When you’re young, you spend your time thinking others don’t
understand you. When you are old, you
realise they understood you all too well.
We think of ourselves as individuals whose nuances of personality
deserve close scrutiny or psychoanalysis.
But we don’t feel that way about rabbits, or about humans. When you’ve seen five or six, you’ve seen
them all. You can call yourself an
expert. So maybe what we perceive as
differences in ourselves are only mistakes based on not having the right common
denominator. I think about that a lot.
Which is why I was initially attracted to that group. They seemed different to all those that I had
been brought up with. Old J kept this
group under pretty tight control. There
was never much room for dissent. Now I
think, obviously, that the apparent difference is itself an impossibility, that
I just can’t see the feature they have in common. I’m not capable of it. But if I was something stupid like a rabbit,
or maybe even a spider, I’d see it all too well. Because they see of us what they need to
see. Humans are cleverer, in a way. They are more powerful than us. They can judge us. But their understanding will always be
flawed, all the same. Because they can’t
help but attribute their own values to us.
And it’s hard for me to see, and even less to admit, that I
might be the same (or indistinguishable to an outsider, a rabbit-God), to
X. But maybe it’s not so hard. Self-interest, self-preservation. Selfishness.
Self. Our intellect is designed
for a purpose. To kill rats,
rabbits. To dig dens. To fuck.
To rear and teach our young.
Teach them to be like us. To put
away their capacity to understand things we have learned to ignore, they used
to say. (Speaking together.) Teach them stupidity. But if our intellects are designed for the
narrow parameters of our existence, then maybe we shouldn’t try to stretch
them. A project doomed to failure. Abuse of the intellect: philosophy. Beyond the elasticity, a snapping. Madness, death. At least the realisation of what we are…
nothing. So we have two types of being,
one that is a machine without knowing, and one can see the mechanical behaviour
of others and so realises we are all machines.
Fine. But to see the mechanics of
others’ behaviour and think that this appreciation elevates you to something
else, which is not simply mechanical? No
– I don’t accept that.
