July 6, 1995
Dear S:
I'm writing this letter to you, but it's meant for me. I'm using you as an exterior object for me to try to explore what I think is important about how to live, and I don't pretend to know how the exploration will turn out until I get there. The letter is sort of a Rilke letter to young poet idea -- use someone who represents an extreme point of you as a pole against which to project ideas.
In this case, you represent the extreme, and consistent, position of anti-quality, of laziness, sarcasm, selfishness, and uncaring. Although this sounds insane, I do not mean these words to be criticisms. If it were so obvious to me that these qualities were totally contemptible, I would not write the letter. Rather, they are for me part of myself, a large part of myself, which I am torn between fighting -- in the name of what -- and indulging. I would indulge them if I could not name what that 'what' is, if I could not articulate reasons for living a life of some quality -- how that can be defined I'll go into shortly. Why bother. In some ways, that's the question.
It's been asked many times before. "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation," said Thoreau. The idea has been turned into a cliche - "Be all that you can be." The opposing point of view has equal currency in our society, at least from my way of looking at it. Television, for example, is essentially death. It's the turning off of everything human. What have you done in a day of watching television. You have killed not only the day but yourself, because you are making nothing out of yourself.
Making "something," on the other hand, is not one thing or another. Obviously, it varies with the individual, and encompasses nearly everything. Both the readily apparent -- producing art, being a good and connected parent, religious genuineness, climbing mountains, achieving a positive social change -- and the entirely unapparent -- a real life of extremes, for example -- count. How much richness is there in what you're doing.
Much of the discourse, plainly, is appropriated from 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' which seeks to isolate from among all goods of the world and all enlightenments some quality, which Pirsig calls "Quality," appropriately enough. The genesis of the experiment came from a writing assignment he gave asking students to define quality. The reasoning goes, if you can't reduce it to other things, it must be its own thing. Quality, then, exists independently of other objects and concepts.
Quality's manifestations vary as much as its accessibility. To the zen buddhist it is the undefinable this-ness of the real world -- not something about the world, but "just" the world, in its purity and reality. To the Jew it is both the impregnation of the world with the majesty of its existence/ the wonder of the fact that things are that they are (Gcd, lower "triangle") and the transcendence and utter unknowability, atemporality/immediacy, and ineffability of whatever "God" "Is" (Gcd, upper "triangle"). To the artist or musician it is the completed work, or maybe the creative spark, in perfection. Etc.
You would say that this is just a matter of preferences, that quality is just another word for what you like. What is the response to this? One response is the death argument: Thoreau's other sentence, "I came to the woods.. so that when I die, I would not discover that I had not lived." (Paraphrased; he said it better.) You only live at least once, and the world is so manifestly full of richness; there are qualitative differences between those pleasures which are just "fun" and those pleasures or goods which deeply touch this "marrow" of life. Even humanity can be at its best ingenius, cunning, and beautiful. The richness of human relations - whether attributable in cause to genetic programming or "love" - is phenomenologically beautiful. And what human beings can achieve when they decide to be noble, to do the dharma that they have in front of them honestly and with dedication, is remarkable. This counts for goods regardless of preference. The Good isn't 'what I like' because richness of quality covers anything so long at it makes life worth living. It covers the famous and the obscure; both the Taj Mahal and the son that loves his father are testament to humanity's capability for goodness.
Correspondingly, there is an astonishing capability for evil. What is evil, anyway. The manicheanism that pervades most common conception of evil -- that it is some thing all its own -- leads to strange conclusions. Is there some "evil force" "out there" somehow? It seems rather strange, and rather upsetting if there is really an omnipotent force associated with the good. So junk everything you associate with the term 'evil.' Let's build it anew, because it can be a useful term. The way I would look at evil would be to say that it is turning away from good. Just as good is not a thing 'out there' -- goodness on the part of humans is a description of becoming, not of being. There is no entity which wakes up in the morning and Is Good. A person is good when he/she acts in a certain way, or improves himself, or seeks to strive towards the unattainable perfection (ideal). Likewise, evil is that which turns us away from truth and from bare reality as it is. Radical evil, like the holocaust, is not only evil on a grand quantitative scale but evil on a grand qualitative scale: the dehumanizing of humans, the murder for no reason, the mass assents of individuals to not think for themselves and only be commanded by others. Goodness, then, is humanizing humans, preserving life, thinking responsibly.
Simple evil is trickier, because we can't always agree on it. It's easy to pick out the Nazis and say that they are evil. Another problem is that we tend to synonymize evil with bad. And we have only one word for good. Much evil is really nice, it's good with a lower case g. You enjoy making fun of other people, including homeless people. This is evil -- obviously in a far less concentrated way than the holocaust -- because it dehumanizes both the other and yourself. You're not a person when you make another person inhuman; you're a machine. Evil. Evil is turning away from essential personhood.
Many things are evil to some degree. The world of business is evil insofar as it makes people non-persons, and makes them think of everything in terms of commodity, costs and benefits which have no qualitative distinctions and obtain their constructed value only from the 'prices' the market commands. Business can also be good if it improves the personhood of others, and if it allows the businessman to not immerse himself in business and instead treat it as a means to obtain qualitative goods -- a good education for his children, for example. Another evil is masturbation, which you named as one of the only things you like. Masturbation is evil because it wastes life. I don't mean that in any spilling-sperm sense, of course. I mean that it takes energy that could be used for creating something or working in a good way, and just spends it. Masturbation is good, lower case g, of course. It feels good, it's cheap, it has no real negative consequences. But as I said, lots of evil is good. It's true too that sometimes masturbation's evil isn't so great -- it's a fairly low-level evil in my opinion, more significant for what it isn't (meaningful sexual union with the purpose of connection or immortality) than what it is (cheap fun). So sometimes it's ok to masturbate. But it's never good. It's always evil in that it turns what could be oriented towards Meaning into objectification or commodity. Remember, evil doesn't wear a stupid black hat and have a pointed beard. It's not like some things are Sinful or Devilish; it's that some things point you away from what is worthwhile about life, yourself, or others, and instead point towards a shallow (albeit enjoyable) pleasure which has no quality to it.
Actually Judaism and Christianity differ strongly on this point. The Christian perspective is that certain things are evil, and other things are good. Sex, for example, is basically evil -- albeit a necessary evil. The ideal is for men and women to be celibate (priests, nuns). The Jewish perspective is that no things are evil or good: things are things, and it depends how they are used. Sex as a thing is neither good nor evil. People are. Sex can be the most good thing in the world - it's the first commandment, it unifies two people (Kabbalists say it unifies the godhead as well), and so on. Or it can be evil, that is to say (in our definition) it turns the mind/spirit away from qualitative pursuits -- in the Jewish tradition this basically means religious pursuits -- and turns it to less-qualitative pursuits.
You'll note that even in this religious discussion the existence of Gcd, whatever that means, plays no role in the action. Both the Christian and Jewish approaches do have Gcd at the good end of the spectrum, but you can just as easily replace Gcd with moral goodness, or with ethics, or with art, or with love.
Hedonism does present a challenge. You would just put pleasure at that end of the spectrum, and say that anything closer to complete pleasure is better than anything farther away. Masturbation is generally, then, a lot better than reading, even though some books can change your life. It's probably better than writing or painting unless you happen to enjoy writing or painting more at the time. Trouble with hedonism is it's usually confused with laziness. Hedonism is basically a utilitarian system -- pleasure can be more or less measured in units, and the more units, the better. Well if that's true, you would almost have to admit that achieving a big goal (even a hedonistic goal, say, really good sex) is worth more pleasure units than many little goals put together. And so hedonism collapses back into the quality argument, because I'm prepared to say that if really good sex gives you such concentrated pleasure units, such a burst of good feeling, then it's a high quality experience. Insofar as it doesn't interfere with the autonomy of other human beings (thus ruling out violence), it's okay with me.
So it's not really hedonism that I have a problem with, it's laziness. I do think that, ultimately, the pursuit of Big Pleasure is less qualitatively valuable than the pursuit of, for example, Great Art (and I also think most people figure this out along the way). But if Big Pleasure is where it is right now, then at least when/if it is achieved, there's a Quality experience at the end, just as there is in reaching the moon or climbing Mt Everest. It's the laziness part -- which isn't hedonism -- that doesn't pass the test. Laziness is evil because quality is the wonder of the world, and laziness turns you away from quality.
Laziness is thus turned away from the world. Just as it is turned away from the self -- introspection is not for the lazy, tv is -- and turned away from engagement with other people -- relationships are not for the lazy, acquaintanceships are. That which turns way from the realness of the world, the realness of the self (if you believe in the self -- otherwise it's just the realness of the world), the realness of relations with others, is evil.
For me, laziness is one of the most accessible evils. I tend to be an independent thinker, so laziness of thought is not a problem. But laziness of action is. I have two whole books ready to go, if I would only get off my ass and edit them. I could write a story every night if I would only not watch tv or masturbate or read a cheap magazine. (I've given up on the tv, at least.) So the fact that you readily embrace laziness -- as we've seen, it's not really pleasure -- is very important. Why bother? Because otherwise, you are not living, that is, you are not engaged with the world, or yourself, or others. You are not "sucking the marrow out of life," and you might as well be dead. Why live if you don't bother?
And the world is so full of richness. One of the last hopes I have for humanity, which is making a perverse art form out of catering to laziness (here again is another critique of the "market" which will always lead to catering to laziness), is that it will recognize the pluralism of quality in the world, that the hippie who gets a real peace-love feeling at a concert is having a quality experience, that the astronaut who achieves his dream is having a quality experience, that the hari krishna who really and sincerely has an ecstatic experience is having a quality experience, and so on. Sadly, many if not most quality-groups don't see it that way. Most ultra-orthodox Jews think that any good other than Torah study is a waste of time, or outright evil. Most ravers who think anything think that the 'squares' aren't really living, when in fact raising a family strikes me as one of the most quality-rich activities possible (more on that later). Many outdoors-adventurers think that people who stay at home and read aren't really living, but quality doesn't have to be all 'yang' -- it can be 'yin' and passive too. The opposite of laziness doesn't have to be hiking across India, it can be turning off the tv and reading Tolstoy instead.
The world is even full of richness for those who seem our easiest targets -- the suburban, middle-class, unimportant-career people who don't do much but raise a family. That's an important 'but.' As I've gotten a little older I've begun feeling very strongly that children, the way we become immortal, can be the highest-quality generators there are. I don't expect you to agree, as I didn't at your age. And it's true too that so many parents are so bad. I can't conceive of having a child and not loving him or her, not wanting to show him/her what I think is good about the world. It's a real sadness to me when I see people whose only real shot at quality is just blown. Quiet desperation, indeed. If I were cynical I would say that it's good that they don't know what they are missing.
Actually, I don't much care if the masses of humanity do come to understand this pluralism of Quality (which as I've outlined it even includes hedonism and suburbanism) but that's mostly a symptom of the fact that I no longer care much about what the masses of humanity think about anything. It makes me very sad to think how much negativity people carry around -- how much hatred of others, stupidity, dumb rage -- but it made me even sadder when I used to care about it all the time. So while it is a "hope" that people come to be more pluralistic in their recognition of quality in its many forms, and that education can somehow get ordinary people to value their lives and interactions more, the only role I see myself playing in this development is small-scale, little suggestions to try to get people to see things more openly, more vividly.
For me, the next step in this discussion is to try and show how religion plays in. It needn't play in, as I've emphasized, but for me it does. One way I personally feel as if I'm really living, and not just merely existing, is when I feel a sense of religious attachment or appreciation of the world. It's always a struggle for me to separate religious sentiment from what I'd like to be able to call 'the spiritual,' and I'm not sure I understand what the spiritual really is. But suffice to say that I am convinced as much as I am convinced of anything (and that's an important point, because try to convince yourself even of the simplest thing, that this table exists, for example, and you find yourself going in circles. Everything is constructed by our language-orientations, as Wittgenstein appeared to suggest at one time. So we should always be aware of what we mean when we say we are 'convinced.') that there is "a motion and spirit that impels all thinking things, and runs through all things." (Wordsworth) For me this can be accessed through religious concentration. Religion is for me a way of sucking the marrow out of life, of making a life a LIFE rather than an existence which might as well not happen.
Can you say "I might as well not live"? If so, you are not living properly.
Something must change. Where to begin. That's not really the question. The question of religion, at least Jewish religion, isn't where to begin it's how to go. Halacha -- the way to walk. You don't get a certain set of beliefs, agree to them, and go merrily along your way. The way is the struggle and the engagement with the world. Halacha is how Jewish humans should be. It's thus not a matter of 'why do this' or 'where does this come from.' The system is itself a means of acting deliberately. It transforms every nondeliberate act. Eating, for example, "comes naturally." Why think about it. Because if you don't do things deliberately, you slowly lose the grip, the richness of life. Eating can be taken for granted as easily as anything. It's natural. So davka for that reason Jews make a big deal out of it. There are rules about what you can and can't eat, not because pigs are evil and must be avoided, but because >not thinking about what you eat< is evil and must be avoided. As I said before, it's not the objects that are evil but the direction in which they're pointed. Sex isn't evil. Eating isn't evil. It's how you do it.
Jews also make blessings before and after they eat, to recognize that they are dependent on this food, and to recognize that it is wonderful that food exists. Today this is more important than ever. If you were a farmer in the ancient near east, you would know how wonderful (i.e. wonder-full, as in Heschel) it is that food exists because it wouldn't always be there, and you'd be dependent on the rain cycle to get enough, and so on. Now we face no danger whatsoever of starvation, and so the availability of food loses its wonder to a far greater extent than it could have before. But think how amazing it is. The rain falls reliably, human ingenuity ("image of Gcd") turns grains into bread and pizza, our incredible digestive machines turn that stuff into energy, and then the system recycles everything -- until modern times, our shit's nutrients went into the ground, and fertilized the soil, which grew the grains, etc. What an incredible circle.
Blessings over food function as just one subset of blessings generally -- revealing and reminding us of the wonder of existence. It's easy to be amazed when you see the Grand Canyon at how beautiful the world is. You don't really need a blessing for that (although Judaism has one). It's harder to be amazed when you see some rice on your plate at how beautiful the world is. That's when we need the bracha. (I prefer bracha to 'blessing', which I think has weird Christian connotations of magic.)
What I'm trying to articulate is a view of religion that is not about rules but about discovering quality, which is what this letter is about. Again, religion is only one way to do it. It's well suited to me, and Judaism - partly because I grew up with it, partly because of its intrinsic excellence - is well suited in particular. And it is important to say that Judaism like any thing or system can be turned away from quality (yes, evil) by people who want to do it. Judaism's emphasis on community can turn into ugly ethnocentric bullshit nationalism, where the goyim are all evil or stupid, and only Jews are decent. And Christianity's emphasis on sanctification can lead to genocide. There are those who would throw out the whole thing for these kinds of faults. I agree with the sentiment as an initial gut reaction, but not as a real plan. Unless there is something to replace it with -- and no effort has succeeded so far in getting both stupid and smart people to be truly good -- I'd prefer to fix the system than junk it.
To me, the flexibility of Judaism and halacha is one of its greatest features. There are plenty of atheist halachic Jews, who maintain their practices for family reasons. That's definitely quality, right? Engagement with the world and others? Gripping the world, making a life worthwhile? There are plenty of theist halachic Jews who have none of my spiritual orientation but see halacha as a coherent, good way to live as human beings. That's obviously quality as well. And there's me, who thinks that halacha is the above plus a way to constantly prod one's self into wonder at the world.
Shabbat is another example of this process. Is every shabbat a "cathedral in time" in which genuine religious inspiration is received? (Heschel again.) No. Does every shabbat dinner lead to an "I-Thou" integrative, intense experience with a guest? No. Nor does every shabbat connect you with community or with your ancestors. But some do. Shabbat in particular seems like a pain in the ass -- all the restrictions. But if you leave them all in place for a minute, the general picture is fantastic: it's a time to set aside all the concerns of the week, to stop doing things and making things, and have one day be completely non-productive. In that empty space, you try to make room for the normally-overpowered background wonder of the world to be heard. You know how you don't hear the birds chirping in the city. So shabbat is the same as going to the country. You turn off all the noise, and try to listen. If you start trying to fit in the noise, tinker with the system to 'allow yourself' one thing or the other, it starts collapsing. It's important to be very, very cautious about changing the rules because you don't want to disturb the effects. And you don't want to create a 'salad bar' where people pick some observances and leave others. That's no way to get to quality-living; it's a way to hedge. If you're not going to do it for real, why do it? Of course 'for real' can also be a reform 'for rea'l, if the reform Jews actually did it. But so far no one's been able to improve on the original. The point is that shabbat tries to wake you up to the world by getting you to stop, just for a day a week, and just be.
Obviously wonder isn't "on" 100% of the time, at least not for me. But that's what halacha is for again. Of course you can't keep it going 24-7, but you don't predicate your religious behavior on how you happen to be feeling that morning. "Oh, I don't feel like shabbat this week, so I won't do it." Pretty soon, you'll never do it. You can't rely on genuinely moving experiences to always be there, and at the same time you can never know when a simple bracha will catch you and jolt you. Lots of the time it does nothing, and sometimes I(at least) do bend the spirit of the rules and only observe the letter, when there's something else I consider important at issue. Sometimes it's even just rote. But better to have the opportunity always. And you just can't live religiously only when you feel like it. Sometimes you go long periods without feeling like it. (This argument works for the social justification of halacha as well, because if you only obey the social norms when you feel like it, they're not social norms, and the system doesn't work.)
So that, in very abbreviated form, is how religion in particular dovetails in to quality-life generally.
I used to think that there were spiritual systems with less "baggage" than Judaism had -- Taoism for
example -- but that I would accept the baggage because of Judaism's accessibility. I'd still do that
trade, but I no longer think there's any spiritual system without its baggage. One person's bullshit
baggage is another's important part. I don't like Judaism's chosen-people obsession, for example;
although I explain it in descriptive terms (since Gcd is in Its immanence a description of the way the
world is, 'chosen' in that context refers to the way Judaic thought developed among the Israelite
people, and does not in any way imply a "decision" on the part of some naive anthropomorphic guy
in the sky) I know that for many it's Gcd-chose-us/aren't-we-cool. Well, okay. But Taoism has its
obsession with herbal healing and ancestor worship. Islam has its fundamentalist problems.
Buddhism has its devotionalistic silliness. Every system, no matter how sublime the tao te ching,
sufi poetry, or diamond sutra, also has its stupidity
Your response to this problem, beyond 'why bother,' was 'why not make your own religion and just be it.' This is not really on the topic of this letter, but I'll briefly address it. The first answer is, great, do it. If you can come up with a coherent spiritual system that is not contradictory, and leads you to embrace quality/ life/ the world/ the Divine/ relations with others in a meaningful way, then more power to you. But I found that just as you have to do halacha all the time for it to work some of the time, you have to really put in a lot of effort to make a self-devised religious worldview work. For one thing, it's very lonely to never have a community in which to share lifecycle events (weddings, for example, should be linked to whatever is your Ultimate Concern, and if your spiritual system is that, then that's what you should link the wedding or funeral to), ordinary events (remember, religion is the art of learning to live in amazement, and that includes every day: you have to 'elevate' each thing by yourself if you have no religious community), and ultimate concerns generally (I think Judaism has this one perfectly: praying individually, in a group). It's also very tiring to keep it up all the time with no one else around you doing the same thing. (So much for laziness.) And finally it runs serious risks of being cheesy. It's good to have the resources of 3,000 years of religious thought backing you up in case your own ideas miss something. When you pick and choose from a variety of different traditions, plus innovate some of your own -- as new age people do -- you run the risk of missing some important detail. 'Oh, you believe in visionary experiences but you don't think the soul can see? So how does it work, then? How'd you see the planet Saturn?' That sort of thing. It's hard to tie up all the loose ends by yourself.
So while I think it's fine in principle to start your own religion (especially if you're not Jewish, not trying to not to give Hitler a posthumous victory), in practice I think it all collapses. And with religion, the proof really is in the practice. What are you doing, what are you thinking, what is the direction of your life. Nice tries don't do it.
That excursus was somewhat off topic -- the letter is about why live a life of quality, not why organized religion is better than non-organized religion to do so. One could debate endlessly the merits of different means to get to the end of living a rich life, and it is interesting to do so. But this letter is concerned with the value of that end.
There are just a couple more threads I want to draw in. I've been thinking that your laziness fits in very well with your sarcasm and apathy. If you're lazy, you're overly skeptical of the worth of any accomplishment. Why bother. So you'd naturally be apathetic about the worth of other accomplishments, and sarcastic about claims that real worth is actually out there. Yeah, right. The baseline is 'we're all lazy, so don't give me that bullshit.'
The ideal is not 'I am excellent' arrogance but rather honesty. A sarcastic person myself, I've lately been thinking that sarcasm and irony are like twisty turns around the forthright line, that they minimize what should be left alone. The other extreme is maximization -- either making a big deal out of things, or having a puffed-up view of one's accomplishments and the Importance of Things. Come on, we're only human. But then again, we are human. Instead of adopting an attitude towards things, it is very refreshing to just approach things. No preconception, no attempt to minimize or maximize. Just see how it is.
The Jewish take on this is "Who will ascend Gcd's mountain? The clean of hands and pure of heart." To translate into non-Jewish quality-speak, who will lead a quality life? The pure and honest. Note that the Jewish formula isn't "he who observes all mitzvot carefully and does the right thing." Having clean hands does mean that you haven't dirtied them in evil (as defined before) but it doesn't mean you're the most observant Jew of them all. And pure of heart. Not trying to make things overly ironic or overly grandiose, but pure. You can't be pure of heart and cynical at the same time. And I say this as one considered very cynical. If your heart is pure, you approach life with what zen monks call "your original face," your pure (non-)self. Zen generally seeks to uncover the world as it is from beneath all of our ideas and conceptions about it, and just let it shine. We non-zen-monks can do this at least a little bit just by not trying to have cleverness, by approaching things purely.
So laziness and sarcasm go hand in hand. So too does non-laziness and purity of heart. To reemphasize, non-laziness does not mean that you have to build a barn or bike a marathon. Quality IS in those things, in yang, in activity, dynamism, attaining goals. But Quality is also in yin, in peacefulness, contemplation. "Without going out of my room, I can know the way of heaven" says the Tao Te Ching. Obviously Lao Tze is not advocating hikes and climbs. From a Western perspective, yin quality can mean rational contemplation in place of quasi-Romantic energy and drive. It can mean doing one's dharma honestly and truthfully, even if that dharma is being a good librarian. You can have a qualitative yin experience looking at a beautiful mountain and getting aesthetic wonder from it, and never yang climb it. One can lead a life of yin, passive quality -- but that doesn't mean the television is on or the vaseline is going. Yin contemplation and rest is integrated, not 'turned off.' There's a difference between being at peace with the world and having one's nerves numbed by cathode-ray novocaine.
One is alive, the other says "I might as well not be."
In conclusion, I doubt I've convinced you of anything, because I think you're basically a lazy person in the Way You Are. And I think when I was 16 I agreed with about 10-15% of this letter. A lot of it is youth and inexperience. (I say those words non-negatively as well. What are you supposed to be besides young and inexperienced?) Nevertheless, I am also a lazy person by nature. I grew up in the upper-middle class suburbs, I watched a lot of television. But that's not the end of the story. Luckily for those of us starting off behind, I also think that -- as said before -- good is becoming good. Real goodness isn't where you are, it's which direction you're headed. 'No one is perfect' doesn't mean you should be content with where you are -- I'm dead against the post-1970's we're-all-okay thing. We're all okay, sure, it's good not to feel bad about onesself, but it's also good to constantly struggle. (Nahman of Bratzlav) Good is becoming good. Evil is moving away from good. So even if I'm coming from a lazy baseline, if I'm constantly getting somewhere, well, at least I'm getting somewhere. That too can lead to complacency. Complacency is a form of death.
Whatever drains the living-ness out of life and minimizes its wonder, it is dead to that which is real and remarkable, it is the anti-Thoreau, and I would rather end my life than live a life not worth living.
Your friend.
Jay
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