Essays Regarding the Human Condition

By Art Dodds

That everybody is different is truism as is. Some succeed in the world and others don’t. Many found resistance to them and only accomplished a modicum of success; some had a great deal of resistance and lost their minds or life, but none in my book, except two, had to experience the speed of life as it is today. President Obama seems to have been sensitive to the artists and showmen regarding their legacies and had several groups on public TV channels with special shows. The productions at the White House have given guests a charge if they needed it. Obama, in attending to his own legacy, has certainly helped theirs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640270695

Book preview

cover.jpg

the Human Condition

Essays by

Art Dodds

Copyright © 2017 Art Dodds

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-64027-068-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64027-069-5 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

ETHICS

ARE WE BETTER THAN THE ROMANS?

In post-WWII, Winston Churchill, who was at England’s helm, requested from the parliament an allocation of money for the arts. Some members were skeptical and felt that there were more urgent and imperative needs than reestablishing symphonies and orchestras, refurbishing libraries, and funding art exhibits. Churchill answered his inquisitors without hesitation. Gentlemen, the preservation of our cultural legacy is what we fought for.

There is an assumption in Churchill’s stand that is seemingly not obvious to those concerned with quantitative survival only. What evades people with this mind-set is the fact that they aren’t mere animals who are fully satisfied with life if they eat regularly, have a place to live in, and a job to go to. They can really only be happy with things of quality, with intrinsic value as opposed to things with only extrinsic value. If qualitative things were not present in their lives, they probably wouldn’t be able to survive very well quantitatively. No man was made for bread alone, Jesus said. This idea is what prompted Churchill to answer as he did. Churchill himself enjoyed ninety years of life that was full of cultural worth. He’d acquired a liberal arts education first at Harrow then went on to the Sandhurst Military College and in those institutions developed his multifaceted personality. He was a great debater, orator, and raconteur. He was a master of the written language and an artist of merit. He was both a brave soldier and a gifted statesman.

And as he also was a knowledgeable historian, he was aware that the decline of the Roman Empire was not due mainly to the onslaught of barbarians in its provinces but was due to the internal decay of its culture, which had been long before the deluge. Rome was always known for its military might and organizational genius. While magistrates were strict in enforcing laws concerning properties, taxation, and distribution of goods, they were generally very tolerant of cultures in the provinces they had conquered. Tolerance was, to them, an advantage; it was a good means of controlling people by keeping them satisfied with what they were familiar with.

And in the early centuries of the empire when many Romans had a great esteem for quality and excellence that characterized the Greeks and Egyptians, they adopted many aspects of their art and knowledge for their own edification. But by the AD 3, things had changed. The Roman’s best fighting forces were by this time not necessarily Romans but Illyrians originally a barbaric people who had come to literally idolize their regal traditions. Many generals as well as soldiers of all other ranks were Illyrians and latter-day emperors Diocletian, Severus, and Constantine also were.

Yet as there were a constant horde of enemies beyond its borders, which called for a large army to combat them, it strained the resources of the empire particularly of farmers and laborers because so much in taxes and percentages of yield were demanded of them which eventually caused the system of distribution to crumble. Furthermore, Rome’s wonderful tolerance of those unlike them (except for Jews and Christians) turned into mere indifference.

Their sense of truth, beauty, and goodness in human affairs gave way to cynicism. They lost their empathy for others and looked out mainly for themselves. Instead of a sense of well-being though, they felt malaise. In this mind-set, the Roman’s skills in quantitative survival declined which caused their social fabric to fall apart and soon it allowed Alaric and Attila to come in through their city’s front door and sack it.

Those psychic maladies exhibited themselves in an exaggerated usage of language and manners that were basically as cold, as they were rhetorical. Meritorious content was gone; only empty forms remained. Clever speech and a smooth appearance became fashionable. People’s personalities became a set of poses and affectations for applause and money. They actually mocked their cultural past by trivializing it. Now currently in America, as it is experiencing unprecedented prosperity, there are signs of a similar mind-set as that of third century Rome. But ours seems premature compared to theirs: Rome was over a thousand years old, whereas we aren’t even four hundred years yet.

Two main qualities, which have always characterized America, are people’s concerns with freedom and opportunities to compete. Both are undoubtedly responsible for the greatness of our country in the last two centuries. People are familiar with their rights and liberties beginning with the Constitution, have the urge to exercise them, and choose to enter into a personal quest to find happiness. And as to, self-reliance, they have the pluck and initiative to conjure up a vision, single­mindedly pursue it, and overcome all obstacles to make it a success. Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison were prime examples of self-reliance.

However, early on, people realized that cooperation was necessary for the success of a personal or organizational project as it couldn’t rely totally on one individual but that of a common effort. Conversely, there was a willingness to conform to a set of rules or mandates for the achievement of a goal. Generally understood even then was that a great idea is fine, but for most, it takes financial underwriting to implement it.

Yet today both in the areas of rights and competitiveness, there is a mean aggressiveness in people. Money today is everything and people see few boundaries in trying to obtain it. Individuals look for violations of their persons and properties to gain money by litigation. They are likely to sue someone for any imagined provocation. Competitiveness is often vicious and underhanded and leaves the marketplace strewn with bloody corpses, so to speak, of victims, who were beaten out of their portion of the prosperity.

Shortly after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, the public utilities giant, Enron, went down in our economic ocean and tearing itself asunder on the rocks, showed its rotten insides to the world. As it had been a major player in the stock market, its demise revealed a group of ruthless managers who were just as callous and unfeeling toward its employees, stockholders, and allied companies as were the terrorists who physically destroyed the buildings and lives there.

What has gone along with these obsessions is our people’s rather rigid conforming which for us is not in the name of cooperation, but consumption and beyond that, what is fashionable, what changes literally from month to month and leaves only a trace behind. It is all surface. The Romans deified the past and exploited it. Americans of late simply ignore their past and use their leisure time to pursue the brand new.

They obtain emerging marvels of technology as cars and computers on credit. But in this crush for the new and different, the people have become indifferent to basic ideas and aesthetic feelings just as Romans were.

As with our ancient forbearers, we have lost something invaluable; it is our feelings for beauty, truth, and goodness. The cultural icons that were recognized and honored before World War II no longer seem to have much relevance today. It’s not because they are no longer worthy and capable of touching our emotions, but it is because they are neglected in the fast-paced lifestyle of most people; they don’t have time for them. A good deal of this is their rush to keep financially afloat from their indulgence in credit.

But our technological atmosphere certainly doesn’t bring us happiness. It brings anger, boredom, depression, and affects people’s self-esteem adversely. It blocks what has brought satisfaction to people in the past, namely passion between people and passion for some aspect of culture.

THE BIPOLAR PERSONALITY

In the upbringing of a bipolar personality, there is usually a father whose primary interest is in his own ambitions, appetites, and aggrandizement in the eyes of others as well as a recessive mother whose love for her child is weak and ineffectual and falls way short of giving substantial emotional support to him. What results from a persistent lack of love and care for the welfare of a child is a torpid condition, an emotional desolation in him which bears adversely on virtually everything he thinks or does thereafter.

While this torpor suffuses his consciousness and he feels that it is just a natural part of his makeup, he may never discover why it informs him to the extent it does. As far as he knows, torpor is a permanent condition though. As he grows up, he comes to resent being at a disadvantage because of it in learning things and relating to others.

He realizes as time goes on that other people are motivated in varying degrees to make their way in the world. But because existence weighs on him, he musters very little. Also, he feels little empathy for others. He doesn’t have the emotional resources to care for them and what they do. He feels that he is a separate entity who is disaffiliated from their modes of behavior. In other words, both survival and love are almost beyond him.

As he grows up, it is possible that someone may come along who shows care for him and instills enough energy in him thereby dispelling his torporous condition. He or she may help this handicapped person to see that there is goodness and beauty around that makes life worth living. This interested party may be able to develop an incentive in him to want to live and love.

But such a benefactor may not arrive in time with his goodwill because the one he would help has acquired a bad attitude that thwarts it. It might be said that torpor causes feelings of inferiority, which with help can be dispelled or at least modified toward what Carl Rogers has called positive self-regard. But as an individual sees himself always at a disadvantage to other people, he may come to hate himself. This is strictly in the realm of the conscious will; yet, paradoxically, he can feel this as more suffocating and implacable than when he just experienced torpor. It is what afflicted Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka’s story Metamorphosis when he awoke one morning as a cockroach; in that state, he felt completely unlovable.

What this attitude would mean to a possible benefactor is that whatever he said would meet with skepticism and, whatever he did, with distrust of the psychological crippled person who would have prepared himself to believe that nobody could really care about him, that he is a freak who cannot be loved. Of course, he will have backed himself into an untenable corner of existence. He can’t really accept this decision as final and abide by it for it would be a condition of living hell.

Since this unfortunate individual has blocked off the channel in himself where trust may flow, he directs it into extreme self-effort—to adopt an enterprise where he feels if he succeeds, he will establish some aspect or aspects of himself permanently in the consciousness of others and compel them to at least accept him with a tacit wish in his mind to be loved. He wants to commandeer the attention and affection of others.

While this has happened with certain people of genius—Poe, Van Gogh, and Wagner—as with them, he could engage other people’s attention even admiration, but not their love. Chances are he would only disrupt their lives and incite their displeasure. He then would probably feel the fallout of his mania, which was that of inflamed rage at the injustices of the world and perhaps he would even desire to seek some sort of revenge against it for its insensitiveness and stupidity.

Yet this poor fellow in his isolation would begin to feel that even if he went out and shot people indiscriminately or blew up a building, he would make little overall impact on the world and he would quickly lose his freedom to do what he wanted. Instead, he would be quickly apprehended and probably wind up on death row and lose himself relatively. Hence, the feeling of deep dread would set into this young (or old) person and as he contemplated any further destructive acts—indeed, any acts—he would feel like he was doing a shaky crossing on a tightrope over an abyss where one false move might send him hurtling into it. Because of his fears, he would be taken by an incapacitating depression. But then in his intolerable state he would begin to again formulate a plan to escape it. Hence, another bout of mania that would banish his dark outlook for a time.

There is a duality here and it is called bipolarity. This unfortunate individual not only works against himself and, in the view of others, never seems to progress anywhere but beleaguers any good intentions of those around him to the degree that they will withdraw their support. He is often sullen and violent. To repeat: this is certainly not conducive to being loved, such moodiness didn’t endear people even to the towering genus of Beethoven. They preferred to admire him from a distance. Personally, he mitigated his loneliness by writing divinely inspired music. The fact is that most bipolar people merely aggravate people and produce nothing. This is largely their own choice and they are ultimately responsible, barring any real persecution, for their own downfall.

BLACK HOLES AND GESTALTS

The world is full of black holes of despair both socially as well as personally that have overwhelming magnetic force just as black holes in space have a tremendous gravitational force that can pull anything, which comes too near into them, and just as with matter, psychic holes can swallow up happiness and degrees of satisfaction into their dark interiors not to ever be seen again. There have been many victims.

Any tragedy or calamity can bring black holes on and the victims cannot escape their initial and usually, long-term effects. Many have virtually no way to deal with them. Nothing seems to reduce their effect much. Black holes remain as a nemesis to torment individuals with an aftermath of hopelessness of ever finding happiness and satisfaction in life again. People are sorely afflicted and will never have any solace—they believe.

It doesn’t happen only from death or destruction by a fire, hurricane, or earthquake. It could have developed from a series of small reversals that had accumulated or just a sequence of decisions that went sour perhaps against good advice