2024.10.18
"Intermezzo", about a nearly estranged pair of brothers (one a solicitor the other a chess prodigy) coping with the recent death of their fathers and dealing with romances (complicated by age differences) was resonate.
Aber fühlst du nicht *jetzt* den Kummer?
("Aber spielst du nicht *jetzt* Schach?")
But don't you feel grief *now*?
('But aren't you *now* playing chess?')
--LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN,
Philosophical Investigations
Nobody when they're rejected believes it's really for extraneous reasons. And it almost never is for extraneous reasons, because mutual attraction – which even makes sense from the evolutionary perspective – is simply the strongest reason to do anything, overriding all the contrary principles and making them fall away into nothing.
Sadness, missing his father, and a kind of shame somehow, because each passing day seemed to bring Ivan further away from him and the life they used to have together, a life that was receding increasingly into the past, into the realm of childhood and adolescence. The realisation that his adulthood, into which he was entering now so definitively, and which would last all the rest of his life, would have to be lived without his father. That he was becoming a person his father would never know.
Yes I would like he thinks to live in such a way that I could vanish into thin air at any time without affecting anyone and in fact I feel that for me this would constitute the perfect and perhaps the only acceptable life. At the same time I want desperately to be loved. Aloud he says: Whatever, I don't know.
They look at one another again, tired, and tender, affectionate again. Pitying themselves and one another. The old fond familiarity in her look, without which he thinks he could not live. Yes. When he saw her waiting for him at the gate: to encounter not only her, the beauty of her nearness renewed, but also himself, the self that is loved by her, and therefore worthy of his own respect.
Together they walked over from her apartment to the union meeting the other night, her hand on his arm. A philosophical problem. When they go out together, to be mistaken for what they aren't. Or rather: to be mistaken for what they are. And how is that possible. To see a man and a woman walking together: to name in the mind their relation to one another, as it were automatically. Which is to select from the assortment of existing names the one that seems appropriate to the particular case. To say to oneself that in relation to the man, this particular woman must be a friend, or else a girlfriend, or a wife, or sister. An act of naming which stands open to correction, but correction only in the form of replacement: that is, the replacement of one existing name for another. If you are mistaken in thinking this woman my friend, that means merely that you have chosen the wrong term from the assortment, and therefore that I can correct you by supplying the appropriate one in its place. The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, says Wittgenstein, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent. Because the name you give to a presumed relation between a man and woman may be both correct and incorrect at once. Each name including within itself a complex of assumptions. You say to yourself that a certain woman is my girlfriend: and intrinsic in this act of naming is the supposition of a number of independent facts. That this woman and I go to bed together, for instance; that neither of us goes to bed with anyone else; that while we are in bed certain particular acts take place, and so forth. And if you are corrected about the nature of the relation, you will therefore reasonably conclude that after all we don't go to bed together, certain acts don't take place between us, and so on. Here saying 'There is no third possibility' or 'But there can't be a third possibility!' – expresses only our inability to turn our eyes away from this picture. Is she or isn't she. Are they or not.
One of ChatGPT's can be reframing "the obvious" (Along with a knack for taking established knowledge and seeing what sounds likely to apply it to a novel problem at hand, the "merge tool" model of these damn things.)
Anyway, I decided to ask it about procrastination. I thought
When confronted with many tasks, the brain can perceive them as a threat, triggering a "fight or flight" response. Instead of "fighting" (tackling the tasks), the brain might choose "flight" (avoiding the tasks).was kind of insightful. Certainly "Fight or Flight" is a well-known trope, but I hadn't thought of it in this context.
And even if the tasks aren't scary in and of themselves, they are a constant threat to tender egos, our self-image as capable and competent people.
Still wishing I had better self-insight; definitely there is a part of me that is not my narrative, more-or-less rational self - that part of me that's reacting with fear seems to be something else - but if it's as simple as a left/right hemisphere split or something better described with Internal Family Systems type thinking is still an open question for me.
I think the Dune "litany against fear" has it right. My favorite version was is the condensed version from the miniseries:
"I will not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
I will face my fear.
I will let it pass through me.
When the fear has gone,
there shall be nothing.
Only I will remain."
I think from the fear brain part of my mind, having a big Todo list - even if most of the tasks are pretty straight forward, should be easy wins - brings up a " just remember that if you go knocking on enough doors asking to see the devil, eventually he may answer." - like at some point you run into the tough problems that seem more likely to kick your ass.
Sometimes the slogan Jerry (from Rick and Morty) came up with for the National Apple Farmers of America - "Hungry for Apples?" - a rip off of "Got Milk?" that would only work in a custom VR world - is actually pretty good? At least I think about it and sometimes eat an apple.