18 Feb 2025 / Counterpoint

Befuddled with Being

Schopenhauer lived in, and on, a modest pension with a series of small dogs called in succession, Atma or Butza as his only company. He was a brave and a wise man. He was also as famously misanthropic as his reputation, which included his philosophical antinatalism. He observed that “human existence must be a kind of error.” Before the reader (always in a severely diminished microscopic minority as far as my work is concerned) rushes to errors of understanding, allow me to explain that misanthropy does not mean an inhumane attitude towards humanity. At least not all the time. Schopenhauer concluded, in fact, that ethical treatment of others was the best attitude, for we are all fellow sufferers and all part of the same will-to-live; he also discussed suicide with a sympathetic understanding which was rare in his own time, when it was largely a taboo subject. The spectrum of people like him is varied if not vast.

The Norwegian thinker Peter Wessel Zapffe held that children are brought to bear and given birth to without their consent : “In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation.” And with disastrous consequences. For the individual, for humanity, for the planet. Look around you, dear reader, and you shall be inclined to agree. Look at the profusion of idiots and imbeciles who surround you everywhere : at work, in the street, possibly at home (even if you be loath to admit). Look at the inversely and dangerously downturned measures : everyone wants to be a man/woman of success. No one wants to be an individual of value. Look at the degeneration of our planet. The madness and the pace at which it is being destroyed. Everyday we lose acres and acres of primal forest, every day we lose one species of flora and one of fauna. The ones who cling on to the extant animal kingdom, are perhaps worse off , given their fate at our hands, impending or otherwise. People produce babies with the intensity and ferocity of a mad hailstorm. What exacerbates the disaster is the fact that the dregs of society whose heads and hearts have never bloomed, multiply the most. It is this obnoxious, deadly slime which seeps into everything genteel and refined. And batters at the gates of civilization, as one has come to appreciate whatever is appreciable in it. Money as the only denominator of success today seals the fate of humanity. I do not mean the materially poor when I say ‘dregs’. A vast number of these materially poor unfortunates are very fine people indeed. They are enriched by much of what we consider admirable in a human being. I mean instead, the mentally, emotionally and spiritually impoverished. These are the most horrible of all afflictions. They permeate families and entire societies, sparing neither time nor generations. And incubate or deliver evil. Scratch the surface of civilization and contemporary history ; virulence can be seen. The world is neither ugly, nor depressing nor unhappy ; man makes it so. It is angst which rules our lives end- to- end, even though we all begin life “at the far ends of despair”. We invariably live and end it in wretchedness of form and fate. The only crutch a man may lean on is the realization that everything passes and that the metrics which really matter, are as different from the ones the world knows, as chalk from cheese. It is a curious case of a life lived between aphorism and paradox. Quite difficult. To a man of intelligence (always slightly above average if not more) and sensitivity, the business of living appears inherently vexing. It is quite purposeless, therefore, people seek purpose in family, offspring, wealth, career, ambition, accomplishment and similar diversions which are ingredients of the brainwash and conditioning we slip into during the formative years. Life in the mainstream is spent amidst distraction. It is driven by task and possibility of reward. It is designed so. That is the locus of confounded extremity. One cannot rue this fact. Like religion, like ideology, and like ambitions (personal and collective) the concoction is essential to keep open chaos and mayhem at bay. On a large-scale, organized virulent form at least. An exceedingly tiny minority may escape the activity trap to see the grand design behind existence. But really, to any thinking man life must appear hopelessly futile; confounding even. We come from nowhere and go into nothing. In the fleeting period of consciousness we call life, we very seldom, if ever, know why we do what we do or comprehend the import of anything beyond a one millimeter dive into cause and effect. After great deliberation one may attempt to cobble together something cogent. Michio Kaku, celebrated Physicist : “Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability. Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.”

Tom Stoppard, celebrity writer playwrite : “Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don’t value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life’s bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it’s been sung? The dance when it’s been danced? It’s only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature’s highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we’re expected! But there is no such place, that’s why it’s called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can’t arrange our own happiness, it’s a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.”

Whilst these are veins of hope and purpose, they do not take away the eventual pointlessness of it all. Wilfred Owen’s poem, Futility, attempts to question the point of being born and the point of dying, very well. The drudgery and the repetitiveness of life, are sapping. To glean meaning from them must be some sort of a feat. Dr. Kaku and Sir Stoppard and others like them try and succeed only partially. Like the DNA of existence, their ponderings serve partial purpose. No one can offer a comprehensive explanation, much less solution. That, alongwith the chore of ceaseless life is the curse. Everyone is Sisyphus. Only that some know the crushing experience by virtue of sharper thought, whilst all others feel its terrible wake. We are benumbed by overwhelming weight and inexorable velocity of being. In my thesis life is pointless, futile and a dead end. Unless viewed from apertures of metaphysics, it defies all logic as to its existence

and purpose. If anything, the only succor it may offer is momentary feelings : joy, satisfaction, creation or alteration of a larger condition. For this to happen, vectors must carefully be prepped. And that in turn, is both science and art. For the most part, life for the thinking individual, is a bitter lemon. Pungent, sharp, acidic. Never sweet. Since self-destruction is not an option worth considering, one flaps about the high seas ducking, diving, floating, swimming and sometimes surfing. But eventually always drowning. At the end of it, there is no escaping the waters. And few islands, if any, host shipwrecks. It is Hobson’s Choice at the end of it. This unwelcome and unfortunate, but unavoidable situation stems from the fundamental that people gravitate towards chaff. Awareness, understanding and therefore appreciation of anything else, is nonexistent. We are conditioned, if not destined to gloss over life. To fret and to fritter. To skim. Dives, shallow or deep, are exceptions. No wonder then that we have singular and very linear views of most things not tempered with enlightened self-interest. As for everything else, we have no view whatsoever. Relatively late in his career, Freud observed that “the goal of all life is death”. He explained it : “the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state.” The inexhaustible reservoir of all libido appears from the Id much before it moves to the Ego. All life instinct, shorn of everything else, is pleasurable survival. That is the taproot. I think the death instinct Freud speaks of, runs parallel to the life instinct. It seeks destruction of the external world and other organisms. The preserver and the destroyer manifest together. Vishnu and Shiva may be counter embossing on the coin of creation, but they are conjoined in intent and purpose. Where does this leave us ? I do not know. But I think it points at the curse of existence. Birth and death, and birth again. Classical Indian thought, therefore, scoffs at silly concepts of heaven and hell. The warped and pedestrian view that one must ensure the former while assiduously avoiding the latter. It sees through the trap and chases Nirvana, Moksha, Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Cessation of being. A full and final erasing of all there is, and all there can possibly be. The Katha Upanishad reveals : “Beyond the senses are the objects; beyond the objects is the mind ; beyond the mind, the intellect ; beyond the intellect, the Great Atman ; beyond the Great Atman, the Unmanifest ; beyond the Unmanifest, the Purusha. Beyond the Purusha there is nothing : this is the end, the Supreme Goal.