HOW TO BE A PERSON IN TIMES AS TERRIBLE AS THESE

RODIN, LES DAMNEES, 1885

I. TIMES AS TERRIBLE AS THESE

I find myself wondering these days. What it means to be a man. To be a person. In times as terrible as these.

I spent the day in a lovely sunlit square today. Children played and families gathered. Mothers laughed and fathers smiled. And the thought of the world we live in now was kept distant, as it should be, from the little ones.

In the times we live in, a civilization itself is dying before our very eyes. But to put it just that way is far too gentle, meaningless. Our eyes have been sewn shut, so we barely even see the death of a thing greater than us. Our hands break and shatter something, a pillar, a foundation, and we laugh in glee. All this is what technology, hopelessness, predatory capitalism does to us.

After the square, I went to a cafe. Young people sat there on laptops, staring into their screens. The cafe was full of posters and paraphernalia about a better world. Can you change a world—scratch that. The world has changed. But in the wrong ways, all of them.

II. THE RUINS OF A THING ONCE CALLED A WORLD

It was a pleasant day of thinking. A perfect spring day. We drove to the cliffs, and looked out at the ocean. I pulled my lovely wife close. How beautiful, she said. An old couple sat beside us, having lunch. Cute dog, the man said. I smiled.

And I wondered what it meant to be a man, to be a person, in times like these. The sea was silent. The sun glimmered on the waves, as it had a million days just like this one. I never stop wondering, these days.

We are standing now in the ruins of a thing once called a world. Technology has seduced our children, and made them its slaves. The most ancient and noble project of all, democracy, lies in tatters, unravelled and shredded. The lurid faces of billionaires scarcely look human anymore. The things called our economies are ceasing to function properly. Knowledge, truth, reason, and justice are no longer ideals to aspire to. They are most contemptible things of all.

And I wonder as I stare at the sea, from the cliffs, on a perfect afternoon. Have I wasted my life on these things?

III. DO YOU FEEL AS LONELY AS I DO?

The answer is as obvious to me as it is to you. These things have no place in a world like this anymore. Now the world belongs to the most violent, vicious, stupid, and crude among us. Smash that subscribe button! I’ll sink your supertanker before you sink mine! All your oil, water, land, belongs to me.

And so the question changes. What does it mean to be a person in times as terrible as these? For starters, it means you wasted your fucking life, LOL, on nothings like science, art, beauty, goodness, decency, all of which are liabilities. Of course, “being a person” in this sense I’m equating with the conception that personhood is a thing we develop and become through the exercise of our higher and nobler faculties.

Do you feel as lonely as I do? Do you ache the way I do in your loneliness?

IV. BEING THE PEOPLE WE ARE ISN’T WORKING ANYMORE

After the ocean and the cliffs, we went to the beautiful campus of a great university, lined with old trees. And on a little street, where time had stopped, my lovely wife exclaimed a little sound of delight. A bookstore.

But not just any kind. Not one full of new books, but old ones. The kind that, for people like us, is a wonderland, a treasure trove. Can I-? she asked. I nodded. I’ll watch the dog.

She came back out, half an hour later, smiling and aglow. A bag full of old books clutched in her hand. Look at this one! And this one! Philosophy, poetry, art, more.

How electric. How alive. I savored the moment. Because the truth is that in the dead, dead, dead world we live in now—how many moments are left like this? There, on the little street where time had stopped, we stood and communed with the ghosts of great minds past. They whispered through the linden trees.

Who do you commune with at amazon dot com? LOL, that’s a coarse way to make the point.

What does it mean to be a man, a person, in a world as terrible as this?

Maybe we are just left with the moments where truth and beauty and goodness still flow through us, like a shining thread, to history, civilization, to the things which matter. In that moment, and only in that moment, I felt my loneliness ease. Just…for an instant.

Maybe I just need more books.

Maybe I need to fucking kill myself, and become someone else who can live in a world like this, because this me…can’t. Laugh, fucking laugh, goddamit, because we’re all thinking this these days.

Aren’t we? Don’t lie anymore. Nobody else can hear you. Not even me. Admit it. Being the people we are isn’t working anymore.

V. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PERSON IN A WORLD AS TERRIBLE AS THIS

Then it was late at night. I stood on the street, sneaking a cigarette and a late night coffee. Snowy sat down. Dad, aren’t you tired yet? The city spun by me. Lover on a moped laughed as they sped by. Cute dog! I smiled.

And I felt the terrible loneliness again. What does it mean, what does it mean, what does it mean? To be a person in a world like this?

I have been teaching you…just a glimmer…of the dark arts lately. Chief among them, money. Those of you who’ve followed Havens have done well. For those of you who are wondering, Havens is now just going to be here, for simplicity’s sake. In this little essay, we won’t dwell on how to make money. As I often say, that part’s easy. The larger question is what concerns us.

To be a person in a world like this means, for people like us, becoming different. Those of us who are not brutes, idiots, savages, fools, simpletons, and if you want to imagine that I’m being insulting, by all means, do so. I can’t mince words about where I feel the world is now. Should any of us? Do you see intelligence or reason or decency in abundance anywhere much?

The question then becomes: do we become terrible people to exist in a terrible world? How much do we harden ourselves? Inure ourselves? Make ourselves indifferent? When I hug my wife, and look at the ocean, what do I see? Just waves? The supernova of despair and hopelessness sweeping our world? Which is fair? Where do I stop seeing? Do I tear my eyes out like Oedipus? Shall I ask for them to be torn out for me?

I don’t write about what I see anymore. What would be the point? It frightens and confuses people to know what will happen next. And the world is in enough pain. So I muse, gently, as softly as I can, instead, here with you. We’re old friends. But there is a method to my madness. There must always be. I am always trying to guide you.

A world as terrible as this demands that we renegotiate our relationship with it. Not so that we give up on moments of beauty and truth like the above. But so that we can preserve them.

VI. THE DARK ARTS OF PERSONHOOD

The dark arts of being a person exist, too. Above, I used the example of making money. I don’t talk about it too much with you because it changes people. Unless they are very, very careful with it. As do all the dark arts, manipulation, persuasion, exploitation, and so forth.

These are very real. You can see in our world that those who excel at them are the ones who win, and the rest lose, and this is how our world works. It is not just zero sum, but negative sum. That means: we’re all losing. Democracy, justice, peace, knowledge, these are grave losses for all of us. The stock market has forgotten that they’re where prosperity truly come from, and in time, we will make a great deal of money from that too.

But that is a dark art. And like me, you must carefully strike not a balance between the darkness and the light—that is the wrong way to think about it entirely.

You must learn the dark arts in times like these.

But only so that they free you. Never so that they master you, and never so that they enslave anyone else. Those are the conditions. Anything else is what Mephistopheles offered Faust. The darkness, not kept in its place, will consume you. But how is darkness to be contained? Only by, with, through, light. And so in this, knowledge, truth, reason, justice—if you are going to practice the dark arts, as you must learn to, in times like these—must be your guides.

VII. HOW TO BE A PERSON IN A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE WORLD

We can say something like this. Now the time has come to learn the dark arts of being a person for the sake of self-preservation. You’ve already begun learning from me, for example, how to make money—but for what reason? My wife jokes at me, scornfully, in the way that wives do. You’re teaching people too much. She looks at me like I’m a fool. I laugh.

The point isn’t the money, I say. Then what is? She frowns, and rolls her eyes. My fucking useless intellectual husband.

The point is to teach you how to be a person in a world like this one. Being ignorant of the dark arts of being a person will leave you utterly defenseless in times like these. And that is more than I can stand, personally. I think it’s more than anyone should be able to stand.

In another life, I would have been a teacher. But I only had this one. And in this one, I made my fortune, got ill, lost it all, met my wife, and so on. It’s a long, funny, and interesting stories.

As I stood on the beautiful, leafy campus, I thought something like this. Even if I’d been here, a teacher, what good would all my knowledge have been in a world like this one? Would it have helped anyone orient themselves, navigate these poisonous waters, find their ways through the labyrinths of treachery, hate, folly, and rage we’re abandoned in now? I was skeptical.

First, before this kind of knowledge, which is beautiful and wise, don’t misunderstand me, a person in times like these must have a different kind. An acquaintance with the dark arts. What good is it to teach you in some abstract way what an economy is if you’ll never make any money? What good is the scientific method to you if your life is at the mercy of crackpots who don’t believe in it? I could go on.

VIII. WHO ARE YOU WHEN MIDNIGHT FALLS?

The cliffs and the ocean. The library. The bookstore. It was a wonderful, electrifying day. And at the end of it, I found myself back where I always am.

In the darkness. Swathing me like a newborn. I only feel like myself at night. I only feel right then. One of my favorite songs goes like that.

All my life, I've lived in two worlds. It’s something that’s different about me. I’m at home in a cafe or a bookstore, like I was in a boardroom. But I’m just as much at home at 3AM on a streetcorner, in a city, at night. And life at night is different. It breathes and murmurs differently. Here, we’re not the people we were during the daytime. Our animal selves prowl. Words matters less than looks. Here, when the sun has gone down, the truth of you is revealed.

You can’t go on being the same person you were when midnight is falling all around you.

Being the people we were taught to be isn’t working anymore.

I think the time has come to teach you a little bit about the darkness.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!)