“The world is little, people are little, human life is
little. There is only one big thing — desire.”
― Willa Cather
 |
| Charles Bukowski |
Bukowski’s poem (I suggest reading it) is a blinkered and clichéd construction of
reality stemming from his own life of abuse and misfortune, resulting in a dismissively
pessimistic viewpoint. This is a poem from a degenerate, and perhaps only
speaks to degenerates. I will however, for the purposes of this post, pretend
as if the poem is a profound source of philosophical debate, and not a source
to be examined by psychiatrists for an insight into the mind of a mentally
broken man.
Bukowski
suggests that we are two-dimensional creatures, and in doing so fashions the
notion that our purposes are arbitrary. Through the collocation of “flesh …
bone” juxtaposed with the collocation of “mind … soul” the conventionally
complex portrayal of the human is challenged through a reductive portrayal.
Bukowski immediately separates the physical from the spiritual and indicates
that our lives are a simple combination of these two elements. It would be a
sin (and completely wrong) to call Bukowski a metaphysical poet, but the concepts
he is dealing with here are largely metaphysical. Specifically Bukowski is
writing like a dualist, possibly suggesting that mind and matter are ontologically
separate objects. This separation may relate to his youth and the injuries he
received from his father. He was beaten three times a week with a razor strop and
was socially humiliated due to severe acne. Bukowski says it helped his writing
as ‘he came to understand undeserved pain’. There is an important transition to
note here. The physical effects on Bukowski’s life (being beaten, having acne)
had a direct result in his spiritual faculty (writing about pain). This
transfer from a negative physical realm to a positive spiritual realm is a
possible explanation for his inclination to adopt a dualistic viewpoint.
Contrary to some beliefs this is not
realism. The poem is not didactically (or esoterically) aiming to make anyone think
about life realistically. Bukowski most likely aims to reduce the reader down
to a subhuman state so that the reader can feel the lows Bukowski felt. This
poem is not a universal meditation on the meaning of life – it is a singular
memoir from a man who wants to prove everyone is arbitrary simply because he
believes he is arbitrary.
Belief
is the one single creator of meaning and Bukowski’s belief is shown in the
poem. Maybe those who relate to his attitude believe it is a profound,
universal and realistic treatise. Maybe those who cannot relate see it as a
collection of lone, depressed, and subjective thoughts. To say that life means
nothing is to believe in it. A proper belief is one which is rationally
founded, and an improper belief is one which is irrationally founded. There is
no rational ground to suggest that life means nothing. Those who believe life
means nothing are extrapolating from personal experiences, exactly what Bukowski
is doing in his poem, and are confused with what is true and what is not.
I
take the quasi-hedonistic view that the meaning of life is based on aiming to
satisfy desire. This is not traditional desire in respect to desires such as
sex, power, and wealth (although they are included). Humans aim to do things
which give them satisfaction. A person giving to charity earns the satisfaction
of feeling charitable. A person practicing a religion earns the satisfaction of
knowing he will not be punished in the afterlife. A person who sacrifices his life
for another earns the satisfaction that his sacrifice would be for a good
cause.
A
‘greater purpose to life’ is an inherently misleading phrase. The purposes or
meanings behind life are simply the rankings of desires, which are relative depending
on each person. Furthermore, if a range of purposes exist from which there are certain
supreme purposes and then certain antithetical purposes (these must exist if a ‘greater’ purpose is to
exist), then this range has to be founded on ethical beliefs. Ethical beliefs
are of course regularly contested and doubted. Standardising the range would
mean ranking beliefs, which simply cannot accurately happen. To summarise: the
meaning of life is to satisfy desires, and the importance of each desire
relative to each person reveals what is of a ‘greater’ purpose or meaning.
I
must admit I went off on a tangent whilst exploring the meaning of life and now
feel a reluctance to return to Bukowski’s craft (though I am sure you have
already have guessed I do not really care about what Bukowski has written). I
am neither a cynic nor a realist (these two words cannot be used
interchangeably) but I can understand why one would be either or neither. The
truth is: it does not matter. By taking different viewpoints (cynicism, realism
or optimism) all you are doing is showing that everything changes depending on
perspective. This is nothing new. What may be considered new is an answer to
why we search for deeper meanings in life. It is an interesting answer, because
I believe we don’t search for deeper
meanings in life, we search for different
meanings. Different meanings come from different perspectives, and these
different perspectives inform our different desires, through which we reorder
our beliefs accordingly to form a system of what is relatively meaningful.
Bukowski
is not exploring a largely controversial concept, he is not a sage and he is
not the new Socrates. He is simply canvassing issues of his life in the vaguest
way possible so that an illusion of universality is created. The use of definitive
statements formed from “nobody … nobody … nothing” are signs of delusion and depression,
not truth. Bukowski makes us consider his corrupted stance so that we too adopt
these signs of delusion and depression. Once everyone becomes like him, that is
when everyone is ‘Alone With Everybody’, as we are all together with the same
view that we are all alone. It is not a wrong outlook, but the problem is that
it is not everyone’s outlook. The only thing I can commend Bukowski for is that
he provokes self-examination within the reader to search for a personal view.
His stance may be amateurish, but it is so definitive that it is an initiator
of critical thought within those that are not so definitive, such as me or you,
and for this purpose I think it is quite valuable.
(Visit the blog which inspired this response)
