Schopenhauer on Man's Big Surprise at Existing

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands of years of non-existence; he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

What Our Oldest Story Tells us About What it Means to be Human - Greenblatt on Gilgamesh

All of this is taken from Stephen Greenblatt's new book The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. This is a blog post rather than a book chapter, so where I could I made the story much more succinct, the result being that this is more choppy and less informative than Greenblatt's account.

----------------

Gilgamesh was written by Sin-lequi-unninni. All that is known of him is that he probably compiled materials - texts and oral legends - that reached far back into the past.

The Torah was probably assembled in the fifth century BCE; the Iliad somewhat earlier, perhaps between 760 and 710 BCE. But Sin-lequi-unninni wrote his text sometime between 1300 and 1000 BCE, and the earliest surviving written tales of Gilgamesh date from around 2100 BCE. Older by more than a thousand years than either Homer or the Bible, Gilgamesh is quite possibly the oldest story ever found. [And what follows is just a portion of that epic of Gilgamesh.]

Uruk was the first city in the ancient Near East and perhaps the first city in human history and the creation story of Gilgamesh starts there. This isn't the story of the origin of humans. This is the story of the origination of humanity, told through a being named Enkidu who is transformed from beast to man.

The people of Uruk are terrorized by Gilgamesh who is one-third human and two-thirds god. He's a great builder and warrior but his sexual appetites are terrorizing the city. In response to the complaints about him from the people of Uruk, the gods create Enkidu who is placed - not in the city but - in the wilderness outside the city.

Enkidu roams naked with gazelles, a wild creature with hair covering his whole body. Then he meets Shamhat.

Shamhat is a temple prostitute skilled in all pleasures. Shamhat and Enkidu spend six days and seven nights in fervent lovemaking and at the end of this time, when Enkidu tries to rejoin the gazelles he cannot. This - the love of Shamhat - has changed him. He is no longer an animal.

Shamhat continues Enkidu's initiation. He cleans himself and seems to lose the hair covering his body. He eats at a table. She takes off her clothes and shares them with him (one for me, one for you style), clothing becoming a sign of culture rather than a covering for shame.

Next comes friendship. Enkidu meets Gilgamesh and stops him from raping a bride on her wedding night - as was his custom. (This custom was the catalyst for the people complaining to the gods about Gilgamesh and their creation of Enkidu.) After they fight over this, Enkidu and Gilgamesh become great friends who share adventures and companionship.

Finally, Enkidu learns of his mortality. Facing death terrifies him and he curses Shamhat, who initiated him into civilization. In truth, though, Enkidu was always mortal but was simply unaware of it when he was more animal than human. While still filled with trepidation about death, he is consoled by the gods with the memory of all that he has gained by joining civilization: food and drink that have sustained and delighted him, beautiful clothing he wears, honors of which he is proud, and above all his deep friendship with Gilgamesh. Enkidu dies.

Gilgamesh is thrown into deep mourning at the loss of his friend. He, too, is saddened and terrified by the prospect of death and seeks out ways to avoid it. In his search for immortality he encounters an alewife who delivers this advice:

As for you Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full,
Always be happy, night and day,
Make every day a delight,
Night and day, play and dance.
Your clothes should be clean,
Your head should be washed,
You should bathe in water.
Look proudly on the little one holding your hand,
Let your mate be always blissful in your loins

The alewife's words epitomize the wisdom of the everyday, the advice summoned up by the spectacle of too much heroic striving: know your limits, accept the human condition, savor the ordinary sweet pleasures that life offers. "This, then," she concludes, "is the work of mankind."

----------------
[Your loyal blogger's voice]

It isn't about avoiding death; it's about embracing life.

This reveling in the normal, realizing how extraordinary is the ordinary, seems to me a much richer way to enjoy life than to insist that we do great things or strive to fall into the top 0.01%. In that direction lies failure for 99.99%, and that's tragic. Learning to delight in the common things promises delight for anyone who can realize the gift of civilized humanity, the promise of the pursuit of happiness.

Just the Way Things Are

Once a myth is seen to be a myth, it no longer is. That is, if you call a myth a myth it no longer functions as a myth, as a way to make sense of the world that people believe in. The people who believe something is a myth no longer believe in it.

I wonder if a philosophy is similar. Today, pragmatism is characterized by the fact that people don't think of this philosophy as a philosophy. To call yourself pragmatic is, of course, to say that you are not ideological or philosophical.

Once we see pragmatism as every bit as philosophical as the Enlightenment before it, we might begin to find it lessen its hold on our collective consciousness.

Bernard Questions the Direction of Causality

Bernard got right to it. “Do you suppose that we’ve got causality backwards?”

“Meaning?”

“Well, we think that the event that comes before causes the event to follow.”

“Ah. You are talking about the hic hoc postal ergo hoc fallacy?” I said, proud that I’d remembered this from my philosophy class.

Bernard frowned. “You mean post hoc ergo propter hoc?” he queried. “Since an event follows another it must have been caused by it?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. Suddenly drawing a complete blank on what I’d just said or how I had pronounced it. “Isn’t that what I said?”

“Sort of,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “But no, that is not what I am talking about.”

“Oh,” I said in what I hoped was an intelligent tone.

“I’m talking about something broader than that. We know that just because an event comes before another it did not necessarily cause it. But we also know that cause comes before effect. We know that if something did cause something else, it always happens first. But what if that is not the case?”

“What?” I asked, baffled.

“Well, look at it like this. All your life you have seen wind blow. You know that when things move, the movement comes from being pushed, being blown away. And then one day someone turns on a vacuum cleaner and now things don’t move because they are blown away. They move because they are sucked in. In our models of the world, causality is blown away from the cause, comes after. But maybe effects are sucked towards the cause, effects come before.”

“Got it.” I thought. But was not sure.

“Well what if causality were like that? What if the past didn’t cause things? What if the future were the cause of things? We get sucked towards a future rather than caused by our past?”

“Are you arguing for predestination?”

“No. I think that the future has infinite options. It is just that we’re pulled forward by these possible futures.”

“But you have to admit that some things are caused by past events. A boy sets a fire and the hillside erupts into flames. The event before caused the wildfire after. Right?”

“What if that is simply a failure of imagination? The past event causes the next because it came before? The invention of the telegraph, for instance. You think that was caused by what came before? Or do you think that it was caused by a possibility – what came after?”

“So, you think that the notion of causation ought to be replaced by the notion of possibility? Or you really saying that causation works from the future to the past?”

“I’m really saying that the two ideas are the same. Current events are caused by future possibility. I think that we keep looking into the past to see the cause and we should be looking to the future.”

“Bernard,” I rubbed my forehead. “Some days you give me a headache.”

“It’s probably low blood sugar. Here,” he handed me the menu. “Order something to eat. You’ll feel better.”

The prospect of food did make me feel a little better. Maybe his notion of causation was worth considering. Did the hunger cause me to order or did the prospect of food cause me to order? Wait. Just as it seemed that Bernard was starting to make sense, I lost it again.

Bernard smiled. “You think I might be on to something?”

“Yes Bernard, I do think that you might be on something.” And then I looked for our waitress.

"'Hip hop, postal hick,' fallacy" Bernard shook his head disgustedly. "It wouldn't surprise me if someday you get a recall notice from your alma mater, asking you to send your degree back."