Previous - 69. When cities work
Alice Herz-Sommer
I may be reviving my Regieren blog soon, but not quite yet. The reason is the latest book for my book club, that I started reading yesterday,A Century of Wisdom: Lessons From the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor
by Caroline Stoessinger, Spiegel & Grau, 2012
I have to admit I didn't think this title sounded promising, but, as usual, it's a mistake to generalize about people, even Holocaust survivors. That at 108 she sites the Stoic Epictitus as a guide to life, in particular his statement, "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for those which he has," quickly won me over.
Philosophy
Being me, you can't just drop this quote into my mind without it having consequences. (Yesterday I only read the Forward by Vaclav Havel and the Prelude by the author.) When Epictitus enters my mind he brings along his buddies Epicurus and Diogenes. After a tasty lunch, I started thinking about Epicureanism -- in the academic, not the popular, sense.Being cheap, I have a natural affinity for the principles of Epicurus. The cafes I frequent tend to have decent (veggie) food at reasonable prices (and usually good WiFi.) Even my favorite Burmese place has comparatively cheap prices (it's location half way to Hawaii helps with this.) My regular pizzerias are not places I would take an out-of-town visitor devoted to sampling the best pizza.
A purest Epicurean (a vegan to my veggie) would opt for even simpler and cheaper cuisine. In fact you could probably make a philosophically Epicurean argument for Fast Food. But what's the point of living a life spent trying to elude cravings you can't easily satisfy? If you are that keen to keep disappointment and longing at bay you should probably opt for suicide as the perfect (and simple) way to avoid all future problems. I can't believe Diogenes never suggested this, so this probably isn't an original notion.
And speaking of the most famous Cynic, while a modern Cynic would probably be a dumpster diver, I think she would have the sense to prefer dumpsters behind upscale restaurants.
Need + meaning + story
But all this was yesterday and I had almost forgotten about it when I ran into an article written by the Dalai Lama today on Facebook. (Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded.) I think this is completely true, though I would like to add a Victor Frankl note and add the importance of meaning. While being needed can give a life meaning -- in either the superficial sense of having a reason to get up in the morning, or the more profound sense of the suicide bomber who wants his death, and therefore his life, to have a meaning to some cause or other -- this relationship between need and meaning is not always present. (And this sense of meaning for the suicide bomber connects back to the philosophical advantage of death vs all the contingencies of life.)But in addition to "need" and "meaning" there is also my old friend "story." Riding the bus this morning to my favorite breakfast place -- while thinking about all this -- I noticed an advert on the side of a bus for the latest TV show by an English actor (Hugh Laurie) who recently wrapped up a long run on another, very interesting, show ("House"). I could come up with a list of other actors who have made similar transitions recently, but why did they have to leave good shows with established audiences? I would argue the reason is that the long running shows had run out of compelling stories. The material had played out, like a vein of gold in a mountain.
What people (and we may as well say Trump supporters, since that's what we're really talking about), want is to be needed, for their existence to have meaning, and to participate in a compelling story. I still hope they will be satisfied with scaring society to the point that society is forced to address these social requirements, but this is the same level of hope I have that the California drought will end or that all the people in my building will suddenly compost their waste properly -- more of a wish than an expectation.
