I recently read a very annoying article
on why life is absurd.1
Why did I find it annoying? Because it mostly ignores our biological
imperative to reproduce and assesses life only on our culturally
inherited aspirations.2
In other words, it deals with the abstract at the expense of the
concrete. Rivka Weinberg, a philosopher, characterizes the normal
human life span as “fleeting, ludicrous, minute,” not far from
Thomas Hobbes's “nasty, brutish, and short”3
Hobbes, however, describes the physical life of man for the most
part in this phrase, while Weinberg uses terms that portray our
psychological response to the shortness of human life, for the most
part. And there's the rub.
Defining absurdity as “when things
are so ill-fitting or ill-suited to their purposes or situation as to
be ridiculous,” Weinberg concludes that, yes, human life is
absurd: “By the time we have an inkling about what sort of work
we might enjoy and do well, most of us have little time to do it. By
the time we figure anything out, we are already losing our minds.”
Bleak, huh? But to Weinberg absurdity seems inevitable, because our
average lifespan is not long enough to allow us to find fulfillment
or achieve mastery in any of our pursuits: “. . . if we cannot
remove the obstacle of absurdity then it will be hard to conclude
that life has meaning or determine what that meaning might be.”
Well, to me, Weinberg's essay is absurd
because, though she does mention being a mother herself, she assesses
the value of human life in totally cultural, not biological terms.
Metaphorical thinking, this is not. Obviously, most of us have
plenty of time to meet our biological imperative: to reproduce
ourselves and help others to do so as well. Weinberg's essay ignores
the great majority of people in this world who choose (or have the
choice thrust upon them) to value their lives based on their
families. Not only that, but her reasoning is a classic example of
assuming that life is now almost entirely cultural—that we have to
a great extent vanquished the demands of biology.
As much as we as a species do seem to
be moving in that direction, as individuals we do still get born,
grow, get sick, give birth, and die as biological beings. It seems
to me that anything beyond fulfilling our biological imperative is
gravy—a matter of choice, not a necessity. If we reject any value
in the biological realities of our lives, then, yes, life can become
a matter of existential angst. But if we respect and even celebrate
the biological realities of our lives, then everything else we choose
to do is just further reason to celebrate. You can't have the depth
of a metaphor without the anchor of a concrete image. You can't have
the depth in a life without (I believe) the anchor of our biological
realities. It's not just a question of limits increasing
appreciation of life, but also of the unconscious wisdom that is tied
more to our bodies than to our conscious minds.
In another recent and fascinating essay
on the therapeutic powers of psychedelic drugs,4
Michael Pollan speculates that psychedelic drugs (administered in
controlled conditions) help ease existential anxiety because they
suspend the tyranny of the ego. He refers to the experience of
Aldous Huxley:
“In 'The Doors of Perception,'
Aldous Huxley concluded from his psychedelic experience that the
conscious mind is less a window on reality than a furious editor of
it. The mind is a 'reducing valve,' he wrote, eliminating far more
reality that it admits to our conscious awareness, lest we be
overwhelmed. . . . Psychedelics open the valve wide, removing the
filter that hides much of reality, as well as dimensions of our own
minds, from ordinary consciousness.”
What many people experience under the
influence of psychedelics is spiritual wonder and an acceptance of
the limited role of the individual within this extraordinary
(unreduced) realm of existence. The ego afterwards is grateful not
to have to carry responsibility for the meaning of life and relaxes
enough to know that it resides within larger meanings without any
effort beyond being able to see beyond itself—so unlike Weinberg's
inability to escape the conclusion that life is absurd, despite much
intellectual effort.
Pollan also quotes Robin
Carhart-Harris, post-doctoral researcher in neuropsychopharmacolgy,
on what we lose as our egos mature and consolidate in adulthood: “We
give up our emotional lability, . . . our ability to be open to
surprises, our ability to think flexibly, and our ability to value
nature.” Pollan concludes: “The sovereign ego can become
a despot. This is perhaps most evident in depression, when the self
turns on itself and uncontrollable introspection gradually shades out
reality.”
Philosophy is necessarily rooted in
abstract ideas, but literature can be redeeming if it survives the
onslaught of “theory” and returns to individual thought about
metaphor, imagery in particular. I came to maturity in the Sixties,
but I never took any hard drugs, hardly any soft drugs, either.
Literature is a way free to all to explore the big abstract ideas
about our existence while also being rooted in the very important
reality of the natural world, thanks to the workings of metaphor—and
without the potential dangers of drugs.
1Rivka
Weinberg, “Why Life Is Absurd,” NY Times online, 1/11/15.
2Weinberg
does mention having children, but she believes that we do not have
enough time to rear children well. Thus, she is focussing on the
cultural rather than biological aspect of reproducing.
3Hobbes
famously characterizes the life of man in his Leviathan as
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
4Michael
Pollan, “The Trip Treatment,” The New Yorker online,
2/9/15.
