Table of Content
A note on happiness
Quotes and comments from this week’s readings
Anna Karenina, Part one, I-X.
À la recherche du temp perdu, La prisonnière, p. 1609-1646
Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda, Sarga 95-116
Next week’s readings
A note on happiness
Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina famously begins with this line “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (p. 1).” Though at first, it seems I understand what Tolstoy meant, I find that as I try to grasp exactly the idea behind the sentence, it slips away. I find myself more and more like Augustine trying to define time, when I read the sentence, its meaning seems clear, but when I try to explain it, I come up short.
The classic interpretation of that sentence has been dubbed the Anna Karenina Principle. It follows from a fairly straightforward mathematical understanding of statistics: There is only one way in which a set of things can satisfy multiple assumptions, but there many ways in which that set can violate them. I’m not convinced this is the proper way to understand what Tolstoy meant. Or if it is, I think Tolstoy’s wrong.
Are we all alike in happiness? In a way, yes. We all strive for the same kind of things, material comfort, friends, etc. Though Maslow’s pyramid of needs may not have a sound scientific foundation, it nevertheless captures an idea that Tolstoy seems to be alluding to. To be happy we all need the same kind of things, although I would argue that we needn’t have all our needs met to be happy. It seems to me that this is one of the greatest discoveries of happiness research, happiness can be found in the most bizarre of places. Places one wouldn’t have guessed people could be happy. If this is true, then the statistical interpretation of what Tolstoy meant can’t work. There are many ways to be happy.
What about unhappiness then? Are we really all unhappy in our own unique way? I find it hard to believe, as it’s fairly easy to guess what could bring unhappiness to most. Being alone, having no food, etc. Basically if having our needs fulfilled brings happiness, then when they’re not fulfilled we should be unhappy. Thus we should all be unhappy in the same way. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if the statistical interpretation of the Anna Karenina Principle would hold but in reverse. There are multiple ways for a human to be happy, but not that many to be unhappy. Books written on unhappy people are never that different from each other and unhappy people are usually fairly boring to be around because they all act the same, there are no surprises with unhappy people.
Quotes and comments from this week’s readings
Anna Karenina, Part one, I-X
There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. (p. 4)
Before science and engineering, there were no answers to be had to pretty much any questions one could ask because regularity is not something one witnesses often in nature, if ever. Regularity is something that we experience all the time in the modern world, but it is something we’ve had to fight to achieve, and something we have to fight for every day. Our ability to get answers is not something we should get for granted, as it is the result of a massive engineering project that started 300,000 years ago when we became Homo Sapiens and accelerated in the last 500 years with the advent of the scientific revolution. We can have answers because we’ve engineered ways to create what Ian Hacking calls “phenomena”, that is “an event or process of a certain type that occurs regularly under definite conditions (Representing and Intervening, p. 221)”. That these phenomena are weird and unnatural will probably strike some as strange, but as Hacking remarks :
It will be protested that the world is full of manifest phenomena. ALl sorts of pastoral remarks will be recalled. Yet these are chiefly mentioned by city-dwelling philosophers who have never reaped corn nor milked a goat in their lives. (Many of my reflections of the world’s lack of phenomena derive from the early morning milkstand conversations with our goat, Medea. Years of daily study have failed to reveal any true generalization about Medea, except maybe, ‘She’s ornery, often’). When I say that there are few phenomena in the world, the ample lore of mothers, and hunters and sailors and cooks is cited in reply. Yet when we talk with romantics, who advise that we become wise and return to nature, we are not told to notice its phenomena but become part of its rhythm. Moreover, most of the things called natural - yeast to make bread rise, for example - have a long history of technology. (Representing and Intervening, p. 227)
Answers are rare, and they usually come in very general and obvious ways. My favorite is the one M. Pollan offered to the “what should eat question”: Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. I’m pretty confident that this answer will stand as the only one we can have for a very long time.
But in spite of that, as often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while rationally justifying the other’s activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion. (p. 17)
The discussion was about a fashionable question: is there a borderline between psychological and physical phenomena in human activity, and where does it lie ? (p. 24)
That line was written more than 150 years ago. We have learned a lot since then, but we are nowhere near an answer today. Philosophy of mind is a fascinating topic of conversation today as it was in Tolstoy’s time, but nothing has really changed. For those interested, a pretty cool collection of essays by the leading philosophers of mind was recently published.
À la recherche du temp perdu, La prisonnière, p. 1609-1646
Il était d'ailleurs fort excusable car la réalité, même si elle est nécessaire, n'est pas complètement prévisible, ceux qui apprennent sur la vie d'un autre quelque détail exact en tirent aussitôt des conséquences qui ne le sont pas et voient dans le fait nouvellement découvert l'explication de choses qui précisément n'ont aucun rapport avec lui. (p. 1609)
His mistake was, however, quite pardonable, for the truth, even if it is inevitable, is not always conceivable as a whole. People who learn some accurate detail of another person’s life at once deduce consequences which are not accurate, and see in the newly discovered fact an explanation of things that have no connexion with it whatsoever.
This quote is in the same vein as the earlier one from Anna Karenina about the difficulty of predictions and answers.
Le snobisme est une maladie grave de l'âme, mais localisée et qui ne la gâte pas tout entière. (p. 1613)
Snobbishness is a serious malady of the spirit, but one that is localised and does not taint it as a whole.
Elle était de ces femmes qui ne savent pas démêler la raison de ce qu'elles ressentent. Le plaisir que leur cause un teint frais, elles l'expliquent par les qualités morales de celui qui leur semble pour leur avenir présenter un bonheur, capable du reste de décroître et de devenir moins nécessaire au fur et à mesure qu'on laisse pousser sa barbe. (p. 1616)
She was one of those women who can never distinguish the cause of their sensations. The pleasure that they derive from a smooth cheek they explain to themselves by the moral qualities of the man who seems to offer them a possibility of future happiness, which is capable, however, of diminishing and becoming less necessary the longer he refrains from shaving.
I’m not exactly sure what Proust’s relation to women was. Sometimes he seems utterly misogynistic, sometimes not so much. Considering the depiction of lesbians in Search of Lost Time, I would say Proust himself is unsure about what he thinks of women. In any case, I don’t think what he talks about in the above quote is only a female trait. I would even go as far as saying it’s the norm when it comes to humans. Following philosopher P. Carruthers, I would argue that humans are pretty oblivious to what is really happening in their minds, a phenomenon he calls “the opacity of the mind”, and whenever someone gives an explanation for a behavior or a preference one has, it is always an a posteriori rationalization.
L'amour n'est peut-être que la propagation de ces remous qui, à la suite d'une émotion, émeuvent l'âme. (p. 1617)
Love is nothing more perhaps than the stimulation of those eddies which, in the wake of an emotion, stir the soul.
This is an idea that I’ve read often under Proust’s pen. I will try and come back to it sometime later.
Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda, Sarga 95-116
This is the end of the Yuddha Kanda, Ravana has just died and his wife is grieving. What she says has to be quoted in full. It is a beautiful expression of grief and is filled with so much emotion. Mandodari goes through most of the stages of grief: disbelief, pain, and anger. It is one of the most touching moments in the entire Ramayana.
Now even as the raksasa women were lamenting in this fashion, Ravana’s beloved seniormost wife, Mandodari, gazed on her husband in her sorrow. And as pitiable Mandodari gazed there upon her husband, ten necked Ravana, who had been slain by Rama of inconceivable deeds, she lamented.
‘‘Surely, great-armed younger brother of Kubera Vaisravana, even Indra himself, the smasher of citadels, feared to stand before you when you were angry. And surely it was because of your power that the seers, the gods on earth, the illustrious gandharvas, and the celestial bards fled in all directions.
‘‘Yet now you have been vanquished in battle by Rama, a mere human. Are you not ashamed, your majesty? How could this be, bull among raksasas? How could a mere human, a wanderer in the wilderness, have slain you, who had conquered the three worlds, who was endowed with majesty and might, and whom no one could withstand?
‘‘It makes no sense that Rama could have slain you in battle—you who could wander in realms inaccessible to mere mortals and could take on any form at will. I do not believe that it was, in fact, Rama who accomplished this feat in vanquishing you in the vanguard of the hosts when you were fully equipped for battle.
‘‘Instead, it was your sensual appetites alone that vanquished you, since they recalled, as it were, your hostility when, long ago—before you conquered the three worlds—you subjugated your senses.
‘‘Or perhaps it was Vasava himself who came here in the form of Rama, putting forth some unimaginable magical illusion in order to destroy you. For when in Janasthana he killed your brother Khara, who was surrounded by many raksasas, it was clear right then that this was no mere human. And when, through his might, Hanuman entered the city of Lanka, which even the gods could not enter, we were all deeply shaken.
‘‘When I told you, ‘You should make peace with Raghava,’ you would not listen. And this is the result that has come of it.
‘‘Unaccountably, bull among raksasas, you conceived this desire for Sita, which has only led to the loss of your sovereignty, your kinsmen, and your life. You acted utterly improperly, you fool, when you assaulted Sita, who is worthy of respect and who is superior even to Arundhati and Rohini. This Maithili is in no way my superior or even my equal in breeding, beauty, or talent. But in your infatuation you did not realize this.
‘‘No creature ever dies without a reason. In your case, then, your death has been brought about because of your treatment of Maithili. Now Maithili, free from all sorrow, will enjoy herself with Rama, while I, a person of little merit that I am, have been plunged into a dreadful ocean of sorrow.
‘‘I, who used to enjoy myself with you on Mount Kailasa, Mount Mandara, Mount Meru, the Caitraratha Garden, and in all the gardens of the gods, traveling in unparalleled splendor in a flying chariot befitting our station, wearing marvelous garlands and garments, and gazing out upon the many different lands, have now, because of your death, hero, been robbed of the enjoyment of all pleasures.
‘‘The destruction of the principal raksasas, which my illustrious brother-in-law Vibhisana, a speaker of truth, foretold, has now come to pass. Through this catastrophe born of your lust and anger and characterized by your obsession, you have deprived the entire raksasa race of its protector.
‘‘I really should not grieve for you, for you were a warrior famed for strength and manly valor. But still, because of the inherent nature of women, my heart is in a pitiable state. Taking with you both the good and the evil deeds you performed, you have gone to your proper destination. It is for myself that I grieve, miserable as I am, because of my separation from you.
‘‘Resembling a black storm cloud, with your yellow garments and bright armlets, why do you lie here drenched in blood, splaying out all your limbs? I am overcome with sorrow. Why do you not answer me, as if you were asleep?
‘‘Why do you not look at me, the granddaughter of an immensely powerful and skillful yatudhana who never fled in battle. You always used to worship your iron club, adorned with a fretwork of gold and, with a radiance like that of the sun, as if it were the vajra of Indra, the wielder of the vajra. With it you used to slaughter your enemies in battle. But now that smasher of your foes in battle, shattered by arrows, lies scattered in a thousand pieces.
‘‘Curse me whose heart, oppressed by sorrow, does not shatter into a thousand pieces now that you have returned to the five elements.’’ (Sarga 99)
A superior person never requites evil on the part of evildoers with evil.’ This rule of conduct must always be adhered to. For good conduct is the ornament of the virtuous. A noble person must act compassionately whether people are wicked, virtuous, or even if deserving of death. For, leaping monkey, no one is entirely innocent. (Sarga 101)
This is something we should all be reminded of in the context of calls to cancel Russian culture.
What human purpose can man serve if his spirit is so feeble that he will not wipe clean through his own blazing energy an insult he has received (Sarga 103)
Next week’s readings :
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part one, XI-XXII
Proust, The Prisoner. p. 1646-1686 (ed. Quarto Gallimard) or p.49-99 (ed. Penguin Classics Deluxe)
Valmiki’s Ramayana, Uttara Kanda, Sarga 1-25