Noble Lies, Noble Lives

Some people dream of living authentically. I was introduced to the dream of authenticity by John Steinbeck, when I read The Pearl as a young man. Living as that couple did… it gripped me. I even thought of exercise as inauthentic - shouldn’t a person get their exercise directly from their work? Exercise as a separate activity seemed so silly. And the gear! Hypocrisy too was a regular theme - I was sharp, and I lived a watchful life. The hypocrisy of others never failed to exacerbate me. And money - that root of all evil - allows people to casually pursue conflicting goals, without having to pay much of a price. Things such as these represent schisms between words and actions, actions and consequences. And it is these schisms that the philosopher notices and objects to, just as the logician notices discrepancies in logic. An authentic life is a life devoid of such schisms.

Fortunately, I wasn’t so stupid as to live my entire life according to such half-formed notions. The in-authenticity of exercise didn’t stop me from exercising. I just thought of it as second-best - a band-aid of sorts - what the poor, degraded, modern soul-less soul needs in order to at least not be so fat and lazy. The hypocrisy of my elders didn’t stop me from the ability to keep an open mind and eventually understand how such mismatches between words and actions can happen, and for good reasons. But still, I carried around this nebulous dream of the authentic life, which a modern American such as myself could of course never attain (not having been born into a family of poor pearl divers, for instance). Consumerism, of course, is the very antithesis of authenticity.

So far, so… youthful. Young people tend to see things in black and white, and to be a bit humorless. They are idealists, when they aren’t the worst of cynics. But this dream of authenticity, like many religious or pseudo-religious dreams, is problematic - it is a strong vision of something better, and there is nothing wrong with that. But like all myths its primal attraction is contradicted by its utter inaccessibility. As long as the vision need involve changing the given facts of my circumstances, as long as it looks to the past or denies the mundane details of who I am at this moment in time, the meaning of the vision and the details of the vision are completely out of sync with each other. A goal without a path.

My point is that this goal of authenticity - the kind that involves emphasis on origins, purity, limited options, etc. (some variation on the noble savage, really) - is best abandoned in favor of the superficially similar, but very different goal of simplicity. Simplicity is about reducing the effect of such schisms, increasing the ability to live a more integrated and therefore powerful life. If you desire health, you don’t also drink too much, or chain smoke. If you consider yourself pro-environment, you don’t also build yourself a new 5,000 sf “green” mansion. If you want a good marriage, you understand that marriage is also a business arrangement. If you don’t want to support the causes that Jack Welsh supports, you don’t trust your money to funds that invest in General Electric.

It’s not a puritanical thing - it’s not that you shouldn’t ever have such conflicts in your life - it’s a practical thing. It’s about understanding how things work, and not being confused and depressed when they don’t. If you prefer to have angels and demons and myths about salvation in your life, it’s best to also understand that prayers don’t actually get answered. At least not in the way that many people seem to think.

Myths are powerful. They inspire, and can lead a person to make some sense out of how such a vision can apply to one’s own life in a constructive way. But you have to know how to use good judgment and make something healthy out of it. If that can be done, maybe you can relax and put on your pilgrim hat or Indian feathers, and share in a celebratory feast. Eat too much, drink too much, pay the price, play some role, and smile all the while. Nobody’s life is inherently degraded, just as nobody’s life is inherently noble. Be thankful for what you got, and you can begin to make something out of nothing. Simple.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTXljIqxRE[/youtube]

Don’t Panic!: Nearly Everything Is Better Than You Think
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Panic-Nearly-Everything-Better/dp/0980292441

Hi Anon,
Well written that piece of yours. I have also had relationships with novels - in my case it was (amongst others) Somerset Maugham who captured me in “of human bondage”. I have also always had a regard to religious writing as to fiction, and because I have also felt that every good book has truth to learn from, so I also learnt from the Bible.

You are right, we have to understand the difference between the story and the truth in it - and not imagine the story to be (historically) true just because it has truth to it. I find that there are many tales which speak to my soul, but which are quite plainly fiction - albeit that they are true to life. I have very often lost myself in a tale and sometimes I have had the wish that it was reality. That is where I found myself giving the book away to escape its illusion and return to life.

It also shows us to what degree does our mind dictate over what is real or true. Looking up from the pages of the book and having to re-adjust to reality just shows how captivated we can become. Some never escape that magic and that is where it reveals itself to be a lie or an illusion which has bewitched us, suggesting possibilities that are not actually there.

Thanks, you had me going there

I believe you’re a fan of Thoreau? Or am I mistaken? If so, I’m curious if you have any thoughts on the relevance of his writings on this subject. For instance, perhaps his most famous quote (from Walden):

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

He strikes me has having had an ambivalent relationship with his culture - somehow both completely at odds with it, yet accepting it with true friendliness.

I’m glad you appreciated my little attempt at… whatever. Something. I think the relationship between fiction and truth is fascinating. As often as I think suspending judgment (fact versus fiction) is worthwhile in order to get at something “deeper”, I am as often angered by the knowing deceptions undertaken by some (authors, philosophers, etc.).

I suspect that very few people honestly and straightforwardly engage in that murky realm where fact and fiction stew together in that same great simmering cauldron.

Isn’t religious myth and storytelling, just an integrated version of modern, dis-integrated entertainment? It is integrated, because the stories both entertain and are instructive. And they are interactive. Now that’s high-tech!

Seriously. I wonder if there was a golden time in which people understood things with a light touch, when they weren’t so literal, but took things with a grain of salt. When they just enjoyed life, enjoyed the stories, sat around the fire listening to the bards and eating their salted fish…

I’m sure there was that time - it may not have been permanently the situation but especially around the fire (with salted fish ) the atmosphere was primed for storytelling.

We permanently tell ourselves stories and we explain to ourselves and others with stories - they are inherent to human understanding.

Are you sure? I’m not.

What do you think of my linking of the Iliad and, say, some sitcom?

The Iliad is perhaps one of those stories that would take more than a night to tell and might be the result of a series of stories told over many years and developed by repetition.

I think we under estimate the importance of such stories in a pre-media age because we have media and can’t imagine being reliant on bards, not only for entertainment but also for wisdom and pedagogy.

I agree! And the flip side is to recognize our entertainments (books, movies, songs…) as not fundamentally opposed, or even different, from what you’ve so eloquently described.

Quite, the difference is in how certain stories become reliable sources of wisdom with time and repetition - evolving perhaps to become the classics that we have come to know, far removed from a time when their influence was greater. It is the discovery that a story is not only entertaining or even true to life, but carries a timeless aspect that keeps it fresh and true, even centuries after being told the first time. I believe that the composition of such stories became an art long after the first of their kind had evolved with time.

In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.’" - Jim Jarmusch (via Blurry)

“Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed
bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise til noon, rapt in
revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in
undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around
or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in
my west window, or the noise of some traveler’s wagon on the
distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in
those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better
than the work of the hands would have been. They were not time
subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual
allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation
and the forsaking of works.” Walden - HDT

anon,

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each
other’s eyes for an instant?”
–Henry David Thoreau

Walden’s one of my favorite books. Thanks for the quotes, V.

I like this one:

“I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries.”
~ Henry David Thoreau - “Letters”

I am now, thank kindle, steeped into Walden - and bewitched
It is this kind of language which captivates me best and I’m thankful for the hint!

yeah, I get this struggle. No compromise, being tainted, yearning for perfection, which all becomes incredible pressure on the self to remake the World without the Power to do it.

This makes sense to me. That one knows what one wants, but deals with what is here now as well as one can.

Unless you are authentically shallow or whatever. I Think authenticity is a problematic idea when aimed at others especially. How does one know what their real selves want?

I Think one can maintain both, but it is not easy. Guilt, shaming, hopelessness, downgrading and diminishing one’s own reactions and pleasures and successes come with the turf.

I question this. I feel like we have made ourselves fairly small and impotent. We do need to grapple with where we are now, but I see us often taking as given what is temporary and local.

Moreno, that last paragraph - say more? I don’t get what you’re saying yet.

Hey V… what’s the difference between noble lies and noble lives? (Corny joke alert)