The problem of self love and the new morality of self interest in an age of happiness is what matters most aka Bora Uhai
It is rare for a piece to come at me all at once like this, brushing my teeth on my way out to work but gosh darned it this one is one take. I’ll spellcheck only. Let my editor (that’s me) sit this one out.
Machiavelli and Foucault damned us. Here’s why.
Insatiability is a human trait. That is the central takeaway from both writers. Unfortunately, Machiavelli was taken literally despite being forced on pain of death to write a book on war. That he satirized war simply makes him even more G in my book. Foucault however reeks of a man who lost an intellectual war with someone and spent his whole life trying to counter said intellectual. It is of little surprise to some that the ghost of Foucault looms large over us nowadays. To people like me however, he was a new addition to my vocabulary and I am glad, because I get to blame all of society’s current sickness on one man. And he’s dead. Good.
I’ve been hearing the phrase self love a lot nowadays. The other day I sat beside myself, and asked myself how is it that I’d been using an Oprah-esque expression, audibly, in day to day conversations. Well, apparently that’s because I stumbled into a panel discussion on self-love and self-care at an uppity Nairobi flea market.
It gets worse.
I sat through every second of it.
And worse still.
This was my second time there. (I can hear some hearts breaking for me, but these are the things I have to do on occasion in this world)
It helps when you have really good company though.
As I understand it, self love is like the opposite of paying a compliment, justified by a sentence that begins with “Because I…” inside your head. Self-care involves acts of charity to self. Self love and self care are ‘I’-centric which is my way of being polite, because if this were not an evidently self-defeating concept already I’m not sure why I’m going to try and explain why it is a dumb idea to adopt. Here goes nothing:
The Problem of Morality
Let’s deal with the definition of morality and eliminate pesky strawmen right of the bat shall we? Per Webster [check], morality is “conformity to ideals of right human conduct” which is the basis of legal systems. All definitions of morals and morality dance around the issue of right and wrong with the serendipitous exception of this one; “perceptual or psychological rather than tangible or practical in nature or effect”.
Here is where I come in with a bucketful of icy water getting y’all shook like Parkinsons…
Self love is a tenet of a very new morality, that much is evident. Even atheists agreed on the morality of selflessness (disagreeing essentially on where these morals came from). This isn’t even a debate, some new global morality of happiness is the only thing worth living for is localising in weird ways. Phrases like Bora Uhai act as both greeting and proselytising in Nairobi, co-opting the previous meaning of caution to its now more common use of self-indulgence.
Happiness as a moral is one of those things that do sound like a good idea but fall apart upon the briefest scrutiny. How is this happiness measured and how much happiness is enough? I’ll have to leave that one to the philosophy majors but it is enough to know that a balanced life requires… reciprocity. That and that happiness is a flood of chemicals just like with pain or courage. You can do with that what you like.
The Problem of Pain
Machiavelli (or someone) quipped about the foolishness of infinite growth in a finite world. The same can be said of most of the problems that have manifested themselves in our current day, that ideas like self-care purport to abate (or is it cure? Vague cult-ish shit). The idea goes something like; I am a wonder, but I also know myself best and only I can cure myself. That’s a materialist worldview that’s devoid of reflection beyond it’s surface. It also doesn’t leave much leg room for growth via nature; pain and persistence.
The Problem of Pain is a 1940 book on the problem of evil (😈) by C. S. Lewis, in which Lewis argues that human pain, animal pain, and hell are not sufficient reasons to reject belief in a good and powerful God. Lewis summarizes the problem of evil like this: “If God were good, He would make His creatures perfectly happy, and if He were almighty He would be able to do what he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.” His Apologetics being well established at the time of authoring, he finely addresses human suffering and sinfulness, animal suffering, and the problem of hell, and seeks to reconcile these with the Christian belief in a just, loving, and all-powerful God.
Lewis caveats this with the suggestion that the problem runs even deeper quite succinctly; “if God is wiser than we, His judgments must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil.”
If you’re still not convinced by now, let’s talk glorious America:
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
A day in the life of a truck driver may be scenic landscapes swallowed underneath their 16 wheeler, but a year has love, romance, heartbreak, STDs, bribery, theft, hangovers and diarrhoea. And that’s just one year. They most likely have one family that they deem theirs but otherwise a life on the road is all the stability they need as they compound themselves into a life of debauchery just to shake away the numbness of that existence. Not sure whether this description best fits an American trucker up and down Appalachia or a Kenyan one doing the Kenya-Congo route. Bah, I’ll let you decide that one.
The Newsroom’s epic pilot opening scene boils down America to “Liberty and Opportunities and Freedom and Freedom” and then eviscerates that notion with the juxtaposition of real life circumstances.
Debt. Sickness. Fetishes. Diarrhoea. Country of birth. History.
Things that self-care has no frame of reference for by all its various definitions.
In short: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? Chew the meat and spit out the bones.
iP...here. 