People have tried to justify their existence with happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction, service, love, hope, devotion and what not. But those who have existed in full spirit, lived it to the fullest have realized the effect of sufferings on our lives and even after overcoming them are ready to endure them again in the hope that they will become better than what they were before. These are the people who might have solved the query to justify the life. Overcoming the sufferings in life and continuing the journey ahead could be the answer.
On Charles Dickens’s short story – A Child’s Dream of A Star
The Impact of Suffering in the Pursuit of Happiness
Question- what would you choose of the following?
A short life filled with happiness and satisfaction? or A long life filled with pain and suffering?
I will assume that you have selected one.
Charles Dickens’s short story – A Child’s Dream of A Star
I came across a short story “A Child’s Dream of A Star” by Charles Dickens which shows what it means to pass through the suffering of the lost loved ones.
This is a story of a boy who loses many loved ones throughout his whole life. Whenever he is losing someone, he dreams of a star where he sees the souls of his loved ones meeting and coming together. First, he loses his little sister in childhood, then his baby brother. When he grows young, he loses his mother, while being adult he loses his own daughter. Every time, when the boy loses his people, he dreams of the same star and wishes that he too could join them. But, when grown adult and losing his daughter he is somewhat soothed that his daughter is not alone, she has the angels of his sister, mother and brother to accompany her.
When he realizes the arrival of his last moment, he accepts the death for the joy that he will join the souls of his loved ones now.
The Suffering of Watching People Leave
Charles Dickens in a very impactful way shows what it means to live life. On surface analysis, one can say that this short story of a boy dreaming about the people he lost and asking for his own death in the hope to join them is about the pain of losing the loved ones and dissatisfaction of not getting enough time to spend time with them and love them. Deep down it is about how one endures pain and I think the only way to endure such pain is to pass through it. Any attempt to alleviate or even control it, leads to more pain.
Enduring the Suffering
The great thing about this story is that it delicately captures what a beauty that life we live in is and how we connect same attributes of life to the afterlife (even when we are unsure whether it truly exists, even when it exists in our minds and dreams) also how fragile our existence is.
Charles Dickens used the innocence of the child’s mind to show how we carry that innocence throughout our life to use every chance to stay closer to the people we love. The opening of the story also talks about the sorrow that is felt by everyone when someone dies.
“They used to say to one another, sometimes, supposing all the children upon the earth were to die, would the flowers and the water and the sky be sorry? They believed they would be sorry. For, said they, the buds are the children of the flowers, and the little playful streams that gambol down the hillsides are the children of the water; and the smallest bright specks playing at hide-and-seek in the sky all night must surely be the children of the stars and they would all be grieved to see their playmates, the children of men no more.”
It shows that even for children the suffering had a bigger meaning not even when they had faced any such suffering from loss in their tender age. It shows how by default we are hardwired for the sensitivity towards suffering. Maybe we are more sensitive to suffering than love.
Then we see that the boy is exposed to multiple losses and you will see over the time his dreams are evolving gradually. In early childhood loss of his sister, he is totally devastated that he could not join his sister, then he is again agitated with the thought that his younger brother has to join her in the starry heaven. Then when he is young, he is somewhat settled that his mother could join his sister and the brother.
Now when being adult and losing the beloved daughter, the same boy has made peace with her death in the thought that she has enough people to take care of her and maybe love her more. Now he has made amends with the death.
“My daughter’s head is on my sister’s bosom, and her arm is round my mother’s neck, and at her feet is the baby of old time, and I can bear the parting from her, God be praised!”
You must understand how the boy from childhood till his old-age sees the death in different ways. At first, he has intense sorrow for his sister but over the time he sees that even after death the people he loves have each other’s company.
He cannot do anything to join them in the afterlife and death is the only way to join them. Please note that there is not even single mention or any indirect indication that boy wishes to end his existence just to meet his loved ones in afterlife.
So, it’s a story of how a person builds himself towards the suffering. You will see that the boy never gets numbed because of the series of losses, he is hopeful that at least someone is there in afterlife for them to love each other. Death along with love is the only constant in this story.
We are well aware of the love from the very beginning of our existence but it takes time to appreciate that just like love, death too is eternal. It’s just that our minds find it difficult to bring together the idea of eternal nature of love and never-ending series of death in single thought. Maybe that is why not everything exists at exactly the same time and ends at exactly the same time, otherwise there would be no one to witness and appreciate what one existed in and carry that forward.
The Eternal Curiosity, Innocence and Love
I am adding the concept of eternity, endlessness in this story of involving series of deaths, ends and sadness with it, because that is how the life is. The symbolism of star used in this short story by Charles Dickens also points to that idea.
You should notice that in the opening it is about how everything that is there in existence will feel sad for loss of the children of men. The boy feels that sorrow in his childhood; later on, we realise that he holds these unfulfilled emotions, feelings of not getting enough time to spend with the people he has lost. These emotions are continuously getting reflected in his dreams. In the end, we see that he is dying happily while feeling that he can love them again in the afterlife.
But you should now notice that the dream is limited to the boy only. What is real is the star in this story; the star shining on little sister’s grave and was still shining on her brother’s grave who died at old-age.
Just like the children’s curiosity about whether the nature grieved for the losses in the beginning of the story, we can say that the star (being the child of nature) would also grieve for the people he saw dying. But that is not where the story is going. The boy had learned to handle the grief over time and that is why is mature emotionally with the death of his daughter and even his own death. This became possible because his love for his sister increased multiple folds, got intense over the time.
The maturity that comes to such sorrow is worth noticing, the boy now an old-age man is not sad because he will be leaving his children behind. He is neither happy that he will join his loved ones in the afterlife (although what he says while dying means that he is eager to join afterlife).
The star was a construct of his mind to move over the grief and be assured that no one – not even him will never be left unloved. He had a strong belief that at least love is eternal in some or other forms. The star still shining upon his grave in the last sentence of the story is thus the symbol of the child’s innocence and love.
The last words of the boy/ man are these:
“…My age is falling from me like a garment, and I move towards the star as a child. And O my Father, now I thank thee that it has so often opened to receive those dear ones who await me!”
We all can appreciate that the afterlife’s notion is only in the boy/ man’s dreams but that does not invalidate his feelings. He is grateful that he had someone to love (although he couldn’t love them to the fullest while living). The childhood innocence and curiosity he carried throughout his life helped him to endure the suffering. Curiosity because of the urge to understand what would happen to the people who die gets materialized in the dreams of the boy and thus he builds his understanding around it. This curiosity emerged because he cared for them so strongly that he was concerned about what would happen to people after they die. Innocence because from childhood till old-age he deeply believes that just like the children of nature, everyone and not only him cared for people, loved them in some or other ways.
Conclusion
Most of the existential queries on human life point to one single question of meaning or purpose or at least worth of the life. Once started, if it is destined to end then why is this everything existing? And this question is not just about life. It is about everything attached to the life itself. If everything in existence is attached to something and everything at any time will be lost forever, disconnected forever then why does everything exist in first place? Once you appreciate this question, you will see that existence is majorly a series of detachments, losses – literally and figuratively. It is just that some things detach faster than others, some things stay for longer time but are lost in the end; we are just existing in these gaps of losses and detachments. Maybe how we felt about those things especially the innocent emotions we had for everything that is there (which are neither good/ bad, pure/ impure) are eternal. If not eternal, I would say that they evolve in better ways, get refined, gain maturity and get transferred to our next generations through our legacy. Maybe they too would have an ending but what can we say about the human spirit! The spirit to exist in spite of the sufferings! The ability to exist in full spirit and endure multiple sufferings over the time while maintaining that innocent child alive inside you is what justifies our existence in the end. And even that is to end in the end, I have no complaints.
So, when I asked to select one of options at the start, if you felt that selecting only one of these is foolish (or difficult/ meaningless) then welcome to the club!
People have tried to justify their existence with happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction, service, love, hope, devotion and what not. But those who have existed in full spirit, lived it to the fullest have realized the effect of sufferings on our lives and even after overcoming them are ready to endure them again in the hope that they will become better than what they were before. These are the people who might have solved the query to justify the life. Overcoming the sufferings in life and continuing the journey ahead could be the answer.
Most of the times, we are forgetting that when we are promoting and asking for individual freedom, individual expression, individual identity we have ignored what it means to reserve the same rights for others. Ernest Hemingway’s short story called “In Another country” from his collection called ‘Men Without Women’ shows what men lose when they have no one of their own to open up, express, share. Hemingway’s writings although were heavily influenced by his personal experiences of war, the ways in which his men handled emotions is exactly same as how modern men are still handling their own emotions. They are not handling them at all, they are suppressing them, running away from them.
Men are so strongly conditioned with the trait of showing themselves unaffected by whatever life throws at them that now they have accepted it as their second nature. There is a specific psychological term called Alexithymia which literally means “a lack of words for emotions.” You can see alexithymia in Hemingway’s “so-called” masculine characters.
The remedy to all these complications is creation of more open spaces for men. We need men to open up at least among themselves, at least a man needs to treat other man’s emotional, expressive side, others will eventually follow.
Ernest Hemingway’s Men Without Women
The Paradox of Individualism
It is always interesting to question what would happen if we were not exposed to certain things, experiences especially the people. What we would be of us if those events, those people had not crossed our life path? We definitely would have been someone else. In a sense we are what is happened to us and where we lived and with whom we lived. One can say that man himself is enough to justify his own existence, he doesn’t need anything else or anyone else to live through his life, to pass through it and there is no denying in that.
One must understand that people can spend their whole existence as an isolated being, a person unaffected by the surrounding and molded completely by his/ her own being, not by others and without the influence of the surrounding. You will see that what I explained in the last sentence seems illogical. How could a person be completely be detached throughout his whole time on earth filled with many things, events, people? The answer to this confusion is that the person assumes that he/she was alone all along the time thereby mentally erasing every instance where they had a company, such people have mastered the art of removing every influence their surrounding had on them. Human children are anyways some of the weakest off-springs among the many species on earth. A new born baby continuously needs support from parents/ surroundings to finally become self-dependent. Now, one cannot deny the fact that even if you can live on your own, what you call as “your own” which substitutes for the void of the external influences is ultimately created from that very surrounding you are trying to deny to prove your individualism. This “your own” internal support could be anything – your identity, your habits, your religion, your mind, your way of thinking, your way of seeing things. Now you must appreciate that even though we can control what we are, once we are matured/ independent we cannot completely erase what brought us here.
The concept of individualism itself needs supporting justification, there is nothing like an isolated being. In order to define isolated or individual, you have to define what it is not and that invites everything that exists out there.
The whole point of starting the discussion with the idea of futility of individualism is one short story I came across, rather the book’s whole point is the denial of individualism. It shows that even if one justifies their individualism, it immediately rips them from their real version. The person creates a defense mechanism to avoid certain unsettling feelings just to satisfy their version of self. Men need safe space of women or at least a feminine side of humanity to express, to vent out or at least to acknowledge what they are feeling in front of other human being. If men are not given such space, they are no longer men, not even human.
The book I am talking about is Ernest Hemingway’s collection of short stories called Men Without Women. These stories show how men are flawed when they try to erase or are forced from external factors the influence of women from their lives, how it steals their true masculinity, true humanity. I will deep dive into these aspects as discussion evolves.
The short story from Men Without Women which intrigued me is “In Another Country”. I like this story because is direct reflection of who Ernest Hemingway was. It is written in first person point of view and the factual details of Hemingway’s biography overlap with the locations, events mentioned in the story, so the Hemingway’s fiction brings a realism.
In Another Country – Summary
I won’t go into every nook and cranny of the story, because I want to invite you into reading that 15 min short story all for your own interest.
Even if I spoil the story here, reading the details of the story and building your own interpretations are one personal and exquisite experience. This is because of the iceberg theory attributed to Hemingway’s characteristic writing style. He will not explain everything or show everything that is there in the story. The limited narrative and limited details make the reader to evaluate multiple attributes and possibilities and thereby interpretations so Hemingway’s writing create a very subjective and personal experience in readers. I think only a piece of great art, only a masterpiece can create subjective experiences in people. And that is exactly why art is important, it makes people see what they already had but always denied because they were busy in creating something totally irrelevant – the irrelevant which they didn’t even want in first place.
So, here goes the summary –
The narrator talks about his routine to a hospital for a therapy session for those injured in the war in Milan. He is American but fighting for Italy and is decorated for his sacrifice. He is accompanied by three decorated Italian officers and one more boy who was disfigured on the very first day at the front of the war. They go to this therapy session to somehow restore their original physical functions. The narrator is always made aware through the surroundings and people around him that even though he sacrificed himself for the people he still is an outsider. It is just because he was dutiful that he deserves respect from the localites. In his therapy he is accompanied by a Major who treats the narrator good and is also helping him to improve his Italian. One day while casually discussing what their future would be, the Major gets triggered by the mention that the narrator wishes to get married. He aggressively suggests the narrator to not get married because it will bring the pain and suffering in the end. He suggests that if one knows that he is going to lose something then one must turn away from attaching to it in first place.
The Major then immediately leaves the discussion and goes to make a phone call where he receives the sad news of the demise of his wife. The major apologizes to the narrator and remains absent for few days and rejoins the therapy session although he has no expectation to fully recover from this therapy session.
Deep Analysis of In Another Country
As I have already mentioned that Hemingway’s stories are like icebergs, they reveal very little than what they carry below. I would invite you to explore Ernest Hemingway’s biography to understand why it might be so. He faced multiple injuries, illnesses, traumas throughout his whole life. If you see the list of the illnesses Hemingway went through you will definitely say that the life loved him. Tragically he ended his life by himself. On surface reading you will see that Hemingway is a strong proponent of strong masculinity but deep down just like an iceberg he was not what he showed. I have reasons to prove that just through this single short story. Just keep in mind that there is more to what Hemingway said and showed to his readers and it was truly an imagery of what was going in his own mind.
Lack Of Warmth
The ways story opens, the narrator talks about the cold season of fall in Milan. The meat of hunted animals is hanging and the foxes were just there in the snow. There are three canal crossing bridges along the path to the hospital. The narrator would prefer the bridge where woman who roasted the chestnut used to sit. The narrator mentions that her charcoal fire and the roasted chestnuts ensured enough warmth before reaching the hospital.
This is Hemingway’s way to tell that the surroundings were completely hostile for the narrator, the short-lived warmth of the charcoal fire and the hot chestnuts in pocket thereafter thus highlight how much the narrator valued warmth. Even though narrator is not ordered to go on war and perform his duty now it was not a better situation too. There was no one to provide ‘that’ warmth of familiarity, relationship, love to the narrator. If it wasn’t for the duty, he would not have got into this.
Duty murders the true identity and the ambition of men to become their true version
We are told that the narrator is accompanied by four Italian soldiers for a therapy session in the hospital. They are practiced with some machines to improve their physical movements which were the result of war injuries. A major with hand injury is also undergoing physical therapy to recover from war injury.
Three of the Italians who accompanied the narrator wished to become something different before the war started. One of them wanted to be a lawyer, one wanted to become the painter and third one wanted to become a soldier. The Major suffered from hand injury was the greatest fencer in Italy – a technique where the dexterity of hand is crucial.
There was one more boy whose face was disfigured the very first day he was sent on the war front. He had lost his nose.
You must now understand it’s not just a character introduction or description in Hemingway’s short story. Hemingway very subtly shows how men sacrifice their own ambitions to carry out their duties. Two of the three Italian soldiers wished to become something totally different than what they are now just because war demanded the sacrifice of their own ambitions, dreams. The Major sacrificed his precious, skillful hand while carrying out the same duty of war.
The boy with disfigured lost his identity even before understanding what he was entering into. The disfigured face is not mere description of the grave injuries. Hemingway shows readers that men lost their identities in the war.
Men sacrificed their wishes to carry out the duties given to them, they did it because that is what every man should do.
Men are loved just because they are dutiful and not for who they truly are
I really appreciate how Hemingway maintained subtlety in his writing while making us feel like he is just describing the characters of his story.
The readers are now well aware that this is about a group of well decorated, brave, dutiful soldiers who were undergoing rehabilitation in the hospital. They are not some losers who just suffered because of negligence or disinterest towards going to war. Rather even though against their will and wish, they went all in with the sense of duty. Then Hemingway tells us about how the localites treated them.
People from communist quarters of Milan actively hated them. After the therapy sessions, the group has routine to visit the café, where the narrator comes across the locals. When the narrator is asked about his medals by the locals, he is somewhat happy that people care for what he had done for them. This happiness is short lived for him and not really a happiness. The moment localites see that he is an American, they immediately changed their behavior towards him. He is immediately made to feel like an outsider.
You must understand how painful this feeling is. The moment people see treat like you are not one of them even after you sacrificed yourself for the same people is a betrayal for such man, a man of honor and duty. It’s equivalent of death for such men.
This is also one way of Hemingway to show that generally society appreciates men, loves men for what they can do for the society. Society in deeper sense never appreciated men for what they are. The moment men stop the duty towards others they are worthless. The moment men will try to show what they are very few will be appreciated for what they are, very few men are loved and liked for what they are. Hemingway also shows how the war crushed the human-ness among the people.
Together But Lonely – Alienation Among Men
Hemingway effectively shows how the military instincts or trainings have conditioned men of different personalities to come together and work toward a common duty.
“We were all a little detached, and there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital”
At first narrator shows us that there is some sense of collective-ness in this group of soldiers. Even people from the communist quarters hate them collectively.
But soon you will see that they are not quite there for each other, it’s just that the circumstances are in that way.
This is evident when the narrator calls three of the decorated officers as “hunting -hawks” and denies to be one of them.
You will also see that the narrator craves for meaningful company when he mentions how his group has to “jostle” through the crowd of men and women from the wine-shops.
For now, the only meaningful connect he has with his group is the trauma of war shared amongst these soldiers. You will see that the narrator finds it difficult to relate to the mainstream crowd – the crowd from wine-shops and the streets of the Milan.
“We felt held by there being something that had happened that they, the people who disliked us, did not understand.”
The narrator has this subconscious feeling of being unliked by the people around him. This is some sort self-rejection, self-loathing because even after sacrifice he is made to feel like an outsider.
Self-pity And Surrogate Sympathy
You will see that the narrator feels some authentic connection with the boy with disfigured face and the fencing master Major who is undergoing therapy for his hands. The reasons to feel this connection are actually not that authentic, it’s just the narrator’s psyche which is trying to find a pivot of relatability to create a sense of belonging.
You will see this when the narrator mentions that while he sees the three Italian soldiers like “hunting hawks” not counting himself like them, he feels a connect with the one who has his face disfigured. The justification is purely intellectual. It’s because the ill fate that boy faced at the war front and he wasn’t even decorated for anything. The narrator sees this as an ill-fate for the boy because he didn’t get anything in return for what he sacrificed. The narrator at least got some recognition so he sees himself in better condition than the boy. It’s that feeling where the person himself sees him in a poor condition but when he sees others in even worse condition, he creates a sense of satisfaction just because others are living way worse than they deserve. There is nothing wrong in this feeling. It’s just how a person going through trauma tries to find a sense of belonging through pity and sympathy.
Men’s Inability To Communicate And Express Emotions Clearly
Hemingway’s iceberg style writing peaks here.
The narrator is seen to make an attempt to speak in Italian with Major. He feels that he is able to speak Italian fluently but the moment Major asks him to speak with the awareness of Italian grammar, the narrator feels that speaking Italian is difficult.
It is an indirect indication how men always fail to express their emotions as they are. The “mainstream definition” and “perception” of what masculinity prevents men to sacrifice their real version just to demonstrate superiority in the dominance hierarchy. If you cannot dominate others, how would you establish control? How would you prove your manliness?
So, men subconsciously develop a tendency to distance themselves away from what they are feeling, because they know there is no way they will get any sympathy towards such emotions. Instead, the moment they express their true emotions, it’s like blowing up their cover, exposing themselves. Society is ready to devour them, forget about dominance.
Narrator’s struggle to speak in Italian is thus a metaphor to show how men are continuously challenged when they want to express something freely. You must understand that even if they do it, every man has some bad experience of how they were betrayed when they tried to open up. Now you can only imagine how this feeling gets amplified in men with trauma. Over the time, men have trained their minds to intentionally cordon off such feelings because they know and they have experienced this before that nobody care about how they feel.
Emotional Numbness – Alexithymia – Hemingway For Today’s World
In the last part of the story you will see that the Major gets triggered the moment narrator expresses his wish to get married once this is all over. He is unsettled not out of jealousy or the pain due to the war. He is restless due to even worse pain – the pain of the loss of the loved one.
“If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose.”
And in the end, we come to know that the Major always feared that he is about to lose his beloved wife. He was always scared that he will lose his beloved wife anytime and he cannot do anything about it. (Understand that this man is a disciplined and War-seasoned major who has tricked death now is feared of something).
He stood there biting his lower lip. “It is very difficult,” he said. “I cannot resign myself.”
Who says that men are rigid, tough, insensitive to emotions!
This is a tight slap to those who say that Hemingway was a strong supporter of the masculinity. People twisted Hemingway’s character to convey what they wanted for themselves.
There is a specific psychological term called Alexithymia which literally means “a lack of words for emotions.”
You can see alexithymia in Hemingway’s “so-called” masculine characters. The narrator himself is unable to express his emotions to his group in Italy, even though he is with his acquaintances he feels alienated. You will see he craves for warmth from his observations on the roasted chestnuts. The warmth is not just a matter of temperature.
The three decorated soldiers have murdered their personal ambitions for the duty to serve the nation in the war. Each of them had their own plans about their future. Hemingway gives us one detail about one of these guys. One of those three soldiers who wished to become lawyer had three medals for his valor in war, was a lieutenant. Hemingway through narrator shows us that he had seen so many deaths in war that he was isolated from his surroundings. Note that this guy had a company of at least two native faces who had gone through somewhat similar hardships. The trauma of war and in addition to inability to express what he was going through detached him. He had familiar faces to do so because of the relatability, but the trauma prevented him from openly expressing what he felt.
The narrator also shows us that these three Italian soldiers were like hunting hawks. It is a way to show how they showed off their valor and medals to prove their worth to the society. You must understand that before going to war, their ambitions were completely different than earning medals. But as the conditions forced them to show up for duty, they helplessly gave up on their dreams and accepted the life for what it was. This hawk like attitude is the reinforcement of the masculinity assigned by the society through the medals, decoration which society gave them. As they have no one intimate to open up to they assumed this display of manhood as the means to show strength.
The boy with disfigured face, who didn’t even get recognized for his sacrifice is another story in itself. You will see that there is very limited mention of his presence in this story. He is just their as an additional character. For me, upon a very meticulous style of Hemingway’s writing style – I see it as an intentional limitation. Hemingway shows us that how some of the greatest sacrificing men will always go unnoticed, how society won’t even care for them for the reason that they cannot provide back to the society. The great sacrifice of identity by this soldier feels worthless.
This is Hemingway’s way to show that a man who cannot provide is a worthless man in society, societal structure will make sure that he is perceived as worthless. There is no single person to blame why it happens in this way. People especially men are nurtured to subconsciously assume it in this way. Society will only accept men for what they provide and not what they are.
The Major has no hope to recover from his therapy session for his hand. The narrator gives us surety of that through the discussion between the Major and Doctor. The Major has suppressed his nihilistic attitude by submitting to the routine of physical therapy. This is an active indication of Alexithymia. Him trying to help the narrator to learn the Italian in proper grammatical way is his conscious choice to cast away the real emotions of his worthlessness after the injury. Narrator mentions that even though Major has no hope from the therapy machines he showed up regularly. This is definitely indicative that major rejected his real feelings with the distraction of the therapy routine.
The moment Major gets triggered by the awareness narrator’s plan to settle with marriage he realizes that he too had this suppressed wish to settle with the woman of his life. He senses that he too had same wish as the narrator but now is scared to lose someone he loved with his life. He immediately rejects that feeling by speaking “angrily and bitterly” with the narrator to not get married.
It’s not the Major despising women – some people may call it toxic masculinity. It is actually rejection of reality of the sad emotion of the loss of the loved ones to avoid the trauma and pain that follows after that. But Hemingway lets out some sadness through him to show how helpless men are.
“He looked straight past me and out through the window. Then he began to cry. “I am utterly unable to resign myself,” he said and choked. And then crying, his head up looking at nothing, carrying himself straight and soldierly, with tears on both his cheeks and biting his lips, he walked past the machines and out the door.”
His Woman Is Everything For Any Man True To Himself
As the title of the book suggests, this is Hemingway’s attempt to show what a man loses when he has no one of his own to open up. Why women are important instead of men here? Because men are so strongly conditioned with the trait of showing themselves as unaffected by whatever life throws at them that now they have accepted it as their second nature. If you are swayed easily by hardships, you are not ‘man’ enough. If you are not able to provide, you are not ‘man’ enough. If you whine at every adversity, you are not ‘man’ enough. If you express your vulnerability, you are not ‘man’ enough, in addition to that the society will make sure that you are made joker out of your vulnerability because it is the survival of fittest.
So, the best shortcut men’s minds have started taking is to become completely numb to the sensitive emotions, expressions of those emotions and have resorted to divert to something which looks ‘manly/ masculine’ or rejecting the emotions they are having.
Now imagine how would a man would open up to another man who he knows would already be numb to what he is expressing. For that you should see how group of women discuss their personal problems Vs how men discuss their personal problem in a group of men.
That is exactly why a comfort of woman’s emotional sensitivity is important for a man to get rid of their numbness to emotions. Otherwise, men without women are not truly men, rather they cannot even become human in first place. As the times are evolving, a man may not solely need exclusively a woman to open up but the fact that men are always forced to numb their emotional sensitivity to demonstrate their masculinity still remains the fact.
For any human being’s personality – identity, absence or withdrawal of certain aspect of life is always traumatic, insecure and unsettling. If this aspect is immediately linked to a person, then the effect is very strong. To cope with that insecurity the person undergoes rejection of the very version his/ her self which once was associated with the person they lost or the person they wished they could have been with.
For me the tragedy is the ways in which men are exposed to the world experiences. Almost all of the men have subconsciously trained their minds to ignore such exact unsettling losses, emotions under the label of masculinity.
Conclusion – The Feminine Side Of The Real Masculinity
I would take this part to connect the Hemingway’s writing to the modern times in which we live. It is a curse to us humans that we cannot understand things unless we differentiate between them, the very process of differentiation in order to understand nature steals certain characteristic attributes of those things which made them really special.
Same happened with what society first called as masculinity, modified it to something totally different then calling it toxic masculinity – that is why men (true men) now became just the providers – not even humans in modern times.
Hemingway’s men are not that different from the modern men. The older ones suffered from the trauma of war the modern ones are suffering from the responsibility to carry forward the skewed definitions of masculinity. Nobody sees that changing times disfigured the definition of what it really means to be a man. Then there is a group who calls out that new definition as a toxic one. No wonder some people see Hemingway as a proponent of toxic masculinity.
The key thing to understand here is that it’s not about whether feminism is lesser or masculinity is getting redefined in toxic ways. It is about how fast we are losing the touch of humanity to support and justify one of these sides.
Now you will see that this is Hemingway’s lament, a call for help in a way that if there were women for such helpless men, their lives would have been completely different. You must understand that this was his silent call for help or an unexpressed, suppressed feeling when you look at Hemingway’s biography.
That is exactly why when I am connecting the link between Hemingway’s short story “In another country” with Alexithymia, I am neither promoting masculinity and denying feminism. I fear that if this continues the world will see even worse versions of toxic masculinity. Imagine a human which has rejected what he feels, it’s not a human anymore.
Most of the times, we are forgetting that when we are promoting and asking for individual freedom, individual expression, individual identity we have ignored what it means to reserve the same rights for others. Hemingway’s writings although were heavily influenced by his personal experiences of war, the ways in which his men handled emotions is exactly same as how modern men are still handling their own emotions. They are not handling them at all, they are suppressing them, running away from them.
The remedy to all these complications is creation of more open spaces for men. We need men to open up at least among themselves, at least a man needs to treat other man’s emotional, expressive side. Women will eventually fall into it as they are naturally and also societally more open to it (e.g. see the group of ladies and their discussions). There is nothing wrong for a man to cry like a sissy.
(I know it’s hard to do than to say it in few words. Men are more comfortable in rejection of sensitivity that to be made fun for the same. But once one sees that there is nothing like only feminine or only masculine in real nature of how we pass through this life we would see that it’s better to let it flow than to accumulate it like a stagnating trash. And someone has to start somewhere even though the journey seems impossible.)
Ernest Hemingway – the greatest manly man world would ever see again. (At least he let his own emotions, expressions – whatever they may be flow through his writings. Trust me, it takes courage. You will appreciate this when you notice how unaware you are about the very man sitting next to you is going through and is successfully masking it. I hope that we will start crossing that barrier for the good of all.)
Most of the men are poor in openly expressing their emotions, love for the men they love. Fathers are an important entity in this group.
In the vast ocean of unexpressed masculine love and the unexpressed emotions between father and son, James Blunt’s “Monsters” stands like a lighthouse. “Monsters” is not just about acceptance of father by his son or a love letter of a son to his beloved father; it is more than that. It shows how a good upbringing can create better sons for tomorrow. No doubt mothers are more than enough to create better children and better people for tomorrow but we need good fathers – sensitive fathers to create better sons for today and better fathers for tomorrow. Responsibility thus lies at the core of manliness which gets glorified through this fatherhood. It also shows the sensitive side of masculinity. This song is all about that.
On the song called “Monsters” by James Blunt
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he is wrong
– Charles Wadsworth
They say when you can’t tell someone what you are feeling or when words are falling short to express those unsaid emotions music is the best medium. Everyone of us has this group of songs which snugly fits with certain emotions we hold inside especially the emotions which we hesitate to express openly. Believe me that these songs are not just love songs or romantic songs, if you ask people when they are comfortable around you, you will realize that there exists a wide spectrum of emotions people never expressed or couldn’t express just because they couldn’t find proper words.
Talking about emotional people and the hesitation to express them openly, there exists a group of relationships where people rarely express their emotions even though their counterparts know that what those feelings are.
I am talking about boy-boy relation, man-man relationship, boy-man relationship – please note that its not just about romantic relationship in men. It is beyond that, and given that men hesitate to express those many times, I too am finding it difficult to write this down in a convincing way – about how men feel for other men.
In this ongoing but intentionally ignored realization, I came across a song which helped me to express the feeling that I had but never was able to connect to the reality of words. Boys, men rarely do that. That is exactly why music is so powerful, it is an enabler for those who are failing, hesitating to express what they are feeling.
I came across a song called Monsters by James Blunt where the son expresses how strongly he appreciates what his father did for him and also guarantees that his father’s legacy will live through his son by being the next responsible father figure for the family.
The lyrics is credited to Jimmy Hogarth, James Blunt, Amy Victoria Wadge.
This is about that song. You will find many references/ interviews on internet to explain why James made this song.
This is about what I saw through this song.
Oh, before they turn off all the lights I won't read you your wrongs or your rights The time has gone I'll tell you goodnight, close the door Tell you I love you once more The time has gone So here it is
As far as the song goes it is about a boy telling his father how he is opening his heart out in front of him. The metaphor of turning off the lights and saying good night shows that it’s the father who is going to sleep and the son is turning off the lights for him, closing the door for him and saying good night.
The use of the metaphor of the night time routine between parents (especially father in this case) and the children (the son in this case) is really beautiful here. The son turning off the lights and saying good night to his father shows how the roles have switched. It shows how the son has accepted the responsibility of fatherhood. It’s not just a normal night for his father it’s the long night and final slumber for his father. The son is very well aware of this and thus considers it as the responsibility to respect what his father trained and nurtured him for.
The realization of final moments of his father made the son express his feelings for him. The feelings which were never expressed openly before. Knowing that there is very short time left for father, the son wants to share the emotion that he really loves his father.
One important thing which is woven in the flow of emotions by the songwriters that I liked very much is the idea of completely rejecting the notion of rights and wrongs done by father (as much as the son thinks) throughout his life.
This notion of person not being right or wrong but just a human being gets expanded more in the next verse.
I'm not your son, you're not my father We're just two grown men saying goodbye No need to forgive, no need to forget I know your mistakes and you know mine And while you're sleeping, I'll try to make you proud So, daddy, won't you just close your eyes? Don't be afraid, it's my turn To chase the monsters away
It is only when the son accepts fatherhood, becomes father or at least assumes the role of father figure then he realizes that his father was just a human being who did everything that was possible in his capacity.
This is very important aspect of a son becoming father. As long as father was there especially when the son is a young adult, father was just a person who was a lost cause. This is one of the most common behaviors among young boys. Everything their father did feels wrong in this way or the other way for boys.
But it is only when the boys themselves become men (literally and/or figuratively) they understand and appreciate how their fathers raised them. This is exactly why when the son is telling his father that ‘he won’t mention rights and wrongs that his father did’ – he is actually respecting the efforts of his father – the lengths to which his father went to ensure better life for his son. He has understood that in the end we are all human beings – we are not perfect – neither right nor wrong.
When the son is telling his father to not judge each other, it is him accepting his father as a human being. It’s the evolution of that teenage boy’s mentality into a man – the father figure. The songwriters have beautifully captured this change from boy to man. A boy always sees his father’s actions decisions as foolish, unreliable and wrong but the moment he puts his feet in the shoes that his father wore he realizes that all his father did was to give the best to his son, to his family. He also realizes how wrong he was when he was judging his father from a single point of view. That is exactly why the boy is telling his father that we both know how flawed we are – how flawed we humans are but in spite of that we are living together, we are accepting each other. This is the spirit of humanity shown through the mature relationship of the son and his father. I loved how songwriters put the act of recognition of mistakes more important than the act of either forgiving them or forgetting them. It removes any type of attribution or the notion of right-ness and wrong-ness for any mistake. I feel that the moment someone starts noticing that there is always some aspect beyond right and wrong for everything is the moment when that person truly understands the reality – the nature of things, such person is able to see right through the things. Most often this is sign of maturity.
There is difference between growing old and getting matured. Songwriters have very well created that feeling here. Son even though being younger than his father has started appreciating what his father handled for him and the family. This is exactly where the song comes alive – especially lyrics for me. It truly catches the essence of fatherhood. The son tells father that now its his turn to chase the monsters away.
The monsters could be any adversity that the family would have been exposed to. For me the notion of “chasing the monsters away” is very powerful way to show essence of fatherhood and father’s love. It also shows how the nature of father’s love completely differs from mother’s love; this difference itself sometimes creates the sense of superiority of motherly love over fatherly love. No doubt mothers are supreme caregiver to their children but that also should not reduce what fathers do and feel for their children. Fathers are the doorkeepers for the adversities before they could harm their families and most of the time the family rarely notices what harm was prevented. I mean if they are not even noticing what harm could have done to them this means that the job of protection was performed in perfect manner. That is the actual job for a fatherly figure – to not even let anyone get uncomfortable because something bad will hit them.
The son appreciates this and consoles his father that now he will take the tougher responsibilities which his father carried for the family, now he will become the man of the family and make him proud. One more beautiful thing happens here is the childhood callback between father and son. When the son is scared of the monsters under his bed and father telling him the story so that he could sleep well and telling him that he will chase those monsters away for him. Now that the son has grown up the attribution of monsters is changed, now these are the monsters that exist in the world in reality.
One beautiful thing to notice here is the moment when father confides his young son that he will chase away the monsters under his bed – he is completely aware that what real monsters he is chasing away for his son and the family. Only that the son’s young age would be scared and afraid to handle those real monsters father makes sure that he is protected from these adversities or at least the awareness of those adversities.
The bridge that the idea of “chasing away monsters” and the role reversal between son and his father shows what it means to be a man in this world.
Oh, well, I'll read a story to you Only difference is this one is true The time has gone I folded your clothes on the chair I hope you sleep well, don't be scared The time has gone So here it is
Sleep a lifetime Yes, and breathe a last word You can feel my hand on your own I will be the last one So I'll leave a light on Let there be no darkness, in your heart
One important thing that men are taught right from their childhood is to become tough and strong. That tenderness, vulnerability and emotional inclination is a sign of weakness. Men have never followed this advice completely to their heart. They have just mastered the art of masking their tenderness – hiding it in a way to create an illusion of its nonexistence.
The way son is telling his father that he will read a story to him, fold his clothes shows that son’s masculinity holds that tenderness of love for his father – he has learnt that from his father.
One emotional part of this song for me is the next part. The part where the light and darkness are used as a bridge between the earlier fatherhood of the father and then the fatherhood of his son. It shows how a boy matures into father and thereby the real man. Light here signifies the hope for better times the son will keep on bringing when his father won’t be there. When the son asks father to have no darkness – it’s the darkness of the bitterness created over time between father and son due to some disagreements. It could be my overthinking playing here but the songwriters have also pointed out this common phenomenon between fathers and their sons. Right from the adolescence sons get many chances to notice and count the mistakes their father committed and consider them the most incapable, imperfect person in the world. It is only when the same sons take the responsibility of the fatherhood that they realize how hard it is and what actually their fathers sacrificed for them and the family. Men have this unrealized habit of not coming to terms with things with other men especially the men they love because of the unconscious habit of suppressing the emotions and vulnerability. Men rarely accept the mistake to other men – they will generally get along with the act of apologizing without it happening formally. The bitterness between the relationships is hidden in these deep cracks. So, when the son is telling his father to have no darkness in his heart n his last moments, he is actually apologizing to his father for always judging him for his flaws and imperfections. The father is feeling sad because he could not live up to the standards, expectations that his son had for him. This is some part of the said “darkness”. Son is finally telling his father that now that he has assumed the fatherhood, he appreciates all that his father did for the family and for him even though mistakes were made, bad decisions were taken and he couldn’t be “the perfect father” but in the end, we are all humans. The son is consoling his father that there is nothing to worry because he will be following his father’s legacy.
But I'm not your son, you're not my father We're just two grown men saying goodbye No need to forgive, no need to forget I know your mistakes and you know mine And while you're sleeping, I'll try to make you proud So, daddy, won't you just close your eyes? Don't be afraid, it's my turn To chase the monsters away
It’s the final goodbye of a son to his father when he is telling that he will try to be a better son by accepting the responsibility of fatherhood through the legacy his father gave him. His father will now through him.
Men And Their Fathers
I have no opinion against the greatness of motherhood and the feminine capacity to express and demonstrate love for their children. What itches me is the ignorance towards the capacity of men to love their children as equal as the mothers. Maybe the reason lies in the incapability of men to actually and openly express love for their loved ones. It could have happened because men are trained to demonstrate masculinity through the attributes of strength and showing emotional neutrality. This has now been an unconscious habit among most of the men. A daughter with strong emotional sensitivity imparted due to her femininity can deeply understand what a fatherly love is but she can rarely understand and appreciate what the masculine side of that fatherly love is. A son very well knows what his father had in his mind all along this time the moment he assumes the fatherhood. It’s not necessary that the boy should bear a child or become father in reality. Mere acceptance of the responsibility triggers this mindset in boys. Most of the men are very poor in openly expressing the emotions, love for others especially other men they love. Fathers are the most difficult men in this group of loved ones (trust me on the basis of me being a man). Most often a boy could openly express his love for that girl in public in spite of being an introvert – he would cross that valley of insecurity for her. But same is not the case for men he loves – specifically a fatherly love. Boys show love for fatherly figures mostly through respect and assumption as the next responsible person in the line. “Monsters” by James Blunt is one such love letter from a son to his father. In the vast ocean of unexpressed masculine love and the unexpressed emotions between father and son, I think this song stands like a lighthouse. The most expected response for a man’s confession of love to other fatherly, manly figure (like a simple sentence “I love you father for all that you did for us, for me”) is a big laughter followed by comment similar to – “Are you OK?! What happened to you?” Men hesitate to accept the comment of being loved too. A father by default considers his execution of his responsibilities without the expectations of returned favor or appreciation or recognition. Men are rarely hardwired to accept recognition for being responsible and that is also may be why for some men in some cases it is easy to run away from the responsibilities. Fatherhood or feeling of fatherhood rarely allows that escape. It’s a commitment of a man to himself which makes him the real man.
The Monsters is not just about acceptance of father by his son or a love letter of a son to his beloved father. It is more than that. It shows how a good upbringing can create better sons for tomorrow. No doubt mothers are more than enough to create better children and better people for tomorrow but we need fathers – sensitive fathers to create better sons today and better fathers tomorrow. Responsibility thus lies at the core of manliness which gets glorified through this fatherhood. Assumption of fatherhood (sometimes physical and mental/ emotional fatherhood in each and every time) is the highest level any man can secure in this human world. So, Monsters is that handover of that legacy of true manliness from a father to his son. What could calm a father more than the awareness that his son has assumed the fatherhood, his son has grown up to be a real man! That his son has learnt to stand strong in adversities. That his son has become responsible. That his son has learnt to stand down against the short-term pleasures for the betterment of his family. That his son has mastered to chase away the monsters of his life. Fatherhood can give purpose to any directionless man. That is also why unstable society needs better fathers.
For me this is the song which answers the question – “Why the world needs good fathers along with good mothers?” It also shows why father’s role is also important in the upbringing of children especially boys.
Being social animals, we compare our lives with the lives of the others, we create our baselines and set our targets based on what others have achieved and done in their lives. In our current times when the life expectancy is better than ever, when we have a better cover of social safety than ever, the primitive instinct of survival from natural predators has been replaced by the modern instinct of philosophical- ideological survival which is the ‘preservation of our identity’ – the idea of our own image. The realisation of the philosophical death of our being should come with the awareness that your idea of self, your consciousness was just created by your desires and after this philosophical death you are returning to the fundamental forces of what made them. The endless possibilities for your becoming are opened in this point. This is the true eternal existence – to get broken down into the fundamental blocks of being and be recreated again. Juliet Ivy in her song ‘We’re all eating each other’ beautifully brings the sense of life that is made up of eternal creations and destructions.
Juliet Ivy’s song “We’re all eating each other”
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood
– T S Elliot
There exists a special category of songs which sound very jolly, full of life, giving the impression of the light hearted joy, calmness, relaxation everyone desires; on close inspection you end up realizing that the lyrics of that same song is so dark that one would question the mindset in which the song was written and composed. These songs are the songs to which people would dance happily due to its music but the moment lyrics of this songs is opened for discussion you will end up questioning your existence. It feels ironic.
There are many songs to name which fall in this category, I stumbled upon one such song by Juliet Ivy called “We’re all eating each other” from her album playpen.
The song is written by Lucas Sim and Juliet Ivy Ortiz.
playpen album by Juliet Ivy
The great thing about this song is the way its melodies try to befriend you. It’s so simple yet effective and the song’s rhythm is not continuously varying which creates an impression of safe and calm space of familiarity.
What's the point of living without dying for an ego? So we validate our fantasies to feel like we are special inside You know we love to lie
I was literally shocked when I started digging into the lyrics. How could one simply state a brutal fact of life as if someone is asked to simply pass salt and pepper on dining table?
For me it creates an impression of life being so simple at its core yet we always choosing the complicated version to justify “our” way of life and “our” ways of truth. Juliet beautifully and very clearly puts this observation in few words of wisdom.
The life we are living, the identity we carry is all we have when everything is taken away from us. This identity is created and molded into a specific shape and size from the life experiences we have. They are mostly subjective and are created from inside. That is exactly why we are completely attached to our identity. This identity has two facets – the identity we truly know ourselves and the identity we project on people around us to show them who we are. Trust me both could be totally different. We are always trying to preserve our identity. This is what Juliet is calling the ego here.
In order to preserve our identity – our ego, we let go of the objective truths and accept certain illusions, fantasies. This is done to create a sense of security otherwise our mind would keep running everywhere in panic. We create some lies, ignore some painful truths to calm our mind down; no wonder they say ignorance is bliss.
The biggest lie is the lie we tell ourselves in the distorted visions we have of ourselves, blocking out some sections, enhancing others. What remains are not the cold facts of life, but how we perceive them. That’s really who we are.
– Kirk Douglas
We like grabbing onto anything to feel like we're important Not a moment that is shorter than a hiccup or a blink of an eye You know we're scared of time
Here Juliet shows how the limited span of life brings in the urgency to justify our existence so that we will be satisfied with the feeling that we are special. But we chose to ignore the fact that the ideologies, things that we are clinging to justify our special-ness also have limited lifespan just like the lives we are living. Even though we want to live for hundreds of years, on the grand scale of creation we are not even a blink – not even blink of the blink!
This is more than enough to leave all those false things which we are trying to justify our life, our special-ness with. The moment we let go of the feeling that we are something superior than anything in the world is the moment we lose the fear of not existing. The loss of this fear of not existing would make one eternal. We don’t want to lose the identity we created when we became conscious of our existence. That is why dying without getting any recognition, remembrance is a painful idea for all of us. But that remembrance, those memories will fade away. This should humble everyone.
The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we’re afraid.
We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we’ll lose it. We fear that if we don’t have love, we will be unhappy.
– Richard Bach
But we're all gonna die Decompose into daffodils and dandelions The bees will use our flowers for whatever they like Make the honey that our grand-kids will put inside their morning tea It's the thing of life We're all eating each other The thing of life Nobody lives forever The thing of life
The urge to ‘consciously’ exist forever is the only lie we need to let go to become truly eternal, free. We are so attached to our so called “self-created identity” that we consider everything going against is as a potential threat to our existence – the existence which eventually will fade away into nothingness. It is way better to accept the finite-ness of life and be useful to each other rather than carrying that false sense of superiority, higher ego to justify our lies of life.
Juliet puts higher perspective to sooth our confusion of “conscious existence”. We are justifying our egos because we don’t want to die, we don’t want our identity to die, we don’t want our memories to die, we want to be remembered by people even when we are not existing in the world. The urge to preserve our conscious identity thereby our personality becomes the ultimate goal of life.
I am using ‘conscious’ word here to show that we are scared of losing the “I”, “Me” from our life because that is how we experience the life. We create the sense of existence from inside that is why sense of “I” is very important for our existence but if you closely observe the way things exist in the nature it is really difficult to pinpoint what makes that “I” – the “I”. Is it my brain? Or is it my body? is it my property? is it my super-car? is it my villa? is it my designation/ salary? is it my family? What exactly defines us?
You will get the answer once you accept that this thing that you have assigned your identity to – your existence to will not remain forever. When we say it will not remain forever it means that the combinations which created that existence. The existence would crumble down into nothingness.
Now here is an interesting part. We call the crumbles of nothingness “nothing” because they do not immediately affect, improve or help the existence we were trying to hold on to – our identity. We forget that it was the same set of some “nothings” which came together in a specific way to create “something” – this something became our existence.
Juliet beautifully brings in this perspective by saying that we will end up into flowers then into the honey that our future generation will put in their morning tea.
While we are trying to hold onto our special identity which is short lived, which would disappear in a blink we are forgetting the fact that the nothingness from which we were created is more eternal than the identity we are trying to maintain. This nothingness is the truth, its that something which is getting recycled all the time. On the other hand, we are in this constant battle to justify our falsely created, mortal identity.
We should understand that we are actually eternal but this false sense of ‘being’, this false sense of ‘conscious’ steals the real eternal existence.
We don't know how to accept we're just a product of a chance And less like gods but more like plants Who can't stop making up reasons we're alive (We're alive, we're alive, we're alive) You know we love to deny (To deny, to deny, to deny)
Juliet is again waging war with our falsely created sense of “special”. We intentionally highlight the facts that justify our superiority and ignore the facts which actually show that we might be the result of few overlapped coincidences. Even if we have not come out of chances and coincidences our existence is not that grand in the whole scheme of existence. On the level of creation, we are as close to plants than the powers which created all of us.
So we paint our face with intellect Pretending we're not curious Too busy, super serious Don't have the time to do what we like (What we like, what we like, what we like) Baby look at the sky
In spite of knowing that we are insignificant, knowing that the creation is way bigger than what we are trying to justify ourselves, we are always in the race to prove our superiority. Why does that happen? Why are we always trying to justify our superiority with some lies while we call ourselves the smartest species? Why ‘we’ the smartest ones fail to recognize the objective truths of the world when we know that there is not meaning to chase everything all at once? Why we are always trying to win the race and justify our worth with something?
The reason is that we think our existence is limited, our time of remaining conscious of our being is limited.
We very well know that we will die someday, that is exactly why we try to justify every moment of our conscious existence to something, some idea, some object which we call our job, duty, faith, passion. We don’t want to die with the regret that we have nothing that will remain forever after we die. We are so wound up in justifying the life, memories after our death that we have invested our present into the pursuit of lies which are creating the illusion of our specialty.
Our heads are so engrossed down into the pursuit to create that false identity of worth-ness that we are unable to look up and appreciate the beauty around us, the reality around us.
The urge to lookout for the meaning of life and then assigning that meaning to something so superficial will eventually end into the pain and regret of not enjoying the time we had to its fullest, the moments we had to fullest. We are always trading the real awareness of “present” to gain the illusive comfort of safe “future”. That is how we justify meaning.
The real meaning of life should come with the understanding that whatever it may come next, one will never attach the sense of being to something which amplifies ego. Ego too will perish in the flow of time. The rejection of ego comes when one lets go of their sense of identity being special.
'Cause we're all gonna die Decompose into daffodils and dandelions The bees will use our flowers for whatever they like Make the honey that our grand-kids will put inside their morning tea It's the thing of life We're all just eating each other The thing of life Nobody lives forever The thing of life We're all just eating each other The thing of life Nobody lives forever The thing of life
The rejection of ego will make you free, will show you what your real worth is. Even though you are not special – in the end, you are something of value when you synergize with others. Even though your conscious being is not eternal, the things which made your conscious being are eternal and that awareness should free you from all the urges to justify your identity, your specialty.
You are given a chance to experience the universe in the most sophisticated manner possible which many of the other species might not even have. What more could sooth your existential confusion! Once you realize that you are already made up of eternity, you will let go this mortal identity which you are always trying to preserve with some subjective perspective and lies. This is the real freedom and it requires innocence. Innocence is one of the basic indicators that the person has no ulterior motive to achieve something, it brings in the sense of acting on things without expecting anything in return. Please understand that innocence does not mean that the person should become a fool. Remaining innocent in spite of knowing everything is really hard, that is how you will know that you are not fooling yourselves. This song shows us that innocence.
Conclusion
Juliet Ivy very beautifully brings the sense of life that is made up of eternal creations and destructions. We attach the meaning of our lives, the purpose of our lives to certain things while realizing that they too will perish in the flow of time – this is what would unsettle even the dumbest person. This feeling is also experienced by the highest specimen of humans. In order to come out of this unsettling fear of unjustified – worthless living, we take support from our surrounding. We selectively choose certain aspects that will create an illusion of safety and comfort. Being social animals, we compare our lives with the lives of the others, we create our baselines and set our targets based on what others have achieved and done in their lives.
You know what? Even after achieving such goals which we defined based on our surrounding we are not happy. Even after those material victories, we see that the happiness is short lived. So, we shift our goals to something which is immaterial, something which is spiritual. Something which we think is more eternal than the material things. We make certain ideologies the meaning of our lives. Religion is one of such examples.
René Girard – a French philosopher coined the concept of Mimetic theory where he tries to answer how we decide what to do and why to do. Mimesis roughly means imitation, trying to resemble. When we are stuck with no information or loads of information in either cases, we will be overwhelmed. The best way to come out of such conditions would be to see what others are doing around you. We set our standards based on the baselines of our surroundings. We create lies to justify these baselines and goals we want to achieve. Our ego is thus created to ensure that we maintain the sanity in the times of clueless-ness. It will prioritize survival of body in materialistic races and survival of its own sense of existence its identity in the spiritual races. In the end, both victories will fade away. (That also should not mean that one should not engage in the pursuit of certain victories. It should imply that the non-eternal nature of everything should humble the person.)
The most important point to understand is the ways in which everything great (also everything worse) will be broken down to their most fundamental building blocks. The idea is to not get attached with what you created which got destroyed.
In our current times when the life expectancy is better than ever, when we have a better cover of social safety than ever, the primitive instinct of survival from natural predators has been replaced by the recently created – modern instinct of philosophical – ideological survival which is the ‘preservation of our identity’ – the idea of our own image. (Social media is the booster for such way of life. It is also how the mimesis is happening strongly.) Philosophical death seems more painful than actual death. That is why in certain cases people gather courage to do self-harm. The best way to come out of such mentality is to question the very thing which brought this philosophical death; I know it is difficult to pick on the injury which already is painful to bear. The idea to work in such confusions is to notice one important behavior every one of us maintains when we define our life. We always strive to amplify things which bring happiness and ignore things which bring sadness. We define our life selectively on such choices in spite of knowing that both hold same potential to realize in actual life. This desire to selectively attach to certain aspect brings pain in life.
The moment we accept that there is no end to the cycles of creation and destruction (of both good and bad) we will see that we are nothing but a recycled versions of everything that is there in the existence.
The realization of the actual death of our body should come with the awareness that you are returning to materials which made you.
The realization of the philosophical death of our being should come with the awareness that your idea of self, your consciousness was just created by your desires and after this philosophical death you are returning to the fundamental forces of what made them and thereby what made you. The endless possibilities for your becoming are opened in this point. This is the true eternal existence – to get broken down into the fundamental blocks of being and be recreated again.
Juliet Ivy said all this in one simple sentence “We’re all eating each other.”
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
Morgan Housel – the famous author of ‘The Psychology of Money’ has another important book called “Same as Ever” which gives insight into things which have never changed over the course of time. Same as Ever drives the motto of objective flexibility and subjective awareness of every event happening around us and with us. It also highlights that our mind is the first and the easiest one to fool, which leads to false sense of superiority over others and creates biases. Once we accept that nothing is perfect, no one is perfect – it injects humility and forgiveness. It also makes us to be grateful for what we possess today. The ability to see every event at the same level is a superpower any one of us can have.
An important book from Morgan Housel called “Same as Ever”
Somebody, make me a time machine
Life would be easy if we had a way to accurately predict the consequences of the events/ actions.
Scenario 1 – what would be your reaction if some random person hands you a $1,000,000 lottery ticket and, in few moments, you realize that you just won that lottery?
Scenario 2 – what would happen if an ambitious project that you worked on tirelessly for many years while sacrificing your other priorities – ends into a big failure because of a seemingly impossible and insignificant event/ error?
For most of us these two scenarios are practically impossible but the odds are still non-zero. They can happen in reality.
How can we be sure that they selectively happen to certain person? Scenario 1 for ourselves and Scenario 2 for our enemies especially… (Just kidding)
If you closely observe the lives we are living right now, you will see that we are always oscillating between such events which demand certainty of outcomes even before the are realized. We have this innate urge to remain ready for such events; it is what we are always striving for.
Now, one question – are we living in a matrix? Is universe a simulation?
If the answer is ‘YES’, then it means that every outcome should be predetermined. If everything is predetermined then why things don’t happen the way we ‘want’? Does that mean that we lack the computational capabilities to precisely calculate the outcome? OR is what is destined to happen different from what we ‘want’?
If the answer is ‘NO’, then everything explodes into meaninglessness. The answers are nihilistic.
Looking at the both outcomes of this question we see that we need a baseline to make our decision making effective. Is there a formula to systematically put all the things happening around? What are somethings in nature whose knowledge will ensure our satisfactory existence. (I am being very optimistic while writing ‘satisfactory’ word here.)
In simple words, what is the formula to live a good life? whether it is predictable or not.
Morgan Housel the famous author of the Psychology of Money wrote one important book called Same as Ever which tries to answer this same question. Same as Ever drives the motto of objective flexibility and subjective awareness of every event happening around us and with us.
This is a deep dive into Morgan Housel’s book “Same as Ever”.
I will try to keep this short. Here are some instructions:
Those who have read this book – each idea in this book is numbered in the sequence Morgan explains in the flow of the book. So, #1 is Hanging by a Thread as mentioned in book and #23 is Wounds heal, Scars last
Those who haven’t read the book – I have given short summary of what Morgan discusses in each of the 23 ideas. That should help you to wrap you head around my distilled down version of this book.
(I apologize for putting that part in the end and spoiling the conclusion/ discussion on this book.)
I would say this book has been one of the most important books I have come across. (I am an average book reader by the way. So, not sure if same would be the case for other people.) While going through each idea, you will realize that something keeps on repeating; and even though it repeats, it brings new perspective into that specific discussion. My attempt to summarize this book focuses on picking what is common but connected to all the facts mentioned in the book and also their connection to the reality we live in.
Discussions
The discussion is in 3 steps, so adjusting our understanding to previous step is key to understand the next step. The illustrative images in each step of the discussion connects the ideas from the book to a common central idea. It will be handy if you read this with the book in your hand or you can jump to the point-to-point summary (the part after conclusion) in a neighboring tab of your web browser.
Step 1 discussion:
Figure 1. Finite and recurring cycle of compounding processes
You will see in the figure 1 that reality is ever changing process of infinite real events. The key to understand what is happening is to see every event containing same potential at first. Keep in mind – same potential – neither good nor bad. Once you assign every event with equal potential you will see that compounding accounts for that single event to build on and create the next event. Sometimes two big events will compound together to create an enormous event.
Now comes the fun part – the enormity of every compounded event will always be in favor of someone and against the favor of the complementary population. This makes that event good or bad for people. Some will suffer some will rejoice.
A person who knows how the world, nature or universe works will not have preferences, favor-ability towards such events. The answer lies in the cyclical nature of such events. Keeping a single event sustained for long duration demands to go many things to work in supporting ways and as every event has same potency in the infinite possibilities, it surely will lead to the downfall of that process. It’s just matter of time.
Talking about matter of time – the game of life is not about winning, rather it is about remaining in the game longer as the compounding pays off and decomposes into new start.
Our limited life span intuitively doesn’t allow us to wait till the compounding pays off. That is exactly where we make mistake. That is exactly why we are devastated by a single seeming insignificant event causing destruction of our favorite things.
Step 2 discussion:
Figure 2. Reality is far from perfect
Our urge to predict everything to ensure survival demands perfection in every entity considered for precision and accuracy of prediction. As reality is made up of many real possibilities, this count of possibilities and the errors associated with their measurements require huge resources which render the prediction process impractical for the possible outcomes.
(Keep in mind right now that we are only talking about those variables, events which we can understand; we haven’t even entered into those variables, events we don’t even understand or know in first place.)
The moment we introduce poorly known, immeasurable but significant variable – the whole game of predictability crumbles down.
That is exactly why instead of striving for better predictability, it is a smart choice to be prepared for everything. Knowing that this too shall end soon should comfort us to prepare for such things/ events. The rejection of the urge for perfection, absoluteness and full efficiency will immediately prepare us for everything that reality unfolds.
Step 3 discussion:
Figure 3. In the end, we are only human.
Now that we know how every event is potent and can immediately contribute to a cyclical process of compounding, it is important to understand how we comprehend that compounding. As everything that we do is directly linked to our survival we are by default born with preferences. These preferences get eliminated or amplified based on the life experiences we have. Even though our urge for predictability demands objectivity we often forge the subjective parts of every narrative. The subjectivity is important, because the reasons to survive are different for different people.
Conclusion – Human behavior and laws of nature
Our mind rarely understands anything as a flow of entities. Almost all of the fundamental entities existing in nature are flow – continuum entities. But in order to understand them study them we break them into pieces which makes is practical to quantify and predict. For time as an example – we have past – present – future; we need this separation to comprehend the flow of time. This slight arrangement of separation of events just for the convenience of communication and comprehension for our minds has now become such a second nature of our realities that we could hardly come out of the idea of past and future. Past keeps on haunting and future creates anxiety due to the uncertainty. Nostalgia from past brings us joy and what advancements future will present inspires us to work harder today. We rarely notice that this works both ways.
It is really difficult and impractical for our mind to let go of this past-present-future mentality. This convenience of separation for the sake of improving our decision making and survival has imparted a sense of time being a set of discrete isolated events, independent events. This steals the feature of hyper-connectivity in our understanding of reality.
Once we come out of the discretization of time as past-present-future we will see that every event is equally important and highly interconnected and multidimensional (in the sense that it creates multiple real effects on multiple entities) Our mind being biased for survival and in energy optimization mode, it always focuses on what is required to remain alive. This sense of remaining alive now has evolved into intellectual survival – as in what things we define as our life. So, even though from objective point of view all events remain exactly the same, on our personal level certain events are highly important because they change the things we are attached to in a drastic way – in most cases our life. We are now scared to die intellectually – a mental death – the death of our truths – our identity. And trust me, this happens frequently.
Morgan in this book very beautifully noted down the factual version of the reality we live in; it is beautiful because it shows how our human nature is always affecting the seemingly objective reality of the most of the things.
This is my ultimate distilled down version of the book “Same as Ever” by Morgan Housel.
One point summary of ‘Same as Ever’ by Morgan Housel
It also highlights that our mind is the first and the easiest one to fool, which leads to false sense of superiority over others and creates biases. Once we accept that nothing is perfect, no one is perfect – it injects humility and forgiveness. It also makes us grateful for what we possess today. What else could be more important than this to be justified as a human being?
These points ask for detachment from predictions and end results. A sense of responsibility for the actions could be the best version of any person – this exactly is invoked when we are trying to prepare for the future instead of striving to predict it.
I think we need more ideas like this when we are fighting for survival for such unimportant things where we already know the real, practical answers but have decided to ignore them.
The ability to see every event at the same level is a superpower any one of us can have.
For those who haven’t read the book here is the point-to-point summary of the book “Same as Ever”:
#1. If you know where we’ve been you realize, we have no idea where we’re going.
Here, Morgan gives many real-life events where a single decision led to catastrophic events causing loss of many lives and valuable resources.
When we study history even when we know what exactly happened, it is tricky to pinpoint the trigger for that event. There will be why and how behind every small-small event and when we will reach to its origin it becomes really difficult to wrap your mind around that petty thing which had led to such a big and historic event.
The absurdity of past connections should humble your confidence in predicting future ones.
#2. We are very good at predicting the future, except for the surprises – which tend to be all that matter
In very simple words, Morgan highlights the extents of our imagination and thinking. Even though they are infinite, the nature in which we are existing is equally or rather infinite in bigger and greater sense. That is exactly why even when we think we are prepared for everything, nature will always have something new in its pocket to reveal and not being ready for that exact new thing makes that event overwhelming for us because we were not ready for that exact new reveal.
It’s impossible to plan for what you can’t imagine, and the more you think you’ve imagined everything the more shocked you’ll be when something happens that you hadn’t considered.
This itself should humble us. That is why preparation is more important than forecasting.
Invest in preparedness, not in prediction
#3. The first rule of happiness is low expectations.
The most important observation Morgan puts here is in the ways we gauge our resourcefulness – it is always relative – material or immaterial – objects or emotions. We always have a baseline which is created by comparing ourselves with those around us. That is exactly why we rarely appreciate what we have at our hands.
We always crave for what ‘they’ seem to have instead of appreciating what we already and really have in our hands. Even when we are unsure about whether others actually have those things, still we crave those things for us, which is tragic!
Morgan expresses that almost all of the truly precious things in our life don’t come with a price tag that is why we never care to evaluate their importance – like good health, freedom. Same is the case with expectations.
When Morgan is asking for low expectations, it is not omission of the motivation to improve ourselves. Low expectations ask for realistic expectations. One must always be observant of the gap between what we wanted and what happened in reality.
#4. People who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you won’t like.
Here, Morgan talks about the role models, heroes, leaders we consider the best of us all. It is very important to understand that they are the best among us all because they did something in very exceptional manner which made them stand out of the well-defined ‘boring’ and ‘average’ structure of the society. If they would have followed the same paths that other followed, they would have been just like others.
In order to stand out of the masses they did something different.
Now be cautious! This different could be seen as good or bad as per the average crowd level. And keep in mind this specialty in that person is because others don’t have it in them. So, in order to create and develop something special out of the same average crowd one has to overcome a resistance of the masses where a trade-off is done with other aspects of their personality. Sometimes the exceptional conditions create exceptional personalities which many people fail to recognize.
Of course they [successful people] have abnormal characteristics. That’s why they’re successful! And there is no world in which we should assume that all those abnormal characteristics are positive, polite, endearing, or appealing.
Simple words, there is always some trade off to achieve something truly exceptional.
You gotta challenge all the assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after
#5. People don’t want accuracy. They want certainty.
A common trait of human behavior is the burning desire for certainty despite living in an uncertain and probabilistic world.
Morgan discusses how we are always trying to alleviate the bad results, pain in all life scenarios. The urge to survive supersedes everything. Our brain always wants a confirmed trigger on whether to fight or flight for given problem. It is always in energy optimization mode and in the uncertain world filled of infinite possibilities it wants something to act on immediately. Otherwise, brain knows that it won’t survive. The urge for certainty – that clarity of whether to fight or flight is the most important information than how precisely we are assessing the reality. It’s like brain takes a shortcut to ensure survival. That is exactly why huge load of information especially numbers overwhelm us.
The core is that people think they want an accurate view of the future but what they really crave is certainty.
#6. Stories are always more powerful than statistics.
If we continue the train of thoughts from previous point, soon we will appreciate how dearly we appreciate stories instead of boring numbers. Even when stories would tell a lie and numbers would tell the real, pure truth we would always choose a fake story over realistic numbers. Our brain doesn’t want to overwork itself to ensure survival.
Good stories tend to do that [evoking emotions and connecting the dots in millions of people’s heads]. They have extraordinary ability to inspire and evoke positive emotions, bringing insights and attention to topics that people tend to ignore when they’ve previously been presented with nothing but facts.
Stories create an emotional, empathic bridge between people which our brain already knows since the childhood. The very first think a baby does to start breathing is crying not counting. (I know the analogy is lame but it works here) we are implicitly trained to actively process emotions first and then numbers. Stories enhance this ability on next level.
That is exactly why emotional-ity will always be preferred over rationality.
We live in a world where people are bored, impatient, emotional, and need complicated things distilled into easy-to grasp scenes.
#7. The world is driven by forces that cannot be measured.
Morgan brings here more clarity on the objective nature of the numbers even when they are showing the truth, the reality. The point that our reality is made up of the infinite possibility itself shows that the sheer limitation of our computation capability will create a partial picture of the bigger reality. This happens because many of the factors which influence our reality are beyond quantification. That is exactly why whenever we are making any decision based on objective and true data (like truest of true numbers) we should bear in mind that these numbers are not accounting for those unmeasured factors which also affect the reality we are trying to understand.
Some things are immeasurably important. They’re either impossible, or too elusive, to quantify. But they can make all the difference in the world, often because their lack of quantification causes people to discount their relevance or even their existence.
In simple words, our story loving brain is driven by intuition and safe/ familiar information which is unquantifiable most of the times.
#8 Crazy doesn’t mean broken. Crazy is normal; beyond the point of crazy is normal.
Morgan is trying to point out how we understand what is means to be at the top. He established that most of the tops we experience in life are to because we have experienced falling down from them and we would have never understood that we were at top unless we have had fall down from them.
The only way to discover the limits of what’s possible is to venture a little way past those limits.
We never appreciate summit of something unless we start climbing from down or fall down from that summit. That is exactly why what made you feel at the top will make you safe and that attachment to safety will lead to your fall, the pain of fall will motivate you to climb new heights and again the cycle will go on.
#9. A good idea on steroids quickly becomes a terrible idea.
Morgan here explains how evolution created the species around us. There was always some trade-off while evolving because of the forces of nature. In nature nothing has absolute competitive advantage otherwise a single species will take over everything that single species alone will lead to its downfall and destruction due to the lack of diversity.
Most things have a natural size and speed and backfire quickly when you push them beyond that.
In simple words, anything that is burns bright, goes out fast. Resources behind every process are limited and even if they would be available in surplus, extent of their utilization affects the outcome and overall integrity of that process.
#10. Stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can’t.
The urge to survive makes our brain to push to its untested limits. These limits are there just for the optimum behavior so that our brain could actually use the reserve energy when it is the question of life and death. When it come down to do or die – people have always delivered in surprising and shocking ways.
The circumstances that tend to produce the biggest innovations are those that cause people to be worried, scared, and eager to move quickly because their future depends on it.
Morgan points out here that this stress should be healthy because there is always a natural size of everything as explained in point #9.
There is a delicate balance between helpful stress and crippling disaster.
#11. Good news comes from compounding, which always takes time, but bad news comes from a loss in confidence or a catastrophic error that can occur in a blink of an eye.
Growth always fights against competition that slows its rise.
Morgan here shows how things that exist today as our reality have gone through multiple iterations. They have already failed many times and started again long ago; its just that the compounding imparted grandeur and power to fight against the adversities of the life which made their realisation possible here in front of us. There will again be some simple, seemingly insignificant event which will destroy this creation and things will start again.
To enjoy peace, we need almost everyone to make good choices. By contrast, a poor choice by just one side can lead to war.
#12. When little things compound into extraordinary things.
Here Morgan points out from the examples of history how in order to avoid a big calamity people ignored some small incidents which led to even bigger calamities. It is ingrained in our mind to overlook big events because the smaller events which lead to their realization are “small and insignificant”.
Small risks weren’t the alternative to big risks; they were the trigger.
#13. Progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist.
Morgan here talks about how our preferences for each and everything have stolen away the realism in our lives. Instead of favoring one side, life is more about appreciation of the spectrum. It was never about who wins or who loses because both are short lived. It is always about who survived and stayed in the game longer. (Simon Sinek calls it the infinite game as explained in Game theory.)
The trick in any field – from finance to careers to relationships – is being able to survive the short-run problems so you can stick around long enough to enjoy the long-term growth.
Whoever lives to see the end wins but that victory is just over those who couldn’t survive. There will always be some room at the top because conditions never remain the same.
#14. There is a huge advantage to being a little imperfect.
The more perfect you try to become, the more vulnerable you generally are
The idea of perfection immediately steals the flexibility from any given system. Because of the perfection the system is bound to certain thriving conditions and exactly when you expose this system to the reality of infinite possibilities there will always be some ‘seemingly’ trivial event which will take down that whole system.
A little imperfection makes the system to bend thereby giving place to perform in unimagined conditions and as we have already learnt that the reality is full of unimaginable but real events.
Morgan beautifully explains the ways in which natural evolution has worked out.
A species that evolves to become very good at one thing tends to become vulnerable at another.
…species rarely evolve to become perfect at anything, because perfecting one skill comes at the expense of another skill that will eventually be critical to survival.
Nature’s answer is a lot of good enough, below-potential traits across all species.
#15. Everything worth pursuing comes with a little pain. The trick is not minding that it hurts.
The really important and actually valuable things in life don’t come with a price tag and that is exactly why we are not ready to pay any price. This makes our minds to wish for such things because of the false sense of entitlement. This same entitlement blinds us from the real actions which can lead us to this achievement and we keep on whining about not achieving these things. A wishful thinking!
A unique skill, an underrated skill, is identifying the optimal amount of hassle and nonsense you should put up with to get ahead while getting along.
#16. Most competitive advantages eventually die.
A we have now already understood that even a small event can lead to collapse of any grand creation and how easy it is to undermine any event we must now accept that nothing big will stay as it is now. Same goes for any competitive advantage. As things keep changing the advantages which made their impact big will become irrelevant with the changing things. One has to keep on reinventing in order to remain relevant and effective with the changing times.
Evolution is ruthless and unforgiving – it doesn’t teach by showing you what works but by destroying what doesn’t.
#17. It always feels like we’re falling behind, and it’s easy to discount the potential of new technology.
Morgan highlights how the innovations which we consider ground-breaking, world-changing were result of multiple small-small events creating synergy to coexist.
It’s so easy to underestimate how two small things can compound into an enormous thing.
#18. The grass is greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.
You never know what struggles people are hiding.
As we have already seen our urge to compare our conditions with the conditions of others and always consider ours to be the worst most of the times, it is evident that we are experts in judging everything in its entirety based on very little information. Our biases and basic mentality feed this tendency furthermore. But reality is always like the iceberg.
Most of the things are harder than they look and not as fun as they seem.
#19. When the incentives are crazy, the behavior is crazy. People can be led to justify and defend nearly anything.
Morgan here shows that beyond envy people are driven by incentives. You can make people do almost anything, make them believe them in almost any thing if their interests are aligned in that. This is strong when people are helpless and when it is about their survival.
One of the strongest pulls of incentives is the desire for the people to hear only what they want to hear and see only what they want to see.
The beauty that Morgan points out is that this can also be used to bring good out of people.
It’s easy to underestimate how much good people can do, how talented they can become, and what they can accomplish when they operate in a world where their incentives are aligned towards progress.
#20. Nothing is more persuasive than what you’ve experienced first-hand.
As we have emotional beings and we have already seen that we will always prefer emotional clarity of falsehood over the numerical, arithmetic truth it shows that every part of our understanding of life is tied to our own individual experiences. We rarely appreciate the foretold truth. But we will appreciate all those things which we experience on our own.
That is also why there are certain truths which very few people have experienced but are not generally accepted by the masses because there is no part to connect personally. We can only connect personally only when we have passed through those experiences.
That is exactly why it is difficult to convince people of something really exceptional and extraordinary personal experience, that also why it is also easy to fool people.
The next generation never learns anything from the previous one until it’s brought home with a hammer… I’ve wondered why the nest generation can’t profit from the generation before, but they never do until they get knocked in the head by experience.
#21. Saying “I’m in it for the long run” is a bit like standing at the base of Mount Everest, pointing to the top, and saying, “That’s where I’m heading.” Well, that’s nice. Now comes the test.
In simple words, Morgan shows us that we rarely will ever know what we have signed up for. Most of the times our simulative experiences and thoughts will be broken down by the unimaginable possibilities of the reality. Instead of craving for that summit one must try to stand strong while they have started this journey and remain faithful to this step they are taking ahead. This attitude has to be kept with every step which very few people maintain.
Long term is less about time horizon and more about flexibility.
#22. There are no points awarded for difficulty.
Almost all of the times people appreciate certain things, certain people because they couldn’t not have or become like them. This crates a mysticism. We are always attracted to mystical things because the urge to know better (to improve chances of survival against unknown) is our hidden trait.
Complexity creates this mysticism instantly. That is why we most of the time reject truths which are so obvious and in front of our eyes and accept that intellectually stimulating complicated lie. The complexity makes our brain to actively engage in that thing which creates an attachment just because our brain was invested in it.
Complexity gives a comforting impression of control while simplicity is hard to distinguish from cluelessness.
#23. What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?
Morgan points out that our lives even though we have common experiences, we associate ourselves to certain groups, certain ideologies on deeper levels and at core we are totally different and individual.
Many debates are not actual disagreements; they’re people with different experiences talking over each other.
Robert Louis Stevenson is known for his world-famous novels ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ . His short story called “The Body Snatcher” throws light on the mentality and evolution of the dangerous psychopaths. The false sense of greater good, the ability to ‘suppress destructive thoughts’, ‘destructive actions’ to justify superiority keeps driving certain types of criminals to cross the limits of humanity, ethics, morality. It shows that even though the consequences of wrong actions may not get punished due to the limitations of the laws of the respective times, the punishment of wrong thought is almost instant which is the degradation of the person’s psyche through ‘guilt’ and ‘fear’ – and most of the time it goes unnoticed and builds over time resulting in even more grave dangerous acts. It shows how thought and action are equally important in the overall personality. The wrong act may not get punished but the wrong thought has already punished the mind.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous short story “The Body Snatcher”
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
Robert Louis Stevenson
In storytelling, especially in visual storytelling media, there is an expression – “Show! Don’t tell.” It is very impactful because it makes the viewers to put their minds consciously in the narrative thereby it increases their engagement in the story; this makes them to consider the narrative as their own story. The emotional impact is very high. It is furthermore potent if the story is horror or thriller. More the viewers feel engaged, more scared they will be.
But there are some stories especially, some unconventional crime stories where there is no point of relatability because not every one of us is a criminal, not every mind thinks the way given psychopath, criminal is thinking in the story.
Now the impact of such stories is solely dependent on how they are written, expressed. The mastermind depicting, writing such stories knows that being a human we have all the tendencies of whatever good there is in the world and whatever bad there is in the world. It is just matter of which of those we give chance to flourish and which of those we suppress to make our ultimate personality. The master author uses that fine thread of slight ‘unnatural’ tendencies we have suppressed to make us simulate the real horrors the villains of his story would commit. These stories create impact and relatability through our urge to simulate the events to understand the end truth of the narrative. Inspiration from real events adds further more spice in such stories. (That is exactly why “Based on real incidents’ has remained an impactful (but still a cliché) opening for any horror story. We know that it’s a cliché but it creates a space in our minds that there could be a possibility of this happening in real life)
R L Stevenson wrote one such short story which feels like a normal depiction of a crime but in the very last sentences the horror of the story unfolds thereby leaving the readers shocked and scared. We will deep dive into this famous story written by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The Body Snatcher – Synopsis
This is a story of two young men who studied in the school of medicine in Edinburgh in early 1800s.
Macfarlane is now a Doctor and Fettes – old drunken but literate man was his companion in the past academic times. The main story starts unfolding as Dr. Macfarlane and Fettes see each other after long time unexpectedly which revives the memories of their wrongdoings in their shared past at the school of medicine.
Being a good and sincere lad, Mr. Fettes gets the job of maintaining the dissecting room held by Mr. K_, the teacher of anatomy. Macfarlane was assistant to Mr. K_. So, Fettes and Macfarlane were responsible for ensuring the smooth demonstrations of anatomy to the class by Mr. K_. In order to ensure the duty and credibility, Fettes and Macfarlane had crossed the limits in the ways they would source such dead bodies. There comes a day when Fettes is shocked to find out that the dead body he received is of Jane Galbraith – a lady he met in a good health just a day before. He tries to bring sanity in this matter by asking Macfarlane but Macfarlane rejects that idea of identifying and informing Police about the possible murder because that suspicion opens the possibility that all the dead-bodies they receive for dissection in the class of anatomy are results of crimes thereby making them immediate criminals.
Here we come to know that whenever there is shortage of dead bodies, Fettes and Macfarlane went to dig out the graves in the graveyards around Edinburgh.
One day Fettes discovers that Macfarlane has one acquaintance called Gray who has some sort of control over the behaviour of Macfarlane as if Gray knew something really dark about Macfarlane and revealing it would jeopardize Macfarlane’s reputation. Gray uses this trick of black-mailing to have a feast on Macfarlane’s money even though Macfarlane was not into it.
Upon the passing of night, Fettes understands that Macfarlane took care of the Gray Problem when he sees the dead body of Gray as a new subject for the dissection class. Macfarlane himself delivers that body to Fettes and it is now clear that he himself murdered him. But there is no chance to inform authorities and bring more trouble for Fettes. Macfarlane is not bothered by all this and rather feels free as the axe of Gray no more exists on his neck. He ensures Fettes that its just a matter of time that these dreadful memories will fade away and they both will be on their way as if nothing happened.
Fettes feels the same but both Macfarlane and Fettes have the event of Gray etched on the back of their minds as they now consciously avoid any direct or indirect conversations leading to Gray.
One day due to the shortage of subjects for dissection they go on the ‘resurrection’ hunt to a graveyard to dig out a dead body of an old farmer lady. They take a halt before going on to the main task of ‘resurrection’. They are caught in rain and darkness when they start to remove the dead body of the lady from the grave. They load that body in their small, congested cart in darkness. The body lies partly on their shoulders, is bothering them and is shifting continuously due to the uneven roads.
The uneasy dark and rainy environment, the dogs following the cart makes Macfarlane uneasy as if someone, something unnatural is watching them. So, Macfarlane asks Fettes to light the lamp so that they can at least check the dead body and keep it, adjust it properly in the cart so that they would continue the journey. Upon lighting the lamp both Macfarlane and Fettes are shocked to discover that the dead body they retrieved from the grave of the old lady is a dead body of Gray – a dissected dead body of Gray.
Inspiration From Real Incident
William Hare (left) and William Burke (right)
Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story “The Body Snatcher” was published in December 1884 and was based on infamous and real “Burke and Hare Murders” in 1828. Burke and Hare were owners of a lodging facility. Burke and Hare committed 16 murders to supply dead bodies in exchange of money to Dr. Knox who used them for dissections. This event led Dr. Knox to lose his credibility and fame. Dr. Robert Knox was a famous anatomist of his time. He was not convicted because he was not directly involved in the dealings of the dead bodies from Burke and Hare. Burke was hanged in public and Hare got immunity because he supported the state’s evidences and testified against Burke.
The way in which R L Stevenson knitted the story is what made the story interesting. He calls the anatomist doctor Mr. K_ when the readers had an informed notion of Burke and Hare Murders and Dr. Knox in those times. So, it makes the readers to find out themselves that mystery around “Mr. K_”. Mr. K_ of the story is no other than Dr. Knox of Edinburgh.
Psychopathic Tendencies – How Criminals Justify Their Crimes
For any average person, committing single murder is a huge, seemingly unnatural, inhumane and in the end an illegal act to fully commit. The consequences are dangerous. Then how come Burke and Hare committed 16 repetitions of this crime? They were just some small business owners.
In similar sense, Mr. Fettes and Mr. Macfarlane were just students of medicine and were doing their duties to ensure the supply of subjects for dissections. What made them to go on the streak of multiple illegal activities in the story? They were just doing their due diligence to Mr. K_.
Upon looking at the depths of the investigation of Burke and Hare Murder Case we will find that the first time they sold a dead body was for totally different reason. One of their lodgers died of old age while leaving a debt of 4 Sterling Pounds. Burke and Hare decided to sell the dead body to settle the debt. Note that dead bodies in those times were scarce for dissection and demonstration. They sold the body to Dr. Knox’s Private Anatomy School. Professor Doctor was not directly involved in the dealing. Burke and Hare received 7 Sterling Pounds for the body.
From hereon they decided to take the control of people’s lives for such beneficial business of dead bodies and started murdering the people who lodged in their facility. They killed 16 people in this way to deal for money in exchange of dead bodies. The careless murder they committed was to kill a beggar with clubfoot and his dead body was easily identified by a student due to this disability which made him to limp. Knox is said to make that body unidentifiable by removing the head and feet.
They had differences in their partnership which made them to split these acts for themselves. During an attempt to forcefully shift the lodgers to Hare’s establishment, Burke killed a lady and the lodgers who were shifting found the body while they returned to retrieve their belongings from Bare’s establishment. This was reported to Police but the dead body was already sold.
Looking at these events you will see that it is the rejection of morality and false sense of greater good and self-betterment which drives the criminal to commit the crime again and again. Burke and Hare got involved in these acts for the monetary benefits where it was easy to bypass the system and provisions like Dr. Knox’s anatomy demonstrations. Dr. Knox was driven to improve his credibility by flaunting his skills and demonstrations of dissections in the medical community.
R L Stevenson took this fine thread of reality to create Mr. Fettes and Mr. Macfarlane in his story. We will see that Mr. Fettes is shocked when he identifies a dead body of the lady he just met, that too in good health. Mr. Fettes had raised concern to Macfarlane but as Macfarlane was experienced and conditioned knowing that dead bodies once dissected were beyond any identification and legal jurisdiction. Actually, being a student of medicine, Macfarlane was expected to have a sense of the importance of life for any human being. The false sense that this will not get discovered by anyone practically and all of this was being done to maintain the reputation of his teacher thereby improving his credibility created a false sense of greater good in Macfarlane.
There is a section in this story where Macfarlane expresses how he feels about all these matters of dead bodies and Gray’s murder. He expresses following to Fettes in the story –
“The great thing is not to be afraid. Now, between you and me, I don’t want to hang-that’s practical; but for all cant, Macfarlane, I was born with a contempt. Hell, God, Devil, right, wrong, sin, crime, and all the old gallery of curiosities- they may frighten boys, but men of the world, like you and me, despise them. Here’s to the memory of Gray!”
The way he says all this shows that his mind has developed a false sense of greatness to justify his wrong-doings. Now he wants to prove his manliness. It’s like a defense mechanism to cover all the guilt which comes from committing such crimes. The criminal considers the motivations behind his criminal acts are way superior than the moral weight of what is right and what is wrong. (The word ‘CANT’ use in expression “for all cant” means a criminal act, deceitful act, falsehood. Macfarlane very well knew that what he was doing was a crime.)
In case of Burke and Hare it started with settling the debt for ensuring proper monetary gains for stable business of lodging. Then it snowballed into series of murders because they were never caught in action and had a way to come out of the murders. They created that ‘ecosystem’.
Same ecosystem can be seen in this story.
What could have actually made difference is the sense of reality and integrity. Integrity is the behavior which we carry when no one is watching. Fettes had chance to expose all this system when he discovered the young Lady’s dead body. But only because he felt that this action came with lot of difficult consequences and impossible to favor him in the end, he keeps mum.
Fettes found that exposing Macfarlane and Mr. K_ and getting them punishment is the most impractical and impossible event – the inevitable and that is where he made his first mistake. He went with the flow, the wrong one.
The same would be the case for Burke and Hare. They could have asked authorities for the settlement of the debt from the old dead lodger. But, considering it a tedious route they considered the ill- route to sell it.
However difficult it may seem; impractical it may seem there is always a right way to do right things. The environment in which you are deciding your action is also playing a huge role in your choices. First helplessness shows you the path, then guilt follows and in order to mask that guilt the person creates a sense of greatness which demands sacrifices. This is real and constant in every generation of humanity. Most of the times right things are the toughest one to act on and accept.
Stevenson beautifully brought these human tendencies in his story which go hand in hand with the reality we live even today.
The Ending Of The Story – Real Or Supernatural?
What hangs people…is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Many readers argue that the ending is supernatural and spooky. Robert Louis Stevenson in a masterful way maintains the realism of the story till the end. And in the last few closing sentences he mentions dead and dissected body of Gray which was completely destroyed many days ago in the reality of Fettes and Macfarlane. It is practically impossible for a body completely dissected to show itself in deep grave at completely different location. So that body definitely was not of dead Gray.
There are evidences to support this. Before going to the ‘resurrection’ job, Fettes and Macfarlane had stay in Fisher’s Tryst where they had drinks. So, it’s pretty much possible that whatever happened was under the influence of alcohol.
There is one more doubt that if it was real then at least one of them would have noticed the reality of the dead body. How can two men would have a shared delusion? A shared delusion can only be explained by a supernatural intervention.
The justification to opt out shared delusion is the shared guilt Fettes and Macfarlane had. It is a human tendency to make sense out of bunch of things which don’t make sense collectively when conditions are hostile. This sense is heightened when one is in hyperalert state, when one is in full fight or flight mode. Deep down Macfarlane knew the acts he is performing. The surrounding events just fuelled this sense of guilt and Stevenson beautifully created this environment in the minds of the readers.
You will notice that Macfarlane is completely unsettled and repulsive of minor things happening to him once they load the dead body. He hates the jumps that the body makes while going on an uneven track, he hates that ice-cold sackcloth flapping on his face, dogs following the cart on the road is unsettling to him (in reality we all know dogs would follow every vehicle going through their territory, especially in night), he also feels that the body has grown in shape (how would he know this if there was not enough light, as the lamp was not working?).
In this exact moment Stevenson injects this sentence for us readers which is a money shot –
“…and it grew and grew upon his mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen the dead body, and that it was in fear of their unholy burden that the dogs were howling”
“The unholy burden” they both were carrying was the guilt they had suppressed long ago and not acted on it in rightful manner.
This guilt and intoxication are the main reasons behind the spooky conclusion of the story.
What Should Be Punished – The Action Or The Intent?
The Body Snatcher as a story and even the reality of Burke and Hare crime to which it is associated poses a very interesting question. What are the limits of judicial system, law and order?
As this statement from Kant goes, in order to be called a criminal in the eyes of the public, one must be seen to perform the crime or the evidences should support so. Thus ‘Law’ becomes more of a sociological term – ‘to arrest the degradation of human as a society’. On the other hand, Kant beautifully highlighted the unitary role of a person in the society. Simple logic says how a society is made of many ‘individuals’ coming together to interact for mutual benefit. Kant consciously asks for preservation of rights of others while achieving benefit otherwise society collapses (what is beneficial for one will not necessarily always be beneficial to others.) Which is why ethics prevent the degradation of the person on individual level. That is exactly where morality and integrity become more influential.
So, even though our generalized and biased, conditioned thinking makes us to weigh the wrong acts heavier than just their thinking about doing them, in the end they both weigh the same. Sometimes, even though these thoughts don’t get in the fruition of realised actions, they keep on affecting minor, seemingly insignificant decisions we make which ultimately create our personality and our psyche. Act of crime and thought of committing the same crime are same.
Friedrich Nietzsche posed this same dilemma of “what weighs heavy – action or intent?” in his book “Beyond Good and Evil”. I have discussed that in depth in the section “The Freedom of Actions” in my other blog post “The Free Spirit – Beyond Good and Evil “.
The gist of the things is that we will be able to appreciate the crime of ill-thinking when the stakes are really high as in any decision would have grave dangerous scale of destruction. If we will wait for the actions to be presented as wrong while we already know that it leads to wrong then even the thought of doing that action was wrong in the first place, even before the action’s ends were realized.
The Real Punishment – Where And How Does It Happen?
So, now that I have established that even the thought of doing wrong action is a crime then, one would definitely say that I must be a fool. Every one of us is always thinking of such ideas all the time – consciously and unconsciously. (Not of murdering someone obviously. Just recall the last time you cursed someone because they made your life miserable, or the thought that why bad things always happen with good people – especially ME!)
The answer is “It is really easy to fool our mind”. This is also where the core of the fiction in Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story The Body Snatcher and the reality of ‘Burke and hare Crime’ is overlapping.
Burke and Hare thought that their crimes were justified because of the profits of their business. Fettes and Macfarlane thought that their acts were justified for their survival and reputation.
Deep down they were completely engulfed in the guilt of their wrongdoings. So, if we follow the before-explained thought of Immanuel Kant, we will see that real actions from law will ensure realistic punishment but the punishment of the mind is instant, the guilt is injected immediately. This guilt if is “real”, it will immediately start eroding your personality and psyche. Which will eventually lead to unnatural events and acts of crime in real world.
I am saying the feeling of guilt to be “real”, because (again) it is really easy to fool our mind. One has to train mind to distinguish the difference between impulses, responses and their encouragement or suppression. One will realize that whenever there is suppression of wrong thought like guilt in this case, it leads to the defense mechanism – creating a cover up with false sense of greater good or the false security of not getting caught in action, on not having enough evidences. Even though they are not caught in society, the guilt has already passed its sentence on their personality, their self-image and psyche. Now such persons have just accepted what they have become. (This is how a psychopath would start their journey to justify all their crimes).
I am posing this also from the other perspective of ‘false-guilt’. Sometimes we consider ourselves guilty when in reality we were not responsible for those events. This false guilt will start taking even the good things you have.
The only way I see to handle any wrong thought is to not let it grow out of its own boundary of creation, not to feed it further. Not to mask it or suppress it but just let it remain there. The overgrowth and flourishing of good thoughts will eventually diminish its influence. It’s natural to have right or wrong thoughts for given stimulus. Response, reaction lies in our territory. You must understand that even the act of suppression demands extra efforts which requires extra involvement, this extra involvement is unconsciously feeding that wrong thought, thus suppression on mental level is not suppression rather it’s a feed. Which exactly what we keep on missing when judging between an action and its mere thought.
Egg Or Chicken? – Action Or Thought?
You will appreciate the dilemma created due the practical limitations of the world we live in. As it is really difficult to enter immediately into the mentality, psyche of the others – we have to always go by the external attributes of everyone around us to measure the rightness or wrongness. That is why act imposing guilt must also be supported by the thought of guilt. This is very important when the psyche, the mind of person is not normal or completely evolved. So, one may think that the importance of ill-intent is less important, it also plays equally important role in judiciary decisions.
In court, the thing we punish is the criminal intention. -the mens rea, the guilty mind. There is an ancient rule: actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea – “the act does not create guilt unless the mind is also guilty.” That is why we do not convict children, drunks, and schizophrenics: they are incapable of deciding to commit their crimes with a true understanding of the significance of their actions. Free will is as important to the law as it is to religion or any other code of morality.
William Landay, Defending Jacob
Conclusion
Robert Louis Stevenson is known for his world-famous novels Treasure Island and Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The short story called “The Body Snatcher” throws light on the mentality and evolution of the dangerous psychopaths. The false sense of greater good, the ability to ‘suppress destructive thoughts’, ‘destructive actions’ to justify superiority keeps driving certain types of criminals to cross the limits of humanity, ethics, morality. It shows that even though the consequences of wrong actions may not get punished due to the limitations of the laws of the respective times, the punishment of wrong thought is almost instant which is the degradation of the psyche through ‘guilt’ and ‘fear’ – and most of the time it goes unnoticed and build over time resulting in even more grave dangerous acts. It shows how thought and action are equally important in the overall personality of a person. The wrong act may not get punished but the wrong thought has already punished the mind.
‘A Hunger Artist’ was the last book published during Franz Kafka’s lifetime. The titled story reflects the inner turmoil and the imposter syndrome Kafka had for his writings. Even though tragic in the end Kafka successfully defined the attributes of the true artist in this story.
In today’s social setup of becoming viral, influential – Franz Kafka’s story ‘A Hunger Artist’ stands like a lighthouse. It urges the readers and artists to trust their special process of expression, their special talent. It asks the artists to honor their subjectivity and not let that timeless, immortal subjectivity be maligned by the limitations of objective mediums and feedback loops of appreciation, popularity, fame from the surrounding. Authenticity, honoring the purest ways of self-expression can stand on their own just like truth. They don’t need any other supports to stand the test of time.
Franz Kafka’s story “A Hunger Artist”
‘A Hunger Artist’ was the last book published during Franz Kafka’s lifetime. The titled story shows the inner turmoil and the imposter syndrome Kafka had for his writings. Even though tragic in the end Kafka successfully defined the attributes of the true artist in this story. Every person who appreciates the struggles in the life of an artist, the process of creation of a piece of great art, a masterpiece should read it. He impressively highlighted the importance of the artistic journey as the most authentic way of self-expression which what makes us who we are in the first place.
Synopsis
This is a story of an artist whose skill is demonstrate survival without eating anything – remaining hungry thus the name – ‘Hunger artist’. The impresario – the event organizer of this demonstration by the Hunger artist has a well-planned demonstration to make sure that enough intrigue, curiosity and attraction is spread in the public so that the show would be a success in the end thereby earning him profit. There is proper way to publicize the artistic demonstration, a proper time window of 40 day to end the fasting so that the artist is not stretched beyond his limits and the public interest doesn’t fade over time. There is also a proper way to conclude the hunger demonstration with full celebration.
Hunger artist is nowhere in this equation except for his demonstration. He is not doing this to earn money. He is doing this because it is the only thing he is good at and makes him special than the people around him, the crowd around him. For him it is his special talent which makes him different that rest of the crowd. Getting recognition from people is the result of this special talent which is his real earning from his art-form.
The impresario’s only intent to use the art-form of the Hunger Artist is to capitalize his skill of fasting to earn more money.
Over the time this show’s popularity fades so Hunger artist is forced to join a circus because now he has aged and this is the only skill he has. He joins the circus with the hope that impresario will not limit his ability to fast for longer time and he can prove his artistry with even better efforts and make it truly flawless, a masterpiece ultimately. He starts his demonstration in a cage.
Sadly, this cage is placed right at the end of the row of animal cages where people, audience rarely have left any interest or they are visiting this last cage as it is in their way to the exit. People rarely show any interest in the cage of the hunger artist.
Time passes, the hunger artist had already broken his record of 40 days but nobody notices this. The artist is forgotten and one day someone notices his empty cage as if there is no one there and asks the people to use it to bring some exciting animal into this cage. The moment someone identifies that this is the cage of hunger artist, the supervisor asks the hunger artist to end his fasting without disrespecting the hunger artist – saying that he admired what the artist accomplished.
The hunger artist dies and his place in the cage is replaced by a healthy Panther, who is properly fed by the circus people and the Panther itself is enjoying his life in the cage. People were intrigued and happy to see the cage of the Panther and they start crowding around this Panther’s cage where the Hunger artist used to reside earlier.
The Tragedy of Hunger Artist and Franz Kafka
Many readers attribute the story of the Hunger artist as the reflection of the inner tragedy Franz Kafka had throughout his life. Bear in mind that Franz Kafka’s literature became famous after his death. He was so unsure of the literary creation he made that he was very conservative about publishing his writings. The hunger artist is the last story which was published when Franz was alive. Most of the popular and legendary stories from Franz Kafka are available to masses because his friend published them after Kafka’s death. Kafka died with the assumption that his writing would always remain a mediocre creative piece instead of an art.
The Hunger artist has exactly same emotion when he dies. He dies with the feeling that his talent remained underappreciated thereby being mediocre in the eyes of the people. His art-form of fasting even after breaking the previous records remained worthless because people did not appreciate it.
It is very interesting take on the whole process and purpose of creating any artistic form. I would dive deeper into Hunger artist to understand what drives the art and the artist. Which one of these is more important? or are they really the center of the artistic journey? is there something else more critical in the artistic journey?
What Is An Art?
Anything can become an art-form and any person can be an artist. But the same statement is not true the other way around. Not everything is an art-form, masterpiece; not every person is an artist in the end. So, there is something really distinct, standing out in a person and his creation.
Art is the bridge between what artist feels strongly, wants to convey it and how the audience consuming it are experiencing it and interpreting it. It is the bridge of objectivity connecting the subjectivity of the artist and the subjectivity of the audience.
So, any art in order to realize itself in reality has to take the support of the objective, materialistic things. It can be anything which can be felt by the senses which are common to all of us but it has to create that materialistic, tangible experience to invoke the intangible feelings into others.
This objectivity, materialistic form of the artistic piece is itself is its limitation. Kafka very smartly pointed this out. People can see the Hunger artist emaciated and weak proving that he is really dedicated towards fasting, he has such a strong will that he can literally control his body condition. This intangible willpower of the artist is translated through his art-form to the people. Not everyone has this willpower to remain hungry which makes it special thereby making this demonstration the art. The thought of not eating for many days is the test of the patience and willpower in every common person which is the real emotion hunger artist is capitalizing through his performance.
The art thus creates a new perspective, makes people appreciate a hidden emotion, feeling which they already had but never appreciated it. A real art shows people what was already in them but was never realized.
What Makes A Person The Artist?
This is very controversial topic. Any person doing something rare, difficult to copy/ replicate, doing something exceptionally better, thinking out of the box, making things seem effortless could be an artist. Doing such things attracts people, audiences; it creates curiosity, joy/sadness, intrigue in their minds, it makes them think and feel something. This response from the audiences is generally used to judge the worth of the artist. If any average artist can invoke such feelings into the masses, then he is a good artist and his art is a masterpiece. Not everyone can create a Mona Lisa or Guernica that is why Leonardo Da Vinci and Picasso are the great artists. People feel something special when they see these pieces, it inspires them to appreciate the beauty they were never able to notice before.
One important aspect of the success of an artist is the talent he has which is rare. The special factor of talent makes people appreciate this artist because they themselves don’t have that talent in spite of having many things common between them and the artist.
What the audience and the hunger artist had in common was the ability to stay hungry. What was not common and special in the hunger artist was his will power. This will power created that differentiation between him and the masses. Due to this the artist was able to create something very special out of something very common and normal. That is why his performance became so special amongst the people. There was a factor of relatability of fasting between people and the artist, he only magnified this ability to extremes to make it artistic and special.
Even when most of the people have common ability of fasting, the mind-power of hunger artist made him to demonstrate his extreme will thereby converting this fasting into a special ability. The impresario made sure that it will be dramatic to earn profits from this performance.
Is Art Created For The Joy Of The Artist Or For The Joy Of The People Consuming It?
The very subjective reason behind the creation of any art-form is its strength and weakness simultaneously. In most cases, the key reason behind creation of an artistic piece is the urge of the artist to convey his deeper unexpressed emotions into something which can be expressed into something tangible and this object is then experienced by others to understand what was meant to be conveyed. This is some sort of subjectivity conveyed through something objective. If people – the audience are moved by it then this gives the artist a confirmation, a validation of his special talent. Then the artist creates even better influential things so that people are furthermore entertained and stimulated. Then this becomes a cycle which keeps on going. So, on surface it feels that art satisfies both its creator and the people experiencing it.
But this is not the complete and satisfactory answer to this question.
What if an artist is conveying something so rare that most of the people have not felt it ever in their lives? When the artist would communicate such emotions, feelings and very few people would appreciate it thereby the art-form prevented from being popular and furthermore not making it ‘special’. This is where the real things start. The earlier definition of the purpose of art explains the definition of “a popular art”. But, just like certain human experiences and perspectives somethings can really be rare and the relatability is very scarce among the audience. Thus, this art is not popular. So does it still remain an art-form? Will it make its creator the artist?
Franz Kafka points out the same thing in this story. Over the time when the popularity of the fasting demonstration is lost among the public does it deserve to remain an art-form as the hunger artist still remained loyal to his art-form and was still working on to improve it further? Even though people lost interest in hunger artist’s demonstration should it lose its specialty and not become mediocre? Shouldn’t artist get more recognition if he broke his own record?
“In man’s struggle against the world, bet on the world.”
Franz Kafka
The answer lies in the origin of the art. The urge of the artist to express his intangible feeling to the world even when they didn’t appreciate it. The honor he had for his will power and patience made it a pure art-form. It wouldn’t be an art if everyone could honor the willpower to fast indefinitely without expecting anything material in the end. That is what was special in the hunger artist. He was so dedicated to his art-form that not finding anything good to taste became his second nature.
What Ultimately Is The Purpose Of The Art?
Franz Kafka was very potent to warn the downsides of becoming an artist who is demonstrating something really special and rare. He converts this special ability of an artistic journey into a tragedy. The art-form and the emotion it is trying to demonstrate is so rare that nobody would be able to relate to it and then appreciate it further. So, any artist embarking on such artistic journey must well in advance should be aware that the fame and popularity would be the side-products of this artistic journey. People might not be able to relate to it but the honesty of the artist matters the most. This will make the art-form stand the test of any forces of nature especially the time. That is what brings in the authenticity in the process and later gets reflected objectively. It will definitely be relevant sometime. Bear in mind the artist must understand that remaining relevant forever is not the necessary condition for a given creation to become an artistic creation. People change over time and the same objective piece of art may lose its relevance. That is the dreadful part of the artistic journey which injects tragedy in this same journey. Kafka was master of injecting such tragedies from his personal life experiences into his stories.
The honor which made the hunger artist popular remained constant till the end. This is what is important. He died doing what he was best at and refining his talent, the tragedy was that people lost interest in him and he didn’t earn the fame he deserved.
The fate of this Hunger artist is a warning to all those artists who have started or are in their artistic journey.
Is Recognition Important For An Art To Become Valid?
The Hunger artist also points to a paradox in the artistic pursuit. If people are not appreciating given thing doesn’t that make it mediocre thing instead of a piece of art? Something must be lacking which is not triggering, inspiring people which is preventing it from becoming the masterpiece.
This is because of the fine line that exist between art and mediocrity, this is the same difference which lies between a true artist or a dilettante.
Mediocrity is invited when the talent is rare but many people could do it just like singing; many people can sing well but very few are professional and very few of the professionals have that ability to struck the strings of your heart. Many people are experts in the music theory but some of the greatest songs we enjoy today have sung by people who don’t even know the A,B,Cs of the same music theory.
Obviously, recognition is the foundation of an artist to become successful, but being successful and recognized is not the intent of the creation of any piece of art. What inspires an artist to create something special is his urge to express those unexpressed feelings into something expressible.
This is also where so called “Dunning Kruger effect” taps in people and creates mediocrity. This same effect is responsible for the imposter syndrome in many of the greatest artist world has ever seen. The key reason behind Franz Kafka’s tragic writing style is not only because of his life events but also because of his imposter syndrome. That is mainly why he was always doubtful of publishing most of it. It was only because he remained loyal to his way of expression, honored his urge to write and create stories that made him immortal.
This is a great life lesson for all the artists who are in their own special journeys. Not everyone’s life is supposed to be tragic if they are honoring their art-forms with full dedication. Fame, popularity and relevance are the byproducts of any artistic process. An artist could know this better that the audiences or the dilettante.
Hunger Artist For Today’s World
In this culture of becoming viral, becoming an “influencer”, Franz Kafka’s story A Hunger Artist stands like a lighthouse. It urges the readers and especially artists to trust their special process of expression, their special talent. It asks the artist to honor their subjectivity and not let that timeless, immortal subjectivity be maligned by the limitations of objective mediums and feedback loops of appreciation, popularity, fame from the people. Authenticity, honoring the purest ways of self-expression can stand on their own just like truth. They don’t need any other supports to stand the test of time.
“People are sewn into their skins for life and cannot alter any of the seams, at least not with their own hands.”
Franz Kafka
Anyone who is involved in such creative processes must be very well aware of the fact that trends come and go (that is how they become trend in the first place! It’s always a wave). They will also be able to see that there are classics which are still relevant irrespective of the unimaginable, unpredictable directions in which the whole world is going. Because even though as a human being our external objective, tangible attributes are evolving at the same time what we are at the core, our subjectivity remains unchanged or very rarely is transformed into something totally different. Even if this subjectivity would change it takes huge time and resources which we are rarely capable of handling and controlling. The changes subjective expressions are very slow.
We should learn to handle these aspects of human evolution very well in advance. The process of preservation of what makes us human is the same thing which pushes us to become mediocre. That is why people who bring new perspective in our same boring, repetitive, mundane life stuck between birth and death are important. Artists are such people. That is exactly why art is important in everyone’s life.
“Either the world is so tiny or we are enormous; in either case we fill it completely.”
The ten letters from an Austrian poet, novelist – Rainer Maria Rilke to a young poet undergoing the fear of mediocrity and criticism laid down a roadmap for a successful artistic and creative life. The beauty of Rilke’s letters is that they are not limited to those strictly in the creative professions; rather it is a roadmap for every person who want to live a fulfilled life involving continuous transformation of inner and outer riches. That is also why art is important in our lives. Rilke through his ten letters, implores the reader to cultivate authenticity, empathy, and patience to pass through all events of their lives.
In today’s times the written communication has become so handy and easy that you can send millions of sentences from one end of the globe to the another within few milliseconds. This convenience of communication has stolen away the sanctity, sanity and strength of the words and emotions they invoke which were actually supposed to transform our worlds in better constructive ways. After reading these letters from Rilke you will appreciate how effectively he distilled down the divine wisdom of life in few pages. A book costing less than one time meal can transform your whole life. This is the power of a true artist.
Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet
One of the biggest fears any budding artist carries inside them is the fear of mediocrity and the fear of the criticism. Creative pursuits can be followed by anyone and everyone but very of few them are able to rise-up as the real artists. At the same time, it is also true that a great master was once a starting novice. This is where lies an ambiguity; how could an artist develop his art to the greatness when today he/she is unsure about its end fate? This may feel a complicated question but the answer is simple or at least someone has already simplified the answer for us. Rainer Maria Rilke, the poet is the one of the artists who truly understood what it means to create an art or become a true artist.
The reason to mention Rilke out of the other artists is the way he provided that answer. Very few artists carry so much artistic power that even when they would sneeze or yawn, it feels artistic. Rilke was one of those effortless artists. Pardon my example of artistic yawn, for Rilke deserves far superior analogy for his works. A true artist’s life itself is an expression of art. This is only possible due to the authenticity. Authenticity is the core of great and true art.
The reason to choose Rilke to solve the riddle of the true artistry is the letters he wrote to a budding poet for giving feedback on his poetry. You will see the inner workings of Rilke’s genius artistic mind through these ten letters. You can call these ten letters as ten advises, ten rules to become a great artist rather a great human being. You would wish that someone would have given you exactly similar advises in your journey when you will read these letters. What strikes me the most in these letters it the relevance they still have today, that is what is an attribute of true art – it stands the test of time. I will throw some light on the key moments from these ten letters and would encourage you to read them for yourself. You will understand that very few pages of paper are enough to change the way you live your whole life.
Letter 1 – Art should fill the gap between what is felt and what is expressed
Criticism of art
Franz Kappus – a recruit in military academy felt the need to have an opinion on his poetry which is why he wrote letters to Rilke asking for his feedback. Rilke once studied in the same academy. Rilke writes following in response to Kappus.
“Things are not all as graspable and sayable as on the whole we are led to believe; most events are unsayable, occur in a space that no word has ever penetrated, and most unsayable of all are works of art, mysterious existences whose life endured alongside ours, which passes away.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
It is very interesting to see how Rilke found out the gap between the expression of any art and the interpretation of its observer, admirer. And that is exactly why art should exist and function. That is also why it is very easy to criticize given art but difficult to replicate it. Most of the pure creations of art, however fictional they may be have somehow emerged from some real-life events and are very personal. This fuels the pure artistic creation but it may also steal the perspective from the observers who haven’t gone through that real life experience in their own lives. That is exactly why criticism is the easiest task in any artistic journey. Rilke thus encourages the new poet to not worry about the criticism of others in this journey. Actually, bringing the intangibility into tangibility, unsayable and unseeable into comprehensible reality is the exact job of the artist. He would anyways face the criticism as he is the first one to bring them into the reality; others are yet to pass through the same experiences on their own level. Fear of criticism should not stop the process of artistic expression.
Artistic style is effect of the art not the cause behind it
“Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself. Examine the reason that bids you to write; check whether it reaches its roots into the deep regions of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Many artists try to copy the style of other famous artists to create their own art because it is already proven technique that others are appreciating. It is the safest way. Some try to force things so that art would be created. Art should not force you to do certain things. The style created by these routes becomes pretentious and ‘cringy’. People will like it; it will become viral but it will be short lived.
Rilke thus advises the young poet to look for the reason he has chosen to walk this path. He wants the poet to make sure that the reason to go on this journey is to express the deep sayings of the heart. The art created from this deep urge of the heart will have its own style.
Rilke was very well aware that the emergence of style is directly linked to its uniqueness of expression which is very personal thing. Hence, he suggests to go inwards. Every one of us lives their life in unique ways and if the art reflects that uniqueness, then it can easily create its own style. This is possible only when one has the urge to honestly put his own life in his art instead of copying or imitating the lives of others. This is also why one cannot separate the biography of a true artist from his art. So, study of an art is in a way the study of that human who created it, his philosophy of life.
“A work of art is good if it has risen out of necessity.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Letter 2 – Art is more about depth than its aesthetics
“For under the influence of serious things irony will either fall away (if it is something incidental) or on the contrary (if it really belongs to you in a native way) it will gain strength and so become a serious tool and take its place among the means with which you will be bound to create your art.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Art most of the times is meant for pleasure or to stir up the emotions. That is why aesthetics are one important part of any art. So, it is natural for any artist to work on improving the materialistic attributes of his art, the way it looks, the way it sounds, the way it smells or the way it feels to the skin – the way it triggers the senses. Rilke wants the young poet to care less for such aesthetic attributes and focus more on what needs to be said which was not said by others before. This is possible only when the artist shows his personal depth, his honest intent while expressing his emotions, thoughts, ideas through his art. If there is depth in the expression, the aesthetics would be automatically be built around it to fulfill that honest expression.
This shows why Rilke’s simple writings feel so artistic and pure to the core. Even his normal letter communication has an intent and depth.
Letter 3 – Solitude engenders the art
The solo journey of authenticity for the creation of true art has its shortcomings (I won’t use the word ‘disadvantage’ because Rilke explains the power of such solo journey many times in his future letters). The shortcoming is that as you are on your own, you may cross the paths which others have already passed, you may commit the same mistakes which others already committed. This wastes valuable time and resources. So, anyone would obviously think that at least if they start with some preconceptions of what others have already done, it would prevent them from potential failures in their own artistic journey. Rilke prohibits the young poet from embarking on such journey. There is a reason.
“Trust yourself and your instincts; even if you go wrong in your judgement, the natural growth of your inner life will gradually, over time lead you to other insights.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
The single most common attribute of any great artform which is the authenticity is possible when the artist successfully pours his/ her unique perspective into their art. This is only possible when they go on their own journey in their own ways even if others have already done that. Rilke focuses more on how you grew out of your failures, the failure which other have gone before but never learnt from them. For an artist, failures are less important than the personal journey of gathering personal unique perspectives and insights which world has never experienced before.
Solitude is important in such journeys because it demands the artist to go in his own ways without getting influenced by others. This isolation from the surrounding ensures the true expression of what was suppressed by the very surrounding itself. Being a social animal, we try to suppress certain aspects of our identity to melt and fit into the corners and molds of the society. Rilke implores the importance of solitude so that those hidden, personal and unique aspect will bring out the authentic perspective out of the artist.
“It is a lesson I learn every day amid hardships I am thankful for: patience is all!”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke knew that failures shatter anyone completely and that is exactly why asks for patience in this journey.
Letter 4 – Artist must be careful about the limitations in the expression of art due to the tangibility of its materialistic media
Rilke cautioned the young poet about the media of the art. The media are purely materialistic which are expressing the immaterial, intangible ideas and emotions. So the chances are high that the limitations of the media will not successfully communicate the intangible expression of the artist. The art could immediately feel mediocre because the media failed even though the artist had an impeccable picture of that piece in his mind.
“…for even the best of us get the words wrong when we want them to express such intangible and almost unsayable things.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Many of us are pursuing certain arts because it gives us certain type of pleasure, enjoyment, and entertainment. This is also one of the aspects of the materialistic limitation of the media of expression in art. The materialistic media excite our physical senses and also the intangible parts of our personality. Most of the times the goal is to excite the physical, materialistic aspects of our personality. Rilke advices to not focus on such materialistic pleasures during the creation of the art. Such art would excite physically but as physical things have materialistic limitations these limitations will restrict the expression of intangible and truly pure, authentic attributes of given artform.
“Physical desire is a sensual experience, no different from pure contemplation or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit sates the tongue; it is a great and endless feeling which is granted to us, a way of knowing the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge. And that we receive this pleasure cannot be a bad thing; what is bad is the way almost all of us misuse the experience and waste it and apply it as a stimulus to the tired parts of our lives, as a distraction instead of as a concentration of ourselves into climactic points”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
(It’s like even though loud music excites you that does not mean that you will keep on listening to it forever; it will surely feel boring after some time. This ‘boring’ feeling is due the material aspects like your eardrums getting tired after repeated exposure.)
That is why Rilke asks to ignore the materialistic pleasure while creating and expressing the art. The pleasure is the byproduct of authentic art, it should first invoke that which was not realized by the person who is consuming that art. Even though the person might have gone through that experience before but it was the artist who showed this person what the observer didn’t felt before.
Letter 5 – Art is one of the very few things which could last forever
“…and you slowly learn to recognize the very few things in which something everlasting can be felt, something you can love, something solitary in which you can take part in silence.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke here was writing about his time in Rome, Italy. You will see that he describes Rome with hot weather, empty, difficult to settle in, lifeless and museum-like dead and still feeling. But Rilke then pointed out the creations of Michaelangelo which are still beautiful in this dead stillness. In a smart way Rilke shows that the art which is created in pure solitude, silence and love could still remain relevant and still express that authentic expression of the artist. Even though Rome was boring for him that day, Michaelangelo’s art inspired Rilke to redefine the artistic venture to inspire his young poet. That artistic creation in Rome was alive and inspiring people around it like Rilke. It is true still today.
Letter 6 – The ‘final’ destination is solitude and only solitude
“What is needed is this and this alone: solitude, the great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
You will find Rilke reiterating the great importance of solitude in his every letter to the young poet. And there are important reasons behind it.
Solitude makes the artist to look inwards which prevents him from copying other styles, it prevents him from mediocrity.
If the artist would depend on other external techniques for artistic creations; once these techniques fail for any reason unknown to the artist the whole journey is futile and great failure.
Failing inwardly is way important to recover because artist would know each and every reason for its end fate into failure. This creates new opportunities for improvements and learnings which lead to unique style of artistic expressions.
Solitude makes the art more personal. Even though we are all same inside and outside on human level what separates us are our unique life experiences and the unique personal perspectives created from those experiences.
Solitude prevents the artist from the hesitation of expression thereby making his art more potent. Any artist who can shake the people to their core rarely hesitates, this is possible only when he has detached himself from the influence and opinions of others. This strength comes when one submits himself to solitude.
Letter 7 – Only solitude can create ‘real’ love.
“I believe that love remains so strong and powerful in your memory because it was your first deep experience of solitariness and the first inner work that you undertook on your life.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Most of the art is revolving around love. There is a reason why it is so. Love allows the person to appreciate the very reason of being himself. Many would say that love makes the person complete because his other half part in his lover empowers him but that is not the case in reality. You should appreciate how Rilke points out this fantastic observation about our human nature and its definition of love.
The love which we feel for others and consider it as a fulfilling in the form of the other person who loves us back is solely a result of – we carefully and intentionally working on ourselves inwardly. We consider love as a completing emotion not because others make us feel special through it; rather it is because love inspires us to willingly work on ourselves so that our lover would appreciate our love for them and love us back.
True love inspires a person to love themselves, to work on themselves, improve themselves so that their loved ones would love them back. This is only possible when one has completely appreciated solitude. Solitude is the ultimate and authentic form of love. When you would start loving yourself honestly you would appreciate what your loved ones are looking for when they are looking for love.
So, however paradoxical it may seem, our love for others starts with our love for ourselves and only ourselves. (bear in mind that we are not talking about selfishness) Rilke pointed out this observation.
Letter 8 – Sadness is the blessing in disguise
Letter 8 is my most favorite letter. Not because it glorifies sadness or pain which is a common tool for any great art. (Some newcomers, wannabes are ready to harm themselves mentally, physically to invoke such feelings for creating true expression of their art – I feel its too pretentious and inauthentic.)
I like this letter because it asks the artist to observe his sadness in greater depth instead of running away from it. The mere nature of life as a pursuit of happiness prevents us from appreciating its other lesser known but glorious aspects which are hiding in plain sight behind sadness and pain. Rilke knew this hence he implores the young poet to study and appreciate sad experiences constructively.
“If it were possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and a little beyond the outworks of our intuitions, perhaps we should then bear our sadness with greater assurance than our joys. For they are the moments when something new enters into us, something unknown to us; our feelings shy and inhibited, fall silent, everything in us withdraws, a stillness settles on us, and at the center of it is the new presence that nobody knows, making no sound.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
What a pure and real thought!
Rilke beautifully convinced us that we learn more, develop better, create better if we let new and unknown things inside ourselves. Sadness is highly associated with unfamiliarity, uncertainty which is also why it is invoked in such conditions but that is the exact reason for an artist to explore the unexplored territories of humanity. These new, unknown experiences actually develop and amplify the artistic attributes in better ways than any happiness, joy or pleasure would.
“The quieter, the more patient and open we are in our sadness, the deeper and more unerringly the new will penetrate into us, the better we shall acquire it, the more it will be our fate, and when one day in the future it ‘takes place’ (that is, steps out of us towards others) we shall feel related and close to it in our inmost hearts”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke strongly proposes the creative person to not be swayed by the sadness and get carried away with it. Rilke demands patience. For patience will make the person to study this feeling of sadness and what it is actually pointing to. As we are the creatures craving for happiness and running away from sadness it is natural to consider sadness as a hostile feeling. But this less acquainted sadness is actually carrying the gifts of our better futures for when we pass through them, we are transformed. A true artist is always looking for a new perspective towards the world we are living in. And transformation is a coal mine which holds the diamonds of creative, new, and radical artistic perspectives with immense depth. Rilke wants the young artist to capitalize the sadness with the tool of patience to learn a totally different perspective towards the world.
“Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke also showed that the very thing we are scared of is also scared of us for it too is clueless about the unknown. The way Rilke said this shows how important empathy is for any artist. Empathy will help any creative person rather any human being to make amends with the uncomfortable, sad feelings. So, patience and empathy are the most important tools to live a life full of transformations. These transformations, especially the inner transformations will fuel your art.
“Do not think that the person who is trying to console you lives effortlessly among the simple, quiet words that sometimes make you feel better. His life is full of troubles and sadness and falls short of them. But if it were any different, he could never have found the words that he did.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke then turns the face of inner patience and empathy outwards. If you are this much careful about your inner world in a creative pursuit, think how others are feeling when they pass through similar emotions, feelings. People in your surrounding world are also transformed by such events. Especially, people who are always nice to others, extend hand to others in need, create a safe space for others to get comfortable. They are not doing it because it is nice, it makes them look good or because they want that greatness of good deeds. They do it because they know what it means to be helpless, sad, being thrashed by the events out of their control. Only because they kept their inner world alive, they underwent this constructive transformation which made them a better human they are today.
Rilke wants the artist to appreciate such people living around him. I might be overstating here but only an empath with a strong inner compass can see these qualities in all people. He can look through the people for who they are. This is important aspect of any creative journey.
Letter 9 – Life is right, whatever happens
“All feelings are pure that focus you and rise you up. An impure feeling is one that only comprises one side of your nature and so distorts you. Any thoughts that match up to your childhood are good. Everything that makes more of you than you have hitherto been in your best moments is right.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke beautifully explains what is right and what is wrong. You have to appreciate that this idea of right and wrong is not based on some religious ideas or some scientific evidences. Although most of the times people resort to either of these given ideologies. What Rilke explains is the way of inner judgement born out of pure solitude. When you isolate your inner world from the external influences, you will realize that the inner child filled with all the curiosity, intrigue and innocence is still there waiting to explore the world. You will find that this is what you are actually but the outer influences made you to twist and morph your core. You will understand that you feel things differently when you are looking inwards. The feelings will remain the same but how you respond changes drastically.
In order to appreciate this I will pose an example: look out for the authors who wrote murder mysteries, psychopathic thrillers or some melodrama with tragedy. The thing to observe is how they are in real life; some actor who played a deadly sinister villain and then look how he/she is in real life. You will see that most of the times the gap between how they live and what they portray is totally different rather polar opposites. This way of artistic performance is only possible when one is aware of what emotions they are going through. They know why they are feeling this and are masters of artificially creating them too. This awareness is possible only if the person has cultivated his inner world deeply.
Feelings are one inseparable part of this inner world. They could be of sadness, happiness, pleasure, anger, anxiety, or jealousy. On surface, it may seem that feelings emerge from external factors but what people always forget, is that one can consciously recognize those feelings and select a constructive response towards them; especially when the feelings are negative. Feelings if mishandled could be devastating and if recognized properly can bring about a revolution in the inner world and the external world thereafter. The very volatility of feelings is their strength and weakness simultaneously. What Rilke wanted is to acknowledge every such emotions for they are not there to remain forever. And that is exactly why he defines the right-ness and wrongness of feelings in completely radical ways. That is also why the childlike innocence is very important for there is no prejudice when one is passing through given emotions. Feelings are the response to reality and not a way to become sad or happy. Rilke wants every artist to use this in their creative pursuit. This is the secret of authenticity – to feel everything that you are feeling instead of getting flown away with it, let it pass but don’t get overwhelmed by them.
That is exactly why life filled with so many multitudes of emotions, feelings would make sense even when they are not on helping term with you. You will see that even such ‘bad’ feelings will open new portal to new creative journeys. For any artist cultivation of emotions especially the negative ones thus become highly important.
Letter 10 – Art is a part of life, life is bigger than art but at the same time, life is futile without art
“Art too is only a way of living, and it is possible, however one live, to prepare oneself for it without knowing; in every real situation we are nearer to it;…”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
It is not compulsory to end your artistic journey into the creation of your magnum opus or the masterpiece of your life. What art should do is to make you appreciate the life around you on deeper and richer levels. Once one learns this, they will find art in every aspect of life, which by the way is also an artistic take on living life. The life you are living itself is a masterful creation. Rilke wants the creative person to honor that beautiful creation by remaining worthy of it.
So, this is it. I would recommend every person to read through these 10 letters written by Rainer Maria Rilke to Mr. Kappus. They are not some letters intended to communicate with each other. These 10 letters are guidelines for the people on their creative journey whatever it may be.
In today’s times the written communication has become so handy and easy that you can send millions of sentences from one end of the globe to the another within few milliseconds. This convenience of communication has stolen away the sanctity, sanity and strength of the words and emotions they invoke which were actually supposed to transform our worlds in better constructive ways. After reading these letters from Rilke you will appreciate how effectively he distilled down the divine wisdom of life in few pages. A book costing less than one time meal can transform your whole life. This is the power of a true artist.
That is exactly how a simple scribble by true artist becomes a sermon to whole world. People worship it forever. Authenticity, empathy, and patience make it happen.
The dream that Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam had for developed India is the reality in which we are living today. It wouldn’t be possible if he hadn’t devised a result-oriented action plan for the Nation. It is sad that we never celebrate such great bright minds the way we celebrate film/ TV stars or sportsmen, especially in this golden era of social media. The incorporation of e-governance, e-judiciary, Information Communication Technology (ICT), Providing Urban-amenities to Rural Areas (PURA) were some of his key agendas for developed India and same is the reality we are living in. Today’s youth must appreciate that we are just enjoying the fruits of his well-formed result-oriented action plans created on his ‘Vision 2020’. This is to remember the ideologies of Dr. Kalam from his book ‘Turning Points’.
Turning Points – Remembering Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s legacy on his birthday
Unity in diversity lies at the heart of India as the biggest democracy in the world. This diversity also brings in various challenges from geographical, cultural, economic, governance and many more local perspectives. Bear in mind that despite having multitudes of such challenges the constitution has ensured that the machines are well oiled and keep running properly. To handle a nation with such diversity is a challenge in itself. Try convincing small group of people on an idea you have and you will realize how difficult it is to make others appreciate your vision. You will realize that people rarely resonate with completely new, unconventional ideas. The person must carry an aura to convince others for the path he is laying down. The person must carry a clear and pious vision for the masses.
Vision elevates the nation
-Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
A vision must be pious because the moment people discover malice, a vision no more remains ‘the’ vision; it becomes a propaganda. Polarization is created and chaos ensues. That is one of the challenges with democratic society.
Only a self-inspired person, a person who is pure at heart, a person who can empathize with the masses, a person with emotional and intellectual intelligence and most importantly a person with humility can truly inspire people towards a common goal of the upliftment of the whole nation. Such people are blessing to the society and they appear once or maybe twice in a century. They are rare and leave an everlasting mark on society.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, The Missile Man, The People’s President, and a teacher at heart was one such personality India had. Dr. Kalam was India’s 11th president. Even though he is not physically among us his ideas and his vision are with us and will keep on inspiring every Indian rather every human. He is my source of inspiration since my childhood; I will take this opportunity to unfold certain aspects of his personality hereon. This is me remembering Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam on his birthday 15th October.
Dr. Kalam wrote a book called ‘Turning Points – A Journey through challenges’ where he highlights the key events which shaped his tenure during the presidency and what really drove him to have a sense of accountability towards the people of India. If you look at the life achievements of Dr. Kalam, you will realize that overcoming challenges in spite of having multiple failures and worst conditions was his forte. His systematic logical thinking combined with result-oriented actions was the key reason for such achievements. You must also appreciate that he was not just a scientist with logical foolproof plan for results; he was a pure empath who understood what people of the nation actually wanted. He knew the pain of the masses and also made successful efforts to resolve many fundamental issues. Please understand that the position of The President in Indian Constitution although is the highest position, there are very few examples where the elected President created a significant impact on whole nation physically and ideologically. Most of the times, Prime Ministers are known to be the key drivers of the nation’s future in Indian Democracy.
You will appreciate what exactly caused Dr. Kalam to have a focused mindset towards making India a developed nation by 2020. Although we are still in developing phase, the rate is slow but we wouldn’t be here if Dr. Kalam had not envisioned the ‘Vision 2020’. The book Turning Points thus gives a glimpse into what made him to devise an action plan in making India a developed nation.
You will be surprised to know that we are literally living in the accomplished visions of Dr. Kalam and there are many those will be achieved in near future.
The Modern India
Dr. Kalam was the key originator and proponent of many facilities and policies we Indians are enjoying today. It is only because of his vision and action plans we are enjoying certain life changing benefits in our routine lives.
Dr. Kalam was responsible for successful inception of Indian space program led by Prof. Vikram Sarabhai. The SLV program (Satellite Launch Vehicle), the IGMDP (Integrated Guided Missile Development Program), Indigenous hovercraft development called ‘Nandi’, Project Smiling Buddha in Pokhran for nuclear weapon development are some of the professional achievements of Dr. Kalam.
The concepts of e-governance, e-judiciary, court hearings through video conferences, pushing for the evolution of National Litigation Pendency Clearance Mission, meetings through video conferences, incorporation of Information Communication Technology, creating more policies to become energy independent, to become stronger in defense technologies, boosting the innovation funnel throughout the country, empowering the states while leveraging their specialties in cultures and traditions, making India a Nuclear superpower, developing and promoting an indigenous nuclear power program, pushing for increased plantations and facilities in biodiesel production, pushing for solar energy production and required policies, creating an annual target driven action plans for each ministry and states to have a focused development approach, creating an action plan to work on industry relevant skill development and more exposure to higher education in science and technology, creating more opportunities for the research in the fields of nanotechnology are some of the visions Dr. Kalam had for the people of the nation. This is just a short glance into what he planned and achieved in his tenure. We are just enjoying the fruits of his well-formed result-oriented action plans.
The book Turning Point will give readers a peek into the thought process and key motivations behind Dr. Kalam’s vision for making India a developed nation.
Dream Big
Appointment in ICSR – Indian Committee for Space Research (ICSR later became ISRO – Indian Space Research Organization)
The key moment which changed Dr. Kalam’s thought process was during his interview with Prof. Vikram Sarabhai. Dr. Kalam worked in the development of the hovercraft after which he had this interview. You will notice that Dr. Kalam was very impressed by the first-hand confidence that Prof. Sarabhai had in him because he explored the capabilities Dr. Kalam had without questioning his competencies. Dr. Kalam always told youth to dream bigger. That idea came from this exact moment. Dr. Kalam realized that what Prof. Sarabhai had dreamt was way bigger than the dreams of Dr. Kalam.
This moment inspired Dr. Kalam to dream even bigger which he always kept reiterating in his interactions with youth.
Urge for cross implementation of technologies
Appointment in DRDO missile program
India’s first satellite Rohini RS-1 was launched by SLV. Dr. Kalam was Project Director for this program. He presented how this satellite launch vehicle put Rohini in the orbit to Dr. Ramanna who was a nuclear physicist and director of DRDO (Defense Research and Development Organization). Dr. Ramanna offered Dr. Kalam the position of DRDO. Dr. Kalam accepted this position because he wanted to implement the space technology developed from SLV program into missile development program.
You must appreciate that the missile technologies developed in-house for missiles like Agni, Akash, Prithvi, Trishul and Nag were possible because of Dr. Kalam’s approach to interdisciplinary knowledge implementation for indigenous technology development on faster speeds.
His same approach to create intersections in various unconnected fields through technology got reflected during his presidential tenure. The implementation of electronic technology for e-governance, e-judiciary are result of that. He always believed that such intersections of technologies boost the speed of growth.
Indigenous technology is the way to self-reliance and defense
Dr. Kalam wanted to return to his passion for teaching and interacting with youth while he was Scientific Adviser to the Defense secretary. P V Narsimha Rao, then Prime Minister also Defense Minister asked him to continue as the defense minister and Kalam agreed because he was handling multiple important programs. P V Narsimha Rao’s long-term vision for indigenous defense program inspired Dr. Kalam.
I think Kalam called this moment as the turning point because if he would have been associated with teaching at that time his future would have been totally different from becoming the President. This moment is also important because it created a concrete foundation in Dr. Kalam’s mind to create a long-term vision for nation which will rely on indigenous technologies.
During his Presidential International visits Dr. Kalam always pushed for the use of indigenous ICT, BPO frameworks, pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies. This moment might be the key inspiration behind Dr. Kalam’s thought process.
Nation first, politics later
Dr. Kalam was offered a Cabinet position under Vajpayee Government in 1998 when he was handling the Missile Program (Development of Agni Missile) and Project Smiling Buddha (Pokhran Nuclear Test). Any other normal person would have accepted the better and beneficial offer of Cabinet Minister but keeping Nation first Dr. Kalam decided to decline this offer and focused on the Indigenous Missile Program and Nuclear Weapon Program which further upon their success made India’s global presence stronger.
Drive to Envision, Urgency to take Actions, and Having Courage to do the Impossible
Dr. Kalam stands out as one of the rarest statesmen who focused on practicality of vision and action plan for their execution; there is a reason for that attitude.
When Dr. Kalam was Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) for Government of India when he paved the foundation of action plans and their implementation for Vision 2020. During this tenure as PSA, Dr. Kalam had a helicopter accident where for the sheer luck of the nation he was unharmed.
Even after going through such accident, he was immediately ready to connect with the locals and the youth where he asked them to recite his hymn. This shows the artistic side of Dr. Kalam. Dr. Kalam was known for inspiring poetry showing the importance of the power of youth.
Courage to think different,
Courage to invent,
Courage to travel on an unexplored path,
Courage to discover the impossible,
Courage to combat the problems and succeed,
Are the unique qualities of youth.
As a youth of my nation,
I will work and work with courage to achieve success in all the missions
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
This near-death experience gave him a totally new perspective towards the life in front of him. It created a sense of urgency for him which pushed him to write the famous book ‘Ignited Minds’. This sense of urgency inspired him to push more for PURA (Providing Urban-amenities to Rural Areas) project. Many independent village ecosystems, governance technologies, tech policies, benefit transfers which are now available in rural areas are the fruits of this PURA program.
I have always believed that cowards never make history, history is created by people with courage and wisdom. Courage is individual, wisdom comes with experience.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
Empowerment and Independence of the Nation
Dr. Kalam believed in the power of self-reliance and improvement in the agility between different functions of government and also between individual states. You will be surprised to know that he was the statesman who brought the idea of e-governance in the Office of the President and implemented it effectively. It later spread horizontally to the e-governance and digitization of documents that we see today. It took time because of multiple reasons but you must appreciate his vision and future outlook behind it. His dream then is now our reality.
In similar sense, Dr. Kalam created action plans for individual states based on three parameters:
The contribution to the vision for developed India
The heritage of particular state
The core competency of that state
This shows how agile and practical Dr. Kalam’s thinking was. He knew how to play with the strengths of each state and also cared for their legacy thereby preserving the cultural importance of diversity in our country.
Dr. Kalam is also one of the statesmen behind the upliftment of the judicial system. He pushed for the National Litigation Pendency Clearance Mission. This mission is the origin for the e-judiciary, court hearings through video conferencing, use of ICT in litigation, age analysis of pending cases, fast track courts which we are seeing today.
Duty Towards Nation
Dr. Kalam always created a sense of duty towards nation in the hearts of the youth and his action always reflected the same attitude. Many of his lectures were named as ‘What Can I Give To The Nation?’
Dr. Kalam’s way to guide the youth to answer this question is based on the importance of values in human life. He gave huge importance to each and every public address he would give. He revised his public addresses multiple times to ensure that the message is crisp and inspiring.
You must appreciate that human values were the core of his speeches. The ideology of ‘being a better human is the best you can offer to the nation’ is what inspired youth to follow their own dream thereby also benefiting the nation in greater sense. Dr. Kalam’s speeches always had this element of ‘call for action’ that is exactly why the question – ‘What can I give to the Nation?’ is simple yet meaningful. It made the youth to look inside them for the betterment of the nation altogether. These are the skills of a seasoned inspirational personality, they make you look inside to create a better future outside for everyone, it creates a sense of duty, accountability and also satisfaction for life well spent.
And this same sense of duty and accountability Dr. Kalam wanted to inject into the Indian Parliament and Indian Politics. He had action plans to do that too.
When politics degrades itself to political adventurism the nation would be on the calamitous road to inevitable disaster and ruination. Let us not risk it.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
Dr. Kalam was well aware of the gaps between the lives of the common people and the events in the parliament, They were completely inconsistent and were not helping (even today they rarely help)
People are yearning for lifestyle change by preserving the cultural heritage, values, and ethos of the Indian civilization.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
Dr. Kalam asked the parliament members to focus on key aspects of development of their own state instead of engaging into the propaganda-based politics. Dr. Kalam was one of the few proponents of the Development Politics. You might think that this word is somewhat recent concept but Dr. Kalam was the originator of the action plan and policies for development-based politics.
He gave five points to the members of parliaments to work upon:
Agriculture and food processing
Education and health care
Infrastructure
Information and communication technologies
Self-reliance in critical technologies
You must appreciate that the world we are living in is the result of action-based plans and their results based on these ideas.
Dr. Kalam pushed for the indicator of National Prosperity Index (NPI) instead of GDP (Gross domestic Product). The idea was that GDP growth indicates net domestic product but it doesn’t reflect how this growth is affecting the quality of life in rural and urban area. Thus, associating GDP with other indicators can actually help to gauge the realistic growth of the nation.
NPI (National Prosperity Index) =
annual growth rate of GDP +
improvement of quality of life of the people particularly those below poverty line +
the adoption of a value system derived from our civilizational heritage in every walk of life which is unique to India
This shows that Dr. Kalam had the sense of importance of the cultural heritage in the growth of nation. The urge to push for the upliftment of quality of life is intentional to reduce the gap between the riches and the poor.
Strong Inner Compass – Value-based character development
Dr. Kalam even though was an intelligent scientist and had many professional achievements, he was down to earth. Intellectual humility was his second name. His thoughts also showed how he valued the sense of service, honesty and compassion right from the childhood.
Dr. Kalam shares an event from his childhood where he received beating from his father for the very first time in spite of being the youngest and the most loved child. The reason was to accept the gift from others for being elected as the President of the Panchayat of Rameshwaram.
Dr. Kalam quotes his father’s words from Hadith-
“When the Almighty appoints a person to a position, He takes care of his provision. If a person takes anything beyond that, it is an illegal gain.”
That thing remained with Kalam forever. The last things that Dr. Kalam possessed were 2,500 books, a wrist watch, six shirts, four trousers, three suits and a pair of shoes. He donated his pension to the development programs for rural areas. He didn’t have any TV, fridge, AC.
Dr. Kalam was a spiritual person. You will see from his whole life journey he never submitted to a single side of the religion – he was always on the side of divinity. This shows his openness to find the real truth of what it means to be a human being. Humanity was at the core whenever he was discussing any religious topic.
“Kalam sees no conflict between science and religion. When I asked him if he believed in the Day of Judgement and rewards or penalties, we might have to pay in life hereafter, he replied evasively, ‘Heaven and hell are in mind’…”
“No rationalist can dispute Kalam’s vision of divinity. Some define God as truth; others as love, Kalam’s concept of godliness is compassion…”
Khushwant Singh, Author and columnist for Hindustan Times
Sacrifices make any great pursuit ‘great’
Dr. Kalam was devastated after the crash of an Air Surveillance Platform which led to death of all its 8 occupants. He realized in this very incident that many people without any personal gain give away their lives to the service of the nation and their sacrifices goes unnoticed in the chaos of all the politics. This should never happen. You can sympathize with the pain of the relatives of these heroes but you would never be able to return the service they provided to the nation. Everyone must be aware of that.
This shows the sensitive side of Dr. Kalam. He was a strong proponent of dreaming big, having courage to do the impossible but this event shows that he was also aware of what sacrifices people make to achieve the impossible, these sacrifices, this service are bigger than anything and should not go unrecognized. He wanted the people of the nation to appreciate the same.
Religion is a personal thing and so are the culture, faith, language and heritage
Dr. Kalam visited the places affected by the Gujarat Riots. His intent was to understand the ground reality and he knew that his mere presence will speed up the relief efforts. Bear in mind that visiting such sensitive areas for a President is a highly risky task.
Dr. Kalam was disheartened by the events, he expressed the reason behind that-
“…in our land, with its heritage of a highly evolved civilization and where great men were born and stood tall as role models for the entire world, communal riots with their attendant tragedy are an aberration that should never happen.”
“Each individual has the fundamental right to practice his religious, cultural and language faith. We cannot do anything to disturb that.”
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
Building bridges to share each other’s competencies for mutual growth
Dr. Kalam is also known globally for his speech in the European Parliament. He focused on mutual growth plan for European Union and India. His poem ‘Message From Mother Earth’ won hearts of all the members of the European Parliament. Dr. Kalam’s visiting day in 2005 – 26 May to Switzerland is celebrated as Science day there. Dr. Kalam proposed to implement the electronic network to connect African nations using the IT power of India under Pan African e-network Project.
Whenever Dr. Kalam visited any country, he made sure that both countries help each other to generate mutual benefits and deepen the relationship. Dr. Kalam was always open to understand what greatness lies in others.
In meeting people, we are transformed too, though we stay the same.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
Real development starts from the bottom – PURA
Dr. Kalam highlighted one key observation about the developed nations. Even though their rural regions, villages in developed nations look just like our meaning not exactly, not physically meaning that the ways people carry their lives. The villages in developed countries don’t have high rising towers, big houses, big restaurants and hotels. What they exactly have are the basic amenities like power, education, transport and easy access to government to live comfortably. This inspired Dr. Kalam to work on the mission for the upliftment of rural areas of India under project PURA.
The word itself is self-explanatory.
It stands for Providing Urban-amenities to Rural Areas.
The key idea behind PURA was to solve the problems of emerging due to fast Urbanization of towns and fast migration from the villages. Towns get overwhelmed due to overpopulation and villages are empty because there is no quality of life.
If you see the other side, villages are pollution free which urban people want. Urban areas have better opportunities for earning and sustenance which rural people want.
PURA focused on addressing these exact issues on rural level.
Following were the key headers of the PURA project:
Physical connectivity – roads and transport
Electronic connectivity – for local knowledge preservation and transfer
Knowledge connectivity – for skills sharing and efficiency boosting of multiple rural areas thereby creating spare time to do better things and improve quality of life
Earning capacity – once these three connections are improved, people can work on increasing the earning capacity.
In the end we, are all humans
Dr. Kalam also made efforts to made the Mughal Gardens in the Presidential office to become a center of discussions. He tried to improve the flora and fauna there. He coordinated between DRDO scientists who had developed high-altitude agriculture before to develop several (12) gardens in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Later biodiversity park was also developed there. This showed his connect with nature.
Dr. Kalam was reluctant on approving the capital punishment believing that it is not a human’s job to decide the fate of the life of other person, but as a duty he had to do that. Dr. Kalam made sure about the total background of the convicted person and tried to understand what will be the life of the people dependent on such convicts. Wherever he found the offenses to be too inhumane he approved the capital punishments. You must appreciate that being the President he could have approved every capital punishment but his core value system, that human side was always active. He knew that in the end the convict is also a human.
We are the creations of God. I am not sure a human system or a human being is competent to take away a life based on artificial and created evidence.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
Parliament functions are the heart of democracy
Dr. Kalam was the main proponent of the need for improvement in parliamentary Functions.
Constant vigilance is the price of liberty. It is important that democratic processes and functioning, however satisfactory they may appear on the surface, cannot be, and should not be frozen in time.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Turning Points
He made every practical effort and created a result-oriented action plan for giving the boost in the efficiency of the parliament. Some of them are implemented, we hope others are still under consideration.
Dr. Kalam had created a development matrix between the Cabinet Ministries and the Members of Parliament which created and intersection of resources, action plans, targets and results for each state. He made sure that his presidential powers are put in effect for the betterment of Parliament and thereby the people for which it stands.
These are few takeaways from Dr. Kalam’s 21st book – Turning Points. There are many details which show a deeper insight into the personality of Dr. Kalam. Everyone should read it. This book shows all aspects of a perfect human being. The vision that Dr. Kalam had for the developed India is the vision in which we are living today. It wouldn’t have been possible if he hadn’t devised a result-oriented action plan. Although there are many things which are yet to be achieved and speed sometimes is not that fast. Dr. Kalam was also concerned about the speed of these developments. But at least we know where to go – the right direction. It would be impossible without his vision.
In the times of the golden era of social media celebrities, film stars, TV stars, sportsmen always are at the focal point of attention. We rarely celebrate scientists on such platforms.
It is sad that we never celebrate the bright minds especially the scientists the way we celebrate film stars or sportsmen. Dr. Kalam is a rock-star if you compare with others. Not only from Science and technology point of view, Dr. Kalam was People’s President, an ideal teacher every student dream of, a kind human, a divine spiritual leader, man of values and virtues and the best of all the humans the nation, the world would ever see again.
We are just living in his dream which became the reality today. It was only because he dreamt of the Vision 2020 with a realistic action plan to execute it and make it ‘our reality’. We owe it all to Dr. Kalam. There would rarely be any leader, any human like him in future. The world will remember him forever for his contributions.
The polarizing reception of Joker: Folie à deux shows how deeply we are attached to certain fictional characters. Whatever might be the reception of this film, the character design and writing of Arthur Fleck in Folie à deux will go down as one of the best representations of the psychotic villain in the history of cinema. Even though the film doesn’t cater to the fan service, it will definitely become one of the best depictions of the inner conflicts of a mentally challenged person swinging between reality and delusion. There is an interesting mental dilemma of identity common to both the Batman and the Joker. How they chose to deal with it made them who they are. The movie also points to the importance of inner compass for a healthy mental state altogether with surroundings nurturing empathy, kindness, appreciation, and love.
Character study of Todd Philips’s Arthur Fleck in Joker: Folie à deux
Recently Joker 2 or should I say Joker: Folie à deux released in theaters and people almost lost it. Most of the movie goers especially the comic book fandom was highly disappointed. There is another side of this same movie experience where people are really appreciating what the film presents in its narrative even though it is not completely loyal to the source material. Some are praising the liberties the film makers took to show the world what it means to become the truest of the villain of them all and why villains are praised more (maybe they deserve to be praised more) than the hero, even though hero wins in the end (this emotion is strongest in terms of the batman villains to be honest).
I am taking the side of what the Joker duo-logy presents itself to the audience rather than its correctness to the source material or the fan service. It is really a daring move from the creators of this second film to use all their creative power to show the world how dangerous character of Joker could be in real life. When I am saying this, I know fans can say that its just a movie and we only watch it for the sake of the entertainment; we do not want every movie to be a lesson on good or bad, right or wrong, truth or lie. But trust me when you are completely in the mood of bliss and entertainment, engrossed in the world created, even a lie would seem true and a wrong would feel right. It leaves an impression on our mind. A great entertainer can convince you to twist the ideas of certain truths in a person’s mind. Advertisements are a crude example to prove this point. Movies, cinema, stories are a potent media to change the minds, perspectives of the masses in an impactful way.
Mark my words, after few years of “marination” this movie will go as one of the best materials to study the writing and the design of a psychotic person. The movie will definitely regain its value as the ‘cult classic’ in coming decades. I am not saying that people are fool to not appreciate this film; I am saying that some of the things which disappointed people are actually way ahead of their time, people will take time to get comfortable around them and appreciate them.
The ability of movies like this to create a polarization of opinions amongst audience shows how potent the medium of cinema and storytelling is! We are humans – we love stories (especially those which unsettle us)
I am taking this opportunity to show appreciation for how the character of Arthur Fleck is written in this Joker Duo-logy. This is not the critic of what the comic book says and what could have been done in a right way to make movie goers happy. As the makers of these movies had already said, it was pretty clear that we are not in for what is generally expected from the mainstream, fan-worshiped representation of Joker from comics.
This is a story of a failed Joker to be very clear. The ways in which music and singing is injected in the narrative is highly effective. Most of the people found the musical aspect of the movie unnecessary and stretching but it had a proper intent. It is not draggy in any sense. You must understand how a psychotic person’s mind works in order to appreciate the whole movie.
(The fact that people despised this way of representing the Joker of Arthur Fleck, shows that most of us are sane and good-hearted people.)
I will be deep diving into the psyche of Arthur Fleck’s Joker and there will be heavy spoilers (if you care) I will try to touch the nuances in the character design of this Joker and why it all should make sense. For that you must accept that this is not the Joker which ‘our’ Batman had.
This is the Joker who found his way back to sanity but the society rejected him. (I will discuss this in detail further.)
Last warning – SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Me and My Shadow
The cartoon poses a question – if a person has multiple dissociated personalities inside him and one of the hibernating personalities made him commit the crime which is not who he is generally; then how should the person be punished?
The answer has many aspects.
If we are pardoning the person because he is psychologically challenged then the masses who are watching this proceeding would consider that even a heinous crime can go pardoned if the person is not sane. This creates a gray area for the real perpetrators to commit more heinous crimes. Judicial system is well aware of such consequences that is why an example needs to be put in front of the masses.
To show men that crimes can be pardoned, and that punishment is not their inevitable consequence, encourages the illusion of impunity and induces the belief that, since there are pardons, those sentences which are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than the products of justice.
Cesare Beccaria
Next question-
The mentally challenged person who committed this crime is also a human being in the end. If we go on giving capital punishments to every human being fitting in similar situations, then what human part are we supposed to preserve of the humanity through law and order?
The answer lies in the psyche of this psychotic perpetrator.
The answer is what this psychotic criminal considers himself. Trust me this is not an easy choice. Bear in mind that this in not a normal sane person we are talking about. It is more difficult when such person is carrying multiple personalities inside him. It is difficult for such person to submit to only one identity out of the many he carries inside. One of the reasons for a person to undergo personality dissociation and have multiple personalities is to have a coping mechanism to outside events. Same was the case with Arthur Fleck, the personality of Joker was his coping mechanism against the society. They are polar opposites. His problematic childhood is the key reason.
Who is the real Arthur? – The interview with Dr. Beatty
This interview with Dr. Beatty should justify why the movie ultimately becomes a musical in overall. You will understand from this interview that the real opportunity for the personality of Joker to shine out was in the Murray Franklin show. Arthur was actually intending to commit suicide on national television but knowing this would eradicate the existence of the other personality – the Joker takes the charge of Arthur’s ‘body’. There he kills Murray and makes statement and vents out all those emotions he had suppressed. That is exactly why Arthur is not concerned and doesn’t remember that he murdered some people in that show; he associates to the music of the show on that day. Because in that musical moment he felt free.
Also, keep in mind that Arthur has other personalities other than Joker. His mother’s mirror personality is also inside his head. The changed accent of attorney in which Arthur talks with Mr. Puddles in not just a performance to mock the court, it is a personality Arthur created so that he can defend the adverse external conditions which Arthur is incapable of handling.
It’s not just about Arthur and Joker.
Joker’s (Not Arthur’s) Smoking Addiction
From Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
Psychotic person resort to a habit which helps them to relieve the suppressed emotions or identities. It could be any small habit and mostly would seem harmless. In this case it is smoking. In the first Joker movie smoking is just a way to release the tension in his mind but as the Joker’s personality gets the hold of his ‘body’ the smoking intensifies. In the interview with Dr. Beatty when she asks Arthur if she can talk to the Joker inside him, the gaze that Arthur throws at the recording camera is more than enough to let us know that the smoking personality was the Joker himself. (Joaquin Pheonix is just perfect here!)
There is also a moment in Arkham Asylum when Arthur is watching Harvey Dent’s statement implying that only a fool would consider Arthur a martyr, this further reinforces Joker to consider himself more powerful and influential. He is smoking there too.
Before going live in interview with Paddy, Arthur’s attorney Maryanne tells him to stop smoking in front of the camera during the interview because it makes him look like a ‘cavalier’ – reckless. This is exactly where we should get a clear idea. The Joker is reckless, carefree – ‘cavalier’. Smoking becomes an extension of this very idea of recklessness that Joker has in his personality.
But for the good of Arthur, he controls Joker inside during interview. The moment he realizes that it’s just to create sensation, the Joker takes control and again smoking starts.
When Arthur’s private diary is being read out loud in court and when Ms. Dumond is testifying, saying that Arthur’s whole identity that his mother created was fake; you will see that Joker is just there absorbing everything because all these things are very uncomfortable for Arthur to handle. Arthur cannot handle such public humiliation and identity crisis. Joker is truly his coping mechanism.
There is also a scene where the Joker breathes out the smoke into the Harley ‘Lee’. It is very dramatic and feels like they are exchanging their very souls, their identities. Now they are inseparable.
From Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
(Todd Philips deserves appreciation for creating such characteristic moments throughout the movie. There is one moment in the start of movie where Arthur gets a lip cut during shaving and the blood drop flows down his chin creating a sad face. It is impressively symbolic of the state of the mind Arthur is in. Applauds to Todd again!)
The ‘Kick’ Dance
From Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
The most characteristic attribute of Joker being present and active in Arthur is his dance. The specific step of kicking fiercely in the air is very poetic. This kick shows how reckless Joker is. The Joker is literally kicking the society which led to the downfall of an innocent person like Arthur, the society which created Joker himself. It is a tight slap to the degraded social system which led to the formation of such psychotic character.
Very subtle but the ‘kick dance’ has its purpose in the whole narrative and character of the Joker. Later ‘Lee’ mirrors the same dance showing that Joker and Lee are now in sync.
The Musical
I have never ever seen the medium of musical to demonstrate the state of the mind of the character especially a completely negative character. (I am not a big musical fan) Whenever I have tried to appreciate the musical it feels to break the continuity of the realism of the narrative and dreaminess of the character or given scene. Although there are many good examples where musical just fits in perfectly.
But, this musical in completely negative and dark setup is very impactful. I know most of the moviegoers absolutely thrashed the musical approach and underwhelming utilization of Lady Gaga but trust me it was all intentional. It was supposed to make you uncomfortable.
The unsettling musical is actually a peek into the psyche of Joker and how uncomfortable his character is. It’s a warning to those who glorify Joker as villain or consider him an anti-hero.
Every musical had clear purpose and it also landed perfectly. You have to be slightly ‘mad’ and must fool yourself for the given moment to appreciate importance of musical in the whole narrative of the Joker. I will reiterate that people not appreciating the Joker musical is a subtle proof that the real society we are living in is still in a healthy mental condition in overall. If you didn’t like the musical, it is totally fine, and that was the intent of the creators.
Joker strongly associates himself with music, that is the pivot of his identity. Music allowed him to express freely and also supported his recklessness. The moment he discovered ‘Lee’ in music session that bond with music got further reinforced. That is exactly why his delusions, their delusions are fully filled with music.
Now, it’s lyrics appreciation time:
The opening cartoon song
Everyone needs love
There are already enough mountains
What Arthur helplessly wanted was appreciation and love from his people around. “Mountains” used here and used extensively in further narrative of the movie indicate the hardships, difficulties in everyone’s life. Even after these difficulties, if you are loved you can come over these mountains. Sadly, exactly opposite happens with Arthur.
In later parts of the movie, where Lee says that we will build a mountain from hill. She is actually saying that we will raise chaos everywhere and make other people’s lives difficult because they deserve it.
The Arkham Asylum musical
From Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
For once in my life, I have someone who needs me
For once in my life
I won’t let sorrow hurt me
Not like it has hurt me before
For once I have someone
I know won’t desert me
And I am not alone anymore
For once I can say this is mine and you can’t take it
This is Joker singing in Arkham realizing that people may consider him a martyr and he has also got the company of ‘Lee’. The sense of belonging to something for a person like Arthur through accepting the identity of Joker made him feel invincible. This is exactly what is sung in this asylum scene. Arthur wanted somewhere to belong and someone to care for him in the end.
The ‘B-Ward’ movie scene –
When the patients are watching the movie where Arthur and Lee are sitting together there is musical which goes like this:
We are all entertainers
Everything that happens in life
Can happen in a show
You can make’em laugh
You can make’em cry
Anything can go
Anything
We must understand that there are lots of creative choices while making a sincere film. Even though it feels useless, this movie musical scene has a purpose. It is exact reflection of how Joker thinks. For him it is all a performance, it makes him free, same goes for Lee. But sadly, society questions Arthur if he is doing a performance and not Joker. The very lyrics here show why Joker is reckless. This delusion of performance enables him to remain carefree, reckless in the ‘real’ reality.
The Hotel Arkham Dance –
From Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
In our minds, we’d be just fine
If it were only us two
They might say that we’re crazy
But I’m just in love with you
This shows how pivotal ‘Lee’ is for Joker. She fuels him. As Arthur is meek, loveless and innocent nobody appreciates him, loves him or cares for him. Being bold, carefree, dashing through Joker, at least he gets ‘Lee’ to love him, appreciate him. The identity of Arthur needs something to lean on, to fulfill his humanly needs – mental and physical. These needs would only get fulfilled if Joker comes out as dominant one. If not Arthur then at least Joker would make this personality free. This song is just about that. Even though delusional but Joker gets all the mental support to justify his personality in reality through ‘Lee’.
The interview with Patty
Before this interview Arthur has full control over the Joker, he has suppressed him to demonstrate his innocence. But the moment Arthur realizes that this interview is just happening for the sensational content, he loses it all and allows Joker to take control. (while starting to smoke characteristically in front of the camera!)
I’m wild again
Beguiled again
A simpering whimpering child again
Bewitched
Bothered and bewildered
Am I
Lost my heart but what of it
She can laugh and I can love it
Although the laugh’s on me
I’ll sing to her
Bring spring to her
And long for the day
When I cling to her
Bewitched
Bothered and bewildered
Am I
Here, Joker is making statement that he is the in-charge of Arthur’s body thereby his complete identity. When he realizes that Arthur will not get any help and it is just a sensationalism in the society, Joker shows the society that he is not alone anymore for the society to take care of him, He has someone who care for him now. This is his way of telling the society that it can go ‘freak’ itself now. The society pretending to help him to create one more drama is a conniving move for Joker. So this song is the final warning to the society that he doesn’t need this pity help from the people. He has his ‘Lee’ to love and appreciate him.
From Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
Lee’s makeup song
Most of the scenes when Joker and Lee are sharing the screen while singing are the delusions running in the mind of Arthur. In the third act of the movie when Lee is singing alone while applying all make-up, she is alone. This is where the reality of what Lee is becomes clear.
What a world, what a life
I’m in love
I’ve got a song that I sing
I can make the rain go
Anytime I move my finger
Lucky me can’t you see, I’m in love
Life is a beautiful thing
As long as I hold that string
I’d be silly so and so
If I should ever let it go
This clarifies that Lee is manipulating Arthur to reinforce the Joker in him and using him to justify her own delusions. She knows she has all the strings in her hands to create the delusions she wants with Joker.
The Guard’s humming in Arkham asylum in the last part of the movie
When Arthur truly accepts the reality and rejects the persona of Joker he is actually on the path to new and healthy life.
When Arthur is sitting in front of the TV in asylum after this event, the asylum guard Sullivan sings this near him and another guard asks him not to sing this again.
We are not crowd My echo, my shadow and me
The guard is hinting Arthur that reality is the only thing where we truly exist. Whatever Arthur thought of himself having a different personality to take charge of his body while committing a crime is just a lie. It’s Sulivan’s way to mock Arthur to show that he will get the punishment in the end by court.
Another guard fears that this might trigger Joker to defend the joke on Arthur that is exactly why he tells Sullivan not to sing it in front of Arthur again. This also shows that Arthur is really trying to bring himself back to reality as this doesn’t trigger him. There was some hope for his recovery.
During the proceedings of the court when the events of Arthur’s childhood are brought in light again to prove that the Joker is a defensive identity that Arthur has created to cope with the trauma and adversities in his life, you will understand that what Arthur lacked was clear identity.
The identity crisis actually led to the creation of intense defense mechanism through the creation of his shadow as Joker. There are specific reasons behind this:
Arthur learns that what his mother told him about his parenthood was a lie
He learns that even though his mother told him that his purpose was to make people happy, she was not a big fan of his jokes. Ms. Dumond in her testimony clarifies this, which shakes Arthur to core
Arthur had created his whole personality around making people happy. The career choice to become a standup comedian was all driven by this sole thing. This is what defined his life
But the moment when Arthur realized that all the truths on which he created his life and his character were lie, he undergoes cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a state when a person enters in paradox about the truths that made him who he is today.
Same cognitive dissonance happened for Batman when he learnt that his parents also took help of the very criminals he is fighting against today to hide their family’s dark truths in the past.
My point here is that both Batman and Joker underwent the state of the cognitive dissonance, the identity crisis, what they stand for. How they came out of this cognitive dissonance made them hero and the villain.
Batman chose to move away from the only motto of vengeance quoting that ‘Vengeance cannot change the past’. Batman then decided to stand as a symbol of hope for the degrading society.
Arthur – Joker in this case blamed society for the very state of mind he is in now. And there is nothing wrong in it. The very situations, events, people that Arthur got exposed to, made him chose that side. If he would have got proper support from the society and people, there really was a hope for him.
That is exactly why you must appreciate the act of Arthur to not become Joker in the end of this movie. Although the guards of Arkham had beat him to show that he is really weak in reality and Joke is not the reality. Arthur arguably had less privilege than Bruce Wayne to chose the right side and even after these hardships Arthur in this movie choosing reality of Arthur instead of delusion of Joker is a bold move. This makes Arthur’s character transformation far bigger, better and glorious than the transformation of Batman. (I am not saying that Joker is superior than Batman morally. I am saying the mental efforts that Arthur took to reject his Joker personality are way bigger, humongous than the mental efforts that Batman took to redefine his identity.)
There is very symbolic moment of Arthur running away from the Joker persona in the end of the movie to show how badly he wanted to escape that delusion.
From Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
You know what? This is exactly where the city of Gotham went wrong. People wanted an agent of chaos. Not the guardian of hope. Chaos is more sensational and attractive.
The Society and The Sensationalism
You should closely observe how Arthur behaves in the interview with Patty. He has dialed down Joker perfectly. But the moment Arthur understands that these people are not here to help him or work with him, they just want something sensational to show to the people watching TV, he loses the hope for the society. This is where Joker truly gets reinforced.
The way in which the character of Arthur Fleck is designed by the writers, it is a result of the overall failure of the social systems. The rising unrest in common people led to the reinforcement of Joker in Arthur Fleck even though he knew that he committed crimes.
Common people of Gotham somehow, anyhow wanted the rich and powerful people to be held accountable for the problems they were going through. Even though it was a group motive it was a very selfish motive. Joker doing certain murders was just a sensational direction people wanted so that they would get this feeling of redemption against the corrupt system.
From Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
Arthur was just a person in need of fame and appreciation for who he was. Only sad thing was that people only loved his Joker persona. That is exactly why Arthur chose the delusion of Joker to satisfy the delusion of redemption from riches for the society.
The real Folie à deux is not just about the shared delusion between Joker and Lee. It is between Joker and the society. It is between Todd Phillips’s Joker and the fandom. Deep down we too wanted this Joker to do some scandalous acts, exceptional crimes, and sensational interviews. We paid for the movie tickets to see the chaos that Joker creates in society thereby glorifying him as one of the best villains.
But, in reality we cannot handle such sensationalism. On surface it feels great while reading some spicy news, conflicts in our day to day lives but the moment they start affecting our very lives we know how horrible these things can turn out.
This movie actually made an effort to show how twisted a psychotic criminal is inside even though his life may seem sensational and happening outside.
The Loneliness and Kindness
There are many moments where Arthur clearly says that all he wanted was someone to understand him and love him for who he is. The only reason Arthur submits to Joker’s persona was the fact that this is what the surrounding around him wanted from him. The DA wants him to be the Joker so that they can punish him. This would also make him a martyr among the common people of Gotham. People of Gotham wanted him to be the Joker because it was their way to vent out their anger for the riches and powerful of the city. Harley wanted him to be the Joker because he symbiotically supported her delusions, he was ready to do whatever she wanted.
You will realize that there were also some moments where this was possible, it was possible to tell Arthur that he is not alone. Some events actually do happen but not everyone is thinking the same about him. That is what creates conflict in Arthur’s mind. There is a scene where Arthur is singing a book with good intent but the moment the guard mocks him, Joker takes over and signs maliciously.
You see this is intense when the person is challenged mentally, such people are ready to resort to any part of their persona provided that they get what they long for. That is successfully depicted in the psyche of Arthur Fleck.
Conclusion
A society on moral, social, political decline – a degenerate society – a society on the brink of collapse – will always reject Arthur and welcome Joker.
It is very evident from this duo-logy that the surroundings, society plays a crucial role in the character development of every person. We chose certain attributes of who we are based on what we actually want. This is decided by how society responds to our actions. Based on the such selected attributes, then our behavior, action on such attributes and the reaction from society on such action mold our personality. This is roughly how our personality, our identity is created. If we are fully dependent of society to define who we are, then our personality would exactly reflect what the society. That is what happened with Joker. Arthur was completely empty inside. You will see this when he accepts all his crimes honestly while ending with a Joke.
- Knock, Knock - Who’s there? - Arthur Fleck - Arthur Fleck who?
It shows that Arthur accepted that he was nobody. Society just poured inside his empty jar of personality, made him the agent of chaos.
That is why having an inner compass is very important in personal development. Our internal beliefs may sometimes get challenged and it is completely fine to change them, upgrade them. But the moment one starts to pivot his/her identity purely on outside factors it may create internal conflicts, mental conflicts. That is where Arthur lost his battle for personal identity. Even though the ideas are fictional they prepare us for the adversities occurring in reality, that is for me is the real power of storytelling. May everyone in reality find their true identity in a healthy and sustainable way.
We are full of biases and we are always in search for the things which reinforce our internal belief system. It is a normal human tendency to justify one’s identity. Those who are ready to change and modify their understandings about the surrounding are closer to the reality and those who are stubborn to change their belief system will get hit by the reality until they have learnt their lesson.
This Joker movie indirectly keeps on highlighting how difficult it is to gauge what goes in the mind of a mentally challenged person. Most of the time our instincts repel us from such people but what such people need is a sense of being loved and sense of belonging. If they are felt loved in reality, maybe there is some hope that they will let go of their delusions. Being kind is the only way.
For me the movie actually presents a choice in front of the audience for the fate of the Joker. As a human being Arthur coming out of his Joker persona was a very healthy and hopeful character development. But that is not what we wanted from him. We, just like the people of Gotham city wanted him to create chaos. This movie shows that hidden dark part in our minds. I am not saying that all of us are sadistic. I am saying we all have a dark part in our psyche and its normal. Everyone should be aware of their own darkness to remain mentally healthy. It improves decision making.
My favorite moment from Warner Bros. Joker: Folie à deux
Parts Per Billion 