Things Written Randomly in Doubt Read online

  If democracy involves a sense of involvement and ownership amongst the wider public, then democracy has never come to Britain, except perhaps in those first two post-war Labour governments. Even though it was an illusion. Because the establishment was temporarily buying off the people’s postwar determination to obtain greater social justice, the people felt that they had more control and that was a wonderful gift to society. It would be even more wonderful if they had real control.

  The principal elements of effective representative democracy were described by Marx in his comments on the civil war in France. They included the average workers’ wage for representatives, short mandates and all elected officials recallable on demand. That less ambitious and more practical dream should be preferred to the utopian withering away of the state, which is a form more intangible than heaven or the lion lying down with the antelope.

  Institutions are difficult to reform from within, because it is rare for someone to believe that a system which has promoted them to the top is in some way flawed.

  XXI

  Tomorrow always comes and brings along its burden of grime and crowded solitudes whose purpose we fail to comprehend, and glimpses of beauty, wonderment and love whose caress reveals the greatness of our lives and hopes.

  Love is a proper concern for humanity and the world that sustains it. It is, in practical terms, the application of that concern in our relations with human individuals, animals and things, and the expression of it in our creative lives. By removing us from the tyranny of our selves, it is the balm that engenders a happiness incidental and unsought.

  Hatred, so often an overreaction, is always a burden that brings no fruit but bitterness and further hate – a prickliness that obscures the real but elusive reason for our lives on earth, be they finite or, more unlikely, a shred of some infinite continuum. It adds nothing to our existence and binds us to our selves. It grates the skin and produces unnecessary wounds.

  A theologian is someone who takes the wine of Jesus’s words and turns it into acrid water.

  A man who loves his enemies is not destined to live for long.

  Jesus was not “God in disguise” but many of his thoughts were divine.

  The Romans turned Jesus into a god in order to change his meaning. The Russians embalmed Lenin for the same reason.

  Lenin was a man of hate who knew how to impose his will; Jesus was a man of love who probably did not. They were both motivated by outrage at human suffering. It may be that one led to the other and it took near two thousand years.

  The communism of the future must be based on non-violence. It must not fight fire with fire, but fire with reckless passivity. It must not believe in class war but in the power of gentleness to overcome the fears of the powerful and the greedy.

  All fear degrades. Lucky are the absent-minded because they forget what they should be fearful of.

  To laugh disdainfully at others is to lose all understanding of your self. It is deadness of the soul.

  Procrastination puts you back in control of time.

  Frederick Taylor gave us affluence of unnecessary stuff, and took our souls in exchange.

  Life is not for the extravagant expenditure of wealth on mere stuff; it is for the extravagant expenditure of time in purposeless wandering, loving encounters, endless inconclusive nattering, withdrawal to a book or a fishing rod, and the natural laughter of the unhurried (so different from the manic and coarse consumer’s laugh).

  Frederick Taylor turned production into slavery, and consumption into work.

  XXII

  The “wise man” will say such things as “We learn from suffering”, which is only partly true, even in his case. An intelligent man will learn from suffering by observing – perhaps with great detachment – even as parts of his psyche are bruised, damaged or destroyed, but not everyone can do this. Some people – probably most – are simply crushed and destroyed by suffering, and never revive. Perhaps the imperatives amongst these confused thoughts may be the strictures of a wise man – so beware! I hope they’re not a wise man’s, as a wise man is rarely correct but merely persuasive, and his persuasiveness derives from his powerful self-belief. I would rather be a fool who, conscious of not only his ignorance but also of his lack of method (because no reliable method exists), rashly utters his wild, disjointed thoughts.

  If you speak to a ghost, he ceases to haunt you.

  The trouble with the sensitive is that they often consider sensitivity to be their exclusive preserve.

  I believe (dangerous word) or I almost believe that every human being can develop sensitivity – excluding brain damage of some kind – as long as the inevitable mix of good and evil experienced is right for that person and not too extreme. But “sensitivity” itself should not be treated as a delicate flower, as it is forged in strife and adversity as much as it is in calm and security. The only sensitivity that matters is sensitivity to others and to art.

  As for men who write about sensitivity, they are too busy analysing it to experience it. That is why I avoid mirrors.

  Believe in nothing and your laughter is hollow. Believe in something too much and your laughter is too solid for it to contain any joy.

  Laughter without joy is laughter that laughs at laughter – unkindly, for who would denigrate laughter, particularly when it comes from the heart?

  Speak to a stranger and you will learn much. Speak to a friend and she will reassure you of your convictions. Speak to an enemy, and you will discover, if nothing else, that his resemblance to you is shockingly close. Speak to your fears, and you will travel continents of experience in peace.

  If you order your physical environment, you disorder your mind.

  In spite of all the fashionable comparisons with computers, your brain and your body are not machines.

  XXIII

  Every existing virtue is at least slightly diminished by awareness of itself, but self-awareness mitigates vices.

  Self-knowledge destroys natural spontaneity and can lead to cynicism, but the ancients were right to prize it: it leads us away from the animals and closer to the gods, whoever they may be – the ideal perhaps.

  Self-knowledge is accompanied on one side by heavenly Empathy and on the other by grotesque and tragic Self-Obsession.

  If an independent thinker joins an organisation, he immediately becomes a heretic.

  Be a heretic, if you want to be loyal to what you now belong to.

  To disagree courageously is noble, but remember always that you may be wrong. Many a heretic has died in prison who, if he had escaped and prospered, would have imprisoned others.

  Do not let the harshness and unkindness of others make you harsh and unkind. You came into the world to avoid these things, which destroy your pleasure and others’.

  Better to be injured by your enemies than by your friends, who can be your covert rivals.

  As friendship is your greatest balm, life takes many surprising turns. Accept them as you accept the power of the sea. No exhilarating voyage is without its dangers.

  The greatest risk to a pleasant and meaningful life is your desire to live without risk. Do not over-insure yourself by rejecting unpredictable loves and friendships; the possible losses are not as great as they might appear.

  XXIV

  The uxorious man (who in modern times does not have to be married, in spite of the etymology) is happier than the man who believes that no woman is good enough for him.

  Perhaps he is not happier but simply more attuned to his own emotional environment, for what is happiness and how fleeting that indefinable condition. More generally then, to love is to live and to desire is dependency – desire is to die in your consciousness.

  The beauty of old age is that the brain is reconciled to its own limitations – imposed by the unknowability of the external world. The ugliness of old age is that the body refuses to accept its own limitations – imposed by its attrition with the external world.

  No one can ever banish desire, nor s
hould they completely: that is the road to the hermitage, monastery or, most extremely, the stylite’s column – another form of desire perhaps.

  The way to control desire and the troubles it brings is to busy yourself with exploring the world around you – especially the human world.

  Distrust these few Epicurean ramblings – those of an old man as mildewed or dusty as the papers he reads or scribbles on. Take life for its joy, particularly when young. Learn from the saints and hermits who generally gave themselves body and soul to debauchery in youth and then became ascetics when body and soul were capable of nothing else (in Italian, gaudente describes someone who thoughtlessly and irresponsibly pursues physical pleasures, and gaudioso describes someone who follows a spiritual and ascetic lifestyle, and both derive from the same Latin word, gaudere – to pursue pleasure).

  Follow your heart and you’ll make a fool of yourself. Follow your head and you’ll make an arse of yourself. Better to be a fool, but most people won’t notice if you act the arse – they might even applaud you. Such are our times.

  Think and occasionally utter your own wilful conclusions. Even if you embellish them with doubts and provisos, you will be disliked, not because you’re smarter but because you’re making people uncomfortable. The compensation is that you’ll feel alive, heading into the wind and sensing its harsh coolness on your cheeks. And yet more rarely should you shout something from the rooftop just to see the crows and starlings leap into flight: the crows disorderly, cumbersome and angry like a group of indistinguishable men breaking up from an important meeting, and the starlings balletic in their dance of the masses. Give power a mildly bad afternoon; that’s all you can achieve. Suddenly you feel that you understand the magnificent sweetness and beauty of life, and the air is like a gift from heaven. It’s probably an illusion, but a sublime one. In other words, dear reader, be a garrulous failure, a fool like me. Ruminate but don’t become a ruminant.

  Weight and Counterweights

  Cats and Dogs, and Other Things We Cannot Understand

  Why do humans love their dogs? It appears that many enjoy the regular walks imposed by dog ownership, which no doubt is good for their health. As a walker myself – of the irregular and spontaneous kind – I am constantly aware that I am walking in a park without a dog. Not having a dog means that I am alone with my thoughts, a place of almost absolute freedom, even if, like all freedoms, it is not always well used. My dog-owning colleagues, however, cannot have a moment for their own thoughts, because a walk is not a walk but a constantly interrupted saunter in which the principal scope of the game is to avoid your dog getting enmeshed with another person’s dog along the way. These encounters are accompanied by the ritual smiles generally used by indulgent parents in relation to wayward children. Amongst the tut-tutting and commands barked by the owners at their property, which occasionally barks back, couples make their acquaintance, discuss the weather and, above all, exchange their canine curricula vitae.

  All this appears to be not only harmless, but positively beneficial to both man and beast. And unquestionably it is, but this doesn’t answer our question. I want the answer because I cannot quite understand the attraction, although, quite bizarrely, dogs find me very interesting indeed. I don’t know whether I’m unwittingly exuding some powerful pheromone that has more effect on these servile quadrupeds than it does on human beings or I’m attracting them precisely because I don’t have another member of their species in tow – they detect a perverse anti-canine disposition. Perhaps dogs are contrarians and keep this eccentricity secret from the human owners. Often their attentions to me are entirely amiable or even embarrassingly effusive. In these cases, the dog owners, immediately sensing that I’m not one of them, start to shout quite aggressively, “Here, come back here!” Just occasionally however, the dog in question displays marked homicidal tendencies, and then the dog-owners do exactly the opposite. Instead of coming to my aid, they affect insouciance and then surprise at my howling. “I realise that your dog finds my Achilles tendon and my various peronaei – the brevis, longus and, of course, tertius – particularly succulent, but could he or she – I haven’t had a chance to check – please disengage his or her teeth from them, as I find them useful for the articulation of my ankle.” Unlike the ones who want to spare me the discomfort of being slobbered over by a huge but over-friendly great Dane and continue to apologise for five minutes after their dog has run off for somebody else to lick, these calm and collected dog-owners greet my whimpering complaints as the ravings of a madman. “Are you sure that you feed your dog enough?” I ask in staccato as I try to shake my leg free of the beast. “If you’re short of money, I’m sure your local butcher has some bones that are much more interesting than mine – and no longer attached to any sentient creature.” A waste of breath: these owners use an SAS training manual on their dogs before the little pets are even housetrained.

  But these dog-owners, both good and bad, must be only a tiny part of the entire tribe: they are the responsible ones perhaps. There is a whole city full of these creatures, of all shapes and sizes, and they are part of the city’s economy. They employ trainers, behaviourists, psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, stylists, beauticians, groomers, vets, canine toy manufacturers and surely many other human beings willing to provide for their increasing consumer needs. Dogs are not just consumers; they are also producers, working as sniffers and guards. They are, according to one advert, a “highly cost-effective, flexible and reliable indicator of contraband”. If only they knew the nice things that are said about them! Particularly “cost-effective”; does our society have a greater accolade?

  I fancy that in our city there are less energetic dogs belonging to less energetic owners. The dog, for instance, who enjoys watching daytime TV along with his kind-hearted owner who rarely leaves his one-bedroom flat. They spend their days in companionable indolence, and his owner eases the drudgery with an occasional can of beer. Then there’s the dog that has to listen all day to the ramblings of an owner who labours under the delusion that dogs can eventually understand the English language and all the quirkiness of life in human society in the early twenty-first century. All in all the dogs I meet in the park are the lucky ones.

  By now, you’ve realised that I’m an unpleasant curmudgeon and, if you’re a dog-owner (which you most probably are), you’re about to throw the book across the room. Don’t, because there are cats to come, and you really need to know if it’s going to get worse – especially if you’re going to write that letter of complaint to the publisher.

  Some dog-owners must surely be attracted to the dependency of their pets. Other domesticated animals quickly revert to their feral conditions when they escape or are manumitted by mankind, but dogs are only the fancy cousins of the permanently and irreducibly untameable wolf – they are so very needy. Dogs are not only obedient; they also never answer back or even question their owners. This is an animal that can become an extension to the human “I” – a part of the human owner, an extra limb that occasionally suffers a rebellious tic. But some of us find that answering back is exactly what makes company so exciting. We call it dialogue and we can have no idea of where it’s going to go when we start it.

  So what would the Israeli philosopher Martin Buber have thought of dog-lovers? Quite a bit, I think, as his principal theory concerned every relationship and how they can become dialogic. This was the subject of his most famous work, I and Thou. But first we need to take a step back. Schopenhauer, a cantankerous misogynist, said that human beings are divided between those who on encountering someone say “there goes another ‘I’” and those who say “there goes a ‘not-I’”. He did not say which he belonged to, and you didn’t have to be Schopenhauer to come up with this fairly obvious observation. Buber analysed the phenomenon in much greater detail, and extended it beyond relationships between human beings to those between human individuals and all things – not just living things.

  In spite of my caricature, dog-owners coul
d and do have what Buber called “I-thou” relationships with their dogs. These would be the ideal dog-lovers who acknowledge their pet’s autonomy and, most importantly, what it actually is – its essence. They enter into a relationship with an animal, accepting its difference, its limitations and its abilities. Not only do they accept it for what it is; they also love it for what it is. In other words, they don’t anthropomorphise it and they don’t turn it into a human substitute. Those who do such things, on the other hand, are engaging in an “I-it” relationship. They see their pet as a thing to be moulded exclusively in terms of their own needs. The dog has to be paraded, coiffured, cosseted, spoken to and ordered about like a servant. You might object that a dog, having evolved over many generations to be subservient to man, is essentially something that cannot survive outside its subservience. And you would have a point.

  The counter-argument could go further: no relationship can be wholly “I-it” or wholly “I-thou”, particularly in the relationship between man and dog. A good owner would probably let the dog run free and allow it as much liberty as possible without exposing it to danger.

  There are no references to dogs in Buber’s book, but he does mention the other principal companion chosen by humanity from the fauna and adapted to household lives in a fairly typical passage:

  I sometimes look into the eyes of a house cat. The domesticated animal has not by any means received the gift of the truly “eloquent” glance from us, as a human conceit suggests sometimes; what it has from us is only the ability – purchased with the loss of its elementary naturalness – to turn this glance upon us brutes. In this process some mixture of surprise and question has come into it, into its dawn and even its rise – and this was surely wholly absent from the original glance, for all its anxiety. Undeniably, this cat began its glance by asking me with a glance that was ignited by the breath of my glance: “Can it be that you mean me? Do you actually want that I should not merely do tricks for you? Do I concern you? Am I there for you? Am I there? What is that coming from you? What is that around me? What is it about me? What is that?!” (“I” is here a paraphrase of a word of the I-less self-reference that we lack. “That” represents the flood of man’s glance in the entire actuality of its power to relate).1