Tag: Books

Feminine Side of Masculinity

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.)    

Further reading:

  1. Alexithymia

A Hindsight For Better Future

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.

References:

  1. Morgan Housel’s book “Same a s Ever”.
  2. Morgan Housel

The Body Snatcher – Weighing Intent Against Action

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.    

References-

The Real Purpose of the Artistic Journey

‘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.”

Franz Kafka

The Roadmap For A Creative & Fulfilled Life

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 Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか) – Bittersweet Reality of the Artistic Legacy

Studio Ghibli’s masterpiece The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか, How do you live?) tries to answer one complicated question on artistic legacy. On surface, it is a story of boy coming out of the melancholy of his mother’s death and his new beginnings. Deep down it is a love letter from a creative father on his creative legacy to his son who wants to go on his own journey. It shows how difficult it is to make others appreciate a personal piece of creation, emotion and how to leave a truly influential legacy behind.

A creative father’s love-letter on his legacy to his beloved son

We are always in a pursuit of creation of something to ensure better coming days. Survival is one aspect of it but as the time moved on, we have comfortably brought ourselves to ensure our sustenance. Most of us can live a basic life and rarely worry about what to eat tomorrow. Once such stage is achieved, you will see that our efforts to create and accumulate still have never stopped. Now we are creating and accumulating for even better days than other, once this is achieved, we continue creating and accumulating so that our new generation will see better days. This act of creating a legacy is not just a matter of survival, it is also matter of preserving some part of ourselves even when we won’t physically exist in this world.

It is easy to see what happens to the materialistic legacy like wealth, but it becomes very tricky to handover the moralistic, value based, character-based legacy to the next generation because of the differences in the ways to live and understand the life. The passage of time alters some truths to the new generations thereby changing their mindsets and moral compasses. Even though our animal drives, emotions are exactly the same the motivations behind them change over time.

Now, imagine that you created such precious legacy which is close to you, which defines you, people appreciate it adore it but your next generation is unable to carry it forward. How do you handle such rejections? what is the resolution? Is it good? Is it bad? Is there any way around? As you love your legacy, should you force them to see the value in your legacy? And if you truly love them, should you force them in the first place to carry that legacy?

Studio Ghibli’s recent movie The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか, How do you live?) is an attempt to answer one such complicated question on artistic legacy. Hayao Miyazaki-san has again given a masterstroke by creating a very personal yet relatable artistic narrative.

I have tried to explain the overall purpose of the narrative in this movie and will try to uncover what was the real core of movie based on the events in the life of Hayao Miyazaki-san.

The story and the meanings behind it

You will find megatons of explanations on the symbolism, personal connection of Hayao Miyazaki-san, his life, his childhood, his parents, and his colleagues from Studio Ghibli in this movie. There are many theories and cross references between the previous Ghibli movies too. I will not go into those details. I will focus on what the narrative stands as a whole.

It is obvious that it is a story of a boy who lost his mother and his journey of getting over that melancholia of her loss and acceptance of his new mother. You will also notice in the end credits that the creators have thanked a book called “The book of lost things” by John Conolly. Once you check out what this book is all about, I think you will get new perspective beyond the symbolism and references in the movie. Miyasaki leveraged the narrative of this book to create the structure of his narrative. The book also draws inspiration from Genzaburo Yoshino’s book “How Do You Live?” (君たちはどう生きるか, Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka)

Two books which inspired ‘The Boy and The Heron’

This is the story of the all emotions that are invoked when a person loses their loved ones. The first question that comes in mind when such loss happens is “How Do You Live?”

This is how the story is built –

The tower created around the rock is a portal where you can physically access your emotions. Just like in Interstellar how Astronaut Cooper was able to physically access the dimension of time.

Birds are representation of the free flying feelings, emotions we have.

The book that the great granduncle left unread is the same book Mahito’s mother read and then it got handed over to Mahito, which is the book called “How do you live?” The book is about the conversations of a boy who lost his father and the boy’s uncle.

The great granduncle already knew that the rock from space can allow him to create the world of his dreams. That is exactly why he built a tower around it for protection. Upon going through the loss of loved person in his life, he saw himself in the role of the person who will lead and help his descendants to handle their own pain of loss. But as the great grand uncle was always into books and had his own internal dreamy world, he used the powers of the rock from space to create his own world.

The act of leaving the book unread to disappearing into something is pointing towards that intense moment when you have to act on things because the author said exactly what you believe in. You feel this urge to act and create that thing because the author, the person who you don’t even know feels exactly the same. You feel an unexplained deep connection.

So, the rock from space and tower built around it is a portal where things can enter and exit in space, time. The moment when Himi lost her mother, she accessed the portal, confronted her emotions but also met her future son Mahito.

She realized that even though she lost her beloved mother, she will have an opportunity to have her own son who will love her deeply. Even when she will not be there with Mahito, her sister will love him equally. This gives her peace. That is exactly why when grannies are telling the story from Himiko’s childhood to Shoichi (Himiko’s husband and Mahito’s father) they say that she was grinning to ears – happy like anything when she came out of the mysterious tower.

The great grand uncle can call anyone to enter the tower. That is why grannies are scared if Mahito gets taken by the tower in the start of the story.

Kiriko has also accessed the portal in the search for young Himi before, that is why her younger version is available in this dreamy world and knows the ways of this world. Her older version entering into the portal along with Mahito closes the loop of time paradox if you think it through.

Natsuko is called into the portal to make young Himi aware that her future son will have a caretaker and lover when she will not be there for him. This helps young Himi to get over her own loss of mother. It’s that feeling of love you create for your people when you realize how deeply you loved the person you lost. You realize that your people also deserve to get the love that you received from your lost loved ones. That brings the person out of the melancholy of the loss of loved ones.

Natsuko is called into the portal to make up her mind that Mahito is also her son. She is also called into the portal to make Mahito accept that his step mother also deserves the same love that he has for his own mother. The great grand uncle is the orchestrater of all these events.

The grey heron is Mahito’s mind personified, his conscience. Heron is always guiding, helping Mahito. Mahito has this feeling that his mother is alive somewhere because he never saw her dead body. Heron attracts, teases Mahito using same understanding. Somewhere in a hidden corner of Mahito’s mind he thinks that there is still a chance to save his mother and bring her back. He is just looking out for an opportunity. Heron teases this opportunity to Mahito.

Heron like every person’s mind is paradoxical in nature. Heron is equivalent of Jiminy Cricket from the story of Pinocchio.

Most of the events between Mahito and the grey heron are Mahito’s dreams until he personally enters the tower where all his emotions can be accessed physically. That is where he is able to get the hold of the Heron, that is where the power of the seventh feather is functional, because Mahito has heightened awareness and access to his emotions.

The illusion of his mother in bed is a reminder to Mahito that she only exists in his dreams not in reality.

The starving Pelicans are the feeling one gets when they realize that they won’t be loved in the ways and to levels they used to before because of the loss of loved ones. These feeling to be loved, the huger to be loved by that person pushes the person to meet his loved one in afterlife. You will see the pelicans pushing Mahito in graveyard so that he can meet his mother. Pelicans are his feelings from the void of love which are pushing him to die to meet his mother in afterlife.  

Kiriko saves Mahito from his urge to die, maybe she has done same to Himi in past too. The mark left on Kiriko’s head by swamp thrasher is intentional creation to make Mahito comfortable. The fact that they both share some common pain brings comfort to Mahito. The thrasher bird is a symbol of self-reflection, it is like upon getting settled and being calm Mahito realizes that dying is not the solution to meet his mother – Himi.

Warawara and the phantoms are the attempts of great grand uncle to show everyone entering this world that life and death are part of existence. The person must accept and will have to support both, feed both to ensure that the reality remains ‘real’.

The event of giving proper burial to the dead severely injured pelican is Mahito’s acceptance to detach himself from the urge to be loved by his dead mother. This is him making amends with death and urge of being loved.

The moment Mahito accepts the weird and paradoxical nature of heron is the moment when he gets a clear direction to meet Natsuko. He literally repairs his conscience to get the clarity.

The Parakeets are the defense system of mind. They are the logical emotions, feelings that we use to defend from the sad feelings, they make sure that the system of our mind remains intact. Parakeets are the indicators of love and colors in life, when we are deeply saddened these emotions of love and colors become intense, defensive to save our mind. Here in the extreme case, they have become so strong, disciplined, and militarized that they are ready to consume their own host – Mahito. Parakeets show life, colors, happiness, anti-sad emotions, and the defense mechanism to create good for everything. That is why they have rules, moral values – the indication of what is allowed and what is not for the betterment of the host. They make sure that the person remains sane by choosing what is best for him instead of getting overwhelmed by all other emotions.

Parakeet king is the ultimate personification of such defense mechanism, he just wants to make sure that the world inside the host’s mind remains intact otherwise the host will go mad, this world will collapse.

The important conflict Mahito must resolve is to find his mother. Where the great grand uncle gives him the test. You should appreciate the role of great grand uncle in this whole narrative. The very first time when Mahito is inside the tower with Kiriko, the great grand uncle could have immediately met him and resolved everything in his mind.

But he makes Mahito to go through whole journey because you cannot force any emotion on the person just by telling the truth. His/ her defense mechanism will strongly and willfully reject that truth. Only when that person will go through personal experience, then only he/ she can appreciate the value of truth. Uncle thus gives Mahito this final test of truth once he overcomes the obstacles in his mind.

Mahito is given the taste of truth by showing him that even though he could not save his mother Himi he can now save another mother Natsuko. This is the Natsuko who enters the portal with a feeling if she would ever truly be able to love Mahito while having her own baby. This is conflict resolution for Natsuko too. She develops true love for Mahito when Mahito lets go of his attachment to mother Himi to save Natsuko because he doesn’t want that to happen again. And Natsuko also realizes that it’s her loving sister’s son in the end who deserves the same love like her coming baby deserves.

Only upon the resolution of this conflict when Mahito gets the access to the portal to meet the great grand uncle. 13 grave stones are the 13 movies created by Hayao Miyazaki-san. Which arranged in many styles create different world. They create an escape to different reality where people can manifest and physically live their dreams. For uncle these 13 gravestones are the purpose of his life, they define who he is and are his legacy. Great grand uncle asking Mahito to arrange these 13 gravestones is Miyazaki-san’s way to order his son Goro-san to carry his legacy in the exact ways Miyazaki-san intended. Mahito noticing the difference between wooden blocks and the gravestones is an indication that his life interests do not lie there, wood here as a part of tree – the life against the gravestones show that this is not how Mahito would live his life.

As a punishment uncle sends Mahito to parakeets. Parakeets are the structured constructs, rule, laws which ensure that the world has order even though the person may hate them. Goro Miyazaki-san chose the career of an architect because he wanted to do something different from his father. Hayao Miyazaki-san asked Goro-san to create artistic movies exactly in his “Ghibli” style but Goro-san’s artistic creations never matched the Hayao Miyazaki-san’s Ghibli vibes. It’s like his creative powers were restricted due to the parakeet like strict construct, high expectations and extreme criticism of Hayao Miyazaki-san. The great grand uncle had some hope that Mahito will accept what he wants him to appreciate.   

Mahito’s own conscience – the Heron comes to rescue him in the end. Grand uncle asks Himi to leave this world and also tells that Mahito should also leave with her. He is hoping that there is one more chance to convince Mahito to take care of what he had created. When Mahito and Himi meet the great grand uncle to bid goodbye the uncle presents Mahito some stone without malice. It is uncle’s attempt to show Mahito that even though his creations have their challenges, rules, restrictions Mahito still has freedom to do anything with these new stones free from Malice. It’s uncle’s attempt to convince Mahito to not lose the grip on the legacy. It is Hayao Miyazaki-san’s desperate way to reconvince his son Goro-san that he just needs to create for the studio Ghibli by using some new things – new experiments but just keep studio Ghibli alive. He wants Goro-san to create so that the world of Ghibli will bring bounty, peace and beauty into people’s lives. It’s not just a selfish request for continuing the legacy. It is a request to maintain the core of his legacy – Miyazaki-san’s legacy.

Mahito responds to great grand uncle by saying that he has his own challenges, his own malice, his own limitations which make it difficult to carry this legacy. Mahito wants to return to his own real world even when it has some darkness, bad things. When uncle asks him that Mahito’s reality is a chaotic world full of murderers and thieves Mahito responds by showing that he has good, caring, and loving people along with the heron – his conscience to support him there.

This is also important moment for Himi where she is relieved that even when her son will lose her, Mahito will have enough support system to take care of him. This is one more reason for young Himi to return happy to her reality.

Uncle then ordering Mahito to just stack the stones for last time would be equivalent of the discussion happened between Hayao Miyazaki-san and Goro-san on the creation of one last project for Miyazaki-san’s peace of mind. Maybe Miyazaki-san just like the great grand uncle wanted to play a trick on Mahito – Goro-san to convince him to continue the legacy.

Finally, the Parakeet king trying to arrange the blocks by himself is the futile attempts of the admirer of great grand uncle’s creation to ensure their own survival. But as there is no personal connect between them, the Parakeet king doesn’t know the ‘art’ of arranging the stones. When the attempt fails and the world collapses as the great grand uncle had already expected, he instructs everyone to leave the tower and return to their respective reality.   

You must appreciate that there would have been a proper intimate discussion between Hayao Miyazaki-san and Goro-san on how to take over this legacy and continue the future of studio Ghibli. Rearrangement of 13 blocks shows advice to use the styles and ideas of Hayao Miyazaki-san’s movies to create further new stories.

The resolution of Mahito returning to reality is Hayao Miyazaki-san’s way to show that the path has already been chosen and good thing is that it is more real than anything possible. It could be ugly, full of malice, murderers, death, grief and detachment but is far better than dreamy and perfect world. Looks like Goro-san successfully convinced his father Hayao Miyazaki-san that his father’s reality of Studio Ghibli is not the only reality, only legacy which deserves to exist. Hayao Miyazaki-san also realized that if he truly loves his son, he would let him go on his own path, to create his own art. Just because he is too attached to his creation does not entitle his son to carry it forward, especially as a burden.

It’s poignant to come to this fact but it is what it is. That also doesn’t stop either Hayao or Goro-san to create the world they want. (there is a rumor that Miyazaki-san is working on his next film.)  

The Curse of the Intangible Value of an Artistic Creation

For any true artist, it is the expression through creation which matters him/ her the most. The art they create is exactly who they are, it is a part of who they are. For such artist who has realized that they will have to leave all this creation behind in the end, search for the true successor who can appreciate their creation is crucial.

And the problem with artistic creation is that they are very intimately connected to the person who created them – the artist. It’s like the bond of a mother and child – she has carried that child for 9 months in her belly, it’s a piece of her body and soul. In similar sense, that art held its root in the artist’s mind and the artist kindled it in his mind to finally bring it into the reality. The fundamental problem with emotions is that you have to pass through those feelings to appreciate them in true sense. You can intellectualize other person’s emotions, write about them, create narratives/ stories out of them. You can make philosophies about how and why people have certain emotions, why they feel sad, happy, melancholic. You can also simulate pain to induce the feelings of emotions in a person, you can simulate happiness by triggering certain chemicals and suppressing others. But, you must accept that unless and until you yourself don’t pass through that real-life emotional experience, you will never be able to appreciate and understand how others felt when they had similar feelings. You can be highly empathetic, sympathetic but they too are bound by the limitations of you own mind. You can be a highly intellectual person who has already figured out what action would lead to what emotion, what is good for your mind, what is bad for you, you may create a whole internal defense system to handle the anticipated emotional responses but the experience you will have when you pass through that emotion will be very personal and the art created after the passage through such emotions cannot be attributed to any tangible value.

Now think of handing over such a creative legacy to you descendants. You are confident about this handover to your children because they are your immediate physical extension and if you are lucky then maybe your immediate mental extension too. But, as I already clarified in previous paragraph about the curse of intangibility, the intangible subjectivity of any artistic creation, there is no guaranty that you descendants will resonate with what you believed that art to represent.

It feels cruel to realize this fact but believe me it is the reality. Others, especially the people you call yours are not entitled to appreciate the things exactly to the levels you appreciate. I agree that they should at least not disrespect it but you can never force other people to appreciate ‘your’ valuable things at your exact same level. This journey has to be made solely by themselves which will never be in your control. You may force them, influence them, punish them- abuse them mentally, physically but you cannot force others to generate the same respect, same value for the things you love. It’s purely an internal and voluntary journey.

That is why having people who resonate with how you appreciate certain common objects and common emotions is a blessing. This also does not mean that people who perceive something different for the same objects are bad. There can be cases where they perceive something even better than what you perceive and where they do not even care but that’s not your fault. In order to find clarity in these cases you have to accept that emotions are double edged sword. It will cut both ways. Even when you have anticipated, planned, intellectualized them, you cannot escape your emotional responses. What you can do is to observe them sincerely and let them pass. You are not your selective emotions; you are above them. Emotions are not your creator rather you are the creator of your emotions. The moment you accept this you will see the truth that not everyone, not even your own blood is bound to experience the life around you in the exact ways you want them to. The moment you will appreciate what I am trying to put down in words, I think you will feel liberated. Please understand that this is not just about any artistic creation, it is about everything you call your life – mental, physical, tangible, intangible. To live a life with this intensity could be a blessing (on personal level if this intensity is not anticipated well in advance or not controlled then it is one cruel curse to carry.)

I think this is exactly what Hayao Miyazaki-san was struggling with. But as the movie resolves I think there is still hope for him, for the studio and in the end for all of us rooting for his next movies. It definitely is not a sad ending and even if it is a sad one we know what great things they made us feel about ourselves, how they gave us better perspectives towards life. I think that his true legacy is all his admirer, we people altogether whose lives he changed through his creation. Even though his movies won’t be there, what they have made us feel – that legacy of having a perspective towards life will keep on affecting new generation through us.   

To be honest, for me it’s a love letter of a father to his son who doesn’t want to follow his father’s legacy and wishes to go on his own journey.       

The Father Son – Hayao Miyazaki and Goro Miyazaki

  • All movie scenes from Studio Ghibli – Hayao Miyazaki’s movie The Boy and the Heron

Undone – the hymn of Sisyphus for modern times

There are certain moments in life where everything seems meaningless while we take a look at the final fate of all things and nihilism takes over, especially in the times of great unexpected failure. A crystal-clear philosophy of absurdism can come to rescue in such unsettling moments of existential confusion. When such complicated ideas reveal themselves through a simple, soulful yet philosophical song spanning few minutes, the impact is immense. ODESZA & Yellow House’s song called ‘Undone’ from their collaborative album called ‘the flaws in our design’ is one such song which treasures the ideas from the myth of Sisyphus and the philosophy of existentialism, absurdism given by Albert Camus. Absurdism focuses on giving life our meaning through revolt, passion and freedom.

A simple, soulful song pointing towards the philosophy of Absurdism

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Some songs have this magic where you instantly get hooked to them, you cannot put it in words but it makes you feel good. You love the feeling this song creates, but don’t know why. Now it’s in your mind on loop and you brain is completely saturated with it.

Now, there comes a moment when you are busy with something and the same song is playing in background like an ambient noise, like a filler and suddenly you have this epiphany, a revelation about what the song really means. Has this happened with you?

I came across a song in 2023 and thought that I have checked out every corner of this song in my mind, but I was wrong. This song was on loop for almost 10 months (believe me on loop means hardcore omnipresent music) and recently I found something revelatory about this song. It was beyond my superficial interpretation of this song (as this is subjective, maybe I should consider myself a dumb fool to not recognize that important side of the song – someone might have found out that thing, that meaning in their early listening of the same song or maybe I am surely hallucinating in the lands of overthinking! – only the creators know!)

The song I am talking about is from the ODESZA and Yellow House’s EP album “The flaws in our design” called “Undone”. (Written by Clayton Joseph Knight / Harrison Gordon Mills / Emile Van Staden, © Foreign Family Collective Publishing, Gmr Foreign Family Collective)

Flaws in our design by ODESZA and Yellow House

Allow me to take you on a mind trip (what it meant for me actually and what it revealed to me recently)

There’s no time to hide from the sun
There’s no time to come undone
That’s easier said than done
Just pick your poison and run

The song starts with certain urgency – “there is no time”.

The song-writer wants you to face the day and don’t give up. The writer understands that it is difficult to start fresh when every hope is lost, the path you were on, the things you were striving for didn’t come to fruition or didn’t go the ways you wanted. The urgency to exist is far more dominating than what great things you lost. So, writer asks us to start again even though is will be painful. Whatever you will be doing, in the end you are going to die, that finiteness of life brings in the urgency to live, to survive. That is why the song-writer says that even though the poison of existence is painful you must do something stick to something because when the time of departure will come you will fill empty that you didn’t appreciate what existence had to offer. You will call your existence worthless. At least sticking to something will give a meaning to the life – your life – whatever it may be but that will be “your” meaningful life in the end.

I’m struggling to find out where I stand
I keep wrestling with God and with man
Tryna forge a little life in-between
A man can only but dream

The writers are trying to show how the person is going through tough times, this person is trapped in a fight between the natural forces and the people around him/ her.

This is about where do we stand in this grand existence. On a personal level if someone comes to attack me or my loved ones, I consider these lives so precious that I would go beyond limits to save them and yet in the grandiose of all this creation our planet is just a speck of dust. Even if the whole earth is engulfed into some giant star, black hole or is crumbled to dust or vaporized due to a man-made nuclear calamity, nothing in the universe is going to change.

So, how do I justify my worth in this grand existence? It’s somewhat philosophical interpretation of given lines in the song but even on societal level it shows a conflict of the mind. This is a struggle to justify the position of a person in this complicated and chaotic society.

This could also be called as an existential angst; one has to fight with the natural forces of creation and the people around them to create a life they desire. There is always this innate resistance to survive, anything small or large could be responsible for the termination of your existence.     

This resistance to survive and create the life we desire gets converted to the existential angst when all our attempts fail, when we lose hope, these are the difficult times of directionless-ness where we try to question our existence. It’s this confusion, this question that “even when we tried all the possible things why didn’t the come to fruition?”

Forging a little life indicates how small is the success rate when one tries to create their own perfect life. A ‘dream-like’ perfect life.

The time’s come to lay it on the line
When meaning seems so hard to find
It all weighs heavy on the mind
It’s easier to leave it behind

Writers are trying to reiterate the urgency through the finiteness of the life. When the right time comes it reveals everything and when you are facing multiple failures, tremendous hardships it leads to breakdown. This breakdown, this hopelessness puts gasoline in the fire of the existential confusion. It feels like there is no way out. The writers feel the same but they advise to leave this weight behind. This is the weight which is actually holding us back in hard times. Acceptance of the failures is the only way to calm down the mind, learn something new. Sometimes it’s not just about failures, its also about the way we wanted our life to be, even after making many attempts if the things are not turning out the way you want, its better to leave that weight behind and move on.   

There’s no time to hide from the sun
There’s no time to come undone
That’s easier said than done
Just pick your poison and run

Again, the same advice, whatever you will struggle at will eventually make you feel hopeless, directionless but you should stick to something hopeful and move on.

Life can’t be won, can’t be tamed
The point of it all goes unnamed
The lost and the gained weigh the same
When returned to dust or to flame

There is no way to justify life in certain definitive way. It’s the grandeur of life and the infinite possibilities it provides which are more than enough to confuse anyone, especially those who have faced big failures or totally lost hope. There are these moments when you feel that you are not living a better life than your peers are living, when you feel like others’ lives are more happening and interesting than yours – this is the moment when you must appreciate that many people ready to die for the life you currently have.

And in the end, nothing will matter, everything will return to dust – to nothingness. Every transaction you had during your existence will be balanced to null, Nada.

I’m struggling to find out where I stand
I keep wrestling with God and with man
Trynna forge a little life in-between
A man can only but dream

Living is a struggle, living with failures is even worse but that doesn’t stop us to create those little lively moments in difficult times because our time here is finite.  We cannot waste this limited thus precious conscious existence on things which are resisting us from living the lives to the fullest.

The time’s come to lay it on the line
When meaning seems so hard to find
It all weighs heavy on the mind
It’s easier to leave it behind

When you receive the clarity of failure and the reasons behind it, it is always better to leave that weight of guilt, confusion, hopelessness behind to begin a new journey.

There’s no time to hide from the sun
There’s no time to come undone
That’s easier said than done
Just pick your poison and run

Show up, keep your head up, do something and stick to it, you are going to die anyways but make sure that when you die you won’t regret even a single thing, look alive and live your life.

Undone and its (deep) philosophical consequences!

You can call the things mentioned hereon as the garbage generated from my overthinking but bear with me, I have a point. This exactly might be the point of the song-writers while creating this song or this is just my brain connecting some random dots to make sense out of nothingness (that is how trickster our existence and the creation is – again according to my overthinking!)

OK, enough, now to the point!

In single simple line it philosophically goes like this and you can stop reading if you don’t like it!?!!

The recent revelation I had with the song Undone by ODESZA & Yellow House is the philosophy of Absurdism by Albert Camus, so the Myth of Sisyphus comes into picture. This song has uncanny resemblance to the philosophical ideas in absurdism.

Myth of Sisyphus

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the king of Ephyra who was known to trick death, escape it and even trap it in its own chains. Sisyphus had tricked the Gods many times and gods were running out of the punishments to make a statement. In their one attempt Gods assigned Sisyphus a simple task – to roll a big boulder up the hill. When Sisyphus started rolling the boulder uphill and once it reached the top of the hill the boulder would roll down and again Sisyphus had to roll it uphill. This went on and on and Sisyphus got trapped in this meaningless task. Gods were relieved in the end.

Nihilism and Sisyphus

Albert Camus’s work on the philosophy of the absurd is one importance aspect of how we justify our existence in this seemingly meaningless existence. 

The meaningless task of Sisyphus is an analogous our daily mundane routines – sleep, wake up, go to job, come home, eat, sleep (then wait for weekend!). EAT, SLEEP & REPEAT. But even after this repetition, even after this boring routine when it comes to dying, we are always more scared to die than to live this meaningless, mundane life. I mean in the end it is all about coming from and returning to the dirt, even after that we crave for this conscious but repetitive, painful and “poisonous” existence.  

The lives we live are full of many small and big cycles, these cycles keep on repeating and we keep on following them. Remember the moment when you achieved something really great and in the next immediate moment you felt empty and directionless? Now that this great feat is achieved what lies next? And you become clueless, then you move on to achieving something far bigger and better and the cycle goes till you eventually die. In the end you weren’t even able to take your body with which you realized your conscious existence. What’s the purpose of all this if it is meant to end into dirt again?

Nihilism – nothingness thus rejects all the ideas which justify conscious human existence rather the existence in totality. Nothing really matters because everything starts and ends into the same worthless things. All this knowledge, all this kindness, all those relationships, all those friendships, all that discipline means nothing, there is no sense in following rules, routines, morality doesn’t make any sense, winners or losers – all end in coffins buried underground.

You must understand that these are the exact feelings many of us go through when we face some great challenges, great failures in our lives. The ideas from Nihilism may get associated to such feelings of meaninglessness. One might think that Nihilism is totally negative way for philosophy of existence but that is not the case. Nihilism also talks about non-attachment, non-possession which are the roots of suffering in life as explained in Buddhism. So, it’s not chalk and cheese scenario to be honest. Life may feel meaningless, filled of mundane routines like the task of Sisyphus and in this life, we are struggling to achieve something to realize in the end that we have to leave all that behind – what a cruel joke!

Existentialism, Absurdism and Sisyphus

What Albert Camus presented in his essays of the Myth of Sisyphus was the philosophy of the absurd.

The tendency of Sisyphus to always play tricks with death is exactly who we are. We are always trying to trick death, reject the death in many ways. Sisyphus shown as the king and having all the enjoyments of the life is who we are; everyone of us wants to live life to its fullest. Like Sisyphus, we all are tied to our routines.  

So, the philosophy of absurdism believes that the universe is meaningless and if people will try to find the meaning of the universe, then they will end up in a conflict. Absurdism calls out to the cycles we keep on repeating throughout our existence achieving nothing in the end; what came in, it went out leaving no trace behind.

The key difference between Nihilism and Absurdism is the extent of acknowledgement. Nihilism completely rejects any attribution or meaning to all aspects of life thereby rejecting the worth of life, whereas absurdism is more open ended. Absurdism believes that whatever the creation, the universe is we are not in sync with it to understand it completely. Absurdism thus is humbler and better ready to upgrade its ideology compared to nihilism.

“I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that its impossible for me just now to know it”      

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

What Camus beautifully did is provide a justification for such “absurd” nature of existence.

This is exactly why the philosophy of absurdism is in sync with the ideas presented in the song Undone.

Absurdism and Undone

Camus in absurdism explains that when people face scenarios of meaninglessness, scenes of existential crisis they reject the very life they possess – thus suicide.

This suicide could be physical or philosophical.

No need to explain physical suicide in detail, the core is that continuous sufferings reduce the perception of the worth of life, what life offers for the sufferings one goes through.

Philosophical suicide is more interesting (!) people kill their own conscience and submit to some ready-made belief system in order to brutally terminate their own existential confusion. (Now you must appreciate what this philosophical suicide is pointing to – the religions spread across he world and the hatred they create is the best example)

Camus says that our urge to live the life (physically and philosophically) is much more overpowering and influential than our whining, crying excuses to reject life. We value our conscious life more than our submission to death, even if it is mundane.

“What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

As Camus says, man is condemned to death and the opposite of suicide is to revolt.

Since we cannot evade death, we must entertain death, keep it busy.

So, Albert Camus gave three possibilities of how one could make sense out of all this absurd life – Revolt, Freedom, and Passion.

– Revolt –

We must not accept any ‘final’ or ‘ultimate’ conclusion or calming justification in our unsettling struggles. Because the moment we get a proper justification to our existential angst, we surrender to that way of life (that is how extreme cases of religion work) and the process of learning and curiosity stops there.

The notion of ‘not hiding from the Sun’ in the song thus signify showing up even when the situations are difficult and unsettling. Sun indicating new day (even though being part of the routine) but with new way to look at it.

‘There is no time to come undone’ creates the urgency. Because, when a person is said to be undone – it means that the person has fallen apart, disintegrated, there is no meaningful attribution, purpose to the life they are living. The urgency to live life in spite of seeming meaningless and in spite of ending into death is a call to follow our instinct of living over suicide (philosophical). The absurdism thus focuses the subjective value of life; even though from outside our routines are mundane, only we know what exactly is happening with our lives and that surely is greatly unique; the way we experience our own life and the way other experience it is very special.

That is exactly why you must not waste your time on whining about the problems, losing hope, giving up on something.

The revolt is appreciating the meaninglessness and is also creating space to grow. Even when in final evaluation when we discover that the life is truly meaningless that should not stop us from giving it our own meaning.

That meaning could be anything, that is why ‘picking “your” poison and run’ becomes extremely powerful in the song and it is scattered throughout the song.

– Passion –

Talking about poison, absurdism talks about Passion.    

Passion calls for living life full of rich and diverse experiences. Again, just because nihilism reveals the meaningless view of life and creation, it should not stop us from appreciating what the life and creation provide us. Just because you know that you will die ultimately that does not stop you from breathing and waking up in the morning hoping that you will live another day.

Passion could be anything, that is why the songwriters figuratively attributed is as a poison. Whatever makes you feel free, liberated is your poison (bear in mind that this is philosophical). Do things that make you feel alive (again philosophically), run, sing, dance, write, fight, curse, play, work but look alive. You will appreciate that every thing you do, every passion you follow, every poison you consume have their own consequences, the moment you face these consequences of your acts – your life will have meaning. That is why this figurative poison in this song is very important.

“Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

– Freedom –

Third possibility is the freedom. We are absolutely free to think and behave as we decide. The perspective of life being free is more optimistic take on nihilism. If the creation means nothing that it is exactly what we call it! We can call it whatever we want, that is what freedom is. When you think that you are free, you do whatever you want and at that very instance you will realize that even freedom has constraints.

But, as the creation is infinitely meaningless it is open to up-gradation and rebooting. A truth which holds the capacity to upgrade itself is the real ultimate truth I would say; and in the same sense the freedom which knows its boundaries truly knows the real freedom and hence is the real, pure freedom.

“Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one’s consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

(Mathematically Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Spiritually Miyamoto Musashi’s the book of Void talk this exact freedom).

“I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

‘The struggle with Gods and men to create a dreamy life in between’ is the expression where I associate this song with the Myth of Sisyphus – his actions were exactly like some Greek demigod who challenged both humans and Gods.

‘The heavy weight of meaninglessness in the moment of reckoning’ expressed in the song point towards the that nihilistic and hopeless situations in the struggles of our life. Its better to not cling to such nihilistic thought. Passion explained in absurdism thus becomes the savior in such hard times.

‘The wildness of life’ in the song thus shows the ability of our freedom to upgrade itself in the ocean of infinite possibilities.  

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Listen to this song again with these thoughts of absurdism in the back of your mind, I am sure you will appreciate the song and its creators more. (‘The flaws in our design’ is a well justified name to this album and each song carries its own philosophy. Also pardon my over-explanation in certain places but you get the point (I hope))

You can listen to the song Undone using following links:

References

  1. ODESZA & Yellow House Team Up For New EP “Flaws in Our Design”
  2. The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays – Albert Camus

The Model Millionaire – Attributes of True Wealth

Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Model Millionaire” is a story depicting the boomerang of kindness. It also tries to fuse the importance of tangible assets like money and intangible/ non-physical assets like kindness/ love/ art in our lives. It shows how the balance between these separate attributes can create a true rich life.

Oscar Wilde’s short story called “The Model Millionaire”

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

Albert Camus

Stories we cherish – especially short stories which tickle our brains have huge impact on our personality. The shortness of tightly woven multiple events inherently brings out the simplicity and invite intrigue in readers. All of us have such favorite stories which we would love to remember forever for the lessons they provide, the happiness they create. Most of such stories we love belong to the chapters in our textbooks, school books. There are many short stories which fall into exactly similar category of being a textbook chapters as if they are not that deep enough and simply convey what is to be conveyed. They get the job done within few pages thereby giving readers a worthy payoff.

It is a cakewalk for readers to enjoy such short stories and interpret the message which author/ writer is trying to convey. Sometimes there is nothing to learn or any hidden message to covey through the story, the intent is to invoke certain emotion in readers. It is a joy to appreciate such stories from readers’ perspective.

It is also crucial and highly underrated to understand what was going in the writers’ mind when they penned down such stories, especially for the of case short stories. This happens frequently in terms of short stories due to their simple, short presentation. You read, get entertained and move on to the next one. 

It is very important to understand the simplicity of such stories and so called- “entertaining” word-play. The writers of such stories make every conscious effort to simplify the narrative and convey the meaning. The simplicity is not inherent rather it is intentional and full of efforts – the hidden tediousness. If you are reading an interesting story, it’s not because writer just wrote what came to his mind showcasing his brilliance; it is interesting because writer had created multiple perspectives, personalities – I would say pseudo- readers to establish the narrative and remove the confusion from the story. Writers just wear this mask of the characters from their stories to fearlessly express what they feel about the reality.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Oscar Wilde

We will see one such simple, high school textbook-worthy yet an interesting short story written by Oscar Wilde called “The Model Millionaire”. The story is flawless in such a way that the plot can be explained in 10-15 lines. The real beauty lies in how Oscar Wilde saw the world and expressed it through the characters in this story.

Plot

Hughie Erskin is a young, good looking but incompetent (according to the mainstream social standards) – a kind of below average man. As he has not proven his worth, has no money he is struggling to find the rhythm of life and marry his love of life – Laura Merton. One day he finds his painter friend – Alan Trevor – painting a life size beggar-man. Hughie feels very sad about how the beggar has to go through this sitting session where he won’t get just few shillings whereas the painter would earn in thousands by selling this painting. Feeling pity for the beggar-man Hughie gives him most of the money he has – to take care of the matters. Later, Hughie founds out that this beggar-man was actually an exceedingly rich “Baron”, an important person capable of influencing a continent. Hughie feels ashamed of his deeds because he thinks he has insulted the Baron by handing some petty alms.

In the climax, when Hughie feels the moment of confrontation, he prepares to apologize the Baron for what he did. Turns out that all that money, all that power had not polluted the Baron and rewards Hughie for his good deed by offering enough money to get married with Laura. The millionaire who earlier was a portrait model also proves his humble personality as a “model” millionaire.

Opening – Your love and charm will not fill your belly

“Unless one is really wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

Oscar is trying to establish some pragmatic thoughts to intensify how big a failure his character is in real life. He uses this established foundation to create a contrasting climax of the story in the end

Oscar Wilde in first few lines depicts the contrast between the attitude of Hughie and how the world around him is constructed. As if Hughie was never meant to live in this world. In the opening of the story Oscar makes every effort to show Hughie’s futile attempts in making a pragmatic living. In every sense Hughie is a failure. Every venture, business (Stock Exchange, trading Tea and Dry Sherry) he tried ended in failure. The legacy of his ancestors (his father’s cavalry sword and 15 volumes of the History of the Peninsular War) is worthless in those modern times. (Even luck is not on his side!)

“Ultimately, he became nothing, a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and no profession”

Oscar Wilde is trying to portray a very practical picture of life. One must understand that things are exactly the same today in 21st century. 

When one has not established themselves at least as an average earning independent man then every new luxury, wish is burden. Love is a luxury for a man who hasn’t established himself in society (at least financially).

“To make matters worse, he was in love”

Hughie’s lover’s (Laura’s) father – Retired Colonel Merton likes Hughie but is not ready to hand over his daughter to Hughie for the same practical reasons – Hughie cannot offer Laura a stable life.

“Come to me boy, my boy, when you have got ten thousand pounds of your own, and we will see about it”

Oscar Wilde is trying to show the brutal nature of reality which is extra brutal for daydreaming people like Hughie. (Please keep in mind that the opening is mere single dimension of Hughie’s character, more things about who he is at the core unfold in the later part of the story)

Post opening – Intangible things like art must surrender to physical/tangible media in order to remain relevant in practical world

Hughie has an artist friend called Alan Trevor who paints for living. Oscar shows us that Alan truly is a gifted artist and he earns well through his painting profession. He befriended Hughie (a real-life failure) because he liked his generous and reckless spirit. Being an artist Alan appreciates a kind-hearted and good-looking people irrespective of their social and practical status.

“The only people a painter should know are the people who are bête and beautiful, people who are an artistic pleasure to look at and an intellectual repose to talk to. Men who are dandies and who are darlings rule the world, at least they should do so.”

Whatever Alan thinks, we all know what the reality is.

Middle – An act of kindness

Hughie meets Alan in a session where he is painting a beggar. Hughie feels sad for the beggar for how life is treating him. He somewhere feels that the beggar is more helpless than himself. At least he is in a better condition than the beggar who is modelling for Alan’s painting. He argues with Alan that he should pay the beggar in percentage as Alan will earn a big chunk of money through selling this painting for thousands. The beggar deserves more. Alan argues that he definitely has to put more efforts to paint the beggar than the beggar by just standing still there.

“…there are moments when Art almost attains to the dignity of manual labor…”

This expression by Alan shows that the art may just invoke intangible, non-real things in a person but the process of creation an art is very difficult as it tries to express things which know no bounds/limits through the physical media which have inherent real-life limitations.

Realizing the correctness of Alan’s opinion and at the same time feeling pity for the beggar Hughie gives whatever money he had to the beggar.

This shows another side of Hughie where he is sensitive, he is not just a naïve person who cannot handle the practicality of brutal real life thereby getting labelled as a failure as per the social norms.     

Climax – Kindness is a boomerang

Hughie through his friend Alan realizes that the beggar to whom he donated the money was actually a crazy rich person called Baron Hausberg. A rich person who holds potential, is powerful enough to change the course of every possible thing in society.  Now Hughie feels ashamed of his act. Even though his intent was pure it may get projected as an act of disrespect to Baron Hausberg.

But turns out that Baron Hausberg is a down to earth personality and he returns Hughie’s act of kindness by offering him 10000 pounds required to marry his love of life.

Closing – Artistic, Emotional and Materialistic wealth all can coexist; it narrows down to what kind of human being you are.

Alan expresses that despite having loads of money, Baron Hausberg understands the difference between “having lots of money/ power” and “being wealthy”. That is why this millionaire who was a model for a portrait was also an ideal millionaire – a rare “model millionaire”.     

Baron Hausberg is not the only “Model Millionaire” in this story

This might be my overthinking or over-analysis of the story but bear with me.

Oscar Wild through his cheeky narration and the expressions from his character tries to create a picture of a pragmatic life we human beings live. One must earn money to live in the society. But that is not the only thing which will define him as a model man as an ideal human being.

Baron Hausberg while having loads of money is rich in morals too. He appreciates Hughie’s act of kindness and returns that kindness with the same spirit. The materialistic wealth does not pollute his mindset. That is what makes him the “model” one. Baron Hausberg is the obvious model millionaire of the story, but you must appreciate that the word “millionaire” frees itself from its association with only money. That is exactly what the wordplay between “millionaire model” and “millionaire model” conveys. Being rich was never only associated with having loads of money and possessions.  

That is why Hughie is also a “model millionaire” thereby “a model rich” person. Hughie’s intent to help the helpless people even in the case of not possessing any basic wealth shows his richness in humanistic values. It is just that our mind is not ready to define Hughie as a rich person because the concept of being rich is mostly bound by the quantification of materialistic possessions. Emotional awareness, intellectual awareness, and proficiency in communicating the intangible things are also another versions of wealth.

Talking about the proficiency in communicating the intangibles – Alan is also another “model millionaire” of the story. He is rich in life. He knows how to identify a high spirited yet worthless (by societal definition) person like Alan and befriends him. He can also capitalize his intangible art through painting venture. He respects the labor he has to endure to translate intangible aspects of life into physical reality. (Imagine the reaction of an average art connoisseur when he/she sees a painting of beggar and finds out that the model was crazy rich person! At least from the description, that painting seems a masterpiece with an interesting backstory.) Even the last wordplay between “model” and “millionaire” portrays the artistic wealth that Alan carries.

Baron Hausberg despite being rich can only appreciate the art and is cannot create it (he can ask an artist to create it). Hughie too appreciates the worth of art but cannot create it. That is why I think Alan becomes the most balanced “model millionaire” of the story.

An “Aesthetic” Proof By Contradiction – Love, Kindness And Art Are As Important As Money.

Oscar Wilde in the writing of this short story’s opening establishes very practical aspects of life and the necessity to have enough materialistic possessions. In the beginning, Oscar makes it clear that intangible things like love, affection or good looks cannot solely help a person to meet the ends in this society. Hughie is a complete failure even though he is good looking and kind-hearted. Hughie has found true love and is ready to commit but that is not enough and practical for his future father-in-law. He knows that until and unless he does not get the hold of sufficient money, he will lose his love. Hughie also has two antiques as a legacy from his father but they are described as useless and non-liquid-able assets.

When we read through the event of Alan’s painting session with the beggar model, it is pretty much confirmed that even a seasoned artist like Alan (a person who is much closer to the art and similar intangible things than average masses) understands how important it is to sell the paintings to sustain his artistic profession. Oscar adds Hughie’s point of view in this scene to show that the sufferings of the beggar which brought him to this condition, his efforts to stand still for the painting despite being weak and old are as important as Alan’s painting skills, that is exactly why Hughie demands percentage share for the beggar model.

Alan is successful because he can translate his intangible skill of painting by selling paintings thereby into real money. It’s not because he is artistic or appreciates art. Hughie can appreciate a good art, knows what goes into the laborious process of its creation but doesn’t hold the skill that Alan has.  

Hughie also receives scolding for his extravagant charity from his love Laura. This also shows that pragmatism mostly prevails over intangible emotions.

And to comment on Baron Hausberg, he is the only person in the story who knows the importance of capital possessions, is capable of compounding them for the influence and power – I mean he is filthy rich and respects money. Otherwise, why would he commission a painting of himself as a beggar? He understands what he would become if he doesn’t have that money. If he truly wanted to mock the poverty and beggars, he would have paid some model for the painting assignment. He would not have wasted his valuable time in this assignment.    

Can you see it now?

Oscar Wilde first puts the mind of readers in the practical aspects of living a life. He establishes that emotions, art, love will not put food in your plate at the end of the day, you must go out and do something practical to earn money.

And then Oscar starts showing you the other side of the same people, same events which are fully in contradiction with what he had established as “practical and tangible”.

You will see Hughie getting rewarded for his emotions, kindness and act of charity. Only a fool who is poor will give all he has to another poor person but that does not happen here. Hughie knows what it means to be poor and helpless. It is Hughie’s empathy which makes him rich – a millionaire at heart. Oscar through Hughie’s character shows his readers that love and kindness are also the attributes of a true rich person. Hughie is wealthy by his character. (Hughie could have turned to some malpractices to get the money but Oscar does not inject this intent into the character of Hughie)

Alan Trevor is a kind of bridge in this story. Oscar Wilde developed Alan’s character in such way that he is a double-edged sword in this proof that there are other important things than only capital possessions. Alan can not only appreciate art but also create it and capitalize it. If we are to rank the millionaires by the balance between the possession of tangibles and intangibles in life, then Alan Trevor is the richest of them all. He also knows to identify and befriend kind people like Hughie. Alan has enough money, a skill in hands and company of good people like Hughie and Baron – the ideal and balanced wealth. (There are no ways in which Alan’s character would have become polluted – that is also why his character is the most balanced character of all- he knows ends of the both sides of the society)

Baron Hausberg intends to see himself as a beggar not because he is mocking the poor people, it is his attitude of attributing importance to things which are not money. Oscar Wilde attributes the wish of ‘a rich man to see himself as a beggar’ in a very conscious and artistic way. Baron wishing to picture himself as a beggar through a piece of art shows how much he values art when he is crazy rich. Again, the choice of modelling himself instead of some paid model is his artistic interest. He knows his reality and the depiction in painting will elevate the artistic value of the piece. Also, Baron doesn’t consider the Alan’s act of charity as an insult to his wealth which shows that monetary wealth has not touched his soul. (Baron Hausberg could have been an arrogant filthy rich old man, but Oscar did not projected him in that way)

It is funny how the story turns out in the end. The Model Millionaire is not just about how a good-hearted but helpless person like Hughie got rewarded for his act of kindness by a filthy rich person like Baron Hausberg. It also shows how different non-physical attributes like kindness, love and art equally contribute the a truly wealthy life.

That is where aestheticism come in picture and Oscar Wilde is hailed as ‘the Father of Aestheticism’.

The dictionary definition of aestheticism goes like this:

“A late 19th-century European arts movement which centered on the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose.”

There is this famous quote by Oscar Wilde

“All art is useless”

Oscar Wilde

I think it is an antiphrasis (the rhetorical device of saying the opposite of what is actually meant in such a way that it is obvious what the true intention is)

It’s not just art but its also about intangible things which the art tries to convey i.e., emotions of all sorts. You will realize that when we remove these art-like non-physical attributes from our lives even when we are materialistically filthy rich, that riches would be worthless. I think that is why he creates these contradictions in his story “The Model Millionaire” to show that the balance of tangible and intangible assets makes the person a truly wealthy person. Oscar Wilde fuses the importance of tangible assets like money and intangible assets like kindness/ love/ art through this story.

Oscar also makes a conscious effort to show this fusion through Alan Trevor’s comment on art and manual labor.

In simple words,

What good is being nice if the man has no money to achieve what he desires?

What good is money if the man is not nice?

An extremely emotional poor and an extremely insensitive rich person both are the wrong ends of the reality.

I mean, if Oscar really meant that art is useless then it is literally useless of him to contribute to the prosaic artistry through his writings. He was just messing with our head to prove the importance of the given thing by showing the effect after its absence. It is indeed one smart trick!    

The American Scholar – The Books, The Actions, Intellectual Humility and The Dictionary of Life

Part-2 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay called “The American Scholar” made an attempt to move people out of their immediate achievements of separation from the English Government and inspired them to create something new, create and value the processes for building strong future generations and deep knowledge of nature. Even though this essay was more relevant for the American generation which was largely dependent on their English legacy, it still remains relevant because of the crispness of truth it holds for every new generation of humanity. The speech/ essay will always transcend the understandings of every generation. See Part 1 to understand how Emerson sets up the ideas of the nature, the knowledge, the purpose of education system and the true scholar in the starting part of his world famous essay.

Now, moving on to Emerson’s advise for a true scholar.

Books – The Mind of the Past and its Blind Worshipers

Emerson wants to establish the ways in which the past wisdom was transferred to the next generation. He refers to it as a distillation process. Over the period of humanity, the crude things in experiences, events lost their unwanted parts and went on to become concise, crisp through books. This process created the truths, the facts. The cruder the event, the experiences the less crisper the truth. Emerson explains the imperfections in this process of truth generation by giving analogy of Vacuum Pump. As no vacuum pump can generate the perfect vacuum, no machine can give out exact amount of work to the exact amount of energy input, the process of creating the truth is also not completely efficient. Thus, it is absolutely impossible to establish the ultimate truth in a single attempt, in single past. The best version of the truth we have today is the truth that has stood the test of time, the truth which has been upgraded over the time. It is very interesting to understand how Emerson thought over the ideas of the books and the evolution of truth through them. He connected a very technical idea of efficiency of any mechanical system to a more abstract idea of the extent of the truth value of knowledge.

Emerson also highlights that the age-old books will not stand the test of today’s truths as there will be may stages of evolution in between which will lose their footprint over time. For example, the idea of the earth being carried on the back of the turtles, the elephants, the snake’s head the earth being flat is lost to the ideas of eclipses, the seasons and the actual images of the earth (even though there are still some admirers to these ideas! And it is also important to understand how people interpreted them)

Thus, Emerson in a sense warns every scholar, every person to not become just an admirer, a follower, a worshiper of the book. Because, the understanding and the experience with which the book was written, the truth was conveyed will not exactly be the same experience, the same understanding for the reader. The inefficiency of the system is the boundary of the reader which can only show him the limited understanding of the truth.

“Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and soul. Hence the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees. This is bad; this is worse than it seems.”       

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson expresses his sorrow for the fate of the books. He calls the people who blind worship the books “the Bibliomaniacs” and “the Emendators” as in the editors of the truths who create their versions of the truth. Emerson expects a true scholar to not become a book worshiper or a past worshiper. Worshiping the past is the death of the evolutionary thinking thereby restricting the flow of generational distillation of true knowledge. Emerson wants a true scholar to lose the idea of a book lover, book worshiper and become a genius. In some way Emerson tries to define a genius. For that he uses the idea of “an active soul”. An active soul is free from the blind influences of the past and thereby the books. It is not following a defined orbit around the truths from the books, rather an active soul itself is capable of creating a system around which others will orbit. The teachings of the schools/colleges, the subjective truths of past from books are questioned by this active soul further called as the genius by Emerson. This Genius is responsible for the creation of the next version of the absolute truth; there is a sense of progression this genius brings. For that he should break out of the past, come out of merely following the books, look forward to the future. Emerson mentions how mere worshiping of Shakespearean pieces killed the future creative progression of English literature. Many creators became over influenced by Shakespeare thereby nothing original happened for 200 years in literature.

Someone might think here that Emerson is undermining the importance of the books, rather he further explains the impact of books in the hard times of any true Genius, any true Scholar. Books serve as the best companion anyone can have in their idle time, they are the kick starters of every genius mind, they are there to initiate the spark in every creative mind but not to drive it.      

“When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must,—when the soul seeth not, when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining,—we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson gives the examples of some great English poets like Chaucer, Marvell, Dryden. He says that even after passage of many long years the ability of these poets to connect with our minds is really fascinating which is possible only because of the books. This also means that these ideas of poets wee futuristic, visionary enough that they are relevant after hundreds of years. Books are the best option to carry this vision.

Innocence of Knowledge and Awareness of Media

Emerson warns every person of the books they are consuming. He explains this with the analogy of survival of human body. The very innocent nature of human mind and the knowledge both can be conditioned with any thought from the book leading to the fact from the book to become the ultimate truth for the person. Emerson wants everyone to not accept the truth of the books for the truth of life. He wants every true scholar to become a selective reader and follower of the books. Emerson explains that the books display only that part which its creator wanted to show to the readers, this also means that whatever we are reading is just a small part of the authors life not the whole. Thus, when a powerful person, scholar (mentally and physically) encounters books, he holds the power to materialize, personify any and every thought from the books. It is the skill of a true scholar to selectively find the ideas and the versions of the truth, instead of going full on literal and thereby accepting them as truth. In simple words, Emerson expects every reader to get the hold of the ideas and inspirations from the books and not blindly follow them word to word. A genius, a true scholar thus knows what to pick from every book.

In our daily lives today, books are not the only source of information. Emerson’s warnings have become more real in today’s times. We must understand that every information we get from media is not a knowledge hence we must be selective and aware about the content we are consuming. Emerson was not highlighting only the academic noise of knowledge in schools and colleges; he was also highlighting the overall noise of information around us in our daily routine. This noise has become more effective in our generation through social media, portable/digital media, user selective media. Beware of the media you are consuming, try to find the pattern in your content and break out of it. Otherwise, your “curated content” will keep on narrowing your perspective.  

Building on this Emerson shifts his focus to the educational institutes. He clarifies that though books and learnings from the past are inseparable and important part of learning and educational institute have done a great work in executing this part, they have completely exploited this part to worse extents. Educational institutions have also established a business on these tools of knowledge to grow rich in materialistic forms. Hence, Emerson also reminds the policymakers to realize the truth that even single part of the absolute truth, the knowledge is powerful enough break this whole commercialized system of education.

Emerson also predicted the future that if the educational systems keep on commercializing the book following, past following, mugging/ cramming up the books culture, create an assembly line of scholars and professionals, even though these colleges will have fat bank balances, funds, even though they will grow richer and richer, their importance/ quality of the education they provide will go on degrading; these institute will lose their public importance.

And look what is happening with most of the education systems of our generation.        

Action Speaks Louder Than Words (and that is not the end of the story)

“There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, —as unfit for any handiwork or public labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called “practical men” sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson never fell short while explaining the importance and power of new ideas, knowledge they create and the legacy they leave behind for future generations. But he made sure that people wont’s god worship the ideas they have. He wants every thinker to execute their ideas, convert them into actions.

“(The action) It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson has identified one common trait that scholars of all generations hold. All scholars, intellectuals are known to be recluse, always in their own mind and there is nothing wrong about it. The ideas sometimes can carry them far away from the reality. Sometimes new and original ideas are so rare and powerful that one has to embark on a solo journey to discover them completely. One has to understand when this pursuit over-influences their mind, it takes a toll over their minds. The separation of our intangible mind from reality eventually has a bad ending. The neuroticism, the inability to communicate such feelings to others, conversion of such thoughts to some extreme explosive actions and consequences thereafter are one part of intellectual society. The mad geniuses, super smart but cunning villains in our pop culture and real-life stories of smart criminals, smugglers, murderers, sociopaths are the exact reflection of such people in today’s society.

Emerson wants every scholar to come out of their overthinking and the comforts of the world of their own ideas. Emerson knew and made others aware that anything is possible in your own world and as it is created by your own ideas, you get attached to it. You will never want it to disappear and will avoid to test them with the reality. This goes on and on and your mind will be full of many new ideas. They will keep on expanding but they will never become real.

Emerson wants every true scholar to test their ideas in reality and break out of the comforts of the world in their own minds.

“Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson gives advice to future scholars in advance that this fascination of their own beautiful ideas, the comforts of the worlds in their minds may seem beautiful but it is addictive and never-ending- it’s like analysis paralysis leading to inaction.

We always fear that our beautiful ideas will cease to exist when tested with reality, it feels like a part of us is died and deep thinkers, over-thinkers can connect with this on different level. But one must also accept that the death of such non-real ideas is one integral part of the process of the discovery of absolute truth. Death of “wishful thinking” is also one important aspect of every true scholar rather every person’s character development. Emerson instructs that this process of testing ideas through real and concrete actions will be boring, more problem creating, anger generating-frustrating but one has to endure through them. One must not lose the opportunity to test their ideas in reality.

“(Action)…It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson gives the example of our childhood events and how they made us who we are today. We are what we did and what happened to us in our childhood. We are not what we used to think in our childhood. (Like how most of us wanted to become a Pilot and Astronaut and look how many of us really want that today).

The ideas not converted to action lose their existence in two ways. Either (and most of the times) they change instantly into new idea, something else due to their fickle nature or they get rotten in a corner of our mind thereby indirectly disfiguring our adult mind. It is very interesting observation by Emerson; he identifies that our behavior, habits, inspirations are rooted in our childhood. Further on and most importantly Emerson points out that it is not our whole childhood that gets carried over in our adult behavior, habits, inspirations; it is the events and our actions, our responses to events in our childhood that shape us in future. Childhood thoughts, ideas converted into actions are actually etched on our personality forever. And only thoughts and ideas limited to our minds are lost forever. Same is happening with us every day, it is just that Emerson makes everyone aware of the importance of converting our ideas into actions by presenting a very intimate and common example.

“The new deed is yet a part of life, -remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson puts one excellent insight in front of everyone. The actions and not ideas become the subconscious part of our life. These actions solely initiate the cascades of event which are always unfolding in our current life events.

“Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing.”      

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Dictionary of Life

“Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions has the richest return of wisdom.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great thing about Emerson’s persona is that not only he instructed the scholars but he also gave the directions to start from. Emerson makes everyone aware of the types of actions they can take and their consequences. He wants everyone to understand the nature of outcomes from the action we will take to bring our ideas into reality. As actions will be driven by ideas, there will be times when actions following one wrong idea will not yield good and favorable results. Some actions will feel worthless, unidirectional, single faced, niche and they will only reveal their nature after we see their results. So, does that mean that if actions are more important than ideas and if actions are anyways most of the times going to be worthless then why actions should be one important part of a true scholar? After all most of the times, they are not proving the point of their superiority over the ideas. At least ideas give some type of comfort to our mind.

Emerson says that a true scholar’s life is not only about thinking beyond limits and taking actions on it. If thinking and acting on them was the only purpose of life then everyone would have craved for acting on the ideas which is not the reality. Systematic thinking and bringing them into reality through actions is just one dimension of being a true scholar. Before being true scholars, we are human beings, we have lives.

“If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Actions, Pasts, Ideas are part of that bigger life. Hence, Emerson focuses ono living the life, which is possible through having different types of experiences, be mindful of each and every experience in your life. Hence the concepts of Actions, Pasts, Ideas are just “vocabulary”, where life is bigger than that, life is a “dictionary”.

In simple words, the things that we are trying to learn and think beyond and bring them into the reality are a just part of bigger reality that is life. So, Emerson wants every true scholar “to be alive” to live through the life they have. Emerson wants everyone to have a life relevant scholastic aptitude, which anyone can have (though it sounds “sophisticated”)

Getting things done for proving worth of ideas is not the final job of a true scholar. Life is bigger than ideas and their execution.

The Great Principle of Undulation in Nature and Influence of Popular Opinions

When Emerson suggests every true scholar to live a live of rich experiences, be aware of the reality around them – he gives everyone the idea of one confusion that will always tempt them to have a bias. Emerson says that the “Polarity” is the law of nature.

In his own words-

“…inspiring and expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold;”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

These extremes in every natural phenomenon creates a wave, an “undulation” in nature. Which is one inseparable part of life thereby every human soul. Every idea, every action a scholar takes will have a wavy nature, there will be some part of idea, of actions which will dominate over their opposite one for a time. Emerson says that actions, ideas, knowledge, thinking these are just the resources for a true scholar. Even after losing these resources a true scholar will not lose his character, he will not lose who he is, his identity.

“Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.”  

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson establishes this to warn every true scholar and remind their real pursuit in life. Emerson through this wants to communicate that there will be times when a scholar will have temptation to follow a popular opinion, he will feel bad for not getting proper recognition for his/her achievements. Things will happen which will force them to give up on their lively pursuits, to give up on living for some materialistic means. In such moments, a true scholar should never give up on his character.

“Character is higher than intellect.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson actually removed a fine line which used to exist between the uneducated, working class and the studying class or so-called scholastic class – educated class. Emerson clarified that a scholar is not the one who joins one institution, secures a diploma/ degree, attends office, decides actions, creates policies and drives the “less intellectual” life around him. What is important to become a true scholar is “the character” – “the attitude”. Every person can have that; hence Emerson instructs every scholar to have that intellectual humility and not get fooled by the popular opinions of “white collar jobs” of scholars. He indirectly establishes that people who did not come from the system have more power to create a disruption in the system, to create a new and positive change in the system.

“Not out of those on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature; out of terrible Druids and Berserkers come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.”

The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson

This really holds true in today’s times too. There are many proofs from famous startups, fortune companies, literary and art schools that formal education is not the indicator of creative disruption in our society. Revolutionary people were never dependent on the systems to create new ideas and bring about new change. Thus, Emerson’s age-old ideas resonate with the facts of today.

A true scholar according to Emerson is the one who has this intellectual humility; who understands that having and creating great ideas, executing them to reality is just a part of life. A true scholar is not limited to thinking, executing and learning only. A true scholar has the purpose of living a life beyond the system created; a true scholar being an active part of his society and can come from any part of it. This idea itself is very powerful.

There will one last – third part on how Emerson closes his ideas, requests, guidance to the scholars of every generations.

– End of Part 2 –

Read Part 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

Read Part 2 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

Read Part 3 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World from here.

  1. The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson

About the thought of ‘Reading for thinking’

Arthur Schopenhauer

A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like a transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural limb: it alone really belongs to us. This is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar

Arthur Schopenhauer

New year represents new beginnings, a fresh start. Though recent years were filled with great challenges, we have adjusted ourselves to the new conditions, many things have changed. One of the things that are not changed are ‘the new year resolutions’. New year resolutions are one inseparable part from the new year celebrations. Whether one declares it publicly or keep it to themselves, everybody has thought of doing something new (consistently!) for upcoming year. Developing the habit of reading or reading ‘these’ many books is one of the famous new year resolutions (please note that joining the gym is still ranks the number one).

Being a bookworm, being bookish person (with spectacles for extra effects) has always been an indicator of studious, genius, mastermind, scholar personalities in popular culture. Having read lots of book is status symbol in the scholastic circles for years. But here is one thought – What if you are given all the resources, time, superpowers to read all the books in the world, will you be the wisest person in the world? Everybody knows the answer- the answer is ‘No’.

I came across this essay by the great German philosopher (and the most underrated one) called ‘Arthur Schopenhauer’. The title is ‘On Thinking for Oneself’. The essay is made up of mere 75-100 sentences but it has all the juice that will last forever if you really think over it. And this man has more essays like this.

‘On Thinking for Oneself’

Schopenhauer starts the essay with an example of two libraries- first where it has lots of books and you have read them all and second one has far lesser number of books, you have read them and have thought thoroughly over them. The second case will be of far more value- Schopenhauer says. The answer lies in the process of rearrangement of your experiences, their alignment with the truths/beliefs you have established, questioning your current beliefs, changing them if they are proven wrong after reading. That is how you not just gain the knowledge but this is how you acquire authority-mastery over it.

In simple words, reading a book is just feeding your brain with some words and collecting such sets of word again and again to call yourself a scholar. This is more of an artificial approach of gaining knowledge and will not last forever. Like, do you even remember what you read for that exam in the school where you scored the highest marks? In Schopenhauer’s words ‘It is like forcing a spring under continuous pressure so that it loses its elasticity’. I think this is what’s wrong with the current education system. Development of a train of thought for everything you read, is more organic. One can force people to read as much as possible but one cannot force anyone to think about them or anything forcefully. The thinking needs to be originated from inside only and once it starts flowing it will go on building itself. This is possible only when one has innate ‘Will’ to understand/ question what she/he has read. The act of reading must start with a purpose born from inside. Read whatever you wish not what others recommend.

Schopenhauer explains this ‘plain’ reading with the analogy of mouth and digestion/assimilation necessary for functioning of body. According to him reading is like chewing the food, splitting it into the pieces. But the real transfer of the nutrients from the food to the organs is only possible through the digestion and assimilation which is of far more importance. Thinking is like digestion and assimilation. People value mouth and eating more for remaining healthy, we consider reading in the same way; Staying healthy is also about digestion and metabolism.

Schopenhauer wants to focus on the importance of thinking over the things rather than just registering them, recalling them whenever demanded. He writes-

“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; It means letting someone else direct your thoughts”

Means it is very important to understand the intentions, background of the writer. When you are reading any book, your boat of imagination, thought is sailing by the winds of writer’s intentions. These intentions can be subjective, personal hence are of immense value to the writer but same might not be the case for the reader. There are many examples human history can provide, where people have stuck to the sayings, declarations, predictions from the books without even questioning, debating over them, accepting them as the ultimate truths and later they lead to disasters.

So, does that mean that you should stop reading?    

Schopenhauer has explanation for this too.

“You should read only when your own thought dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; But to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost; it is like deserting untrammelled nature to look at herbarium or engravings of landscapes”

Books are very important when your thoughts are stuck in a place, when you are completely directionless. Even starting with wrong directions which the case most of the times can at least make you aware of where you are (provided that you are thinking on your own).

The roots of this all ‘thought process’ lies deep down into the Schopenhauer’s philosophy of Will. Schopenhauer’s famous book called ‘The World as Will and Representation’ elaborates this idea in far more detail (this deserves one separate discussion).  

It is not just about reading lots of books. It is about developing the habit of thinking over what you have read; it may be a small paragraph or even a quote. Questioning, debating, challenging and erasing the old beliefs thereby establishing newer ones and most importantly aligning them with your ‘personal’ experiences is what is of the highest value- that what being the smartest species on the earth means. I think this is what ‘critical thinking’ is and the gift of being a human.

In simple words, a ‘book smart’ person is the one who has gained the knowledge just by agreeing to the writings of the books, it may be in his/her imagination. On the other hand, a ‘street smart’ person is the person who has gained the knowledge by dealing with the things in real life, real experiences, by developing muscle memory. You will be a lethal combination of ‘book smart’ and ‘street smart’ if you could really connect your real-life experiences and the thoughts developed after questioning the readings from the books. But for all this, you really have to start think on your own without any external influence. Because, it is always easy to make people think based on the external influences. That is what advertisements do, one commercial and ‘poof’ you have already bought that unnecessary thing.

How can we start to really think over anything we have read? How can we make reading more effective? How can we extract value from reading a paragraph or mere sentence?

Actually, we already question many things, readings in daily activities- but these questions are not pronounced to the noticeable scale and get faded with the time. So, whenever you come across some readings and that makes you think over them, try to write it down and revisit it someday, you will get a new perspective to that thought. Maybe you will think for yourself and that will be the most natural, organic way of thinking- nobody has forced you to do it. So, I would say read once and small but think over it twice and big, maybe think again later (Overthinkers know that better :D) Whenever you are reading anything, just keep this small thought in the back of your mind. I know you have read all this to the last line, it will be great if you have thought over this for yourself too.

Image of Arthur Schopenhauer by Johann Schäfer

Further reading:

  1. On thinking for Oneself by Arthur Schopenhauer
  2. Arthur Schopenhauer– Wikipedia
  3. Arthur Schopenhauer– Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy