Lessons
Start by admitting, 'from cradle to tomb
it isn't that long a stay'...life is a Cabaret[98]
I have argued in this essay that we individually exist between birth and death: that there is no afterlife; that we can experience. We are 'brief candles' and we need to make the best of this life.
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.[99]
We can choose to suicide, or to retire to bed and never do anything, or we can decide to set ourselves goals that satisfy us. The goals you set may be about gaining experience and knowledge and, perhaps, making a better world for others (than if you had never existed).
We are not just individuals. We are all a part of the universe and have an impact on it, and on those who share it with us. Much that you do in life will be about obtaining the cooperation, help and regard of others. I hope so.
We must learn to accept that that past is essential to this present and should have no regrets. That we can do nothing about the past once it is past is also reason not be too disheartened by mistakes or to dwell on things in our own lives, once they are past. But we can learn from them; after all they are how we got to now, with all its possibilities.
So make your choices as best you can, for the future you want. If we make no decisions or plans and take no actions we still get somewhere. But if we want to get somewhere in particular we must plan and act or it is unlikely that we will get there:
'Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where – ' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
Your choices about where you want to go and your decisions about how to get there will define your life. As I have discussed you do not have to be famous or wealthy or even caring to have 'a life well spent'. If you feel that you are using your brief time wisely; that is all that matters.
Of course the things that make us feel that we have a 'life well spent' vary for each of us. Some seek personal well-being, others the acknowledgement of, or power over, other people. Some are collectors; of wealth, fame or experiences or just stamps, old cars or train numbers. Others are driven by sexual or family needs and yet others set personal or physical goals or seek wisdom or knowledge.
In this essay I have argued for The Great Human Project, as providing a purpose to humanity. But this is my personal choice. You may well decide that entering Australia's Next Top Model will fulfil you better.
A recent survey of people and how happy they were found that your genes are the most important factor in happiness (you can't do much about that; so moving on) the next most important was relationships (marriage, partners, friends, and children), contributing to society or the well being of others also made people happy.
Being moderately well off also helps but importantly the ability not to want too much or to be too concerned about your own appearance (to be too concerned with comparisons of status, wealth or beauty; to covert other's status or possessions) also led to greater happiness.
Many wise people have pointed to our ability to take reward from the here and now, to enjoy what we do and take pride in doing it well. You can have as much reward tending your garden, making something or writing something as living 'la dolce vita'[100]: the good life.
The 'physical you' is the result a rich mix of genes and ideas; a collection of cells designed by millions of years of genes competing to be reproduced. In addition, ideas, beliefs, feelings, hopes and desires, change the physical structure of the cells in your brain. As I said earlier you are a unique collection of messages.
The 'emotional, thinking, self-aware you' is coded in, and an expression of, the relationships between those cells. Many of our ideas are borrowed. They originated in the brains of others. In turn, we have similar power to change the structure of the brains of others.
500 years ago Francis Bacon wrote, 'knowledge is power' but knowledge (the collection of beliefs, skills, ways of doing things and remembered experiences) together with our genes, defines the knower. We control very few of these things that define us. Does knowledge give us power or does it have power over us? Is the Me I feel (the one that is because I think) the sum of my knowledge?
The motto of the Delphic Oracle (and of Socrates and of my high school) was 'Know thyself'. But how can you decide the skills, ideas and behaviours that define you?
'I know myself', he cried, 'but is that all?'[101]
We can't do much about our genes but we can be selective about ideas and by investigation of 'what is'.
I started talking about words as the carriers of ideas. Although words are important, it is the ideas that they stand for or encapsulate that are the essence of understanding and of their usefulness.
Most of our ideas come from our culture. To learn more go to plays and the opera, art exhibitions, read books, listen to radio, watch TV selectively, and talk to and mix with cultured, competent and knowledgeable people.
But don't be gulled into believing that culture is the domain of the past. Someone who only understands Latin texts, European poetry, art or music is not cultured (especially if they are commentators and not practitioners).
The words 'television', 'plane', 'computer' or 'microwave oven' cannot be fully understood without an understanding of physics, chemistry, manufacturing processes, energy and media markets, government regulation, economics and many other things. As a result no individual fully understands these words. We understand them more or less fully, and slightly differently, depending on our education and other knowledge that we have.
To understand many of the words and ideas that we use in everyday life, that are essential to comprehending our world and culture, you must be up-to-date in a wide variety of contemporary ideas and particularly in scientific thinking.
It once took six months to travel between England and Australia. Now it takes around a day and I can talk someone in England as if they were in the next room while walking down the street in Sydney or Dubbo. Children chat around the world via the Internet. These abilities are a direct outcome of our culture's improved comprehension of the Universe.
Just as we look back at the lack of knowledge of in the past that led to restricted cultural choices, so people in future will look back to the present. In this respect our choices are expanding. The challenge is to use the options we have effectively, to improve our lives.
Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises,
sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then in dreaming,
The clouds, methought, would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.[102]
Shakespeare still seems to be full of insights after 500 years. I suspect that it is because our culture and the ideas we have absorbed through our education and upbringing have incorporated these ideas. When we read or see a Shakespeare play we are going back to the English renaissance, the trunk from which grew many of our inherited beliefs and ideas.
All ideas are not equally valid. Most useful ideas only work in context. Contrary to the deconstructionist view, all cultural claims are not equal. A belief in fairies is not the same as a belief in atoms.
We only have so many voices, sounds and dreams we can listen to. Many ideas are clearly wrong, others are useless in our time and place and yet others are harmful. Which is which?
We must learn to recognise meaningless questions and not spend too much time trying to answer them. All ideas need to be treated sceptically to see if they can withstand our attempts to disprove them.
Experience in different cultures and places can give new insights and allow us to find ideas and skills that work together for people.
Cultural success can be an indicator of utility but it is not infallible.
Intelligence ... is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.[103]
As I and others have argued, passionately held or fashionable ideas and ways of living are likely to be self replicating or deliberately engineered ideas in which the adherents are simple carriers; like the hosts to a virus.
The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts -- the less you know the hotter you get[104].
The success of an idea, fashion, is not always due to it being true; or in the interest of the person who holds it. We should be sceptical of fashion and argue out ideas with those that might test them or teach us something new.
Our culture gives us, unlike any time in the past, a special ability to get nearer to understanding of our universe. Increasing knowledge gives us more options and helps us find new ways to get a sense of personal achievement and self-worth.
Personal understanding allows us to see wonder in everything natural. It also helps to understand our social institutions and cultural values. It helps us to distinguish value from price.
Like the visitor from a more advanced land, a person who is intelligent (in the Sontag way: with good taste in ideas) can stand aloof from unearned privilege and:
The insolence of office and the spurns
that patient merit of the unworthy takes...[105]
or the adherents to strange beliefs.
But we are human. Relations with other people sustain us. The mystical enriches our lives. We have a powerful sense of wonderment and poetry in our natures that can give great pleasure. We can find pride and pleasure in skill. Life is to be enjoyed.
1997-2017