Reflections On The Human Condition
Hidden premise. — To envy is to resent another for having what you might have had instead. But this implies an assumption that you could have had what the other has, which you would only know if you had actually achieved it yourself, in which case you would have no reason to envy. Hence, envy is, among other things, a convenient veil of indignation to hide an uncomfortable combination of presumptuousness and doubt concerning one’s own worth and abilities. We see, then, how egalitarian progressivism, in all its variants, is the philosophy of envy.
Loneliness. — To fear being alone is to fear being alive. This is not to imply that life should not be frightening, but rather that those who are least susceptible to loneliness are the most courageous.
Dying alone. — Everyone fears dying alone. And yet we all die alone. Perhaps we could overcome our dread of this universal fate if we were able to imagine, and to really consider, what it would be like, in the hour of our final reconciliation and letting go, to be smothered in small talk. Or worse, in others’ tears; to see oneself, in one’s final moments of self-awareness, as the star of a kitsch vignette.
Real conditional. — “What would you do if you knew you had only one day to live?” we ask, with the breezy, hypothetical air of the unreal conditional. One ought rather to ask, “What would you do if you could accept the reality of this very moment, which is that you might have only one day to live — or even less for all you know?” Even better: “What would I do if I could accept this reality?”
Two steps. — 1. Find the thing you would do for no remuneration or reward, the thing you would do even if no one knew and appreciated you for it, the thing you would do even if everyone despised, suspected, or mocked you for it, the thing you would do even if it caused you great suffering and confusion, even if you knew it would cause you suffering and confusion, even if it were too difficult for you and you lacked the time and energy to do it as well as you wished. 2. Do that.
Well-schooled. — I meet young people all the time who tell me with matter-of-fact self-satisfaction, or at best a mild, joking self-reproach, that they spend eight hours per day playing games, scrolling on their phones, or watching the videos of strangers. Each year, then, they cede one hundred and twenty-one days to passivity. Imagine being twenty-two years old and spending four months merely allowing one’s immediate environment to wash over one with neither an ounce of resistance nor a moment’s doubt or discernment. That is the kind of behavior we would expect from one suffering with a debilitating longterm illness! And so…we should not be surprised.
