Categories for Books, films and TV

44. Kou / Coming to Meet

above CH’IEN THE CREATIVE, HEAVEN
below SUN THE GENTLE, WIND

This hexagram indicates a situation in which the principle of darkness, after having been eliminated, furtively and unexpectedly obtrudes again from within and below. Of its own accord the female principle comes to meet the male. It is an unfavorable and dangerous situation, and we must understand and promptly prevent the possible consequences.
The hexagram is linked with the fifth month [June-July], because at the summer solstice the principle of darkness gradually becomes ascendant again.

THE JUDGMENT

COMING TO MEET. The maiden is powerful.
One should not marry such a maiden.

The rise of the inferior element is pictured here in the image of a bold girl who lightly surrenders herself and thus seizes power. This would not be possible if the strong and light-giving element had not in turn come halfway. The inferior thing seems so harmless and inviting that a man delights in it; it looks so small and weak that he imagines he may dally with it and come to no harm.
The inferior man rises only because the superior man does not regard him as dangerous and so lends him power. If he were resisted from the fist, he could never gain influence.
The time of COMING TO MEET is important in still another way. Although as a general rule the weak should not come to meet the strong, there are times when this has great significance. When heaven and earth come to meet each other, all creatures prosper; when a prince and his official come to meet each other, the world is put in order. It is necessary for elements predestined to be joined and mutually dependent to come to meet one another halfway. But the coming together must be free of dishonest ulterior motives, otherwise harm will result.

THE IMAGE

Under heaven, wind:
The image of COMING TO MEET.
Thus does the prince act when disseminating his commands
And proclaiming them to the four quarters of heaven.

The situation here resembles that in hexagram 20, Kuan, CONTEMPLATION ( VIEW). In the latter the wind blows over the earth, here it blows under heaven; in both cases it goes everywhere. There the wind is on the earth and symbolizes the ruler taking note of the conditions in his kingdom; here the wind blows from above and symbolizes the influence exercised by the ruler through his commands. Heaven is far from the things of earth, but it sets them in motion by means of the wind. The ruler is far form his people, but he sets them in motion by means of his commands and decrees.

Six at the beginning means:
It must be checked with a brake of bronze.
Perseverance brings good fortune.
If one lets it take its course, one experiences misfortune.
Even a lean pig has it in him to rage around.

If an inferior element has wormed its way in, it must be energetically checked at once. By consistently checking it, bad effects can be avoided. If it is allowed to take its course, misfortune is bound to result; the insignificance of that which creeps in should not be a temptation to underrate it. A pig that is still young and lean cannot rage around much, but after it has eaten its fill and become strong, its true nature comes out if it has not previously been curbed.

Nine in the fourth place means:
No fish in the tank.
This leads to misfortune.

Insignificant people must be tolerated in order to keep them well disposed. Then we can make use of them if we should need them. If we become alienated from them and do not meet them halfway, they turn their backs on us and are not at our disposal when we need them. But this is our own fault.

Nine at the top means:
He comes to meet with his horns.
Humiliation. No blame.

When a man has withdrawn from the world, its tumult often becomes unbearable to him. There are many people who in a noble pride hold themselves aloof from all that is low and rebuff it brusquely wherever it comes to meet them. Such persons are reproached for being proud and distant, but since active duties no longer hold them to the world, this does not greatly matter. They know how to bear the dislike of the masses with composure.

5. Hsü / Waiting (Nourishment)

above K’AN THE ABYSMAL, WATER
below CH’IEN THE CREATIVE, HEAVEN

All beings have need of nourishment from above. But the gift of food comes in its own time, and for this one must wait. This hexagram shows the clouds in the heavens, giving rain to refresh all that grows and to provide mankind with food and drink. The rain will come in its own time. We cannot make it come; we have to wait for it. The idea of waiting is further suggested by the attributes of the two trigrams–strength within, danger in from. Strength in the face of danger does not plunge ahead but bides its time, whereas weakness in the face of danger grows agitated and has not the patience to wait.

THE JUDGMENT

WAITING. If you are sincere,
You have light and success.
Perseverance brings good fortune.
It furthers one to cross the great water.

Waiting is not mere empty hoping. It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal. Such certainty alone gives that light which leads to success. This leads to the perseverance that brings good fortune and bestows power to cross the great water. One is faced with a danger that has to be overcome. Weakness and impatience can do nothing. Only a strong man can stand up to his fate, for his inner security enables him to endure to the end. This strength shows itself in uncompromising truthfulness [with himself]. It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognized. This recognition must be followed by resolute and persevering action. For only the man who goes to meet his fate resolutely is equipped to deal with it adequately. Then he will be able to cross the great water–that is to say, he will be capable of making the necessary decision and of surmounting the danger.

THE IMAGE

Clouds rise up to heaven:
The image of WAITING.
Thus the superior man eats and drinks,
Is joyous and of good cheer.

When clouds rise in the sky, it is a sign that it will rain. There is nothing to do but to wait until after the rain falls. It is the same in life when destiny is at work. We should not worry and seek to shape the future by interfering in things before the time is ripe. We should quietly fortify the body with food and drink and the mind with gladness and good cheer. Fate comes when it will, and thus we are ready.

James Baldwin – (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987)

It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within. And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents — the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however, and by definition, a provisional self — and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits.

Source: The Terror Within and the Evil Without: James Baldwin on Our Capacity for Transformation as Individuals and Nations

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be. One hasn’t got to have an enormous military machine in order to be un-free when it’s simpler to be asleep, when it’s simpler to be apathetic, when it’s simpler, in fact, not to want to be free, to think that something else is more important.

Source: James Baldwin on Freedom and How We Imprison Ourselves

An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can tell, what it is like to be alive. All I’ve ever wanted to do is tell that, I’m not trying to solve anybody’s problems, not even my own. I’m just trying to outline what the problems are.

I want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too.

Source: The Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are: James Baldwin on the Empathic Rewards of Reading and What It Means to Be an Artist

Art has a social purpose [and] art belongs to the people. It’s not something that is hanging out there that has no connection with the needs of man. And art is unashamedly, unembarrassingly, if there is such a word, social. It is political; it is economic. The total life of man is reflected in his art.

Source: James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe’s Forgotten Conversation About Beauty, Morality, and the Political Power of Art

I was tired today. I played World of Warcraft. I watched Buffy, halfway the third season. I did some shopping. Got stuff for the cakes i will bake for Sunday. There is a small market then on the Peace Garden. Cakes and chocolate chip cookies. A talk with the real estate agent. Monday i will have my decision ready.

And this evening i feel so happy. Like, singing and dancing happy. Like, it is all easy. All decisions simply come. Easy.

And just yet i threw coins for the I Ching. Contemplation. With a changing line on the first and sixth place. With Difficulty at the Beginning as the final sign.

This does mean something to me. I do feel my life is aligned with something out there. With difficulty. It took me so long. To let it go.

Thank you.

THE JUDGMENT

CONTEMPLATION. The ablution has been made,
But not yet the offering.
Full of trust they look up to him.

The sacrificial ritual in China began with an ablution and a libation by which the Deity was invoked, after which the sacrifice was offered. The moment of time between these two ceremonies is the most sacred of all, the moment of deepest inner concentration. If piety is sincere and expressive of real faith, the contemplation of it has a transforming awe-spiring effect on those who witness it.
Thus also in nature a holy seriousness is to be seen in the fact that natural occurrences are uniformly subject to law. Contemplation of the divine meaning underlying the workings of the universe gives to the man who is called upon to influence others the means of producing like effects. This requires that power of inner concentration which religious contemplation develops in great men strong in faith. It enables them to apprehend the mysterious and divine laws of life, and by means of profoundest inner concentration they give expression to these laws in their own persons. Thus a hidden spiritual power emanates from them, influencing and dominating others without their being aware of how it happens.

THE IMAGE

The wind blows over the earth:
The image of CONTEMPLATION.
Thus the kings of old visited the regions of the world,
Contemplated the people,
And gave them instruction.

When the wind blows over the earth it goes far and wide, and the grass must bend to its power. These two occurrences find confirmation in the hexagram. The two images are used to symbolize a practice of the kings of old; in making regular journeys the ruler could, in the first place, survey his realm and make certain that none of the existing usages of the people escaped notice; in the second, he could exert influence through which such customs as were unsuitable could be changed.
All of this points to the power possessed by a superior personality. On the one hand, such a man will have a view of the real sentiments of the great mass of humanity and therefore cannot be deceived; on the other, he will impress the people so profoundly, by his mere existence and by the impact of his personality, that they will be swayed by him as the grass by the wind.

I still feel ridiculously happy. After a fab weekend with two parties, today was a bit quieter. I watched three episodes of the new season of Stranger things. I watched the first season a year ago. I love the kids playing the lead part. Eleven is wonderful. And of course i know the 80s well, i lived through it.

I’m only halfway the new season episodes, it is hard for me to have a clear perspective on it. I do enjoy it. Thoroughly.

Jim Hopper dancing to Pumped up Kicks @DavidKHarbour @milliebbrown pic.twitter.com/oQnAuwlmP4

— thatsimplepanda (@ThatSimplePanda) October 29, 2017

This. Is. Everything! #StrangerThings2 #DavidHarbour #HopperDancing #Wham pic.twitter.com/ZTRBtJMRyK

— James Patrick Herman (@TheGlamourGuy) October 30, 2017

Later in the day, after i updated the operating system from 10.8 to 10.13, i watched an episode of the Filosofisch Kwintet. How do we deal with the current technological giants and their commercial use of our data? Is there a good way to deal with it? On a personal level, a social and a political level.

The episode is in english with dutch subtitles.

I’m gonna watch some more Stranger Things for now.

Enjoy your day!

Two weeks ago my internet and television was cut of. I really missed it. I know there is wifi in the library, so i went up there and asked about it. They offered me a trial subscription of three months for free, with which internet access is free.

I took it. Of course. I used to be a member of the library years ago. Ten years ago? Maybe even longer? I started to look for books i would like to read. And ended up in the young adult section, foreign languages. Yay! I read The Hunger Games Catching Fire last week. Yesterday i finished The Maze Runner. I watched the movies after i read the books. Some differences. But still. Today i burrowed two new books. Capital in the Twenty-First Century written by Thomas Piketty, in Dutch. Lets see how i deal with that one. And the Endgame: The Calling written by James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton. I did read a bit in both books already. But, judgement is still out.

I also started to watch the chess game played in the big hall of the library. I started to talk a little to the people around the game. And last week, i actually played a game! I lost, of course. Still so used to playing to a computer, still very much better in defensive play than agressive play. I do love to watch it, look at all the moves people make, trying to figure out the thoughts behind it. Hopefully i will get a bit better. And play some more.

Do you remember a guy that’s been
In such an early song?
I’ve heard a rumor from Ground Control
Oh no, don’t say it’s true

They got a message from the Action Man
“I’m happy, hope you’re happy too
I’ve loved all I’ve needed, love
Sordid details following”

The shrieking of nothing is killing, just
Pictures of Jap girls in synthesis and I
Ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no hair
But I’m hoping to kick but the planet it’s glowing

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom’s a junkie
Strung out in heaven’s high
Hitting an all-time low

Time and again I tell myself
I’ll stay clean tonight
But the little green wheels are following me
Oh no, not again
I’m stuck with a valuable friend
“I’m happy, hope you’re happy too”
One flash of light but no smoking pistol

I never done good things (I never done good things)
I never done bad things (I never done bad things)
I never did anything out of the blue, woh-o-oh
Want an axe to break the ice
Wanna come down right now

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom’s a junkie
Strung out in heaven’s high
Hitting an all-time low

My mother said, to get things done
You’d better not mess with Major Tom

My mother said, to get things done
You’d better not mess with Major Tom

My mother said, to get things done
You’d better not mess with Major Tom

My mother said, to get things done
You’d better not mess with Major Tom

The Matrix

Several science fiction creators commented on the film. Author William Gibson, a key figure in cyberpunk fiction, called the film “an innocent delight I hadn’t felt in a long time,” and stated, “Neo is my favourite-ever science fiction hero, absolutely.” Joss Whedon called the film “my number one” and praised its storytelling, structure and depth, concluding, “It works on whatever level you want to bring to it.” Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky commented, “I walked out of The Matrix … and I was thinking, ‘What kind of science fiction movie can people make now?’ The Wachowski Brothers basically took all the great sci-fi ideas of the 20th century and rolled them into a delicious pop culture sandwich that everyone on the planet devoured.” Director M. Night Shyamalan expressed admiration for the Wachowski Brothers, stating, “Whatever you think of The Matrix, every shot is there because of the passion they have! You can see they argued it out!”. Actor and screenwriter Simon Pegg said that The Matrix provided “the excitement and satisfaction that The Phantom Menace failed to inspire. The Matrix seemed fresh and cool and visually breathtaking; making wonderful, intelligent use of CGI to augment the on-screen action, striking a perfect balance of the real and the hyperreal. It was possibly the coolest film I had ever seen.” Director Quentin Tarantino counted The Matrix as one of his twenty favourite movies from 1992 to 2009.

A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia, or simply anti-utopia) is a community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is translated as “not-good place”, an antonym of utopia.

Images of a dystopian future are custom in futuristic scifi blockbusters like The Hunger Games, Blade Runner, the Terminator series, RoboCop, The Matrix, The Island, WALL-E, Snowpiercer, Divergent and The Maze Runner. And so many many more.

The one book on my reading list, Infinite Jest, is a dystopian novel. Dystopian books are a big theme within young adult fiction.

I have grown up with dystopian stories. Science fiction, as a genre focused on a future in whatever shape, has many dystopian stories. The main story of our present earth right now in 2017 evolves around climate change, war, globalization and post-capitalism. There are many forces going against each other. One time one party seems to be gaining ground, the next time another party wins a fight.

Looking at our planet as it is right now, it is hard to see what path we will take. Nature, the woods, the rain forest, the mammals, fishes, insects, birds: they are taking a beating. But they still survive. And life on this planet is on a ever changing path as it is. For millions of years.

It is impossible to predict the future.

Dystopian stories are our dreams of a possible future. Dystopian fictions invariably reflect the concerns and fears of its contemporaneous culture. We can fight. Fight the armies of the rich and powerful. As we do in the stories. We can dream. Dream our live away from our present world. Dream our wishes away in a thought out world in which we are able to stand up. As one amongst many. To get back to living our ordinary lives in our ordinary world the next ordinary moment. It is like we go on a holiday for a couple of weeks to a sunny bright beachy hotel right next to the sea. To get back home and start working again. The ordinary life.

Dystopian stories are a relief from our ordinary lives, a relief from our ordinary work. A way out of our world, dreary as it seems. Dystopian stories are related to our world. It does reflect concerns and fears of our world, as it is today. Yes. A scary story with a true hero fighting for a good cause against the evil enemy.

The increasing interpenetration of government, university, and private firms has led everyone to adopt the language, sensibilities, and organizational forms that originated in the corporate world. Although this might have helped in creating marketable products, since that is what corporate bureaucracies are designed to do, in terms of fostering original research, the results have been catastrophic.

Source: Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit

I love several dystopian stories. A few weeks ago i posted about The Handmaid’s Tale, a television series i really like and admire. In the scifi books i have there are many dystopian elements. It is a good area for people who think and dream about our current society to tell a meaningful story. To make up a new world, to set out its details and idiosyncracies and interconnectedness.

But right now, i am more interested in our present world. In what constitutes power. Where are the details here, in this world we live in.

It is so easy to look away. It is so easy to hide within your own cocoon of work and friends and facebook and home. It is so easy to not think about this world where we are right now and which way we are headed.

Our world, this planet we live on, is a wonderful, glorious, beautiful place. We are messing up things, yes. But it still is beautiful.

We should do our most urgent best to make it better again. And many people are doing exactly that. Working in other countries to save chimps or ants or dolphins or whales or the rain forest or the Antarctica or poor hungry people or whatever needs saving.

I’m not believing in all the dystopian stories there are about. No. But i do believe there is something really wrong in our current world. I can not point it out directly. I am thinking of the rich people. Thinking of the powerful people. Thinking of the people telling us what to think, what to feel. But i don’t know for sure.

I’m thinking of the news this evening telling us the economy is doing well this year. Showing images of people walking in shopping streets and spending money. It will rise with 2,4%. Yay!

Which is ridiculous. Stupid. What are people buying? What are they spending their money on?

My mind is not clear about these things. But i am thinking. And talking with friends. And moving my life away from the way of life we are told we should live.

A new story. Not dystopian. Not utopian. Not a dream world, but a world we work hard in. A world in which we are going to miss many of the things making our lives look pleasurable. That is the way i think we should move in.

I should talk about this with other people. Of course. Talk, fight, argue. Make myself clear. Listen to what other people have to say. There are so many things i don’t know anything about.

Because this is an enormous fight. No mistake. Huge!

• The cyberpunk dystopia we were warned about is already here
• Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
• Project Hieroglyph: Fighting society’s dystopian future
• Death of a Dystopian
• Why Do We Like Dystopian Novels?
• The Rising Popularity of Dystopian Literature
• Forget the ‘Hunger Games’: Dystopia Is Alive and Well in America
• From utopia to dystopia: technology, society and what we can do about it

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

If you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude – but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. So let’s get concrete …

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here’s one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real – you get the idea. But please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called “virtues”. This is not a matter of virtue – it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centred, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

By way of example, let’s say it’s an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired, and you’re stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early because you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home – you haven’t had time to shop this week, because of your challenging job – and so now, after work, you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the workday, and the traffic’s very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store’s hideously, fluorescently lit, and infused with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can’t just get in and quickly out: you have to wander all over the huge, overlit store’s crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough checkout lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can’t take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.

Anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and pay for your food, and wait to get your cheque or card authenticated by a machine, and then get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death, and then you have to take your creepy flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and try to load the bags in your car in such a way that everything doesn’t fall out of the bags and roll around in the trunk on the way home, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive rush-hour traffic, etc, etc.

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is: I’ve worked really hard all day and I’m starved and tired and I can’t even get home to eat and unwind because of all these stupid goddamn people.

Or if I’m in a more socially conscious form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUVs and Hummers and V12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just 20 stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam, and I can think about how our children’s children will despise us for wasting all the future’s fuel and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and disgusting we all are, and how it all just sucks …

If I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do – except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn’t have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities. The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible car accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive; or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to rush to the hospital, and he’s in a much bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am – it is actually I who am in his way.

Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you’re “supposed to” think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it’s hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you’re like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat-out won’t want to. But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line – maybe she’s not usually like this; maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who’s dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible – it just depends on what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important – if you want to operate on your default setting – then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren’t pointless and annoying. But if you’ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars – compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff’s necessarily true: the only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship – be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles – is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things – if they are where you tap real meaning in life – then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already – it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power – you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart – you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the “rat race” – the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness – awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”

Source: The Guardian – David Foster Wallace ‘Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions’

A speech given by David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) at the 2005 Kenyon College commencement ceremony.

I still have Infinite Jest lying in my bookcase, for the most part unread. I made posts about the book here, on this blog. But it is hard. For me right now. I want some lighter reading.

But i will read it, someday!

This commencement speech is very well thought out. It is almost hurtful to hear the audience laughing at certain passages. Maybe because they recognize something? Something they do experience in their own life?

I don’t know.

I only know myself. The past two and a half years i’ve been working hard on myself. The work is never done. There are failings – times i don’t want to bother – times i’m occupied with myself. Any excuse. Really. But yes, working hard. Smiling at people i walk by on the street. Helping people as much as possible.

Helping a lady at the check-out counter in the supermarket, to get her groceries on the band. And when she is finished helping her to get her stuff in her rollator.

Helping a woman to get a parcel in her bag. I saw her standing at the side of the pavement struggling with it. I simply asked her. Do you need any help?

Talking to a man shouting in the city center, about how people hate him. Walking up to him and telling him: I don’t hate you. What you say doesn’t count for me.

Simple things. Not things i am proud of. Because i see so many more things. So many more people asking for help, and not getting anything.

This world is cruel.

I still need to learn so many things.

This is water.

This is water.