I walk with pursed lips through the sea of orange. The Rangers lost and now I’m Bikini Atoll surrounded by radioactive fallout (Astros fans). I find myself all absorbed by my favorite baseball team’s loss. There are 162 games in the MLB regular season; we lost one, and I cannot open my mouth to speak. My face remains balled up as if hiding great pain as I descend the stairs and fall out into the humidity of the fiery Houston sun. How can one be so consumed with
THE MENIAL
An unexamined life is unbearable. In Socrates’ famous quote, “An unexamined life is not worth living,” he is dismissive of the Beauvourian Sub-Man. There is no sympathy in that statement for those who are burdened with nothing beyond the menial tasks and events of life. Small things are nothing beyond small to this thinker. One must pity a fish caught in a fishing net that cannot see the ocean.
In my observations and experiences, a main cause of human suffering is an attachment to the Menial, yet the simplicities of life are also extremely important to appreciate, so where is the line between the Menial and the Simple drawn? To explain this, I have a story of two farmers.
Farmer A wakes up every day, says his prayers to a God he doesn’t know, eats a slice of toast, and gets to work. He checks off task after task. He milks the cows, feeds the chickens, and fertilizes the corn. Suddenly the sun has set and he kisses the wife and heads to his stiff bed in the center of his room. There is nothing to his life, there is nothing more than tasks. His work does nothing, goes nowhere, and never will. He is already dead.
Farmer B wakes up and sees the sun. He kneels before his bed and prays to his God. He sits opposite his wife and sips his coffee. His day starts in the fields, fertilizing the corn that he uses to feed his cows, which he milks for his children’s cereal. His children feed the chickens leftover corn and selling the chickens pays the bills. When work is over, the sun is enlarged and engulfed in red fire. He sits and thinks for just a moment before heading inside, kissing the wife, and heading to his stiff bed in the center of his room. His life is more than just his life; his life is everything. His work does something, goes somewhere, and always will. He is alive.
The differences between Farmer A’s and Farmer B’s lives are not in their attitude or tasks but in one moment in the day: the one moment of thought at sunset. The passages are written differently to stress this, but what makes the farmers lead different lives is thought. The Menial has no thought to it. The Menial is nothing but right there. Therefore, the Sub-Man is inherently consumed by the menial.
Appreciation of simplicities only comes through acknowledgment and thought of the action. The Sub-Man is unable to acknowledge and look beyond what is there, placing them in the cage of the menial.
In the plunderings of my mind to find the words for these thoughts, my mother stepped in with an intriguing idea. The idea of the Menial is identical to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. This was a shocking thought to me because I am not a subscriber to Plato’s ideas of an objective reality. In the case of the Menial, Plato’s ideas can be interpreted in an entirely different way. Those viewing the shadows on the wall are the aforementioned Sub-Men consumed with the Menial. Those who have escaped the cave are the ones appreciating the Simple. A good life comes from seeing both the outside reality and the shadows on the wall The appreciation of the Simple comes from seeing and acknowledging the puppeteers projecting the shadows. One can still watch the shadows eagerly, as long as one also sees where the shadows are coming from. This is the border between the Simple and Menial.
I do not believe anyone is truly a Sub-Man, though I walk through the halls and wonder if any of the people I pass are Sub-Men, consumed by the Menial, living without thought. In my wonderings, I am brought to
SOLIPSISM
Solipsism is an inherently flawed philosophy. If no one else was conscious, the concept of philosophy simply wouldn’t exist. No matter how flawed, the ideas still float in my mind.
I tell my mother nearly all of my philosophical thoughts, and to almost all of them, she responds by reminding me of my age and that these are normal thoughts to be having at this time in my life. I am still led to think: are other people really having these thoughts? Are the people consumed by the Menial having the same repeating thoughts as I?
My definition of consciousness is awareness of the self: knowing the beautiful fact that one is alive. I have no proof that the people around me know this. I believe that many of them do, but I hear people consumed by the Menial and I can’t help but wonder if they are aware of themselves. Do they go through life seeing individual, menial tasks with no end? Do they know they are alive?
I am not a solipsist, nor do I believe in the Sub-Man, but these questions are important to ask. I am just as consumed with the Menial as anyone else. Goodnight.