pinkfloydpsw's Blog

“Marry well and you will be a happy man, marry poorly and you will become a philosopher”

I can’t remember who said this, I do now think it may be true though. I read and wrote philosophy when I was married, I studied economics and politics too, and I felt very strongly about all three subjects. Now I have a new found happiness in divorce and I don’t seem to be able to be as passionate as I once was about those things that really matter. Bummer really, I was on a journey, maybe I should have stayed unhappy? How do I get it back? Must I be miserable again? One theory I strongly believe in, and I’m not sure if it’s mine or somebody else’s, is that change is only necessitated by failure or possible failure, meaning that my ability to philosophise may be contingent on a conflict somewhere else in my existence. This is a problem, I am without conflict now… Eros is gone and Thanatos seems a long way away now (love and death).

I have more difficulty to come, my place of work will become empty soon save for the skeleton crew that works the summer, then I will be alone day, evening and weekend. I think that will be very hard for me to cope with and intend to get through it by writing, though I must hope now to be less introspective during that period than I have been since March. The question I have to ask is this… Did every writer of great works know misery, or at least feel misery and be able to embrace it temporarily, while they wrote? It seems that it is our unhappiness that is our greatest tool when we wish to critically examine something in words. Noam Chomsky makes this point brilliantly when he says that “two minutes is enough to agree with the majority, two minutes is not long enough to disagree or to explain why you disagree with the majority” meaning that during a TV interview the guests do not get equal opportunities even if they are afforded equal time because the contrarian has, by necessarily, much more material to present and is of course hoping to change minds rather than bolster their already held beliefs.

I suppose I could be wrong, Sartre admitted to being rather happy while he wrote existential works about death and inspired a generation to dress in black and drink too much coffee, Nietzsche obviously enjoyed the arguments he made, Chomsky seeks out argument as did Hitchens, Galloway (in my opinion an intellectual of great power) relishes his ability to demolish mediocre arguments and quite obviously enjoys being smarter than his interlocutors. What these men have in common is that they passionately disagree with what they see the world being or becoming, they are unhappy about something or other. Unhappy people get things done, the world is not full of people protesting on behalf of the status quo (N Korea excepted), each person who protests in any way is highlighting their discomfort and trying to shed light upon what they see as wrong, it is this protest that I seem incapable of at the moment. I suppose it’s possible that I’m introspecting far too much to focus on the external, and maybe I need to do so just for now. My great hope is that it wont last long, it was narcissism (from my former wife) that made my marriage fail so miserably and it is narcissism that might become my life also if I let it be so. what I have learned from online dating is that the temptation is to over focus on the self since it is the self that must be sold and it is myself that is the salesman of it. I have no wish to make every passing thought one about me and my needs, that would mean coming out of a bad situation only to create it again but with the difference the next time being one where I am the bad guy rather than the victim, I intend to be neither from now on. They say (now there’s a phrase I try to rarely use) that the harmed can and do become the harming, I also have no wish for that to be so.

I will get back to what really matters, and soon, but I will also continue to use my blog as a journal for my life, it’s cathartic for me even if nobody reads it.

Paul Simon Wilson