Maybe it has got something to do with the fact that English is, and has been for a long time, the world’s lingua franca. This means that an Englishman cannot avoid having his language tortured and distorted every day, in writing or in speaking. It is molested by people from all over the world who are unable to appreciate or could not care less about the extraordinary musicality, the finer conceptual distinctions or the subtle idiomatic flavours of the English language. And although it is true that many native speakers are also less than linguistically adept I wonder how it affects the pride of the nation to have its mother tongue permanently and ubiquitously mispronounced, misspelled, misunderstood – and, indeed, understood – by strangers who have no, or at any rate very few, personal ties to and hence little personal interest in the English language and its territorial foundations: English history, culture, customs and traditions. For the strangers the language is merely a convenient tool for easy cross-cultural communication. A tool wholly detached from its national bedrock.

It is almost as if anyone suddenly had a right to rule over my child. No doubt I would feel uneasy and hostile to the intruders. Sooner or later my feelings would find an outlet: I would tell them to go away. Or if I am not up to the confrontation I would seek to protect my child by withdrawing it. I would take the child to a secret hiding place where only I and my close relatives had access. But then I face a dilemma: I cannot isolate the child for the rest of its life but on the other hand I cannot expose it to the outer world where total strangers will readily dominate and contaminate it. Not quite knowing how to solve this dilemma I continue to keep the child in hiding whilst making an effort to integrate as seamlessly as I can with the outer, foreign world in the hope that this gesture will divert the attention from the fact not only that I have a most precious child tucked away but also that I consider the influence of this foreign, disrespectful world on my child as dangerous and detrimental.

My English friend, I believe, had such a precious child hidden away, namely his dear mother tongue. For fear of hurting it he sheltered it from foreign disrespectful and prying impulses. And he tried to cover it all up by adopting the pidgin language of his foreign companions. I suppose this is the price to pay for the sensitive person whose language happens to be the lingua franca of the world. At some deeper (not necessarily conceptual) level he realises that language is inextricably linked with national background, heritage and culture and cannot be shared with total strangers save in the most superficial sense. Not wanting to be superficial he conceals from the light that which he knows cannot bear the exposure rather than displaying something that cannot be genuine and true.

This is a healthy and rational, albeit endless, life process. We establish goals that are within human reach, we labour to reach them and then we establish other reachable goals. It is a linear process that gains its momentum from the continuous disparity between the external objective (ideal) and the internal measures and procedures (will, knowledge, competence). When there is equilibrium between the two “forces” (the goal is reached) the impetus is lost and that’s why another goal must be found before long. Otherwise life grinds to a halt.

Now, suppose we get the idea to have “ourself” as a goal in our life. Then we discard all external goals or ideals and seek instead to be our own goal. On the surface at least, this is an unhealthy and irrational ambition in the sense that it is absurd to search for that which we already possess. It’s like saying “I really want to find my keys” while holding the keys firmly in our hand. It also destroys the fine balance between the two opposite “forces” above: here the ideal coincides with the measures and procedures with which we seek to realise our ideal – will, knowledge and competence become simultaneously means and ends. So in reality, there is no way of ascertaining whether we reach our goal (ourselves) because of our effort or if our effort itself is proof that we have reached our goal (ourselves). Indeed, having “ourself” as a goal is identical to having a goal that is unreachable.

And yet, people keep searching for themselves all the time. Or so they say. Reusing an Aristotelian phrase that has become very popular many insist that what they want is to “realise” themselves, that is to say, to bring themselves to “realisation.” But very rarely do we see people who acknowledge the severity of the task they take on. The following checklist should provide some paradoxical clues for the individual who really, truly, obsessively, ineradicably wants to bring himself to realisation:

Abandon yourself,
become a stranger to yourself,
forget everything that is important to you.

Exert pressure on yourself.
Be your own worst enemy.
Constantly kill your darlings.
Loathe the glorious image you have created of yourself,
love the horrible image of yourself that others bring to your attention.
Never give yourself a break, but stay focused although your head and body kill you.

Empty yourself.
Starve yourself.
Cleanse yourself.
Seek pain.

I will return to these questions. For starters, let’s just note that the two words have the same origin. ‘Authoritarian’ is derived from ‘authority’ which has its roots in the Latin ‘auctoritas’ meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence or command. ‘Auctoritas,’ in turn, stems from the Latin word ‘auctor’ which denotes master, leader or author. So etymologically, there is no distinction between the two concepts. Also, from a grammatical point of view, there seems to be little difference. Just as it makes perfect sense to say of a comedian that it is a person who performs comedy and of a librarian that it is a person who works in a library, it makes sense to say of an authoritarian that it is a person who exerts authority. Indeed, so intimate are the conceptual ties in these examples that we would not hesitate to name them circular since there is no variance in denotation between the explanandum and explanans; they are semantically very similar if not identical.

Dictionaries, however, (I have here used quotes from http://dictionary.reference.com) do confirm that there is a marked distinction between the two concepts. Having authority here entails “possessing the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes” while being authoritarian means “exercising complete or almost complete control over the will of another or of others.” The former, in other words, is the sagacious magistrate, the latter a wicked tyrant and oppressor. But if we look at the etymology we find that this clear-cut distinction is a rather new invention. Until the end of the 19th century the word ‘authoritarian’ didn’t even exist. When the phrase was coined it denoted a person or system that favoured “imposed order over freedom.” Interestingly, the term ‘authoritative’ had originally this very meaning. And if we go back half a millennium, to the late 14th century, the word ‘authority’ itself denoted the “power to enforce obedience.” So historically, that is to say, over the last four or five hundred years, there seems to have been a more or less conscious cultural drive towards the purification and amelioration of the concept of ‘authority,’ an urge to rid it of its nasty connotations culminating in the construction of a new, derived, “scapegoat” concept in the 1870s – ‘authoritarian’ – a concept, by the way, much favoured and wholeheartedly embraced by the steadily growing number of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-traditionalist Marxists and socialists after World War I. For those groups ‘authoritarian’ was a wonderful weapon with which they could blame and shame not just the violent tyrants and oppressors of their day (including parents and teachers) but more importantly, by association, the concept of authority itself.

No wonder then that contemporary common sense holds that there is a sharp division between having authority and being authoritarian. This is the air in which we all breathe these days. Nonetheless, a lot of people today are open to the idea that authority has undeservedly been tarnished by too close an association with its despised cousin, ‘authoritarian.’ Common sense has, over the course of the last fifty years or so, finally discovered (initially to its great chagrin one might add) that a society devoid of distinct authority figures and with an intellectual elite that uses every opportunity to discredit behaviour and character traits that carry the remotest resemblance to authority or authoritarianism – for example hierarchical thinking, self-restraint, self-governance, and the wilful and dutiful exertion of power – turns into a deeply malfunctioning society, a society marked by serial victimhood, severe under-achievement, blatant narcissism, widespread shamelessness and a general lack of purpose and meaning.

Therefore, as the societal disintegration becomes visible for all to see and thus more and more incontestable, even the elites are forced to admit that the anti-authoritarian movements, reaching a climax in the nineteen sixties and seventies, might have gone just a little bit too far in its ideologically motivated witch-hunts against any remnant of the old society and its classical virtues. Indeed, it is as if the metropolitan chattering classes have suddenly come to the sobering realisation that in tossing traditional values away in favour of the wholesale embracing of a series of politically correct stratagems – most notoriously “equality,” “diversity” and “human rights” – one is throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. And what could possibly be worse for these classes that entertain no greater wish and no greater desire than to protect and care for the proverbial (symbolic) child that is thought to reside within all of mankind? Until now, one has lived securely and self-assuredly in a mental sphere of “neverlandish” proportions created upon the ideological foundation provided by Romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, most importantly, his notion that the young child is intrinsically good and that society, civilisation and hence education are to blame for all its consequent deviations and misfortunes. Not any more. Grave societal ills – definitely not attributable to the “deviousness” and “despotism” of the societal institutions themselves which are more prone to bend over backwards in a sincere attempt to help and please and support anyone with a grievance, be it justifiable on a larger scale or not – bring deadly smoke into the rabbit holes of the intellectual definition-makers and render unbearable a continuation of their previous lives in comfortable illusion.

So, they are in for disillusion and disenchantment. The intellectual elites are faced with the following option: either return to the old-world conception of authority – which does not think that a person who exercises authority is very much different from an authoritarian – or generate a new conception of authority where it means something entirely different (the opposite) than ‘authoritarian.’ Being already experts in Orwellian newspeak they find this an easy choice: they go for the re-writing. Thus, a person with authority is competent, intelligent, always just and proper, self-confident and courageous and he never succumbs to the temptations of power, or even experiences no temptations at all. He is pure. In fact, he is very much like Jesus without the religious and metaphysical baggage: hard-hitting and tough but always acting under the auspices of generosity, friendliness and love. The authoritarian, on the other hand, is the mirror image of the authority figure: sadly lacking in skills, prejudiced and intellectually less well endowed, unfair and whimsical in moods and attitudes. But first and foremost he is – and this in the starkest contrast to the true authority – in love with power; he enjoys the power to dominate his fellow human beings by ridiculing, harassing and creating fear. The authoritarian is a plain tyrant, an unloved shadow, a nefarious Cain green with envy of his kindhearted brother who is loved by God and man alike.

The image and its shadow are of course interdependent as antithetical imaginary constructs. But they have both precious little to do with reality as perceived by most people. In the real world we see either the presence of authority or we do not. If there is authority there must be somebody who is authoritarian, that is, who exercises authority. And no one can be an authoritarian without exercising authority on some level and of some type. Really, it is as simple as that. And where there is authority there is also hierarchy and the exercise of power, to a greater or lesser degree, of course. The social hierarchy established by authority – for example between teacher and pupils – may be rather robust or more on the lenient side, it may allow more interventions from pupils than it forbids or vice versa, it may give more or less responsibility to pupils, but a social hierarchy it certainly is, regardless of how we label it. Also, an authoritative or authoritarian teacher must possess a great deal of power, otherwise he will just not have the guts to make the necessary decisions there and then (be they of a practical or dialectical nature), nor the guts to give the necessary orders and make sure they are carried out according to instructions. He must, quite simply, have a will, and also a will to exercise his will, that is to say, he must know what he wants and then set about achieving it. But knowing this and setting about this is exactly what is meant by having power. It is inconceivable that a person who knows what he wants and who manages to do what it takes to achieve his desire has no power.

All people have a past. Most people have a healthy relation to the past, reminiscing as long as it gives pleasure, else forgetting. Some people, though, have an unhealthy relation to the past, clinging to it like a baby to its mother. It is not a clinging to the past as such but to particular, cherished episodes and events from their own bygone life. They do this not because the earlier events are grander or more significant than the present ones but simply because they belong to the past which is the stuff that their dreams are made on. They keep their cherished memories alive by revisiting them as often as they possibly can and any object brought before them – an old bus ticket, a vivid face or a piece of music – becomes a catalyst for mournful-yet-delightful recollection and remembrance. Indeed, for this unhappy lot there is no such thing as pleasant reminiscing, merely a bittersweet awareness of that which no longer exists – bitter because of the insuperable friction between non-existence and existence, between mind and matter (because of their predilection for the former); sweet thanks to the dreamlike, mellifluous richness of the retentive experience itself.

A baby clings to its mother as if thereby attempting to remain in a state of non-consciousness. For the baby, too, there is friction: between potential conscious life (the future) and actual pure being (the present). Friction – but no choice. A baby obviously cannot choose the one or the other. Neither can, however, the people who are infatuated with the past. They cannot consciously choose either the path of existence (the present) or the path of non-existence (the past). The choice seems mysteriously to have been made for them already – by genetic disposition, parental or societal conditioning, psychological damage or otherwise. Therefore, they are “doomed” to seek out the non-existent past, that is to say, to spend their lives as almost-alive shadows in constant and futile search of their templates. But there is an important distinction between the baby and the adult: the former moves steadily (naturally) towards a realisation of its future potentialities, despite the pain necessarily involved in the process, whereas the latter, having more or less completed the process of the realisation of its innate potentialities and having thus, in a manner of speaking, no future, moves instead (unnaturally or naturally) towards the perpetual rediscovery and reliving of past experiences reneging entirely on the idea that change is or can ever be for the good.

Change can never be for the good – according to adults of this ilk – because it is precisely the permanence and ubiquity of change that fundamentally contaminate life by obliterating the possibility of pure actual being. Change is clearly a precondition for life but at the same time it is the very thing that annihilates the prospect of a life in harmony with life’s ultimate goals: the True, the Good and the Beautiful. Change precludes harmony, full stop. This is one of the great paradoxes of life and one that the clinging adult is thoroughly incapable of resolving. Let’s just call it an existential discrepancy. The act of clinging to the past is a desperate measure faced with what is perceived as a desperate human condition. The adult transfigures the past and fixes it so that it may, however incomplete or erratic, in some way resemble the ultimate purity and stability that he or she so craves in his or her life.

An interesting question is whether it is, as suggested above, the pathology of the individual that creates the existential discrepancy or rather the other way round, the discrepancy that creates the individual pathology. In the first case, it would be reasonable to let the individual undergo some sort of treatment or medication in an attempt to reestablish a more viable and productive relationship with the past. In the second case, however, there is no apparent prescription. In this case there is something wrong with the world itself, or with human nature at any rate, and surely the only adequate way to react to such malfunctioning is to evolve a corresponding malfunctioning on the personal and individual level. If human nature is corrupt or inconsistent by design then nostalgia and other “disorders” are not pathological aberrations but on the contrary sound and healthy reactions that prove that the individual is in perfect tune with reality. ]]> http://www.olsholt.no/wordpress/2011/09/nostalgia/feed/ 0 http://www.olsholt.no/wordpress/2011/08/cure-of-verbal-diarrhoea/ http://www.olsholt.no/wordpress/2011/08/cure-of-verbal-diarrhoea/#comments Sat, 20 Aug 2011 13:49:35 +0000 Rafe http://www.olsholt.no/wordpress/?p=418 Read more »]]> When being stopped in the street by political campaigners prior to local or general elections here’s what to do to avoid being subject to the usual verbal diarrhoea. Before they have a chance to start regurgitating their tiresome message ask them the following question: give me one, and only one, reason – in one short sentence – why I should vote for this party. Before they start answering, ask them to confirm explicitly that they have understood the task and are willing to adhere to it. After hearing the sentence, say thanks and tell them that you have to go as you are collecting all the parties’ sentences. Or if you feel so inclined, start to question them about one important word in their answer, for instance “freedom” or “justice.” If they deviate tell them so in a firm voice. This cure is 90 per cent effective and offers a little bit of entertainment as well, especially when the campaigners think that their answer is any good.

Later it struck me that I had in fact been lucky. For what if the next stranger that happens to pass by is of a less gracious constitution? What if he turns unpleasant as I refuse to buy anything from him, starts telling me how much he despises my country and my people and adds menacingly that I should watch it, that future “visitors” may not be as tolerant and indulgent as he? And what if the next stranger after that is worse still: what if he simply knocks me down as soon as I open the door and steals and loots whatever he can get away with? Yes, I must have been very lucky. Every other day I read about my fellow countrymen, particularly the elderly, who hospitably open their homes to complete strangers only to be met with violence and destruction. Confidence as a general trait of our kind of society – that is to say our long-standing habit of giving everyone the unconditional benefit of the doubt – is swiftly eroding as a consequence.

But I don’t give up that easily. What if they for some reason had to choose one or the other, I ask, like Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice? Would they still dismiss the question? In the film a cruel Nazi officer orders Sophie to pick one of her two children to be saved from the concentration camp knowing that the remaining child faces certain death. A terrible predicament and yet she has to make a decision else the officer dispatches both children to the camp.

“This is a somewhat different situation,” a friend comments dryly. “If you pointed a gun at me I would no doubt try to answer your question. In fact, I would do almost anything if my life depended on it. But it is still a silly question, you understand. Also, we should bear in mind that forcing Sophie to choose between her children, her ‘necessities’ as it were, destroyed her life. Now, answering your question wouldn’t exactly destroy me but I admit there is a certain pain or friction involved when being asked to choose between things that are truly indispensable, even when it is just for fun.”

What can I say to my friend? Only that I find it slightly curious that there is such resistance to a seemingly innocent yet on the other hand rather intriguing question. For are we not all at times bound to choose between “necessities:” between enjoying love and doing our duty, between developing our physical and spiritual capacities, between giving way to our feelings and desires and employing rational analysis? Love, duty, body, soul, emotion, rationality ‒ they are all necessary and inevitable parts of human life, but no one can have or fulfil all of them at the same time, at least not all of the time. Sometimes we just have to prioritise. So what is so wrong with a little test of our prioritising capabilities using the above question?

Anyway, I decide to make life easier for my friends so I ask the same question but with new alternatives. What is more important: to live comfortably or meaningfully? Now, that is a beautiful question if there ever was one. But will my friends answer this time? No. They now object that there is no real contradiction between the options since a certain level of comfort must be reached in order to live meaningfully and vice versa. Hence it would be a violation of both categories to distinguish sharply between them. Really? Are they not forgetting that comfort often precludes meaningfulness inasmuch as the latter often requires effort and sacrifice, none of which are compatible with the former? But even after recognising this point my friends still don’t like the question and would like to dismiss and evade it. Why?

I surmise that my friend’s aversion to binary questions has less to do with an intellectual realisation that the alternatives are either necessary or non-contradictory, and the questions therefore unanswerable, and everything to do with an emotionally based unwillingness to speak or act in a discriminate fashion. They emphatically ‒ and by and large unconsciously ‒ resist any judgement that entails that A is better or worse than B. Why? Well, probably because my friends consider it morally superior to entertain an open and inclusive attitude, consequently, it is morally inferior to make a judgement, any judgement, since judging sooner or later, by force of habit, leads to a judgemental or prejudiced attitude or outlook. In other words: openness is good because it is relative, not absolute, taking a clear stand is bad because it closes the issue and narrows down the number of available interpretations.

Evading questions is one very effective way of preserving this openness or relativism. Just leave things as they are, then you will never be guilty of making errors or worse, of hurting somebody’s feelings. Argue that it is better to eat than to sleep, therefore, is something my relativist friends will never do, even if their own personal sentiments should tilt in favour of one or the other option, because there will always be someone out there who may disagree and take offence (heaven forbid). Indeed, in this warped world-view, any argument is a possible violation of somebody’s opinion and since opinion, emotion and self-esteem are inextricably intertwined we must avoid all argumentation. Instead we should follow our base instincts, eat and sleep and live our lives in relative comfort. The price to pay is the meaning of it all.