‘All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ — Pascal
Maybe philosophers are better than anyone else at sitting in quiet rooms alone. Most of us like it. it’s part of the job description. We read something and then think about it a bit. We stare out of windows. Sometimes there is a bit of finger-drumming or earlobe-pulling involved. We do plenty of brow-furrowing. Jerry Fodor says that he does his best thinking in showers, but probably he’s an exception. Sometimes there’s a bit of music, but most of us get to work in quiet rooms. Maybe we’d be miserable if we couldn’t get on with it in that way.
Probably Pascal didn’t have philosophers in mind when he had that thought about misery. Heidegger and maybe also Schopenhauer, I think, come to a similar conclusion about the connection between misery and sitting quietly or maybe doing nothing. Doing nothing is a kind of nightmare for most of us. When we have no disctractions — no phones or Ipods or books to read, no pretty things to want or otherwise catch our attention — we fall into boredom very quickly, and for some of us it hurts. Why that should be is an interesting question which doesn’t get much attention. Some speculate that boredom is living in raw time, being in the moment, feeling the full weight of mortality and the horrible, horrible passage of time. If it is all that, then it’s at least an authentic way to be, a way of facing up to the way things are.
You might try it. Turn off your phone, unplug your head, switch everything off for a while and see what you get. See what thoughts you have. If Pascal is right, you might learn to avoid a certain sort of misery. It’s a consolation you might reflect on the next time you find yourself stuck in traffic or waiting for a train.
It occurs to me that, if we are all on Death Row, effectively, and wanting distractions, why then drop the distractions that we have? I’m going to read a book…
I’m a bit of fan of sitting alone in quiet rooms, but then I used to live in a Buddhist monastery, and it kind of came with the territory there. I’m always mystified (and, inexplicably, irritated) by the increasing inability of people just to sit quietly with their own thoughts. I’m a frequent traveller on trains, and what particularly astonishes me is how many people read and listen to an MP3 player at the same time. Frankly, if I weren’t able to sit on a train without musical or other stimulation for half an hour, I’d have to start thinking of myself as a fool.
You have a view of man as very passive. Maybe the alternative isn’t between being plugged in to every possible gadget and sitting silently, but between passivity and activity: writing, conversing, reading something that takes mental effort, building something, working to change society.
I do Yoga and we sometimes have meditation sessions of half an hour (basically, sitting with the eyes close).
It’s relaxing, get’s difficult after the first 15 minutes or so, and a lot of thoughts come by, but never theorical stuff, even when thoughts about philosophy comes, it’s rarely something I can use in a theory.
But I do a lot of thinking walking, sometimes I am reading a book and the author says something genius that gets me thinking, I drop the book and start to walk to absorb it.
Maybe it’s because of Nietzsche:
“You can only read and write while sitting (G. Flaubert). That’s how I get you nihilist! The slowness is justly the sin against the Holy Spirit. Only what is thought in movement has value”
There’s solitude–nobody around, but books to read, paper and pencil, some good music, a cup of cappuccino. Then there’s emptiness–sitting for an hour in lotus position, keeping mind still. I can see why it’s good to be able to enjoy the former, but don’t really see why the latter has much value. I mean, sure, if you’re a wreck, it’s good to calm down. But life’s too short to waste much of it on emptiness…in my very humble opinion.
In my humble opinion, Jean Kazez is mitaken. I’m a western trained academic philosopher and a yoga & meditation practitioner. Meditiation isn’t emptiness, it’s stillness. This cultivates our awareness of what’s going on inside us much like writing does, but without judging. It’s just noticing…
Potatoes of the world: Disperse! Each to your own little couch. Put on the tweed jacket, light the pipe, twirl the moustache and now, gazing intently on your navel (an outie, no doubt) consider the abject misery of me and my fellow cyclists as we face our mortality climbing that 12% grade hill, our minds absolutely and totally in the moment as we fly down the other side with only cows sharing our infinite time and space. Oh, Pascal, you really are such a wuss. Nietsche, didn’t your mother tell you to go out to play. Heidegger, all you other guys, fresh air does wonders to get out the mental cobwebs as well.
Meditation.
The thing about Metaphysics is that it involves slow thinking. You don’t see very large slow moving being (to on) unless your mind allows its configuration to emerge. Denis Devlin in his poem ‘Ank’hor Wat’ captures this.
The Antlered forests
Move down to the sea
Here the dung-filled jungle pauses
Buddha has covered the walls of his temple
With the vegetative speed of his imagery.
This caught my attention, and I wondered about it. I think the problem is the word “distractions” - I don’t think that’s quite the right word. I think we want something rather than nothing, but not necessarily because we want to be distracted - I think it’s because we want food, we want something, we want something to work with. I think it’s a sign of health to get bored very quickly if we have nothing to work with.
Consider. 1) We’re in a beautiful garden, or a wildflower meadow. Not boring. 2) We’re in an ugly waiting room with a grubby tattered pile of bad magazines. Hideously boring.
That’s not because the garden or the meadow is distracting, nor is it because the bad magazines are not boring.
We want something, and we want it to be of a certain quality.
See? That’s not the same thing as nothing - we’ve got something to read. Sitting in quiet rooms alone is one thing, and nothing is another. Reading and thinking about the reading is the very opposite of nothing - reading and thinking is less like nothing than a lot of more energetic activities are. Reading and thinking alone in a quiet room is a lot less like nothing than is being on a crowded bus full of people talking into their cell phones.
Oops! nor is it because the bad magazines are not distracting - it is because they are boring.
I used the word “emptiness” (as well as stillness) because that’s what I read in Buddhist writing…
Well, OK, as a means to an end (being “ready for anything, open to everything”) I guess I cansee it.
I have to say (re: rtk’s comment), the one situation where I find this state of mind useful is when swimming laps. Letting the mind go empty/still is the only way to keep going.
The class origin of Pascal’s affirmation is clear. Apparently, Pascal was not driven by what Marx calls necessity. He did not have to grow or buy his food, cook his meals, wash his dishes, unclog his toilet, or their 17th century equivalent. For most of us, who are driven by necessity, having an hour or so of free time is a pleasure, for which there are too many worthy activities: reading a good book, writing in a blog, arguing with Ophelia, etc. Only an aristocrat, who does not work, could imagine that most of man’s time is filled by distractions or diversions. Please, Allah, divert my need to clean the kitchen table in order to leave dinner prepared for my housemates before the computer repairman arrives.
From my experience with others it seems that people spend so much time doing things with others that to take a moment to stop and reflect can end up being uncomfortable and confusing. When I’m focused on a task my life is simple: accomplish the task. Should I suddenly be left without a task (and I mean with nothing to do), I may become bored, irritated, or something else.
Philosophers are a bit unusual in that they are usually very good at keeping to a task with almost nothing but their thoughts. There are also a few who can simply allow themselves to not focus at all and simply rest. However, most people seem to be distracted by things outside themselves, be it television or friends or whatnot. Thus putting them by themselves without something to focus on is surprising, and perhaps disconcerting. “What now?” Not that it causes misery necessarily, or that it can’t be dealt with by people in general, but it is something that can throw one off.
rtk: “Heidegger, all you other guys, fresh air does wonders to get out the mental cobwebs as well.”–I’m not sure if this is an ironic statement, but Heidegger did much of his work in the German countryside. His house would be of interest to any who are intrigued by what a more minimalistic lifestyle would include. Heidegger was known to encourage his visitors to take countryside walks with him. Throughout his life, and expressed in aspects of his philosophy, he was a proponent of a closer relationship with nature that didn’t involve domination, and thus in a sense, a relationship that required active participation in listening to the voice of nature. Something that could certainly consume one’s time and energies in the way that a bike ride could…
On a personal note, I find that in moments of silence and solitude, I begin to wonder about spatial relations and rationalize the feeling of weighted-ness with the idea that in the moment of solitude I am cognizant of all that is staring back upon me. Like walking somewhere in the dark…because you can see nothing, all eyes are on you…
Yes, I was being ironic, and really picked on the wrong guy. I did not know this about Heidegger.
In fact, I stare a lot. It is essential, I believe, for any creative work. I think this is true for a physiological reason although I’ve read very little about it. We all know of answers that escape us, however intensely we pursue them, even a simple 5 letter word in a crossword puzzle. Look away, even sleep, and the word, the name, the answer is there just waiting for us. It seems our brain, if fed with adequate information, operates on its own. Without plenty of stare time, my ideas are thin and unsubstantial. The key is a well fed brain. The stage must be set. I look at some stuff, others may read a bit, or listen, possibly sip, whatever. A mind has to be facing its subject before it goes consciously blank. This is only hunch, based almost entirely on my own experiences and working habits, but what I do know for sure is that creative and busy do not work together. Creativity is not busy work. Busy is a bad four letter word although not to be confused with activity, even chores which can be enjoyed. A clear table, Amos, is a thing of joy.
I was not being ironic about the biking, in the moment and all that. Going downhill is not done with a wandering mind. Yet a run around the golf course is a lot more pleasant with my iPod. That’s what I’m about to do now, but it is no substitute for staring. By stare I really mean stare.
Amos:
Pascal was thinking of those who were occasionally obliged to leave their rooms. He thought up for the city a carriage omnibus system on a route with fixed stops at regular intervals. Fare: 5 sols s.v.p. Several lines were in operation and they were a great success but after about 17 years(1679) they dissapeared because they excluded from usage “soldiers, pages, lacqueys and other people wearing livery, as well as manual labourers”. In the 1930’s a minute portrait of Pascal was to be seen on the cover of books of tickets for the Paris omnibuses.
Michael: Pascal’s affirmation that man is incapable of sitting silently in a room, that he needs distraction or diversion, is often taken as a description of the human condition. In my experience, 99% of humanity gets up out of their silent room because the baby is crying, the alarm clock rings signaling the need to commute to work or because the sun rising means that there are crops to irrigate. Pascal basically is talking about an elite who needed distraction from the emptiness due to a lack of a personal project or due to the lack of necessity driving them to get out of the room to find food. Therefore, it is not a description of the human condition per se, but a description of a certain social class in 17th century France.
Helpful comments. Many thanks.
Ophelia, it’s interesting that you mention a beautiful garden. I think Schopenhauer goes on about aesthetic contemplation as an escape from the never ending cycle of wanting followed by either frustration or boredom. You can look at a bowl of fruit and get distracted by wanting to eat it. If you look at a fine still life, however, the will is not awakened. You just kind of groove on the image.
Mellowing out in a garden isn’t doing nothing, but maybe S thinks it’s nearer nothing than the constant cycle set in motion by willing. And his notion of nothing isn’t an everyday notion of nothing. It’s nearer the nothingness of nirvana, the extinction of willing and the misery that willing brings with it.
Fascinating discussion. I dont think we have to be quite so all or nothing though. We can ride bikes and meditate (or not), be still, listen to music on the train sometimes, other times look out the window. There is no one right answer about how to live one’s life or even one’s morning commute. The world, to quote another Irish poet, is “incorrigbly plural.” The guy wearing the headphones might be listening to ocean sounds while he reads Basho, or techno while he reads Manga comics. So what? We’re all going down in the ship together no matter how we spend these moments. The trick as Epicurus said is to take deep pleasure from whatever you’re doing.
BTW its a bit depressing that no one told Denis Devlin that the shrines at Angkor are largely Hindu in nature not Buddhist at all. Here and there the Buddha has been co-opted into a diverse, rich, mercurial, labyrinthine Hindu pantheon and this happened long before the jungle swallowed his temple. When West comments on the East and vice versa its often easy to miss the subtleties.
adrian mckinty:
One just assumes that the temple was Buddhist as that is the dominant religion of the country. That is a gross error but about the subtleties it is a given that there will be mistakes. We live inside ‘rooms’ that we bear about on our backs like snails. We think that we are men of the world but we haven’t left our rooms.
rtk:
Pre-moderns like me don’t take excercise, we work. I’ve just been mowing the garden by the apple trees with a scythe. Nice old fashioned shoulder opening work producing a mild sudation. Things had got very jungly down there with tall ferns, thorn bushes and raspberry canes that had advanced from their original patch. My dog was watching me and staying on the alert for frogs.
Tsk tsk. I have apparently interfered with “meaningful dialogue.” rtk had said–
Taking exercise, MR, is not my thing, either. It goes with eating healthfully, being careful and not overdoing.
Pass the wine, please. Yes, more.
p.s. Frogs? Delightful. Send them here. I have a 2500 gallons pond, but only indoor frogs.
If bicycling isn’t exercise, then what is it, life itself?
Good question, JK, and for some it is. Or It’s a sport, a pastime, a perfect way to see the world - not too fast like a car, and not too slow like walking. It’s also a way to go faster than the next guy along with swimming and running.
Exercise is quite different, a health thing, a painful process by which you achieve some physical goal. Not enjoyable. No fun races. Exercise is mindless repetition. Athletic effort requires focus on technique, especially swimming where you must search for resistance constantly.
Exercise can be enjoyable (perhaps only in small doses). When I’ve been sitting at the desk for a long time it feels really good to shove some weights around for a minute, or to dance or jump around or pretend to be a boxer or go for a fast walk.
Ideal I suppose would be to do it in a beautiful garden…
So much for a little peace and quiet. AP reports this morning there are record breaking numbers of suicides in the national parks. People are seeking the ultimate solace in the loveliest areas, I suppose fulfilling Pascal’s recommendation that they avoid misery by blotting out everything. I think I’ll go for the misery: conversation, good food, racing downhill, a new iPhone, lots of work, a hard swim, a good movie and my favorite lousy tv program, listen to good music and, better yet, make my own not so good music . I’ll even watch for the 30th time the little commercial about the dog who refuses to roll over. You can have your rocking chair among daisies, Pascal, I’ll take chaos on the low road, the one well-travelled.
rtk, I do wonder. There are two sorts of misery, no? It’s not exactly a choice between quiet contemplation and base distraction. There’s misery on both sides. Pascal picks one.
Maybe we’d be less miserable if only we could find happiness in sitting quietly. It’s the difficulty, the misery which comes from sitting quietly, which drives most of us to distractions (even, god help us, to watching commericials). We don’t much like our own company, being lonesome, or anyway the thoughts which come in the midst of boredom. It can make suicide seem like a good idea.
But there’s misery in the distractions too (all MAN’S miseries, i.e. the miseries of humankind, social ones). We get into trouble, screw things up, when we blunder around in life, when we flee boredom and rub shoulders with other people. The human world looks a miserable mess from a certain point of view.
For Pascal, anyway, avoiding the miseries associated with the riot of life by sitting quietly and coping with mortality and the passage of time is preferred. Most of us leap from distraction to distraction — breathless little meaningless circles. Maybe, for Pascal, there’s a long term solution to that sort of misery in quiet reflection, getting comfortable with withdrawing and thinking.
I don’t know.
Facing one’s mortality. The phrase has a lot of weight, even the promise of poetry and layers of meanings. But I’m coming up short with only a silly image of looking in a mental mirror at a skeleton.
How about this? On the way to the pool this morning I passed an old people’s home (or whatever the pc name is for it these days) and there was a man sitting quietly, looking blank. Yesterday, out riding. I was passed by someone really flying down a steep grade. Which of these two men was facing his mortality and which one was miserable?
I do find it clumsy to think of life as a miserable series of frivolous distractions. But then, sitting still has never been a challenge for me, either.
I’m catching up! I think that Pascal was wrong. All of life’s miseries do not come from being unable to sit quietly in a room alone. In fact, I don’t know what that means.
There are so many miseries in life. Poverty, hunger, sickness, war, cruelty, loss, boredom. Pascal’s solution seems likely, to me, to magnify many of life’s miseries. Being alone with one’s thoughts of grief or poverty or loneliness or the anticipation of death or sickness: all seem perfectly designed to intesify life’s miseries.
And then, of course, there are different temperaments. Some people treasure moments where they are able simply to sit alone and in silence. For some this prospect would be misery indeed. But why should we think of the activities of life as distractions? Sometimes, no doubt, we do things to distract ourselves from unpleasant thoughts, but often we do things because we enjoy them. I enjoy a period of strenuous exercise, to feel the muscles stretching, straining, the sweat pouring off my forehead with exertion. This is not simply a distraction. This is to feel something of the very sinew of life itself. On the other hand, meditation has always been foreign to me, and exceedingly painful. I do not envy Pascal his lonely silent room.
So, we all have our ways of dealing with life’s miseries. But there is no simple solution. In the end, very often, all that people know is misery, and then they seek, not for distraction, but for the end.
Eric:
Don’t be afraid of leaving your room and going for a long walk, your patellae are in excellent order.
The active and the contemplative life can be complementary; there is no either/or between them. Pascal was probably thinking about time he had spent at the gaming table. Vain and empty pursuits whether within or without were what he censured I think
Why censure at all? So what if it’s vain or empty to someone else? Take a look at some of the greatest scientific and art ideas in the whole wide world, at the attitudes behind them. Do you think Einstein did e=mc2, trying to be significant? Warhol was trying to be profound with his Campbell soup cans? They were following their bent, pursuing their interests without all these evaluations and judgments. Here’s my motto - no, make that here’s my *philosophy,*no less. If it’s not a waste of time, it’s not worth my doing. I’ll go further. If you judge what you’re about to do, you’ll have to have standards and those standards are the enemy of anything creative. Obviously, you can’t have a standard unless it’s been done already.
Well, now you mention it, I think he probably did. Clearly, he was aware of the significance of his theory, and how radically it would impact our understanding of the universe. That doesn’t mean that I don’t get your point, rtk, about censure. I guess the point is, still, that it is possible to fritter your life away on frivolous things. As to wasting time being your philosophy, what can one say? Did you waste your time writing that, I wonder?
And why, pray tell, are ’standards the enemy of anything creative’? If there are no controls, no parameters, whatever, what is the basis for speaking of creativity? This is pure nihilism. Give me a reason to embrace it.
rtk seems to think the examined life is not worth living. Now, I can see how examining can be overdone, but (on careful examination) I think a bit of that, here and there, is a good idea. Most people want to invest at least some of their time in “things that matter.” At some point, you get to feeling empty if you’re doing nothing but stenciling the bathroom walls, and the like. I don’t think it’s sustaining to keep stenciling away, thinking “Oh great, what a wonderful waste of time!” I mean, yes, that will keep you going for a while, but not forever. Of course, some people spontaneously spend their time on “things that matter” so they don’t have to ponder. I doubt Einstein was getting that empty feeling while he worked on e-mc2. But many people aren’t so lucky. Besides, it’s fun to think about what matters…well, er, at least I find it fun.
Einstein’s theory of relativity was viewed as too weird to get the Nobel Prize which he was awarded for a lesser theory. Besides, what kind of a time-waster sits around listening to the pitch of fire engine sirens go up and down? Or thinks about people in elevators.
Did I waste my time writing? I don’t even ask myself such questions, but I think many of you do. I like to write these little notes.
After I wrote *creative* I realized I meant *original.* Quite different. Creative is subjective; you can create something humdrum. But original means it’s never been done before and therefore there is no standard for it. No nihilism intended. I mean anything goes, but of course the work may not speak to anyone, evoke any response at all. So original is not necessarily good or desirable.
Re: your previously mentioned patellae. If ever there was proof that the Designer was not Intelligent, it is in the flawed design of knees. Get Thee back to Thy Drawing Board O Designer. Your standards suck; a little originality is called for.
I will now do my fritter thing. As is my wont.
Maybe Cheney is right; you have to work with the army you have, not the army you want. I’m much in favor, JK, of bettering one’s mind (not army) and then following one’s new improved mind to redo the bathroom’s plumbing rather than stencil the walls. I do believe that original thinkers follow their inclinations to more satisfying ends than those who censure their own interests. How about the teapot spout theory? A physicist actually mulled over the drip and developed a whole theory about it. Why not? The guy in the next lane to me today, the head of the space lab here, told me all about the ladder to the moon that is his current preoccupation. I don’t, however, just mean seemingly nutty ideas, but rather getting along with oneself, pursuing natural inclinations as far as you want without self-censure and judgment so severe you’d even question what misery to choose.
It seems like most people have multiple selves. There’s the me who’s happy to eat miniature marshmallows all day, and the me that wants to do a few “things that matter.” Of course, I’m going to choose the things that matter that suit me, not the ones that suit someone else. But the marshmallow thing is just as much a part of me. Maybe the very admirable people you know can follow all their natural impulses and get reasonable results…but alas, not me. Some pondering is most helpful.
In fact, the desire for marshmallows is intriguing! The texture, sweetness, some childhood need unfulfilled? Are marshmallows universally craved or is it an American perversion. If this leads you to thoughts poetic, consider it is easy to rhyme. Sallow, shallow, wallow.