Icebergs and Infinity
2005年1月10日 (月) 10:15am JST
I believe it was Wordsworth who wrote, “The world is too much with us.”
As I write this, I’m thousands of feet in the air, jetting past mile after mile of frozen ice. According to the TV screens, the air outside is cold enough to kill, never mind the distance to the earth below.
Like most people, when riding in an airplane, I tend to spend a fair amount of time contemplating my own mortality. Of course, as we all know, statistically, I would do better to worry about my mother dying on her return trip from the airport, but somehow airplanes seem to the visceral senses more contemptuous in their flaunting of the laws of nature (what goes up, etc.) that it is difficult not to reflect at least momentarily on the fragility of my world. In fact, of late, the absurdity of life has been especially with me. On my first flight today, I managed to stumble into the abyss in which you forget yourself as the everyday world. Forgetting one’s own face and name, you encounter them as though for the first time. This inevitably leads to a horror. My horror in particular was broken only by the Captain’s handy flight announcements. While it wasn’t so much the truth of our being not long from Detroit that saved me as the act itself, that truth was accepted for what it was.
I once wrote, “Life makes no sense; philosophy is an attempt to cover this up,” and the sentiment fits my melancholic mood of late. On this flight, I’ve pecked away some at The Nothingness Beyond God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitaro. Kitaro, it seems, was with William James in ranking the undifferentiated mass of pure experience as the primordial ground of existence. Which seems all well and good, but it hardly answers the questions that I want asked— why this existence; why this life; why this world; why this book; why this pen⁇ Since Nishida’s quest is to describe experience, world, and all the rest, as they are before they are described, why cannot enter into it. So, while I appreciate his efforts, I feel his insights can never be an end to philosophy.
Of course, for some, like Aristotle, an end to philosophy would be an end to happiness itself. He hoped to turn his thoughts on themselves for the rest of his days in emulation of the unmoved mover. To others, like Wittgenstein, an end to philosophy would be more precious than gold. To me, philosophy is like the icebergs beneath me— whether infinite or not, their bound is beyond my sight or apprehension. An endless wasteland of sterile death, atop a fathomless sea. Though perhaps, were I alone in such a world, perhaps it might be easier for me to embrace. As it is, oh what a world, with such people in it! Here in the cabin above the wasteland, humanity endures, some speaking, some entranced by the images on the cave wall, some children cry, and some adults slumber. Yes, it’s a “blooming, buzzing confusion” which must ultimately defy category, and thus defy explanation. But all is well (ish) for little truths set me free, like Mario and mealtime. Buddha says time flows and static concepts give rise to suffering, but time also brings me closer to home and leaving this shell, and contemplating also comforts. The world is by turns too much with me, and by turns, mine, all mine.