Bukowski

The True Face of Humanity: An Essay

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Jean-Paul Sartre had me believing there was no human nature. He wasn’t the only one to argue that point, and maybe not  even the best, but when he spoke I believed him. I crave the complete responsibility for my own actions. There is a hitch in the plan though, that is only provided by experience. The more I live the less I believe humans are neutral morally. The more I live, the more evil I see. The evil of violence, which humans gorge on. The evil of inaction, exemplified by the lazy generation I was born into, but we are not alone. The evil in the way that love ends and how we make our most intimate friends and lovers into strangers. This also happens with family.

Loyalty is dead, or is at least left bleeding in some gutter, unattended to. We have become loyal to only our desires and personal ambitions, and not even the sort of real ambition only certain people possess. The false ambitions – that of wealth, personal “success,” and moving up some invisible and indifferent latter – also push people in strange ways.

When we eat, we seek to feast. When we get ahead, we seek to take metres instead of inches. Progress has become a clock spinning out of control, and what of morality? Nobody gives a damn about morality, because it doesn’t pay the bills. Morality is argued about in dark corners of philosophy departments, where even as we speak, it has taken a back seat to mechanical debates about logic and the obscure discussions surrounding the meaning of a solitary word.

We are not some privileged animal, despite our sophisticated brains, because we spoil and waste our talents. We possess the tools to look deeply and meaningfully at our lives and our predicaments, and we would rather use them on the inconsequential and mundane tasks that have no bearing on our being. We are the most advanced animal, well ironically the most stupid. No other creature on this planet rapes it or takes advantage of it the way that we do.

No other animal finds ways to mass murder its own species and other species with such efficiency. Our faculties have evolved, but unfortunately, our morality has not evolved at the same rate. Our moral compass is pointing north, telling us we are good human beings despite the evidence to the contrary.

Sure, you don’t recycle as much as you should, and you drive a distance you could walk in five minutes, but at least you don’t own a Hummer. And if you own a Hummer, at least you don’t fly a private jet plane. And if you own a jet plane, at least you donate to charities, and maybe you dump money into carbon off-sets for some of your travels or buy Monsanto seeds for poor Africans to become dependent on. They were already bankrupt and starving before the seeds anyways, right?

None of this is new, or hip, or popular to talk about, except the environmentalism, and even that depends on the circle of friends you keep. Humanity is just not that good to each other. They are awful in intimate situations, brutal in social settings and the worst in mob-sized dealings. There’s no cure coming, no sudden invent of a gadget that will teach people how to live better, deeper and smarter. There is nothing like the investment that gets poured into science and technology, but they care about your vehicles, new drugs they can invent new illnesses for and new ways to sell you something you don’t need.

But let’s not talk about all of that. It’s a good ol’ Saturday night and the people are dancing and drinking, and if they are not dancing and drinking, they are losers anyways. Certainly, I am a loser. I’m a loser to be spending a Saturday night reading interesting books, writing about how broken our species is and drinking a tall glass of water and reality. Charles Bukowski said what was needed was an old school jester, but even the cleverest and goofiest clown in history can not show us a shred of redemption in humanity. We are in a funk like we have never seen before. Humans before used to break everything, but they couldn’t destroy their planet with their stupidity. We possess the most knowledge at any point in human history, and it’s only led us to innovative ways of crippling ecosystems and hearts.

So don’t tell me there is no human nature. As far as I know, history has taught us what human nature is. Easter Island is human nature. Hiroshima and Auschwitz are human nature. The Crusades are human nature. Two people sitting alone trying to figure out where they go from here after one lover has confessed to infidelity, lying and stealing, both peoples’ hearts crushing and not for the first time, are human nature. The way we stab the earth with needles and explosives for minerals and oil to build more luxury SUVs, and over-priced trinkets, just to see all that money climb up some greedy tree where the top one per cent collect their lop-sided earnings, is human nature.

Human nature is not a broken concept, and I’m surprised the goblins, trolls and devils of our world do not being funding Arts programs seriously. They should be teaching people there is no human nature – although Sartre wouldn’t make sense to teach, because he preaches responsibility and free will – because there are always those in control of money, and those without it, and that’s all based on human nature. Humans idolize and place people on pedestals. Having your face on television, your voice on the radio and your general idiot nature yapping all the time, makes women and men want to bed you without having met you. Don’t tell me we are not broken, or that there’s some sunny dawn coming to chase away all the bad times. We are the bad times. We are humans being natural, and we are broken beyond repair.

a sad blanket

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A waste as it were,

potential turned to shit;

the saddest loss.

Whether one is passing by the woods on a snowy evening

or admiring the tragedy of the leaves,

sadness blankets the word

in fragments all-consuming.

Sorrow and loneliness are

beautiful,

and do not care for justification.

Starving ideas

/ andyveilleux / 4 Comments

I cut pages,

to watch them bleed,

hipster, broken symbolism,

and what a worn-out image.

 

used, worn-out,

broken,

like all of us,

but is that all we can say?

 

Where is the lyricism,

not of Milton, Donne,

but of harsh reality,

Bukowski, Hemingway?

 

Where have we scurried,

and how far removed,

are we from greatness?

 

We are nowhere.

 

We float in endless space,

choking on too much time,

ideas dying every second,

like all of the starving poor.

 

Ideas are starving,

and I'm only one writer.

Good conversations and the eternal sadness of being human

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I've been having a lot of conversations lately, with a bunch of people with differing opinions. I've talked about purpose in life, Hemingway, Jung, Bukowski, the ADHD generation I am coming up in, intellectual boredom and stagnation, the difference between academic and public writing, and most important, the overall sadness that invades daily life.

There's a certain sadness to the daily events of life. Not specifically, because it's nothing you can put you finger on, but generally. It's not an overwhelming sadness.

It doesn't team up with the other negative emotions to push you down. It waits in the background most of the time. Occasionally, you can let it out of its cage, and play with it until you're both satisfied. It then will return to its cage and wait your next moment of weakness. In this way, it is like that ex-girlfriend, or friend-you-slept-with-and-sort-of-regretted-who-won't-go-away.

A lot of conversation has centred around what causes this sadness, and whether it will ever go away. I don't think it ever really goes away. The dull pain is probably always going to be there behind my ears. Maybe that's what got to Hemingway and Hunter S. Thomson.

Maybe it comes down to knowing that eventually we're all going to die. Our bodies can only continue for so long, and then the show's over. Good-bye Andy consciousness, you'll be gone for good one day. Hell, the whole species is doomed for that matter.

That's the eternal sadness of being human. It may be the only part of us that survives.

There is an emotion that teams up with that overall sadness well; loneliness. The feeling, or even thought, of being alone. To quote Bukowski, "there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock." The clocks have gone digital, the loneliness has to.

Now we sit around on MSN, Facebook, Twitter, just waiting for that message to lead us to salvation, away from loneliness. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't; but it never lasts. 

It's quicker than ever to get in touch with someone, but it's harder than ever to hold their attention and time. How much spectacle is acceptable in one's life to keep on entertaining, without becoming the jester?

Some nights are harder than others.

The lost art of writing

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Writing isn't what it used to be. Blogs have ruined it, some say. Others say my dumb-founded generation, and the generation preceding it ruined it before that. This is too big of an issue to tackle in a blog post, but I wanted to share two prime examples of exceptionally good writing, from the modern era (last thirty years or so). I won't ruin them by explaining why I think they're great piece of writing, so that's up for you to decide. Here they are:

 

"…off to the right of this typewriter, on the floor between the beds, I can see an 8×10 print of Frank Mankiewicz yelling into a telephone at the Democratic Convention in Miami; but that one will never be used, because the god-damn hound put five big claw-holes in the middle of Frank's chest."

– from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

 

"I shaved carefully with an old razor

the man who had once been young and

said to have genius; but

that's the tragedy of the leaves,

the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world has failed us
both"

– from Charles Bukowski's The Tragedy of the Leaves