My belief is that the world is fundamentally indifferent to any individual's presence. Our course in life is mapped, not by design or fate, but by a combination of individual resource and luck. As individuals, we should care if we're enjoying ourselves (indeed, I believe that joyfulness is an aspect of moral responsibility), but the world itself is as indifferent to our pleasures as it is to our sorrows.
Not everyone shares my perspective. If you were to have asked me why -- what accounts for differences in world view -- I would've guessed that a combination of experience and temperament accounted for the variance. Reading Ian McEwan's The Child in Time, I discovered a new explanation: world views correspond to our styles of lovemaking.
The Child in Time includes a sex scene between Stephen, the protagonist, and his wife, Julie, during which Stephen wonders:
(p. 68.) The passage brought an abrupt halt to my reading, as I mused that I'd never found sex to be "good and simple," nor did the pleasure of an orgasm suggest (to me) the fundamental benevolence of the world. On the contrary, the humiliating complexity, searing ecstasy and basic irrationality of sex has always implied a world that, if not indifferent, was sardonic. (My own preference for indifference over sardonicism relates to the my temperament: I'm not a pessimist.)
I nonetheless appreciate McEwan's insight. I recognize intuitively the correctness of his observation: what we like to do in bed, how society responds to those preferences, and how we deal with the societal response, colors our world view. Unlike Stephen, I myself have never experienced the word "home" repeating itself in my mind during intercourse. The sex Stephen and Julie share derives its joys from the habitual: "the known dip and curve [leading to] a deep, familiar place." (p. 68.) The societal approprobation that accompanies such a domestic delight in sex no doubt supports a benevolent world view.
That our behavior in our most primal moments should correpond to the fundaments of our world view is logical, but not necessary. In fact, the correspondence might -- at the opposite extreme -- be viewed as silly. Why should a personal fetish, for example, complicate one's understanding of something universal, like matter (to use McEwan's formulation)? The fact that it so clearly does, however, is yet another instance of the world's indifference to what we think.
Not everyone shares my perspective. If you were to have asked me why -- what accounts for differences in world view -- I would've guessed that a combination of experience and temperament accounted for the variance. Reading Ian McEwan's The Child in Time, I discovered a new explanation: world views correspond to our styles of lovemaking.
The Child in Time includes a sex scene between Stephen, the protagonist, and his wife, Julie, during which Stephen wonders:
how anything so good and simple could be permitted, how they were allowed to get away with it . . . . [M]atter itself had dreamed this up for its own pleasure and perpetuity, and this was exactly what you were meant to do, it wanted you to like it. . . . Surely the, he thought . . . surely at heart the place is benevolent, it likes us, it wants us to like it, it likes itself.
(p. 68.) The passage brought an abrupt halt to my reading, as I mused that I'd never found sex to be "good and simple," nor did the pleasure of an orgasm suggest (to me) the fundamental benevolence of the world. On the contrary, the humiliating complexity, searing ecstasy and basic irrationality of sex has always implied a world that, if not indifferent, was sardonic. (My own preference for indifference over sardonicism relates to the my temperament: I'm not a pessimist.)
I nonetheless appreciate McEwan's insight. I recognize intuitively the correctness of his observation: what we like to do in bed, how society responds to those preferences, and how we deal with the societal response, colors our world view. Unlike Stephen, I myself have never experienced the word "home" repeating itself in my mind during intercourse. The sex Stephen and Julie share derives its joys from the habitual: "the known dip and curve [leading to] a deep, familiar place." (p. 68.) The societal approprobation that accompanies such a domestic delight in sex no doubt supports a benevolent world view.
That our behavior in our most primal moments should correpond to the fundaments of our world view is logical, but not necessary. In fact, the correspondence might -- at the opposite extreme -- be viewed as silly. Why should a personal fetish, for example, complicate one's understanding of something universal, like matter (to use McEwan's formulation)? The fact that it so clearly does, however, is yet another instance of the world's indifference to what we think.
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