I couldn’t do it, Viktoria said, writing to me about how I feel compelled to engage with the world as it is, the world of work and corporate life. There is, I think, more to it than that. I live in places which are “normal,” like San Antonio and Seattle. I don’t live in paradise outposts in Maine or rural Ontario, or live in less prosaic but nevertheless lovely and spectacular places like London or other major cities where everything is there for you, where you can detach from normal existence while still enjoying the benefits of cosmopolitan wonder. I don’t even live in Philadelphia or Manchester or Tampa, where the world blends into a kind of stable mix of paradise and normalcy, where the food is good or the sun shines but the housing is subpar and the urban planning is rubbish and most people still dream of the places where it all seems sterling, where people dream of London and Maine in their different ways as benchmarks, as marks of what should be. Continue reading “Engagement”
Incomplete koan
My son read me a story on Sunday night, from an illustrated book entitled Zen Shorts, by Jon Muth. His mother and he had stumbled across the book on the weekly trip to the library. The book is meant to grant children a window into Eastern philosophy, and it involves a trio of kids who befriend a wise panda bear named Stillwater. To one of the children, he tells the following tale (with full attribution to Mr. Muth): Continue reading “Incomplete koan”
On success
The notion of “success” and “failure” has been swirling around my reading lately. It’s not intentional; in fact, the intentional reading I’ve been doing is a bit strange, all relating to late colonial road trip chronicles in Africa. At the temporary apartment I rented last month in San Antonio, I found a book from 1941 entitled Behind God’s Back, by a fantastically named journalist, Negley Farson, about an extensive trip through mostly sub-Saharan Africa that he and his wife undertook in 1939. That inspired me to look for other pre-independence travelogues of Africa, and I stumbled upon Inside Africa, by an intrepid American journalist, John Gunther, who went with his wife for a year-long adventure across the entire continent, this time from late 1952 to 1954, just as the independence movements were really starting to take off.
On failure
She knows there’s no success like failure/ And that failure’s no success at all.
I was fifteen when I first heard these lyrics, although they had been written more than a decade earlier, during the miraculous mid-60s, when Dylan released an album every year, each one full of greatest hits. By the time I discovered his music he was playing in a large band with backing singers, and some of the immediacy and tenderness of his early love songs was lost from the music; but never from the words.
For the Love of ____ ! (All that is dear)
So this is it, the start of my book. I am currently doing a ‘Introductory Writing of Non-Fiction’ class and today, I submitted what you will find below to my fellow leaners for critique. I thought I would also share with you. # sign means ‘page break’. Obviously, please comment at will ! If you wish to comment privately, you may at: braveviktoria@gmail.com Hope you enjoy ! Yours truly, V.
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PRELUDE
To be silent or not ? That is the question. Because ‘to be’ without a voice is like existing without committing to the act of living. It can look like a beautiful life; a life filled by laugher and love, pleasure and successes, joys and challenges. But inwardly, this life feels shallow, incomplete, unworthy. Only by voicing who we are and what we believe in can we ‘own’ our selves in this reality.
By the virtue of being alive, we are given the opportunity to participate in this wonder that is planet Earth. By our actions and words, we co-create our shared present. But to remain silent is to squander this opportunity, to let the future unfold without being reflected in this universal experiment.
If one were ‘to be’ and yet remain in silence, it would feel like being a castaway on a deserted island. One pocket of conscious life surrounded by an endless ocean. The surrounding waters obviously abound with life and energy, yet they form this unbreakable barrier between you and the rest of the universe. Assuming that the island is physically sustaining, the social isolation would still drive anyone mad. We are not meant to be alone, nor are we meant to be silent in the presence of others.
Still, it is often easier to be silent. It is more an absence of choice than a conscious and deliberate act. The unsaid cannot create conflicts, at least in the short term, and so remaining silent prevents the boat from rocking. Tacit agreements and unspoken grievances maintain illusions and pretenses; for we often prefer imaginary joys to the discomfort of truth. But the very worst about the unavowed is that it fuels the status quo. Moreover, it steals the very precious time you have to find where you belong, to discover what makes you happy and to allow others to see the glory shining within your heart.
Edmond Burke said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” To break the silence and speak up is taking action, one with effects often reaching far further than we can ever anticipate. To speak up is first and foremost a refusal to be at the mercy of forces other than ourselves. It is refusing to stand by idly while others choose our common destiny.
Speaking up also has another purpose, more visceral than rational action. Only by voicing who we are, what we think, what we hope for and aspire to – in other words, by putting ‘ourselves’ out there – can we possibly achieve a feeling of connection with our fellow humans. Only by speaking up can we hope to feel understood. Speaking up might not be enough to make sure we are listened to, but it certainly is necessary if we are to built connections with our fellow human beings.
To break silence is something we must practice. It doesn’t come easy. Sometimes it feels right; yet at other times, it takes tremendous courage and conviction. But each time you speak up, it just might change your life for the better. And it is this hope that we must nurture and treasure.
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Note to self:
Be brave. For what you have to contribute to our world, only you can say.
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Dear Reader,
Whoever you are,
I wrote this book personally for you.
I wrote it for your children too.
Indeed, I wrote this book for all of us, including me,
So I could hope for a better world than what I see.
First of all, I wish to thank you for your attention: for picking up this book and giving me a chance to enter your consciousness. If randomness brought you to this book, I am glad for it. Or maybe it is someone you love, someone who loves you, someone you respect who recommended this book to you. Either way, I hope you are willing to open your heart, have an open mind, and maybe even wish to be swept away. Your openness is essential to both reading this book and living, as I will not be providing intellectual proofs of what I say. This is not a scholarly book, where arguments and logic prevails. This is a book of letters, written to you Dear Reader as well as to important people and concepts around you. I ask that you read me with your heart open and judge for yourself if my words resonate within you.
In writing this book, my deepest wish is to connect with you through the emotions we share, simply because we are both humans and capable of the same feelings. My key assumption is that there is a universal humanity within us all; that we all share the ‘essence of humanness’. This means that, by virtue of being human beings, we are fundamentally the same: we crave, we yearn, we feel pain, and we love. While the objects of these sentiments are specific to a particular life, at a particular time and place, the feelings themselves remain universal. Hence, it is by a shared understanding of what it feels to be human that we can connect with all our fellow human beings. Empathy is the key to knowing ourselves and others, to rejoice in all we share and discover how we differ.
So while I don’t know you (the socialized individual), I feel I know the you within (the human being seeking to thrive). I wrote this book to speak of and to this core of our humanity. If I am correct in my impressions of our fundamental human nature, you might feel that I have written these letters for you personally, or even better, that you could have written these letters yourself ! I sincerely hope that you recognize your voice, your angst, your regrets and hopes. As a bonus, may these pages give you ways to express more of how you feel to those you love.
Herein, I share my most precious convictions, values, beliefs and thoughts. I’m voicing the ideas that I hold dearest and I am taking a moral stand: what follows is how I believe one should live. But let me be crystal clear: this book is full of mytruths, ideas that make sense to me. In these pages, I wish to share them with you because, first, I do what I preach: I shall take my place in our world through speaking up ! I am willing to lead by example and can only wish that you will follow this philosophy to a more human life. I also have an intuition that these ideas will make sense to you too; that you will actually recognize our humanness within my point of view. Hence, what follows might be my subjective truths, yet I believe there might be some universal insights of relevance to you.
In that, this book is a paradox. It asks you to keep an open heart and put yourself in the metaphorical shoes of both me – the narrating voice – and the recipients of my letters. By empathy, I hope that you will feel moved by the plea of our descendants, that you will be inspired to be radically honest with those you love, that you will re-consider your place in the universe and the purpose of your life. Throughout, I ask that you entertain the possibility that we – humanity – could hold dear different values and live happier as a result. And while I appeal to your heart, I ask that you maintain intellectual independence. In whatever conclusions you reach, I urge you to actively choose for yourself: for if you make conscious choices (ie: to be silent or not, authentic or not, egoistic or not), at least you are aware of your life-shaping powers and can assume the inherent responsibility for your actions and omissions.
I am transparent about my intentions here because I need you to remain vigilant about what you adhere to. Only by being aware and selective of what you believe can you be your own human. If only one sentence could summarize the Enlightenment, it would be: “Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding!” (Kant, 1784) So, dare to be enlightened! Exert this discerning power over your beliefs, evaluate what you hold dear, and let yourself be swayed by your own inner voice, not what I (or anyone else) say.
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Note to self:
Be open of heart and intellect. Feel my words. Yet dare to honor your responsibility to understand and choose for yourself.
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Dear Truth Seeker,
Didn’t you get the memo? In 2016, we entered an unchartered territory: the post-truth world ! Beyond the hilarious potential for misquoted politicians[1], have you ever stopped and pondered what this word – and the world that it represents – even means ?
As an adjective, it’s defined as: ” relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. (Oxford dictionary)
As a concept, it implies that rationality – the use of reason in decision-making – is losing importance relative to its counterpart, the ‘passions’. I herein use the concept of passion as broadly as possible: it can mean what you love (or hate), what you are attracted to (or fear), anything you strongly react to, including your religion and your traditions. Passions usually come from the heart, from the gut, from the groin; they are visceral and cannot be easily explained in words. Justifications may emerge after the fact, but passionate acts are often sudden and unpredictable. And by definition, not necessarily rational.
In itself, this human ambivalence between rationality and sentimentalism is not a new phenomenon. In the 18th century, as modern science was gaining importance in society, some philosophers questioned if reason could make the world a better place. Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed the negative; that the pursuit of arts and sciences corrupted the natural compassion of human beings. Obviously, men of learning continued to study the physical world, gaining for humanity both knowledge and eventually great control over our environment. Fast-forward to the 21st century, we can’t deny that we hugely benefit from the technology that our brains created. But neither can we deny Rousseau’s conclusions: compassion is certainly not the leading value of our time!
While it is easy to acknowledge that science and technology improve our standards of living, it is not self-evident that they make ‘our world a better place’. This assessment requires a moral judgment. Science, through its concern with objectivity and experiments, can hypothesize the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives, show the fallacy of assumptions, and even model possible consequences. But rationality alone cannot make moral choices on our behalf; we can be informed by reason, but a moral choice can never be dictated by reason.
Hence, our entering the post-truth world is a symptom of our ambivalence with reason. In the last 250 years, we – humanity – have been accustomed to seek solutions to our problems by rational and scientific means. But this intense focus on the scientific has crowded out other methods of seeking knowledge. Beliefs in scientific truth even lead to the dismissal of religion as an accepted source of knowledge. But no matter what tradition of knowledge one favors – the scientific, the religious, the subjective sentiments or intuition -, when it comes to moral choices – which include political choices -, there are only informed opinions and value judgments.
In this sense, our invention of the word post-truth finally acknowledges that there is no absolute truthto be found. If our common goal is to ‘create a better world’, then ‘what’ this world should be can only be decided by our morals, our conscience, our hearts. For the ‘how’, we can rely (at least partially) on science and technology. Still, moral values lead history forward, even if it is to value science and rationality above all other methods of knowledge.
TO BE CONTINUED …
[1]Which culminated in Rudy Giuliani telling us that “truth isn’t truth” in August 2018.