Tag: Ibsen

Solitude

On By phulsrojIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

‘This is a lonely time’ is a statement that rolls off the tongue easily at the Christmas of a corona-ravaged year.

We reach out by Zoom and see loved ones, yet we are more alone than we ever were since humankind’s early days. Not even village life or the office offer proximity. The plague, arguably, and cataclysmic wars did not bring physical distance in the way we experience it now. War encompassed the gravest horrors, camps, trenches, yet alone was not the problem.

What we forget at our peril is the difference between solitude and loneliness. You can be abjectly lonely in a crowd, and you can be alone and feel companionship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote movingly about a nearness to his fiancee and his loved ones although he was waiting for death alone in his cell during Nazism.

There is no denying that the face-to-face with the Other is essential for understanding the Other, and that most of our personal treasures are those that we have laughed about, cried about, lived through, together with other human beings. And evidently there is currently a hiatus on much of this joint experiencing. Yet, that does not mean that loneliness must be the result!

Now is a time for appreciating those already collected treasures of life with others; for feeling the nearness of the spirit of togetherness that is imprinted in our hearts. Ibsen said: eternally owned is but what’s lost. That sounds depressing but is not. We own forever that which has happened in our lives, and Kierkegaard was wrong when he suggested that the past is of no relevance. Our past is also our present and the nearness to others that you can and should feel even when they are not present is made possible by a shared past. So let this Yuletide be the time when you are near your loved ones, not only by technical means, but because your mind and feeling let you travel to them with an intensity that only heart can bring!

The Imbalance of Creation and Destruction

On By phulsrojIn American elections, politicsLeave a comment

It is a truism to say that it is easier to destroy than to create. It is simpler to burn down a house than to build it, and a reputation, built over a lifetime, can be destroyed in minutes. Writing books is hard, burning books less so. Donald Trump can destroy but not create.

Of course, destruction is also a kind of creation, although often destruction might just be a return to the ex-ante. When we destroy the international system it may be argued that we are merely recreating the world of the 19th century. But that is not the complete truth, because when multilateralism goes, we recreate 19th century conditions but with nuclear arms. When we kill the rose, the weed that follows may be new.

Creation is exhilarating, as we know, yet destruction carries it own attraction too, unfortunately. In a sense this is strange given our inbred desire to improve. The reason is less Freud’s Todestrieb, and more the envy humans hold alongside the desire for progress. Most fundamentally, though, destruction is the purest exercise of power, and we truly love that. Moreover, killing something gives kinship forever. The hunter creates an unbreakable bond when putting the magnificent tiger to death! In a different context Ibsen said: Eternally owned is but what’s lost. That could be the destroyer’s motto!

Given the competitive advantage of destruction over creation, one can ask how it has been possible for human society to progress to the extent it has. Why did the fatal attraction of destruction not always win out?

One reason is surely that humankind did not take Nietzsche’s advice to heart to abandon what he called self-denying slave morality. Imagine thousands and thousands of Napoleons living their destructive ‘master’ grandeur uninhibitedly. Surely, human progress would have been impossible, and Napoleon himself, of course, saw this as well. His only truly lasting legacy is the Code Civil, which is a wonderful example of codifying slave morality. The progress of civilisation is entirely contingent upon restraint and self-restraint on our destructive impulses.

Even eclipsing this in importance is the fact that good ideas are hard to kill. A cannonball may destroy the house, but still it will not be forgotten how to build a house well. Europe was destroyed by two world wars, yet within 15 years of the last it was blooming again. It had not been forgotten how to build prosperity.

What sets humans apart from other animals is not only our capacity for good ideas, but also our capacity for passing them on. Instead of the endless procession of statues to slavers and warriors surely we should have monuments celebrating the resilience of good ideas. They are the ultimate proof of mind over matter!