ninemsn
Recently while I was traveling in Argentina I crashed my bicycle into a huge truck hurtling down the highway, and did some nasty damage to my foot. Here’s what I learned about what to do when you’ve injured yourself overseas, and dealing with your travel insurance company.
This is post six of a series titled: Monica’s Mind-Blowing Trip Through Existential Philosophy.
Picking up from the last post, we have two options: 1) we can do years of meditation in order to break through and see the insubstantial nature of ‘free will’ (few of us will do this) or 2) accept our inability to let the ‘free will’ thing go, and work with it. Which brings us to our next existential themes:
3. Angst and freedom
Freedom is usually a word with positive connotations, but for anyone reading into existentialist philosophy it is something that can trigger a cold sweat of anxiety. Because in this context freedom doesn’t just mean you can do whatever you want, it means “you can do WHATEVER you want.” This path, or that path … the onus is completely on you. There is no one and nothing telling you you must or even should pick one over the other. Total freedom.
When Kirkegaard, writing as Vigilius Haufniensis, wrote about this he used the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. And when the man looks over the edge, he not only experiences a focused fear of falling, but a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. (I get this feeling sometimes when there’s oncoming traffic.)
Of course, just because you can do whatever you want, doesn’t mean you can want whatever you want. Attempting to just spontaneously want something, or nothing, would be to deny that we have any pre-existing values. And unfortunately (or fortunately?), you do – you were brought up with them, and just because you now realise they’re completely arbitrary doesn’t wish them away.
The existentialist concept of freedom is often misunderstood as a sort of liberum arbitrium where almost anything is possible and where values are inconsequential to choice and action. This interpretation of the concept is often related to the insistence on the absurdity of the world and the assumption that there exist no relevant or absolutely good or bad values. However, that there are no values to be found in the world in-itself does not mean that there are no values: We are usually brought up with certain values, and even though we cannot justify them ultimately, they will be “our” values.
In Kierkegaard’s Judge Vilhelm’s account in Either/Or, making choices without allowing one’s values to confer differing values to the alternatives, is, in fact, choosing not to make a choice — to flip a coin, as it were, and to leave everything to chance. This is considered to be a refusal to live in the consequence of one’s freedom; an inauthentic existence. (Wikipedia)
4. Facticity, authenticity and inauthenticity
So a condition of your freedom is taking into account facticity, which are things that exist “in-itself”, things that are, rather than be. Confused? Here’s a list of things I accept as my facticity:
- I have a body that will eventually die
- I’m not a bird
- Yesterday I walked to the postbox
- I was born and raised in Sydney
- My upbringing has led me to believe in equality
- Sometimes I get jealous of other people
- I feel like like I have ‘free will’
These are things I understand about myself. Of course all of these can change (some requiring a larger mind shift than others), but for me, embracing my new found freedom (do, think, be whatever I want), and then trying to arbitrarily “turn off” these current understandings about myself would be a denial of my facticity. An attempt to simply forget what has already surfaced.
I must stress that none of these things are immutable. For example, perhaps over time I will learn that in fact I never did get jealous of other people. Perhaps I had misread those feelings. But here, right now, I cannot just switch off that pre-conceived notion about myself, or instantaneously wish it into non-existence. That would be an “inauthentic lifestyle”. The only way to transform that understanding would be to change the way I think in a deep and meaningful, sustained way. And often that only comes about after a particularly enlightening experience, or undergoing a long journey involving greater self-awareness and knowledge.
Which is why, taking ourselves back to that card game with Nihilism and Existentialism, although, yes, we have the freedom to now play ‘whatever we want’, there are some conditions. Namely, you must accept your facticity, and from that platform, leap into the wilderness. Even though facticity binds you to a starting point, there’s still a lot of room to move.
Denying one’s facticity isn’t the only form of inauthenticity, however. There is the flip side, which is binding too strongly to social norms, which is,
… a sort of “mimicry” where one acts as “One should.” How “One” should act is often determined by an image one has of how one such as oneself (say, a bank manager) acts. This image usually corresponds to some sort of social norm, but this does not mean that all acting in accordance with social norms is inauthentic: The main point is the attitude one takes to one’s own freedom and responsibility, and the extent to which one acts in accordance with this freedom. (Wikipedia)
Let’s use my own pre-conceived notions to illustrate:
Earlier this year I was feeling some anxiety that I was 25. It meant only 5 years to cram in a lot of living because for me 30 was a death sentence. It meant kids, husband, mortgage, stable job, no more adventures, wild partying or transient lifestyle. I mean that’s just what one does at 30, and any alternative is sad, or indicative of one’s inability to commit, get serious, be real, to make something of oneself.
But now I see how very silly that was. That I can do whatever I want at 30, and make of it and see it as whatever I want. Nobody is forcing me to do or think anything.
However, in this process, it would be unhelpful for me to deny that I was raised believing in these social norms. And because I was raised believing them, and for the most part many people still believe in them, it will not be easy to live alternatively. Many people around me will begin to go down that path at 30, and it will become increasingly lonely and difficult for me to not get sucked into that current. This is accepting (or being aware) of one’s facticity.
My dad is involved with this annual medical mission that performs 500 cataract surgeries in remote parts of Uncle. On Sunday evening the charity group responsible hosted a big, flashy fundraising dinner, with past and present NSW premiers, MPs and Unclese officials attending. My sister and I arrived at 6pm, only to see everyone still faffing around with photos and shmoozing, so we decided to return to her apartment just 10 minutes away, and come back later. But before we re-entered the elevator, guess who I spotted in the room? None other than Philip Ruddock, my MP.
You may recall a previous post, in which I sent Mr Ruddock a heartfelt letter pledging my support for gay marriage. And now, here was my chance to talk to him about it in the flesh! Not only that, the night before I had dinner with one of my best friends and her boyfriend, who had advised me to contact my MP and pledge my support to an upcoming carbon emissions trading scheme bill.
My sis and I went home, and I quickly jumped on the internet, typing in “emissions trading scheme bill Australia” into Google. The truth of the matter was I knew nothing about this bill. But I trusted my super smart friend and her boyfriend, and wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity so there was nothing for it but to do a very quick crash course in what all this was about.
(For those of you who think it foolhardy I so quickly adopt someone else’s stance, perhaps you’re right. But as I’ve said in previous posts, one can’t be an expert at everything. And for many things, one must simply trust the knowledgeable people they have access to. Otherwise we’ll all just flounder in indecision, and nothing will get done!)
An hour later and we were back at the dinner, eating and listening to pollies from both ends of the political spectrum take the mike. I snuck up to my Dad, who was sitting at another table.
“Dad, can you introduce me to Philip Ruddock later?”
My Dad eyed me suspiciously. I had told him previously of my same-sex marriage letter to Mr Ruddock. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” I laughed.
“No,” he replied flatly.
“Dad, he’s my MP. If you don’t introduce me, I’ll just go up to him myself.”
“Oh, OK then,” he conceded.
The speeches had ended and the charity auction had begun. My dad brought me to the VIP table where Phillip Ruddock was sitting at the centre of. He had met Mr Ruddock several times previously, and introduced me to him as his daughter.
“Hi Mr Ruddock, I was just wondering if you’d read the letter about same-sex marriage I’d sent you?”
“Jog my memory,” he replied.
I explained the letter, and how I was supporting the recent senate inquiry into a Greens amendment to the Marriage Act, which would basically allow same-sex marriage. He didn’t really know about the bill, and said that they, in the House of Reps, would probably never see it. I admitted that I realised it probably wouldn’t get passed, but as I was a member of his electorate, I just thought it important to inform him of how I felt about the matter.
“Which suburb do you live in?” he asked suspiciously.
“Beecroft,” I replied. And with a laugh, added my postcode, “2119″ for extra emphasis.
A few years back, Mr Ruddock was the guy responsible for amending legislation so that the current definition of marriage stands as an institution between a man and a woman. Making iron-clad a common understanding that gays can’t marry. He reiterated this line, saying that although the government should legally recognise relationships between gay people, under no circumstance should gay people mistake what they have for a marriage.
“But I want to go all the way with this. Let’s give them 100%, genuine marriage,” I requested.
“Well you’re going to be very lonely with that view,” he replied.
“Well there were 5,000 of us protesting at the National Labor Convention, so I can’t be that lonely,” I quipped. “I’ll send you the letter again. Funny, I did receive an email from your staff saying they’d passed it on to you. And, ahem, I happen to think it was a pretty great letter!”
At this point I nervously moved onto the ETS bill. This was surely some kind of madness. Here I was, talking to a man who was once one of the most reviled figures for the Australian Left. Talking to him about gay marriage and the environment. And worst of all I was about to bring up something I was definitely not informed about.
“And the other thing I wanted to say, is that I support the upcoming emissions trading scheme bill.”
Now this, he was definitely aware of. His line was that although the Liberal party want to do all they can to reduce carbon emissions, it was foolhardy and pointless to promise anything the rest of the world weren’t going to do. Any kind of independent action would lead to job losses, detrimental to the country’s economy.
“So basically you think we shouldn’t implement any changes until after Copenhagen?”
“Exactly,” he replied.
“But,” I struggled to recall a line from an article I’d read just hours before, “but don’t you think that to some degree Australia needs to show some leadership and come to the Climate Change conference promising something?”
“Again, you’re going to be very lonely with that view,” he smirked.
Suddenly we were interrupted with someone calling him to get onstage. I thanked him quickly for talking to me, and got out of the way. Later, my dad dragged him over to the table my siblings and I were sitting at for some photos. Last year Mr Ruddock had presented my brother with an award for the Australian Agricultural Industries Young Innovators and Scientists Award. I couldn’t help but feel, a little, that in this situation I was definitely the shit-stirring bad kid, and my brother the high-achieving good kid!
Just before grinning for the cameras, I asked Mr Ruddock if I could write-up our little talk on my blog. He graciously gave me permission.
UPDATE: A couple of days later I resent that original letter. Here is Mr Ruddock’s reply.
I was sitting on a bench in circular quay, scoffing down a rich slice of carrot cake, when suddenly a great, big seagull pounced and stole the cake right out of my hand. It dropped the cake on the floor in front of me, and began pecking at it nonchalantly. Full of indignant rage I spitefully snatched that piece of cake back. “I don’t think so!” I hollered.
Upon reflection, I feel a terrible sense of remorse. So typical of my species. How quick we are to defend what we feel is so righteously ours. How slow we are to remember that no one can ever, truly, OWN something.
***
“It’s horrible, we’re on the brink of disaster.”
Later I was describing to my lawyer friend a previewing screening I had attended that morning, of a documentary called The Age of Stupid. According to this loud, doomsday crier, unless there’s drastic changes put into place to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the next six years, we’re all going to be utterly fucked by 2055. By then I’ll be 72 years old. Probably still breathing.
After the seagull incident I had spent half an hour scribbling on the back of a paper bag a map of, “everything that’s wrong with the world,” and on the front, “everything that can be done to fix it.” I wanted to run the draft version by my friend.
“OK, so you know how when you buy a toaster and then it breaks, it’s cheaper to buy a new one than get it fixed. I mean that’s crazy, right? Your toaster probably just has one little part that’s degraded. But it’s cheaper to extract new raw materials out of the ground, get an exploited third world person to assemble it in a factory and then get it shipped thousands of miles to your local Myer or whatever. ALL THAT is cheaper than paying someone in your city to do a 30 minute fix-up job.”
“So, how about we ensure all goods are sold reflecting its true cost. The factory has to pay the third world person a reasonable wage, and provide good working conditions. Mining companies, factories and transportation companies are taxed for environmental degradation. And hike the cost of dumping things in landfill. Toasters will be a lot more expensive, but now people will demand toasters that last, and it’ll be cheaper to get it fixed than just chucking it out.”
My friend shook her head. “It will never happen. You’d need all these fair trade laws, and it’s just in no one’s interest.”
“Well then we’re all screwed,” I grumbled, absent-mindedly stroking a beautiful pair of soft pajama pants in the Peter Alexander store we were in.
“Let’s go, they’ve sold out of the hot water bottle cover I was looking for,” she replied. “Great place to have an anti-consumerism rant, Monica. Look at all these things, they’re great.”
***
Last night I went to the opening night of an indie art exhibition, which was being held in the foyer of the Sydney Saatchi & Saatchi office (a renowned global advertising agency.) Tonight the chairs and pool tables had been taken out, and replaced with Sydney’s young and ultra-hip, who were drinking beers, admiring the art and posing for social photographers, while a DJ spun records.
I was talking to a young, handsome banker.
“SO! WHAT IF, we decided we were all happy to both SPEND less and EARN less. Would the whole economy collapse?”
“Well, it’s more that China keeps only 1/3 of what it produces. Whereas economies like the US and Australian consume 2/3 more than what it produces, so what really needs to happen is China needs to begin consuming more of its own stuff.” (OK I think that’s what he said.)
“No, OK but wait. I have the environment in mind here, so what I’m wondering is, what if, IN TOTAL, the entire world; What if we all decided to consume less? Would the global economy collapse?”
He thought about it for a second. “Yes. I mean that’s how capitalism works. You’re constantly finding ways of becoming more efficient, and you have to consume more and more for it to function.”
“So we’re screwed?”
“I guess,” he replied.
***
My friend giggled as she ogled the the table next to us. In a semi-drunken stupor we had left the gallery and crossed the road to have dinner at Pancakes on the Rocks.
“Look at them, they all look EXACTLY the same! They’re even wearing the same belt!!” she whispered. I looked over at the other table and saw four girls sitting squashed together on the couch. They were all wearing tight tops, wide leather belts, with shiny straightened hair, and faces caked with orange makeup. Across the other side of the table was a beefy guy in an equally tight top, and gelled hair.
I looked back over at my friend and her clique of fellow artists. They were all wearing black, waist high skirts or tapered leg jeans, vintage boots, rock hair, and cultivated pale skin and ruby red lips.
“This,” I waved a finger in the direction of her friends, “is just as much a uniform as all that,” waving my finger back at the other table. “It’s just a different genre. Each to their own.”
“The only consistency is that we all use stuff to define ourselves.”
I was glum, and poured myself another glass of red wine.
By the end of dinner I was ranting again.
“I mean that’s ALL ANYONE DOES! Everyone wants to be famous, everyone wants to be rich, everyone wants to be a SOMEBODY! You’re part of a SCENE. You embody a LIFESTYLE. Is it really a community when all anyone is doing is pimping their own name? This perpetual CHASE for a projected image of SELF. I mean sometimes I’m guilty of it too, but it makes me sick. Shouldn’t it make us sick? We’re living in a city that’s totally obsessed with TRENDS.”
“I sure hope so!” my friend’s friend replied cheerfully. He owned a digital marketing company and could thank Sydney’s many trend-hunters for putting bread on his table.
I rose my glass to the air. “That’s it! Let’s just live in perpetual distraction. Let’s get drunk, have sex, get our teeth whitened, buy lots of stuff. Because it’s all going down the drain anyway, and really, who cares if it happens in 40 years, 5 years, or tomorrow. At least I’ll go out gorging on feelings of being sexy, and cool, and infamous, and loooved, and boy it was SO MUCH FUN while it lasted, right?”
I polished off the rest of the glass.
My friend politely, but pointedly looked at the bill and said, “so I think we all owe $40?”
***
There were some aspects of those stories that were tweaked. Perhaps I’ve come off sounding like a paranoid, chest-thumping, 90s-Naomi-Klein style, nutjob. But I truly AM concerned about the fact that consumerism is our religion, and it’s virtually BLASPHEMOUS to say, no, no, stop this can’t be right. And yet there’s something rotten to the core about the system.
Everything around us has been produced, assembled and built on CHEAP ENERGY. And that black, greasy oil stinks of the blood of future generations. And perhaps not even future generations. Perhaps we will be there to witness, first hand, the rising sea levels, the hurricanes, the unnatural deserts. We will be the victims of food shortages, and bloody wars fighting over the remaining resources. Soon, we’ll be drowning (literally) in our own mistakes.
And, on the flip side, so few care. Should we care? The universe doesn’t give a shit. The universe is silent and eternal and will do just fine with or without us, thank you very much. The earth doesn’t care either. The earth has, at one point, been molten fire, a rock of ice, a teeming planet of green life. What does it care if it’s drowned in water next, and whatever comes after that.
OK so kind of sucks for all the plants and animals. But let’s face it, they won’t really be sad. I mean they won’t know what’s going on.
No, the only people who are going to be sad is us. Sad that we so willfully committed suicide. Is it already too late? Are we already a lost cause? If so, what’s the point in worrying?
So get plastered kids! It’s last drinks.
***
UPDATE: And by the way, just to clarify, I think it’s human nature to like having or consuming nice stuff, and talking to each other about nice stuff. I’m sure tribal people used to make their own necklaces or hunting tools or whatever, and admire each others craftsmanship.
My point is that the whole thing has accelerated to the point in which it’s out of control, and we have far more than we truly need. You see what oil is, is millions of years of captured energy from the sun. And in only a few HUNDRED years we’ve sucked so much of it up and burned it off, not to mention done lots of other exploitative things to the environment and the third world, in order to give us lots and lots of things, and lots of comfort and convenience, relatively cheaply. And now none of our stuff means anything to us anymore. (This kid-friendly video called “the story of stuff” does a much better job of explaining.)
The system needs to be changed, and you should be a part of making it happen. Head to NotStupid.org and StoryOfStuff.com for ideas on how you can become involved.
This is post five of a series titled: Monica’s Mind-Blowing Trip Through Existential Philosophy.
Battling onwards with the themes of existentialism!
2. Existence precedes essence
A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called their “essence” instead of there being a predetermined essence that defines what it is to be a human. It is often claimed in this context that a person defines himself, which is often perceived as stating that we can “wish” to be something — anything, a bird, for instance — and then be it. According to most existentialist philosophers, however, this would be an inauthentic existence.
What is meant by the statement is that a person is (1) defined only insofar as they act and (2) that they are responsible for their actions. For example, someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Furthermore, by this action of cruelty they themselves are responsible for their new identity (a cruel person). This is as opposed to their genes, or ‘human nature’, bearing the blame. (Wikipedia)
I remember once when I was in high school, and no doubt troubled by typical teenage insecurities, I imagined myself having only ever lived on a desert island, without a single other soul. And I thought to myself, there, would I be funny? Dorky? Intelligent? Kind? Cruel? Without anyone to interact with, how can you ever know if you are any of these things? And if you never once ‘act’ these things, are they still a part of you?
For the French existentialist Jean-Paul Satre (1905-1980), your essence only emerges in the act of existence. Which is to say no, your essence is not locked up inside of you like a rattling genie in a bottle. You are the sum of your actions. It is the way you live, the way you talk, the way you treat others, the things that you do, that make you. And outside of that lived life, there is no essential you.
And Satre’s lifelong partner Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) carried this idea into feminism, developing the idea that “one is not born a woman, but becomes one.”
The thing is, as more work is done on the differences between the male and female brain, or looking at the way personality traits are, in actual fact, written into our genetics, not to mention hereditary mental disorders, one can’t help but wonder if some of this negates their ideas. (According to Evolutionary psychologist Nancy Etcoff in her excellent TED talk on the science of happiness, 50% of our ability to be happy is determined by genes – but there’s still 50% which is unaccounted for.)
In fact science and psychology – particularly evolutionary psychology and social darwinism – are constantly coming up with theories that attempt to explain why we act the way we do. It seems like that long list of diverse human behaviour, that seemed to embody the creativity, the chaos, the diversity and the irrationality of humanity, is one by one being linked to ever-more complicated expressions of simple, prosaic evolution. In fact if you take this to the extreme, perhaps every single thing we humans do and think links back – somehow – to evolution.
So in reply to the existentialists, can we be responsible for our actions? Are we actually free to choose? Or are our bodies simply driven by that primal urge to survive (Schopenhauer’s will to live), and making all the decisions for us?
Many psychological scientists argue that the concept of “free will” is more of a philosophic issue than a scientific one, given that it is difficult to experimentally conceptualize or to empirically test. It is also largely a semantic house of mirrors: we feel free (have “free will”) when we have the capacity to choose. However, do we have the capacity to choose what we want to choose? (And, if so, can we choose what we want to want to choose, and so on…)
Evolutionary psychology, as does psychological science in general, operates under the assumption that human behavior has causal roots. Our desires and wants, and our choices, are a complex interaction of biology and environment; we can “feel free” while our behavior is determined. (Wikipedia)
Perhaps every aspect of humanity, from the transcendental beauty of great art, the genius behind technological innovation, to the mad irrationality of love boils down to some sort of evolutionary drive. Even somewhat counter-intuitive things like altruism and homosexuality, will some day be explained as part of a survival instinct. But where does knowing that it’s all an illusionist’s ‘trick’ get us?
Evolution delivered us ‘free will’ – the feeling (note, just a feeling) that each of us is a unique entity, responsible for our actions and more sophisticated than just a bundle of primal, biological urges. And evolutionary psychologists may continue to uncover the mechanics behind the illusionist’s elaborate trick, but for now not enough links have been made for the spell to be broken. We will continue to be amazed by art, feel personal responsibility for the actions we’ve made, and, yes, feel like love is some kind of mystical connection between two souls.
