I was doing Lumosity just a few seconds ago, and it is funny that when I am really doing well, strong emotions come up, old blockages. There is something in me which all my life has put the brakes on, has prevented me from fully expressing myself, from working in a sober and diligent way for long term successes.
And that something is fading. I cannot describe how difficult some of these emotions are to process, but it is very much like a case of indigestion you know will pass.
It is not my intention to be a psychological exhibitionist, but it is my conviction that our society has become used to dealing in trifles, used to using the countless distractions mass society has made available to avoid processing deep feelings, so I want to be one person saying that it is both possible and NECESSARY.
And I did want to generalize this thing. I am of course well aware of projection, but do think that people are introspective and habitually honest can largely take it into account.
And I do think in some ways I look at Sartre as someone I could have been, with only a slightly different temperament. Perhaps atheism alone would have done it.
And I don’t mean to say I have his talent. Candidly, other than my knowledge that he was a rock star in his time, I have no way of assessing how intelligent his work was.
What I can say is it was not apparently USEFUL for substantially anyone, which is my own way of measuring actual talent. I will say that by my own criteria, an average carpenter is much more useful to the world–much more functionally intelligent, much more to be admired–than an intellectual who makes things WORSE. That is the equivalent of building a structure which falls over the first time it is used, and then blaming the lumber. It is mediocrity, nothing more, or less, no matter how apparently intelligent otherwise, no matter how effectively those masses of words sopped up the excess cerebrations of equally mediocre human beings.
I was thinking today about how different our world would be if in the middle of our culture, our elites were working hard at cultivating Goodness, at cultivating ACTUAL love, ACTUAL compassion, ACTUAL empathy, and ACTUAL correlation between stated goals and chosen means.
As I have said, Goodness in my view consists in large measure in learning how to see the world as it is, with a sincere desire both to learn how to be happy oneself, and to support other people in their own efforts to build their own happiness. It consists in wishing others well, sincerely.
How valued is sincere perception in our world? Not very, in my view.
In the case of Nausea, it is the recognition, on an emotional level, that something very wrong, very horrible was done, which cannot be integrated into any narrative which does not presuppose the inclusion of evil, which does not requite connecting with evil, with seeing the harm people are capable of doing to one another, on a deep emotional level.
With regard to Sartre, can we not assume his embrace of Stalinism, of mass death and torture, of slavery, and mass poverty, was not made necessary by his own failure to deal with his own psychological ghosts? By his encounter with Nausea, and decision to consider it a defining attribute of “authenticity”, and not a sort of illness, a relic of the past to be processed and disposed of?
Things to do. This came out differently than I intended, but the thing will circle around. I’ll continue later.