The Building of a Prosaic Philosophy

I hate to call these building blocks of prosaic thinking “principles”, as they then tend to presume or assume some kind of stance of ontology or reality.   But that is not the goal.  These principles just focus on the prosaic, the ordinary, the material place and space and time where we mostly live.   It is certainly true that we don’t live only in the prosaic – we also live in our ideals and dreams, which you might call living in the heroic, and in our needs, fears and nightmares, which you might call living in the basic. But mostly, we live in the prosaic.

Nevertheless, the basic premises of a prosaic understanding of reality would include these ideas, here set out in very conventional and perhaps inappropriate but traditional categories, all of which need more unpacking to be clear:

Metaphysics:               Metaphysics is local, not universal.

Reality/Existence:      A chief characteristic of pictorial space, which betrays its animal origin, is that it has a center. . . . Pictorial space therefore reappears, wherever an animal rises to intuition of his environment, and in each case it has its moral or transcendental center in that animal; a center which, being transcendental or moral, moves wherever the animal moves, and is repeated without physical contradiction or rivalry in as many places as are ever inhabited by a watchful animal soul. (Santayana)

Epistemology:             To eat a fruit is know its meaning. (Pessoa)

Values:                        What is aught, but as 'tis valued? (Shakespeare)

Morality:                     Our attachments are our blessings, our goods.

Ethics:                         There is a feigned disrespect for all the things which men in fact take most seriously, for all the things closest to them. (Nietzsche)

Meaning:                     The closer things are, the easier it is to find or confer meaning.  The sun and the moon, being close, seem more meaningful. Eating a fruit is closer than looking at it, and therefore more meaningful.  The farther things are, the less meaning. 

Purpose:                      If the world is cold, make fire. (Traubel)

Work:                          Play is man’s most useful occupation. (Hoffer)

Psychology:                It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.  (Irish proverb)

Aesthetics:                  Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. (Heraclitus)

Politics:                       As long as there is a single god standing, Man’s task is not done. (Cioran)

Prosaic principles therefore eschew the notion that reality and what matters in reality is deeper rather than the surface, farther way than what is nearby, harder to find and reach than what is in front of us.   Pictorial space is where we are, which is the center of the universe (as for all animals).  Metaphysics are local and not universal. True meaning is closest to us and not far away at all.   Only values matter. What is morally significant to us is what we are attached to.  That we often forget that the things closest to us are what we take most seriously.  We find meaning in what is closest to us, and what has least meaning for us is what is furthest from us. We determine the purpose of life – our life. What we play at is more important than what we work at. That life (our life) can be good if we are strong enough for it. That we are our best selves when we play.  And finally, no Gods of any kind rule our lives.

 

 

The Playful Civilization

It is easy to be critical of the consumerist-materialist societies.  It is commonplace to comment on their inherent superficiality (advertising), excessive consumption of goods (shopping), tacky architecture (suburbia, malls), and banality to values (rat race, daily grind, family vacations).  Those criticisms would be pertinent if there were some quality about these societies that point directly to some human unhealthiness, or at least some clear immorality.  But it is difficult to pinpoint the direct evidence that these societies pose some special danger to human existence.

 Indeed, the banality of the consumerist society seems obvious, but that is no argument against it.  Rather, its prosaic nature is a clue to its likely virtues.  The daily character in a materialistic, luxury-loving culture is nothing more than a routine form of playfulness. 

 Even playfulness can become banal, but that does not change its basic nature.  In consumerist cultures, much of the entertainment sought by the middle class consists in discovering new trinkets, bartering at a new agora, finding new forms of art and theatre, and trying new foods and alcohol.  The forms of delight are endless, even if excessive, overwrought, and ubiquitous. 

 Another way to see this point is to ask where the evil lies in consumerist-materialistic societies – even after conceding the excessive dreck, tackiness, and tedium pursued by the middle class masses.  Is it in the enormous production and re-production of goods that are not needed?  Is it found in the planned obsolescence of styles and functions?  In the endless creation of the permutations of every new thing – until the thing burns itself out from the principle of  familiarity breeding contempt?  Is it because there are environmental problems with producing and consuming too much?  Is it a moral issue based on “haves” and “have nots?”

 One could concede all of the questions and still be left with an imprecise objection to the consumerist-materialist society.  Its excesses are excesses of playfulness.

 

“Man is the only playful animal . . .”   Eric Hoffer

Man’s two basic characteristics – playfulness and hesitation – are his prime movers. Those traits of consciousness are rarely mentioned in all of the musings from Plato to Freud to explain basic human nature.  Man is rarely homo sapien – the wise ape, nor is he initially competent as homo habilis – the tool-making ape or “handy man.”  And his hesitation, his haltering, his doubtfulness has never warranted a fancy latin name, but his characteristic breach between thought and action shows that his innate instincts do not rule his waking consciousness.  He is rather, homo ludens – the playful ape.  Lazy and smart, playful and fickle, his key characteristics are neither bad enough nor good enough for the great thinkers in history to have paid much heed.  Their goals were always to look for the angel and devil in man . . .

 PROSAIC attempts to describe the arc of human behavior that is rooted in man’s playfulness and hesitation.  Man’s basic nature is only slightly different from his closest primate relative, the chimpanzee, so they say.  Genetic differences are a mere 2%, so they say.   Man is a primate from earth only slightly different from his primate cousins, so they say.  But the differences are significant in how man interacts in the world.  But man’s description as an animal can proceed as it would with any animal from earth: what is his basic nature, how does he spend its days, and what unique characteristics does he possess that are marvelous and remarkable?

 There is no god or demon in man.  He is an animal from earth that is territorial, acquisitive, aggressive, emotional, fragile, fecund and curious.  He is smart, creative, and imaginative.  He is monogamous, polygamous, and sexually ambiguous.  His god, were he created from one, is the Demiurge, the god of the material universe.  His moralist, had he one, would be the deviant and amoral Pan.  His demon, were he to fall to one, would be himself on a bad day, or his closest companion that convinces him to exploit others.

 It is an unfortunate fact that even in the early 21^st century, most discussions about man continue to be couched in terms created by religionists and moralists from centuries past.  The last 150 years have demonstrated the prosaic nature of human life, a life of daily material existence that is marked by the striving to create new art, determine greater scientific knowledge, develop more technological competence, and make a more comfortable material environment.  Man seeks, above all, a better day, every day.  This is the most significant fact that is routinely ignored by the thinkers that continue to seek the devil and the angel in man.  They should start over, and with this easy and unremarkable fact as the starting point: Man is the playful and lazy animal from Earth. 

Nietzsche writes in Human, All Too Human, Volume II, Part II, §5:

There exists a simulated contempt for all the things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday matters. For instance, we say "we only eat to live"an abominable lie, like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose of all sexual pleasure. Conversely, the reverence for "the most important things " is hardly ever quite genuine.

The priests and metaphysicians have indeed accustomed us to a hypocritically exaggerated use of words regarding these matters, but they have not altered the feeling that these most important things are not so important as those despised "everyday matters." A fatal consequence of this twofold hypocrisy is that we never make these everyday matters (such as eating, housing, clothes, and intercourse) the object of a constant unprejudiced and universal reflection and revision, but, as such a process appears degrading, we divert from them our serious intellectual and artistic side. Hence in such matters habit and frivolity win an easy victory over the thoughtless, especially over inexperienced youth.

On the other hand, our continual transgressions of the simplest laws of body and mind reduce us all, young and old, to a disgraceful state of dependence and servitude I mean to that fundamentally superfluous dependence upon physicians, teachers and clergymen, whose dead-weight still lies heavy upon the whole of society.

 

 

PROSAIC is based on three aphorisms, the first from Friederich Nietzsche’s The Wanderer and his Shadow:

            Everyday things

            There is a feigned disrespect for all the things which men in fact take most seriously, for all the things closest to them.

The second is from the poet Jim Harrison:

               Life is only what one did every day.  

And the last from Epicurus:

            Send me a pot of cheese and I will dine sumptuously.

These three aphorisms stacked together illustrate a principle that is rarely acknowledged in conventional philosophical or moral systems – that the only valuable things in the universe are daily desires, wants and needs that are most personal to us. 

PROSAIC celebrates “all the things closest” to the individual in his/her daily life, and honors the “determiner of values.”