Two Hundred and Fifty Eight

The mayor declared today a memorial day to honor all those who died during the pandemic.  Radio stations have been playing religious music all morning.  When they played Nearer, my God, to thee I thought of the Titanic.

Two Hundred and Fifty Seven

The theme of the latest issue of the NYRB is language.  It’s also about Trump, as everything is now.

It contains an article about freedom of speech, in which the author says it’s a sham unless it also includes freedom of action, because speech is action and vice versa—-which has obvious relevance to the protests which Trump condemns.  Another article with obvious relevance to Trump is about 'disinformation' and ‘fake news’.

Tallyrand said we invented language in order to hide our thoughts from each other.  But it’s not only our thoughts we hide, and not only from each other.  The things we tell ourselves, as well as the things we tell each other, are usually attempts to hide the things we do, because we know they’re not the things we should do.

We’ve done so much of which we’re now ashamed.  But worse than remembering all the shameful things we’ve done, however hard we try to forget them, is not being able to remember the reasons why we once believed we had to do them.

The article I found most interesting is about animal language.

It begins by reviewing all the rôles talking animals have played in the human imagination, from Aesop’s fables to Hollywood cartoons.  The author says animals have always talked to us, but only recently have we begun to seriously listen.

We’ve always known that other animals speak to us, but we chose not to listen for the same reason adults choose not to listen to children, men choose not to listen to women and masters choose not to listen to slaves.  How could we go on exploiting them if we took them seriously?

We also know—and have always known—that not only are all animals sentient, but they aren’t the only sentient beings.  

What we know is what all sentient beings know.  Humans differ not only from all other animals, but from all other sentient beings, in pretending we alone are sentient.  Otherwise how could we go on exploiting them?

We don’t know enough about the beings we call living and those we call nonliving to define the difference between them, so how can we define the difference between the living beings we call sentient those we call nonsentient?  But the difference between being and nonbeing seems more important from my perspective.  No mind without body.

I think we all know that all beings are sentient to some degree—no body without mind—but we’re told that’s just sentimental anthropomorphism by those we call logical.  The reductio ad absurdum of this logic is when we're told that even we are merely meat machines because only matter is real, and mind an illusion (but whose?).

Another article was about a current television show in which animals seem human, according to the author, because they're self-destructive and know it, but can’t help themselves.  That, more than their use of language, makes these animals seem human.  

Unlike most animal languages, the primary goal of human language is not the communication of what we know, but of what we learn.  Knowing what we know—what all sentient beings know—doesn't make us human.  The delusion that only we are sentient enables us to pretend we're human.  And in order to sustain that delusion we must be surrounded by other, equally deluded beings.  We learn their language, say what they say and pretend to believe what they pretend to believe.  All animals speak, but only we learn to speak as actors do, impersonating the people we pretend to be.

Two Hundred and Fifty Five

What we want is a safe place.  But there's no such place, no home for us in this world of change.  We wander through it a while, trying to find our way; but there is no way unless and until we make one.  Whether or not we do, all our journeys still end the same way, with all we were and all we've done gone as if we'd never been.

Two Hundred and Forty Four

Justin just emailed me a link to his new crush's FaceBook page.  She's as lovely as he said, but I told him her husband and children might be a problem for him.

Two Hundred and Forty Three

'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free

'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be

And when we find ourselves in the place just right

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained

To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed

To turn, turn, will be our delight

'Til by turning, turning, we come 'round right

On the lathe of heaven.

Two Hundred and Forty Two

Why would anyone want to go on living in this hell?  Something is better than nothing, I suppose.  No, I don’t.  Not if it’s this thing. 

Suicide tempts those of us who think death would be an escape from a miserable life—and life is miserable for most of us most of the time.  The knowledge that we ourselves make it miserable makes it hell.  The few of us who fear death do so because they think it’s not the end of life.  Not only do they believe there will be an afterlife, but even worse, eternal life. 

Even the few of us whose lives are good would kill themselves if they could be sure their afterlives would be not only equally good, but better, because eternal—because although their own lives are good, they know life is miserable for most people most of the time, and the knowledge that we can’t help them makes life miserable for us as well.  Those whose lives are good want to escape hell in the next life just as they have in this.  We’d all kill ourselves if we knew what death is.

Is death the end?  We’ve always believed nothing is ever lost, but only undergoes a change.  It’s obvious that everything changes in this world of change, so I don’t know why evolution was ever considered controversial.  The only questions are how things change, and how much.

Westerners we call religious used to believe we leave the real world—the perfect, and therefore unchanging, world—to be born into this world of change, wander it a while and then return to the real world when we die.  Easterners we call religious used to believe the same.  The only difference is that they wander through several lives until they wean themselves from their desire for the illusions of this world as a baby weans itself from its mother’s milk, or an addict from his drug.

Most of us used to believe that throughout all these changes something remains the same—something we used to call the soul.  Others believe the change is complete, whether it's for better or worse.  Whether nothing of us that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea change

Into something rich and strange

Or great Cæsar, dead and turned to clay

Stops a hole to keep the wind away

the change is complete because nothing is eternal.  Perhaps not even that.

Two Hundred and Forty One

Rachel wept, and Mary wept; but she never wept, even though she had as much cause as they.  More, because they were consoled by the thought that god saw their tears, even though no one else did.  She said weeping is a display for others, a bid for their sympathy; and she’d seen too much, knew too much, to expect sympathy.  She knew what I am only now learning.

There is no consolation. 

I thought I'd found it in philosophy.  She thought I had, too, and could teach her to find it there as well.  But I misled her. 

Or did I?  I think she knew I was a fool, and loved me anyway.