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Weil on oppression

In her 1934 essay, “Analysis of Oppression,” the earliest in a series of political essays, the twentieth-century French philosopher Simone Weil touches upon the state of nature as a vital insight into the nature of human beings in society. Oppression is such a fundamental aspect of social relations that Weil does not stop short at the conclusion of Marx that oppression is intrinsic to material conditions and means of production. Weil sees oppression as a more profound human expression engendered by more specific conditions than contemporary labor or production. She criticizes the Marxian position as one of “correspondence.”

Weil notes that the idea that the function creates the organ is an idea of Lamarck, an outdated notion of biology. Darwin replaced “correspondence” with the notion of conditions of existence. Function is not a cause but the result. The evolution of anything social is essentially derived from each person as he or she is, individually, whether temperament, education, custom, bias, activities, in short in human nature. Weil argues that the conditions of existence, both the natural environment and the contrived social environment with its tools, equipment, and form of social organization, already dispose the individual. And if each individual enters an existing social context and its material means and conditions, the spectrum of oppression, always accompanying (as in Lamarck), is always a condition of human society.

The most primitive economy reflects Rousseau’s original state of nature. Though Weil never mentions Rousseau, the primitive state may thus be projected as far as material conditions. In this social organization, the level of production is extremely low or limited, with each person attempting to sustain himself individually or as a nuclear unit o a family. The division of labor is based on sex. Each family produces essentially what it requires for existence, probably no more, subject to environment and nature. There is no oppression because there is, strictly speaking, no social organization. Aggression, violence, and war consist of pillage or extermination, not conquest or occupation, which cannot be consolidated given the necessities of survival. Paralleling animals, the need for observation, intuition, and mastery of technique, occupy each individual’s every effort, excluding complex social organization.

As Weil puts it, “At this stage, each man is necessarily free with respect to other men, because he is in direct contact with the conditions of his own existence, and because nothing human interposes itself between them and him.” Weil notes that in primitive conditions, nature is divinized as all-powerful and determining. At this stage, the relationship to environment is the only form of servitude.

The development out of primitive economy is itself the replacement of nature as compelling force by other human beings. The force exerted by the compellers or oppressors is oppression itself. Power or force, exerted on the part of some over others, parallels the compulsion by the force which is nature and environment, but another factor advantages the oppressors, namely privilege. Power consolidates all of the mechanisms of oppression: inequality, authority, monopoly. The oppressor essentially intervenes in the life of the primitive man, the ordinary man simply exercising the effort to live and work. Intervention terminates independence, autonomy, and equality. As nature’s divinized power wanes and the oppressors’ power replaces it, the oppressors divinize their privilege. Weil elaborates:

“This is what happens to begin with when the religious rites by which man thinks to win nature over to his side, having become too numerous and complicated to be known by all, finally become the secret and consequently the monopoly of a few priests; the priest then disposes, albeit only through a fiction, of all of nature’s powers, and it is in their name that he exercises authority. Nothing essential is changed when this monopoly is no longer made up of rites but of scientific processes, and when those in possession of it are called scientists and technicians instead of priests.”

At this point, then, the evolution of human society begins. Social structure and history take off. As soon as this point is reached, too, the trajectory is established: the dominance of the few over the many, regardless of geography, culture, or era. The question then becomes how humanity can extricate itself from this apparently inevitable dilemma. For the sake of speculation about the state of nature the question asks how the individual, let alone the masses, can return to a state of equality and industry that is without oppression, a status of tolerance at a minimum, peace and stability at most. Centuries of history have failed to provide a mechanism for alleviating oppression, and, indeed, oppression grows more acute in time as both man and nature have become oppressors. Weil concludes that oppression seems intrinsic to society. “It would seem that man is born a slave, and that servitude is his natural condition.”

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Self-effacement

Self-effacement is presented by standard dictionaries as the disposition of a withdrawn personality lacking self-assertion or social sensibility. To not take initiative and stake out one’s ego, even in an ephemeral situation, is seen as a character flaw, a lack of personality, or more serious on the spectrum of social disorders.

This notion of self-effacement is quickly refuted in the anecdotes of historical hermits.

Self-effacement was a virtue among historical hermits, not because it was a useful device for dropping out of situations but because it was a reflection of a deeper philosophy of living, wherein helping others was not to be taken as a credit or exception, and withdrawal not to be taken as a weakness but strength, transcending the momentary.The project of the historical hermit required a declining of the worldly, tacitly expressed in self-effacement.

Some of the best anecdotes about self-effacement will illustrate the virtue, in a way that is startling to the modern observer. The stories break down false perceptions. Because so many sayings and anecdotes were gathered about the Christian desert hermits, here are three representative anecdotes. (The names of the characters are, for now, omitted as distracting.)

1. A chatty theologian came to visit a famous old hermit and elaborated on many theological fine-points. The hermit remained silent, so that the miffed theologian left, commenting to the old man’s assistant that the hermit had said so little. The assistant asked him to wait. He went in to the old hermit and explained how the theologian was offended. The hermit replied that the theologian was talking about subjects the hermit knew nothing about. “I only know about the passions of the soul,” he explained. The assistant went back to the theologian and explained the hermit’s response. The theologian went back in, spent the rest of the visit listening to the old hermit’s wisdom, and went away edified.

2. A bishop having heard of a famous old hermit was eager to visit him and showed up one day. He chattered about his work and his ecclesiastical responsibilities. He made personal observations. The hermit was largely silent. The bishop noticed and was ready to leave. He asked the hermit for some parting advice. The hermit looked at the bishop and said, “You ask my advice. Then, please heed it. Never come here again. You will return to your city and speak freely about me, and I will be inundated with visitors, and so I will have to leave this place, my home, and go further into the desert.”

3. The hermits in the desert lived in individual huts, cells, or cottages, within proximity of one another, coming together once a week for religious services. One Sunday, the hermits were all assembled, listening to a visiting priest (who had probably heard confessions). The priest announced that a certain Brother So-and-So must leave the assembly immediately because he was a sinner. The young man, shamefaced, did so. At that moment, an austere old hermit with long gray beard, most esteemed, stood up and began to make his way out of the assembly. “Wait, Abba!” cried the priest. “Where are you going?” The old hermit turned back half-way. “I, too, am a sinner,” he said quietly.

These stories represent different and refreshing ways of viewing self-effacement. Silence is a form of withdrawal, tacit disapproval. Perhaps the silent hermit of the first story seems “passive-aggressive.” He does not complain but replies to bad behavior with silence. One can imagine his assistant knowing this routine and absorbing the burden of the chatty theologian’s annoying presence.

In the second story, the hermit is more bold, saying exactly what is wrong with the bishop’s behavior. The hermit safeguards his solitude, his spiritual priorities, and has little sympathy for or interest in the worldly responsibilities of the bishop. Thomas Merton once quipped that the desert hermits were so successful because the bishops were far away.

In the third story, self-effacement is intrinsic to the old hermit’s spirituality, and he protects the young brother’s opportunity to remedy his life and make progress, while this solution does not occur to the visiting priest, invoking the authoritarian solution of humiliation. The old hermit, further, protects the solidarity of the hermits in general, who are dedicated to helping one another, not ostracizing any who makes an effort.

In this regard is a short anecdote about a young brother who comes to a wise old hermit and confides his troubles, plagued by certain thoughts for the last thirty days. “You have been plagued by these thoughts for thirty days?” says the old hermit. “I have been plagued by such thoughts for the last thirty years!” The hermits were humble, realistic, and dogged in their pursuit of virtue. Why, then, should they put down another?

One of the great desert hermits was Moses, a black man who had been a robber, knew the world well, and then came to spirituality, becoming a hermit. Moses is famous for his cogent advice to a young brother who asked what to do about thoughts. Moses said, “Go to your cell and stay there, and your cell will teach you everything.”

In a further anecdote about Moses, self-effacement is again expressed as a method of guarding solitude. It happened that he was out walking near a crossroads. A party of pilgrims approached. They asked eagerly for the cell of Moses. Moses replied, “Why do want to see the cell of that old fool?” But the pilgrims insisted on knowing the whereabouts of the cell of Moses. “In that direction,” said Moses, pointing exactly in the opposite direction of his cell.

Something piquant about these stories suggests that the desert hermits were no fools. The hagiography of Athanasius, filled with monsters and demons, does not ring well with the quiet persistence and psychology of the hermits. Similarly, the salacious hermit portraits of Flaubert and Anatole France entirely miss the strength of spirituality and self-effacement that is authentically reprinted in the desert hermit sayings.The tales are for modern mentalities.

A wonderful and literal story of self-effacement is to be found in Kamo no Chomei’s Hosshinshu, a collection of hermit stories from twelfth-century Japan. For many years, a brilliant instructor of novices had taught at a particular temple, garnering great repute and many disciples. But the old teacher longed for the solitary life, and one day he retired, disappearing from the temple and the city. Years passed. One day a man was traveling to a distant province. He had been the teacher’s disciple many years before. The man came to a wide river. He could not pass, for there was no bridge, but others lingering on the shore informed him that a ferryman would escort them all across momentarily. The ferryman appeared. The traveler looked up. The ferryman was his old teacher. Tears welled in his eyes. He wanted to say something. They had eye contact, just for a moment. The teacher acknowledged nothing. The travelers entered the ferry, the traveler of the story sitting at the fore of the boat in order not to see his teacher, and not to be seen with tears in his eyes. At last, they reached the other shore, and the traveler walked on, continuing his journey. Two months passed when the traveler made the return trip. He came to the same river, but another ferryman was working there. The traveler asked other travelers about the ferryman he remembered, describing him. “Oh,” they replied. “About two months ago, he abruptly left. We have never seen him again.”

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Spengler’s hermits

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) considered historiography as a morphology, like the biologist studying an organism, from birth to maturation to eventual decline and death. This trajectory does not necessarily represent a circle, like that proposed by the historian Giambattista Vico (1688-1744), or the eternal recurrence proposed by the philosopher Nietzsche. In biology, the same entity does not return, but a new entity is generated. At the same time, study of the entity is examined for its form and structure, while Spengler refrained (or presumed to refrain) from examining its function. The latter exercise would presume a valuation, an opinion about the value of the culture and its values and ideas. Of course, the whole exercise suggests a valuation of the cultures Spengler examines, but his goal is ostensibly to demonstrate a process, a biological process. The inevitability of this process, applied by Spengler to the Western world, is grounded in the morphological analogy.

The theme of Spengler’s Decline of the West is that the institutions and values of the West had proven not sempiternal but moribund, that the process of decay and collapse dissipated the strength of the West, leading not only to internecine conflict of states and potentates but within the fabric of power and culture itself. The result would be slow or precipitous, depending on events and on one’s vantage point, but inexorable.

Spengler perceives this process in numerous and representative examples and historical instances, contrasting ancient and classical forms of thought, contrasting the West and other civilizations, wherein the universe is given as being, and the restless morphological processess and sheer movement (social, technological, etc.) connote only “becoming.” Thus:

In the world as seen by the Faustian’s [i.e., Western] eyes, everything is motion with an aim. He himself lives only under that condition, for to him life means struggling, overcoming, winning through. The struggle for existence as ideal form of existence is implicit …

To Spengler, even the Western religious orders, presumably originating with the goal of providing paternal stability in religious practice, are “movements” not orders, in sharp contrast to what Spengler calls the “askesis of the early-Christian hermit.” Askesis is asceticism, the hallmark of the hermits. Spengler sees the stability of the hermits in terms of identification with “being.” In contrast, the rush of war and acquisition in greater society, and the spinning of elaborate dogmas and religious privileges among churchmen, reflect “becoming.” The process of becoming accelerates the morphological process, planting the seed of self-demise. Asceticism means “being.”

The moral collapse of the medieval monasteries (among other events), engendered the mystics as alternatives, among them hermits being prominent. But the late Middle Ages were too late to recover the simple and stolid askesis of the past. The reform movements within and outside of the Church were not restorative but self-destructive.

But the last reformers, too, the Luthers and Savonarolas, were urban monks, and this differentiates them profoundly from the Joachims and the Bernards. Their intellectual and urban askesis is the stepping-stone from the hermitages of quiet valleys to the scholar’s study of the Baroque.

Part of this dissolution of institutional religion in the West, Spengler maintains, was due to the priesthood itself, turned to hollowed form and superficial function. The ancient spirituality bound up in what he calls the Magian, its shamanistic and ascetic character, was lost: “the priest of true Magian cast is the monk and the hermit, and becomes more and more so, while the secular clergy steadily loses in symbolic significance.” Thus, over time, the religious function devolves into an irrelevance to the world’s circles of power and authority. “The religious man will always try in vain, catechism in hand, to improve the instincts of his political environment. But it goes on its way undisturbed and leaves him to his thoughts. The saint can only choose between adapting himself to this environment -— and then he becomes a Church politician and conscienceless -— and fleeing from it into a hermitage or even into the Beyond.”

With the devolution of the West, in a process witnessed many times before in other world civilizations, war and struggle for power lay waste the earth, and the masses are thrown into despair, until the end. Even then, Spengler notes, the triumph of the hermits endures.

There, in the souls, world-peace, the peace of God, the bliss of grey-haired monks and hermits, is become actual -— and there alone. It has awakened that depth in the endurance of suffering which the historical man in the thousand years of his development has never known. Only with the end of grand History does holy, still Being reappear. It is a drama noble in its aimlessness, noble and aimless as the course of the stars, the rotation of the earth, and alternance of land and sea, of ice and virgin forest upon its face. We may marvel at it or we may lament it -— but it is there.

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Swedenborg’s hermit

One of the more colorful theological figures of the eighteenth century is Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). In an era of rationalism and the exhaustion of wars of religion in he West, Swedenborg revived and extended mystic thought. Not mysticism as medieval figures like the thoughtful Meister Eckhart or the spiritual Richard Rolle or Julian of Norwich may have pursued it. The tradition of cautious theological speculation and heartfelt religious emotion were dissipated. Swedenborg revives the imagery of Jacob Boehme, assured of its literal descriptions of God and angels, heaven and hell. Nor here the modesty of St. Paul telling the Corinthians of being rapt to heaven: “I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—-whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person—-whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—-was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” Pau dared not relate details, whether he wanted to or not, feeling humbled. On the other hand, Swedenborg tells of revelations and intricate detail. He propels the literalism and imagination of later theosophy and its variants, as much as in literal Christianity in evangelical and prophetic modes.

As an illustration of the mysticism of imagination: In Three Principles, the early modern mystic Jacob Boehme is eager to reveal the seven properties of nature, the first being Saturn: “The First property is a desirousness, like that of a magnet, namely, the compression of the will; the will desires to be something,and yet it has nothing of which it may make something to itself; and therefore it brings itself into a receivingness of itself, and compresses itself to something; and that something is nothing but a magnetical hunger, a harshness, like a hardness, whence even hardness, cold, and substance arise.” Similarly described are the other six properties: 2. Mercury, 3. Mars, 4. the Sun, 5. Venus, 6. Jupiter, and 7. The Moon. Each planet is linked to property (hardness, light, fire, noise, cold, etc.) and thence to a human disposition. “Now these are the seven properties in one only ground; and all seven are equally eternal without beginning; none of them can be accounted the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or last; for they are equally eternal without beginning, and have also one eternal beginning from the Unity of God.”

In Boehme’s footsteps, then, follows Swedenborg with the ambitiously-titled The Earthlike Bodies Called Planets
in Our Solar System and
in Deep Space, their Inhabitants,
 and
the Spirits and Angels. In this book, the intimate knowledge Swedenborg reveals is the result of neither insight nor imagination but privilege: “Buy the Lord’s divine mercy the deeper levels within me, which belong 1 to my spirit, have been opened, enabling me to talk with spirits and angels—not only those near our world, but also those close to other planets. Because I have had a longing to know whether there are other worlds, what they are like, and what their inhabitants are like, the Lord has granted me opportunities to talk and interact with spirits and angels from other planets.”

Like Boehme and Swedenborg, Helena Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, pursues the same interest in planets in her Secret Doctrine, where she presents seven planets as constituting a “planetary chain,” though some planets are downgraded and others prioritized in her system. She significantly sophisticates the epistemological sources by appealing to ancient documents.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in this essay “Swedenborg; or The Mystic,” in Representative Men: Seven Lectures, described Swedenborg as a colossal, an adherent of science and technology, but whose personal beliefs classed him “a visionary and elixir of moonbeams.” Swedenborg meticulously describes heaven and hell, the social atmosphere of quiet conviviality, and the forlornness of hell. As an example, he records: “As for angels being human forms, or people, this I have seen thousands of times. I have talked with them
 face to face, sometimes with just one, sometimes with several in a group,
and as far as their form is concerned, I have seen in them nothing different from that of a human being. At times I have felt surprised that they were like this; and to prevent it being said that this was some illusion or hallucination, I have been allowed to see them while I was fully awake, or while I was in full possession of my physical senses and in a state of clear perception.”

Here are other random citations to illustrate both the detail and the confidence of Swedenborg:

I have often been allowed to see this [different levels of heaven and different manifestations of beings]when I was in the spirit and therefore out of body and in the company of angels. … Several times I have been allowed to see that each community of heaven reflects a single individual and is in the likeness of a human being as well.

The earliest ones, who were heavenly people, did their thinking from correspondence like angels, so they could even talk with angels. Further, the Lord was quite often visible to them, and taught them. Nowadays, though, this knowledge has been so completely lost that people do not know what correspondence is.

People living in their organs: “People who are in the head, of the universal human that is heaven are supremely involved in everything good. In fact, they are in love, peace, innocence, wisdom, intelligence, and therefore in delight and happiness. These flow into the head and into the components of the head in us, and correspond to them. People who are in the chest of the universal human that is heaven are involved in the qualities of thoughtfulness and faith, and also flow into our chests and correspond to them. However, people who are in the groin of the universal human or heaven and in the organs dedicated to reproduction are in marriage love. People who are in the feet are in the outermost heaven, which is called “natural-spiritual good.” People who are in the arms and hands are in the power of what is true because of what is good. People who are in the eyes are in understanding; people who are in the ears are in attentiveness and obedience; people who are in the nostrils are in perception; people in the mouth and tongue in conversing from discernment and perception. People who are in the kidneys are in truth that probes and discriminates and purifies; people in the liver, pancreas, and spleen are in various aspects of purification of what is good and true; and so on. They flow into the like parts of the human being and correspond to them.”

[A form of spiritual materialism inevitably troubling literalism, re angels’ appliances, clothing, housing, re housing]: “Whenever I have talked with angels face to face, I have been with them in their houses. Their houses were just like the houses on earth that we call homes, but more beautiful. They have chambers, suites, and bedrooms in abundance, and courtyards with gardens, flower beds, and lawns around them. Where there is some concentration of people, the houses are adjoining, one near another, arranged in the form of a city with streets and lanes and public squares, just like the ones we see in cit- ies on our earth. I have been allowed to stroll along them and look around wherever I wished, at times entering people’s homes.”

Here quoted in full are two entries from the 1957 Book of Imaginary Beings, by Jorge Luis Borges, the first essay titled “Swedenborg’s Angels,” the second “Swedenborg’s Devils.” Borges is amused by Swedenborg’s imagination, as he is by esoteric thought like that of gnostics and theosophists, and writes with wry wit.

Swedenborg’s Angels
For the last twenty-five years of his studious life, the eminent philosopher and man of science Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) resided in London. But as the English are not very talkative, he fell into the habit of conversing with devils and Angels. God granted him the privilege of visiting the Other World and of entering into the lives of its inhabitants. Christ had said that souls, in order to be admitted into Heaven, must be righteous. Swedenborg added that they must also be intelligent; later on Blake stipulated that they should be artists and poets. Swedenborg’s Angels are those souls who have chosen Heaven. They need no words; it is enough that an Angel only think of another in order to have him at his side. Two people who have loved each other on earth become a single Angel. Their world is ruled by love; every Angel is a Heaven. Their shape is that of a perfect human being; Heaven’s shape is the same. The Angels, in whatever direction they look —- north, east, south, or west — are always face to face with God. They are, above all, divines; their chief delight lies in prayer and in the unraveling of theological problems. Earthly things are but emblems of heavenly things. The sun stands for the godhead. In Heaven there is no time; the appearance of things changes according to moods. The Angels’ garments shine according to their intelligence. The souls of the rich are richer than the souls of the poor, since the rich are accustomed to wealth. In Heaven, all objects, furniture, and cities are more physical and more complex than those of our earth; colors are more varied and splendid. Angels of English stock show a tendency to politics; Jews to the sale of trinkets; Germans tote bulky volumes which they consult before venturing an answer. Since Muslims venerate Mohammad, God has provided them with an Angel who impersonates the Prophet. The poor in spirit and hermits are denied the pleasures of Heaven, for they would be unable to enjoy them.

Swedenborg’s Devils
In the works of the famous eighteenth-century Swedish visionary, we read that Devils, like angels, are not a species apart but derive from the human race. They are individuals who after death choose Hell. There, in that region of marshlands, of desert wastes, of tangled forests, of towns leveled by fire, of brothels, and of gloomy dens, they feel no special happiness, but in Heaven they would be far unhappier still. Occasionally, a ray of heavenly light falls on them from on high; the Devils feel it as a burning, a scorching, and it reaches their nostrils as a stench. Each thinks himself handsome, but many have the faces of beasts or have shapeless lumps of flesh where faces should be; others are faceless. They live in a state of mutual hatred and of armed violence, and if they come together it is for the purpose of plotting against one another or of destroying each other. God has forbidden men and angels to draw a map of Hell, but we know that its general outline follows that of a Devil, just as the outline of Heaven follows that of an angel. The most vile and loathsome Hells lie to the west.

In a prologue titled “Emanuel Swedenborg, Mystical Works” Borges summarizes the hermit in Swedenborg thusly:

“Like the Buddha, Swedenborg rejected asceticism, which impoverishes and can destroy men. Within the boundaries of Heaven, he saw a hermit who had sought to win admittance there and had spent his mortal life in solitude and the desert. Having reached his goal, this fortunate man discov­ered that he was unable to follow the conversation of the angels or fathom the complexities of paradise. Finally, he was allowed to project around him­self a hallucinatory image of the wilderness. There he remains, as he was on earth, in self-mortification and prayer, but without the hope of ever reach­ing heaven.”

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Solitude survey

A series of related items on the topic of solitude is presented in the blog of Psychology Today. The chief article is titled “Motivations for Solitude Explain Why Loners Love Being Alone: A new 14-item questionnaire gauges various motivations for seeking solitude.” This item presents an important source from the January 2019 issue of the Journal of Adolescence, where the survey was first presented. The survey asks adolescents taking the survey: “When I spend time alone, I do so because…” with the response on a continuum between “not at all important or relevant” to “extremely important and relevant.”

1. It sparks my creativity.

2. I enjoy the quiet.

3. Being alone helps me get in touch with my spirituality.

4. It helps me stay in touch with my feelings.
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5. I value the privacy.

6. I can engage in activities that really interest me.

7. It helps me gain insight into why I do the things I do.

8. I feel energized when I spend time by myself.

9. I feel anxious when I’m with others.

10. I don’t feel liked when I’m with others.

11. I can’t be myself around others.

12. I regret things I say or do when I’m with others.

13. I feel uncomfortable when I’m with others.

14. I feel like I don’t belong when I’m with others.

URL: Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201904/motivations-solitude-explain-why-loners-love-being-alone;
Journal of Adolescence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30472399

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Metaphors

In their classic book Metaphors We Live By (2003), the scholars George Lakoff and Mark Johnson sought to demonstrate that most human speech is expressed as metaphor. Anthropologically, nature is confronted as menacing and mysterious, a source of danger, hostile and threatening, in short, Other. Specifically in the West, nature was disparaged as a force to be tamed, subordinated to the whim of human beings. With the passage of time, gentler forms of nature were accepted if processed as metaphor, especially in literature: the wind whispers, the stars wink, a river wanders, a storm is nasty or wicked, a bird sings.

When human actions are metaphorized, the results are more revealing of human action than of speech. A pertinent example offered by the authors is labeled “Argument is War.” Here is their example:

Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his argument.
I’ve never won an argument with him.
You disagree. Okay, shoot.
If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.
He shot down all my arguments.

The authors rightly note that the “Argument Is War” metaphor “is one that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in arguing.” One might add that other activities such as political debate and sports are often described the same way, with the same war metaphor.

The import of such metaphors is not merely to sanitize speech but to realize the mentality that underlies such a way of speaking. Essentially, we do not speak rationally about issues, we engage in an equivalent of violence and warfare. Is there a way to speak rationally and reciprocally about an issue, or is argument to be retained and sanitized, reduced to nuanced threats of future retaliation? Ultimately, is not arguing ethically untenable since it is a verbal form of war?

Thus, whether engaged in real warfare or merely speaking in a war metaphor, the culture commits violence. The alternative of peace in society and self is to eliminate the metaphor, to change our speech if not our hearts. This may be easier, perhaps, than outright eliminating (or hoping to eliminate) war itself. Silence is a simple and practical basis for peace in one’s life. This is the basis of a pacifism that is eminently practical and non-ideological.

Not to speak in the face of opposition or offense is not so unusual if one looks to the sages of history and considers their behavior in the midst of opposition. Silence is a virtue cultivated by the mindful, but further, it is the appropriate response to violence, coercion, and worldly notions of power. What opposes a universal ethic should collapse of its own untenable state, not requiring a response, a refutation, or a provocation. The beginning of ethics is in silence, and as metaphor shows, ethics resides not in human thought or contrivance but in embracing a receptivity to nature and nature’s way or path. Once nature is followed, nature’s beings — from inanimate to animate, from river, wind, and stars, to trees and birds — become our companions, become providers of insight and reflection.

Kahlil Gibran’s short poem “The Two Hermits” understands this presentation of argument succinctly. Here is the text:

Upon a lonely mountain, there lived two hermits who worshiped God
and loved one another.

Now these two hermits had one earthen bowl, and this was their only
possession.

One day an evil spirit entered into the heart of the older hermit
and he came to the younger and said, “It is long that we have
lived together. The time has come for us to part. Let us divide
our possessions.”

Then the younger hermit was saddened and he said, “It grieves
me, Brother, that thou shouldst leave me. But if thou must needs
go, so be it,” and he brought the earthen bowl and gave it to him
saying, “We cannot divide it, Brother, let it be thine.”

Then the older hermit said, “Charity I will not accept. I will
take nothing but mine own. It must be divided.”

And the younger one said, “If the bowl be broken, of what use would
it be to thee or to me? If it be thy pleasure let us rather cast
a lot.”

But the older hermit said again, “I will have but justice and mine
own, and I will not trust justice and mine own to vain chance. The
bowl must be divided.”

Then the younger hermit could reason no further and he said, “If
it be indeed thy will, and if even so thou wouldst have it let us
now break the bowl.”

But the face of the older hermit grew exceedingly dark, and he
cried, “O thou cursed coward, thou wouldst not fight.”

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Nietzsche’s madman

When Nietzsche announces the death of God – through the persona of Zarathustra and the madman in the marketplace – his statement is not a theological one but a cultural one. Philosophy maintains a logic or set of parameters for understanding ramifications for culture, though this process is as much that of the historian or anthropologist.

Nietzsche himself was professing neither atheism nor nihilism. On the contrary, he observes that Western morality has been historically – and precariously – based on traditional Christianity. Over centuries, Western society weakened its belief system, eventually scoffing at its own foundation.This was not simply a secularism. The West increasingly depended on an ethics founded on a system no longer efficacious. The process may have been a historical exhaustion, while rationalism, science, and technology, hastened the defaulting of religious belief to a public morality. What rationalists and atheists did not pursue was to understand and anticipate the effects of the demise of this singular structure on the ethics of society at large. To them, the topic was an abstract matter of proof versus refutation, of belief versus non-belief, without a cultural context. What happens when society at large comes to realize the basis of its ethics?

Nietzsche argues that God maintains an inner logic, an inner life, so to speak. The biblical or scriptural presentation of God maintains this inner logic so long as the society reflected the sociological structures wherein the entire cultural structure supported itself. The scandals of medieval popes or wars of religion in the Reform centuries had no effect. When the structures of society began to change dramatically, economic, material, environmental, the foundation began to change. Kierkegaard may have been the first insightful philosopher and Christian on the topic of God.

Kierkegaard observes the difficulty of belief or faith in God. The doubt would not have arisen in an earlier era, and this paradox furthers Kierkegaard’s distress. He observes the inevitability of faith as subjective, that a believer becomes a blind “knight of faith,” that no institutional presence or church could compel or persuade in the modern era. Further, Kierkegaard reacts in horror to realize the implications of two famous biblical stories. God demands that Abraham sacrifice his son, a potential murder. Kierkegaard wonders how Christians can continue to celebrate the figure of Abraham, realizing the existential despair that Abraham suffered at the whim of God, and the decision to resist God against ethics. Then, too, God hatches a bet with the Devil to torment Job and test his fidelity. Kierkegaard thus observes that God and ethics are not necessarily compatible within the Christian tradition. Kierkegaard does not reject the existence of God but Nietzsche logically follows up the social implications.

The madman in the marketplace is a vivid story. Here is Nietzsche’s own text, from his Joyful Science:

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!” As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us — for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars — and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”

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The eternal loop

An article writer in a past issue of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle described his personal interests, how little they intersected with worldly concerns, and asked rhetorically:

Am I out of the loop? Well, that depends. As William Carlos Williams wrote, “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” I’d argue that I’m in the loop, the loop that Hsieh Ling-yun and Meng Hao-jan and Wang Wei and Han Shan and Su Tung-P’o and Shih-wu and countless others call home. It’s a bigger loop, an older loop, a far more stable and enduring loop.

That much said, it is difficult, isn’t it, to write on a computer, flip a switch for electricity, expect the refrigerator to preserve food, drive a vehicle down the street — and still claim to be out of the loop. The loop is bigger not just because we think we can afford to absent ourselves from parts of it, but because, happily, we have access to historical resources like the ancient Chinese poems. The content of ancient poems is just one example of an intellectual alternative to a physical reality.

The Taoists understood that only “heaven and earth” last. Buddhism called it impermanence. But these are natural law, so to speak, the nature of things, in short, the Tao. Today (and from the beginning, really) the evanescent is not what infects or undermines the “ten thousand things” but rather the material and artificial culture that surrounds us daily and rips us away from nature. Moderns might call the Tao flux, but not impermanence, permitting moderns to enjoy the worldly concerns our writer disdains. (One strives for a deeper metaphor than “heaven and earth” when reflecting on the destruction of earth itself, while the populace blithely ignores nature.)

Being in the loop with the ancients is always relevant because human culture is itself primarily a superficial gloss to material existence, an epiphenomenon that ignores the authentic values that we glean from remnants like poetry. We can weary of art, music, or literature as so much manipulation when a product for mass consumption pursued one day and discarded the next. In contrast, the ancient Chinese poets present a structure from feelings, and present feelings with structure. This structure and the well of authentic observation from which they emerge is transcendent. At the same time that the ancient poets bid us to pay attention to the moment — for it is the whole outpouring of the universe at the given time — we find in poetry the preservation of moments, reproduced for us accidentally, not consciously. For us, who have access to it, we grasp it deliberately and affirmatively.

The “moment” is brokenly understood by moderns who assign it a hedonism of spirit, a false epicureanism. For the ancient Chinese poets, as Taoists or Buddhists, the moment is the instance of the Tao to be understood. It is to treasure the snow in winter and not long for the flowers of spring. It is to treasure the fruit of summer and not rue the coming autumn; it is to treasure the falling leaves of autumn and not reflect on the snows of winter. It is to appreciate the moment before it is gone and not to resent its passing, not to rue what is gone or what is to follow.

This is not romanticism of the moment but a profound awareness of what is real. All of time is the Tao or Path, and the path is only ourselves watching in silence and awe. To this loop, yes, we can become a part, for it is a big loop and we have already been a part of it all along.

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Yugen and poignancy

Wabi and sabi are familiar concepts of Japanese aesthetics in part because they are readily applied to objects of art, therefore tangible, observable, providing feedback to the artist and crafter making an object distinct from their mental construct. But this acquaintance and literal method of verification of the product of aesthetic principles tends to overlook deeper aspects of wabi and sabi and the concepts behind them.

In the first place, the concepts of wabi and sabi were not originally artistic or even aesthetic but religious and philosophical. Since ancient Shinto times in Japan, nature was identified as the source of spirit, including animism that posited the existence of spirits in natural objects such as mountains, rivers, trees, and rocks, but also the source of inspiration, strength, and guidance. The primitive view of nature deepened over the centuries with the influence of Buddhism, where nature already carried an epistemological component.

A fruitful philosophy of nature arose that evaluated existence and relationship of beings and constructed a way of perceiving reality and encompassing its sense of mystery or enigma. The concept of yugen emerged, the term literally meaning “dimness,” an apt sense of mythological origin and perceived governance of the universe that is elusive, difficult to grasp or define, less control. Human beings were at its mercy and enlightenment meant learning to cope with mystery, with yugen.

Yugen accommodates the sense of mystery that does not assume too much knowledge, too much surety, and dares not carry arrogance or presumption. Rather, a still and thoughtful observance and sense of wonder or awe is fostered by yugen, restoring human beings to their proper place in a large universe which occasionally reveals glimpses of itself and its inexorable ways, but mingled with beauty, provoking moments of awe and wonder.

Expression of yugen were religious as much as artistic, the latter reflecting the urge to depict and speak openly in order to hit upon insight, the religious view content to organize the sentiments of mystery into ritual and familiar expression. The Japanese waka and haiku poets came to excel in approaching yugen, just as literary drama from novels to No plays came to present situations and circumstances where human beings could approximate mystery or yugen as it engulfed their lives, circumstances, and feelings.

A second important principle of Japanese aesthetics gives animation to yugen through literature and art: mono no aware. The phrase literally means “the ah! of things” or “the poignancy of things,” referring to the evanescence or impermanence of things, understood not only as a religious concept of Buddhism but as an emotional construct, human feeling expressed in daily moments of insight, irony, and reflection. Like yugen, mono no aware can be traced to Chinese artistic expression, made unique, however, by Japanese culture.

In the arts mono no aware is expressed by an object or event or sequence, depicted in a painting, a drama, a sequence of events within disappointment and sadness in the lives of men and women, in a painting, a musical passage, a poem evoking the trembling beauty of an insightful moment felt, then lost, or by nature itself, as in the perpetual turn of the seasons, the glorious emergence of cherry blossoms only to see them inexorably fall to the ground, the cry of birds and insects in late autumn foreseeing their shortening days, the solitude of the moon casting its silent light during the long darkness of night.

Returning to yugen, to the sense of mystery that seems to govern and at times abandon the universe, does not obliterate the reading, learning, and thinking of the ages, but puts it all in perspective. The sources of mono no aware sentiment are all around us, yet only in pausing to note them do we note also the intrinsic nature of the sources, and the intrinsic nature of all beings, including ourselves.

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Introvert well-being

Some years ago, a Wall Street Journal article argued that introverts are happier when acting or behaving like extroverts, who, the article maintained, are happier than introverts generally. This conclusion was repeating a common understanding not popularly questioned until Susan Cain in her 2012 book Quiet: the Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking and in her TED talk, where she argued that, specifically in the employment setting, introverts have unique skills that can establish their sense of achievement and satisfaction if the organization will accommodate them. Accommodation simply means managerial awareness of psychological distinctions that can better tap the contributions of all personalities, including introverts, who are thoughtful, observant, detail-oriented, circumspect, imaginative, and critical thinkers and excellent trouble-shooters.

A psychological trial at the University of Australia, first reported in the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, now shows that introverts are better off not acting or behaving like extroverts.

As the researchers conclude: “dispositional introverts may reap fewer wellbeing benefits, and perhaps even incur some wellbeing costs, from acting more extroverted.” The negative observation by introverts was not merely a memory bias, having been told over and over in the past that extroverts are always happier. Rather, researchers noted that the environment fostered by managers, what researchers called “intervention,” directly affects outcomes.

Introvert personality preferences should be accommodated to help foster the preferred outcomes of the organization. “By allowing more freedom to return to an introverted ‘restorative niche,’ a less intensive intervention might also result in fewer costs to negative affect, authenticity and tiredness.”

The conclusion is more reserved that Cain’s, to be sure, but helps begin to establish a more objective view of the issues involved.

URL: https://aeon.co/ideas/acting-like-an-extravert-has-benefits-but-not-for-introverts