A Testament to the Unnoticed

You can't do anything if you don't have anything. And, what's the point of living if you're not going to do anything?I'm usually buying towards a goal. I have something in mind, I know what gear I need, and with each new thing I'm 1 step closer to getting to do it. Like, this year is mountaineering, and I need all kinds of neat, new stuff if I want to be able to go next year, I need to start picking it all up now. Weeee.

I couldn't have made this up if I had tried. I remember reading Bacon saying that western man was restless in an empty room and I can now understand that, even if its roots are as obscure as ever. Of course, it's a gross generalisation to portray the "East" as 'static' or 'contemplative' and the "west" as 'dynamic ' and 'restless' but maybe this isn't such a false depiction in so far as it conveys at least some of the tendencies of the modern soul.

And why did you climb this mountain?
Because it was there.

To me, nothing suggests the complete metaphysical nullity of our age more than these words. Underlying it is a profound boredom, a dullness of spirit that sporadically comes to life in a desperate attempt to reaffirm a sense of existence , or at least a concern with existence. It is a paradox of our times that we should place such great emphasis on autonomy and freedom and yet be so caught up in the whirl of getting and spending. Marx was right to suggest that capitalism would replace a dependence on other people by a dependence on goods. One still has to come to terms with the unenviable possibility that many of our freedoms are actually metamorphosising into the most terrible of addictions, a tyranny of the desiring self.

This cult of action-doing something, anything-goes hand in hand with a bleak sense of meaninglessness. In an indifferent universe, one devoid of any intrinsic beauty or norms, one has to create one's own values. For the existentialist, the very act of 'willing' is all that counts-and it matters little whether that is an angelic or a demonic will, all that is of significance is the skill and inventiveness dispalyed, the sheer urgency and authenticity of the striving. It is as if one were living in a vacuum and that life itself had become a 'problem'. Intrpospection, inwardness and asceticism, like their opposite, wild hedonism, stem from the same disdain for the world, the same desire to escape from it. This is, as Hannah Arendt saw so clearly, the oddest of the consequences of the banishing of the 'other world': it is the moderns who flee the world-either in abstractions , fantastical illusions, hallucinogenic dreams, or in the frenetic search for the exotic:
Been there, done that.

Of course, this is an era where people pride themselves on their independence from 'authority', on rebelling against bourgeois norms and conventions, and in their ability to shock society and express themselves. Except that it is this very transgression against established hierarchies that is desired and produced by late capitalism. Shopping is now seen as an act of freedom and perhaps, even, as the last symbol of our defining characteristic: the ability to choose. The products themselves have come to take on magical, talismanic qualities, with their ability to say something about the innermost recesses of our soul and accurately express who and what we are !

We are caught between a number of contraditctory impulses: a paralysing self-consciousness, indifference, indolence, and ambivalence , an inclination to anonymity, co-exists with a desire to be "useful", to escape the ordirariness and mediocrity, of a suburban life where one could pass one's life unnoticed. But perhaps they are connected in that the dull stillness, the ennui of a world that has been de-sacralized and levelled down, pushes us ever further to extremes, to spectacular entertainment, a sensuous intoxication, and a narcotic of gold that "kills time". But there is a certain weariness, jadedness in all these less than convincing efforts.

The isolation and anxiety that may have driven a previous generation to be besotted by abstract ideologies, to be entranced by the mystique of authoritative voices, is really a thing of the past in all likelihood. For us, there can only be indifference to politics and a numbing conformity. As in the Monty Python sketch, we all claim that we are individuals...in unison!

Nietzsche, with his prophetic insight, had predicted that in the last days of our civilisation western man would want, more than anything, to renounce desire. We have come to painfully to realise that our mountain of things are every bit as ephemeral as our pleasures and that the relentless desire for more and more has exacted a heavy price on our relation with nature and our solidarity with other people.


Some of my favourite books: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/richpub/listmania/byauthor/A5JA3ZONCCADY/202-3443077-7148600