The Blackberry Walk

Back in the sixties, back when scientists had greater freedom, one such scientist conducted the famous rat utopia experiments. Rats were given a kind of city furnished with all the food and other things a rat could want, in order to see what would happen. Would the rats live peaceably as sated grazers, or would they begin wars? The answer is both. Some rats became violent, and others were so vacant they left their young to die. One particular set have captured the imagination of many, however, and these the scientist named 'The Beautiful Ones'. These rats, given all they could ever want, groomed and groomed, until they could groom no more. The comparison between autistic hobbies and The Beautiful Ones is hardly a novel connection, but it is nonetheless a connection bearing a lot of truth. Once the need to survive leaves us, and we are sated for all the simple pleasures, in which direction do our impulses and instincts point? Just like those rats, we groom ourselves. Not by slicking our hair, and perfecting our features, but by cramming our minds with opinions, facts, and ideas. I know first hand, because I've spent my life cramming my mind with opinions, facts, and ideas. It's an easy habit to get into. Within the culture, some new work of fiction comes out, and everyone wants to know your opinion on it. Someone mentions a meme, and they want you to get the reference, understand the in-joke. We're preening ourselves. But with these media opinions and references there's a social element, an in-group out-group mechanism, so it can be argued these behaviours are somewhat normal, even if it's angled at niche autistic hobbies which won't help you find a mate. But there's a deeper autism, an invisible hand pulling you to a deeper depth, which wants you to explore a topic in detail which no one else will care about, or at most will make you a pariah if you speak of it. There is this pull in many a man. A pull towards preening not for a mate, nor for social prestige, but simply by the will of some chthonic force. This is the pull towards cool ideas. A little while ago, I read a book. The book was called "The Greek Buddha", by Christopher Beckwith, and the aim of the author was to find what the Buddha was really like, originally. Unlike the Bible, where all the books of the New Testament were written comfortably within a hundred years of the life of Christ, the earliest Buddhist texts were written around five-hundred years later. Granted, the scrolls are said to have descended from an oral tradition pre-dating their transcription, but oral traditions are fallible, and give ample opportunity to men of ambition to edit. Beckwith's aim, then, was to look not to primary Buddhist sources, but to Greek sources. This may sound ridiculous, but we have a wealth of Ancient Greek texts from around the time of the Buddha, whereas our collection of ancient Indian texts is impoverished, and the major works can most likely be counted on both hands. The author looked to Pyrrho who he deduced and argues in the book had learnt of Buddhism as part of Alexander the Great's party, been initiated into Buddhist practices, and brought back to Greece all he had learnt. The argument is compelling. The argument is pretty cool, too. I personally like the idea Pyrrho had learnt the way of the Buddha, bringing his teachings back to Greece, and that these are the earliest accounts, hidden in an esoteric form. Cool. The author also describes how the Buddha was also a Scythian sage, a point he doesn't expound. Perhaps he discusses the idea in another book. It's nevertheless cool, and I now believe it. Later in the book, Beckwith has an even bigger reveal. Lao Tzu, the ancient founder of Daoism, is but a tradition mis-naming the Buddha. Here his argument. The Buddha is said to have walked off East, seemingly into the sunset, in many of the earliest accounts; to Beckwith, this is the Buddha heading off to China. Then Beckwith performs linguistic alchemy. He takes the name, Lao Tzu, and takes it back to what is traditionally his full name, Lao Tan (Tzu is Chinese for teacher, Confucius is Kong Tzu, for instance). Then, wielding Kangzi changes over time, and how it's believed people of the past pronounced them, he takes Lao Tan, which would've once been Gao-Tan, and may have once been Gao-Tama, and end with Gautama, the name of the Buddha. Genius stuff. And even if Daoism doesn't align too closely to much modern Buddhism, it overlaps quite neatly with Pyrrhonism, both sharing an emphasis on balance, not taking sides, and having no opinion. Was Lao Tzu the Buddha then? Yes, I'd say so. I haven't the evidence to back it up, nor the technical knowledge of ancient Chinese to verify the linguistic shifts, but it seems pretty plausible to me. And what's more, it's a cool idea. The coolness of the idea takes precedence. There is no reason to believe Lao Tzu was the Buddha, nor to believe that Pyrrho spoke of a truer, older Buddhism, but to believe these opinions, opinions some would call conspiracies, to be true is far cooler. Holding on to these minority, out-there opinions gives a bit of a thrill, the same thrill a conspiracy theorist feels, only there's far less at stake. Because whilst Mr. Beckwith is writing a serious and cited work of history, the subject matter lends itself to a bit of fun - nay, most subject matters in academia are quite silly. Monty Python riff on this point best, ruthlessly mocking the philosophic tradition. My favourite of their sketches is the philosopher's football match between the ancient Greeks, and the 18th century Germans, where neither side thinks to kick the ball. The seriousness of these oblique conversations in philosophy and academia, with one academic dedicating his career to his cool idea, against another who thinks his cool idea is lame, can become very funny if but a drop of humour is injected. Perhaps the philosophers, those lovers of knowledge, are the Beautiful Ones of our time? Introspecting a bit, I know that I'm gravitated not to the best reasoned argument the world has ever seen, but first and foremost to cool ideas. Beauty is my guide, and whilst reason and reasoned argumentation may protect me from the siren call, it is the coolness over all other things which I care about. It may sound flippant. Is an Apollonian obsession with ideas and beliefs as an aesthetic the end stage of a Beautiful One? Perhaps. But I reckon most academics are in denial. It's easy to become obsessed crafting and curating a diamond-crystal world-view, which encompasses everything and can explain everything, but it's a project always doomed to fail. Such crystalline world-views are brittle. Again, that's from my own experience and obsessions. Holding on to these rigid opinions and metaphysics isn't a healthy way to face life. This I learnt from Pyrrho in Beckwith's book. Pyrrho achieved a state of ataraxia, of psychic unperturbed-ness, by emptying himself of opinions, beliefs and judgement, only holding on to immediate perception, and chanting mantras like the tetralemma. In the Eastern sense, he achieved Nirvana. This is not something I'd ever want to achieve, it sounds awful. A head blissfully empty would be as hollow as a rotten oak. But we can learn from Pyrrho that many of our beliefs shouldn't be taken as seriously as we do otherwise. We preen and preen, arranging our pretty ideas, but few will be impressed. Some thinkers make it big, but we all know our scribbles are for own vanity. These axioms we repeat become idols, blockages in the mind's pipe-works, rather than pumps. Understanding the world, as a human in the world, is something far deeper than enumerating a series of logical propositions. True understanding, as we'll discuss soon on this blog, is built not on propositions, but on participation.