November 23: Progress

A portion of the proceeds of this movie went to Cheech Marin's formidable art collection.

Of course there's been some progress over the centuries. Why, in the 1800s, it used to take forever to get anywhere in Manhattan! And as for the ruthless exploitation of prison labor -- well, now that takes place a whole ocean away from where we can see it. As a comedy writer my temperament makes me root against progress, at least as it pertains to the human soul. Because that would be bad for business.

However, I do wonder sometimes, and reading Pascal today is one of those times. Because Pascal was one of the smartest men in Europe at the time, the 1660s, yet here in the Pensees he sounds like a bright, but stoned, freshman:

The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things...

Let a mite be given him, with its minute body and parts incomparably more minute, limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops. Dividing these last things again, let him exhaust his powers of conception, and let the last object at which he can arrive be now that of our discourse. Perhaps he will think that here is the smallest point in nature. I will let him see therein a new abyss...

For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which a little ago was imperceptible, in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, in respect of the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who regards himself in this light will will tremble at the sight of these marvels....

Or at least get very very hungry. And have you ever really noticed those crescent moons on the bottom of your fingernails? How come they're there?

As further proof of my brillant-genius-of-the-past-seems-like-stoner thesis, Thought 76 (I don't feel like re-figuring out how to do the accents) also seems like the kind of fragmentary note one puzzles over upon seeing it the next morning:

76

To write against those who made too profound a study of science. Descartes.

For some reason it reminds me of a fake classified ad from Monty Python: "FOUND. Small green and brown thing. Could be a Vermeer."

My other complaint about this passage, in addition to high-ness, which isn't so bad really, is this quietist part right here:

If this be well understood, I think that we shall remain at rest, each in the state wherein nature has placed him. As this sphere which has fallen to us as our lot is always distant from either extreme, what matters it that man should have a little more knowledge of the universe?

To this I have two replies: 1. Easy for Pascal to say that there's nothing worth discovering -- after he'd already invented the syringe, and 2. With this advice to spend our lives doing nothing, Pascal proves his point that we can't really understand human nature. Too much can be made of our Eternally Questing spirit, god knows, and I have a bias in favor of the lazy, but the fact is that we are bound to get into mischief, as the sparks fly upward. If people were inclined to stay where nature had placed them, no one would ever work off the books. And yet it happens all the time. To say nothing of philosophy students dealing pot out of their dorm rooms -- that would be Pascal's Double, in my opinion.

September 27: Jesus (the bad news and the worse news)

The bad news: According the Pascal's Fundamentals of the Christian Religion: Christianity only works if you feel like shit:

We can then have an excellent knowledge of God without that of our own wretchedness, and of our own wretchedness without that of God. But we cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing at the same time both God and our own wretchedness.

There's a lot more of this wretchedness stuff, and also this:

Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it should needs be either that it would be destroyed or be a hell.

But isn't it already a hell, because we're so wretched? It seems like a terrible argument. I mean, under these circumstances, having everything be meaningless would be a tremendous comfort; better than concluding that it all adds up to a hellish wretchedness.

There's also the bad news that Pascal's God prefers riddles -- that the very fact that he's hidden proves his existence -- that only a real God would occasionally decide, not only not to answer your prayers, but not even bother to listen to them. "Recognise, then, the truth of religion in the very obscurity of religion, in the little light we have of it, and in the indifference which we have to knowing it."

I don't even get this, really, but it's sort of surprising at a method of apologetics to claim that God shines intermittently like a cheap neon sign. (Although I've always been fond of the saw that the universe is run by a god who's 90% malevolent but only 10% competent.)

But that's not the worse news. The worse news is that Pascal proves the truth of Christianity from the evidence of how hateful the Jews are:

To give faith to the Messiah, it was necessary there should have been precedent prophecies, and that these should be conveyed by persons above suspicion, diligent, faithful, unusually zealous, and known to all the world.To accomplish all this, God chose this carnal people, to whom He entrusted the prophecies which foretell the Messiah as a deliverer, and as a dispenser of those carnal goods which this people loved.

... For when blessings are promised in abundance, what was to prevent them from understanding the true blessings, but their covetousness, which limited the meaning to worldly goods?

Wow. It's bad enough that Pascal wrote this in 1660; but it's worse that the Harvard people decided to point us to it in 1930. Maybe the world is wretched and a hell after all.

Feb 14: Je voudrais parler la langue of d'amour

The DRG has assigned me Pascal's "Discourse on the Passion of Love" -- because, really, what are Shakespeare sonnets next to the disquisition of French philosophers? It is an extremely disjointed work, random notes really. You keep waiting for the Woody Allen punchlines, like in those fake-deep pieces where he'd write, "Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on weekends." (Or, my favorite, "Should I marry W.? Not if she won't tell me the other letters in her name.") Look, here's an example right at the open:

MAN is born for thought; therefore he is not a moment without it; but the pure thoughts that would render him happy, if he could always maintain them, weary and oppress him.

My punch line is, "Also, he is frequently hungry." Readers are invited to submit their own in comments.

Anyway, since there's no argument to engage with, I thought I would just pull out a few random pieces of advice for the lovers among you, with snarky comments added, so that you may improve your game, French-philosophical-robot style:

How happy is a life that begins with love and ends with ambition! If I had to choose, this is the one I should take. So long as we have ardor we are amiable; but this ardor dies out, is lost; then what a fine and noble place is left for ambition!

Sadly, Pascal leaves undeveloped here the concept of the "trophy wife" which comes after ambition.

For we do not wish for beauty alone, but desire in connection with it a thousand circumstances that depend on the disposition in which it is found, and it is in this sense that it may be said that each one possesses the original of his beauty. [W]omen often determine this original. As they have an absolute empire over the minds of men, they paint on them either the qualities of the beauties which they possess or those which they esteem, and by this means add what pleases them to this radical beauty. Hence there is one epoch for blondes, another for brunettes.

I think there was a Dean Martin movie about that.

Beauty is divided in a thousand different ways. The most proper object to sustain it is a woman. When she has intellect, she enlivens it and sets it off marvellously. If a woman wishes to please, and possesses the advantages of beauty or a portion of them at least, she will succeed.

Pascal, always with boosting the self-esteem. You only need a portion -- the left half of your face, for example. And for you gents:

Yet between being fastidious and not being so at all, it must be granted that when one desires to be fastidious he is not far from actually being so. Women like to perceive fastidiousness in men, and this is, it seems to me, the most vulnerable point whereby to gain them.

Shorter Pascal: Would it hurt to comb your hair once in awhile?

Attachment to the same thought wearies and destroys the mind of man. Hence for the solidity and permanence of the pleasure of love, it is sometimes necessary not to know that we love; and this is not to be guilty of an infidelity, for we do not therefore love another; it is to regain strength in order to love the better.

That's what they all say when they're caught cheating. Is it me or does that seem super-duper stereotypically French?

That's probably enough. The next essay in the book is "Of The Geometrical Spirit." But I'll save that one for my anniversary.

Jan 23: The Pascalian triangle

Can you ever really know a triangle? Apparently so! For today’s reading promises, “Pascal Knew Men and Triangles.” I would kill for this knowledge of triangles, which is apparently available without getting high, but I have a feeling we’re going to learn about Men, or, as we call them today, people.

I believe in fact we’re to read his “searching analysis of man’s conceit” from Volume 48 (“Thoughts and Minor Works,” this being one of the latter. You’re not ready for major works when you’re on the Daily Reading Guide.)

First paragraph hits you right between the eyes: “THE ART of persuasion has a necessary relation to the manner in which men are led to consent to that which is proposed to them, and to the conditions of things which it is sought to make them believe.”

It’s going to be a tough eleven pages. I can only hope that this is more persuasive in French.

“Then it is that a doubtful balance is made between truth and pleasure, and that the knowledge of the one and the feeling of the other stir up a combat the success of which is very uncertain, since, in order to judge of it, it would be necessary to know all that passes in the innermost spirit of the man, of which the man himself is scarcely ever conscious.”

I think we know who wins that one these days, assuming they’re still fighting, that is.

I like this: “… So that the art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!”

I like the exclamation point particularly. I’m surprised that you’re surprised, Pascal. Having realized that pleasing is more important than convincing, Pascal moves on to talk only about convincing, because it might please us too much if he’s actually helpful.

There now come some rules, and since Pascal has me pegged, I’m pleasure-loving, I confess that I will skip them. This is why I would have been a terrible lawyer.

Now there’s “after having established………” What? It turns out: The rest of the phrase is wanting; and all this second part of the composition, either because it was not redacted by Pascal, or because it has been lost, is found neither in our MS. nor in Father Desmolets

Later in the piece we get this: “The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide to it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from their science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.” It’s nice that Pascal has some school spirit.

And then, just as my boredom is almost complete, there is a turn at the end:

The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment. And one of the principal reasons that diverts those who are entering upon this knowledge so much from the true path which they should follow, is the fancy that they take at the outset that good things are inaccessible, giving them the name of great, lofty, elevated, sublime. This destroys every thing. I would call them low, common, familiar: these names suit them better; I hate such inflated expressions.

Why, he almost sounds American! Or does he sound like we think Americans ought to sound – perhaps Americans are more likely to use the “resplendent kings they were written to please” mode. Or is it both – do the Harvard Classics exist so people can put on airs, or do they exist to take the knowledge away from the people who might put on airs?

Three sides to this story – like a triangle!