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1proximity1
"It's just the usual noises in here!"
Meaning and purpose, it turns out, are really, really important. Who knew?
As the article excerpt above recounts,
"The question disturbs our modern assumption that the highest good is enjoyment of the finest things for as long as possible: Why would someone who was the envy of all, who consumed the best things the world had to offer, choose to leave the world behind of his own volition?
The answer is almost assuredly loneliness and depression—both of which Bourdain has talked about in multiple interviews over the years, and since his divorce."
But that doesn't really do much as an explanation. We've just been informed about him that " Bourdain had it all: wealth, fame, a job where he traveled the world, dined with interesting people, was friends with chefs and presidents, ate the best food whether surrounded by finery or by a jungle, and could go anywhere and do anything he wanted."
So, then, why should he have been either depressed or, yet more strange, "lonely".
These problems are clearly not necessarily eliminated, held at bay or greatly allieviated by one's "having it all"--"it" being the social and material comforts and joys which so many are working so hard, going sleep-deprived to their jobs, to achieve.
Money and the ease and conveniences which can come with 'plenty of it,', wonderful food, travel to interesting places, friendships with celebrities and people of social and political influence--these don't, and perhaps cannot, substitute when, at the core, there is lacking some basic informing purpose, meaning, and need which is deeper and richer than just having another stellar meal with stellar dining-companions in stellar settings.
And there's also of course the possibility that Bourdain was tired and out of motivating ideas which might have inspired him to carry on. Ending one's life is really ultimately the very personal business of the individual concerned in the act—though in its wake are the hurt and grieving family and friends who may have been taken by surprise.
But the article indicates that in Bourdain's case there wasn't much excuse for surprise. He had so 'much' but perhaps something was missing.
For me, the prime suspects for the missing are the intimately-related 'meaning' and 'purpose'—something that one has to do, really, really needs to do.
These statistics suggest that those who are paying attention consider these elements :
“Bourdain spoke of his struggles with depression in a 2016 episode of Parts Unknown ((Youtube) time coutner: at 1':05'' - 1':19'')
‘ I’d like to be happy. I should be happy; I have, you know, incredible luck. ... I’d like to be able to look out the window and say, you know, Yay! Life is good!’ (therapist counsellor): ‘And you don’t.’ Bourdain: ‘Nah.’ … ” ( ABC News report 11 June 2018 : "New details of Anthony Bourdain's final days"
This is, of course, a problem for those who are thoughtful and sensitive about the enormous gulf which separates them and their lot, enjoying a very idealized and apparently privileged life—even when all that one was achieved through a combination of good luck and their own hard work during much of which the promise of success was anything but foreordained—from that of the vast majority of the rest of us.
Being happy is, however, not necessarily something that attends the achievements of success however one might measure or define it. Being happy is something different than being successful or even "getting one's heart's desires." I think what Bourdain meant by being happy was what we'd call "content"--a combination of ease, satisfaction, enjoyment of the fruits obtained from effort, and the sense of its having been worthwhile.
But these are precisely aspects of what is entailed in whatever it is that provides one with his life's meaning and purpose.
Sometimes, that kind of contentment involves, expressly or implicitly, not only one's own personal betterment, enrichment--and not only material enrichment but spiritual and intellectual enrichment—but the enrichment of the larger society to at least some discernable extent. If that is part of what one needs, these times present a very big challenge to finding that contentment.
And of course ours aren't the first times to have recognized this—far from it.
____________________________________________________________
* fuller citation:
______________________________________________________________
Given the way "Shakespeare" is taught, this is, alas, not necessarily such a bad thing.
Anthony Bourdain was clearly wonderfully talented in numerous ways both in and outside of a kitchen and obviously, in numerous ways, at least after long years of hard work, quite fortunate according to conventional standards of what that means. But he missed getting the message in Edward (Earl of) Oxford's writings as "Shakespeare" and that's really a shame; it's a shame because mainstream academic scholarship failed him twice: first, in presenting him with a load of humbug about "Shakespeare" when like nearly everyone, Bourdain was first introduced to this topic and, a second time, when it left him with this as a settled and unquestioned view.
But there was a chance he might have found his way to a grasp of Oxford as "Shakespeare" in his own ways and in his own time. That he didn't was another and related kind of shame on us. We ought to be helping the chances that people somehow make this discovery.
Postmodernists Can't Destroy SHAKESPEARE | Jordan Peterson with Sarina Singh:
Peterson: "I don't think that we can actually destroy great literature because it is actually great; and, so if you don't—if you're not exposed to it, that actually hurts you. And I think that a good teacher can demonstrate to willing students that their lives will be immeasurably enriched by exposure to those sorts of classics and if the teachers can't demonstrate that, then they're really not worth their salt." ....
___________________________________
" A story: The prison-hardened gangbanger and thief Carl Upchurch had been in solitary confinement at the federal penitentiary of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, for two months before he noticed the little paperback book propping up one leg of the table. 'I pulled it out, excited to have found something to alleviate the monotony. I turned it over and stared at the cover in disgust. It was Shakespeare's Sonnets.' He put it back. But time in solitary was long, and 'after three more days of staring at gray, I pulled it out again, muttering that Shakespeare was better than nothing.'
From the outside perspective, Bourdain had it all: wealth, fame, a job where he traveled the world, dined with interesting people, was friends with chefs and presidents, ate the best food whether surrounded by finery or by a jungle, and could go anywhere and do anything he wanted. The question disturbs our modern assumption that the highest good is enjoyment of the finest things for as long as possible: Why would someone who was the envy of all, who consumed the best things the world had to offer, choose to leave the world behind of his own volition?
The answer is almost assuredly loneliness and depression – both of which Bourdain has talked about in multiple interviews over the years, and since his divorce. Listening to his conversations over the weekend with Marc Maron and David Remnick, it’s barely under the surface of his conversations – and if you’re familiar with his shows, they seem less like advocacy for an approach to life, and more like arguments with himself about the inherent goodness and beauty we can find in the world.
The disturbing truth we have to recognize is that Bourdain is not alone in his loneliness and depression. We are experiencing an incredible increase in suicide levels according to the latest research from the CDC. From 1999 to 2016, suicide increased in every U.S. state but one (and that one is Nevada, which remains in the top ten states for suicides). It is one of the top ten causes of death and one of only three such causes on the rise. The rise is seen in every age group and across all demographics, but particularly among people who look like Bourdain: 84 percent of suicide victims are white, and roughly 77 percent are men.
... ...
"But good food is about something else too: it’s about bonding with others, whether breaking bread with those we deeply love or sharing it with those unlike us. Bourdain was big on rejecting knife blocks, arguing that you really just need one well-loved and very sharp chef’s knife in the kitchen. The sharp knife is a tool: it can take a life, destroy in cruel fashion, but it also has the ability to create incredible things. Making a good meal for someone, even if it is nothing complicated, is an expression of love: it is an invitation to share, for one dinner at least, in our common humanity. " ...
(What Anthony Bourdain Reveals About Living In The Age Of Loneliness) || By Ben Domenech || June 11, 2018 (From The Federalist at thefederalist.com)
Meaning and purpose, it turns out, are really, really important. Who knew?
As the article excerpt above recounts,
"The question disturbs our modern assumption that the highest good is enjoyment of the finest things for as long as possible: Why would someone who was the envy of all, who consumed the best things the world had to offer, choose to leave the world behind of his own volition?
The answer is almost assuredly loneliness and depression—both of which Bourdain has talked about in multiple interviews over the years, and since his divorce."
But that doesn't really do much as an explanation. We've just been informed about him that " Bourdain had it all: wealth, fame, a job where he traveled the world, dined with interesting people, was friends with chefs and presidents, ate the best food whether surrounded by finery or by a jungle, and could go anywhere and do anything he wanted."
So, then, why should he have been either depressed or, yet more strange, "lonely".
These problems are clearly not necessarily eliminated, held at bay or greatly allieviated by one's "having it all"--"it" being the social and material comforts and joys which so many are working so hard, going sleep-deprived to their jobs, to achieve.
Money and the ease and conveniences which can come with 'plenty of it,', wonderful food, travel to interesting places, friendships with celebrities and people of social and political influence--these don't, and perhaps cannot, substitute when, at the core, there is lacking some basic informing purpose, meaning, and need which is deeper and richer than just having another stellar meal with stellar dining-companions in stellar settings.
And there's also of course the possibility that Bourdain was tired and out of motivating ideas which might have inspired him to carry on. Ending one's life is really ultimately the very personal business of the individual concerned in the act—though in its wake are the hurt and grieving family and friends who may have been taken by surprise.
But the article indicates that in Bourdain's case there wasn't much excuse for surprise. He had so 'much' but perhaps something was missing.
For me, the prime suspects for the missing are the intimately-related 'meaning' and 'purpose'—something that one has to do, really, really needs to do.
These statistics suggest that those who are paying attention consider these elements :
" From 1999 to 2016, suicide increased in every U.S. state but one (and that one is Nevada, which remains in the top ten states for suicides). It is one of the top ten causes of death and one of only three such causes on the rise. The rise is seen in every age group and across all demographics, but particularly among people who look like Bourdain: 84 percent of suicide victims are white, and roughly 77 percent are men." (emphasis added)
“Bourdain spoke of his struggles with depression in a 2016 episode of Parts Unknown ((Youtube) time coutner: at 1':05'' - 1':19'')
‘ I’d like to be happy. I should be happy; I have, you know, incredible luck. ... I’d like to be able to look out the window and say, you know, Yay! Life is good!’ (therapist counsellor): ‘And you don’t.’ Bourdain: ‘Nah.’ … ” ( ABC News report 11 June 2018 : "New details of Anthony Bourdain's final days"
This is, of course, a problem for those who are thoughtful and sensitive about the enormous gulf which separates them and their lot, enjoying a very idealized and apparently privileged life—even when all that one was achieved through a combination of good luck and their own hard work during much of which the promise of success was anything but foreordained—from that of the vast majority of the rest of us.
"Reached by The Post on Saturday, Bourdain’s mother, Gladys, 83, a longtime Times editor, could barely speak .
'It’s really too difficult,' she said.
'He was an incredible guy. I really can’t talk about him … He was brilliant and sharp and funny,' she said.
'He is the last person in the world I’d imagine to do something like that.'
"Still, by many accounts, including Ripert’s, Bourdain had not been himself.
There was exhaustion — and darkness."
____________________________________
(online tabloid journal Pagesix.com)
Being happy is, however, not necessarily something that attends the achievements of success however one might measure or define it. Being happy is something different than being successful or even "getting one's heart's desires." I think what Bourdain meant by being happy was what we'd call "content"--a combination of ease, satisfaction, enjoyment of the fruits obtained from effort, and the sense of its having been worthwhile.
But these are precisely aspects of what is entailed in whatever it is that provides one with his life's meaning and purpose.
Sometimes, that kind of contentment involves, expressly or implicitly, not only one's own personal betterment, enrichment--and not only material enrichment but spiritual and intellectual enrichment—but the enrichment of the larger society to at least some discernable extent. If that is part of what one needs, these times present a very big challenge to finding that contentment.
from Jordan Peterson's (Youtube.com) “Advice For People With Depression”
__________________________________
“Almost all the positve emotion that most of you are likely to experience in your life will not be a consequence of attaining things. It will be a consequence of seeing that things are working as you proceed towards a goal you value. That's completely different—and you need to know this. Because people are often stunned, for example: they finish their Ph.D. thesis and their presupposition is that they're going to be elated for a month and often instead they're actually depressed. They think, 'What the hell? I've been working on this for seven years and I handed it in and—what do I do now?' And that's what depresses them, right? It's the 'What do I do now?' Well, they were fine if they'd enjoyed persuing the thing—as long as it was working out they got a lot of enthusiasm and excitement out of that because that's how our nervous systems work. Most of your positive emotion is goal-persued emotion.”
… …
“One of the things I've noticed about people—cause I wondered—once I started studying these mythological stories, and I got this idea about the fact that life can be meaningful enough to justify its suffering, I thought, God!, that's such a good idea! Cause it's not optimistic exactly; you know, some people will tell you, you know, 'Well, you can be happy.' It's like, those people are idiots. I'm telling you, they're idiots. There's gonna be things that come along that flatten you so hard that you won't believe it. And you're not happy then. And so if life is to be happy well then in those situations, what are you doing? Why even live?”
And of course ours aren't the first times to have recognized this—far from it.
... .... " (Rhodri) Lewis is clearly impatient with how critics have previously understood Hamlet. He argues that it is wrong to impose 'the retrojection of Romantic, Freudian, or any other kinds of individuality onto a period in which they would scarcely have been comprehensible.' ... Lewis declares that his book 'is an exercise in literary criticism,' not to be mistaken for one of those modish studies that uses 'Shakespeare to furnish examples with which to illustrate or to challenge the history, theory or politics of x.'
Scraping away all these layers of critical varnish exposes for Lewis a much bleaker play than the one familiar to modern readers and playgoers:
"Hamlet is thus not a model of nascent subjectivity, the first modern man, a dramatic laboratory for the invention of the human, or even a study of the frustrations attendant upon sixteenth-century princely dispossession. He is instead a finely drawn embodiment of a moral order that is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions."
... ...
" I searched in vain while reading this book for what drove this grim argument—before finding a provisional answer in "Hamlet: Then and Now," a short essay that Lewis recently posted on the Princeton University Press website. He argues there that Shakespeare
"offers us an unflinchingly brilliant guide to the predicaments in which we find ourselves in Trumpland and on Brexit Island. Not by prophesying the likes of Farage, Bannon, and Donald J. Trump (it’s true: reality is stranger than fiction), but by enabling us to experience a world in which the prevalent senses of moral order (political, ethical, personal) bear only the most superficial relation to lived experience." *
____________
—James Shapiro, writing in a review of Rhodri Lewis's Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness, (2017, Princeton University Press) in The New York Review of Books, p.22, April 19-May 9, Vol. LXV, No.7. : The Question of Hamlet.
"If I have understood Lewis correctly, we have paid a steep political price for failing to heed Shakespeare's warning in Hamlet that the world has always been amoral and predatory." *
____________________________________________________________
* fuller citation:
"In seeking to make sense of a famous play whose famous author was neither frustrated nor inarticulate, and in trying to treat Shakespeare as neither unique nor somehow universal, I was surprised to find myself coming up with an answer to a version of the question I with which I begin above. Why study Shakespeare in in the mid- to late-2010s? Because he offers us an unflinchingly brilliant guide to the predicaments in which we find ourselves in Trumpland and on Brexit Island. Not by prophesying the likes of Farage, Bannon, and Donald J. Trump (it’s true: reality is stranger than fiction), but by enabling us to experience a world in which the prevalent senses of moral order (political, ethical, personal) bear only the most superficial relation to lived experience.
"To anyone glancing at my book, this claim might seem counter-intuitive. Its staple is Shakespeare’s engagement with, and ultimate repudiation of, the body of learning and civic-educational doctrine that we think of as renaissance humanism. Historical scholarship doesn’t get much more historically-minded than this. And yet it is Shakespeare’s determination to explore the limitations of the humanistic worldview that draws Hamlet into the nearest dialog with our own age." ...
... ...
"Shakespeare’s drama in general – and his Hamlet in particular – do an extraordinary job of holding up the mirror to a world characterized by illusion, pretense, and self-delusion. They show us that as we try to detach ourselves from the cultures within which we are obliged to exist, we seek to obscure the ways in which we have helped bring these cultures into being – to say nothing of the ways in which our attempts at self-detachment serve to make things worse. This lesson is no more comfortable in 2017 than it was at the beginning of the seventeenth century."
______________________________________________________________
"...there is only a single position advertised this year (2018) in all of North America for a senior Shakespeare scholar. "
___________________________
—James Shapiro, as cited above.
Given the way "Shakespeare" is taught, this is, alas, not necessarily such a bad thing.
Anthony Bourdain was clearly wonderfully talented in numerous ways both in and outside of a kitchen and obviously, in numerous ways, at least after long years of hard work, quite fortunate according to conventional standards of what that means. But he missed getting the message in Edward (Earl of) Oxford's writings as "Shakespeare" and that's really a shame; it's a shame because mainstream academic scholarship failed him twice: first, in presenting him with a load of humbug about "Shakespeare" when like nearly everyone, Bourdain was first introduced to this topic and, a second time, when it left him with this as a settled and unquestioned view.
But there was a chance he might have found his way to a grasp of Oxford as "Shakespeare" in his own ways and in his own time. That he didn't was another and related kind of shame on us. We ought to be helping the chances that people somehow make this discovery.
Postmodernists Can't Destroy SHAKESPEARE | Jordan Peterson with Sarina Singh:
Peterson: "I don't think that we can actually destroy great literature because it is actually great; and, so if you don't—if you're not exposed to it, that actually hurts you. And I think that a good teacher can demonstrate to willing students that their lives will be immeasurably enriched by exposure to those sorts of classics and if the teachers can't demonstrate that, then they're really not worth their salt." ....
___________________________________
" A story: The prison-hardened gangbanger and thief Carl Upchurch had been in solitary confinement at the federal penitentiary of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, for two months before he noticed the little paperback book propping up one leg of the table. 'I pulled it out, excited to have found something to alleviate the monotony. I turned it over and stared at the cover in disgust. It was Shakespeare's Sonnets.' He put it back. But time in solitary was long, and 'after three more days of staring at gray, I pulled it out again, muttering that Shakespeare was better than nothing.'
' I don't pretend that Shakespeare and I immediately connected. I must have read those damn sonnets twenty times before they began to make sense...I had almost always been contemptuous of intellect. The book of sonnets didn't just change my opinion—it quite literally changed my mind...I wanted to ask for more books, but I didn't have a clue where to start. At least I knew that Shakespeare had written other stuff besides the sonnets, so I requested anything else they had by him. I ... started plowing my way through thirty-eight plays and some other poetry ...Caught up in the first flush of literary exploration, I was pretty impressed with myself. In retrrospect, it was lucky I was in the cell alone... (The) guys would have burst my bubble mercilessly.'
_____________________________
— Carl Upchurch, Convicted in the Womb, (1996) pp. 81-84, cited in McCloskey, Deidre N. : The Bourgeois Virtues, (2006) University of Chicago Press p. 276
3barney67
For decades feminists have put men on the defensive. As though we're some weird brotherhood in which we're responsible for even the worst behavior of men living or dead.
4barney67
Loneliness up, depression up, friendship down, social life down. Decades of technology in which generations have been progressively less social.
Facebook is not the answer. Or video games.
Facebook is not the answer. Or video games.
5Crypto-Willobie
I think Harvey Weinstein had him whacked and it was made to look like suicide...
6lriley
A few thoughts:
FWIW people sometimes run out of meaning and purpose. Sometimes I think I'm on the verge. Accomplishing something you've wanted to do doesn't mean that it will or can be replaced by some other thing to be accomplished. Things don't always fall that neatly into place. The fact of the matter is he was 61.....and there's a few thing that runs through my head as a 60 year old. The idea that there might not be much left that you want to do--that there are more health issues for those who grow older and it's kind of sinister in a sense how doctors and hospitals can string people along into total infirmity keeping them going and going while at the same their quality of life completely tanks to the point they're just breathing and defacating. So Bourdain at 61 and probably a bit more intelligent than me--if not certainly more worldly wise might have been looking at 'do I want to be a 70 or 80 year old battling through knee replacements and Parkinson's'? It's a question and who knows he might have been diagnosed for things we have no idea of or that there might be some family history of this or that that he doesn't want to deal with. Arthur Koestler didn't want to deal with a cancer battle he wasn't going to win and Ernest Hemingway after surviving a plane crash was losing his marbles--they hurried things up. I'm not a big fan of Hemingway by the way but I can hardly blame him. Losing your marbles is not good.
To me suicide should be a personal choice and anyone who thinks it's a coward's choice is a fucking idiot. There are a lot of fucking idiots. The wringing of hands over this is another thing that's not always necessary. We really don't have to know why. And it's not that suicide prevention programs aren't a good thing but at the end of the day people who want to be saved I would guess that mostly they will be saved. The life you have though should be celebrated as much as possible and if Bourdain can go out in a somewhat peaceful frame of mind (and there's no way of knowing one way or the other) it's not that bad of a deal. 61 years old again and I think he can make his own decisions for himself.
FWIW people sometimes run out of meaning and purpose. Sometimes I think I'm on the verge. Accomplishing something you've wanted to do doesn't mean that it will or can be replaced by some other thing to be accomplished. Things don't always fall that neatly into place. The fact of the matter is he was 61.....and there's a few thing that runs through my head as a 60 year old. The idea that there might not be much left that you want to do--that there are more health issues for those who grow older and it's kind of sinister in a sense how doctors and hospitals can string people along into total infirmity keeping them going and going while at the same their quality of life completely tanks to the point they're just breathing and defacating. So Bourdain at 61 and probably a bit more intelligent than me--if not certainly more worldly wise might have been looking at 'do I want to be a 70 or 80 year old battling through knee replacements and Parkinson's'? It's a question and who knows he might have been diagnosed for things we have no idea of or that there might be some family history of this or that that he doesn't want to deal with. Arthur Koestler didn't want to deal with a cancer battle he wasn't going to win and Ernest Hemingway after surviving a plane crash was losing his marbles--they hurried things up. I'm not a big fan of Hemingway by the way but I can hardly blame him. Losing your marbles is not good.
To me suicide should be a personal choice and anyone who thinks it's a coward's choice is a fucking idiot. There are a lot of fucking idiots. The wringing of hands over this is another thing that's not always necessary. We really don't have to know why. And it's not that suicide prevention programs aren't a good thing but at the end of the day people who want to be saved I would guess that mostly they will be saved. The life you have though should be celebrated as much as possible and if Bourdain can go out in a somewhat peaceful frame of mind (and there's no way of knowing one way or the other) it's not that bad of a deal. 61 years old again and I think he can make his own decisions for himself.
