I was in college in the sixties before The Sixties really set in. We talked a lot about existentialism in those innocent days, especially in my theater classes. Those were the days when the theater of the absurd was the big thing. We theater majors walked around asking each other, “How do I be in the world? What is the meaning of my existence?”
When I’m in One Of Those Moods, I have fun telling people I was in college while Shakespeare was still writing his plays. Then I watch their lips move as they try to figure out if I’m really 400 years old, and if I’m not that old, then what am I on?
I was in college in the sixties before The Sixties really set in. We talked a lot about existentialism in those innocent days before the Vietnam War, especially in my theater classes. Those were the days when the theater of the absurd was a big thing. We theater majors walked around asking each other, “How do I be in the world? What is the meaning of my existence?” Those were important questions to the post-World War II philosophers, authors, and playwrights. I can imagine Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, Beckett, Anouilh, Ionesco, and all those other guys (plus, no doubt, the shades of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kafka) sitting around in some Paris café, smoking their lungs out and trying to figure out why we’re here on the planet and if anything we experience makes sense. (Think of it as a Woody Allen movie.) These authors had survived World War II, the Holocaust, and the Blitz, the Dresden bombings, the endless Battle of the Bulge. They didn’t see much reason for optimism, and while the absurdist plays can be funny, they’re not cheery. Take Waiting for Godot, which is popular to this day. (I saw it at the Long Beach Playhouse about six months ago.) It’s a vaudeville, these two guys killing time until Godot decides to show up. As you know, Godot never arrives
Now flash forward half a century. Watch TV this week. What is real about so-called reality shows? I’ve seen Jersey Shore. Twice. I wanted to find out who Snooki is. Read the newspapers. Articles about kids with guns killing other kids with guns. This morning, I read an article about two eleven-year-old girls who had a fight after school. One of them died. More articles about debt and foreclosure and cutting funds for public schools until we wind up with a whole generation that never learns anything. Pay attention to politics, especially the absurd Republican candidates. Let’s all quote Macbeth: “Full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.” Go to the movies. For every Artist or Hugo, there must be a hundred movies about self-absorbed forty-year-old adolescent men or other men with knives and chainsaws killing teenage girls.
How are we being in the world? What is the essence of the human condition in 2012?
I’m not a real philosopher (though I was once married to a philosophy major), and I can’t even begin to solve the big problems of the world. But I can make a fairly simple suggestion that might solve some of our smaller problems. As former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill (a Democrat who worked successfully with Republicans) famously said, all politics is local. So let’s make existentialism local. How do we be in the world? Let’s be kind, courteous, friendly. I like the word “benevolent,” which means “kindly.” I like all those words that come from the Latin bene, “good” when used as an adjective, “well” when used as an adverb. Benign. Benison. Beneficial. Benefit. Benefactor. Benediction. Let’s bring goodness into our essence.
Let’s walk around in the world being benevolent. One way to do this is just to look pleasant and talk to people. Not big important conversations on big important topics. Just little unimportant encounters. When I went to the grocery store earlier this afternoon, for example, I noticed a young man with glorious ink covering his arms, hands, and neck…well, most of the visible parts of his body. Really cool, colorful art. So when he turned up behind me in the checkout line, I turned to him and said, “Excuse me…does it hurt when they tattoo your throat?” “Yes,” he said, “it does.” “I have only three very small tattoos,” I said. “I’m not brave enough to do as much as you’ve done.” The man behind Mr. Ink asked to see my tattoos, but I shook my head, and then someone else said something about the pain of being tattooed. “I took Tylenol with codeine when I got my tattoos,” I said. “You don’t want to be twitching when someone’s got a needle in your skin.” As everybody laughed, I nodded, picked up my canvas bag, and walked out of the store. This was just chatting, being pleasant in line. We’d had a tiny, cordial conversation. It was only a tiny bubble of benevolence in the consciousness of the world.
If we are all benevolent, if we are kind to other people, all those bubbles of benevolence and kindness will collect in the noosphere. In our planet’s atmosphere. I’m not sure kindness will clean up the polluted air—from factories and cars, cigarette smoke, and the stupid things people keep saying—but here’s what I have in mind: if enough people walk through the world being benevolent, if we make kindness and courtesy the essence of our existence, then maybe we’ll all add up to a critical mass of kindness and make a significant change in the world. It can’t hurt to try.
Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. (www.barbaraardinger.com), is a published author and freelance editor. Her newest book is Secret Lives, a novel about grandmothers who do magic. Her earlier nonfiction books include the daybook Pagan Every Day, Finding New Goddesses (a pun-filled parody of goddess encyclopedias), and Goddess Meditations. When she can get away from the computer, she goes to the theater as often as possible—she loves musical theater and movies in which people sing and dance. She is also an active CERT (Community Emergency Rescue Team) volunteer and a member (and occasional secretary pro-tem) of a neighborhood organization that focuses on code enforcement and safety for citizens. She has been an AIDS emotional support volunteer and a literacy volunteer. She is an active member of the neopagan community and is well known for the rituals she creates and leads.
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I am interested in your idea of acting kind making us essentially kind. I do have a couple questions about its implications, though. If all we have to do is act kind in order to become kind, then how do we as human beings start acting kind, but then occasionally go back to not being kind? In other words, if acting benevolent makes us benevolent in essence, why can’t we stay that way forever after that decision to act benevolently? I know in my life that even after making a choice to be kind to my family that I have still gone back to being rude or crabby or critical at times. If I have decided to be kind and that should become my essence, then why do I still do the unkind things that I no longer want to do?
I hope this makes sense! Thank you for your ideas; they made me think this morning! :)
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Many thanks for reading and replying. As far as I can tell–and I’m not New Age, I’m a very grounded witch–people are kind and crabby and polite and rude. All at the same time. There’s no magic benevolence pill. I lucky to be self-employed so I work at home, which means I don’t have to put up with idiots at offices, but people who do have to spend their days with other people just have to do the best they can. That’s no help at all, is it. Sigh…… Our human essence seems to be contradictory.
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I’ve been thinking some more about this, and I think that our essence precedes our actions. For example, if we ask the question “What makes us human?” I don’t think we could answer it by reciting different things people do because we could always come up with people that don’t (or can’t) do those things. I think this means that our essence is there before we are born, at the time of conception (or just when we are born, if you do not believe that unborn babies are yet human. THAT is a whole different discussion altogether!), not based upon our actions or anything that we specifically do. Does that make sense?
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Reblogged this on Adventures and Musings of a Hedgewitch and commented:
Kindness is a cardinal virtue
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thanks, Kat. I wasn’t even thinking of cardinal virtues, but you’re right.
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Very nice post. Many of the spiritual readings I’ve done lately have talked about reclaiming or using anger or rage to one’s advantage, and I just don’t identify or relate to that kind of thinking. I am a very kind person, so it’s nice to see someone else advocating for others to be so as well.
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Sometimes of course we do need to be angry, and we need to use that anger constructively. Think of all the strong women in the second half of the 20th century who used their anger to move the second wave of the women’s movement forward. Think of our foremothers earlier who got us the vote. Think of angry women who have helped advance numerous causes. Life and being in the world are both very complex.
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I love this. Really the essence of change. Change ourselves and our attitudes to one of gratitude and love for our fellow beings, human and otherwise. Thanks Barbara! Actions beget thoughts and feelings. When we smile, we almost cant’ help but be in a good mood. Sometimes, acting a certain way, becomes feeling a certain way. For me, anyway.
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When I took acting class in college–I was such a lousy actress that the teacher said I had personally “set the art of Shakespearean acting back a hundred years”–one thing we learned was that acting was doing. Maybe acting is being, too. What you say makes sense.
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I really enjoyed this. Are you aware of Karen Armstrong’s project The Charter for CompassionThe link is http://charterforcompassion.org/.
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Thanks for the link. I just looked briefly at the site. I think I’d heard of it before. It’s good to know that they’re singing a song by Pete Seeger. He’s one of the few men on the planet that I think should be elected emperor. He’d turn it down, of course, but think of the good his example has done and could continue to do.
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It is definitely easier said that done. Some people, it’s just hard to be nice to them, much less benevolent. So we just keep working on those tiny bubbles of kindness. Ya think??
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I loved reading your article. It actually reset the tone for my day. I really appreciated your focus on our own personal, or “local” ways of being in the world, and our seemingly “unimportant” encounters with others that actually can act as a means of expressing kindness that we might not ordinarily choose to express. I was in a Tibetan bead store in Long Beach just the other day, and the woman who worked there was just quietly cleaning. I don’t like to strike up conversations with strangers, usually because I am too self absorbed with my own nonsense to even make the effort. But for whatever reason, I decided to start talking with this woman. i asked her questions about HER, about her work, where she lived, if she liked it. I thought about HER. And it changed the course of my day. I was thinking about someone else, just because, and whether it meant anything to her, it certainly meant something to me. The seemingly “unimportant” encounter changed my perspective about kindness as an action and as a way of being. I am very grateful you wrote this article.
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Many thanks for your kind words. I’m one of those people who can easily talk to strangers sitting next to me at the theater or in line at the grocery store. Just chatting is another way to be kind in the world, of course. It’s lovely that you held a friendly conversation. Way to go!
ba
Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. http://www.barbaraardinger.com. Do you want to write a book but not embarrass yourself in print? Let me be your editor! Nifty quotation: “A poem [or literary work] is never finished, only abandoned.” –Paul Valery Facebook page for my new novel, Secret Lives: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Secret-Lives/140993335978461
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I really enjoyed your post and the whole thread about kindness. I’ve always loved the bumper sticker “practice random acts of kindness” or is it “compassion”. It’s really a great zen-like daily practice. People can be so irritating at times and shifting my focus to finding their beauty and acting with kindness really helps to shift my own feelings about the day.
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I really like your post. I especially like when you said, “Let’s bring goodness into our essence.” You are very right from your example can really change the dynamic of people.
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Many thanks! I think it’s also more fun to walk around being benevolent. I was talking about this with a friend the other night at the theater. I had just been talking to a mother and her daughter sitting in front of us, and my friend exchanged a few words with the couple sitting next to him. My friend and I agreed that we like to be friendly with strangers.
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