One Hundred and Sixty Seven

Sallust said few men want freedom; most only want just masters.  He was wrong.  Men tell themselves they want justice, personified in just masters; but what they really want is order.

Most men don’t care whether their masters behave in a way some philosopher defines as just.  They know justice is only a word.  Only fools and madmen debate what that word means, and what each of us would be entitled to in a just world.  In this world, those who have not yet been driven mad by their suffering and/or the suffering of others know might makes right, and we're entitled to whatever we can take and keep.  Most of us therefore want masters whose whims and lusts are orderly and predictable.

Some claim might makes right because we’re animals, like any other.  But animals in a state of nature are social, with a sense of right and wrong.  We’re antisocial animals, preying on each other and asserting what we call our free will by doing what common sense tells us is wrong.

We're trapped in a cage of our own making, which we call civilization; and we’ve gone mad, as all caged animals eventually do.  Now that we’ve accepted there’s no escape from this cage except by dying, we've decided to destroy ourselves.

One Hundred and Sixty Six

Being told you're going to die shouldn't be anticlimactic, but dying ten years from now isn't near enough to be alarming. Neither is it far enough to be easily ignored.

I was a bit glum, but mostly because on the way home from the doctor's office I drove through the old neighborhood. 

I'd driven though it for the first time in decades last summer, and was awed by its beauty. The uncut grass was knee high and the abandoned houses were barely visible, engulfed in greenery like ruined temples in a rainforest. Sunlight flickering through leafy tree branches overhead reminded me of stained glass windows in a cathedral. I thought it was the perfect place in which to die, and vowed to come back when I was ready to kill myself. But this time the grass had been cut, and the houses looked bleak as disinterred corpses. 

Saddest of all, a car was parked in front of one of the houses with its hood up, and a man was working on it. Someone's living in this graveyard.

One Hundred and Sixty Five

All my life I’ve dreamed of travelling.  Up north.  To the city.  To places I’ve never been except in imagination.  Anywhere but here, wherever ‘here’ happened to be.  I’ve never been at home anywhere except in my imagination.

All my life I’ve dreamed of losing my way.  But not in the forest, like Dante.  It’s in the city that I lose my way, and in buildings like the Tower of Babel or Vanity Fair.  I’ve always been at home in the forest, an animal among other animals.  In the city I get lost among the featherless bipeds, alone in the crowd.

I’ve always been alone.  We all are, but the others don’t seem to know it.  Don’t want to know it.

We can’t know each other, or ourselves, unless we know that we’re always alone with ourselves, with our own thoughts.

What do the others think?  Do they think?  To think is to be made aware of how we differ, if they’re our own thoughts.

Most people don’t think for themselves.  Not because they’re stupid, but because they don’t want to be alone.

Fear of being alone makes them think what they imagine are other people’s thoughts, which gives them the comforting feeling of belonging to the crowd.  But it’s an illusion.

Thinking they’re part of a crowd, all of whose members think the same, are the same, prevents us from knowing who we really are.  One is always alone in a crowd.

I still weep for them, even now, because lost though I am, they don’t even know they’re lost.

One Hundred and Sixty Four

When Socrates was told the oracle had called him the wisest man in Athens, he said he knew nothing. Fools call this a paradox.

Socrates was the wisest man in Athens, but not the wisest man in the world.  He therefore asked himself why most men don’t do what’s good, and decided it’s because they don’t know what’s good.  They need wise men to teach them.

We’ve had many wise teachers.  Most of them became frustrated by the seeming inability of their students to put their teachings into practice, and distilled their wisdom into a few simple rules.  These rules have been refined over the generations – Confucius’ negative Silver Rule (Do not do unto others as you would not want them to do unto you) became Jesus’ positive Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) - but they remained essentially the same because we’re limited beings who can hold only a few ideas in our heads at one time.  Our teachers restate the same old ideas in new words because we can’t or won’t follow them. 

Our teachers were fools to think we would.

We need men with special skills or knowledge to teach us how to build a boat or a society, but we don’t need them to tell us the right thing to do.  All we need is common sense; and common sense teaches us our society is badly built.  Our rulers don’t obey the rules they make for others, and exploit those they claim to govern as parasites exploit their hosts.  When might makes right, only fools obey the law. 

Most wise men use their wisdom to invent reasons why we shouldn’t disobey the law, which common sense tells us is the right thing to do in an unjust society.  Some tell us we’re slaves, and should obey our masters as children obey their parents, trusting them to do what’s best for us.  But the relationship between masters and slaves is comparable only in that not all parents are good and/or wise.

Others tell us we’re predators and prey, like all animals, and should behave accordingly.  But all animals have a sense of right and wrong.  Humans differ from other animals only in having reason, which we mostly use to justify doing what we know is wrong.  Other animals kill out of necessity, but we kill for sport; which is why humans also differ from other animals in feeling guilt when they do what their reason tells them is wrong.  

We know we’re not like other animals, but we don’t know how we differ.

In order to know myself, I must know what is not myself.  I must know not only how self and other differ, but how they’re the same.  Because they’re both.

Those who imagine they know the truth imagine it’s either one thing or its opposite, but not both.  Wise men know it’s always both; but when they tell that to others, fools call it illogical.

Cogito, ergo sum, said Descartes; but knowing only myself is the knowledge a parasite has.  It knows the host on which it feeds only in relation to itself and its needs

All life is food, say the Hindus.  Life feeds on life.  We all know this without needing to be told.  We differ from other animals in that knowing some must die in order for others to live has always troubled us.  It was one reason – perhaps the main reason – why we invented religion.

Our first gods were spirits of the animals we killed and ate, who we pretended died willingly and unselfishly so that we could live.  Next were our ancestors, the people who gave us life.  Last were great leaders of the hunt, who we still follow in death as we did in life.

Often these gods ordered us to do terrible things in return for their patronage, such as killing the worshippers of other gods to prove our loyalty to them.  We could bear the guilt of doing what we knew was wrong because our gods ordered us to do it.  But no longer.

It’s not because we’re wiser than our ancestors that we can no longer believe in gods, as they did.  It’s just the opposite.  We’re not clever enough to invent plausible myths that justify doing what we know is wrong, as they did. Neither are we clever enough to find a way to change, and do what we know is right.

Like Socrates, we were the wisest of animals because we knew we knew nothing.  Now we know too much, but not enough.

We’ve always known we're not like other animals. Other animals kill out of necessity, in order to survive. We kill for sport. We are the world's greatest predators and all the others are our prey as long as we follow our gods.  They lead us to victory and forgive us when we can’t forgive ourselves.  But no longer.

Now we know it's not because we're god's children that we're the most successful predator in the history of the world, but because we’re omnivores who prey on each other as readily as we do everything that lives. But most of all because we live not in the real world, but in a fantasy of our own making, in which everything we do is right; and that delusion gave us the courage to do terrible things.  We know better now, but that knowledge is not power.  We don’t know how to stop being beasts of prey and become what we’ve always pretended we already are: human.  

Waking from this dream hasn’t freed us.  The reality of what we are and what we’ve done – and continue to do - is a nightmare from which we’re fleeing even deeper into fantasies that our supposedly ignorant ancestors would ridicule.  They sought to know what we seek to forget.  So we've stopped evolving, and are now devolving into Stone Age barbarians armed with Atomic Age weapons.

One Hundred and Sixty Three

A big house.

No, not a house. A room.

It wouldn’t be a big room in a big house, but it’s big enough for us. We all eat here, sleep here, shit here.

We’re all children. There are no adults.

Are we brothers and sisters, children of the same parents? Is that why we’re all together in the same place? Sometimes it seems so. And sometimes it seems we’re strangers who’ve come from different places, and ended up here only by chance.

I'm the oldest, so they defer to me, as though I know more than they do. What I know is that, like Socrates, I know nothing.

There are other people here, in other rooms. Sometimes I hear them through the walls, and sometimes I see them in the halls. But we don’t speak to each other.

It’s not a house. It’s too big. It seems as big as the world.

It reminds me of a dream I once had.

I often dream I’m lost in a big building, or a big city. Once I dreamed the world was one big prison, and we’re both the prisoners and the guards. But this wasn't a dream. It was like those moments of clarity I used to have when I was a child.

One hundred and Sixty Two

I am lost.  This is what my dreams are telling me, have always been telling me.

I now know why I’m still alive.  It’s because in my dreams, and only in my dreams, she’s still alive.  But I can never find her, return to her.  The dream ends when I accept that I’ll never see her again.

I’ve dreamed these dreams only since she died.  My dreams were different when she was alive.

First came the train dream.  I’m on a train, the manuscript of my book in my pocket, on my way to meet with my publisher.  She’s sitting opposite me.

We talk.  We flirt.  The train pulls into a station and she gets up to leave.  It’s not my station, but I get up and follow her.

The train pulls out, leaving us alone on the platform.  The empty land, Eliot’s wasteland, stretches to the horizon.

She’s uncomfortable to be alone with me, someone she just met; but when I get her car started she smiles, thanks me and invites me to her house.  And then the nightmare begins.

I can’t save her.  I can’t save anyone in that house, or anywhere else, because I too am lost.

When I was young(er) my road seemed laid out like railroad tracks.  All I had to do was follow them.  At first I resented her for distracting me from following that road.  But I chose to follow her.  And I was right.  But now I'm alone.  

It's too late now to forget your smile
The way we kissed when we'd danced a while
Too late now to imagine myself without you.
 
How could I ever close the door
And go on just as I was before?
It's too late now. 

One Hundred and Sixty One

I’m closer to death now than I’ve ever been.  Not because I’m old(er) now—we can die at any age—but because I’m closer to suicide now than I’ve ever been.

Knowing that should the whips and scorns of time become unbearable, I could always my own quietus make with a bare bodkin, used to comfort me, as it did Nietzsche; but it does no longer.

Knowing myself used to comfort me; but what little self knowledge I have has always come to me in dreams, and it does no longer.  I used to have vivid dreams when I was young(er), and remembered them clearly when I woke; but though I still have dreams that I know are just as vivid, because I feel exhausted when I wake, I no longer remember them.

I had a dream last night, which I remember vaguely because it was—or seemed to be—very long.  It began when I entered college, and ended four years later, when I dropped out.

I always dream I’m back in college, or in high school, when I’m learning something.  What am I learning now?

Even though there were nights when I rode up and down the highway, trying to summon up the courage to crash my motorcycle, I remember my college years as a relatively happy time.  I had friends and lovers.  I was liked and respected by my teachers and fellow students—people who I wanted to like and respect in return, but couldn’t, because they seemed to me stupid, unwilling or unable to see what was obvious to me.   

The dream begins as I enter the building on my first day.  It’s crowded and noisy.  Everyone is talking, getting to know each other like passengers on a ship setting out on a voyage together.  But they all fall silent as I enter. 

They turn and look at me, and I realize I'm the spectre at the feast (This is not what actually happened—Diane sat down beside me during orientation and flirted with me; David and Paul both asked to be my roommate—nevertheless it's true. I've always been the guest who spoils the party for others because he arrives bearing bad news).

We come into this world, out of the everywhere into the here, in media res.  The world was here before we were, and I used to be comforted by the knowledge that it would still be here when I'm gone.  But no longer. 

I'm old(er) now, but I still haven’t learned to accept the world as it is.  Instead I feel more strongly than ever that I don't belong here.  None of us do.  It's even harder for me to accept that most other people aren't as disgusted as I am by what we've made of the world, and don't want to remake it, as I do.  They want instead to remake themselves, into people who can fit into this world.  They want a deck chair on the Titanic. 

What I have accepted is that I can’t remake this world alone, and no one else wants to try.  Therefore this juggernaut can’t be turned, this engine of destruction can’t be turned off.  It’s a bomb whose timer was set at the beginning of our history, and soon will explode.