Positivity

You know what I like a lot right now? I like the Discovery Channel commercial -- the boom-de-yada one. I just can't get it out of my head.

What I like about it is it's nice to hear what someone likes for once. It's great to see some realistic positivity.

It's something I'm not all that good at. For whatever reason I tend to vocalize things I don't like a lot more than I praise things I do like. Sometimes I scare myself. I remind myself of Holden Caulfield quite a lot. There's this warning Mr. Antolini gives Holden, near the end of Catcher in the Rye, where Mr. Antolini says, "It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everyody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know. But do you know what I'm driving at, at all?"

I differ from Holden in that he tells Mr. Antolini that he only hates people for a short while and then he misses them. I'd have told Mr. Antolini that he's right and I'm terrified of turning thirty and only running into people I don't like, because there's no kind of people left that I do like.

One of my friends once called me "cynically optimistic" and I like that because it seems accurate -- I'm actually pretty idealistic about things, but then I have this cynical streak on the other side of the teeter totter, except that it's a portly little tyke and when he sits down my idealism falls off. The good thing is that the idealistic kid doesn't get flustered all that much. He just gets up and dusts himself off... I'm losing myself in this analogy.

The point is that even though I'm philosophically cynical -- by that I mean I really like to get to the root of things and pretty much ridicule anything that's veneer or superfluous or hyperbole -- even though I'm cynical in an optimistic manner, trusting the good in people and not locking my car doors, I hate myself when I disregard a person because they aren't as cynical as I am.

To tell the truth, I'm really bored by all sorts of scripted speech and I'll say obnoxious things just to say something original. Like Holden, I really can't stand what he calls "phonies" and I sort of say the exact opposite of small talk to avoid acting like a pretentious phony myself. And see there's the catch: when I disregard the phony, I'm being pretentious and phony, just at a higher level. I'm creating my own clique the phony can't join. It's like magnitudes of infinity. Even if somone's entirely exclusive, I can be more exclusive.

I really generally get along with me and like being around me, but the cynic in me sees no reason to exclude people or to waste energy deriding people.

I'd rather talk about what I like. And what I like a lot right now is this video. Watch it. You might like it too.

Stranger to Oneself

I finished reading Camus' The Stranger a couple of days ago. He makes this eeriest point clear: whether you die at 30 or 70, you die. Which leaves a thoughtful person (such as myself) utterly confused. If death is the end, then there's little point in prolonging life. Nor do we feel compelled to act, whether murderously or altruistically. Yet, we do act altruistically and murderously. It seems clear why humans developed murder -- to defeat a threat to their lives. But why altruism? A recent article in the Atlantic argued altruism developed through typical adaptive cycles where communal, selfless species survived, thus reproducing philanthropic genes. Which seems to say, scientifically at least (and most religions would argue the same), we act kindly because we prioritize existence over non-existence.

So, if we murder and assist both in accordance to our belief that we prefer to exist, what do we do when life becomes entirely absurd, meaningless and death seems no different than life (for life and death mean the same)? Do we go on living? And if we live, in what manner do we live if we may die in another moment? As Pascal wrote: "Between us, and Hell or Heaven, there is only life between the two, which is the most fragile thing in the world."

Sartre posited an answer to the questioning of Camus' era (and ours): there's no compulsion to do anything, yet we're not dead, so we must choose. Even suicide is a choice. Even standing still, inactive, is choosing. There is no imperative to choose one way of life, say serial-killer, over any other, say philanthropist.

However, Sartre notes that when we choose, we choose for all people -- we demonstrate our preferred course of action and others may choose to follow it if it produces the sort of life they desire. So, Sartre essentially appeals to Kant's categorical imperative: Act as if all humans will be forced to act as you do. Another philosopher said similarly, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I give away my disposition by setting murder and altruism in opposition. Clearly I pose a dichotomy that prefers generosity and service to totem-murder, incest and patricide -- Freud's three universal taboos.

As long as I recall, I have been biased towards altruism. Only recently have I learned words to describe my reasoning. John Rawls, another philosopher, proposed a thought experiment to help us decide how to act. He suggested when faced with a decision, we imagine a veil separates us from the situation, so we do not know what party we will play in the situation. We may be the king; we may be the pauper (there is equal chance). Since we may be the pauper, naturally we will ensure that should we be the pauper, we will be well respected, protected and happy. We want the most benefit for ourselves in the case we should be the least of the society. Rawls called his principle MiniMax: the maximum benefit for the minimum person.

My selfishness masquerades as altruism. I only act to provide an example I hope others will choose to follow. I want the least to be cared for in case I one day am the least. It's why I pick up hitchhikers: to build up my hitchhikers' Karma so I'll get picked up next time I'm thumbing.

I've laid out a couple of viable ways to a satisfying, altruistic life. However, I do not know if I live them, though I try.

Countless questions bother me. Here are two: first, if life is absurd and we evolved, why do we create? There seems no point in striving to make sculpture, music, epic photo montages, poetry and novels. Friendship and altruism are explained by the Atlantic article, but creativity has yet to receive much treatment in philosophy (please, if I overstate, direct me to a place to read).

Second, why does music affect some people so much? Past a philosophy of aesthetics (proportion is related to health and health to survival, so it seems explainable by Darwin's theories), music seems to have little evolutionary value. From my reading in philosophy of music so far today, it seems that music in recent years (enlightenment on) was intentionally developed to express emotions which words and other visual symbols could not, due to a veil of language and bias which separates us from what Kant called "das Ding an sich" and Wallace Stevens called the The -- reality.

But music precedes these theories, and even after these theories, practitioners adapted music to match the human ear, rather than modifying humans to appreciate the music. There are exceptions: it seems it took the human ear time to understand the meaning of compositions like Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- people didn't understand innately. In the normal cases, when music was orchestrated to excite pre-existing biases in humans towards certain meanings for certain timbres of sound, where did those interpretations in humans develop?

I wish I could word this more simply but it's very complicated in my head and, of course, language is an ill-fitted tool to expressing deep pathos.