Speculative Non-Buddhism
Darknessruins of the buddhist real
“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.” —Friedrich NietzscheIn her essay “Action and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Hannah Arendt comments on the deep imprint of affirmation and positivity on “the American frame of mind.” Indeed, this tendency, as she points out, is a guiding principle of America’s founding documents, wherein “the pursuit of happiness” is enshrined as an inalienable human right. Never mind that everywhere, now as then, insecurity, strife, and oppression are the order of the day; still, we all possess that percularly American privilege of “pursuing a phantom and embracing a delusion.” Even Walt Whitman, our poet of joyous celebration must, in the end, wonder, “What is happiness, anyhow?…so impalpable—a mere breath, an evanescent tinge.”
Unlike many others, it is a “tinge” that is at least fostered by our dominant national ideology. What about the tinge of darkness that we all must surely experience? Call it unease, anxiety, nausea, existential angst, sadness, depression, everyday anguish, non-specific mourning, or something else, it is anathema to our collective identity and barred from serious, non-pathologized, discourse.
In this seminar, we will journey together into the (conceptual) night of dark trees and peek beneath those cypresses. Our guides will include Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emil Cioran, Giacomo Leopardi, Thomas Ligotti, Fernando Pessoa, George Friedrich Lichtenberg, Emily Dickinson, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Lev Shestov. We will read and discuss passages from their writings. Our challenge will be to avoid the traps of gothic romanticism (“woe is me!”) and scientific realism (“the universe is absolute nothingness”). Vigorously on the path to a hardy, full-bodied and generously pessimistic darkness, what might we behold?
Facilitator: Glenn Wallis holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University. He is the author of six books including Cruel Theory/Sublime Practice and Basic Teachings of the Buddha as well as numerous articles, chapters, and essays on various aspects of Buddhism per se and Western Buddhism in contemporary society. His most recent work, A Critique of Western Buddhism: Ruins of the Buddhist Real, employs the “non-philosophical” methods of French thinker François Laruelle. Wallis has taught at Brown University, Bowdoin College, and the University of Georgia.
Date: Saturday, August 4, 9am-1pm
Cost: $80
Have you read Stephen Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now!”? He launches an all out attack on Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger et. al. and implies there are no roses under those trees.
Is it true that “insecurity, strife, and oppression” are the order of the day? Pinker has lots of graphs showing that these things have been decreasing since the Enlightenment. Think of gay rights, things have got a whole lo better in the past few years in the Democracies, and there are a lot more Democracies today than there were fifty years ago.
Pinker asks, “Are we really so unhappy?” and suggests “Mostly we are not. Developed countries are actually pretty happy, a majority of all countries have gotten happier, and as long as countries get richer they should get happier still. The dire warning about plagues of loneliness, suicide, depression and anxiety don’t survive fact checking.”
Maybe it’s just us readers of Buddha, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer who are unhappy, and these thinkers help us stay that way? Maybe we should all just aim to become happy, average citizens of our modern democracies and stop making ourselves unhappy by reading pessimistic intellectuals?
Anyway, it might be useful for your seminar participants to read Pinker to see what the optimistic opposition are thinking.
Mal. Thanks, I think I will follow your advice and read some Pinker in the seminar. From the little I have read of Pinker he represents the Pollyannaish mentality of the “optimistic opposition.” A couple of quick rejoinders.
About the question of “strife,” etc: Looking at as large a chunk of what’s happening on any given day, yes, it is the order of the day, any given day. Maybe it does not appear so looking out into my suburban garden on a quiet summer morning, but if I expand my view, yes.
About those graphs: They prove nothing. I can make my own graphs that show how virtually any issue or state of affairs ebbs and flows throughout history. In America, for instance, the leading LGBTQ organization just released a report showing the considerable losses to their cause suffered in a year of Trump’s administration. That America could lapse into the world of the Handmaid’s Tale is not all that far-fetched. In 1933 Germany was the very epitome of a rational, cultured, educated society.
About the question whether we really are so unhappy (1) see comment above about strife, (2) read Bright-Sided, (3) a country doesn’t have emotions, (4) “happiness” is a very recent category and (4) it doesn’t really name anything (see Whitman on the “tinge).
About readers of Buddhism and Nietzsche: I am assuming that is ironic. I hope so.
Re: “dire warnings about plagues of loneliness, suicide, depression and anxiety don’t survive fact checking.”
Actually, they do. There has been a marked increase in suicide rates in the last decade in the U.S., particularly among middle-aged men, but extending to all demographics. There has also been a remarkable increase in the use of psychiatric medications, with more than 15% of Americans now taking them—over 20% among Caucasian adults. Also, the “opioid epidemic” is not complete exaggeration, and popular beliefs notwithstanding most people who turn to addiction are far from happy by any definition of that term.
More troubling for me is the naive idea that “countries get richer.” Sure, the rich are unbelievably richer in the U.S. since the 2007 collapse, with more men than ever worth multiple billions—but the standard of living continues to decrease, and in inflation-adjusted dollars we now make less with a graduate degree than a high-school graduate did forty years ago…
Maybe this has something to do with the general unhappiness…but I suppose it’s a bit more complex than this. I’d attribute it to a failure of ideology—of a kind that could take a whole book to explain.
Of course, it strikes me from reading the description of the seminar that it is likely less concerned with how many people are depressed or suicidal than with the sense of alienation or despondence often felt, particularly by thoughtful people, without necessarily being clinically depressed or suicidal. The sort of despair described in the stories of Sherwood Anderson of some of the novels of Dawn Powell…
“Indeed, this tendency, as she points out, is a guiding principle of America’s founding documents, wherein “the pursuit of happiness” is enshrined as an inalienable human right.”
Those words, of course, are from the United States Declaration of Independence. I once heard that the original word, in place of “happiness,” was “property”. I accepted the claim that “happiness” was used in place of “property” in edit on account of that claim resonating so well with the elite / intellectual zeitgeist of that time, which was so much influenced by Locke (In 1689, Locke argued in his Two Treatises of Government that political society existed for the sake of protecting “property”, which he defined as a person’s “life, liberty, and estate”). But, if Wikipedia is correct, the original word from Jefferson’s first draft was indeed “happiness”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness Perhaps this was because Jefferson (and his team of editors) thought “property” too crass or narrow?