“The Embrace ETERNALE” © Richard Spisak

 

Ethics Chapter 4

There are times when one thinks something similar to this: that had his own existence ended as that ten year old boy whose premature demise when driving a motorcycle not only slammed him head-first into and against the thickets of life, but put him fully into its very essence, which is the quick currents of mass/electromagnetic changes, energy pulsating into mass before reverting back to mere energy once again, or some other premature demise, then perhaps such an ending would have been better. It certainly would have been more manly instead of inane adulthood predicated on this emasculating, callow cowardice in which one is continually worried about not only looking both ways, but upwards and downwards, and forward and backward when crossing the streets of life.

And yet in all other respects, while what was his trajectory is what will be our trajectory, albeit, for him a more intrepid version with an early arrival at the finish line, within his mind at that last second of life no doubt existed the world as it should be instead of how it actually is. To him, we can assume, family, the support of others, small pleasures of sun and wind onto one’s face, breath with oxygen coursing through one’s veins, and the exhilaration of life amongst other lives and species of life, the sense of the world as a harmonious and yet burgeoning and vibrant cradle– harmony and exhilaration often referred to as love and happiness– would go on forever.

And although a man knows that he would not have wanted the limitations of being a perennial child of a perennial first family had such a possibility found viability somewhere in the multi universe and had been an option for him, knows that nothing lasts long in this Earthly realm including memories, suppositions, and assessments when everyday embeds new experiences with neurological circuitry rewiring his thought process in novel ways ever so slightly from day to day, and knows that we aren’t the same people and that we are intermingling with “friends” who are in fact strangers as they are not what they were yesterday, let alone yesteryear, in a society and environment that, outside of its fringes, is ever more convenient and continually evolving in intricacies and complexities, and yet we tell ourselves that our lives in society are constant–our need to believe ourselves as monuments of marble or like the faces on Mount Rushmore is one the litany of lies that we tell ourselves that impels human existence forward individually, socially, and generationally.

It is amazing with such a crucible of chemical catalysts (sexual inclinations even a driving force of imagination and logic at low levels and destruction of mental prowess in slightly more intense levels, prompting Cicero to say that one of the greatest benefits of old age is to be free of sexual inclinations percolating within which detract one from pure logic, although, presumably he did not mean its absence entirely) , internal contradictions of the mind, material changes of self, society, and environment, and ability to envisage higher virtues that cannot be practically realized, that we retain some level of sanity. And that sanity is in large part due to our ability to believe our own lies.

Lies: Family
Everyone who gets married under the spell of being in love believes that they are creating solid foundations of family that will outlast the previous prototype of the first family. Most logically, in The Second Treatise of Government, of all texts, John Locke suggests that the parent/child bond is no more sacrosanct than that of animals and should exist as a bonding force no longer than it takes to get the offspring to maturity and independence. Conversely, Aristotle says that parents are the authors of one’s existence and we must give filial respect to them throughout our lives, but he qualifies that, as he well should, by saying that the nature of that respect depends on how one was treated when growing up. I imagine that we can find a golden mean between the two which is sensible enough. Montaigne in his essay “On Anger” comments on the number of abusive situations he witnessed in which parents took out their stress and vexations with life on their children. And Plato in his Republic suggests that governments (we can assume that to mean trained child rearing specialists hired by the state) should be the guardians of children. Ideally, I think, nothing would be better than loving parents who are familiar with childhood development or at least familiar with Eric Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development, and who know how to discipline a child in such a way that fosters the child’s ability to think about past mistakes and propositionally think about the continuation of this behavior and its ramifications. However, these jewels of parents are rare indeed. Most are people who were raised badly by parents and have bad parenting skills embedded in their memories. And as babies are not born with operators’ manuals, horrible memories of what they experienced under the tyranny of their parents is what they use as the modus operandi for raising their own offspring. So yes, in most cases individuals working for the state are better as caregivers than parents. So I fully agree with Plato on this matter although if no apparatus exists for removal of children from parents I think Locke’s ideas make sense as do the ideas of Aristotle.

Lies: love

Sex is an aggressive act, irrespective of all romanticized portrayals. Even if two parties are more than willing to be perpetrator and perpetrated in order to have the dopamine, adrenalin, serotonin rush, amongst other gender based hormonal combustion to propel the rocket, it is basically overtaking and impaling the more submissive during these spasms of easily dissipated/easily extinguished “love” from what heretofore had been a thinking and feeling, sentient body, so as to use her physical body for pleasure, which is why Montaigne in On Friendship says that perfect friendship is impossible with women due to the sexual appetite which changes them into objects, although that of course should be broadened to homosexuality as well. Montaigne says that anything that is not a Platonic relationship cannot be a perfect friendship, his modification of what Aristotle calls a “friendship of goodness,” that permanent contract of friendship in which two individuals become better by being in each other’s presence. One of the most dangerous etymological maladies and travesties is to use this word “love” so broadly and frivolously that it can encompass instinctual appetites as well as what woeful and inadequate levels of altruism and compassion that human beings have managed to muster. Far greater levels of caring are exhibited by other mammals from dolphins and hunchback whales to elephants. Human beings are much more primitive and animalistic than many animals.

Lies: Material security

We, of course are inadequate, naked creatures who need clothes, food, and all specialized goods which are nearly impossible to make by oneself even in the crudest manner. Thus, we need jobs and money to exist, but any worthy labor according to John Locke is extracting that which is in the state of nature, processing it, and making it subject to man’s use. Gambling and online stock and cryptocurrency trading would not meet this definition. But whatever the labor, it should not become the very essence of who we are. We easily forfeit self for a given societal role if it provides us, who are well aware of the transience of all the misbegotten living entities that are extant and all that once were, with an artificial sense of self-importance to staunch the existential wound and to give structure to the days (retirement hardly a worthy pursuit except for the aged with instinctual hungers so rife and such conflagrations) . All the more so, if it is conflated with a high salary that boosts this sense of being immune to tragedy as though work related stress to get this monetary “immunity” coupled with procuring and consuming that which is deleterious to health, were not the biggest instigators of early demise, and as though loss of health were not one of the biggest tragedies that beset a man albeit, ideally, of secondary concern to loss of moral compass, objective, and sanguine perspective. This “making of money, ” as it is euphemistically called, this hording of liquid assets instead of allowing them to move like water in continual circulation, is done allegedly to protect individuals from any exigency, as though a growing mass of men being totally denied access to the pie, compelled by circumstances into desperation if not starvation, were not an exigency. To be so egocentric as to think one is entitled to more while indifferent to others not having adequate means for basic sustenance can be considered nothing less than the ushering in of absolute moral moldering, and having a materialistic wife to boot, one needing that perfect nest, can be complete and expedited moral devastation to those shackled with that ball and chain. But apart from this, psychologically a fuller integration with society is at the same time a disconnection from befriending deeper subconscious aspects of the self. Without this commune with that which is often our deeper impressions and convictions of life from diminished, repressed, or forgotten memories mixed with fears and instinctual hungers, and is often given a limited outlet in a world of social interactivity, our lives are tantamount to being automatons for society, or worse, mere cogs in the social apparatus and totally dependent on others for validation of individual worth instead of finding uniqueness and companionship within. But the man who is able to summon messages from the deep underground caverns within, as hard as it is to do, is not nearly as subject to the fierce searing ravages of loneliness that consume most individuals, impelling them further into the social embrace and relinquishing even more any individuality, fearing being thought intransigent to deviate from the opinions of others.

 

Steven David Justin Sills is a literary writer living in Phuket, Thailand. His book of poetry is in many libraries in the United States and a copy of one book owned by a library was scanned by the Internet Archive. Sills’ work can also be found on the Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania. Sills finished his last literary novel The Three Hour Lady over two years ago, and until recently, he was devoting that time to writing a long war poem about what is happening in Ukraine. Most of those 25 poems including his most recent poem are at this particular journal. As his graduate degree is great books of the Western Canon he has been wanting to write his own ethical treatise, and this forum affords him that opportunity.

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.