Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Chapter 13

Contrary to what most individuals surmise, the objective of life is not that one should be as comfortable as possible and expect that, within the carbon framework of changeable people, bonds, life experiences, venues, and self, that, at least moderately, such pleasantries are bound to augment and bifurcate in the course of time. Nor should he expect that even if the seemingly ideal materializes (that despite some minor setbacks, there is a slew of favorable circumstances and concatenations that help him to acquire wealth –Marx of course suggesting that any savings is hoarding and halts free circulation of currency that would allow equity to happen which would ensure that the needs of all get met, and only the most callous minded, a sizable amount of the population, getting satisfaction at the fact that they have prospered and accumulated at the expense of so many who have gotten so little while they too sell themselves to toil away to accumulate “comforts” all to be perceived as affluent and part of haut monde society, just as the ones being exploited seek to be part of mediocrity and consumerism and elevated above the indigent and indolent, shortening life expectancy exponentially) that pleasant complacency and paucity of struggles and challenges would not stunt and stultify all neurological connections, or that retirement were something other than the main conduit to dementia. I would even go so far as to say that the emotional impetus or instinct that drives us out of the rain and the cold, as it did our prehistoric ancestors, is what pulls us into superfluous pleasures and complacency in modern society, and this, whatever the flavor, is destructive as instincts, for the most part, are residuals and ativisms that are counterproductive in modern society.

As much as adversity is eschewed, counterintuitively, it is quite possible that prehistoric ancestors increased their chances of survival by an internal reaction to their environment in which neurological and cognitive growth occurred from adversity, and that this is our inheritance, just as natural prejudices are instinctual bequeathments that no doubt allow instantaneous and, in modern society, often erroneous judgment calls and problematic defenses to emerge, with alarm toward that which appears to be different commensurate to how stark that difference is or is deemed to be, and its end would be the end of deeper ruminations within which are the best part of ourselves. And venue does have bearing. Just as a dog of a homeless brute probably thinks only about how to obey to not be kicked or hit, its cognitive development impaired by the circumstances and the makeshift tent that it is confined to, so a fulsome environment can be as damaging as lack of a nurturing one. Sometimes, I must admit, this beautiful island known as Hawaii with its perfect climate–Hawaii actually the name given to the big island with Honolulu on a little squirt island called Oahu–I too lose myself to this real bit of heaven, the only heaven to be had with the other one, as the soul itself, imaginary as hell, and can hardly write a thing here. This is why I often go to the main library near the Iolani Palace. As impetus and muse to write, irrespective of never having an audience or whether my attempts are acts of futility, I imagine the queen of futility herself, Queen Liliolukani, attempting to be optimistic in efforts to restore her nation, even while feeling the travail of seeing a land, a kingdom, a sovereignty, and traditions arrogated from her and the Hawaiian people by American brutes with their imperialistic and proselytizing aims, and their wish to avoid taxes and tariffs, a historically embedded agenda, at all cost. Determination to bring forth the best aspects of a man in a world that seems only to appreciate consuming the quick and the shallow is what every thoughtful person always contends with. So when not writing on the beach or at the library, I write from a metallic bungalow made out of a trash dumpster on Sand Island, a part of Oahu, the way Thoreau did on Walden’s Pond. For him it was as an ascetic to determine and appreciate that which gives real value to a man’s life and winnow away superficial superfluities and for me I suppose it is trying to keep deeper aspects from being asphyxiated when agendas boisterous and inconsequential, often broadcast from the Internet and television sets but largely part of every facet of this tight extroverted society we have to work and live with avalanche upon me.

The objective of life, as I see it, is to become wise, which is an understanding and appreciation of the whole scope of life with its flaws and limitations and how one might best be constructive in it. It is ethical conduct which involves interaction and empathy, an imaginative process I must admit, but one made ever less faulty with greater experiences and understanding. If other mammals (i. e elephants) can bypass that normal tendency toward indifference which allows a solipsistic concentration on surviving and thriving with little consideration of others, humans (or at least the better ones) , can do so as well. It involves sharing for the sake of equity and fairness, and thus it militates against base acquisitive tendencies and survival instincts so that we are more than pigeons clamoring on each other to be the first to get a piece of bread thrown onto the grass and stampeding others in the process. As much as I hunger for solitude and to be free from all compromises and conformity–solitude a coping strategy I learned well when feeling compelled to run off on my bicycle as a boy to the empty fairground to have some respite from the barrage of derision that my father and sister cut me down with–I recognize that to live an ethical life it is more than an exercise in one’s head. It has to involve interaction, which invariably dilutes the self for the aggrandizement of others, which is noble.

As for wisdom, there is little likelihood of becoming wise through discourse with others, and a man is very lucky if to be impacted by a few sparse comments by family, friends, and acquaintances. He can be impacted by his contemporaries more frequently and more significantly as a spectator of artistic contributions which probably do not render anything truly wise so much as that they magnify that which we feel or see around us and never consciously register let alone appreciate. Pathetically, or luckily, depending on one’s perspective, I can think of two ideas from others that have made an impact on me. One came from my mother who in witnessing her daughter and the children of neighbors strapping lightning bugs with grass bands in an effort to make pinky rings reproached them by saying that these were god’s little creatures (of course meaning that they had inherent worth and were not just to be things there to be exploited). The other came a couple decades later by a Canadian friend along the beach in Niigata, Japan. He said that the greatest blessing in life is in never having killed anyone by accident, in war, or from base emotions and vile intentions (meaning that acts of killing anything debase and diminish integrity and that the act of killing another man would haunt such an individual for life). Now that I am sixty I am still waiting for a third wise saying by one of my contemporaries as it seems these bits of wisdom occur every twenty years to almost never.

As to everything being creatures of “God,” I simply see life forms as reactions of accidental spilling of random substances, and occurrences as seemingly good and bad based on myopic interpretations. The famous Taoist fable goes something like this: a man finds extra horses having entered into his herd and the neighbors think that he is extremely lucky for this, the man’s son then gets bucked off one of those horses and the neighbors think that the father is unlucky, and then when soldiers in seeking recruits for their forces pass the boy by because of his broken leg, the neighbors think that the man is lucky. The inference that we may build upon is that in determining whether something is good or bad, the only way of knowing absolutely is to have two of the same thing in control and experiment groups and as it is impossible to have two of ourselves and a third doing the objective scientific analysis there really is no way to know good or bad in terms of favorable or unfavorable events at least in a long term assessment. Whether or not exploitation, or anything for that matter, is truly good or bad we may never have any clear answers as biased judgments are based on time–a day, a decade, a dozen decades, etc.–the eradication of the dinosaurs paving the way for mammals, and Neanderthals and other hominids for homo sapiens, and like it or not, and I don’t as a vegetarian and a humanitarian, predation of the weak and vulnerable is part of the mechanism of life) I don’t think we can be proud of ourselves for exploiting other creatures the way an ant does of an aphid. And although we cannot protect everything that is small (so much of it is now being shown in studies to be much more sentient than we once assumed), we should be stewards, not enders, of life. Everything in life is very complex. Even the rational idea of democracy in the Enlightenment or Age of Wisdom of the 1700s became the Reign of Terror leading to the Romantic Era, a time in which there was skepticism about the scientific method and all rationality. It is books written by the wisest men, and not contemporary contacts, that give some degree of clarity in all of this, and even here, like a good diet, one must pick from an array of great men to counter ideological excess.

 

Steven David Justin Sills is a literary writer in Honolulu Hawaii. His early book of poetry is in many academic libraries in the United States with a scanned copy in the Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/americanpapyrusp0000sill. Sills’ early work can also be found on the Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania. After Sills finished his last literary novel “The Three Hour Lady” over three years ago, he began devoting time to writing a long war poem about what is happening in Ukraine. Most of those 25 cantos. including his most recent canto, can be seen at this particular journal. As his graduate degree is great books of the Western Canon, he has been hoping to write his own ethical treatise, and this forum affords him that opportunity.

As the Arkansas Gazette says, “Twenty-six poems make up this first published book by Steven Sills, 26, of Fayetteville. Sills’ vision is often a dark one. He writes of the homeless, the abused, the forgotten people. He is also intrigued with the mystical, the sensual, loss–as in losing those whom we hold dear, such as a spouse or lover–as well as the lost, such as someone who is autistic, who seems unreachable. Sills’ skillful use of the language to impart the telling moments of a life is his strength. He chooses his words carefully, employing a well-developed vocabulary. He is thoughtful about punctuation, where to break lines and when to make a new stanza. He’s obviously well versed in “great” literature. Sills’ command of language helps to soften the blows of some of the seemier passages found in his poems. Seamy may not be the best word to use. Perhaps gritty is a better word or just plain matter-of-fact and to the point… ”

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.