Summing the Year Up

My contribution to the annual, office newsletter, cross-posted from my financial/work interpretation-of-the-world blog: Ordinary Language Finance.

Even in America, the land of the second chance, and of transcendentalist redeemers, the paradox inevitably arises: you cannot change the world (for example, a state of marriage [or conversely: an economy]) until the people in it change, and the people cannot change until the world changes. - Stanley Cavell

I hadn't seen this passage since the middle-years of college (if you remember those days too, it was a different time back then--long before I personally came to an inkling's understanding of the power of tragedy, and the subsequent flow of change). During those shattering years, I questioned the purpose of many practices and sites of genius. I wondered why so many studied the tragic Greek plays, the tragic writings of Kafka, or the tragic films; I wondered why people didn't focus solely on the works of those who burned brightly with life, those artists and thinkers who reaffirmed this world (and second chances) with zeal. I never gave it much thought until recently.

But then I stumbled upon this one point that I had been missing (or most likely had been unable to internalize), which has only recently taken root in my mind:

What if philosophy is not, as many have supposed, a search for truth, but rather: the avoiding of the void (or avoiding [a] depression), the continual flight from skepticism, the acknowledgment that we are--by our very human nature--isolated: strangers to ourselves, others and the world all at once?

I take this question to mean simply this: philosophy (and education in general) was never about finding a truth, or the Truth (truth can be a wonderful object, but it fails to make us better than we are); rather, it is about recognizing the limits of our humanity (which can be thoroughly depressing for many reasons, not least of which is that these limits correspond to every facet of our economy--a financial extension of our humanity). If this is the case (that philosophy is about avoiding voids), then there has certainly been a lot of philosophizing going on in the last fifteen months. And this, I contend, is a good thing.

But then what does the last fifteen months, and philosophizing, and second chances have to do with anything? I would say that if philosophy is a practice to aid us in recognizing the limits of our humanity, then tragedy is an event that allows us to come close to the void, to reflect on our experience, to begin a practice of philosophy; that tragedy makes us better than we are. Tragedy has the potential to remind us of the extra-ordinariness of our ordinary lives (what some would call the point of philosophy); tragedies arm us to withstand or to appreciate better, the tragic dimensions of a world that those not similarly educated misunderstand (this is why everyone, at some point in life, will be told: "you kids just don't understand," and hopefully the speaker will have had the patience to help us understand). I emphasize potential because there are those who view the tragic as a tragic vision (that this time it's different; that it's all over; I might as well give up). However, tragedy need not be associated with only that unwavering, tragic vision; our desire for an end, a passivity, a will-to-nothingness is a denial of tragic wisdom, a denial of the temporality of tragedy.

This year, in 2009, the markets have been an exclamatory example of both tragedy and its necessary temporality (admittedly, this story is not yet complete, it never can be, but I argue that there is plenty of tragic wisdom to be gleaned from this experience).

Had our story (if I may speak collectively) stopped being written in 2008, it may have read very much like a Greek tragedy (and I most likely would have had no interest in it). Thankfully, our story is a living one, and may never truly stop long enough to occupy only one genre. But I see now that tragedy (and the accompanying politics) can lose its life when consigned to academic disciplines that treat it with such reverence that all profanity and darkness are banished (which is why the stories of war will never recreate fully the experience of it). Without an earthly, painful, lived-through-this-world example of tragedy, the flow of tears stops, and the world flattens.

I feel comfortable saying that the last fifteen months has changed the world, and we too--as individuals--have changed.

I know I've changed. I spent countless hours after work in a cafe with my text books (often with Farren in tow). I completed my CFP studies in May and learned that I passed the CFP exam in September. I took up piano once more after a very long hiatus and even purchased a ukulele (for such a tiny instrument it has a beautiful sound). I started dancing again (and the fox trot is still as difficult as ever). I also lost an important relationship earlier this year (my own, admitting triteness, personal tragedy); I know that many of you have had your own. For 2010 I want to backpack more, and spend a week in Colorado skiing and hiking, and write more.

But let me come back to my original quandary: Why study tragedy?

Tragedy reminds us of the inherent limits--or difficulties--of our humanity (an inability to communicate, to say what we mean, to mean what we say; a lack of patience; a lack of trust--all these are the ingredients of classic tragedy, our current political and economic climate being no exception). It is my hope, that having fulfilled these paradoxical requirements set forth at the beginning of this piece (a seemingly impossible, simultaneous change), that we can take from our experiences, our tragic wisdom, and use that knowledge to change the world and ourselves for the better.

And this year I leave you with one final thought:

The road we have taken is not the only one, but that, for better or worse, it is the one we are on.

Warmest wishes to you and your family during the holidays; and as always, thank you for being a part of my world.