We're Still Fighting It

To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness:
Watch out for life.

I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed.

--Deadeye Dick, Kurt Vonnegut

Regarding the issue of existential angst, of which there was some discussion the other evening, two matters have crossed my field in the last day which I would like to share. The first was an interview with Woody Allen on the radio show Fresh Air which I cannot possibly recommend zealously enough. You can listen or download it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105400872. In response to the question of whether he enjoyed the process of making films, Allen responded that making films was an activity beset with difficulty, but that (like many endeavors, artistic and otherwise) it was a distraction from the human condition and the "existential position" with which every person is faced. His prodigious output of films serves to keep him from the abyss from which we all seek to turn our heads.

His awareness of his own motivations was refreshing, but his exposition also led me to one of the great human emotions: surprise. Surprise is underrated. It is the soul of humor, the brick and mortar of rollercoasters and horror movies. It is in such short supply that society will enrich anyone who can provide even small amounts of it. Just ask M. Night Shyamalan.

Anyway.

The second thing was an essay by David Gessner titled "The Dreamer Did Not Exist (A boy's obsession with nonexistence.)" which appears in Dave Egger's wonderful annual publication of the Best American Nonrequired Reading. Gessner, similar to Allen, frontally addresses the fact that much of our activities and constructs are reactions to a fear of nonexistence, and that we seek to create something to stave off the nothing. This isn't new. By the turn of the century, philosophers and artists alike were dealing with the tension from the fact that we have a twentieth century intellect while our soul is still in the stone age. Nietzsche dealt with it. The psychologist and author Eric Fromm suggested that our only escape was spontaneous love and work. The playwright Eugene O'Neill appeared to advocate opiates. Sigmund Freud had a couch.

For me the "existential position" took on another dimension when my wife told me she wanted to have a child. My peephole was already open. There was nothing to be done about that. But could I pluck another innocent wisp of undifferentiated nothingness and open up its peephole? This felt to me then, and feels to me now, as a momentous ethical question. (I should say here that I am not justifying how I feel; I am merely explaining how I feel.)

And so, when called upon to make my moral case, to take a stand in defense of the gospel of reason as I understood it, I instead chose my wife. I chose my wife because--and there is no way around this--she is my religion. She is my reason. Her origin may be mysterious, her purpose clouded, but she is my scripture, my word-for-word truth transcribed. This is my faith. May I never lose it

[originally posted July 18, 2009]