Before I begin my exegesis of another seciton of Marinoff's wonderful book, let me share something with my readers. As I've been reading Marinoff's book, I've been talking to my wife about it and sharing bits and pieces of it. Yesterday, as I was doing this, she expressed a great deal of frustration at the fact that "others are writing your books!" Indeed, I have found little in Marinoff's book that I have not already talked about with my wife or friends, or which I have not written about in various ways in various unpublished essays -- or here, on this blog. Maybe, if I can find both the time and the money (the two are intimately related, you know), I will be able to get back to work on my own book-length projects. In the meantime, it's good to know that i'm part of some kind of zeitgeist. Notwithstanding Nietzsche's observations to the contrary, even philosophers need society.
But that is an aside getting me away from the issue of the fact that, as Marinoff observes, "Liberty and responsibility go hand in glove" (83). I've already touched on this issue in other posts, talking about the difference between liberty and libertinage. True liberty exists on the borderlands of order and chaos, just as all complex, creative systems do. Marinoff explains that "As long as you are content to blame others for your discontents, as long as you refuse to accept the proper measure of responsibility for your unhappiness, you will not be liberated from your suffering. But as soon as you begin to understand the role that your own view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration play in the production of your suffering, then you become free to produce the next moment according to your willingness to suffer, or not to suffer" (83). We suffer to the extent that our world is chaotic. But trying to push yourself into some sort of rigid order also creates suffering. We must find that sweet spot between the two -- that spot of liberty rooted in responsiblilty for both ourselves and others.
One of the things I learned from reading economics is that people are typically in the situation they want to be in. You are either accepting of the situation you are in, or you are actively working to change your situation. If you say you don't like your job, but you are not doing anything to change jobs, then your actions belie your words. We hear people all the time saying, "I would do anything if X," but they aren't doing anything to achieve X. It becomes clear that they would not do anything -- and are not even doing much -- to achieve what they say they want. There's an old (and quite unfunny if you're not a hard-core economist) joke that goes thus:
Two economists are walking down the street and see a Lambourgini parked beside the street. The first economist says, "I want a Lambourgini just like that one." The other economist replied, "No you don't."
The point is that if the first economist really wanted one, he would either have it, or he would be working to get it. Much of our suffering comes about when we go on and on about wanting this or that when in fact we really don't want it, or else we would be working to get it. We need to be honest about what we want, about what we need, about what our priorities actually are. My father is a coal miner, and if he wanted to be something other than a coal miner, he would have done it. But for various reasons, he has chosen to remain a coal miner. But ultimately, it was his choice. Ultimately, we have all chosen our lives.
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