I'm in a philosophical frame of mind today. Imminent redundancy gives one furiously to contemplate one's own place in the universe, and I've been looking into the meaning of life, the universe and all that. I've done a bit of research, gazed at my navel introspectively, removed any belly-button fluff that was getting in the way, and I thought I might share some of my insights with you, if you don't mind…
Now I know you'll be familiar with Kant and Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer and Nietzche, so I won't bore you with repeating the more familiar aphorisms - Nietzche's old "When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you" or Hegel's "Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights." spring to mind here, but I did do a trawl of some of the less well known but equally entertaining boffins of the philosoverse - if I may coin a neologism.
Life, according to the philosopher Gump, is like a box of chocolates. (Actually, he said chawk-lets, but I think we all know what he meant.) Personally, I think he was a bit on the optimistic side there. Experience tells me that life is more like visiting the toilets in our beloved workplace. Until you lift the lid, you don't know what you're going to have to deal with. Sometimes, it's pristine porcelain and you can just get on with your own business in a calm and relaxed manner, but more often than not you find yourself having to deal with the crap someone else has left behind. And sometimes it's all just too much and you run screaming from the cubicle. (I've only seen that happen once, in fairness.) But, and of this we are all certain, when that great final flush eventually comes, only God knows what kind of shite will be left.
Some of the stuff that's out there is written along the same lines as the Lisbon Treaty or the recent NAMA legislation. I mean, if someone says "I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying," you're going to feel a tad confused. That was Charles C. Finn's contribution, and it frankly left me in the same zone as the Zen thingy that advises you should knock on the sky and listen to the sound.
Of course, one of the classics of this sort was by a dude called Chuang Tzu, who said "The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?" This was clearly a man who understood the Soul of Ronan Keating, or who had been smoking something very herbal very recently.
Ram Dass said that if you think you're free, there's no escape possible, which didn't really cheer me up much and Heraclitus wasn't much better with "Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death." A lot of these guys erred a trifle on the gloomy side, and wouldn't be ideal holiday reading in the same class as, say, Dan Brown or Cecilia Ahern.
Stanislaw J. Lec said "If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?" which I thought was pretty good. Edward Albee said that sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly, which I also thought was fairly ok, but not as witty as Lec's line. Santayana, not to be outdone on the cryptic paradox thingy told us that almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
A guy called Robert Brault, who's obviously spent a lot of time on Ticketmaster, tells us that "I've observed that there are more lines formed than things worth waiting for." I concur. Although I did enjoy the recent Leonard Cohen gig, which was definitely worth waiting for and supplied more than a few philosophical moments of its own. But I think shopping in Tesco or Dunnes on a Friday evening bears out Brault's thesis.
Of course, if you want profundity, you've gotta go to Buddha (he ain't heavy…) who said "The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground." I don't know if he actually said that for the record, but you know how it is when you're at a good party. A few pints and a couple of shorts later, and you'll say any old thing that comes into your head, and the next day it's all over Facebook or Bebo. Look at Antonio Porchia, who told us in 1943 that "a thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence". He never heard the end of that one from the lads, and eventually started going to a different local just to dodge the wisecracks.
The Greeks, while we're in the classical world, apparently have a saying that goes:" A thousand men can't undress a naked man." That sounds like something Graham Norton might have said at a party, but it is, apparently, both ancient and authentic. Stand-up comedy has clearly been a part of human culture for a long time. In the modern world, and not to be outdone by those Greeks, America has a proverb that states that eggs cannot be unscrambled, but I betcha there are plenty of government research groups and Fas employees out there trying to disprove that one.
Anyhoo, having dipped my slightly discoloured big toe in the shallows of philosophy, I can only say that my own experience leads me to the conclusion that the man with the most profound insight was an Irishman. Apparently, some years ago a deep thinker called Murphy formulated a Law as all-pervasive and accurate as Einstein's wild notions about Relativity, and I firmly believe that Murphy's Law underpins the very fabric of our day-to-day existence within the walls of this wonderful world.
Days like today and months like the coming months and governments like the present shower definitely drag me, kicking and screaming, to the sad conclusion that anything that can go wrong will surely do so with vim and gusto.
Best regards and philosophical salutations,
Des
No comments:
Post a Comment