“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.”