(no subject)
And in the words of the always-prescient H.L. Mencken:
"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
Looks like he was right.
===
Anyway...After spending about 25% of my workday reading Jay Albert Nock and H.L. Mencken quotes, I realized that my affection is not so much for their ideas but the style in which they present them. For better or worse, I am a total pushover for pithy cynicism.
- "Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?"
- "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." - Mencken
I realized also that the points at which I most enjoy these guys are when I am feeling most misanthropic and elitist myself. Both inclinations have been running high recently.
As I walked outside for lunch, I realized that the vast majority of thoughts I had all day up to that point were in some sense negative. It's hard to think otherwise when you are surrounded by sales people all day. The experience of hearing questionable truths and pie-in-the-sky pitches in surround sound for hours at a time has the surprising quality of breeding cynicism in me.
En route to the bank, the Walk sign came on and I began crossing the street. Suddenly an SUV swept around the corner and came close enough to me that I could smack the back of it instinctively with my hand, yelling "Haven't you ever seen a pedestrian?" This is now my third confrontation with drivers in three days.
The truth is that in some sense I enjoy the sensation of anger. I wouldn't consistently listen to conservative talk radio if that wasn't the case. Maybe I'm alone in enjoying the subtle pleasures of moral outrage, but more likely I'm just alone in admitting it. As with depression or sadness, there is often something viscerally pleasing or at least comfortingly familiar about doses of indignation.
After blowing up at the driver earlier, I had to take a step back for a moment and realize that anger has something else in common with depression and sadness: it's self-perpetuating and doesn't do much for your overall state of mind or well-being.
It's also philosophically inconsistent for me. I watched a few bits and pieces of the Robert Anton Wilson documentary, Maybe Logic the other night and was reinvigorated to follow through on some of the ideas that he extolled. He talked for a long time about the basic tenets of moral relativism, which is a concept I've never been able to deny, even in the deepest throes of Objectivist brainwashing. At one point he notes: "When you keep this in mind, it's very hard to stay mad at anyone."
There was a period almost four years ago when I suddenly came to a very deep understanding of relativism. It just happened while I was driving one day -- I had always believed theoretically in the concept, but all at once I was stricken by the reality of it, like a bolt of lightning. I felt like I was going to drive off of the road at the thought -- in one sense it would be a wreck, in another sense it would just be the reorganization of matter.
For weeks I walked around with this notion stuck so profoundly in my mind that, like Wilson, I found it impossible to feel or justify anger. Philosophical Prozac.
In one sense, the man who almost hit me in his SUV was a jerk and a lawbreaker. In another sense, he had no option but to do what he did. He did do it after all, compelled by an infinite collaboration of environmental, emotional, societal, and genetic factors over which he had no original control. In that sense, I find it very hard to stay mad of him.
But is there any room for choice or responsibility for extreme relativism like this? Is it a total fluke of coinciding factors that I came to this philosophy at all...and if I had no hand in it, what's the point of believing it?
If I'm correct in my high school reading of him, I think Sartre answered these questions by basically just saying: "Okay, so you've figured out the basic nature of existence. Now just keep living your life as if you hadn't." I guess I'll go on that for now.
"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
Looks like he was right.
===
Anyway...After spending about 25% of my workday reading Jay Albert Nock and H.L. Mencken quotes, I realized that my affection is not so much for their ideas but the style in which they present them. For better or worse, I am a total pushover for pithy cynicism.
- "Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?"
- "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." - Mencken
I realized also that the points at which I most enjoy these guys are when I am feeling most misanthropic and elitist myself. Both inclinations have been running high recently.
As I walked outside for lunch, I realized that the vast majority of thoughts I had all day up to that point were in some sense negative. It's hard to think otherwise when you are surrounded by sales people all day. The experience of hearing questionable truths and pie-in-the-sky pitches in surround sound for hours at a time has the surprising quality of breeding cynicism in me.
En route to the bank, the Walk sign came on and I began crossing the street. Suddenly an SUV swept around the corner and came close enough to me that I could smack the back of it instinctively with my hand, yelling "Haven't you ever seen a pedestrian?" This is now my third confrontation with drivers in three days.
The truth is that in some sense I enjoy the sensation of anger. I wouldn't consistently listen to conservative talk radio if that wasn't the case. Maybe I'm alone in enjoying the subtle pleasures of moral outrage, but more likely I'm just alone in admitting it. As with depression or sadness, there is often something viscerally pleasing or at least comfortingly familiar about doses of indignation.
After blowing up at the driver earlier, I had to take a step back for a moment and realize that anger has something else in common with depression and sadness: it's self-perpetuating and doesn't do much for your overall state of mind or well-being.
It's also philosophically inconsistent for me. I watched a few bits and pieces of the Robert Anton Wilson documentary, Maybe Logic the other night and was reinvigorated to follow through on some of the ideas that he extolled. He talked for a long time about the basic tenets of moral relativism, which is a concept I've never been able to deny, even in the deepest throes of Objectivist brainwashing. At one point he notes: "When you keep this in mind, it's very hard to stay mad at anyone."
There was a period almost four years ago when I suddenly came to a very deep understanding of relativism. It just happened while I was driving one day -- I had always believed theoretically in the concept, but all at once I was stricken by the reality of it, like a bolt of lightning. I felt like I was going to drive off of the road at the thought -- in one sense it would be a wreck, in another sense it would just be the reorganization of matter.
For weeks I walked around with this notion stuck so profoundly in my mind that, like Wilson, I found it impossible to feel or justify anger. Philosophical Prozac.
In one sense, the man who almost hit me in his SUV was a jerk and a lawbreaker. In another sense, he had no option but to do what he did. He did do it after all, compelled by an infinite collaboration of environmental, emotional, societal, and genetic factors over which he had no original control. In that sense, I find it very hard to stay mad of him.
But is there any room for choice or responsibility for extreme relativism like this? Is it a total fluke of coinciding factors that I came to this philosophy at all...and if I had no hand in it, what's the point of believing it?
If I'm correct in my high school reading of him, I think Sartre answered these questions by basically just saying: "Okay, so you've figured out the basic nature of existence. Now just keep living your life as if you hadn't." I guess I'll go on that for now.