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Work work work

Being back in the office after a couple of weeks away always gets me wondering how we ever came to the conclusion that work is a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that food doesn’t grow itself. (Or cook itself, either.) But how did we come to identify labour as something good in its own right, separate from what it produces?

I don’t personally know many people who like what they do for a living so much that they would continue to do it if they no longer needed the money. This is as true for professionals as for those in the trades, service workers, or those whose work supports professionals. It might even be more true for professionals than anyone else. I’ve heard of factory workers, for example, who keep their jobs after winning a lottery. I’ve never heard the same of, say, civil servants.

A good friend of mine likes to say, “If it wasn’t work they wouldn’t have to pay me,” and another who says, “It’s called ‘work’ for a reason.” This suggests something unpleasant about work – and in general there is something distasteful in it. How many of us actually look forward to Monday rather than Friday?

Oscar Wilde used to say that work was the curse of the drinking class. The beauty of that was not only that it skewered Victorian temperance, it also put the Victorian notion of the work ethic in a truer perspective. So often, those who valourize work don’t actually have to do much of it, at least by “working class” standards. If work is a good and noble thing, why is “working class” a pejorative? We tend to like “work” and “workers” better as ideas than as actualities.

There are likely some people – artists, actors, musicians, athletes – who truly enjoy doing what they do professionally. This is likely just as true for those who are barely able to scrape out of living as it is for those who make ridiculously large sums of money. It has to do with what they’re doing, not their reimbursement. People like to say, “Do what you love and the money will follow,” but it often doesn’t work out that way. No one’s going to pay me to ride my motorcycle – or write this blog, for that matter.

Now, I wouldn’t want to given the impression that I think work is a bad thing, or even that I dislike working. I don’t. Or at least, not all the time. My own job can even be rewarding, every now and then. But I don’t think it’s very honest of those whose jobs involve things they love doing to suggest that work – as distinct from their work, and regardless of its remunerative result – is necessarily a good thing. In mot cases, we can think of things we’d rather be doing, and which (if we’re honest) don’t seem any less productive.

My guess is that this idealism of work was propagated by those who benefit from the work of others, and that the rest of us have fallen in line, because not working would be starvation and homelessness. Not working is only an option for the rich.

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Preemptive taxidermy

My cat is an asshole. I expect this is true of all cats, but I don’t wish to cast aspersions on every feline. Perhaps, somewhere, whether presently or in some distant time in the past or future, there exists a cat who is not an asshole. Don’t laugh, it could be the case. Although, it is not the case with my cat.

I have said in the past that cats are the best argument against the theory of intelligent design. This usually causes some deluded cat lover to suggest that feline intelligence is far more advanced than that of humans. I don’t doubt this for a second. After all, Zoe (my cat) lounges around while Adele and I go to work to get money to feed her. When, as happens more or less daily, Zoe wanders around the apartment vomiting, Adele or I follow her around like servants, ready to clean up after her. But then again, in 17 years, she has yet to work out the mechanics of door handles. So, who can say?

I will say, though, that it is not the creature’s intelligence that I am putting at issue here, but that of its supposed creator. But then, perhaps God is a cat. It would explain a lot.

But leaving metaphysics aside, I maintain that, her potential divinity notwithstanding, my cat is an asshole.

In addition to daily, random barfing, Zoe has the annoying habit of thinking it’s perfectly okay to wake me and Adele up several times a night. In some cases, she merely wants attention. How rude it is of us to sleep at such moments! At other times, she will drag a loaf of bread from the counter, through the living room, and into our bedroom, and then attempt to eviscerate it with her back legs whilst meowing at the top of her lungs. Every night it is something different. In fact, it is two or three different things dragging us out of our bed, again and again, in the dark. Is there any better word than asshole to describe such behaviour?

All I know is, she is lucky she’s so cute. As I tell her repeatedly, stuffed cats don’t do these things.

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Up to zero 

Today is my own private New Year’s Day. Another year behind me. That’s 49 of them, now. And what is there to show for it? Have I made anything, learned anything, done anything that hasn’t been done a hundred thousand times or more by others? Does that even matter? Does anything?

How do we measure a life? Clearly it isn’t by the number of years lived. John Keats, Mozart, so many others who died young but achieved something extraordinary, something beyond themselves, proves longevity isn’t the best measure. But is that sort of achievement a useful measure? It is far too rare, and often comes with such great sacrifice. It’s too harsh to say that only a handful from every million lives is worthwhile.

I mentioned Nietzsche the other day, and I think maybe he provides a useful clue. Not that his life is one to emulate. The creeping madness that eventually consumed him isn’t something anyone would wish on themselves. And many of his ideas – such as the will to power, the übermensch, ‘God is dead’ – aren’t really applicable here, either. The idea I’m thinking of is his theory of eternal recurrence of the same.

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche asks us to imagine a devil or ‘evil genius’ appears to tell us that our lives will repeat eternally, exactly the same in every detail, including this moment in which we are told of it, and that it has already done so an infinite number of times. Would we pull our hair, gnash our teeth and cry out in horror at the thought of having to live through each moment again, without any ability to change any of it? Or would we, he later asks in Zarathustra, clap our hands and shout, ‘Again!’

Some philosophers have dismissed eternal recurrence as metaphysical nonsense, but I don’t think he meant for anyone to actually believe that the universe was on a continuous loop. Nietzsche often described himself as a psychologist, and I believe he intended eternal recurrence to be a sort of psychological test. How happy are you? If you were told that you had to repeat your life again and again without change, how would you react?

That’s a pretty difficult test for most of us. Life, as Nietzsche well knew (but rarely admitted), is filled with painful experiences, especially loss. No one wants to repeat those feelings, those moments. But there are also moments of joy, experiences we would not give up for anything. Such experiences almost invariably lead to loss, and yet, even with that knowledge, who among us would want to live without them? If the sum total of joy outweighs the pain of loss, perhaps having our lives repeat endlessly is worth it.

For me, that is the case, right now, at 49, working my way up to the next zero. I hope it will continue to be so.

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New Year’s Day 

It’s quiet this morning. There is sunlight and blue sky, which is strange for winter in Vancouver. We are more accustomed to grey. Then again, we are also more accustomed to warmer days. There is new snow on ground, and on tree branches, and ice where the old snow had melted. It feels peculiarly Canadian.

I got a head start on resolutions this year, the main one being this blog, or rather, the discipline of writing every day, which the blog fascilitates. Writing is a strange discipline. In one sense, it’s the easiest thing in the world. Just talk to yourself and transcribe the conversation. In another sense, it’s incredibly difficult. It’s not just myself I’m talking to, after all, and no one wants to bore their audience. It’s also not really a conversation, which has multiple voices pushing in different directions, and which flows organically, like a river meandering through valleys, branching off into streams, and being fed by others. Writing is more like a canal system, being at once less natural and more purposeful than a river. If it branches off, that is by design.

In thinking about my own resolutions, I begin to wonder what, if anything, others have resolved. Many of us like to say we don’t make resolutions. When asked I used to answer that I was sticking to an old resolution not to make any – just as I like to say I gave up religion for lent. But most of us do make them, whether or not they are formally constructed as such. The start of a new year seems to lend itself to thinking of what or how we can do better this time around.

There are resolutions I’d like to make for some people that they might not make for themselves. For example:

I’d like Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones to collectively resolve to get back in the recording studio together. It’s been seven years, guys. It’s time.

I’d like to resolve on behalf of politicians (of every ideological stripe) that they begin to put the wellbeing of the people they represent ahead of corporate or other organizational interests. All of the people. Especially those who are struggling.

I’d like to resolve on behalf of businesses that they concentrate on making something more than profit.

I’d like to resolve on behalf of Lucasfilm that all future Star Wars movies be at least as good as Rogue One. (Which, by the way, was the best Star Wars film yet.)

Beyond that, I’d like to know what, if anything, you have resolved. Leave me a comment. Send me an email. You don’t have to get too personal (unless you’ve resolved to do so, of course).

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Why I gave up on Facebook 

Those of you who know me will know that I have recently, as a pre-New Year’s resolution, deactivated my Facebook account. I’m not sure how long this will last. There are things I will miss about Facebook, some of which I miss already. Keeping up with the lives of friends who live in other cities, provinces, countries. Keeping up with family, who I don’t see often enough. But there are things I will not miss, and which made staying seem like a losing proposition.

The things I will not miss can be divided largely into two classes: platform ‘features’ that have annoyed me, and more serious, societal issues not limited to the platform, but facilitated by it.

Annoying as they were, the platform features would not on their own have made me give up on Facebook. These include

  • Filtering out of some friends from my news feed, without asking me whether I wanted them filtered out or not;
  • Defaulting to “Top Stories” rather than “Most Recent,” as if Facebook knows better than me what I’ll be interested in (they don’t);
  • Repeatedly suggesting pages they think I’ll be interested in, and people they want me to be friends with (seriously, I was never going to “friend” my boss);
  • Constantly asking me to “like” Mark Zuckerberg (don’t you have enough friends?)

As I said, on their own these things would not have been enough to make me abandon the platform altogether. They were annoying, but nothing more.

More insidious is the memefication of thought, the denigration of fact, and the substitution of innuendo instead of argument. This isn’t unique to Facebook. It is arguably worse in some other spheres, like Twitter. But I see it as being more pernicious on Facebook, perhaps because I care more about what my friends think than the 140 character nonsense from strangers.

This problem has been going on for some time on Facebook. I think David Wolfe, Britain First and others, who use empty platitudes and cheap emotional appeals to build their brands and influence were among the first signs I saw. Everything could be reduced to a meme, lacking in substance, but ostensibly supporting preconceptions, such as “natural is good” or “our veterans should be honoured.”

The problem became more pronounced, with highly spun “news” stories began to be shared and liked faster than they could be read. Many of them, upon close examination, were nonsense. And yet, they would be vigorously defended, largely on the grounds that they came from an alternative media organization whose perspective aligned with that of their defender. The “mainstream media,” after all, cannot be trusted. They are inherently biased, generally toward whatever you oppose. If you are conservative, the MSM are liberal; if you are a progressive, they are right wing; and so on. Whereas alternative media, so long as it aligns with my prejudices, must be true. Facts are suspect, if they do not support my ideology. We saw the effect of this during the recent U.S. election.

It has become impossible for me to see much of this and not comment. Those comments always bring rebuttal, not based on fact, but on perceived orthodoxy. One must believe the right things. Arguing against orthodoxy is almost always a losing battle. And recently, I began to think of Nietzsche’s aphorisms about the “flies of the marketplace,” from Zarathustra. Specifically, I thought of the line: “It is not your destiny to be a fly swat.” Yes, I thought, that is true.

And so I’m saying goodbye to Facebook after nearly 10 years. I have better (or at least more enjoyable) things to do with my time.

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“The Lark Ascending” on a foggy morning

It’s a foggy morning at the end of a long, cold, flu-ridden December. Outside balcony door, everything is shades of grey. A cacophony of crows and gulls squeal and caw a kind of call and response, all rhythm and no song. The cat stares out the window, fascinated.

Adele gets ready for work. Every now and then I hear her coughing. She isn’t really able to take sick days. Who would open the store? Who would close it? Who would mind it in between? Never mind there will be very few customers on a day like this, at the end of the year. There is no one to cover for her. The store needs to be open. She has to go in, sick or not.

I sit listening to Vaughan Williams on the turntable, and drinking coffee. I can take sick time, although technically I’m on holiday, and have been since a couple of days before coming down with the flu. And at this point, I am nearly over it. I will have recovered completely by the time I return in January, a year older and no wiser for it.

By most measures, 2016 was not a good year. Whether it was the endless parade of talented people to their graves, the election of The Donald, terrorist attacks, the war in Syria, or even just the thoroughly crappy fall and winter we’ve had in Vancouver, it’s hard not to look forward to a new year with a mixture of hope and dread. On the one hand, one thinks, it has be better than what we’ve just come through. On the other hand, Trump will soon officially be president; the still-living talented are that much closer to joining those who went before them; war and terrorism seem probable on a number of fronts. Everything seems poised on a razor thin precipice.

But, I remind myself, there was much that was good, too. Just this month, my niece, Abigail was born. Her parents, my brother and his wife, were married earlier this year. Adele came through her heart procedure without issue, and stronger than she’s been in over year. One of my best and oldest friends survived not one, but two traffic accidents without long term disability. It’s worth remembering at a time like this that there is birth as well as death; that illness can sometimes be overcome by healing; that we can survive injuries and move on.

As I write this, the fog outside is beginning to lift.

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Welcome

To paraphrase E.E. Cummings, the posts that are to come are for you and for me, and are not for most people.  Most people have very limited interests. Yours and mine are many, are diverse, are sometimes incongruent, are often out of the ordinary, off the beaten track, or as my former boss once put it: “You’re quirky. But in a good way.”

On any given day I may choose to write about politics, poetry, motorcycles, travel, restaurants, bars, books, sculpture, ideas about time, the mind, the body, whatever. I may choose to write about nothing at all. Or just not write.

And on any given day you may choose to read what I write, to like it, share it, comment on it – or just skip it. Who knows? maybe you don’t like poetry, or politics, Beethoven. Whatever. What you choose is your business, just as what I choose is mine.

Why a blog? Why “premeditations”? Look what good questions you ask! I knew you were the right reader for me.

A blog, because it helps me to focus, to maintain the habit of writing, and because writing without readers is little more than masturbating with a dictionary. (I like words, but not in that way.) It also helps me to maintain the habit of thinking out loud. Anyone can think anything in the cozy confines of their skull. But when we think out loud we invite others to join us – to agree, to disagree, to question us, and to answer us. That is what I’m doing here.

“Premeditations,” because I like the ambiguity inherent in the word. These posts will be premeditated, planned to some degree in advance. Not just off-the-cuff riffs like you might find on social media. They will also be in some way “pre-meditation,” in the sense of being prior to really deep thinking about whatever topic they purport to address. (In other words, don’t allow your expectations to get unreasonably high on me. It won’t be good for either of us.)

So, welcome. Pull up a chair. Stay as long as you like.