An Argument for the Mundane

  

Each one of us has an inner life. That inner life forms some small part of others' outer lives. Each inner life bumps into other inner lives without ever transcending the apparent barrier between the me and the not me. We spend a great deal of energy forcing our way into empathy--trying to pretend that we truly do stand in someone else's shoes. Of course, we do not and cannot. The trial of trying gets us close, closer than apathy would, yet, much of the time, the trying seems perfunctory, the very least we must do to seem to act in a way that maybe humans should. Epictetus says that, when comforting someone, you should scream, cry, and hold them--in effect, be with them--but you should never let their pain, loss, and sorrow disrupt your inward tranquility. Their problems are their problems.

You cannot know them or be them. Do not try, he says. But, pretending is fine--encouraged. The alone-ness, the solipsism implied here, remains an issue for each one of us. Centuries of thinking later, we still stand alone, confined, isolated. Our isolation can feel like a cage at times and an exit from others' pains at others. On the wrong day in the wrong philosophy class (or if you happen to be reading Infinite Jest), you may even be convinced you are the only real thing in the world. The present tense feels much more immediate than the past or future ones; even more so, you feel more centered, more real, than anyone else in the world can feel. We all try to think our way out of that pervasive kind of narcissism--with differing degrees of success. But, even the most successful, the most considerate, the most thoughtful, the most understanding people can, from time to time, be more interested in flicking tone nails into a trashcan than listening to you on the phone go on, and on, and on, about some unrequited lover or some failed sexual escapade. The older you get the less patience you have for truly self-serving conversations like this. You are probably right in zoning out--your friend will be over it all soon enough. But, in other ways, you must wonder what you owe your friends. Or, more generally, what you owe to strangers. There are some universal aphorisms that hold firm: "chicks before dicks," is one of my favorites, for its sonic symmetry.

But what do you do when you find yourself in a situation outside the ontological scope of these pithy yet somewhat trite sayings? In class, we tend to forget about the quotidian; it is always all, what do you do if a person (probably Hitler) has a gun to your head, telling you to a press a BIG RED button you know will blow up an entire Arts & Sciences building, full of people who have been warned but of course have no way to get out? These kinds of examples are exciting, dramatic, full of CONSEQUENCE. At quarter till twelve, or whatever it is, we all exit the room, exhausted by the weight of it. We've either saved or condemned people to die or the reality of their obesity. Clearly, these big, massive, impact-charged examples have their corollaries in the every day; we can boil them down to terms, like honesty, temperance, et al. The more logic prone can build formulas for RIGHTNESS. But, I for one often forget to translate those terms into the banality of my own life. Sometimes, through my isolation, I forget to take into consideration, into account, what aught to be done. I get away with being alone, being out for myself. I use online comment sections as cathartic shouting arenas, hidden behind a pseudonym, feeling a-responsible. At this point, I've forgotten about my Ethics class from earlier. In this post, I'm arguing for a new trajectory, one that takes into account that we aren't all Presidents, POWs, or Fascist Dictators. We have common power that nonetheless does damage to others, in small ways, in seemingly innocuous ones. I want to know whether or not I'm morally required to respond to all EIGHTEEN of your text messages, or whether I aught to go to this or that person's birthday party even though I don't know/like them, or whether I should return all of the books that I've become at this point quite attached to after a relationship falls apart. Most things aren't life threatening but everything deals in ethics. Even when the stakes aren't too high, we must consider, we must reflect, we must try to empathize--all before we act.