A Westphalia

Guest Column

Eric Chaet

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for Eric Chaet

by Eric Chaet

Most of my competitors for attention and resources with which to go on, don't even know why they think what they think, let alone why they're doing what they're doing. 

What they think is the product of programming coming at them from all directions, and, especially, from earlier in their lives --- when they had less experience and, so, less ability to check what they were being told against what they knew to be so, at least some times. 

Those who were "educating" them, whether in school, or in casual conversation, advertising, or propaganda, were, likewise, competing for attention, resources, and influence without even knowing why they thought what they thought, or wanted what they wanted. 

Of course, some didn't care: they just wanted the money, or prestige, or power over others. The others could cope with the negative consequences.

I don't doubt that many of my competitors for attention, resources, and influence have excellent intentions --- at least according to what they believe are excellent intentions.

Some, of course, just want to be rewarded for appearing to be clever. That's common.

I rarely know what to do or say. I take that to be a sort of progress. It's taken me a long time to know when I don't know what to do or say, which is, now, most of the time I am awake.

That realization hasn't come all at once, but again and again. It has sometimes triggered intense anxiety, especially in the first instant. Maybe I'm past the worst of that, maybe not. 

A comforting, false belief I was counting on is dissipating.

If humanity continues to commit pervasive injustice and also species-cide, I doubt that I will ever become more than briefly satisfied, even if I receive a lot more attention, money, esteem.

But I need SOME money and attention, to compete. 

You can say something very clever about this or that terrible event or cluster of on-going suffering, but this war or that one, terrible enough, even fatal, for some, is symptomatic of what each is part of --- isn't it?

Have my competitors for money and attention offered the solution, yet, that ends the human civil war and the race toward catastrophe?

Are you, am I capable of doing more about it than when we were babies?

It is no mean accomplishment to become capable of providing for yourself, especially in an environment in which various sorts of cheating prevail, and you aren't one of those born to advantage --- and it's better than never becoming capable of providing for yourself. 

But, in the long run, you lose the ability to provide for yourself, you die, and humanity is in the same trouble that it's been in as long as we know about it, isn't it? 

But, you may say, that's not your problem. You're right, unless you decide to make it your problem. In which case, how are you doing at solving your problem?

Humanity's situation --- and mine --- are unsatisfactory. A lot of people are doing and saying --- but without knowing why they are doing what they are doing or saying what they are saying. People often achieve great wealth or fame or power over others --- but I wouldn't have done what most have done with their lives to achieve it.--- and won't, to achieve similar. 

I suppose I value what I have, which is mainly who I am --- though I'm dissatisfied with what I have, and with what I have managed to make of myself --- more than I value what they have, and what they have made of themselves, at the price they've paid and are paying.

The price I'm paying is, if anything, even greater.

But I don't pretend to know. Surely, some people are simply more understanding of what they think than I, shrewder, wiser, more courageous, more self-disciplined, even more reverent of life, of being, of others who aren't sociopaths, and of greater value to the innocent and most righteously useful. I hope so. 

I hope to become more successful than I am, even so late in life. I hope to know better why I think what I think, and whether what I think I know is knowledge or not. I hope to comprehend more, to become more skillful, and, as a result, to gain more of what I hope to have and what I hope to become, and am of greater service to those whose suffering is relatively innocent, and whose ambitions are decent, even exemplary.

Meanwhile, I claim that you would be better off attending to and paying me more, and paying less money and attention to the inferior products and presentations of my competitors than you have been doing so far.