Well, that's exactly what I said, that you haven't changed, it's the political parties that have changed.
Those were interesting comments about the French guy's statement. It probably is true that it's because he's generally a caring, generous person, with a socialized French conscience, that he thinks it's not possible to be happy without being generous. Then there's the question of what it means to be happy. There's happiness that is a kind of fun/pleasure, and then there is something else which is a deeper rooted sense of fulfillment and peace. I'm pretty sure the two are different, and even contradictory a lot of the time. There are all sort of pills and drugs and video games and things like sex and eating, and stuff like that, that are pleasurable, sort of like a rat pushing its little bar to get a brief moment of stimulation, but a lot of the time those things are like taking out a loan that you need to repay later, with an I.O.U. for an equal payment of unhappiness and suffering at an unspecified future date. The fulfillment/peace thing comes from something else. I think that's more the thing the French guy was referring too. But that doesn't mean other people find fulfillment in the same way, or that everybody even cares about something like that. Maybe for some people, it's limited to just trying to find ways to press that little pleasure bar as much as possible, until they die. That sounds horrible to me, like some kind of ghastly dark nightmare. It would be like somebody who masturbates as many times as possible each day, every day. There would be a lot of moments of pleasure each day, I guess, but I can't say it sounds like a very good recipe for happiness.
Which kind of leads to the whole question, is life purely materialistic, where we are just a bunch of atoms running around experiencing little bursts of energy and unconsciously demonstrating the laws of physics, or is there something more to it than that. Each person has to answer that question for themselves.
For sure, I do think that life consists of both joy and sorrow, and there's no way around that. In Asian cultures, they totally accept the idea that suffering is a big part of life, but here in America, we do everything we can to avoid that. We're supposed to be happy all the time, just like we're supposed to be young all the time, and I think that in itself is a big source of unhappiness.... it's particularly bitter to be sad in a culture that denies the legitimacy and meaning of sadness.
So how were the festivities surrounding John's birthday party?
I've been thinking about this George Whittell guy you told me about, which is kind of hard to do since I hardly know anything about him. But I was wondering if at one time in his life he really had enjoyed and cared about people, and so it was a shocking change of character that he ended up scurrying around in underground tunnels so he could be alone, or if his whole recluse stage was just a foreseeable ending of the way he had always lived his life. My guess would be that he always treated people the way he treated his Duesenberg and his fancy wooden power boat -- as things to collect and show off and move here and there in ways that amused him. If that's the case, it makes sense that in the end he'd get fed up and just take his toys and live in a tunnel. If that's the case, I feel sorry for anyone who got close to him in his lifetime, if they were at all caring or sensitive people. Fortunately, the kind of person who likes to "collect" other people as fun accessories, tends to attract people who are also manipulators, so it's all fair game.
--edward
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