Truth Matters

Jesus' and Mo's author says Alain de Botton inspired this one.


"Truth matters because we are the only species we know of that has the ability to find it out. In a way that makes it almost a duty to do so." Ophelia Benson, Jeremy Stangroom

The church of what's happenin' NOW

Alain de Botton has announced plans to build a series of temples for atheists in the UK. The move follows the publication of de Botton’s latest book, Religion for Atheists.

Why should religious people have the most beautiful buildings in the land?’ he asks. ‘It’s time atheists had their own versions of the great churches and cathedrals... You can build a temple to anything that’s positive and good. That could mean: a temple to love, friendship, calm or perspective... Even the most convinced atheists tend to speak nicely about religious buildings. They may even feel sad that nothing like them gets built nowadays. But there’s no need to feel nostalgic. Why not just learn from religions and build similarly beautiful and interesting things right now?

Do atheists and humanists need ritual and ceremony, if not an elaborate palace in which to conduct them? Well, could be. Not sure I'll be in the pews for it, but to each her own. 


Or, they could just all get together at the station.

Stonewall

In light of my recent infatuation with certain houses-- 95 Irving Street in Cambridge, and the "14 doors opening out" summer home they now call "Stonewall," in Chocorua, New Hampshire, specifically-- Alain de Botton's Architecture of Happiness offers some interesting insights.

John Ruskin proposed that we seek two things of our buildings. We want them to shelter us. And we want them to speak to us - to speak to us of whatever we find important and need to be reminded of.

What a load of expectation to place on any mere human construction. But those two buildings in New England reminded me how important it is to have a place to hang not just your hat, but your head too.

I toured Stonewall a week ago this afternoon, with a group of Jamesian pilgrims. The stone wall in this image is not the wall, where James and his metaphysical idealist bete noire Josiah Royce perched for their staged debate-it's out back, just to the right.

rats

Poor old Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Scrooge and Sourpuss, victim of his own wan and withering emotions. At least Nietzsche eventually got over the petulant, purposeless rage against fate that kept his former hero sunk in a lifetime of pessimism, isolation, and despair. But from the vantage of mellow Jamesian meliorism, both resembled rodents.

"The mood of a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche... though often an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only peevishness running away with the bit between its teeth. The sallies of the two German authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shriekings of two dying rats."

But Schopenhauer was not a total scrooge, at least towards his beloved little poodles (his favorite was "Atman") and one or two other human beings. That's why Alain de Botton chose him to exemplify "consolation for a broken heart."

His trouble was that he never learned to enjoy the passage of time. Might as well enjoy the ride, Artie. Give us a smile. "The present may be compared to a small dark cloud which the wind drives over the sunny plain," sure. But why not compare it to sunshine breaking through clouds? Sometimes it's like that, too.

JT does agree, though: time isn't really real, "nothingness itself is therefore the only objective element in time." So... embrace your subjectivity. Arguably, that's exactly what Schopenhauer did. His World as Will and Idea was an extrusion from the recesses of his subjective melancholy, and it gave him some considerable satisfaction to extrude it.

Schopenhauer deserves an award for the Most Howling Non-Sequitur by a supposedly-brilliant mind. "The hours pass the quicker the more agreeably they are spent, and the slower the more painfully they are spent... We become conscious of time when we are bored, not when we are diverted. [This proves] that our existence is most happy when we perceive it least, from which it follows that it would be better not to have it."

He's not wrong, though, to note that unremediated evil and suffering "can never be annulled, and consequently can never be balanced." There's no remedy for past suffering. As in bodily health, we must be pro-active. Practice preventive medicine, and pursue "wellness." Still, to call this world-- or even Schopenhauer's 19th century-- "the worst of all possible worlds," is to betray a dearth of imagination.

I don't disagree either, though, with his pronouncement that stoical equanimity too easily collapses into cynical renunciation.

The bit about how disgusted unhappy people are made by the spectacle of "one whom they imagine happy" scores no points against happy people.

Arthur would have been happy to greet the apocalypse, and would have been first in line for 2012. Of course Pompeii, the Lisbon earthquake, et al barely scratched the surface of possible cataclysm. He wishes.

His most sympathetic human views centered on art, which he actually said helps us "transcend egotistical interests and empathize with universal emotions."

Metaphysician, heal thyself.

Socrates

We're really beginning to look like an Art History seminar, aren't we? From the Thinker to the Wanderer, now to the courageously and cheerfully dying Questioner.

Alain de Botton found Socrates at the Met not long before me. Jacques-Louis David's 1786 "Death of Socrates" is an impressive, imposing piece, well worth postponing a Nesquick for. In Consolations of Philosophy he attests to another philosopher steeped in self-confidence against the onslaught of hysterical opposition, a rational confidence "grounded in philosophy," extending to us all "an invitation to intelligent skepticism."

Socrates was unpopular with the unreflective crowd, still a majority of his peers (and judges). But that didn't faze him, and it shouldn't faze us (though of course it often does). "Errors in our thought and way of life can [never] be proven simply by the fact that we have run into opposition. What should worry us is not the number of people who oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so." (That's an observation that should buoy the President's resolve on reforming health care, btw... but I hope he reads Michael Pollan on the subject too.)

This unwashed gadfly was prepared to hear (and evaluate) everyone's arguments. But he did not think that everyone's opinions were equally respectable. A bad argument is a bad argument, from whatever source. "One should respect the good ones..."

His accusers prosecuted him with atrocious arguments, yet he acceeded to the will of the majority and drank his hemlock. Bad choice, if you ask me. "We should not look to Socrates for advice on escaping a death sentence; we should look to him as an extreme example of how to maintain confidence in an intelligent position which has met with illogical opposition."

epicurean success

Has anyone had a better idea about happiness in 2,000 years? What's more important than "pleasure"?