What Am I Doing Here?

on squaring the normative and aesthetic answers

Hello from way up in the sky. Traveling is a great time for reflection, especially when there is no internet connection, just like I used to experience on the Acela train I took up and down the eastern seaboard in the 2000s. Those were great times for pulling out my journal and reflecting on where I was in life. Or right now high up over western Europe where, despite Delta’s promises, I cannot seem to find any working wifi and so I wrote six pages of hand-written morning pages. It must be morning somewhere. Honestly, though, shouldn’t there be some internet here? Isn’t that what satellites for?

So, there are no distractions, and it is high time I return to my substack which I seemed to have abandoned sometime early in the fall semester. I had many reasons, like teaching; and that I had this book to finish, which I have still yet to do; and I have to pour my writing in to my communications with the Emory faculty, with whom I have the privilege of being able to do in my capacity at Emory as president of the university senate and chair of the university faculty council. I have indeed sent out some very good communication. And, oh yes, there was this intense amount of work trying to promote shared governance at Emory which the federal government and my university’s administration seem to ready to ditch at any whiff of inconvenience. Such as when some people failed to express the politically correct misgivings over the death of certain right-wing icons. I have been very busy. But now I am somewhere over Ardennes at about 35,000 feet.

I do have a plan for a future substack series tracing out the main points in the book I am working on. But that can wait.

Right now I am thinking about a question I came across recently:

What am I doing here?

At first blush, that sounds terribly negative, as if the question were a reproach, as if someone found me in their kitchen and says, “What are you doing here?” Or, more generally, but with the same vibe, here you are showing up in the world, seeming to be an utter waste of resources, so, what are you doing here?

But take the question another way. Here you are. Doing your thing. Doing all the things one is supposed to do at any given time. Sixteen? Going to high school and preferably on the honor roll. Twenty? At college, preferably on the dean’s list? Thirty? High time to be starting a family if you haven’t done so already. Forty? Killing it at work. Fifty-five, socking it away so that you can retire in due time.

That is a dreadful way to take up the question.

I have something else in mind: a sincere question I pose to myself early, sometimes early in the morning or late at night, about what exactly it is that I want to be doing here. It is a good question to mull over with that first cup of coffee in the morning, when I am writing my morning pages, whenever I am reflecting. This is best understood as a question I ask myself.

That is when this becomes a difficult question.

I find the question especially difficult because it immediately presents me with what seems to be two antithetical kinds of answers. I mean, other than the culturally normative one of what one is expected to be doing, there is (1) the philosophically normative question of what ought I be doing and then also (2) the aesthetic question of what I really just plain want and desire.

I have ready to hand an answer to (1): I am here to right wrongs, to slay dragons, to further shared governance, to make sure that people who have been harmed can live and flourish, to fight for justice…. But is that the entire truth? If I dig down, I have to admit that part of my answer to (1) is not very pretty. I want the bastards to pay. I want those who have destroyed other people to suffer some too. I am not proud of that, but there it is.

So what about (2) what is it that I want for the sake of my own desire and pleasure? The above normative answer seems to crowd out the epicurean one.

Okay maybe justice/vengeance gives me some pleasure. But I know that hardly exhausts the question,

So, I have to admit it. I like pleasurable things. Yes, great meals, travel, beautiful clothes, art, furniture, gardens, patios, seasides, music, cocktails, waves crashing on a beach, the sight of eagles soaring in the sky, rebetiko, blues, fado, shrimp saganaki, freshly baked crusty bread, the naked skin of my lover curled up asleep alongside me.

I tend to deride these as frivolous and unimportant. But what if these things are not? I am starting to think that the only reason they seem frivolous and embarrassing is because, in the western world that I mostly occupy, they are either distorted or demeaned or denied.

• Pleasure is distorted when it comes in the form of fast fashion and flashy gadgets.

• Pleasure is demeaned when it is dismissed as unimportant compared to the earnest work of social justice.

• But most worrisomely, pleasure is denied when people have to work so hard to make ends meet that they do not have the space and time to revel and dream; to make and break bread with friends; to go for a swim by the light of fireflies.

I make a decent living, certainly more than the median income such that I am well above the poverty line. I have a nice house for which I shell out some bucks for other people to clean. I fly a lot, so much that I get upgrades and am now –- I am somewhat embarrassed to say –-flying Delta One on my way back home.

I take zero of this for granted. I certainly did not grow up this way.

I have a nice closet of clothes, more than half I got from consignment shops, the rest somewhat high end. (See there how I justified my purchases.) I have a great house furnished like a shot from Dwell magazine, nearly every bit of it previously owned. (See there how I did that again.) I love listening to music and lighting candles.( Okay, I hope no one will begrudge me that.) I love traveling and meeting up with friends and colleagues all over the world. (Apologies to the planet.)

I love my erotic life, and I’ll leave that at that.

Where am I going with all this? I would like to square the normative and the aesthetic ways I answer the “what am I doing here” question. Do we need to choose between being good and feeling good?

Why can’t feeling good be good? Or let’s put it the way philosophers put such questions: What are the conditions for the possibility of feeling good to also be normatively good? Or conversely for being good also to open up doors to feeling good?

1. When pleasure for some is not at the cost of pleasure for others.

2. When a “will to pleasure” is acknowledged as something good and normal and the right of all. (Cue Nietzsche here on the will to power.)

3. When the larger culture values pleasure as intrinsic to the good life and so it becomes a political aim. (Cue Nietzsche again on the need for a transvaluation of values.)

Many cultures are way ahead compared to those of us in busy, modern, consumer cultures. I have previously written about the pleasures of sharing a meal, however modest, with family and friends for hours over small plates. On my Instagram I post lots of pictures of bouquets of flowers and lit candelabra. But I suspect this might all come off as me showing off what nice taste I have and how lucky I am to have all this.

I would like that not to be the case. I would like the case to be that the point of justice is not just righting wrongs but for all to be able to have and enjoy the pleasures of a good meal with loved ones, of candlelight and good music, of comfort and beauty and joy. Of maybe writing poetry in the morning and collecting seashells in the afternoon. Yes, that would be good.

For this to be the case, we need to show neoliberalism the door. We need to get away from the economic mantras of growth and the consumerist mantras of shopping as the primary door to happiness.

Oh, look, I just found some internet.

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