“Ah!
how wretched are they
whom
ignorance leads astray by her crooked path!
You
seek not gold upon green trees,
nor
gather precious stones from vines,
nor
set your nets on mountain tops
to
catch the fishes for your feast,
nor
hunt the Umbrian sea in search of goats.
Man
knows the depths of the sea themselves,
hidden
though they be beneath its waves;
he
knows which water best yields him pearls,
and
which the scarlet dye.
But
in their blindness men are content,
and
know not where lies hid the good that they desire.
They
sink in earthly things, and there they seek
that
which has soared above the star-lit heavens.
What
can I call down upon them
worthy
of their stubborn folly?
They
go about in search of wealth and honors;
and
only when they have by labors vast
stored
up deception for themselves,
do
they at last know what is their true good.”
—from
Book 3, Poem 8
Though I
imagine such pranks would no longer be considered acceptable in our time of
heightened sensitivity, I do recall my family telling me all about the
legendary 1957 April Fools’ “Spaghetti Harvest” television segment by the BBC. It
showed a Swiss farming family busy gathering the bumper crop from their
spaghetti trees, so grateful for the disappearance of the terrible spaghetti
weevil. The story has it that hundreds
of viewers wrote in, asking if they too could grow the spaghetti tree in
Britain.
I might
laugh that people believed the story, but then again, I once also managed to
let my own trickster of a father convince me that whether a fire engine was red
or yellow depended on the first letter of the city or town it came from.
Yes, we
are prone to believing all sorts of ridiculous claims. And what could be more
foolish than insisting that the goal of human happiness could ever be satisfied
by acquiring and hoarding things far inferior to human nature? Instead of
looking higher, we stoop lower. We seek the perfect in what is inherently
imperfect.
No one
in his right mind thinks that gold and jewels grow on trees, or that fish are
caught on mountaintops, or that goats should be bred in the sea. We all become
quite expert at our particular businesses and trades, and we will know most
everything about how to build a widget, or sell a doohickey, or make ourselves
rich and famous by playing a certain game. We have engineering, and marketing,
and politics as the refined skills of getting all of that done.
Now what
is the skill of actually being human, simply for its own sake? Well, we call it
philosophy, but we’ve made it into a shambles. It is neutered by doubts and
excuses.
I was
often worried how people spend so much time and effort on perfecting the means,
while almost completely neglecting the end. I was quite wary of too much pride
here, because it is hardly my place to tell other people they are confused just
because we might happen to disagree.
But the
problem was far deeper than that. It wasn’t just that people might have thought
differently than me, but that they couldn’t seem to explain the reasons why they thought that way. There were
all these theories and foundations for being successful, but there didn’t seem
to be any about being good, or about actually being happy. Why, I would ask,
should I pursue this one aspect of my life, and leave the other behind? I was
usually met with a vacant stare.
“Well,
that’s just how it’s done.”
“Without
a good job, you’ll obviously be nobody!”
“What,
do you want to get old without a decent retirement plan?”
“Stop
asking stupid questions, and just do what you need to do.”
So if
it’s popular it’s good, if it makes money it’s good, if it’s convenient it’s
good, and one should act for something without understanding why one acts?
Again, we
are brilliant with the means, clueless with the ends. And only when it is
perhaps too late do we realize how we’ve been paying attention to all the wrong
things. Remember, that’s exactly where Boethius came to be as his life was soon
to end.
So I ask
myself, if I won’t believe in the spaghetti tree, why am I still tempted to believe
in the blessings of fortune and fame? When it comes down to it, the former is
far more reasonable than the latter.
Written in 9/2015
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