One Hundred and Forty One

I'm as alone as Alexander Selkirk. 

Defoe is said to have invented Friday in order to show that the civilized Englishman invariably becomes master of any savage he meets, whatever the circumstances. That may have become the moral of Defoe’s story as he wrote it, but I think he began with Selkirk’s story, and invented Friday because he couldn’t imagine such loneliness.

“L'enfer, c'est les autres”, said Sartre. Not because he was a misanthrope, but because however well we come to know other people, they remain strangers. A stranger could become our friend, but we fear s/he’ll become our enemy because our society teaches us we're all competitors.

“There is no such thing as society”, said Baroness Thatcher. “There are only individuals”. Wise words from a fool. But we’re all fools.

Fools aren’t fools because they never say anything wise. They’re fools because they don’t know what they’re saying, but merely repeat what they hear.

“Never say more than you know”, said Wittgenstein. But if we didn’t say more than we know, most of us would never say anything. 

We all know more than we think we do, or admit we do. Education means forgetting what all children know, because it's too terrible to live with, and pretending to believe the comforting lies adults pretend to believe.

We all know life is terrible for most people most of the time, but we pretend the occasional moment of joy makes the years of pain worth living. Life may be worth living for some, but not for most of us. Perhaps not for any of us. Even the most fortunate must be troubled by the knowledge that their happiness is made possible by the misery of others. But even if they feel no pity for others, the fortunate must fear that their victims will take revenge on them.

What we used to call society, before the baroness corrected us, is therefore built on sadomasochism. The fortunate hurt the unfortunate to confirm that however terrible the things they do, their victims can’t or won’t take revenge on them. 

Slaves don’t rebel against their masters unless and until they delude themselves into believing they'd make better masters. But so few of us are able to master ourselves that only fools imagine they could master others.

We pretend to be masters or slaves because we've all done terrible things. We'd rather be masters, guiltless because above the law; but most of us are content to be slaves, guiltless because we merely carry out our masters’ orders.

We invented gods who could forgive us for committing crimes too terrible for us to forgive ourselves. Now we know too much to believe, or suspend our disbelief, in gods, but not enough to forgive ourselves; so we punish ourselves.