cancer, but I can and should aspire to bear cancer nobly if it falls to my lot (as it might, in spite of all that I or anyone else might do to prevent it).  We cannot make society safe (from crime or war or drugs or death in any number of forms), but we can and should aspire to make it love nobility.  We can publicly worship those people and values that we love for the good they have done, and we can publicly pillory those we hate (for the good they think they have done, to our harm).  We can show others the gods we worship, and let them decide to worship with us or revile.  If they worship, then we respect their contribution as they make it (demanding nothing from them that they are not comfortable providing).  If they revile, then we respect that contribution (demanding nothing from them that we aren't willing to give them ourselves: they can live in peace, doing whatever nonsense they please, as long as they don't expect us to worship them for it or take any active part ourselves in stupid stuff we don't believe in).

Society isn't about bringing us all together in one big happy family, in which everyone gets along perfectly with everyone else.  Society is about reconciling us all to the fact that this will never happen.  We don't all see eye to eye.  We never have.  We never will.  Some of us have the courage to stand for what we believe in, even when others make that very painful for us.  These people are heroes.  Some of us prefer to wait for someone else to tell us what to believe, what to fight for, how to live.  These people are the mob (who might be scum).

What separates heroes from the mob isn't necessarily what they do (not that that isn't important at all, of course).  It is how they do it.  We all fight for causes, somehow, someway.  Are you a noble fighter?  Do you have respect for those who abstain from your fight for their own noble reasons?  For those who fight on the opposite side because they are convinced that you are a dangerous idiot who deserves to go to hell?  Do you love such people, more than the mob who fancy themselves your friends because they happen to fight on your side--not because it is theirs but because they want to cool?  If so, then you are a hero (no matter what church you belong to, what beliefs you have or don't, what politics you espouse, or what you do for a living: heroism is about playing strong and fair, not being "right" or "winning" or some other such nonsense).

We are all, individually and collectively, characters in stories that we tell one another (and ourselves).  What kind of characters should we be?  Heroes, we say (and so I assume, for the moment: in any case, we all approach the business of storytelling from an egocentric point of view, wondering how we fit in and what good, heroic deeds we should do).  So what kind of heroes should we be?

In my experience, there are two kinds of hero.  One is the tragic hero, who faces the reality that he cannot control outcomes by killing himself in attempt to do so anyway.  ("Damn the torpedoes!  Full speed ahead!")  This kind of heroism can be very inspiring (very purely, nobly heroic).  It can also cause a lot of pain and anguish that are not (strictly speaking) necessary (from a point of view like mine: here we enter into my personal views on the best kind of heroism).  If we aspire to become tragic heroes, we run the risk of enhancing our suffering, and perhaps the suffering of those around us.  (The tragic hero wears hair shirts to mortify his flesh when he gets too frisky with joie de vivre.  He puts out his eyes rather than see evil.  He does not take it well when he learns that he has killed his father, slept with his mother, or otherwise broken any custom in the moral code he holds sacred.  He would much rather die than be dishonored.)  That path, noble as I can see that it is (in the examples of men and legends around me, including the legend of Jesus), is not for me.  I prefer another.

My path is the path of the comic hero.  This kind of heroism is not immediately as prepossessing as the tragic variety.  Where the tragic hero faces insuperable odds with Stoic calm and resignation (waiting to commit suicide like Cato when the inevitable happens and Caesar wins), the comic hero prefers jokes and an optimistic cynicism. ("We're really screwed here, but maybe something new turns up unexpectedly to save our sorry butts!")  Humor is the key here, any humor.  Gallows humor.  Slapstick.  The point is to make the show go on.  You can do everything the tragic hero does, if you must, but your attitude is one of cheerful defiance (not heroic resignation).  Instead of acting like Achilles (e.g. Sylvester Stallone in "Rambo"), you emulate Odysseus (e.g. Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry").  Talk is cheap.  So you talk, a lot, and game the system that the tragic hero refuses to dignify with any response other than laconic contempt.  You know you don't control your outcome utterly, but you don't really care.  Instead of tapping your mom and ripping out your eyes, you ride that dung beetle to the throne of Zeus with gusto, and cheerfully accept whatever reception waits.  ("I get to do battle with Ares?  Great!  Sleep with Aphrodite?  Even better!")

Tragedy makes your focus narrow.  You are drawn inexorably toward the doom you cannot avoid, the doom that is written all over your entire world (your family, your people, the stars, and so on and so forth).  You are impotent, but you still stand bloody and unbowed, confidently awaiting the Black Swan that is going to ruin you once and for all.  Comedy, on the other hand, leaves you wide open.  You aren't drawn anywhere.  Who knows what ridiculous prank the universe is going to play on you next?  The most you can do is try to keep your shirt on while Zeus throws the dice again.  Maybe this time you won't end up with egg on your face, but as long as it is there, you might as well laugh, right?  Maybe today you are stuck fighting some interminable, awful war on foreign shores, but tomorrow you could be bedding a goddess.  Better take that shower after all.  You might need it!  You are always waiting for the Black Swan that is going to save you (whether from some really bad guys or just a really bad movie script, because comedy has room for the small as well as the large).

Heroism works best by adapting us to the situations we face--allowing us to give each problem our best shot without feeling too bad about the results (which are never entirely in our control).  Comic heroism, I think, makes it easier for us to adapt than does the tragic (even as the tragic is intuitively easier to understand and even emulate: many a man who struggles to live as a hero has little problem dying as one).  Laughter really is the best medicine, the gift that lets us embrace and transcend our own smallness and meanness--the pettiness that comes with thinking that your individual thoughts are somehow intricately bound up with the meaning and purpose of the entire universe.  Of course they are!  Just like your bowel movements, and the bowel movements of other living things (including small and large cattle: we need bullshit to live, honestly!).

Life is funny.  It would be insufferably tragic, if it weren't also so ridiculous, so unexpected and absurd.  A series of mistakes and stop-gaps, compounding over time, a hopeless tangle of purposes and cross-purposes canceling each other out, and out of it all comes this ape pretending to explain everything with a bedtime story (wait, I mean a gajillion bedtime stories).  The earth is impossibly old!  No, wait, she is incredibly young.  Her wrinkles clearly prove ... that the Intelligent Designer went to fashion school?  Nay, that she was once a dragon, and we live on her corpse!  (Or was it a turtle?  In fact, it may be turtles all the way down!)  In ancient times, the first man was made of mud.  (Or was it blood?  Maybe we should kill a bunch of heretics to find out.  If they bleed red liquid, we'll know we're right!)  And then the Lord made woman.  (From mud, or from a rib?  More importantly, why on earth would he do such a thing?  Why make something that doesn't have a penis?  Well, it has boobs!  Point taken!  Clearly we must save it from doing anything that might shake those things too much when we're not around to gape at them.  Shut them up at home, for goodness' sake!)  And then they made more people.  (People!  How did they make people?  Are we old enough to have this discussion yet?  Probably not.  Let's say a stork gave them babies!)  And then the people were wicked.  (Wicked?  What means that?  Well, they fought, and ate, and farted, and had babies, and got sick, and died, and other stuff.  Wait, why is eating bad?  And babies--what's wrong with getting those from storks?  It makes sense that war be something bad, but what makes it happen?  Hell, kids, you ask too many questions!  Let's just say there was this evil dude named Satan who did it all.  Or was his name Ahriman?  Loki?  Was he a dude dude, with a thingy, or was he maybe something else, like a snake?  So many questions!  Maybe we should just make Satan a mad scientist and be done with it.  But how does that make him different from God?)  And then we had to punish the wicked so that others wouldn't be like them.  (Because punching you when you're sick means that I won't get sick, right?  No.  Stop taking everything out of context!  But is there really any other way to take it?  Snap!)  And so on, and so forth.  We are only ever telling the same story over and over, varying the particulars as some among us accidentally learn a few "new" things (forgetting that there is really nothing new or old for those who cannot tell the difference) and attempt to convey understanding of them with old words.

All religions are true.  All are false as well.  What matters is not so much which one you believe, as whether you live well.  Do you tell your lies sincerely, and live by your code well?  Could you die today and wake up happy, even if you were in hell?  If you can say yes to that, then I approve of you (not that you care or ought to, but you have my approval whether you want it or not).  Life is first about what we do, second about how we do it, and only last (and least) about the words that we or others use to tell stories about it.  It doesn't matter who the storyteller is (whether he is a man or a woman, a paleolithic shaman or a modern scientist): the story will always be incomplete--a pale reflection of things that are more real than it is, helpful in some ways but in others worse than useless.  Some of us worship the stories.  We worship them wildly, madly, destructively, with a passion that cankers all that is most noble and heroic in our souls.  Nietzsche and Taleb call us away from such fanaticism, away from the worship of stories--into the clear, cool light of day, where we must make our choice and meet our doom the hero's way (without knowing or caring how results turn out after we've given our best).  You can meet your doom however you please.  I don't know what it will be any more than I know my own, but I do know this: whenever mine finds me, I will be laughing.  Vale!          

A Small Rant against Modern Sport

These thoughts have been stewing in my mind for a long while, and I finally decided to get them out there for someone else to read.  The catalyst was an article about how red wine may mask elevated testosterone levels.

It always makes me laugh when I read about anti-doping policies in sports. Why do people care so much? Someone always tells me that it is "for the children," who are apparently so hopelessly naive and gullible that they cannot help seeing Lance Armstrong (or whomever) somewhere on TV and thinking, "Cool! I want to live my life exactly like that guy! I wonder what kind of crap he stuffs his face with every day?  I want me some of that!"  If my kids turn out this dumb, then (in my opinion) they will be beyond help (from me or anyone else). Idiots will always do stupid stuff, and professional athletes will always do things to enhance their performance (duh!).  There is no way to change this, the world over.  Fighting the reality is wasting everybody's time (and changing nothing that matters: as is, we just award prizes and then snatch them back reactively when the "right" evidence appears, revealing that the stupid fans were worshipping the wrong sports idol, yet again).

Let the athletes be athletes. (Their risk, their reward. Do I really care how many gold medals somebody wins?  How many world-titles?  How does stripping some prizes away every so often for performance-enhancing behavior make my life better?)  Let the kids be kids.  Tell them what the athletes do, and let them see what happens. (The smart ones will probably realize that professional athletics is no way for most people to make a decent living.  This is one thing that seems to be true regardless of how anyone strives to enhance performance on the playing field.  On the other hand, when some kids want to make a trial of the athletic life, at least they will have the reality clear before they go out into it: they will know that they are responsible for the risks they take to get the rewards they want.  Don't forget to look at something besides steroids: e.g. concussions in football, knees in MMA, heart-attacks in marathoners.)

I want to kill the idea that sports are somehow inherently noble, that they necessarily make participants better people in every way.  Somebody can think this for himself, if he wants to, but forcing it on everybody else is just wrong.  Kids don't need the kind of fake "role-models" that professional athletes too often become.  That cute crush that your ten-year-old has on Lance Armstrong does not need to be saved.  It needs to be broken, shattered into a million tiny pieces and scattered to the four winds.  Lance is a person like any other person, not a "role-model" to be worshipped and imitated with sacred rituals (the sipping of the holy protein shake, the sleeping in the holy altitude chamber, and perhaps even the injecting of the forbidden holy needle into the most holy buttocks).
 
In general, people take sport way too seriously.  Read the words uttered by US federal representatives in hearings conducted over baseball, of all things--a bunch of dudes throwing a ball and hitting it with sticks--and weep.  Our government can't be bothered to balance its budget or ascertain whether the wars it keeps waging make any sense, at all, and yet it has time to make solemn pronouncements on the proper way to hit balls with sticks, an activity which apparently has grave moral consequences.  (Such stupid s***!  Heaven forbid the populace "lose faith" in their favorite pastime, in the congressmen's words.  We wouldn't want that, would we?  No.  Keep the idiots happy with their bread and circuses, even if the bread is sawdust purchased with the blood of future generations and the circuses a transparent farce from beginning to end.) 

Some Thoughts on True Love

I had another thought about wanting to change people this morning. The awful truth, as I see it, is that even when this succeeds (and you manage to change your partner to be closer to some ideal you value and s/he doesn't), the result is bad. You become more set in your ways, more attached to unrealistic fantasies (not just those that relate to your spouse). You become more fragile, more liable to be upset when life upsets your fairytale applecart. Victory in this context is actually worse than defeat.

Looking at my own close relationships, I see great value in commitment.  There is particularly great potential for person growth in a long-term romantic relationship ("marriage"): if you approach marriage honestly, with humility and openness (starting well before the ceremony) and commitment (especially afterward), it can teach you so much about yourself (individually) and human nature (generally).  You learn to adjust your expectations to match reality.  You become more open to other people (not just your spouse: being intimate with another person makes it easier to relate to non-intimates, I think, in that it teaches you to read and anticipate human nature in new ways).  You "grow up" in ways that you could never anticipate or mimic (as far as I can see) in a life-path without that kind of intimacy. Such has been my experience.

But I also see (in the lives of some unfortunate people around me) the opposite as well. Some people retreat into marriage instead of advancing into it boldly. They "settle" for one another passively rather than choosing each other for better or worse. And their marriage makes them weaker, less open (to each other and the outside world), less capable (of anticipating and providing for their own needs, let alone anyone else's). They become nags and cheats--small, mean souls fighting constantly over little stuff that real people would scorn as beneath their notice. They look back fondly on the puppy love of their youth as though it were some great thing, some immense purity that they lost. They try over and over to recapture it instead of moving on to the higher ground, the love beyond romance which many of them don't even know exists. 

The naive simply don't see that intimacy is more than lust or romance. The rush of hormones behind puppy love is great, of course, but to get the really good stuff from life's loving-cup you have to drain it to the dregs--all the way to the last, bitterest drop. That is when you see that true love is as bitter as it is sweet, and you realize that there is no sweetness you would trade for such exquisite bitterness. A really good lover isn't just someone you were once infatuated with. A really good lover is someone you would follow into heaven or hell without counting the difference--and you prove this to yourself when she opens that door, either one of them, and you march blithely in.  No second thoughts.  No regrets.  Total commitment.

I know too many people willing to make their spouses suffer, and not enough willing to suffer joyfully with their spouses (though this latter category contains a lot more people than the most cynical among us might expect: for some reason, the real lovers never get much publicity; if you rely on Hollywood and Disney for your romantic education, you might not even know that they exist).

Many young people think that love is about getting what you want and giving whatever comes naturally. Marriage done right teaches us to educate our desires (so that we don't want impossible things) and give gifts so wonderful we never even conceived that they could exist. Marriage done right shows us that we all want to give more than to receive (anyone can take stuff, but it takes a real person to give something worth having), and that our capacity for giving is much greater than we ever dreamed (much too great for the kind of meanness that comes out as spite or jealousy or any covetous lust for control: we want to give each other little moments in heaven, freely and with no obligation, not squabble over whose turn it is to do the laundry or what kind of paper towels to buy with whose money). But it requires absolute integrity (from both participants) in order to work. Like any really great thing, it is not accomplished on an adolescent whim (not even when a prophet of God invokes the sealing power: that power is just a feeble rhetorical sign-post that means nothing without our blood, sweat, and tears).