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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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Wednesday, December 17
Above all else, I despise inequalities. I do not mean only of the economic variety--for that leads to other forms of inequity--but the most mundane and obvious kinds. The big stuff I deal with in my writings in social science and philosophy. The other I deal with everyday and respond with the most deeply rooted emotion of disgust.
I seriously believe that--as I have said before in this blog--that the modern office is a place of the most pre-liberal (and by that I mean feudal) kind of inequality between us. This is not a matter of property or money, it is one of privilege and power. Management--even if they do not like one another personally--will cultivate a sense of cohesion among themselves in order to keep some kind of structural order of power relations between "us and them." They are the most petty of minds, not seeing that the power of democratic forms of organization are in the ways that information is communicated and a sense of involvement is nourished. They hold on to these positions of power so tightly because their interest is more in their psyche than in the broader concerns of the organization. Indeed, this was the essence of C. Wright Mills' great analyses of white collar culture, but it is no less true today than it was 50 years ago: management sucks, they wield too much power over those who do actual work and their daily lives, and produce more inefficiency than efficiency, all out of a sense of privilege that they seek to protect.
I despise it, and I despise those who--like sycophant boot-lickers--go along with it out of fear, a sense of aspiration or, even worse, because it is the very logic of "what is." I will fight this, and I will never let this change my will, bend my sense of real duty to what is right--both for me and the larger purposes of my work--and I will never submit.
Hence my brief manifesto. Let others take it to heart and join me. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
Michael was existentially meandering at 12:37 PM \\
Tuesday, December 16
I suppose that there is ample reason to believe in the theory that, at least in its more colloqual phrasing, is known as "what goes around, comes around"; or, even better and more provincial, "the chickens coming home to roost." But I can say that this is not the case more often than not: suffering from bad luck is not something that I think is adequate to explain the vagaries of our unhappy existence. (For those of you whose existence is, by your own admission or, perhaps, delusion, one of self-described happiness, I think you are fooling yourselves.)
But back to the matter at hand. I am no longer willing to accept that I have bad luck or that there is some cosmic force willing or otherwise to steer my course toward any kind of misfortune. I need to rediscover the self-willed autonomy of my pre-office working days. I need to see that this world is all what I make of it, and that this whole situation is a matter of my own submission to a petty mind-set that has its roots in the ancient past of human social organization.
Reading Kafka can be such a splendid experience. Readers among you may recall his "In the Penal Colony" where a condemned man is about to be put to death by a huge machine that will ornately inscribe--via the incision of thousands of tattoo needles--the words: "obey authority" onto his back until he is killed. Such is the fate of those of us in the midst of this iron cage of modern existence--of cubicles, subway cars and one hour lunches. What, to borrow a phrase from Buber, paths to utopia do we have before us? I know only expression--art. Philosophy has become tiresome to a certain degree; a curious and always stimulating endeavor, but never fulfilling at a deeper level. Art can do this, however, and I am rediscovering this all the time through my poetry and music.
Perhaps I'll put some on this blog in the near future. For now, I am more content with contemplating the reality of creativity and the powerful sense of freedom it unleashes.
Michael was existentially meandering at 12:22 PM \\
Monday, December 15
An odd sense of tranquility, of calmness, has come over me. I have to say that this is not one of resignation, but of a deicded sea change of direction in my life-course. I am simply not made for this office environment. I am not designed for its pettiness, for its narrowness of mind and the conformity that it breeds. This has been the source of so much angst in my life, but now I see that I need to recalibrate my efforts and my vision. I will leave this place, as soon as I am able and will never look back.
But there is even more to this than that. I found myself--and have been finding myself as of late--in a very creative state of mind. Yesterday, I was sitting at my desk in study when I found that I was unable to quell this feeling of repressed excitement that I was experiencing. I realized that I was thinking about music, that I had a sombre piece of music for strings in my head that I was unable to shake. I began to write it out, to work it and develop it further. As I worked, I knew such bliss.
Later in the afternoon, I then found myself writing out some poetry, and I was astounded at the quickness with which it all came to mind. I ended the evening late composing a fugue in two parts and got remarkably far with that difficult endeavor.
Also, last night I received a phone call from a woman I had been "seeing" for the past couple of months. Things kind of fizzled, especially once I began to see how kind of emotionally messed up she can be and how emotionally selfish her tendencies were. No hard feelings, but I have lost interest in her. She called last night, obviously lonely and depressed, and I found myself talking to her to help her out. But I felt nothing more but distance from her. I could not bring myself to have those feelings of interest I had before. All part of this new orientation, this new tranquility.
I have thought for some time that the philosophy of Stoicism is truly the most humane and advanced that has ever existed. In its secularism, it is superior to the horrid and repugnant superstition of Judeo-Christian and Islamic faiths; in its emphasis on the freedom of self-will, it is superior to Zen and Hinduism with their complete resignationism; and in its acceptance of the world (no, the universe) as an endless process beyond our control, it offers up a perspective that can calm and quell frustration at the contingent imperfections of life. I do not think that I can buy the entirety of Stoicism--my readings of Marx, Baudelaire, Nietzsche have seen to that. But I know that I can somehow carve out a place in this world of chaos, and create one in which I can feel oddly at home.
Michael was existentially meandering at 9:35 AM \\
Friday, December 12
Nietzsche says in his Geneaology of Morals that a "slave revolt" or morality is needed. That in order to overcome the stultifying effects of mediocrity and unfreedom, we are to start not with politics, but with our moral assumptions about the world and our values. A "transvaluation of all values" is called for, and I must say that the more that I inhabit the mundane world of offices and leather-tongued petty-bureacrats the more I see this is absolutely true. Working in any capacity needs to be seen in context. I like to work. I like to create and study, write and read. I like to do things. But this is not the situation when one works in Kafkaesque world of the office life environment.
I have been thinking more and more about our quality of life as people, as people who work. Americans are the more rhetorically adamant when it comes to issues of "democracy," "liberty" and freedom from oppression. But do they not realize that they spend the majority of their daily lives in a situation of almost complete and utter servitude? This may sound like some kind of outlandish diatribe, but do not be so quick to judge me.
What I mean is more in the realm of the extent to which we have self-control over our lives. When Dante, in his De Monarchia, discusses the notion of freedom, he defines it as living one's life for one's own sake and not for the sake of another. I cannot say that the people I know--so many of whom work in offices for 9 to 12 hours per day--work for their own sake, but for the sake of another. I know what this sounds like, but consider this: the average office worker will live a life being underpaid, their personal life violated to the extreme--involuntary overtime is rampant and considered necessary in a wordl of weak if not non-existent unions--and where they are wholly beholden to the place that they work for fear of pissing someone off and endangering their job security.
I can say that only a transvaluation of our values can change this situation. I am not saying that those who really work--by which I mean grueling labor digging ditches or serving people in restaurants--fare any better, but worse. But the thing is we somehow feel as Americans that we have left the stage of capitalism where exploitation and alienation were the norm. We have not, it has simply become more covert, more obscure, but it is what it still is and will forever be: alienated labor which will result in the continued devaluation of humanism and the erosion of the dignity of all people.
Michael was existentially meandering at 10:08 AM \\
Wednesday, December 10
I really have no idea what floats though the minds of others. This is no profound statement of epistemology, to be sure. I think sometimes about the lives of others and imagine what it must be like to be them. We all lack something and we all know it. We all know that somewhere there is this sense that--even the smallest iota--of what someone else possesses (whether it be in terms of looks or something as superficial as a handbag) is something that we would like for ourselves.
For me this is really not about items, but about apparent lifestyles. For the most part, those people I see everyday on trains and streets are common and do not evoke any sense of interest in me. At times, I think there is even an amazed wonder at how really trite some people's lives must be: the over-dressed wall street commuter from the burbs of Jers engrossed in the hardback of Lawrence Taylor's new autobiography (with co-author) seductively subtitled, Living On the Edge. Or, there is the younger, more disheveled taterdemallion-hipster knitting a scarf on the subway, no doubt trying to exploit another aspect of Darwinian biology by looking hip but still sufficiently effeminate to catch the more "interesting" female (or male) mate.
All in all, I tend to look around me and see not diversity in this "great" city of ours, but a rampant conformism. What is on the surface is merely that: surface. What is beneath is nothing more than what Heidegger appropriately called "das Man": a more elusive term for Nietzsche's notion of the "herd" instinct.
So be it, but I pray for my own cheerful science to keep me from such a fate. I think, however, that this itself carries with it a price. At times, however, it could perhaps be that it is more dear than the cost of selling out in the first place.
Michael was existentially meandering at 10:25 AM \\
Monday, December 8
I am decidedly unconvincved by the seemingly ubiquitous thesis that male-female attraction is essentially based on anything that is reducible to one or two explanatory variables. One of the most interesting aspects about this kind of relationship is that men--who are truly less sophisticated than women in this regard--do require very little to be attracted to a woman (even though this very little may be very difficult for most women to achieve). I can say that, because this is the case, it is probably much easier for a man to be in love with a woman and say that he loves her than for a woman to do the same. The simple reason is that a woman needs to love more things about a man--or at least she puts more into that feeling--than a man does. This is not all that different from nationalism: it is easy to say have cheap nationalistic feelings for a country you don't live in (examples: certain ex-pats, some American Jews for Israel, etc.) than when you actually do live there, when things are more complicated and require more sophisticated involvement and investment.
But this is something I think does matter in the long run. I am prone to intellectualizing these things--it is a convenient and efficient, not to mention effective, defense mechanism against intimacy and emotional involvement. But, in the end, we are all at one time or another confronted with this sociological dilemma. I seem to be more and more prone to this weakness, and I cannot say that it has subsided over the years, irrespective of my efforts to quash it.
Nonetheless, dear reader, it is perhaps time that we all look one another with a more sophisticated glance; not judge one another by our superficialities. I suppose that this is more a function of our materialistic age, one that has progressed exponetially since the bourgeois 19th century. The fascination with accumulating "things" has seeped into our thinkning and feeling about other people, as well. I will not descend (ascend?--no, descend in this case) into a diatribe, but I will say this: there are times like this when I recall Pablo Neruda's insightful poem, "Walking Around." I will quote it here in full for your reading pleasure.
Walking Around
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.
Michael was existentially meandering at 9:25 AM \\
Wednesday, December 3
Work has become such a mundane affair. Reading has been a nice diversion, to step into the world of words and narrative. Living has become such a mundane affair: the key question is to what extent is this truly bland existence worth the time and energy spent on it. I am feeling increasingly frustrated with the state of affairs. I am feeling more and more exhausted, but at the same time, more and more at ease. I cannot explain with any degree of real clarity the extent to which this dissonance rings in my ears--but there is also no question about something else: that conformity is the very end of any form of authentic existence, however starved of meaning and fulfillment it may in fact be.
This is no angered diatribe. I have, after all, said that I have been frustrated, not angry. I do not hate the world or the conditions within which I live. No, this would be too simple to solve. For the truly oppressed--i.e., in material terms--the overturning of the system is the only alternative, save the regression into resignation. In fact, we are too accustomed to thinking that barabarism is of this variety: that it is about economic and political oppression; that "democracy" and capitalism, abundance in material things and the like can harbor not even the smallest trace of barbarity or of cultural regression. Should I remind you, dear (and undoubtedly well-read) reader of Benjamin's infamous dictum that every document of civilization is at once a document of barbarism? Or even of Adorno's that any order that is self-proclaimed is nothing but a disguise for chaos?
I am not sure, but I do know that I have been balancing my psychic and emotional life by more "expression." I have decided to go back to studying composition and write music again. But this brings up even more--albeit, aesthetic--dilemmas. I can recall Baudelaire's statement that all art is to go against the grain and reveal the inner pain which we so dutifully ignore. But I really do not wish to wax into intellectualism; it is much better to compose one's art in a very different state of mind. I do not doubt this is why the musical compositions by, say, Hoffman, Nietzsche and even Adorno are so, well, mediocre: they did not allow their aesthetic self to be liberated from the intellectual self. I can see why this is more difficult in literature, but then again, it is not always beneficial in prose. But in music, it is essential.
As Nietzsche says: "Through music, the passions enjoy themselves." (BGE)
Michael was existentially meandering at 9:43 AM \\
Monday, December 1
I have been away from this blog for some time now, and have decided to return. The turmoil of the past month or so has been extreme, and I am not the lesser for it--but there is no question that the idea of reflection and of meditation has once again settled into its proper place in my psyche and in my daily routine.
I am now back to thinking about abstract, large issues. I have returned to thinking about the general orientation of my life, and things are not as bad as I have once imagined them to be. We can all relate to the neurosis of seeing what seems on the surface to be one's life literally falling apart, but when it actually has empirical referents in the world around you, then it is time to seriously take stock.
Now, I know that I have been far too dramatic for my own good, even though it did not seem that way at the time. But the deeper, more probing questions need to be scrutinized (I will not commit hubris by making an effort to answer them). So, I have returned to these cyber-pages once more in the hope for solitude and for comfort. But, I feel more and more as if the walls of time and duty are upon me; that there is little time for speculation and more time needed for actually "doing." Time is perhaps our greatest enemy in life, resembling that horrid god of old that would not drink his nectar but from the skulls of the slain.
Michael was existentially meandering at 9:11 AM \\
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