ahungerartist:

Recently, when in the midsts of the endless introspection that I tend to do, I recalled some conversations I used to have with a guy. I never got to know him too well, mostly because he took a shine to my then girlfriend and so I wasn’t too inclined to like him at the time. He had a web site where he put up some of his writing and I tried to find it recently, only to remember when searching that Geocities was long since dead. Fortunately, the Wayback Machine saved me. His account name, ‘inescapableennui,’ was fitting.

There was one essay he wrote comparing the life of Socrates and the titular character from Cool Hand Luke, a favorite film of mine.  I was going to post it here but because of the likely excoriation I’d face for revealing spoilers, I’ve edited it down some to remove the specifics but keep the general message. It’s not exactly ground-breaking but I think it’s pretty true, well said, and I find the last paragraph especially meaningful.

[…]

Humans are brought into this world in a state free of anxiety. An infant lives in a simplistic moment-to-moment stimulus/response type of world. Soon thereafter, with cerebral development, the first glimpses of language and rationale emerge. Thus begins a period of question asking that continues until death or aphasia. First questions involve a “what.” “What is that thing over there? It is a spoon.” Then comes the “how.” “How does that spoon work? Its rounded shape allows it to carry food.” Finally, there is the “why.” “Why was that spoon made? To serve the purpose of feeding.” Consequently, the questioner soon wonders, “What is my purpose?” Realizing that, at that moment, a spoon has more purpose than he does, this fictional questioner falls into a state of extreme anxiety. 

Anxiety differs from fear in that fear is directed towards one distinct idea or object, while anxiety is a generally vague, non-directed feeling of fear. For example, consider the act of purchasing a car by someone past the anxiety-crisis but before the construction of a belief system. Without a purpose provided by belief, the buyer has no grounding in which to make his decision of which car to buy. Eventually, because of his lack of a belief system, he must choose a car at random. A sense of unease results because there is a general feeling that this event is important and should require at least some justification beyond chance. Unease is exponentially increased when decisions involve one’s actual life and being. This is anxiety. 

Belief is thus utilized in the battle against anxiety by acting as a paradigm in making life choices. Note that this sense of anxiety is a negation of the Sartreian sense, which claims that the post-anxiety-crisis questioning causes even more anxiety than before because of emergent feelings of responsibility. Without intervention, every second of life after the anxiety-crisis is anxiety ridden. A belief system that is more all-encompassing than anxiety is needed to distract from one’s anxiety by giving purpose. “All-encompassing” refers to the quality of a belief that allows it to influence not only every action, but every thought as well. Socrates’ and Luke’s systems of virtue and nonconformity fit this definition perfectly. With Socratic virtue, every action is to be judged and rated according to its virtue. The most virtuous act is then chosen. Also, as Socrates’ discovered, even thought and speech must be rated on a scale of virtue as well. Given the enormous number of actions and thoughts, virtue-based philosophy admirably serves the purpose of combating anxiety. Lukean nonconformity similarly serves this purpose well. Nonconformity for Luke mainly takes the form of repeated escapes, disrespecting authority figures on both the inside and outside of prison walls, and refusing to accept a superior position in the prison hierarchy for himself. The great amount of energy, both physical and mental, required by nonconformity more than offsets life’s inherent preponderance of anxiety. 

[…]

[…] As Socrates’ says, “The most important thing is not life, but the good life.” Life in itself is not worthwhile, only living the good life justly and virtuously is of any worth. If the good life is the virtuous life, then the good life is also synonymous with the life that most efficiently distracts against anxiety. Yet, distraction is subjective, so each individual must choose the belief system that “fits” him best. The sociological factors that contribute to the decision to choose one particular system (perhaps a religious revelation or an injustice) are irrelevant; simply put by Luke, “A man’s got to go his own way sometimes.” […]

As each person encounters the anxiety-crisis, a belief system must be erected in order to overcome it. Consequently, the level of meaningfulness attributed to a belief is not based on the tenets of the belief itself, but the degree to which the belief reduces anxiety. In this simple inverse relationship, the stronger the belief, the more anxiety is reduced. However, knowledge of the latent purpose of this strong belief may weaken it, increasing anxiety. Conclusion: do not read this paper. Or, less elliptically stated, question your belief system and you will suffer the dreadful consequences!

I think of what causes anxiety for me and it is often because some system of beliefs is no longer tenable or reliable as I once thought, or that I find it difficult to mold reality in such a way that my beliefs can be validated. Beliefs that are not fully independent of environmental context can be dangerous to one’s self (and I have a few like that). The beauty of Socrates’ and Luke’s was their beliefs were independent of the actions of others (in the sense that they did not have to depend on someone else’s action to have their belief validated). They had full control and that makes them seem far more impenetrable and resilient. 

Incidentally, not so terribly long after writing that essay he ate a shotgun blast. I sometimes categorize his death as philosophical or existential suicide, though I think it’s difficult to judge accurately. His mother said he was depressed and that was the true problem, but if the source of such a depression was finding life inherently meaningless, what possible cure is there? It’s worth noting towards the end of his life he started heavily experimenting with drugs as a way of distraction. Did the drugs drive him to kill himself or was he driven to drugs because of a need to stop thinking about life as a pointless pursuit?  It’s different, I think, than those who follow that path but still could, in some scenario, find life worth living. Maybe it was something else, some chemical imbalance or other resolvable issue, I don’t know. I just know I’m glad that for all that I agree with a lot of what he wrote, unlike him those kinds of thought have not yet penetrated the illusion that life can be meaningful. His old LiveJournal has now been taken over by his family and it’s strange viewing all these posts from his mother about suicide prevention and missing David.

A parting poem from him:

When 

dung beetles

develop

deductive reasoning, 

they will 

think into existence 

tales and theories

that justify 

eating shit.