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Editor of Logos, an online journal of society and culture.
Lives in New Jersey.
Won't eat frozen vegetables.
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Thursday, August 7
I have to say that I am quite honestly totally confused about my emotional state of mind when it comes to a woman that I have been interacting with these past few months. In many ways, I think that this confusion results from the fact that she consistently talks with me; she calls me quite frequently; asks me to go out and do things with her and sometimes with others, too; and she seems actually quite happy to talk with me.
I find it fascinating that this most simple emotion has no real linguistic signifier in English. After all, langauge as an institution evolved to do nothing other than allow us to express subjecive feelings and ideas. That aside, I find it curious that we are unable in a single word to distinguish between liking someone as in "I LIKE you better than the rest of the wretched rabble that occupy the earth," and "I LIKE you as in I think about you, am eager to learn more about you and become intimate with you." I suppose, in my case, this is fruitless discussion, but in objecive terms it does warrant some degree of reflection.
But I digress! Back to what I was saying before. You see I think these are most unusual traits for a woman to exhibit in my presence. Thus, I am forced to reflect as to the motivations for these encounters and herein lies the confusion. Let us say for the sake of argument that I realized that I had feelings for her. That I really did like her and that I was consumed with feelings about her. The first thing I would need to do in that case would be to analyze the reasons why. I would most likely find to root causes for these feelings: (i) she has reciprocated in some way feelings that I had for her; or (ii) I was simply fooling myself in feeling this way because I thought that she was reciprocating those feelings.
In the latter case--the more likely scenario--it would be the result of my own misinterpretation and misperception. I think that even though I do not like her like that, that the feelings that I do currently possess--which are that of emotional confusion--are the result of this malperception. You see, since I have not interacted with women in so many years and now, suddenly out of the blue, a very attractive and intelligent woman begins talking with me, I would be more prone to reacting not unlike a river that has burst its damming walls. But, dear reader, reason comes to my aid! I know there is no reason for this, and that such a situation is too good to be true. I know that there must be some motivation lurking beneath the fine surface of her sociability.
We talk on the phone quite a bit. She called me last night and was speaking to me until about 3:00am. Of course, I let this happen: partly because I was interested in the discussion, partly because I am typically unable to end conversations with people that I like and am not so comfortable with that I can simply say I need to go with any sort of abruptness. But I do not know why she keeps talking to me. My usually cynical view that she is a manipulator and seeks some form of gain from me--ineed, a violation of the Categorical Imperative and quite dispicable from any ethical point of view informed thereby--is still there is some form, but I know now that it is not explicitly instrumental.
Now, to attribute this to something malicious I have already dismissed. I think she is simply very nice and likes to talk with people. But I am working through these feelings and coming closer to truth. I think the other set of feelings that clash with these are those of self-hate--a self-hate for being so awkward, ugly and inadequate. I hate myself because when I do have feelings like that for another person as a result of my lot I am forced to be consumed by them and disrupted, plagued by the gnawing realization of my disjunction from others. I hate that I am this way and know that it cannot be otherwise, and I am capable of the most extreme self-hatred. For if I were to project it outward instead of inward, it would burn the skies to cinders.
Michael was existentially meandering at 10:38 AM \\
Wednesday, August 6
Sometimes it is difficult to restrain the passions to the extent that one becomes, quite honestly, Dionysian. I cannot say that my usually restrained and quite calm composure is something that is natural to me. No, I think that I have been finding out these past weeks that this other person inside has been creeping his way out from under the bonds of servitude that I had placed it so long ago. I am not sure what is happening to me now, I can only say that it is something more like a revelation of being, of perception and of sense. Nietzsche says that through music, the passions enjoy themselves. But I now see that he means "music" in a metaphorical sense: in the sense that music is that abstract emotive/creative capacity within us that seeks to transform the world, to aestheticize it, as it were.
If all human energies were simply bound by ethical obligation and communal conscience, I should say that our life would be as boring as it is now where it is bound by egoism and self-annihilation in the face of alienation. The force that is creative in us--at least, as I feel it, in me--is something almost frightening. How do we focus it, control it? I have been so lax these many years in practicing some craft or another, a craft of art. I have let my music abilities lessen and almost diminish to the point of non-existence; I have let me writing go with the rare exception of poetry here and there to the point where my time can no longer be dedicated to that art which I once wrought with great profundity and with much prodigiousness.
Now I see I must create once more, I must go back to those old avenues of thought and crativity. Of course, this brings with it the untold woe of wrestling with the titans of the past. I recall the character of Salieri in Peter Schaffer's "Amadeus" where, so utterly convined of his mediocrity in the face of Mozart's genius, he defiantly burns a cross in his study, a symbol of that thing which he felt had bestowed upoin him the gift of musical composition.
I know if I pursue music once more that I will be thrown back into those depressive spells of my late teens and early twenties when I wrestled with the ghost of The Master and, in fate-like manner, lost. I suppose that such a level of genius is unattainable in our age, but that, alas, is another discussion. For now I must be content with my lot, in awe of his great genius and yearn for those powers that I will never possess. For had I his toungue and ears, I'd use them to crack the vaults of heaven.
Michael was existentially meandering at 8:54 AM \\
Tuesday, August 5
How could events be more different from 24 hours ago? I am of the decided opinion that once we embace the Stoic philosophy of life, our troubles seem to dissipate. Of course, it is a very difficult philosophy to be consistent with. So, we are left with the ineluctable reality of straying from its teachings and then--like an impudent, arrogant young pupil who must return to his master for further instruction once his deeper ignorance has come to light--return to it once more to rescue us from the depths of despair.
Well, perhaps this will be the way I am forever, I really don't know. I think that I have been feeling things that I am now unable to really understand with any true depth. And I mean "understand" in the Hegelian sense: I have no "absolute knowledge" of these feelings. Hegel meant by "absolute" (Allgemeinheit) a knowledge that is more than the mere appearance of things, but also of its essence, what makes it work and what is responsible for its being. I know my feelings are that of curiosity and are, in all honesty, quite simple, common feelings. But they have not been present for so long that I have simply forgotten how to react to them and how to deal with them.
I think the woman that I have been speaking to and meeting for the past few months is someone very special, quite sweet and she makes me very happy. We relate excellently, and we speak on a consistent basis. My feelings for her are really quite simple, but sometimes manifest themselves as complex. At first, I thought that I was really beginning to like her, have feelings for her. But now--after last night--I realized that that is not really the case. Rather, what I think is happening is that she has turned something on in me that I simply shut off long ago: I am beginning to become sensitive to women again.
Ok, this may seem terribly pathetic and, to be honest, a bit silly. But you do not understand. I have been alone for quite some time and have grown used to this situation. I do not know if I am ready to depart from it--for these feelings have yet to manifest themselves intellectually as a course of ethical action. No, I think that it is simply the feeling itself which has caused me grief. I was depressed yesterday and was unsure why. I felt abandoned and alone. I did want to speak with her, but I was not going to call fearing the possibility of seeming interested in her. Then, at about 10:30pm she called me and we spoke for several hours. I think that after this I was quite happy indeed: I felt full and renewed, and it was because--during the course of the conversation--I was realizing what these feelings mean and where they are directed.
To evolve feelings for her would not be wise in my practical state of affairs. But this is unlikely to happen. I am more comfortable resting with this insight. It is funny how times of bleak darkness and ignorance can turn at once into moments of pure self-revelation. Socrates' dictum "gnothi seauton!" (know thyself) is one that is an eternal imperative.
Michael was existentially meandering at 9:15 AM \\
Monday, August 4
I have since my early adolescence been dedicated to the ideal of the improvement of the self through education. Today, whatever I may or may not be is the result of my education. It is not the fault of the ideas that I have imbibed that I am imperfect or even corrupted, it is more the deformity of my ability to practice what I have studied with any degree of truth.
Virtue is a term that we in our post-Christian world seem to believe is something that denotes chasteness, naive goodness and some kind of ethical purity derived from the simplistic ethics of Jesus which in themselves were derived from Hillel. But this is not the ideal of the Stoics. My ethics are derived from two basic, principle sources. On the one hand, there is the philosophy of the Stoic philosophers. This tells us never to indulge in self-importance, proudness, gluttony, wealth, pleasures of the flesh and so on. On the other hand, there is the Kantian "categorical imperative" that tells us two important things: (i) do only those things which you wish to see as universal laws; and (ii) always treat others as ends and never as means. I have never wanted to be perfect since I know this is something unattainable and it is not the goal of any form of wisdom. Seneca tells us:
Exige itaque a me, non ut optimis par sim, sed ut malis melior.
[And so require not from me that I ought to be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked.]
This weekend I was accused of violating those ethics. I think it was a misunderstanding--on my part I am sure of it, but I am not sure what my good friend still thinks about this--and insofar as this is the case, I know that my ethical self is still intact. I was accused of putting myself and my own interests over that of others, one of the most base accusations that could ever be made against me. It is difficult for me to explain here in this brief space the vileness of that charge. The details are truly insignificant, but be that as it may: my own ethical self-constitution must remain austere. But there is little solace in this, although there should be much. You see, I have nothing in this world except that which is the fruit of my moral education; for this to be questioned is to question the very essence of who I am and how I live my life. It questions my very essence of being.
The objects of any man's affections should be not self-love, amour propre, as Rousseau called it, but the love of justice, freedom and equality. This is the essence of virtue. The love of another is defined by either the carnal desire for that other or the need for the other to compliment and complete the self. In the latter case, my needs makes me weak, drive me from virtue and enslave me. Freedom is elusive to the extent that these needs drive us and define us. Fear of lonliness is another aspect of this. But what else is fear and desire but selfishness? Seneca once more:
quid enim prohibet nos beatam vitam dicere liberum animum et erectum et interritum ac stabilem, extra metum, extra cupiditatem positum, cui unum bonum sit honestas, unum malum turpitudo, cetera vilis turba rerum nec detrahens quicquam beatae vitae nec adiciens, sine auctu ac detrimento summi boni veniens recedens?
[For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast--a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?]
Of course, this is similar and is intellectually derived from Epicurus:
Ouk estin hedeos zein aneu tou phronimos kai kalos kai dikaios aneu tou hedeus.
Whatever the case may be, it is sometimes difficult to retain this philosophy of life in the face of harsh realities. Sometimes I question Seneca's command:
Agedum, virtus antecedat, tutum erit omne vestigium.
[Come then! Let virtue lead the way and every step will be safe.]
Michael was existentially meandering at 8:54 AM \\
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