I've just finished reading Valis by Philip K. Dick.
Perhaps my favourite sentence in the whole novel is this one (I'll give the preceding sentence, too, for context):
"Write them down," Kevin said; he brought out a fountain pen. Kevin always used fountain pens, the last of a vanishing breed of noble men.
Why do I like this (the second) sentence? The truth is that it really needs the context of the whole story to appreciate, so you just have to read the book. But I will say a few things about it here. For ages I've been meaning to write a blog post, or a series of blog posts about fine writing and what it means to me, giving examples. The sentence above would be one such example. It says, with poetic economy, a great deal about the relationship between the narrator and Kevin. Kevin is a bitter cynic and good friend of the narrator. This sentence arrives at a turning point in their relationship. The writing is fine because the themes of the book are so really and muscularly present below the surface of the text that connections between those real things beneath the surface do not have to be made explicit to be perfectly powerful and perfectly clear, as in this case.
Another reason I like this sentence, which I am thinking of just now, is because it has that combination of what is incidental (or specific) and what is human, which is the essence of art. Art, to me, in its simplest terms, means being interested in things. I read some reviews of Valis on Amazon. None of those I read matched my own experience of it as an incredibly powerful piece of literature. There were a number of one-star reviews, which were characteristically quite brief and said (I paraphrase, but not drastically): "I thought this was supposed to be a masterpiece of science-fiction. There's no story. It's just a load of pseudo-philosophical gibberish. IT IS A LOAD OF RUBBISH." I do find it rather disheartening that this kind of perception exists of what seems to me one of the most open-hearted, open-minded and deeply vulnerable and heartfelt books I have ever read. On the bright side, apparently 0 customers (out of whatever) found these reviews helpful. They weren't helpful. For Dick, as explained in the book, being helpful is part of being rational.
But to get back to art and being interested. There are ways not to be interested in things and these ways are at least as legitimate as anything else… In The Conspiracy Against the Human Race Ligotti articulates an idea that I have myself long entertained, that Buddhism and pessimism are basically identical and it's mystifying that the former should be held to be in some way noble or uplifting while the latter is scorned. In principle (if not in fact, since it may be hard to actually embody one's principles) the Buddhist and pessimist are not interested in anything. There is all and there is nothing, and all is nothing. There can be no such thing as a small difference. There is probably no difference, but if there is any difference at all, it is only the difference between something (which is not interesting and is generally a pain in the arse) and nothing (which is not interesting either, but which at least is not trying or pretending to be something, and is therefore not a pain in the arse). This is not a point of view within which humanity can thrive, probably. If one point of view can ever be judged more legitimate than another (but where is the neutral point of view between them by which to judge, that does not simply form a third point of view?) then it's quite possible that this point of view is more legitimate than the point of view of 'interest', in which humans may at least hope to thrive.
Let's suppose that the uninterested point of view is the more legitimate. In that case, first of all, nothing is of interest unless we loudly say to ourselves, "I'm just about to kill some time, since anyway no thing is more or less interesting than any other." Therefore, Valis cannot be interesting in principle. But it is also specifically uninteresting because it specifically deals with the small differences in which hope lives, and which make 'progress'. The uninterested point of view, from its own premises quite rightly, will condemn the book as gibberish. But, if interest must be found in it, to kill time because no thing is more or less interesting than another, then that interest or uninterest, must be the interest or uninterest of the case study: "Ah, this is a very good example of how we humans delude ourselves that there is hope that things might be better tomorrow, whereas tomorrow is the same as today, and the only difference to be made, if there is any to be made at all, is to turn everything into nothing."
All this may well be the case. But let's suppose there is some hope that, even if tomorrow is never better than today, timelessness may be better than time. In that case, we may legitimately take an interest in incidental human things that make small differences. Like fountain pens. Valis is therefore a fragile book of gibbering, deluded interest, and hope.
I remember us having a discussion about the difference between defeatism and pessimism. Buddhism seems to me to be defeatist, rather than pessimistic, in the sense that the Buddhist wants to throw himself under the juggernaut of nihilism, whereas the pessimist is simply acknowledging the possibility of an external nihilism.Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the pessimist is not interested in anything except this external nihilism; or rather, that this external nihilism is casting a shadow over his other interests.
Ah, well by these definitions, then ‘pessimism’ above should be swapped for ‘defeatism’, in what I wrote, I mean. Nothing is actually of interest in Buddhism since the only thing worth doing is ceasing to exist. So, entertainment and philosophy and progress are all entirely irrelevant to Buddhism except insofar as they can serve as tools by which to attain extinction.
I suppose there are two types of atheism. There is the type of atheism that embraces nihilism; it says, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”. Buddhism seems like a subset of this; one that embraces nihilism to the extent of actually trying to emulate the materialism of the universe.Then there is another, reluctant sort of atheism, that struggles against nihilism. My own atheism is burdensome to me. I have a passion; it’s a passion that doesn’t seem to be directed at anything in particular, a joie de vivre. I feel that there ought to be some entry in the canon of universal law that is sympathetic to this joie de vivre, which is in opposition to nihilism. This joie de vivre is being crushed by the weight of the external nihilism of the universe.The first type of atheist would likely argue that he is not embracing nihilism. This argument seems to suggest that it is possible to unilaterally reject the materialism of the universe. But I don’t think it is possible. Or rather, it’s possible, but materialism probably gets the last laugh.
I think one of the things that I found interesting about Valis is that it presented gnosticism to me in a new way that allowed me to see my own feelings differently. Gnosticism, or the version of it presented in Valis seems like a not unreasonable response to the fact that so many do have the kind of joie de vivre I think you’re talking about in an apparently materialistic universe. Where does the anti-materialistic feeling come from in a materialistic universe? Many are unwilling to immediately say ‘God’, because they associate this, quite understandably, with the tyranny of the universe they know. It does make a kind of sense then that those who have what might be called spiritual feelings place their source in something outside the universe and attribute the universe itself to a corrupt demiurge.Burroughs is another, like Dick, with this Gnostic aspect to his work, presumably in response to the same problem.I personally don’t find Gnosticism entirely satisfying, but Valis has renewed my interest in it.I always had a notion that the position you’re talking about – I hope you won’t mind me saying this, and I may even be wrong – is actually romanticism. That’s not to say that romantics dogmatically interpret the universe as material, but I think there’s the same, or at least a similar feeling of rebellion, placing the spiritual emphasis on the individual rather than the universe.
I do consider myself to be a romantic, but I suppose it’s a rather evil, anthropocentric sort of romanticism, in many ways.I think this individualism contributes greatly to one’s spiritual angst. It’s much harder to be optimistic about the future when one is a leaf rather than a branch, as it were; something that is being shed, rather than something that is part of a continuum.
I’m in the middle of reading VALIS myself, but I’ve gotten distracted by noir stories.
Originally posted by lesoldatperdu:I do consider myself to be a romantic, but I suppose it’s a rather evil, anthropocentric sort of romanticism, in many ways.I think this individualism contributes greatly to one’s spiritual angst. It’s much harder to be optimistic about the future when one is a leaf rather than a branch, as it were; something that is being shed, rather than something that is part of a continuum.I was actually thinking about whether there might be a more specific term. I think ‘romantic pessimism’ is already taken and probably means something else. I was also thinking about romanticism itself. I mean, ultimately, all these labels are a bit silly, but I’ve never managed to feel antagonistic towards romanticism the way I have to some labels.There are some things I don’t understand about it, though, like the link between romanticism and nationalism, which all seems a bit esoteric to me. Obviously, romanticism is a very loose-knit movement or… thing. Having said that, I understand very much the link between landscape and culture I think is supposed to be a romantic concept. Anyway, I was going to say that it occurred to me that one way in which much romanticism does differ from what you’re describing is a tendency towards a kind of pantheism. Therefore, if it hasn’t already been done, it could be useful (?) at least conversationally, to divide romantics into those that tend towards pantheism and those that tend towards atheism. In other words, an atheist romantic would be as you have described.But I’m sure all this is over-simplifying things.Sometimes I wonder just how and why the world keeps rolling. Surely by now people have just run out of reasons to get out of bed?Originally posted by JohnRenard:I’m in the middle of reading VALIS myself, but I’ve gotten distracted by noir stories.Ah… distracted by noir. I wish I was.
I was actually thinking about whether there might be a more specific term. I think ‘romantic pessimism’ is already taken and probably means something else.I’m not sure. I’m tempted to say “will to power”, or “humanism”, but they don’t seem quite right either. There is the Hopi word “naqoyqatsi”, which apparently means “life as war”. That seems to be getting closer, but I’m probably reaching.There are some things I don’t understand about it, though, like the link between romanticism and nationalism, which all seems a bit esoteric to me.I suppose part of romanticism is the yearning for some distant ideal, or idyll. Say, Arthurian Britain. What does Arthurian Britain have to do with present-day Britain? In The Lion and the Unicorn Orwell says, “What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.”. Nationalism then, I think, is what occurs when this mythologising yearning collides with certain fanatical, crusading sensibilities.Anyway, I was going to say that it occurred to me that one way in which much romanticism does differ from what you’re describing is a tendency towards a kind of pantheism.Yes; I don’t really think of Nature in the abstract, as a unified thing. Rather, as a collection of disconnected, possibly antagonistic things. I’m not sure that it’s desirable or even possible to commune with these things. I mean, if everything is part of a whole, I think it’s only part of a whole in the sense that France and Germany are part of the same land mass.Sometimes I wonder just how and why the world keeps rolling. Surely by now people have just run out of reasons to get out of bed?It seems that almost everybody is somehow insulated from the horror of it all. I don’t understand how Richard Dawkins doesn’t just spend all day weeping.
Just a quick comment. Saw Paul Foot last night. Here (in passing) he explains anti-natalism:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4sqS8pFwG8&feature=related
Originally posted by quentinscrisp:That’s not to say that romantics dogmatically interpret the universe as material, but I think there’s the same, or at least a similar feeling of rebellion, placing the spiritual emphasis on the individual rather than the universe.Oh dear! You talked about rebellion, too! I haven’t actually read every word you wrote. Will come back later.
Originally posted by quentinscrisp:Sometimes I wonder just how and why the world keeps rolling. Surely by now people have just run out of reasons to get out of bed?Of course not. How do you suppose to rebel without getting out of bed?People rebel in various forms without realizing it. And people write to rebel, too. One interesting thing is the literary genre or form we each choose that tends to be most suited to our needs and abilities. I choose poetry. You choose the genre that you have been known to be good at. And all these activities is part of what keeps the world rolling.
Originally posted by solidcopper:Oh dear! You talked about rebellion, too! I haven’t actually read every word you wrote. Will come back later.Yes, I thought you were admonishing me for inconsistency. But you’re quite right. I ‘know’ (or at least feel) that the universe doesn’t want me to express myself, so I do it anyway, even if I’m ‘wrong’, which is why I chose the title “All God’s Angels, Beware!” for one of my collections.Still, these days I do find myself longing for a quiet life.
Originally posted by lesoldatperdu:Yes; I don’t really think of Nature in the abstract, as a unified thing. Rather, as a collection of disconnected, possibly antagonistic things. I’m not sure that it’s desirable or even possible to commune with these things. I mean, if everything is part of a whole, I think it’s only part of a whole in the sense that France and Germany are part of the same land mass….It seems that almost everybody is somehow insulated from the horror of it all. I don’t understand how Richard Dawkins doesn’t just spend all day weeping.With nature, the answer for me is that it is both piecemeal and unified, but there certainly do seem to be antagonistic forces. For me to publicly state that I haven’t worked out why or how these forces exist might have about it a hint of delusions of grandeur, as surely no one’s expecting me to have worked out such a thing… but I haven’t, anyway.As for Richard Dawkins, maybe I just don’t understand his personal views enough, though heaven knows he muddies the waters by putting the weight of his scientific (supposedly impartial) authority behind his own absurd personal campaign to rid the world of religion, but, yes, I don’t understand the sources of his generally chipper attitude, either.I watched a fair amount of some debate… no, not debate, conversation between Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and some other guy recently, and I just can’t help wondering what on Earth is going on in their heads. I mean, does Dawkins, friend of Douglas Adams that he was, really believe that 42 is a satisfactory answer to the meaning of life? If he’s capable of believing such a thing, that would explain (in a sense) his optimism, though it wouldn’t explain how he was capable of believing such a thing.I’ve been reading Tolstoy’s A Confession (quoted, incidentally, in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race), and I can’t help thinking, when I read this kind of thing, well, Dawkins, I can understand that his area of learning might possibly be one-sided, but Hitchens is supposed to know everything in a ‘humanities’ kind of way, and yet in all his public speaking he appears entirely ignorant of the very rich seam of human thought, experience and exploration represented by works such as A Confession.
Myopera made me sign up to comment this time. I almost didn’t bother. Anyway here goes (sorry for the longwindedness):Having read a lot of Hitchens over the years, here’s my impression (without double-checking any sources): I don’t think he’s ignorant of all that. He’s read more in that area than most people have, which isn’t necessarily saying much, I know. I think he mentions Tolstoy’s book somewhere. But as an ardent secularist, of a progressive rather than a pessimistic sort, he wants to find all that he needs of psychological, philosophical, cultural, and aesthetic richness within an entirely secular understanding of everything. This is a project for which I have some sympathy, although I wonder if it’s even possible for many people; it actually doesn’t seem to be possible for me, which is unfortunate, since belief also doesn’t seem to be possible for me.As a further clue to Hitchens’ mindset, I recently read a comment that his wife made about him. I don’t remember her words, but the gist of it was that he is really very combative; he always sees himself as in a battle with something or someone. I suppose that’s obvious from his writings; he’s political at his core, a polemicist at heart. He probably wouldn’t know what to do, as a writer and perhaps also as a human being, if he didn’t have something to be *against*. For me, this makes him fun to read, because I like polemic and he does it with flair. But, anyway, I suspect that if one’s fundamental predeliction is to define oneself as against [whatever], this will cause one to see and experience the philosophical landscape differently than those of us who are just trying to figure out what to think and how to be, for our own innocent (?) purposes. Now it appears that Hitchens’ last big battle is to be stoical in the face of imminent death — no wavering or last-minute conversion — and there is, as always for him, a public dimension to this battle. Again, I sympathize.Very interesting blog post and comments section, by the way.
Originally posted by gveranon:Myopera made me sign up to comment this time. I almost didn’t bother. Anyway here goes (sorry for the longwindedness):I recently changed my settings because I was tired of trolls. Sorry for the inconvenience.Originally posted by gveranon:Having read a lot of Hitchens over the years, here’s my impression (without double-checking any sources): I don’t think he’s ignorant of all that. He’s read more in that area than most people have, which isn’t necessarily saying much, I know. I think he mentions Tolstoy’s book somewhere.I have heard it mentioned that he’s extremely well read. Personally, I don’t think I am. The only thing that surprises me if he has read things like A Confession is that, at least in his public speaking, he never seems to address any of it. I have read almost nothing of his actual writing – a page or two. Judging from the reasonable amount I have seen of interviews and public debates, and the tiny sample I’ve read of his writing, I think I would tire of his writing very quickly. I enjoy aesthetic polemics, but it’s hard for me to get much enjoyment out of people shaking me by the shoulders over the kinds of things Hitchens chooses as subject matter, especially as I’ve seen him come out in favour of the idea of replacing religion with science, which I think is frankly dubious at best, and at worst nefarious.I’m kind of resigned to this being an area in which I’m going to experience friction if I ever want to express myself honestly – especially in Britain and especially in the general social circles in which I move, though there are some epicycles of those circles that are sympathetic to me. I tend not to express myself, but after a while deliberate restraint can become tiresome, too.I suppose Hitchens has been resigned to something similar, though perhaps ‘resigned’ is not the right word.Originally posted by gveranon:Now it appears that Hitchens’ last big battle is to be stoical in the face of imminent death — no wavering or last-minute conversion — and there is, as always for him, a public dimension to this battle. Again, I sympathize.A last-minute conversion would not be unstoical, not that I expect anything of the kind. I’ve actually been very affected by the stoic philosopher Epictetus of late, who doesn’t seem to find anything in the least wrong with changing one’s mind about something. Anyway, I wish him whatever death he would most wish himself.Originally posted by gveranon:Very interesting blog post and comments section, by the way.Thank you. Thanks for commenting.
This is from Epictetus, Robert Dobbin’s translation:What is a child? Ignorance and inexperience. But with respect to what it knows, a child is every bit our equal. What is death? A scary mask. Take it off – see, it doesn’t bite. Eventually, body and soul will have to separate, just as they existed separately before we were born. So why be upset if it happens now? If it isn’t now, it’s later. And why now, if that happens to be the case? To accomodate the world’s cycle; because the world needs things to come into being now, things to come into being later – and it needs things whose time is now complete.Pain too is just a scary mask: look under it and you will see. The body sometimes suffers, but relief is never far behind. And if that isn’t good enough for you, the door stands open; otherwise put up with it. The door needs to stay open whatever the circumstances, with the result that our problems disappear. The fruit of these doctrines is the best and most beautiful, as it ought to be for individuals who are truly educated – freedom from trouble, freedom from fear, freedom in general.I intend to use this in a novel I’ve started.With regard to the whole issue of changing one’s mind, this has reminded me that I’ve meant to write a blog post about some of my fictional output in relation to nihilism. If anyone cares at all, I imagine the possibility of raised eyebrows at the hint that I am abandoning nihilism. But, first of all, I have never considered myself a nihilist. As Ligotti has rightly stated, no intelligent person thinks of themself as a nihilist. Why is this? Because the moment you do so, you fall into self-contradiction, since to own a label is to have values and to have values is not to be nihilistic.This also means that nihilism can’t be abandoned anyway, since it should rightly be the abandonment of all things, and how can you cling to abandonment itself?But… anyway, I don’t really have any plan to abandon anything. I’ve just felt for a long time that it’s strange that people equate sticking to a single opinion no matter what with sincerity. I equate it more with the opposite.And this is actually a secondary issue in the post I’ve been meaning to write, but nonetheless deeply bound up with the main point. Anyway, I’ll write that later if I have time.
As Ligotti has rightly stated, no intelligent person thinks of themself as a nihilist. Why is this? Because the moment you do so, you fall into self-contradiction, since to own a label is to have values and to have values is not to be nihilistic.This also means that nihilism can’t be abandoned anyway, since it should rightly be the abandonment of all things, and how can you cling to abandonment itself?I’m not sure about all that. Semantic riddles like this seem logical, but I wonder how far this sort of reasoning can be applied to living things. I mean, everything might be atoms swirling around in a deterministic void, but the fact that some of these atoms have assumed a form that says, “I don’t want to be just atoms swirling around in a determinstic void” seems to threaten the whole system. How can a deterministic system determine its own indeterminism? And yet, it does. So I don’t think it’s impossible for one half of a contradiction to strike down the other.
Ah, I assumed that My Opera had changed its policy. Your reason for changing your settings is understandable.Your experience of social friction in regards to religion is the reverse of mine! I grew up in a small town in the American midwest, and two of my uncles were Presbyterian ministers. Now I live in a larger university town, but it’s still the case that most of the (very few) people I know are religious. So I find it easiest to stay quiet. And, honestly, I’d probably be religious myself if it were mentally possible for me. In my spotty reading, there are a few religious writers that I have enjoyed: Simone Weil, T. S. Eliot’s religious poems, Flannery O’Connor, Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value, Novalis, and a few others that I am forgetting or don’t want to mention because it would require too much explanation.This may sound odd, but I would actually feel more uneasy if I were in an environment where everyone agreed with me about x, y, z. Then I would really feel that I had no space for my own opinions, and no space to change my mind. Groupthink can be more restrictive — more smothering — than disagreement. There are advantages to being odd man out, not that it’s enjoyable.I read Epictetus in school a number of years ago. Much of what he says seems like wisdom itself, but I never felt that I could follow capital-S Stoicism all the way, because it asks one to cultivate and maintain states of mind that go strongly against the grain of normal human psychology: indifference to death, to pain, to calamities of all kinds. A highly unlikely state of mind, for me at least. I still value the more modest tenets of Stoicism, though.For anyone who’s really thinking about anything, the option to change your mind is essential; otherwise you’re not really thinking, or your thinking doesn’t matter. I suppose the relevant questions are: Is the change genuine? Are your reasons and motives good? I feel that I don’t have enough insight into deathbed conversions to talk about them, so I won’t. What I mentioned about Hitchens is only what he has expressed publicly of his own thoughts about his situation.
Originally posted by lesoldatperdu:I’m not sure about all that. Semantic riddles like this seem logical, but I wonder how far this sort of reasoning can be applied to living things. I mean, everything might be atoms swirling around in a deterministic void, but the fact that some of these atoms have assumed a form that says, “I don’t want to be just atoms swirling around in a determinstic void” seems to threaten the whole system. How can a deterministic system determine its own indeterminism? And yet, it does. So I don’t think it’s impossible for one half of a contradiction to strike down the other.On the one hand, this is all to do with definitions, but on the other, there’s no point in trying to define anything, if it doesn’t help us talk about something real anyway. In this case, nihilism would not be the same as pessimism or even defeatism as defined above. I suppose I mean total nihilism. I don’t really think that people are totally one thing or another anyway.But the real – to me, at least – perception I was trying to describe, was that to be totally nihilistic (to find no meaning or value in anything) would have to mean not caring about whether you were nihilistic or not, as you would find no meaning in the term or the attitude of ‘nihilism’.But I take your point that opposites don’t necessarily exclude each other.Originally posted by gveranon:I read Epictetus in school a number of years ago. Much of what he says seems like wisdom itself, but I never felt that I could follow capital-S Stoicism all the way, because it asks one to cultivate and maintain states of mind that go strongly against the grain of normal human psychology: indifference to death, to pain, to calamities of all kinds. A highly unlikely state of mind, for me at least. I still value the more modest tenets of Stoicism, though.Reading Epictetus is challenging – it certainly was for me – because it all (almost all) seems to make sense, but it is, as you say, nonetheless difficult to put into practice, and one has to wonder why it is so difficult.I think it’s because he allows for the possibility of complete injustice in this world, and says that you just have to take it philosophically, and that things might never get better, and you just have to go on taking it philosophically. But, the word ‘stoical’ has come to have a, not exactly negative, but dour connotation, which doesn’t seem to be the main point of emphasis of the actual philosophy. The emphasis, at least in Epictetus, is not on endurance, but on freedom, and with freedom, joy. But that stoicism has the connotation it now has – it strikes me – is that people often know philosophies not by their intended message but by their accidental weak point, thus ‘cynicism’ has not come to mean honesty and so on, but a kind of sneering scepticism, not because this was the intended thrust of the philosophy, but because that is what those who felt rebuffed were left with as an aftertaste.Or, that’s how it strikes me.Anyway, I’ll try and answer the other points later – work to do still tonight.
Originally posted by quentinscrisp:But that stoicism has the connotation it now has – it strikes me – is that people often know philosophies not by their intended message but by their accidental weak point, thus ‘cynicism’ has not come to mean honesty and so on, but a kind of sneering scepticism, not because this was the intended thrust of the philosophy, but because that is what those who felt rebuffed were left with as an aftertaste.This, my friend, is what I have been trying to say to you about your opinions of Buddhism. Fortunately you spared me the effort of continuing to fail to formulate that thought, and went and hit the nail right on its head!:happy:
Be warned – I just had to put in the paragraphs manually with HTML. I think Opera has rather tediously lost its automatic paragraphing function – AGAIN.
Originally posted by JohnRenard:This, my friend, is what I have been trying to say to you about your opinions of Buddhism. Fortunately you spared me the effort of continuing to fail to formulate that thought, and went and hit the nail right on its head!
Yes, I can accept that, but… I think the fact that the philosophies come to be known in these ways is revealing.
Revealing of the philosophies, I mean. And each of us, having different temperaments, will either feel unable or able to accept the good points according to those temperaments, and likewise will be sensitive to or accepting of the bad points.
This is from the beginning of Mumonkan:
Zen has no gates. The purpose of Buddha’s words is to enlighten others. Therefore Zen should be gateless.
Now, how does one pass through this gateless gate? Some say that whatever enters through a gate is not family treasure, that whatever is produced by the help of another is likely to dissolve and perish.
I can get behind this entirely. This – a message repeated throughout Mumonkan – seems to me very clearly to be saying that if a teaching doesn’t make sense to you, then it’s no good, that enlightenment cannot be imposed. It is an individualistic ethos – find out for yourself. But in order to find out for yourself, you must have a self or something like it to find things out. I think this is important if one is to resist being coerced into giving up all integrity.
Much of Buddhism (along with most religions) seems designed to make people give up their own integrity and tag along with authority – in the case of Buddhism, the supposedly unanswerable authority of nothingness.
We probably all know the weaknesses of Christianity, and I certainly don’t think that our situation is one in which we have two alternatives that are Christianity and Buddhism, but I feel like it’s instructive to compare the two.
The great strength of Christianity – it seems to me – (and here you’ll say I’m contradicting my own argument, perhaps) is that thing which these days most non-Christians find to be the most ridiculous about it, and that is faith.
I have some ideas of my own about what faith is that I mentioned when talking about Andre Comte-Sponville on this blog. I find my ideas echoed and deepened by my reading of Tolstoy’s A Confession, though it’s a problematical work for me in some ways.
Tolstoy doesn’t say this explicitly, but he provides a contrast between Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism (not in all its forms, but in the form that is prsented generally as its original form, and the one that people like Schopenhauer would or do find most sympathetic or plausible) is all about death, and is death-directed. It is the opposite of faith, really. The idea is that all this life on Earth is for nothing, and it should be abandoned in favour of extinction. Christianity specifically supports procreation and faith in the idea that life is good and it’s all for something.
Now, what kind of faith did Tolstoy admire? The faith of those who actually lived their faith rather than simply professed it hollowly, in short, the serfs of the time in which he lived, who worked the land. True faith, for him, was of the common people, not the privileged, of people who he described as facing illness and death without complaint, but with a firm conviction that all was as it should be.
In contrast stood the middle classes and the aristocracy (like Solomon, who also complained of the vanity of life) who had everything, but were sickened with a sense of emptiness.
The Buddha appeals to middle-class westerners (you won’t find it catching on among the working class) because it echoes their own emptiness. The Buddha himself was pretty much the prototypical rich-boy dropout. He was cosseted in a palace for his early years to the extent that he did not know what illness, old age and death were. When he eventually saw these things, he couldn’t deal with them. But the poor people who were already familiar with these things dealt with them as poor people always have – through faith.
The fact is that most Indians today are not Buddhist but Hindu and Buddhism is looked on in India, from what I can gather, as not being a proper religion. Some people think that makes it superior, of course, and some don’t.
I’d guess that children and working class people are more likely to reject Buddhism as a load of rubbish, and that effete middle-class people are more likely to be impressed by its nihilism, which echoes their own, whether they wish to deny it or not.
I guess that my own problem with Buddhism might come partly because I’m not quite as middle-class as many of the people I mix with.
I suppose all this is a generalisation, too, but the above probably gives some significant insight into my experience of things.
I realise that it was completely ridiculous to suggest that anyone sympathetic to Buddhism is more middle-class than I am, but it was also inevitable.
Incidentally, I said that we all know the weaknesses of Christianity. I was unwiling to go deeply into such a vast topic, but here is something from Tolstoy’s A Confession(translation by Jane Kentish):
At the time Russia was at war. And, in the name of Christian love, Russians were killing their fellow men. It was impossible not to think about this. It was impossible to avoid the fact that killing is evil and contrary to the most basic principles of any faith. And yet prayers were said in our churches for the success of our armies, and our religious teachers acknowledged this killing as an outcome of faith. And this was not only applied to murder in time of war, but, during the troubled times that followed the war, I witnessed members of the church, her teachers, monks and ascetics, condoning the killing of helpless, lost youths. As I turned my attention to all that is done by people who profess Christianity, I was horrified.
See what I mean:http://io9.com/5819625/in-taiwan-you-can-hire-a-stripper-for-your-funeralEven when they’re dead, the working class enjoy a good sing-along and strip-show. Preferable to Nirvana any time.