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Futile
This post at my own blog is not about politics. It’s about life.
If you feel like reading something that’s not political, go check it out.
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12 Responses to “Futile”
I can accept that “99.999%” will be, by your definition, mediocre. The great are few and far between, so by definition are rare.
But not that “99.999%” are useless. Ridiculous…completely ridiculous.
You can’t possibly know how your life has influenced others/the world, anymore than you can judge where the ripples end when you drop a stone into a lake. They may fade and shrink, but before they’re gone they may reach distant shores.
History is full of inventors, politicians, and business people whose ideas and creations influence us today, but who are forgotten by the vast majority of people today. Our forgetting doesn’t make their influence not so.
The only way one could have no influence was if one was completely isolated from the world, the most exteme hermit–from birth.
And we’re just talking about the secular here. Even greater vistas of possibility open up when we discuss the religious.
I don’t believe in Heaven, not in the usual sense of leaving the body behind and the soul floating away. Believe it or not, that image is not consistent with most Christian theology. And I don’t believe that an afterlife makes this life pointless…if that were true than the Incarnation would have been unecessary and the Gospels pointless.
I do believe that while we may be forgotten by Man, we are not forgotten by the great “I Am Who I Am” who spoke to Moses and the prophets, and at some point we will be raised and, to quote Paul, trade our “soul bodies” for “spiritual bodies”…though I’m not entirely sure what he means by that.
And I do believe that what we do here matters, and is all part of this great epic story of the ultimate salvation of the world. Can’t tell you the why, when, or how, but I strongly suspect that we all have an important role to play.
And thus our actions, however minor, can thus never be useless.
MVG…that was an interesting post. A couple of thoughts:
“Memento Mori”
Have you ever wandered through old cemetaries…I mean, very old ones, like Highgate up about Hampstead in north London? I find them very soothing, actually, for the inscriptions on tombstones.
Late 18th/early 19th century English tombstones are fascinating, with lengthy paragraphs on a person’s life…sometimes with his/her posthumous snarking at their enemies in life. Sometimes, there are just distinctive little memoriams which are highly individualized, and rather moving.
I make this point to note that the futility of existence has become accentuated in the modern world. Instead of individual descriptions of people, we have cookie-cutter memoriams. But even Keats believed his epitaph should be: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
“Et in Arcadia Ego”
I think it is healthy to remind oneself of one’s place in things. Look, it is doubtful whether the United States will exist in 2 or 3 centuries…neither George Bush nor the arguments that consume us will be remembered aside from a few academics.
There is a good poem by A.E. Houseman (turn of the century English poet) that captures this mood. Here it is:
On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
‘Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
‘Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
Old gravestones can be interesting–I know people who visit graveyards and use paper and chalk to make rubbings of the more interesting ones.
Alan G.: thanks for your feedback but you seem to forget that this is not what I think every moment of the day, this is not my ideology, etc.
I am describing a mood.
A fear deep within… You could say that I’m exploring that ‘fear’, that idea..
As for me, I am a Christian myself, so normally I’d agree with you that life isn’t ‘useless’.
Also, it seems that my blog isn’t working right now. It’s a bit strange. This never happened before.
Marlow: thanks for that comment, with that poem. I had never read poem before.
Yes I agree and I haven’t read those stones. Those kind of inscriptions are, indeed, much, much better. I also agree with you when you write:
Also: contemplating about whether what one does is useful or not is important and ‘healthy’ as well. So many people spend hours watching TV. If they’d stop watching TV for a second and ask themselves the questions I ask in my post…
perhaps they would change their behavior somewhat?
The link’s working again.
OK, I wasn’t sure if this was temporary or permanent.
You might want to ask why you feel the need to be “useful”…and how you’re defining “useful”.
You might also want to ask why you feel the need to be remembered,why it matters.
Perhaps these questions seem too obvious, but I feel that sometimes asking the “obvious” questions helps get to the root of cultural/personal assumptions that we might not be aware of.
Marc, on yr blog, makes some good points re: the arts. Think of the deeds done in one’s life as a pyramid. As time goes on their effect lessens. The reverse is true in the arts- if great. The pyramid is upside down, in that case. Shakespeare and Michelangelo have affected manifold times more people w their art than in their lifetimes.
I agree w Alan, to a point, re: uselessness. But, utility is just that- a thing for which anyone can fill in. Most people are drones. All are 100% unique, but most share 99.99% in common. It’s that last smidge that tells the tale, and the overwhelming majority are consigned to the parade of oblivion they deserve.
Artists, scientists, leaders, are the keys that move the hive. A plumber is as important as a doctor, in terms of sanitation, but neither will affect as many as Dickens or Picasso have.
The Butterfly Effect is real, but more often than not negligible. Alan’s fart may affect a Chinese in 30 years, but that effect may jusy mean he scratches his left, nor right, cheek. So what?
Since some other poems were quoted, let me toss one of mine into the ring- one I wrote mindful of an old episode of Carl sagan’s Cosmos:
THE PASSINGS
There are years to go before the last perfect day
on Earth. Then the sun will begin to swell, and life
will cease, shorelines will retreat as oceans boil,
and all will glow a barren red and airless gray.
By then I will be shadow, long dead. Now, I live
amid joys and sorrows, with the love of a girl
in a backseat, behind her mommy and daddy,
as they pilgrim to a motel in New Hampshire,
blowing kisses out her window to teenage strays,
drunk in a sportscar, honking and cursing at her
family squareback’s pace, as they are full on passing,
as if they are ready to face eternal sleep,
as they leave her family behind on the highway,
that is endless, and endless, and everything.
Watched Clouds Of May- a good film. Manifestly a young director- At 130 mins it cd have been trimmed to 90, but a good film, thanks for the tip. I’ll send Joe a review of it in a week or so.
I’m going to break the mood by singing the praises of the medicocre and the forgotten.
Art and philosophy, in one sense, are for the well fed and secure. Those struggling to survive in a day-to-day maze of obstacles will not spend much time musing over color schemes in paintings or the exquisite purity of words in some poetry. They may never do anything heroic or ‘worthwhile’. There may be no one to bring floweres to their gravesites; there may be no one to remember their names.
But they lived. They were angry and mean sometimes, and sometimes they laughed with joy. Sometimes they loved.
They were one of us.
Actually, art is far more for the huddled masses than the effete elites. Ever heard of Walt Whitman?
Sometimes biases run bottom to top, as well as the reverse.
Yes, the poor, struggling artist is almost a cliche.
But the poor, struggling connosseur of the arts if indeed a rarity.
The glass is empty.
And I hate Milk. Makes me vomit.
So, maybe accidentally, this picture is representing very well how I feel now. And your story doesn’t help in soothing my depressions, either.
Where are the good news, Mike???