Ecce Homo: The Top Ten List Version

Listening to a friend’s description of a disappointing social engagement with a former work colleague, in which she confessed, though without any great sense of self-recrimination, that she herself was “being boring” during that evening’s dinner conversation, I was compelled to reflect upon my own life as a social entity, such as it is, or rather to reflect on the sense in which being “social” has always felt antithetical to my philosophic nature, even long before I was old enough to perceive myself as having such a nature. The result of this reflection is the following somewhat playful and simplifying list, composed more or less impromptu or, shall we say, improvisationally, and deliberately modelled on the modern, quasi-objective but actually nonsensical obsession with lists of ten, best exemplified by the maniacal ubiquity of “top ten lists.” 

Here, then, without further ado or introduction, is a list of Ten Truths That Define My Nature.

1. I have learned never to mistake “being boring” with actually being boring. 

That is, “being boring” is just a reflection of other people’s judgments, based on their standards of interest or excitement. Since I cannot control other people’s minds or interests, and since I know, as a matter of philosophical observation and research, that the vast majority of humans in all times and places (“the many,” as the Greek philosophers say) are incapable of understanding, let alone caring about, genuine philosophic thought, great art, the nature of the soul, or theories of society and civilization, I have no reason to expect most people to find me interesting, partly because I know that I only become animated and enthusiastic when I am thinking and talking about topics which they care nothing about, whereas the subjects that animate and excite them will almost always be matters that seem insignificant and forgettable to me.

2. Item 1, above, is a lesson I learned mostly through my life experience as an adult, and especially as a teacher. 

When I was very young, and even through the first part of my university life, I was susceptible to the misery of fearing that there must be something deficient or inadequate about me, because I rarely aroused any interest at all from other people, in school or anywhere else, except perhaps when I felt courageous enough to say something funny to make others laugh. I was fascinated by books and ideas, but knew no one with whom I could share these interests. (I was still too young to understand fully that when we are reading great books with enthusiasm, we are sharing our thoughts with someone, namely the author who is speaking to us through the pages.) I was quite obsessed with the music I loved, but since my tastes were never trendy, common, or “cool,” and my enthusiasms were largely private and incommunicable, I knew no one with whom I could properly share this obsession. I was interested in political writing, but my favorite writers or ideas were never fashionable within the social world in which I was trapped. However, once I started teaching part-time in graduate school, and found a few students who had enough natural interest in ideas to get excited about what I was explaining, I discovered that the problem was not really that I could not be interesting, but merely that I had never found any other souls capable of seeing the parts of me that were interesting. As soon as I realized this, my longstanding insecurities and anxieties about being invisible quickly faded. I suddenly understood the whole picture of my life in a new way. People with the right kind of eyes could see me after all.

3. “People with the right kind of eyes” — eyes that are looking for serious and permanent things, and who are therefore able to recognize a soul that is aligned with their needs — are “my people.” 

There are fewer and fewer of them in this world, at least proportionately (numerically as well, I believe), but the possibility of finding any evidence of them at all, even partial cases, is the only condition that redeems the human race in my mind, at least as a species to which I have to belong. Hence,

4. I instinctively prioritize the truest natures I can find through voluntary (adult) interaction over any conventional attachments or accidental social associations. 

Family connections, childhood friends, pleasant colleagues, and other such inevitable social interactions of normal life are necessary or at least somewhat unavoidable elements of practical existence, but they have nothing to do with the essence of my life or the deepest feelings in my heart. They merely exist, and I try to deal with them without being rude or unkind, but also without getting distracted from my fundamental concerns, which are related to truth and beauty, and which I share with those few individuals I have found through my spiritual life to be truly compatible with my thinking and priorities — these are my true and proper friends, and the only people whom I regard as more than just accidents of my existence. Most of these friends, in fact, are people long dead, usually centuries dead. But a currently living example joins the immortal group once in a blue moon.

5. Today, when I am among people who do not have the type of soul capable of seeing me, I am very comfortable with, or rather prefer, or even love, being invisible. 

I guess I always had some of this instinct, even as a child, but it was confused by feelings of insecurity and shame about being excluded or overlooked, as is typical of all unpopular or ill-fitting children. That is, I was always a natural loner and enjoyed being uninvolved with others most of the time, but I also had the typical fear of a young outsider, which is that perhaps others were ignoring me because I deserved to be ignored. Since I overcame that fear (see Item 2), however, I have learned to crave invisibility in most contexts; and on those occasions when I have been given a certain amount of attention from relative strangers, be it ever so flattering or pleasant, I have always recoiled from it in the end and returned to my natural “hiding” instincts. This explains why I have such a strong positive reaction, such a feeling of identity, with the final stanza of Stevie Smith’s poem “In My Dreams”:

In my dreams they are always waving their hands and saying goodbye,
And they give me the stirrup cup and I smile as I drink,
I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going,
I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don’t know what I think.

And it is why, likewise, I always respond with such profound joy at Kafka’s little moment of self-satisfaction in his diary:

“Don’t you want to join us?” I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. “No, I don’t,” I said.

6. I can appreciate and even love another human being precisely — and only — to the extent that I am able to feel, when I am with that person, that I am essentially still alone. 

The kind of human connection that ultimately matters to me is the kind that does not contradict or interfere with my loner’s nature. With such a soul, meaning with any person to the extent that he has that kind of soul, I am fully myself, without social masks or reservations, and can therefore be as sincere and generous toward that person as I am toward myself. By contrast, the moment any relationship gives me the feeling that I am no longer essentially alone, it becomes a conventional and unimportant relationship to me, as it distracts me (or soon will) from my true, higher being. 

7. I can be very pleasant, even generous, with those who cannot see me, as long as the relationship takes place while passing in opposite directions. 

An anecdote: I took a break from this writing to throw away a plastic food container. While at the recycling bin, I saw three students I have known here in Korea for a few years approaching from down the hall. I have taught all of them in multiple classes, so I know them well, and they are good students. The trio were on their way to the English department office as one of them needed to complete some obligatory paperwork related to her upcoming graduation. I chatted with them for a few minutes in the hall, asking each of them specific questions to personalize the conversation, making some friendly jokes that they would all understand and appreciate, and commenting on their plans for the near future. Then I “let them go” so they could proceed to the English office before lunchtime. I reflected, as I returned to my own office, that my ability to chat so easily with these people in spite of being busy with my own thoughts was partly due to the fact that I knew the conversation would be brief — we began with a unspoken contract in which we all agreed that a brief conversation would be enough. They would be happy to have had a bit of friendly contact with a professor they liked who will not teach them anymore, and I would be happy to have had a chance to finish off a teaching relationship of a few years in a pleasant and encouraging way. They were going their way, and I was going mine. In this condition, putting on my social mask was easy, and not unpleasant. The problem with partial or inherently temporary relationships, for me, arises primarily in situations in which I feel more intractably embedded in the situation than the relationship properly requires, according to the principles expressed in Items 2 through 6. Good-naturedly going in opposite directions, like friendly neighbors passing with a smile and a kind hello in the street, is just the right amount of conventional social contact for me — I neither need nor wish for one minute more, but when no more is demanded, then I am quite able to enjoy the moment, and also to give enjoyment, without any disappointment or resentment.

8. The “philosopher’s garden” is not a theoretical concept or historical description for me, but rather an exact explanation of the meaning of intimacy.

Intimacy in the deepest sense, the connection of souls that see each other clearly and share an essential wish and dream together, means this: a permanent conversation that is so limitless and desirable for its own sake that it becomes inseparable from each participant’s picture of himself, or from his definition of his own life. In self-protectiveness and natural reserve, the thinking loner tends to fear that a feeling of essential attachment indicates some sort of weakness on his part, as though one ought to care about a book or idea first, and about sharing this good thing with another only second. But one may gradually begin to understand that such a connection entails no weakness at all, but rather the fertile context in which one’s enthusiasm for those very books and ideas grows and blossoms most fully and healthily, like plants in a garden with the most devoted and energetic caretakers. This is what intimacy essentially means, and many of the greatest ideas and beauties that humans as humans have ever achieved grew out of just this sort of soil, at the hands of these sorts of gardeners. True gardeners = true friends = separate bodies living together as one soul. Friendship, understood in this profound way, as the highest and therefore defining good of the specifically human aspect of our being, is the missing concept in all modern moral theory, and, by contrast, the sine qua non or apex of all ancient moral theory. In our supposed philosophic and scientific progress or civilizational advance, we have all but lost our awareness of the virtue that Plato and Aristotle identified as the pivotal term in human actualization, the spiritual bridge beyond our materially limited selves and toward the divine aspect of our nature — the most natural conduit or pathway from our higher potentiality to its defining actuality.

9. At this point in my life, I know what I am well enough to know what the people I care about are too — often, I know what they are better than they know it themselves.

This is also part of the nature of being a teacher in the truest sense. Listen carefully to both Apollodorus and Alcibiades, at the beginning and end of The Symposium, respectively, talking about their relationship with Socrates, and you will understand this. They both feel that he sees right through them, and knows their nature better than they do. That is why “Apollodorus the Madman,” as he is dubbed among his Athenian acquaintances, is famous for mercilessly criticizing everyone, including himself, while exempting only Socrates, whom he follows faithfully. And it is why Alcibiades, who proves to be too weak for the highest life, fears and hates Socrates, who failed to convert him to philosophy, almost as much as he loves him, even to the point of admitting that he often wishes Socrates dead, while knowing at the same time that this loss would leave him more miserable than ever — knowing, that is, that losing Socrates would mean losing contact with the best part of himself.

10. The old saw that the best way to learn something is to teach it is not merely true for me, but an indispensable key to understanding who I am.

Perhaps paradoxically for a congenital loner, I must say that many of my most life-enhancing and indispensable insights have been attained through interaction with others, and especially through dialogue: as a response to challenging questions, or to sincerely expressed needs or pains, or to observations from others which seemed to call forth further developments in my own mind or to open out on themes I had not previously examined closely. I have often found the strength to dig deepest and most relentlessly when trying to help someone else find a buried treasure. The apparent paradox implied in this trait — the paradox of all natural teachers, I might dare to suggest — dissolves in the light of Items 6, 8, and 9, above. 


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