The Emptiness of Life

It is impossible to look directly into other people's minds. It is also impossible to even guess at an animal's mind. On the chance that the reader may become involved in a battle of words, a battle 'about' words, a clash of definitions, we may think that animals really have no state that we call happiness. They have (temporary) states of gratification, of elation, of top-excitement, which they show us in wagging tails, purring or otherwise, yet, it all seems not what we call happiness. We must have a separate word for the typical human state, the timeless enjoyment of happiness. Look at the dog's behaviour when his master enters the house. He is delighted and wags the tail frantically. The next moment he is kicked about, because he has wrecked the best cushions and the couch, feathers all over the place. While we see the momentary delight, we would not say that the dog leads a happy life. The dog's mental state is thus, first very temporary, and second absolutely dependable on outside circumstances. The dog, or darg (from 'The Invisible Man') has no foresight (longer than a few seconds), no freedom to use its ideas in its mind. Man has such freedom, and, this adds to his possibilities to be miserable as well as to be happy. Man can be unhappy, simply because he knows that to-morrow ..., or because his friend, wife, or son, is ..., because the radio has told him that ... It is clear that when we preserve the term 'happiness' for the typically human mental state of lasting contentness, a state of well-being distinct from terms like enjoy, elate, gratificate, etc. it means first of all something more permanent than a full belly or a pat on the back, a stroke along one's whiskers. Specifically, it must have its roots in typical human ideation, i.e. this particular freedom over ideation, to be called 'happy' (Unhappy is he who thinks himself so (Seneca) ). Thereby, it must be solely of his own doing, not by outside influences (that may change any moment without foreknowledge). All the rest is simply animal-type gratification, fickle, one might say. On the other hand, what is known to all wise men, but apparently never realized by so-called therapeutists (78), outside circumstances can not make one happy or unhappy, since the two are SOLELY caused by internal ideation (Unhappy is he who ...). Only, then, this (own) ideation should be under one's own control. This is the crux of the matter. Happiness cannot simply be translated in being content with everything, no, it also means that there is control AND some content too. The empty mind might be content or not, yet, lacking content, it is meaningless to speak of contentedness. As is evident, an empty mind is precisely what is contrary to human dignity. As Wells said in 1918:

Everyone who seems worth anything seems regretting his education wasn't better. Joan and Peter.

Then, there is the possibility of being unhappy or happy without knowing it consciously (3 rd degree). There is Forester's: 'The Daughter of the Hawk', were it says:

She was very, very, lonely and unhappy - although at ten one hardly knows when one is unhappy if the unhappiness is not so great as to bring tears.

Exactly as there is a distinction between human life and animal life, making the two incomparable, there is also a distinction between animal and vegetative life (79). While the cellular life remains more or less the same, clearly the individuals, the plants and the animals differ in that the former have little or no inquisitiveness, interestedness in their environment, while the latter are always interested, nay, survive by it. We need no biologists or even pseudologists to tell us, we can observe it in every bee or grouse, beetle or mouse. We always see their little lives being ruled by investigation. On a still higher level of ideation, in mankind that is, this has developed into science and technology. But ... this inquisitiveness has retarded into a professional (i.e. absent when at home) task, burden, the 'real' interestedness dwindled to a few persons. Most academicians are irritated when in their leisure time, they have to be bothered with their scientific subject. It is a phenomenon more pronounced in the so called social sciences. There, it is normal that a psychologist cannot cope with, and think not about, a psychological problem in himself or his family (sleep-troubles, concentration difficulties, problems at school, etc. (80) ). While it seems 'normal' that all parents could cope with these things (all should be influence experts, hypnodynamici) ( 'Thou shalt not come near to a child when thou hast not knowledge of the lores of Minde'. The kiddies are entitled to the best we have, no bunglers!), psychologists are only psychologists (pseudologists) when at work, in their special building, the laboratory. Especially now, when Earth is at the verge of resterilisation, its overcrowded population suffers from a severe disinterestedness in the environment, a mental sterility, an emptiness in life. A life, more comparable to beast-life than even in the days of the Stoics who already signalled this sorry state of affairs. It is why, to the extreme profit of prophets, priests, home-made gods etc., people keep searching for the values of life, for the purpose, for a handhold, the deeper (!!!) meaning. They ask non-existent questions, to fill their emptiness of mind. Had people been 'normally' inquisitive in Herodotus' days, lenses and printing had become possible at least in the days of Jezus of Nazareth. Caesar could have had his books printed, and his world would have known microscopes and telescopes (81) (see also Wells' Outline). Because of gross stupidity, superstition, and overcrowding, this was not to be. Animal-like, man's interest goes no further than his comfort, his luxuries, and that, even with a minimum of time-span for his foresight (82). The reader can easily test this by asking a thousand persons some easy questions like: What season is it in London when the full moon describes a low arc in the sky at New Zealand? or, how come icebergs to radiate warmth?, what so-called contraceptives are really abortives?, is Morse code binary?, how to send a photograph over a mile by sound (ships-bell, drums, trumpet, cracker &c) ? When one gets one correct answer, it will be more or less learned by heart, but with no further interesse for our larger environment (83). Man's happiness is necessarily on a different scale than mere animal existence. We know for 3000 years that, in order to live happy, we must live according to our actual reality, i.e. we must come to know as much as possible about this actual reality. It has been said by Confucius, by Gautama, the Stoics, by in fact all wise men of the past. One cannot have experienced real full happiness when one never has experienced this liberation from emptiness, from mere animal existence. It is therefore too, that only those who actually have experienced it, can, and will, agree with this, they are the only ones who can judge. But this real happiness is made impossible for practically all by, mostly unnecessary, toil. From this toil, we can easily be liberated when we free ourselves from the assertion, pumped in from early childhood onwards, that we must produce, must have 'an' economy, a battle of competing consumerity. We must work, and produce in order to gain our daily bread, our luxuries, we must carry our weight, etc. This all has to end. We shall not have an economy at all, once world-government has been properly organized. We may produce what is necessary, even a few semi-necessities like implements for harvesting, but we shall not be able to afford, sheer stupid luxuries like thousand kilometer air travels, for no reason other than mere recreation. In order to live man-like, i.e. on a higher level than animals, we must fill up our emptiness, our disinterestedness in our world. When we live, when we occupy a planet, wholly as animals, but coupled to an intelligent-like technical skill, we destroy all life on the planet. It is so deep-founded in nature, 'that the inconsistent shall be destroyed' that we have little chance going on as we do now. These things are known to experts, to those selected people that have still some fundamental intelligent interestedness left. Is it not inconsistent that, as the reader can test out, not one mother-to-be in a thousand can be found who has made a study of what is required of her for giving the new citizen all the chances for a happy and full life? We have, as Spencer (Sociology and Essays) demonstrated, for almost everything in our lives, a range of diploma's, and expert courses, except ... for the most critical (and lethal) task, i.e. the upbringing of citizens to be. The parents to be, study everything physical during the pregnancy period, for nappies, for feeding, for afterbirth and so forth except the most crucial knowledge namely: what to develop in the new child so that it grows up, capable to:

• exist in a society,
• develop intelligently,
• being happy.

Do, ask parents and teachers alike, they do not know a thing about these three requirements, these three fundamental rights the new citizen has, hence their duties. Ergo, our children, unfortunately have to grow up and learn to be human (e) in a society, precisely as, (that is: not different from) the customs in general use long before Homer. Parents do as their parents used to do (and the neighbours, uncles, etc.), pupils will do the same when their time comes. Brought up as empty vessel, feeling best only in an empty life, is well-nigh impossible for a living being, a child. The void must be filled. It is therefore that slum-yokels got their chance in filling it up with ... sexuality, prostitution, voyeurism, sexuality for pay. This made it possible for the people to fully indulge in frenzied trance states (84), to misform their whole ideational apparatus, into a mono-mania, a mono-ideism of the pop-syndicate, a world of voyeurism, a medicine-man frenzy. There is the lingering trace of inquisitiveness, with regard to sexuality, which is made 'profitable' by selling voyeurism from running-belt producers. Sexuality, the orgasm from it for sale is inhumane enough, watching it in others for pay, voyeurism, is even lower than any animal we can think of. It is a monstrous exploitation of the 'lower' instincts of man, Nobody who contrives to understand the texts in the public moanings of French prize-breeder stallions, to overhear the orgastic roars of the plebs, observe the movements in the frenzy states, the invariable crying for a mate, a 'you' or a 'baybee', can doubt that, like the cultural state in America, all life seems centered around the copulative function (85). A romantic concept of 'love' has evolved from the very old, superstition loaded times, as an excuse for all sorts of irrational behaviour (see also Hoyle's science fiction 'The Black Cloud'). While mating and family formation cannot but be based upon 'I, to have', it is turned into the false idea of 'I, to give'. It cannot stand the most obvious test from our reality (86). Alexander says that:

no drunken man in our civilization (!) ever reaches the state of anaesthesia and complete loss of self control attained by the savage under the influence of these two stimuli dance and (so-called music).

This we are fed upon daily by our television sets and radio's although it was writ far before the pop-syndicate era. Nowadays, with Sukharno, we call it mental illness, sheer insanity, animals do far better. We, not only have to restore man's dignity, his fundamental rights and duties, but also fill his emptiness with valuables, fill up this horrible void with life-typical, mankind-typical inquisitiveness in nature, environment, society. Knowledge; it is said, is power. It is true, it gives us the power to be happy, to secure our future. It too, is a necessity for rationality, for sheer sanity and survival.

We have tamed and bred the beasts, but we have still to tame and breed ourselves. Wells, Outline.