Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas?

Vanity of vanities ...all is vanity...and the  vexation of the spirit. It appears that the only way to end this cycle is the self realisation. How are we supposed to deal with the complexities of modern day, day to day life, with the seemingly inconsistent need to leave a mark, a legacy of some kind that states that we were here, and we did ... well, something? How does this translate any kind of purpose to our lives? 

The reason I ponder this is that I find myself constantly fighting with people. I worry that I remember my father dedicating most of his life; most of my childhood, to what I believed were trivial disputes. I still do. Yet I look back at the progression of my children’s childhood and find it all too easy to measure time in terms of who I was arguing with at a particular point. 

We’ve talked about weird little teachers and their inability to live up to the standards that society asks of them while at the same time, holding a label which society greatly approves of. It the last little while, one of these annoying little people provides the current case in point. It seems that there is this endless progression of people wanting to be recognised by me, and to do this they will go out of their way to start a dispute.  This chick is going out of her way, putting her very employment and reputation at risk just to get some sort of standing with me. Just to get some sort of acknowledgement that I am listening to her and her petty claims and invalid understanding of behaviour. I couldn’t really care about it at all, I think her whole understanding, her very existence is pointless and I don’t really want anything to do with her. I paint her as the version of humanity that some of us have been lucky enough to transgress and surpass. They live in the bigger cities with their shiney, identity seeking materials that will prove to all and sundry how spiritual they are. They sit in a metal coffin on their way to work stuck in traffic, never realising that they aren’t stuck in traffic, they are the traffic. I should just point a silent and mocking yalp to the pointlessness of her life, however, I can’t seem to just stand by and let her dictate terms to me as to how I can act and what I can say. 

Do you know what I am talking about dear reader? Of course you do; you’re just as cool aren’t you? And I hear you say, “just walk away, vanity is vanity after all.” You’re right, I know that you’re right, but let me ask you this, “have you ever?”

Didn’t think so. 

I have no idea why this is the case. The LoML thinks that it’s because I am too cool and don’t grant people enough lee-way; that I should consciously compliment people more often when they don’t deserve it so as to avoid petty little disputes and an indifferent attitude to develop into an out of control hostility where everyone just gets fed up. 

Many years ago, in one of the first major legal cases that I was involved with, two families basically destroyed each other rather than walk away. This may be because they saw walking away as acquiescing to the request of their now rival. This may be true, the language that is used in disputes first and foremost seeks to own the path of resolution, to put a fence around it that says  “pay the fare or else”. 

These two older men, both from very wealthy families with many generations of wealth and prosperity formed a company that exaggerated their status and cunning to turn their many millions of dollars into serious money. Then the strangest thing happened; a sister of one of them broke a wine glass at a dinner party. It was not too much of a big deal at the time; easily solved with the promise of a replacement glass. It was an exceptionally expensive glass, but the price tag meant little to our heiress, who duly gave, as restitution, a set of six glasses of equal or perhaps better value than the one that she broke. The problem was:  the one that she broke was part of a set of twenty. She replaced one wine glass with six, but this was not regarded as due restitution by the other family. 

Then, by chance or design, who knows...the brothers met again as normal over tea and the brother whose family hosted the dinner party (and had their wine glass broken) ‘accidentally’ broke an antique tea pot belonging to the other. One family saw this as a deliberate response, the other pleaded that it was an accident. Then the lawyers got involved, their business partnership was dissolved and the many, many boxes of paperwork which detailed the dealings of this partnership, from innocent transactions right through to accounts which identify criminal activity from them (fraud, larceny, tax evasion and the like) were in the hands of the lawyers.  

Fast forward a few years and this dispute is still going. The two men were reduced to a laughing stock due to them destroying their position and privilege just to seek to get back at the other. Neither man recognised any point at which they ought to have just walked away, regardless of the loss of face. Yet everyone else looking onto the dispute could hardly see a time where this wouldn’t have been the appropriate thing to do. It’s the language of a dispute, it’s the point where one identifies themselves as the injured party and refuses to give up on some vague concept of justice or a fair outcome that the vanity blinds them from the realisation that this does not exist, or if it does, it is not available to them. One of the stories retold by Mark Twain in his travel writings: Life on the Mississippi  is of a dispute between the Darnells and the Watsons in the deep south; two families who started as kin/squattocracy and, over the generations had bitterly shot each other almost out of existence. Our arrogance and vanity blinds us from happiness. 

As I’ve always said, ‘if arrogance is misconstrued as shyness, well then I wouldn’t be arrogant.’ 

Yet, as Aristotle wonderfully said “there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.” 

The problem is that I find myself way too much of a passionate and moral person to be able to let things go; and that this makes me different from other people. However, it appears most people are the same. I say moral in the sense of ‘how many times does a buttmuncher like Ms X here come across a person like myself? Not that I am arrogant about that (well, not too much, I am not overly arrogant, I have bad eyesight and get bored with dumb people very easily), but it appears to me to be the part I play in scheme of things is very greatly coloured by the fact that I have been given certain privileges and skills that enable me to respond quite strongly to these people whom society has granted a comfortable existence, well beyond their contribution to that society. But then this makes me greatly vain. 

Have you ever been unfriended by someone of facebook? Of course you have, haven’t you dear reader. But when you happen by chance to realise this, isn’t it the funniest feeling? You have this need to say, ‘hey, you’re not allowed to do that, you were my pity friend for like years and now you’re all snoochy about it?” We’ve talked about social media and trolling before, and the strange and unrealistic situations that it gives people. It gives a voice to people who, in real life, don’t have a voice (sorry to use the term real life as opposed to life online, but I’m not sure how else to draw a dichotomy). But the need to identify themselves in the most simple and non-dismissible way seems inversely proportionate to their abilities in real life. But can you simply walk away from that without getting upset, without thinking “is there a way I can have them know that there’s dogpoo on their windscreen wipers, and it’s because of their inabilities in life, their very vanity made me put the poo there?” Or is it my vanity? 

However, is the absence of vanity the answer to all this? I am not sure that recognising the vanity of my actions and removing it is the right course of action. To be selfless is not about being removed or ignorant of the world. It is in recognising that one is part of a greater all. An all that we realise our part in and thus truly transgress vanity. We play our part in the world, our experiences and skills enable us to do great things, but we must never forget that it is only a part we are playing. 

Without the play, we are nothing, but we would be wrong to assume we would be better off without the play. There is no us without the play, both metaphysically (how can we label something that we cannot know?) and morally (if we remove ourselves from the play, others will be left with missing lines). Ignorance is not bliss. The withdrawal of belief in something does not spur belief in nothing, it spurs belief in anything.  Then we are left with a nothing that is hard to comprehend and harder to listen to. As Uncle Fred said, being human, all too human is tough, we should give our darkness one big old hug and howl for the eternal yes. 

So what if we get so caught up in our own vanity. The current version of non-realism, which is generally referred to as science seems at best the latest version of vanity and arrogance spurned on by a failure to understand the wonder in meaninglessness. Meaninglessness is the most wonderful, yet also the most misunderstood and feared quality that our beautiful world has to offer us. 

Well, if you don’t count sex and guitars.

I found myself revisiting the Bible this last week. I have been a lapsed Catholic for almost as long as I was a Catholic. Short of some vision or calling from the big man, this year will mark a point in my life where I have spent longer as a non-Christian than as a Christian. I remember back to the days of my youth when I believed that there was someone at the wheel, keeping everyone to account (which we’ve talked about). Remember when you thought that so long as you stayed close to your parents, you were safe, nothing could harm you. I’m providing that for my children at the moment and it scares me. It scares me because I remember the day that it all ended for me. That day when you realised that you were never safe, you were always as vulnerable to the whims of the meaninglessness of the world. I hope I can keep up the pretence with my children long enough for them to find it easier to forgive me for holding up a conception of meaning in what we do and why. But remembering what it was like to honestly be part of the fold. You sing and put cardboard-tasting discs in your mouth and you had nothing to worry about. Even the time when you were falling out of that group, but faking it cause you wanted to get with the girl down the road who still went to church most Sundays. There’s beauty in that. Well, not in that dear reader, I meant the mindset of that. With regard to the other thing, sure there is beauty in that as much as there is beauty in the lesson learned of be careful what you wish for. Another thing social media has ruined: my memory of her. The memory of shock as I realised I completely misunderstood who she was, how pure she was by being dominated and used. That contradiction between loving being used as a toy for a time while being quite angry that she completely disregarded the rules of chess and threw the game just to get her own way. But now, thanks to the joys of social media, I learned that the years have not been kind. I didn’t want to know that just as much as I did want to know that. But there is nothing to be done about it.  Maybe this is why a passage from the Bible came and stuck for a minute. What wonderful passages there are to be found inside what can be regarded as a predominant history of the West and what joy there is to find, in this book, something that is akin to that wonderful Pink Floyd understanding of the metaphysics of morals.

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

This post’s groovy, identity seeking quote

“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

This post’s lame joke:

This guy, Tom,  goes to his priest and says “Father, I think my marriage is in trouble”

“Well,” says the priest, “it’s good that you realise that and are seeking to do something about it before it’s too late. Especially in today’s world, the role of the mother is vexed and complicated and as a result, some men feel that their marriages come second.”

“Oh, no father,” replied Tom, “it’s nothing like that, she’s great with the arranging everything and keeping on top of things.”

“Well,” says the priest, “Sometimes being a mother will remove a woman from the complexities of the modern world and she will start to appear quite boring and plain during early child raising.”

“Oh, no father,” replied Tom, “It’s nothing like that, she keeps up to date with everything, is an avid reader and we talk into the wee hours about all types of topics...from current events to art, music, politics,... whatever.”

“Well,” says the priest, “Sometimes the role the modern, working man, with its stresses and fatigue can destroy the attention and patience needed of a father.”

“Oh, no father,” replied Tom, “It’s nothing like that, she keeps the kids out of my hair when I’ve had a bad day, but that doesn’t happen too much and they’re great kids anyway.”

“Well,” says the priest, “Sometimes the role of a mother can interfere with the want for physical love and as a result, the husband can feel unloved and unwanted.” 

“Oh, no father,” replied Tom, “It’s nothing like that. She’s an absolute firecracker in the sack...she’s always up for it and willing to try new things and is a wonderful lover.”

“Well,” says the priest, now quite at a loss as to what to say, “why don’t you tell me why you think that your marriage is in trouble.”

“Well father,” Tom started, “It seems a bit silly now, especially after talking with you. Don’t worry about it, it nothing... It’s silly.”

“No, no, tell me my son, no matter how silly.” the priest replied. 

“Well,” Tom hesitated, “It’s just every once in a while, not very often, maybe once a fortnight at the most...usually after I’ve had a tough day...come home to find the kids good and fed, bathed, then , even though I’m exhausted, she’ll want sex...then ... when she thinks I’m asleep...she’ll lean over and with such passion and force in her voice...well”

“Go on my son” the priest encourages.

“Well, she’ll say, full of infatuation and strength she’ll think I’m asleep and say ‘Die, when are you going to fucking die you son of a bitch.”