Schopenhauer's Ennui: Part V

At the end of the time of humankind, the last person prepared to die.

All those before her, having done all they could, made the choice to die of boredom.

She was alone.

Without form, for she had abandoned it aeons ago, she was the very idea of herself. Limitless, it seemed, as she could be anywhere and everywhere in her universe, both at one and at once.

By the age of stars, she had lived an eternity.

She knew all that she could know, and had felt everything there was to touch. She had loved all that there was to love, and had lost more than she could bear.

However, life it seemed, had nothing but a sense of occasion. She made two people, fresh with no knowledge, and set them upon a world.

Someone to say goodbye to, she supposed.

Bewildered and scared, they clung to each other. And as she looked down upon them, she saw that they were quite wonderful.

They looked up to their creator and cried;

"Why are we here?"

"Oh, no real reason." She replied.

"But, what then, should we do?"

"You can do whatever you like, my dears"

The pair looked at each other, then looked around, in awe of their small world. They found that it was good.

But it was not good enough. Like an itch, they had to know more of her;

"There has to be a reason why you made us. We demand that you tell us now!"

She smiled down upon them, pleased that she had created something good. As she died, she said;

"Just, be beautiful."

A truth according to me

or Schopenhauer's Ennui: Part IV

There are no Gods. Of this I'm quite sure. Without our beloved deities, we find ourselves lost in a vast, cold universe.

We were made in the image of it. Both random and insignificant. Yet we evolved to think of ourselves individually and wholly significant, if only to ourselves. And thus, we engage in the grandest delusion of all.

We see patterns and significance in all that we survey. Yet we are no more meaningful than the meanings we observe.

So, we search for truth, and the nature of things; hoping that we find truth to be real enough, so that we might anchor ourselves to it. But in these truths we find no absolute. Each one leads us inexorably, to the search for the next.

And as we seek, we do so from our individual vantage points. Separate from the very thing we observe.

From time to time, this search leads us to beauty. When it does, we sit in awe of it, unable to fully comprehend why we might feel this way. In these brief moments, we are without ourselves. We shift closer to the truth of it all; That we are no more separate from the universe, than a leaf is to a tree.

Schopenhauer's Ennui: Part III

Sometimes I wonder what our lives would be like without children.

I imagine it being full of opposites; Peace and parties, lie in's and late nights, spare time and disposable income. I swear, we'd have the life of Riley. I'd have a small, classic sports car. Miche would have her horse stabled in the back garden. Perhaps I'd have the time to dress well. If I managed to do this, we may finally join the ranks of the beautiful. Our weekend time could be spent shopping with them. My wife could help me to learn how to "look the part".

Perhaps we'd be happy. Though something tells me I'd be a bit bored. There's only so many boutiques and home decor stores one can explore.

In real life, I'm lucky to share my spare time with 2-5 year olds. If you could call it 'spare'. They mop up time like dry sponges. And it doesn't come without its tribulations either. I tell you, my feet are aching from running around / with / after them today. I'm off work this week, apparently taking it easy. Yeah, right.

Let me list today's antics for you;

7:00 - Get up. Sort two breakfasts, 1 glass of milk, a colouring book, find model airplane, play with model airplane

8:10 - Shower, shave, dress

8:14 - Eat bread

8:20 - Dress two children on the move

8:30 - Pack car with lunch bags, reading bag, drink flasks & buggy

8:40 - Set of for schools

8:50 - Drop Miche & Meg off

9:00 - Drop Dom off at play group

9:10 - Shops for bread, milk, fruit etc

9:35 - Home. Tidy said home

10:35 - Sit down. Email, blog, news etc

11:40 - Set off to pick Dom up

12:00 - Pick small child up and drive to nearest beach as it's a beautiful day (eat lunch on way)

12:30 - Arrive at beach, set up camp and start exploring dunes etc

14:30 - Set off home

15:00 - Pick up Meg & Miche from school

15:30 - De-weed back garden (desperate - been put off far too long)

16:00 - Badgered by Meg into going to garden centre to buy Pink flowers to plant (apparently having none is a travesty)

16:45 - Plant pink flowers in garden.

17:00 - Tea ready. Cajole two kids into eating something decent.

17:30 - Kids TV == a sit down

18:00 - Baths, play, fighting over bath toys, tears and soap in eyes

18:30 - Jamas, books, milk. Tired arguments over who's blanket is best.

19:00 - Cook dinner whilst kids being put to bed

19:50 - Eat dinner

20:15 - Sod dishes. Boot up lap top. Sauvingnon Blanc.

Hello.

I don't remember days off being this frantic in the distant pre-sprog days. So why the hell do we do it? Why have we put ourselves through this assault course of a life?

There are myriad reasons. Not least the primordial urge to procreate.

For me, perhaps its the white hot excitement that my children exude that keeps me feeling alive. Buzzing. Connected, you might say.

Today, seaweed and rocks have been awe inspiring. The way compost feels like poo has been hilarious. Pink has become all important and blankets are worth fighting over.

Long may this last. Though I worry that it won't.

I worry that our western educational priorities are mis-balanced. Things are now 'outcomes focused'. In order to increase GDP and per-capita productivity, we focus on give our children the skills and knowledge they need to thrive in the world 'marketplace'. We teach them important stuff like mathematics, physics, human biology, geography and basic literacy. Stuff that can be directly linked to good productivity. We monitor and grade them incessantly. Our children are embarking within a career within this system.

In doing so, we risk stifling this awe of the little things.

Now, there are ample opportunities for numinous experience in physics and geography of course. Plenty of things to say wow and cool at.

However, we need to learn the vocabulary to describe these experiences more fully, so that we may understand them better, and keep hold of a sense of wellbeing. We also need to develop an emotional fluency that allows us to appreciate ourselves and those around us.

These things for me, are best learned through art and creative expression - Music, Visual Arts, English, Drama, Dance and so on. In our target driven world though, these are the very things that are being squeezed out. They're left dangling as an afterthought on the edge of the curriculum. Starved of funding.

Now, we may raise our generation of literate, confident and numerate business people. We may lead the world once more. In doing so however, we should prepare ourselves for the tide of ever increasing depression, when our golden generation forgets how to say that sand is quite cool.

Schopenhauer's Ennui: Part II

Market forces have their place. Given a limited supply and a coupling with high demand, the price one pays for consumable pleasure goes up. Thankfully, our kids like mince and turn their noses up at rump steak; too chewy apparently.

For the consumer, one-way entertainment like TV doesn't conform to these market forces. Quite the opposite in fact. When TV is consumed at a high rate, its availability increases. Thus its cost, in terms of convenience, reduces.

Take soap operas for example. As we discussed the other evening, the UK public spoke clearly to Rupert Murdock when we told him that we like soap operas. Lots of them, and repeated regularly thankyouverymuch. So, we we're given it.

The net effect of this model unfortunately, is a homogenisation of output. Programming that pleases the majority within a standard deviation of the mean, gets priority. Programming that's slightly esoteric, cerebral and/or 'artistic' gets squeezed out.

That said, we do have our BBC, funded through a bastardised tax. Surely this venerable institution isn't subject to these ravages? It seems not. In an effort to retain market share, our broadcasting gem has bought in. After all, the easiest way to validate its mandate to the public is to demonstrate a high market share.

It should be said however, that my BBC has resisted this banal feedback loop with Radio 4. This remains, for me at least, the jewel in its stuffy crown.

Now, I've gone on quite enough for one night. So, to sum up the beginnings of my argument let me say this; I believe that human expression and artistic endeavour will ultimately liberate us from our existential plight.

I also believe that homogenisation stands in our way.

Matt over at Far Traveller asks us to play an interesting game; Think of yourself as an alien and ask questions of your earthly partner. I imagine my alien persona asking Louie, how the human race sees itself answering the "What now?" problem that follows our inevitable pointlessness epiphany.

I believe the answer rests in understanding beauty.

More on this another night.

Schopenhauer's Ennui

Monday nights on UK Terrestrial TV are bleak. If so minded, you can muffle your brain with back to back soap operas from 6:30 right through till 9:00. If one ventures into the multi-channel digital kingdom, you can enjoy these melodramatic effusions 24/7.

There was a time when this wasn't so. Back in the dark ages, when we had only three channels to choose from, scheduling was more balanced. The nation would tune in to Coronation Street at 7:30 one evening a week. It was an occasion, you could say.

Then along came Murdock with his Sky empire. He liberated us from our desperate, parochial lives. Now, we chose what to watch and when to watch it. The customer was in control.

Yet, to get our passes to this wonderland, we had to make a Faustian pact. In return for limitless choice, we attached our magic digi-boxes to the Sky mothership. Each night, as we slept soundly in our beds, the magic boxes phoned home and shared our viewing with Murdock and his minions.

Murdock listened well, and what he heard pleased him. He found that we prefer not to think. Given the choice, the majority of us opt to consume programming that's easy on the brain. Programming like reality TV, sitcoms and soap operas.

So, he gave us more of it, and we watched more of it. So he showed us it again, and we watched it again, and again, and again. He'd hit upon a magic formula;

1) Buy cheap & easy TV, repeat it ad-nauseum
2) The masses consume it, along with the bundled advertising
3) Profit
4) Rinse & Repeat

More on this later...