It occurs to me suddenly...

that this post will make almost no sense.

“Nothing is more precious to the thinking man than life itself;
yet in spite of this, the greatest voluptuary is he who best practices
the difficult art of making it pass quickly.
It is not that he wishes to make life briefer;
Rather, he wants amusement to make him unaware of its passing.”
--Giacomo Casanova

Yes, that comes from the infamous ladies’ man himself. It turns out that that cat knew a lot of things about stuff. In the seventeenth century, the Church replaced the vague sin of "sadness" with sloth, which ought to explain a lot of things from the simple fact of its is-ness. When idle, the mind and body have all sorts of recourse to experience those things which it would much rather not: investigation into itself (which naturally reveals nothing but perpetual isolationism). This one fact tends to make the self sad, which is why sloth actually gets at the heart of the matter.
I don’t know what people do with their days. What do they think about? What are they invested in investigating? Do they investigate anything? What do they think about? How is a day in the life of an average human being passed?
“Ulysses” is one of my all time favorite books, because it is simultaneously a day in the life of average men and un-average men. These are just guys doing their work, getting paid, and trying to make it through as best they can; however, it is not generally in the scope of your average guy’s day to stay away from home all day in order to allow your wife to have an affair; similarly, it is not in the average guy’s day to find the apparition of a savior in the man who has stayed away from home all day to allow his wife to have an affair (and, almost simultaneously, masturbate to a lame girl sitting on the beach while hiding behind a bush).
Or, is it rather that this is exactly what happens to us every day without our full comprehension of it?
I have spent most of my day contemplating the question: “What is time?”
I don’t know how many people do this every day, but today it happened to me, and any time this question pops up (which it sometimes does with surprising, disturbing frequency), I find myself face to face with a fundamental, unanswerable question.
It should also be understood at the outset here that these fundamental, unanswerable questions are essential to existence—in my view of things, and it is not the answering of them that matters, but rather the attempt. There is no way to describe in words what time is because it is something that is experienced, combined with something measured. There is no way that words can touch that: the impotence of my chosen career suddenly becomes manifest.
But, looked at in terms of some of my own definitions of things, Time, then, illustrates a certain truth. Time is the theory that things succeed each other in simultaneousness. There is no way, except for in the world of comic books and science fiction that two times can exist simultaneously. There is no way that 2010 and 2009 can exist, especially for me, at the same time. It is precisely this sequential habit we have of dealing with time that forms its reality as infinite and singular. In practice, it occurs as moment to moment. The moment that I am currently involved in gives way to the moment that will follow it, and this has been so much the historical case with me that there is absolutely no reason to believe that at some point the moment I am experiencing now will be followed by the moment that immediately proceeded it. That is absurd. I will be the first to admit that absurdities are fun, but when dealing with things in earnest, absurdity ought to play a very insignificant part.
What is the difference between the idea of a thing and the thing itself?
To answer this question, it is probably most appropriate to look at the nature of inter-human relationships.
The idea of the relationship I have with my significant other is often far, far more appealing that the actuality of it—whether we choose to acknowledge this fact or not. Sensual and emotional comforts are very appealing, and when the choice is between having physical/emotional comfort and dealing with the pain of aloneness. In the sage like wisdom of Bradley Nowell:
“Sleepin’ by yourself at night can make you feel alone.”
However, the idea of being able to share the pain of being a human being (“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”) is sometimes not a technically effective remedy for the maladies of the relationships itself: constant verbal battles, physical confrontations, emotional drainage, etc. Even still, the mind most frequently, almost consistently errs on the side of combating its reality with a cohort. What is that about?
Perhaps Casanova had it right: it’s not that we devalue life because of its necessarily fleeting nature, it pains us so intensely to understand fully—all in a moment—the monumental reality of that which is passing us by.
And perhaps that’s where time comes into play: we wanted some kind of way to be able to measure the experiences of the human character. Then, after reflection, we found this measure flawed: like attempting to divine which line was greater, the longer one or the shorter one. They are both simply degrees of the same thing. They are both lines and there is no way to decide with one is greater. There is only the possibility of applying an artificial title on one such as “longer” and the other as “shorter.” Even here we run into trouble because we are dealing with comparisons and there is nothing intrinsic about these delineations—which sort of automatically renders them derivative. There is nothing about line A in particular that makes it longer. It is only in comparison with line B—a measurable distance shorter—that this distinction is even possible, which makes it an artificial designation.
For example, take two line segments. One of them is four inches long. The other is two inches long. Which one is greater? Perhaps neither, they’re both lines after all. Which one is longer? Artificially, the one that’s four inches long. Introduce into this situation a circle whose circumference is five inches. Which is greater? That’s apples and oranges! What is a circle but a continuous but measurable line? It is line that is five inches long surrounding a space. What’s incredible here is that the distance from one side of that space to the other is less than two inches (line B). Which is greater? Which is longer?
These are the questions that plague my days.
In short, I think that Casanova is right; however, I think it deserves an amendment in the form of direction. Perhaps man may seek amusement in order to avoid the fact that the most precious gift he has been given is slowly, steadily wasting away in front of his eyes; however, it ought to be noted that the particularities of the amusements are more important than the amusements themselves. Consider if you will the state of two men who have been similar disposed to amusements, but one finds his in the digital imaging of the television and the other in the quest for an understanding of the self that he is through personal experience and investigation of what others have written. Can you imagine which one is going to actively seek out new and varied instances of personal growth and development? Can you imagine which one will probably develop a kind of eating disorder and tendency towards sloth?
I have seen the former and I have seen the latter.
From personal experience I urge you to seek out those amusements that develop the understanding of the self. I fail to see how American Idol induces this urge. Who among us, in this day and age, is actually attempting to understand how we understand ourselves?