Meditations

on suggestiveness, cynicism, curses, and solipsism

1.

All men agree that a strip tease is better than a woman appearing stark naked. They call this “leaving something to the imagination.” A way of enjoying the process as much as —if not more than— the result; disliking the result being handed to them on a platter. It is a celebration of effort. Happy at being invited to participate in an event. It is no wonder we cry when we peel onions—tears of joy as we participate in an unwrapping. 

Now this “leaving something to the imagination” is such a powerful force as I know it. So powerful that it touches everything. It is the power of seduction. It is the appeal in the IKEA effect. It is there in prayer—when prayer is participating in God’s will on the earth. It is the joy in the ambiguous square box wrapped in opaque paper which stirs a joyful anxiety as we tear the wrapping paper to shreds that we might reveal the treasure therein; why throw the mug at them when you can conceal it, ask them to guess, and delay the gratification? 

It is there in wits when a gentleman drops a pun and expects you to make the connection. He looks at you while hiding a huge smile hoping you will get it. It is there in encryption when the message is hidden and all you have are clues to work with. It is in a joke—which loses its power and gravity once it is explained. It is there in romance—“Dost thou love me, cousin? I have loved thee long”; oh the joys of uncertainty. Or the power of suggestiveness.

2.

A pretty girl with many (unwanted) suitors will become cynical. And I dare say that she is justified at being so—she must look out for her self-interest above all else. As such, we may excuse her strained face and unwelcoming smile. We may permit her sneering and mocking and shooing away the undesirables. For where the supply exceeds the demand, cynicism becomes an act of judgment; a way to save yourself from drowning in abundance.

Where people are not allowed to be critical, they must become cynical. Where judgment is forbidden, people become suspicious. Where all hides behind a curtain, the people must distrust and force themselves to peek behind the curtain.

When someone declares himself perfect or acts so, the people often grow cynical; raising one eyebrow; looking for slips and lies. It is not imperfection that sponsors cynicism but perfection. A man will be disappointed that his Madonna is in fact made of clay. He may now hate her. The beauty of human beauty is that all that goodness stops short of perfection. Humanity, if we boil down all the definitions, would point to imperfection as its distinct quality.

3.

A curse, I just realised, is a statement of fate. It is a word that binds; that declares how a person would end up. Like Cain, who was fated to end up a wanderer. Or Briar Rose, who was condemned to sleep — whether for eternity or a hundred years. Or like the Prince who became a beast. Or the Turnip princess. The list stretches on. Yet the observation is true: whenever anyone sits under a curse, their ability to help themselves, if not dwarfed to zero, is left unusually small, leaving them dependent on the goodwill of an other.

This observation feels like an assault on my fundamental belief: on the free will of man, his agency, and his ability to shape his own destiny. As an agent who can act beyond what happens to him; of elevating the physical into moral necessity. Thus, if I hold a heuristic to help me distinguish between ideas, to choose which is more valid than the other, I opt for the idea that allows man more agency than one which offers him less. But it is hard to look at a curse in the face and not surrender this heuristic on such occasions. For a curse can also be said to be an assault on the will; on his agency. Where a man is condemned to being a spectator of his own condition rather than an architect of his destiny as has been famed.

Yet it remains true what a curse is and what a curse does. Even if you do not believe in the mystical elements that surround life. Even though you may refuse to believe in the supernormal, you can admit that there exists, curses of a different kind which assault a man's will and shrinks his possibilities to a narrow range of actions where he is hapless and witless. These more admissible types of curses we sometimes call ideas: some ideas function as curses. These ideas assault the will and agency of those who believe them and live by them. But this is not to say that all ideas are curses. Because while I liken all ideas to spells, not all spells are curses.

Still yet, even though curses limit one’s range of function, I do not imply that all limits are curses. For instance, one's sex, which is a given biological limitation, is not a curse. Yes, it narrows your range of actions: a man cannot menstruate, conceive, or bear children. But this is neither wicked nor is it malicious. Neither does it make you hapless or witless. However, a curse stands peculiarly malicious and malignant. It is, rightly, an assault. In the same vein, some ideas assault your will with the malignant effect of constricting your choices, rendering you hapless, and laying you abjectly at the mercy of another. Eliminating agency.

4.

While it is true that man dignifies himself above other creatures by not resting satisfied in what nature had made of him, it does not follow that we can remake everything as we want. Neither is it true that any limitation at all is default oppressive. So, while we have accomplished great strides in confronting our frailty—diseases and mortality, and we have gone on to make rockets, satellites, move across continents in hours, we must not delude ourselves into thinking that this means we can eliminate every limitation. Nor should we count them as oppressive. Granted that we have unlocked great powers by technology, it still is not true that we can rewrite everything at will without consulting nature’s counsel and will on the matter.

5.

“The man who kills a man,” Chesterton wrote, “kills one man. The man who kills himself kills all men. As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.” Which is typical Chesterton, until you stretch your hand outward a little bit and touch Murdoch, Iris Murdoch who said that "love is the painful realisation that the other person is real." Put these two quotes together and the first makes sense. But add a third, by Rowan Williams, that "the barriers of egoistic fantasy are broken by the sheer brute presence of other persons." Now we heave a sigh; it all makes sense.

It all makes sense when you think of Aaron Bushnell who self-immolated to protest the genocide in Palestine. Per his statement, he could no longer be complicit in genocide and his agony —as he dies— does not compare to the genocide happening in that region.

It makes sense, starting from Chesterton, that in a sense, Aaron Bushnell has killed all men by removing himself from the scene. Realising that he has little control and influence over the actions of others, he decided to erase them by erasing himself. As such, Aaron did not see himself as the problem. He saw others as the problem. And his solution in removing others is to remove himself — since by removing himself, he will not be reminded of the painful and excruciating fact that others are real. Thus, looking from Aaron's viewpoint, he killed all men by killing himself. Solipsism.

Sadly, many cannot fathom the idea that others are real. Which Includes both the perpetrators and the victims.

To Live with the knowledge that some are powerful men, wasting the lives of others, and others are weak, suffering at the hands of powerful perpetrators is courage. The saying goes, for Christians, that to die for the Lord is the easier thing to do as it is something you do once and for all. But to live and die daily, denying oneself, that is the harder thing.