The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to Be Happy (2010)

by Michael Foley

  Most of these dangerous emotions are based on fear – and a hedonistic culture, concerned as much with the avoidance of pain and difficulty as the pursuit of pleasure, is always fearful. The citizens of Western democracies have never been more healthy and safe – and have never felt more unhealthy and unsafe. We now fear the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, the people who smile at our children, the local streets we walk on, the public transport we take to work and the buildings we work in, which may be sinisterly and toxically ‘sick’. The less visible the threat the more frightening it becomes.

  This is not an argument against emotion. Without emotion there would be no possibility of happiness, compassion or love. Even rational decision-making would be impossible. But emotion must be balanced by thinking. And the negative emotions are so much more powerful than the positive that it takes a constant effort of understanding to keep them at bay.

  The alternative to thinking is not emotion but thoughtlessness. Failing to think may sound like a harmless form of abdication – but Hannah Arendt was vouchsafed a profound insight while attending the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Attempting to understand his motivation, she considered – but was forced to reject – the traditional idea of evil as a positive, demonic force i.e. the original sin or Manichean explanation. Then came the insight: Eichmann’s most notable characteristic was not ideological conviction, nor was it evil motivation, but thoughtlessness. In the Israeli court he functioned, as he had done in Germany, by sticking to the cliched, conventional language that protects against reality and renders thinking unnecessary. Arendt’s conclusion: ‘Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever comes to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing or even actually ‘condition’ them against it?’184

  So thinking may make the difference between good and evil. It may even make the difference between life and death. Primo Levi, the concentration camp survivor, has written that the one quality survivors had in common was intellectual curiosity.185 Even the extreme suffering of the camps was an object of study for the active mind, and attempting to understand it conferred a crucial sense of worth. Wholly bourgeois people, reliant only on status and possessions, had no such resource and were the first to die. So curiosity may have killed the cat but it has saved many human lives.

  And the Levi experience is just one example of how understanding can not only ease but make use of adversity, as the Stoics and existentialists advised. Anyone not consumed by self-pity, anger and blaming can try to turn to advantage whatever happens. For those willing to learn, pain is an excellent teacher.

  But Hannah Arendt’s ‘thinking attention’ and thinking ‘regardless of results and specific content’ refer to undirected mental activity rather than thinking in the generally understood sense of purposive thought i.e. thinking with a specific goal, such as establishing a truth, making a decision or choosing from a range of options. Thinking attention is a purely enjoyable form of thought. But directed thought, while frequently necessary, has always been difficult and is becoming increasingly so. How to establish anything as true without the support of theology or tradition, in a culture of epistemic relativism? How to make crucial life decisions in a culture without constraints and almost unlimited personal freedom? How to choose anything when the range of options is huge and constantly changing and growing? Sartre, who insisted on the necessity of choice, also acknowledged that it was ‘agony’. The price of autonomy is the agony of choice.

  The psychologist Barry Schwartz has studied choice and reached sobering conclusions. We all believe we love choice and demand as much of it as possible but we actually hate having to choose. We demand the widest possible range of options but, in fact, the wider the range, the longer and more stressful the choosing and the lower the possibility of eventual satisfaction; we are exhausted by evaluating trade-offs and haunted by the missed opportunities of rejected alternatives. Frequently we become so confused that we no longer even want to make the choice – the fate of the holiday restaurant menu reader who is thrilled by the first menu, intrigued by the second, interested in the third…but by the tenth is too bewildered to decide and is no longer even hungry. And we prefer decisions on choice to be reversible but, in practice, we rarely reverse them and are nearly always less satisfied with a reversible choice.186 This is evidence for Sartre’s view that we can be happy only in finitude – making choice final and following through.

  It is not surprising that our soft times have embraced a new theory on hard choices. Once, decision-making was understood to be entirely rational. Then it was shown to involve emotion. So now theory has gone to the opposite extreme with the claim (advanced in books such as Blink and Gut Feelings) that decisionmaking is entirely intuitive. This approach is obviously exciting for an age that hates to have to think – but it fails to acknowledge that intuition is itself the product of thought. The most rigorous analyst will also be the best intuitive judge, even if unable to explain the intuition. And the emphasis on gut feeling conveniently blurs the line between intuition (usually reliable) and impulse (usually unreliable). Other recent research on snap decisions suggests that they are less reliable than those based on rational deliberation.187

  The only alternative to difficult thought is surrendering autonomy to a higher authority. This is the attraction of fundamentalism, which sheds the burden of freedom and eliminates the struggle to establish truth and meaning, much of the trauma of life’s decisionmaking and all the anxiety of doubt. There is no solution as satisfactory and reassuring as God.

  Directed thought is hard work but there is also a fun form of thinking – Hannah Arendt’s ‘thinking attention’. When thought has no specific goal, no urgent need of a conclusion, then thinking itself is the only end and uncertainty may not only be tolerated but relished, even treasured. Chuang Tzu, a Taoist from the fourth century BC: ‘A sage steers by the bright light of confusion and doubt.’188

  Even scientists are not exclusively concerned with absolute truth. Recently I watched a television documentary on gravity, which featured a physicist who, in a search for a highly elusive particle known as a graviton, had just spent eight years smashing matter by colliding it at high speed with other matter in a tunnel several kilometres long. At the end of this period there was so little sign of the graviton that the physicist was beginning to doubt its very existence and the theory on which this was based. Was he in despair at this disappointment, the waste of so much time and effort, the expense of building a huge tunnel in the Louisiana swampland? Not at all. Beaming with satisfaction, he chuckled, ‘Scientists are happiest when they’re confused.’ Science is no different from any other human endeavour. It is the striving that matters, not the outcome. The search for meaning is itself the meaning.

  Hannah Arendt argues (and herself italicises the passage to emphasise its importance): ‘The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same.’ 189 To oblige the mind to establish truth is to put it into harness and blinkers and whip it along the road to town. But the mind can also be allowed to roam free, in other words to speculate rather than to prove, to romp among the questions that can never be answered and so are usually dismissed as a waste of time by the practical: ‘Behind all the cognitive questions for which men find answers, there lurk the unanswerable ones that seem entirely idle and have always been denounced as such. It is more likely that men, if they were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions, would lose not only the ability to produce those thought-things that we call works of art but also the capacity to ask all the questions upon which civilisation is founded.’190

  This kind of thinking is undirected, a form of pleasure in pure being, the mental equivalent of pleasure in the body. Aristotle considered such thinking divine: ‘The activity of God, whi
ch is supremely happy, must be a form of contemplation; and therefore the human activity that is most like God’s will be the happiest…So happiness is the partner of contemplation.’191 And, since God is tireless as well as omniscient and omnipotent, He did not need a seventh day in which to rest. No, He needed the seventh day for contemplation. He needed the seventh day in order to ruminate.

  The benefits of rumination have been recognized by some therapists, for instance Anthony Storr, who treated depressives by encouraging them to practise what he described as ‘active imagination’.192 This is a kind of detached reverie, which benefits patients suffering from loss of identity as a result of too long and too complete immersion in the world. In the course of ‘active imagination’ they reconnect with aspects of their personalities that have been lost, develop an identity deeper than that required for the world – in other words a secret self – and frequently become less egotistical and less career-driven.

  Storr spoke of a ‘technique’ but privacy is the only requirement – and even that may be snatched during a boring conversation or meeting. The idea is simply to free the brain network from distraction, then power it up and let it run to see what connections it can make. Of course, on bad days the network may refuse to power up because it is overwhelmed by practical issues, disabled by ill-health, paralysed by despair and dread or merely suffering from a hangover. At other times it thrums feebly to no apparent purpose. But, just as athletes know when they are ‘in the zone’, there are times when the network is perfectly attuned, is itself aware of this and hums with a thrilling vibrancy that promises imminent new connections, the winning combination when the dollar signs line up and the fruit machine shudders in ecstasy and coughs out a jackpot. This is the sublime eureka moment, the orgasm of the mind.

  Like most thinkers before them, neuroscientists have been more interested in purposive thought, or the connections between thought and feeling and thought and memory. But recently they have taken an interest in the eureka phenomenon and sought insight on insight.193

  Their conclusion is that the brain has two hemispheres, the left and the right, with very different functions, and that these are coordinated by the prefrontal cortex, the executive controller. The left brain is responsible for normal consciousness, the ceaseless babble of fretting and fussing over health, bills and career, and for many specific functions including language comprehension, visual processing and linear, rational thought. The right brain has fewer specific functions and a greater connexity that permits it to make new associations (including understanding themes, metaphors and jokes) and to see the big picture rather than the detail. So the left brain sees the trees and the right brain sees the forest. Or, the left brain is a nagging realist and the right a detached dreamer.

  When a problem is solved by analysis it is probably the left brain that is doing the work. But, to facilitate insight, the prefrontal cortex must change strategy, order the left brain to shut up and set the right free to associate – a strange form of concentration that involves encouraging the mind to let go and wander. The brain must be entirely relaxed to make the connection that provides the insight – which is why insight rarely occurs when it is being consciously sought, but rather at some unexpected moment such as in the shower or at 4 a.m. on the way back to bed from a pee. And, if a winning combination comes up, the insight is immediately, blindingly, obvious, because it is recognized by the prefrontal cortex which lights up like a fairground. This also happens on recognition of someone else’s insight, and the illumination of the prefrontal cortex stimulates the right brain to new understanding of past experience and new perceptions of future behaviour. An insight, one’s own or another’s, is a glorious flash of incandescence that lights up the brain and the universe, the self and the world, the past and the future – but, most of all, the sublime present.

  Of course, original insights are rare, but, even without eureka moments, it is intensely pleasurable to silence the chattering, obsessive, nagging, humourless left brain and encourage the right brain to take over. This is surely what Spinoza meant by his many expressions of relish for the working of the mind: ‘When the mind considers itself and its power, it rejoices, and rejoices the more, the more distinctly it imagines itself.’194 And although such rumination can look like mere daydreaming, an escape from, or even denial of, real life, it is in fact the most profound expression of gratitude for life. Hannah Arendt does not often provide T-shirt maxims – but here is one: ‘thinking is thanking’.195

  The beauty of ruminating is that it requires no expertise or training, no ritual or jargon, no special location or conditions. It is possible to ruminate anywhere, at any time. Even solitude is not essential. I have ruminated successfully during meetings at work (though a sudden, unexpected question can be tricky). But, for best results, seek peace and quiet and a comfortable sofa. A view of a tree also helps – a single tree, exiled in the city, rooted in concrete, isolated and assailed by delinquent, spiteful urban wind, but taking this and making use of it to rustle, ripple, shimmy, sway.

  9

  The Atrophy of Experience

  It is getting towards the end of the afternoon of a heavily overcast day at the end of November. Light has long since abandoned the struggle and the rain, which threatened all day but could never summon up the energy to fall, can only hang in damp irresolution in the grey. In the doorway of a dying business the proprietor looks out in resentment and bewilderment at a world that prefers supermarkets to the overpriced and understocked Dave’s Deli. On the pavement before him schoolboys wrestle and shove, though without conviction, more from habit and a desire to postpone returning to dreary homes. Two mothers with pushchairs approach from opposite directions and come to a halt.

  ‘It’s closed,’ says one in outrage. ‘Some problem with the toilet. A health and safety thing. Don’t know why they can’t use the toilet in the main Centre.’

  ‘They couldn’t be bothered,’ the second says peevishly. ‘My Tyler is potty trained but he’s always messing himself when he’s there. I said to them, ‘He’s potty trained but you need to remind him to go’ and they said, ‘Why don’t you remind him yourself?’ I said, ‘What are drop-in staff for? I mean, what are they being paid for?’’

  The other nods grimly. ‘This is what you’re up against.’

  They fall silent, regarding the children so capriciously deprived of drop-in facilities. One is asleep and the other, though awake, slumps back and girns continuously, albeit in a low feeble tone without hope of salvation or even concern. Imperceptibly the sky darkens. But on the billboard across the street a handsome sports star lolls in a deckchair in bright sunshine, his sculpted-teak torso glistening with oil, golden thighs parted to present a substantial beasthood snug in tight white briefs.

  As the November sky grows dark, a terrible truth becomes clear. Here, nothing is happening or going to happen. Life, in its radiance and glory, is off somewhere else.

  Everyone has days like this – and for many it is November afternoon all year round. The feeling is of insubstantiality, impotence and worthlessness. The world becomes grey and dull and the buoyant heart turns to lead.

  One source of such feeling is habit. Repetition and familiarity deaden perception and diminish experience. The problem is that habits are necessary. Some, for instance the rituals of employment, are unavoidable. Others have to be adopted because no one is capable of constantly making it new. To live entirely without habit would be as terrible as living entirely within it.

  But the contemporary dramatization of potential intensifies the devaluation of familiar experience. It was Schopenhauer who first perceived the tendency to live, without being aware if it, in a constant expectation that is endlessly disappointed and endlessly renewed – and he understood how such an attitude makes it difficult to appreciate the present.

  The siren voices of the age exacerbate this tendency to live in expectation – which runs forever ahead of realization like the hare at the racetrack pursued by slavering dogs
that never catch it up or recognize it as a fake. It is increasingly difficult to avoid being constantly distracted by anticipation. Desires are ever more quickly forgotten, annulled by gratification or habit and overwritten by urgent new wants. It takes an enormous effort to recall why something was coveted so desperately. I spent many years in second-level teaching aching to move up to the third level, to the reduced timetable, longer holidays and increased intellectual satisfactions of university teaching. And, of course, snobbery was also involved. I yearned for the status of lecturer and grieved at the ignominy of being a mere teacher. But, when I finally moved up, more by luck than application, the wonder of this civilized new world began to wear off after a year or two and I found myself whingeing with everyone else about the laziness of the students, the venality of the management and the relentlessly increasing admin burden. It took a conscious and prolonged effort to recall the desire that had been so constant and intense and to realize that the reasons for this desire remained valid. I had been taken up into paradise.

  And direct experience is also devalued by the many opportunities to live at a meta-level. Thanks to technology it is now possible to meet, befriend, have sex with, work for and kill people without ever having laid eyes on them. This diminishes reality and encourages delusion. It is not surprising that, given also the contemporary emphasis on potential and expectation, there is increasing recourse to fantasy.

  Of course, Hollywood has been selling fantasy for almost a century but, whereas in the past the movies featured something like real people in an approximation of the real world, the trend now is for comic-book characters and imaginary worlds, as in the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Narnia series. The conclusion is that film fans would be happy in the known world if they could be superheroes but, otherwise, would like to go through the back of a wardrobe into an entirely new world.