Crisis in Meaning

Man—This Tamed Being I don’t know that man can be tamed. Half animal, half social, half biological. Freud claimed dark, ferocious, unconscious forces beyond our control drive behavior. Who is responsible for taming this social animal? Sociobiologists say nature can tame, and biology can tame. Instinctual urges, aggression, sex, death instinct and primary process needs powerful, disciplined taming. Can institutions like religion tame? Obligated social conformity, or social control. Did G-d equip man with the internal mechanism to tame himself? The internal mechanism malfunctions in the untamed. Movement I see you move, organismic striving. Yes, condemned to movement until at the molecular, physiological level, there’s cessation of cerebral function. Movement abruptly ends for eternity. Cessation of movement. A universal eventuality except for the Almighty. I’m curious— Does G-d move? If He doesn’t— maybe Nietzsche was right. G-d is dead. Absent. THE ULTIMATE DEATH. Maybe G-d is asleep. If He is who will awaken Him? Can a human being awaken G-d? What if He doesn’t want to be awakened? How did G-d ever fall asleep? I know he rested on the seventh day. But didn’t he awaken and get to work on Monday? He must have known there was an enormous amount of work to do. Schizophrenia Hallucinations. Paranoia. Persecutory delusions. Grandiosity. Thought insertion. Retreat. Porous boundary. Nil for insight. Social contradiction. A rational construction of reality is impossible at times. Schizophrenia. A profound, alienating misperception, and interpretation of a purported reality. My misinterpretation approximates the purported reality. Isn’t approximating the truth good enough? I learned this in a critical thinking class in college—before receiving my glorious diagnosis of Schizophrenia. An existential psychiatrist once explained to me that society is an absurd, meaningless, complicated stage for creatures to play out their selfish desires. Driven by impulses for self-perpetuation. The central, fundamental problem for man is overcoming awareness of mortality. I’m not worried about death—but by a need to belong. I am desperate to belong—not fearful of death. The atheistic existentialist Sartre said of humanity : “man is condemned to be free; condemned because he did not create himself, yet, in you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose” Fitting Work You search for meaning and purpose, and some philosophical type explains to you that it’s all a pretense; a righteous, wild deception called life. I know a plumber who reads existentialism, and he’s mixed up real bad. He’s telling me the world’s an absurd place and it wasn’t G-d who threw me into this ridiculous, meaningless situation. He says there’s characters roaming around this universal stage, slaughtering animals and piling up food to fill their stomachs. What a perverse thing called life. All of it means nothing— just inhale, exhale and try to enjoy and savor that lean, hot pastrami, swiss cheese and sauerkraut sandwich on an onion roll while passing the greasy, torque wrench to Stoykovich. And—don’t worry about the grease on the onion roll. It tastes good with the sauerkraut. I work in the freightyards— what used to be the Illinois Central Railroad in Chicago and this job is fitting work for me. This job called me here—and it’s my fitting work, just like they’ve got their fitting work in a stiff, pressed white shirt walking into that fancy building on State Street. The stiff, digital man don’t read Sandburg—the mighty Chicago poet who glorified, brought dignity to blue collar work. The heroic busting his stiff ass, aching bones doing his rugged work in the red slaughterhouse—Sandburg’s hog butcher of the world. Talkin’ My purpose in life—well, that’s a question for an existentialist and I’m not one of those introspective, deeply philosophical people questioning why I’m here, who put me here and what I’m supposed to do with my life. I’m simply doing—and there’s nothing complicated about it. I move around in a materialist world and will continue doing so until I break down. It’s a preservation thing. My life is an instrument—a sort of utility, work for the mortgage, food and occasionally enjoy good ice cream and shrimp. I like shrimp—but not with ice cream. That’s it for my purpose in life. By the way, why does everything need to have a purpose? One time, a philosopher asked me if I knew what the purpose of aging was, followed by my purpose in life. Now that’s a bizarre question. I advised him to ask a gerontologist. Between you and me—it seemed like a stupid question. What’s your purpose in life? I’ve got a friend named Hank. He’s a plumber, and when I’ve got a problem, he tells me to get the crud out of the lines. Hank also warns me about how to keep the tree root out of the pipes and he’s also got a plumber’s license on his greasy wall. For his time, I end up making him a breakfast sandwich—with a couple of fried eggs, pepper jack cheese he likes and exactly six pieces of Best Kosher salami on the toasted bread. I really like Hank, we’ve been friends for 40 years.