In

2004, I wrote an essay that discussed preference

Hedonism – “the view that the best

Life consists in maximizing the life

Of pleasures one would prefer most

If one could have experienced all the alternatives.”

Its title: “Substantive Good Theories &

Neostoic Grief Over Doom-Nation in

An Object-Ridden World.”

That was about the time I was changing camps, moving out

of what a friend calls the dark forest of Faith

_______

Here it is:

substantive good theories & neostoic grief over doom-nation in an object-ridden world

deidre pike 9.16.2004

Patience for Richard Nelson’s book The Island Within is hard-won.

He is the bird on the rooftop, calling “like a holy man chanting on a street corner, a sacred emissary in a profane world, surrounded by blowing papers, people walking by without paying attention.”

Can’t pay attention. Realize more than ever how careless with words I am, how I lack the ability to concentrate and focus and make deliberate choices.

Revoke the girl’s license to write.

The conflict: I quickly tire of Nelson’s island, of his intense preoccupation with rain, of what seems like his subpar relationships with his people (possible exception, his son). At least a couple of times, he writes of wondering what his partner Nita is thinking, or if she’s crying. Why the hell, I wonder on her behalf, doesn’t he just ask her? What is wrong with this man? I project myself into the place of the woman and feel cut-off and excluded though I have absolutely no idea how she views her relationship. Perhaps she really enjoys staying back at camp with Ethan while her honey goes out on joyous surfing and hunting adventures.

I project myself because she is me and I, too, am left out of these peak male experiences, moments of wonder. I have nothing to do with them. They are his, sole possession of my own Richard, who can’t seem to get enough mountain.

I probably couldn’t make it up Mt. Rose.

From whence does self-loathing come, related to anger perhaps, and what beliefs does its existence presuppose and how could it be used or set aside to achieve eudaimonia?

My puppy is crying, locked in my daughter’s bedroom. I let her out.

I might buy Martha Nussbaum’s book. About emotions and intelligence.

It’s a curious feeling, this being bombarded with so many words on such simple, complex topics. I enjoy philosophy. What if I could just read and think and write in a quiet place? What would that be like?

How is a life made good?

If a fundamental list of the elements of a good life were created, who would get to say what was included? Arriving at an agreement on this would happen how?

How do emotions impact our decisions?

Can all this information help us change the world?

#

“One difficulty,” writes Sissela Bok in a critique of Thomas Scanlon’s “Value, Desire and Quality of Life,” “is that of achieving compromise between people’s views of what makes life good or valuable.”

Some religious beliefs include the idea that suffering is neat-o. Some aren’t concerned about the consequences of our present behavior on this planet because of the coming doom-ation in which all will be wiped out. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, … and there is no longer any sea.” (Rev. 21:1) Marxists, writes Bok, might work to counteract “reformist development efforts,” in order to allow chaos and misery to increase—thus hastening us all to the revolution.

#

It occurs to me that fierce religious and political beliefs are possibly an impediment to whatever we might imagine as progress. (What a wussy understand-ment that is. Yes, I was there for Sen. John Edwards’ talk on the Quad at the University of Nevada, Reno, this week. I saw the pro-Bush people confined to their little free-speech zone and thought how counterproductive these divisions are, to say the least.)

At this point, a Stoic might say, I can embrace that this is the case, that the appearance of a religious/political wrench in the gears has become my judgment. Or I can repudiate the idea—buy into a kind of paradox that insists things aren’t what they seem. Or I can not commit myself one way or the other.

Of course, that all seems relatively obvious.

 

“And God himself shall be among them, and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes and there shall no longer be any death, there shall no longer be any mourning or crying or pain, the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:3b, 4)

 

Female friend, after drinking far too much, leans on my shoulder as we sit under the moon and stars at the end of the cul de sac.

“I’m not perfect,” she says. “I can’t be perfect, the perfect mom, the perfect wife. I can’t keep the house perfect. And that’s what he wants.”

So she doesn’t complain when he drops a $1,000 for a good night on the town with his buddies. She doesn’t argue when he expects her to cook dinner after she’s worked the same 10-hour day that he’s worked.

“I don’t want to be one of those wives who’s always complaining, you know,” she tells me. And she’s slurring her words and I’m saying, yes, yes, I know what you mean.

Because those crusty whining women end up alone with the kids and the bills. And the men who make twice as much money as their female counterparts who’ve chosen family-friendly careers and who make numerous career sacrifices to do the kid thing—these men merely move on to find newer, younger uncomplaining versions of us. They buy convertibles and we drive beaters.

The modern suburban woman’s dilemma: Shitty or shittier? It is 2004. We no longer complain about this. There is no realization, only numbness and possibly anger disguised as something else.

 

Fatigue.

Diverging preferences.

Contractual approaches.

Preference hedonism—“the view that the experience of living a life is made better by the presence in it of those mental states, whatever they may be, which the person living the life wants to have, and is made worse by containing those states which that person would prefer to avoid.”

Christians, hedonists who enjoy the mental state of certainty in the best of times, a certainty that there is One Way that often can exclude other belief systems. My son, 21, and I talking about faith healing at breakfast. God doesn’t give out superpowers, he asserts, having read a book on grace equality or some such. “The rain falls on everyone the same.”

The rain, the island, splendid isolation.

Nelson dealing with grief: “I felt a part of these people whom I so love, yet separate from them: always the anthropologist … never entirely within, never entirely without, even among the closest of your kind.” (238)

Nussbaum: “Can I assent to the idea that someone tremendously beloved is forever lost to me, and yet preserve emotional equanimity? The neo-Stoic claims that I cannot.” (40)

We can not care. In theory.

We can stuff our emotions, allowing them to mutate and manifest in different forms.

We can defer pain, sometimes, in the case of the believer, forever hoping that the end is not the end.

Or we can feel. And wonder at the emotion.

“How can I still feel these burdens, still feel alone, in the midst of all these loving raindrops?” Nelson writes. “If I could have one wish, I would drink down the clouds and sing with a voice of rain.”

 

And finally, the island becomes the man or vice versa: “When I touch my self, I touch a part of the island. It lives within me as it also give me life. I am the island and the island is me.”

This is how I feel about my children.

 

A dead pigeon lies in a pile of feathers on the road, half a block from my house. I drive by it and try not to look. A plastic grocery bag lurks in my spent sunflower patch (all headless stalks as I harvested the flowers into brown bags in the garage). I do not retrieve the bag.

Doomed me.

“But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Rev. 21:8)

Perhaps it’s the fear of hell that causes another degree of destruction. If you’re already damned, what the hey? The pirates make a toast in the Disney movie Pirates of the Caribbean: “Take what you can! Give nothing back!”

Then again.

My son, 14, harvests scallions and potatoes in a community garden near downtown Reno. He and other students at his charter school cook them up with squash and tomatoes.

“Did you know, Mom,” he asks, “that cooking a tomato makes its zing even zingier?”

My kids. The substantive good on the top of my list of preferences.