Rational Philosophy

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Last week I had my first introduction to the layered world views of Buddhism. Apparently there are six of them, each one introducing a little more more enlightenment than the one before.  Those aspiring to inner peace can ease themselves along the way by meditating on each worldview in turn and practicing its lessons in everyday life.

I got to hear the first two during a yoga class Dharma talk. I apologize to Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike if I’m paraphrasing poorly:

Worldview one: Everything changes, or nothing stays the same.

Worldview two: The present moment is what it is and we can do nothing to change it. (Although how we respond to the present moment affects the next moment and the next.)

If something can immediately start to be dwelled upon I immediately began to dwell upon the practice of these worldviews. They seemed to have something to say about every frustration or concern traveling through my mind at the time and about every tricky situation I encountered from that point forward.

I was anxious, for instance, about the ongoing process of approvals at the New York City Department of Buildings (for our renovation) — the Buddhist worldviews helped me realize that I could not change the delays and hurdles, but that they would change with time. My daughter failed her chemistry regents and had to sign up for summer school — I was able to reassure her that this was not the end of the world, as it might seem, but just a modification to her plans for the summer, and a chance to get to learn a bit more about chemistry. And the England soccer team were knocked out of the World Cup after playing several lackluster games of soccer — a mediocre performance for my home country’s national squad; something of a tradition of late.

But while watching a PBS documentary about Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens as he was born) I realized that not only frustrations and hurdles but successes and satisfactions are fleeting and illusory.

Mark Twain’s life story provides a template through which to understand the weaknesses of the capitalist, consumerist worldview that we generally find ourselves stuck in: The perceived rightness of our aspiration for wealth, power, leisure, fame.

Twain denounced and reviled at these aspirations through his words but sought them endlessly in his deeds. He was not a hypocrite, I think, but a man conflicted, unable to reconcile his pleasure in material success and its trappings with his philosophical wisdom about the ultimate futility of striving mercilessly to fix anything that would inevitably change.

He made a fortune, built a beautiful home, surrounded himself with his loving and beloved family, and in the process set the seeds for losing it all (by financial overreaching).

The first two Buddhist worldviews teach us that not only must we practice acceptance and humility in failure and frustration, but also in success and satisfaction. Once I have succeeded in surmounting the feudal bureaucracy of the NYC DOB I will become a landlord and a homeowner with all of the challenges and hurdles that will bring. Once my daughter has passed her chemistry regents she’ll be focused on getting into college. Once England has a successful soccer team again… OK, if England ever has a successful soccer team again its successes won’t last forever (that privilege is reserved for Brazil).

Mississippi Steamboats

Near the beginning of the PBS Mark Twain documentary we learn that Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) started his adult life working on steamboats up and down the Mississippi river. He loved it. He was diligent. He worked his way up to the position of pilot. He earned more than the president. Each day on the river opened up new worlds for him and he never tired of the 1200 mile weeks-long trip ferrying passengers and cargo. It was all he wanted to do. Life on the river was like living a dream.

After 12 years on the river the civil war intervened and Twain was forced to move on for a while. He never went back. The rest of his life was full of ultimately frustrated striving.

Twain’s life can be viewed as the mirror image of Siddhartha’s life. Twain started from humble origins, achieved great satisfaction and happiness as a young man traveling up and down the river, but left that behind for a later life of fruitless searching for happiness in wealth, fame and comfort. Siddhartha began with wealth and comfort and moved on to strive for happiness and satisfaction, finding it as a ferry pilot on the river.

If only we could reach back in time and introduce Twain to the first two worldviews of Buddhism.

Britney Spears accepts the award for Best Pop Video for “Piece of Me” at the MTV Video Music Awards. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

On Sunday evening, my 15-year old daughter, typically guileless, made a bid to watch MTV’s video music awards. “No way,” was the answer, “You have school tomorrow.” (She’s in tenth grade, and supposed to be making a strong start in a new school.) “But we watched it last year,” she replied, “Remember we saw Britney Spears…”

This sent me to the computer because I knew I’d blogged about Britney’s woeful performance at last year’s VMAs. With the help of the blog and my wife’s clam-like mind we recalled that we’d TiVo’d Britney’s debacle instead of watching it live. All of which is to say that my daughter went to bed on time and that this is a blog post about comebacks.

Charles Austin - Atlanta Olympic Gold

I’m back from the time vortex of school vacation. It feels strange to be blogging again. Having been out of the mix for a few weeks, I’m afraid that I’ve lost something or that some essential capacity has become stunted. The “me” of then seems more capable than the “me” of now. I feel a little bit like I imagine Charles Austin feels. Austin won the gold medal for the high jump at the Atlanta Olympics. When we couldn’t watch the VMAs last night (alas, our TiVo attempt this year resulted in two and a half hours of silent gray screen; don’t ask me how that happened) we watched a TiVo’d Austin trying to break the world high jump record for a 40-year old on the David Letterman show. We were all rooting for him as his shirt tipped the bar off its stays. “Tuck your shirt in!” I shouted at the screen.

Britney apparently made a successful return to popstardom on Sunday night, winning three awards. And while I cared momentarily about Austin’s high jump attempt, the objective distance I have about Britney’s success or failure as a pop star (I could care less) allows me to burrow in to the philosophical aspects of success and redemption.

Put simply, in and of itself it ultimately doesn’t matter whether we succeed or fail, whether we make a successful comeback or not. If Austin had broken the high jump record for a 40-year old, someone eventually would have outjumped him, or not. Austin will eventually pass on and those who know him will pass on. Britney will stop making music videos. And this blog post will get archived off to tape, never to be read again.

Ambitions, successes, failures, comebacks are all idealized narratives that we create or consume to accompany events that fill time. They exist in conceptual space, but not as real objects. The most obvious example of a counter-narrative is this: If someone prevails in a competition, others must lose. Letterman asked Austin about his three Olympic bids — gold in one, and what about the other two? “Not so good.” Not so good for Austin, but great for the guys who won golds in those competitions, and not so good for the other competitors the time Austin won.

This perspective can have a very freeing impact. Today I can sit down and write what I want to write because ultimately it won’t matter what I write. And even today right now it doesn’t matter.

Socrates - The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living

But inner and outer narratives often keep us going. More so it seems in modern life we care about the narrative of life and experience life less in itself and more in the abstract. Which brings us back to Socrates, and, for once, it brings me strangely into apparent opposition with Socrates, who said “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

However, onto this I would like to paste the narrative that Socrates had in mind the kind of reflection that brings us deeper into reality rather than further from it…

President Bush warned yesterday of the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. He spoke of his pressure tactics, including economic sanctions, by which he intends to encourage the people of Iran to find new leadership. I’m not the only one to experience deja vue and to read into this that if the sanctions and pressure fail, Bush would consider that we should do with Iran what we have done with Iraq, use force.

In a different story, but with a similar underlying theme, the head of the Federal Communications Commission has a plan to relax decades-old restrictions and again allow media companies to own a newspaper as well as a radio or television company in the same city.

Whether it’s apochryphal or not seems unlcear (although likely,) that the determination of a web-spinning spider inspired Robert I of Scotland to come out of hiding and return North to inflict a series of defeats on the English, thus originating the sentiment that if at first one doesn’t succeed, one should try, try again. (Perhaps Bush has heard of that legend.)

My connecting thought today has landed vaguely on the principle of determination, of trying again. Why do we try again? What conceptual basis causes us to respond to failure with another attempt at the same thing?

It occurs to me that there may be several reasons why one would try again: Because one believes that the circumstances have changed in one’s favor. Because one feels that one can try harder. Because one feels that the only choice one has is to keep trying, that it is the right thing to do. Or because one lacks the imagination or insight to do anything else.

In the legend of the spider, Robert I of Scotland took from the spider’s efforts a sense that defeat should not be accepted. That the right thing to do was to go back and try again. The current head of the FCC seems to feel that circumstances have changed that the communcations landscape no longer calls for the same restrictions on media ownership.

But what of Bush and Iran?

Of course, I realize now that I am following a completely erroneous path of reasoning. Bush believes that he has not failed in Iraq. He acknowledges that there have been problems. But he believes still that the approach he took was not just right, but also effective. With Iran, in his mind, he is not reapplying a failed strategy, but a winning strategy.

At which point the question becomes one of why the president doesn’t perceive his Iraq policy and his foreign policy generally as a failed policy. Why, in the face of contrary evidence, does Bush cling to the idea that he is right, that he has made good choices not poor ones?

Self-insight requires courage. We all make mistakes. We all fail. Every day I do things I shouldn’t do, say things I regret, avoid doing things that I know I should be doing. Occasionally I manage to overcome my failures, to make good on something, to follow through when I’ve procrastinated, to apologize when I’ve insulted. It’s in those moments that I feel a glimmer of courage. That I realize how much I lack by way of courage. That glimmer however slight permits me some self insight.

Bush then must lack courage. Thinking back over this administration’s failures, Bush’s lack of courage has perhaps been the single biggest impediment to his success as a leader. His lack of sharpness hasn’t helped. One wants a leader who can understand the complexities of the challenges at hand. His laziness has been a problem from time to time. But without courage he has been doomed to fail and to continue to fail, to never be able to recognize his failure for what it is, and to address his mistakes.

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