8 Oct 22 | Edition 36
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
"I just want to be happy". That's the problem right there.
Language is a virus, said William Burroughs. The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world, said Ludwig Wittgenstein. Somewhere between these two we find the trap of happiness we have made for ourselves.
Ol' Wittgy also said "When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote". So no more attributable quotes then. How about a proverb instead?
Health, wealth, and happiness.
See the problem? Why is happiness at the end? It's always struck me the priorities in this phrase are wrong. Without attending a quote party, anyone need reminding money doesn't buy happiness, and it can't buy you love, love, love? But I've just fallen into a language trap.
Happiness is an altered state, an exaggerated state. It has an evil twin — sadness. By aiming for happiness we are pitching for a constant state of elevation. This seems like a lot of hard work. A ruler with units of potential failure marked along it.
Perhaps it's to do with the West not having zero for over a thousand years. We're rooted in this dichotomy of plus and minus. There is no baseline. 1
I'd like to recalibrate, using the word contentment. In the West this is a disingenuous word. We're told it's good, and that we should never aim for it. Here are two knobheads sowing the seeds of discontent. "One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has laid down to die, and the grass is already growing over him", Christian Bovée. Fuck you Christian Bovée, are you saying everyone has to be famous to be worth considering, to be valid? In a world where everyone is famous, well, Andy Warhol would hate it to start with. Next up, "A man who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do", Fred Estabrook. Here we go again. What the fuck Fred Estabrook? Fame is the cure?
All tied into aspiration. The need for speed. For addition. What I like about contentment, is the opposite is discontentment. It’s the same state, working and not working. Happiness is asking for the seesaw to always be up. Contentment is being OK with being OK, it has room for other things, wriggle room. One can be content one day, and happy, and contented another day, and be sad. It's an even keel.
So let's stop seeking happiness and start harbouring contentment. The zero loving Buddhists have a saying, "Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Nirvana is the greatest joy". It's from "Dhammapada", a collection of Buddhist aphorisms from around 3 BCE. Not Lao Tzu as the disingenuous internet meme machine tells you 2. While I don't agree with Buddhism's retreat from emotion, there's common ground with Daoism's acceptance of the way things are. (Quick note, this is not passivity, but not fretting over that which can’t be changed).
What difference does nothing make? Compare zero culture's "Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure" with the Western need for progression, "Health, wealth and happiness". If you want happiness, seek contentment.
Pop music is the language of lust. Rarely does it encroach on philosophical conundrums of existence and happiness beyond bonking. Talking Heads (you know they're art because there's no the) not only gave us 'Once in a lifetime', a warning for the need in self-awareness to swim against the current of social expectations. They also gifted us a hymn to contentment, to understanding that equilibrium is the best foundation of life. Neither trying to ever obtain positive states, or living in fear of negative ones. Neutrality, balance, a platform from which to savour all of life's other temporary flavours. I am of course talking about "Heaven".
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happensThere is a party
Everyone is there
Everyone will leave
At exactly the same timeIt's hard to imagine that
Nothing at all
Could be so exciting
Could be this much fun
Together with Jonathan Demme they reinvented the concert movie. "Stop Making Sense" is possibly the only *watchable* live performance that works as a film.
A bassline for the baseline. If you will.
There isn't a magazine of contentment. There is however a magazine. Perdiz — the collectable magazine-object about people and the things that make them happy.
An odd title for an unusual magazine, it's bilingual in Spanish and English, and means Partridge en Español, for no reason that I can think of, except perhaps, it also translates as "bulls eye"? Apparently now on hiatus, I've just discovered from their instagram. Typical, the moment I've decided to suggest it. But back issues are available from Stack Magazines, the superb magazine subscription service I heartily recommend, who in fact sent my first copy.
www.stackmagazines.com/product/perdiz-issue-10/
www.perdizmagazine.com
www.instagram.com/perdizmagazine
Looping back to the point about not fretting over that which can’t be changed. It's a matter of degree. This year I stopped following the news. I am not ignoring the world. The world is loud and aggressive. Apple news alerts still show up every morning on my phone. Friends talk. Anne informs. I have stopped devoting time to that which I can not change.
I followed the news compulsively about Brexit, since it impacted my life. In the end I had no sway over it. Now there is war. I decided to disengage. I can not affect it. That is not to say I can't drive for change. My view is one should focus on change that is achievable, directly in your path.
The opposite of the trickle down economic model. Contentment is stability. Stability is a position of strength. Use that strength to help those in your path. Each of us, a step forward reaching outward. Ripples, that grow into waves.
Nietzsche has a bit of a rep for being a miz git. A reputation for being a miserable chap, for those not versed in Cheeky Nando's banter. The progenitor, along with other miz git Kierkegaard, of existentialism. It's all The Birth of Tragedy and Beyond Good and Evil. Dread, anxiety and falling. So I was rather surprised to find he wrote a book called The Gay Science. Even more surprised to find it contains poetry — along with the infamous "God is dead" — and focuses on the joyful affirmation of life. Who knew?
I've ordered a copy, based on seeing my views about the news, daoist action on what can be changed, and the contentment/happiness axis summoned up in 1882 by Nietzsche miz pants himself, in this passage (yeah, be quiet Wittgy, sometimes a quote is worth a thousand thoughts).
...And while I shall keep silent about some points, I do not want to remain silent about my morality which says to me: Live in seclusion so that you can live for yourself. Live in ignorance about what seems most important to your age. Between yourself and today lay the skin of at least three centuries. And the clamor of today, the noise of wars and revolutions should be a mere murmur for you. You will also wish to help — but only those whose distress you understand entirely because they share with you one suffering and one hope — your friends — and only in the manner in which you help yourself. I want to make them bolder, more persevering, simpler, gayer. I want to teach them what is understood by so few today, least of all by these preachers of pity: to share not suffering but joy.
338, The Gay Science, Nietzsche
And in case you didn’t believe me about the poetry (or gay science as he refers to it), this ditty
You need some rust; sharpness does not suffice:
Else you will seem too young and too precise:15, Rust, The Gay Science, Nietzsche. Translated by Walter Kaufmann
Illustration by Fatima Fletcher
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References
Forever enriched by your introduction to The Gay Science poems. I mean this to extend, not undermine the thoughtful discussion you've presented here: my baseline is the unicorn in the illustration. What do you make of that?
I do think we need some aspiration mixed in with the contentment. Unless we can aspire to be content?