Being v. Becoming, Pt. 1

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

As best as we can discern, change is the fundamental force of all existence.

Nothing that exists stands still. Nothing remains the same.

Becoming is the form this fundamental force of change takes in living beings.

Living beings are conceived, assembled molecularly, born; they grow, mature, deteriorate, die, and decompose.

Human beings have created the notion of Selfhood to account for the experience of individuality, of bodily separateness, over the conscious, temporal course of this process.

Selfhood is constructed, named, bequeathed an Identity.

Identity is a function of memory. Identity subsumes the on-going accretion of experience into itself.

Identity implies the unreality of Becoming and, thus, Change.

Identity privileges/presupposes stasis, unity, continuity over both space and time and over Change and Becoming.

The notion of the Self is an illusion, masked/projected by the construct Identity.

It makes no sense to speak of an Authentic Self.

No Self can be called Authentic because Selfhood itself is an illusion. A 'fiction', if you will.

Change/Becoming is not an (Aristotelian) accident/attribute that happens to the (Aristotelian) substance/being.

Change just is.

Becoming is the norm, the fundament of experience. Beings participate/are immersed in the process of Change. Beings Become.

Your Self is not the same now as it was when you began reading this. For one thing, you have gained the experience of reading this. Thus, you are a different Self now than you were a few moments ago. Though it doesn't feel that way.

Being/Selfhood/Identity is an ultimately futile resistance to the reality of Change/Becoming. A negation of Reality. All things, as the man said, must pass.

This resistance of the Self to the omnipresence of Change/Becoming creates a sort of friction that feels substantive. Feeling is stubborn, reactionary (or, better, reactive), and Self-centric, but is crucial to the Selfhood/Identity illusion. (See this serial post, Thyrophobia, remembering to read from the last post to the first.)

The Mosaic Sadness, Part 2

[cont'd from previous post]

The Mosaic Sadness is the emotional condition of our mortality. When we realize failure is our destiny—incompletion, disappointment—it is the inevitable response. At the end of life, we may, however, get a chance to look back at all our successes and our failures and realize how puny they all are. And, if we are as fortunate as Moses, we may catch a glimpse of the Promised Land on Canaan's side, to wit: what fulfillment, satisfaction, liberation, community, and success might look like. What the future might hold.

Franz Kafka was exquisitely aware of this condition. It marks much of his best, most enigmatic, writing. And it plagues his later diaries.

"Of all writers Kafka was possibly the most cunning: he, at least, was never had! To start with, unlike many modern writers, he wanted to be a writer. He realised that literature, which was what he wanted, denied him the satisfaction he expected, but he never stopped writing. We cannot even say that literature disappointed him. It did not disappoint him – not, at any rate, in comparison with other possible goals. For him, literature was what the promised land was for Moses. ‘The fact that he was not to see the Promised Land until just before his death is incredible,’ Kafka wrote about Moses in his diary. ‘The sole significance of this last view is to show how imperfect an instant human life is – imperfect, because this aspect of life (the expectation of the Promised Land) could last indefinitely without ever appearing to be more than an instant. Moses did not fail to reach Canaan because his life was too short, but because his was a human life.’ This is no longer a mere denunciation of the vanity of one ‘aspect of life’, but of the vanity of all endeavours, which are equally senseless: an endeavour is always as hopeless in time as a fish in water. It is a mere point in the movement of the universe, for we are dealing with a human life." G. Bataille, "Should Kafka Be Burnt?" in Literature and Evil @ 152.

On Kafka's view, per Batille, this Mosaic sadness is our existential situation: the water in which we qua fish swim. An ironic, violent, trickster god denies us our heart's desire despite our faithfulness to this god's calling, and only because of our finite humanity—a finitude into which this selfsame god has capriciously flung us (out of, I might add, pique). It is a profoundly religious point of view: nothing we can do can or even should move the great god. And that's probably as it should be.

Though it should not be a call for self-pity. If this life were the paradise of the Promised Land, there would be no need to strive to better ourselves or our condition. Aspiration would be irrelevant, rendered moot by perfection.

This is entirely in keeping with the theory of literature I've put forth on this blog under the Label Ur-story. Dealing with this existential situation of Mosaic sadness—the recognition and acknowledgement of our mortality—is the substance of literature, and I've attempted to show how a number writers have adressed it.

In the notion of Mosaic sadness, we find the convergence of both theology and literature. It is at the root of what it means to be human, and at the same time it implies our limitation.

We do not live forever. We will not live forever. Some god has decreed it. We can, however, imagine what it might mean to have eternal life, to reach the Promised Land. However, if we are true to ourselves and our situation, we must acknowledge and learn to cope with the foundational sadness that is our essence.

Religious traditions have tried to provide a salve, a consolation, in the form of a Heaven or a Paradise in an afterlife. Look beyond this cruel situation: hope lies in the great beyond. This is their ultimate interpretation of the existential quandary.

Literature details the varied responses of flawed human beings within the finitude of this life to this situation. Get angry. Go to war. Take intriguing journeys. Suffer and moan. Laugh. Love. Seek clues to solve great mysteries. Imagine an alternate reality. Dream the future.

But what if Canaan isn't all it's promised to be?

The Kafka diary entry quoted by Bataille is dated October 19, 1921. Not three weeks later, Kafka sinks even further into existential despair. On second thought, what if the Promised Land is not all it it's cracked up to be? And the wilderness is still Wilderness? In his diary entry of January 28, 1922, he writes:

"...I am already a citizen in this other world, which is related to the ordinary world as the wilderness is to cultivated land (I have been forty years wandering from Canaan), look back as a foreigner, am of course also in that other world—that I have brought along as paternal inheritance—the smallest and the most anxious one and am only capable of living there because of the special organization there, according to which even for the lowliest ones there are exaltations that come like lightning, of course also millenial shatterings that crush like the weight of the sea. Should I not be thankful in spite of everything? Would I have had to find my way here? Could I have not been crushed at the border through 'banishment' there, combined with refusal here. Was not because of my father's power the expulsion so strong that nothing could withstand it (not me)? Of course, it is like a reversed wandering in the wilderness and with childish hopes (especially with regard to women): 'I shall nevertheless perhaps remain in Canaan' and meanwhile I have been in the wilderness for a long time, and there are only visions of despair, especially in those times when even there I am the most miserable one of all, and Canaan must represent itself as the only land of hope, for there is no third land for human beings."

Kafka's sadness is double: "Canaan requires conformity, and the desert, which may provide refuge from the misery of Canaan, cannot protect against despair and illusory hopes." B. Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses: Heine, Kafka, Freud, and Schoenberg in a European Wilderness @ 63-64.

Moses at least had hope—for his people, if not for himself.

Poor, deluded Moses.

(to be continued)


[Yay! The YouTubes!]

TELEVISION
"Marquee Moon"

(Verlaine)

I remember
how the darkness doubled
I recall
lightning struck itself.
I was listening
listening to the rain
I was hearing
hearing something else.

Life in the hive puckered up my night,
the kiss of death, the embrace of life.
There I stand neath the Marquee Moon Just waiting,
Hesitating...
I ain't waiting

I spoke to a man
down at the tracks.
I asked him
how he don't go mad.
He said "Look here junior, don't you be so happy.
And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad."

Well a Cadillac
it pulled out of the graveyard.
Pulled up to me
all they said get in.
Then the Cadillac
it puttered back into the graveyard.
And me,
I got out again.

The Mosaic Sadness, Part 1

"This is the land I vowed to Abram, Isaac, and Jacob," Yahweh said to him. "'To your seed I will give it,' were my words. It is revealed to your eyes, though your body cannot follow." Moses, servant of Yahweh, died there, in Moab's land, following Yahweh's word. Now he buried him there, in the clay of Moab's land, in a gorge facing Beth-peor: no man has ever seen his grave, to this day. (The Book of J @ 178 (trans. David Rosenberg)

[Moshe was 120 years old when he died, with eyes undimmed and vigor undiminished." (Deuteronomy @ 34:7 CJV]

This passage depicts the death of one of the truly great world-historical (or mytho-historical, or both, depending on your point of view) figures of the ancient Near East. A reluctant, ironic leader, at least three of the world's great religions venerate him as the founder of monotheism—Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten excepted. According to the Bible, he negotiated, organized, and led the great exodus of a loosely knit band of Semitic tribes from Pharoanic slavery and, in exile in the wilderness, forged their identity as a nation in thrall to the great god Yahweh. Shepherd, fabulist, magician, miracle worker, liberator, prophet, law-giver, judge, political leader, murderer, warrior/general: these titles have survived five thousand years attached to this man we know as Moses.

In the passage here, Yahweh leads Moses to the top of Mt. Nebo and shows him the proverbial Promised Land—the lands of the Covenant that Yahweh had promised to the Israelites' racial progenitors, Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, in antiquity. Yet, He tells Moses he may not enter this country. The Book of J does not specify why, but later redactors, editors, and commentators allow it is because Moses disobeyed Yahweh in some petty, self-serving manner. There, looking out over the Jordan River, Moses died alone and unremarked in some anonymous ditch.

Moses, whose eyes were unclouded, could see the Promised Land, and even though he was still active, Yahweh refused to let him enter. A congenital stutterer, Moses had mustered all his persuasive powers to negotiate the liberation of the people and serve as their leader, all in service to Yahweh and in reliance on His promise. He remained true to his calling, even though at times his temper and ego got the better of him, and led the people to the very cusp of Canaan.

It's been said there's nothing worse than to die sad and alone. The sadness Moses must've felt there at the end of his life as he looked out over the Promised Land—allegedly 120 years old—knowing he could not go in; the deep disappointment Moses must've felt when he realized Yahweh had no intention of keeping His promise vis-à-vis Moses despite his lifetime of dedicated service; the overwhelming grief that must've consumed Moses in his loneliness as he tumbled into a gorge and died: this is what I shall call 'The Mosaic Sadness.'

(to be continued)