14 April ‘08

There is, it seems, a space reserved in the human psyche for ambition, for that conscious or unconscious desire to attain that which brings glory, influence, power, et cetera. It follows, then, that when one does not possess such ambition, the space left behind is as glaring as that of a missing tooth. This left-behind space is not only empty but is the opening for a potent vacuum that exerts its pull on every other aspect of one’s life. For those of us who did not wake one day and know we were destined to be a builder or a bureaucrat, for example, the vacuitous nature of that space is a source of deep disquiet. Lacking some bone-lodged drive we spend much of our lives trying to sate the vacuum. For many, the way to sate it, the best way to plug the gap, is to fill it with some external force.

Religion is one such force, and a near-perfect one at that. Belief in fate is another that, while powerful, lacks the brilliant and self-contained answers of the various dogmas. Children, in some instances, are a further example of a satiating force, a further way to pass on the implicit and silently subconscious responsibility of deciding about one’s own life (in this final example, the silent and subconscious is replaced by the ability to decide on someone else’s). There is more to say here, but let me digress for a moment.

One of the reasons anthropology is on its last legs as a discipline is that much of what constitutes its scholarship is entrenched in age-old theories of evolutionism. Evolutionist theories suggest that all humans can be classified on a scale with barbarians at one pole and the civilized at the other. On this scale, white Europeans—as the most ‘civilized’ of peoples—are at the top while Australian Aboriginals, for example—as ‘barbaric and uncivilized’—are at the bottom. As well as shaping a nascent anthropology, evolutionism provided justification for various historical atrocities; slavery and colonization are two examples. In the early nineteen-hundreds, the reigning evolutionist theories were challenged and by the middle of the century were largely struck from popular use. Anthropologists today pat themselves on the back for having revealed evolutionism as the fallacious and racist theory it is. They treat as curious artefacts the texts evolutionism produced and blush and chaff when the ‘founding fathers’ of anthropology are revealed as the key proponents of evolutionism.

It is perhaps unfair, though, to blame evolutionism solely on anthropology. After all, it could be argued that like most disciplines and institutions, anthropology just reflects the dominant theories of the time. Indeed, the basic premise—that humans evolve from one state to the next—echoes in myriad other disciplines, development programmes, and covert ‘civilizing’ missions like those which enforce Eurocentric democracy (and unlike anthropology, those disciplines, programmes and mission flourish today). At the origin of these echoes is the fact that entrenched in the Western psyche—and perhaps others, I cannot say—is an ineluctable desire to progress, to develop, to advance. And given that ‘progress’, ‘develop’ and ‘advance’, are synonyms for ‘evolve’ there is a prima facie case at least for concluding that the subversive and infectious brethren of evolutionism cling to the Western psyche like leeches cling to a body. Leaving that thought in its infancy, I return to ambition.

The basic path most of us follow seems to agree with the notion that we are obsessed with progression. Toddlers attend kindergarten in preparation for primary school, primary school is attended in preparation for intermediate, intermediate in preparation for high school, high school for university, university for a job, a job for children, a partner and retirement, retirement in preparation for, well, death. So it goes. A grim and simplistic rendering this may be, the basic premise holds; that at the core of our existence is a perceived need to progress.

The implications of this need to progress are many. Of note here are just two. The first, to which I alluded, is that in the absence of any clear-cut path there exists in many of us a sense of deep disquiet. While some can allay this disquiet with religion doctrines, or a belief in fate or pre-destiny, or children, those who cannot must suffer the anguish of the vacuum, and the pull it exerts on other aspects of life. The response to this anguish—and here I speak solely for myself—is an abdication of responsibility.

One of the many little anecdotes I run with various people from time-to-time is that, in the course of my life, there is very little I feel I had agency over. That there wasn’t, for example, a morning where I woke up and decided I wanted to study anthropology in New York. Instead, I was quite sure that these things ‘just happened’, that I was a passive recipient rather than an actor, that various events and relationships merely fell on me like a shadow. A friend recently had me up on this point, quite rightly arguing that I do, of course, have agency and that all events in my life (save for those determined by external forces) have been my doing. That at this moment, who I am, where I am and what I am doing is my responsibility. I am liable for all that is going wrong and all that is going right. Even if taking full responsibility for one’s life is possible— surely such an act would involve recognising that there’s a version of the self independent from others, that there is something which constitutes the true ego?—the thought itself is, perhaps, too terrifying. For that reason I shall continue to abdicate, for now.

The other implication is that there are very few times in our lives—and here I teeter dangerously close to New Ageism—in which we are content to live in the present. Like those who live this life in preparation for the next (surely the most acute of tragedies) we live for the future, for a time we know nothing of and can do nothing to change (influence, yes. Change, no). There is merit, I think, in the practice of ignoring the hulking unknown and concentrating on what brings happiness in the present, in finding a niche between hedonism and philanthropy, between nihilism and rabid religiosity, or at least in not viewing the present as merely a condition of the future but as a valid and worthy time itself.

***

Okay, so that’s that. I leave behind the pseudo-philosophy, the preaching and proselytising, the immature tirade and lurch instead towards something more tangible. I’ve just returned from a New York comedy show which, later this week, will be complimented by a Broadway musical. The comedy was fine, gays, Jews, blacks, whites, Asians, the elderly, the young were all ridiculed equally. There was, however, the unnerving experience that occurs with most oft-parodied spectacles—here I’m thinking of street-theatre, parades, office relationships, the news—that when witnessing the live performance it is difficult to determine whether it is satire or reality, so close to the two coexist. The musical though, as part of a particularly loathsome genre, I am somewhat nervous of.

Coney Island, April '09
More photos available here.

7 April '08

A while ago I mentioned of a German word, Schadenfreude. A word that means, roughly, to take malicious pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. The Germans have an even better word—‘better’ because the meaning is even more nuanced, and the translation into English even more difficult—which describes when something is not as bad as you expected, and you are disappointed. The word, Scheissenbedauern, is an apt sign for the feeling I have about the New York Winter.

Last year, wincing at the heavy air that preceded an early storm, I described a shift in the weather; a shift from fetid, tepid breezes to bracing, bitter winds, a shift from the casual optimism of summer to the reservation and introversion of winter. Unfamiliar with the New York climes, you see, the nascent season in October made me quiver with nervous excitement.

It is with disappointment, then, that as the calendar determines the onset of spring I must let go of my fear of winter. There was snow, sure. The mercury dropped well below zero for a couple of weeks, okay. I saw cars sliding down hills, impotent against the ice, fine. But that all happens in Christchurch. And Christchurch is about as exotic as a haemorrhoid. I wanted doors to be immobile against great flurries of ice, roofs to collapse under the weight of sleet and slush, school to be cancelled because of impassable paths. I wanted to have to remain indoors because roaming outside would, like ninety-seconds in the Arctic, render my feeble body a glaucous blue. I wanted, if I’m being honest, injury and terror, disaster and abject misery. There was none and, hence, Scheissenbedauern becomes appropriate.

(Part of the reason there were no problems is that this city’s inhabitants are proficient—nay, masterful—at managing whatever inclemency the skies divvy out. At the first sign of sediment the pavements were dusted with thick granules of salt, after every inch of snow that fell walkways were cleared with an arsenal of shovels and spades. All these actions were performed with the same monotonous regularity that a factory worker inspects product, they were as natural as).

So, spring’s here, summer’s coming. So it goes. And after four paragraphs on the weather I shall move on.

***

I recently learned that I will be in New York City for at least another two years. Previously I was, in all likelihood, to return to New Zealand this May. To accommodate this extended stay, a significant shift in mindset is required.

I have lived in New York, on Manhattan, in Harlem, for eight months. Every day I have caught the same train from the same subway station, every week I have bought groceries from the same market. Despite this regularity, this routine, there is little that binds me to this city. It is difficult, for example, to think of myself as anything more than a tolerated guest in this neighbourhood.* (Antilogous perhaps—and here we return to the theme of words-in-other-languages-that-have-no-direct-equivalent-in-English— is the example of the Māori word, turangawaewae, which crudely translated becomes ‘place to stand’. Extending the translation, turangawaewae refers to a place where one has a sense of belonging, an ancestral homeland. I find that the best approximation for one’s turangawaewae is the place that, if you were to die tomorrow, you would like to be buried).

While this is no doubt attributable, at least in part, to my non-comprehension of Spanish, there are other factors. I have mentioned previously that New York is a city of transients. In a great tidal movement of blood and tissue, millions of people alight then leave the island every day. Every year millions more come to settle in one of the five boroughs or depart to populate somewhere else.

Even what remains—the buildings, the streets, the sewers—lack permanence (especially since two of the great symbols of the city were razed seven years ago. So it goes). The City is a vehicle, a chaotic junk made from concrete and steel. It lists, careens from one side to the next, is kept afloat by coincidence and coincidence only. It is, for now, a location at which meaning and novelty radiate in ever-widening circles.

* I should mention that while the disconnect between the psyche and City can be disorienting, there is a peculiar—and sometimes exhilarating—freedom in having no roots, something akin to that felt by nomads whose incessant wandering makes them at home everywhere and nowhere.