We live in troubled times, when a cycle of ever more violent retaliation looks set to result in yet more heartache for those most affected by the violent actions of those who, though claiming to, neither represent them or have their best interests at heart.
And all this at a time when a great many of us are increasingly dissatisfied with our lives general.
Why might this be?
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was a German born philosopher best known for her book ‘The Human Condition’ (1958). In it, if I understand her correctly, she explains her view that the way out of living a meaningless life is to bring about change through our ability to act and thus create something new.
She distinguishes our ‘actions’ from our ‘labour’ and our ‘work’.
‘Labour’, to Arendt, is simply those activities of living by which we meet our biological needs – needs which, because they can only be temporarily met, always need to be repeated and thus in themselves, are not able to satisfy us at any more than the most superficial level.
‘Work’ she defines as that which we do within the world that imparts a ‘measure of permanence and durability upon the futility of mortal life and the fleeting character of human time’. ‘Work’ produces something abiding, and is of a higher level than ‘labour’ which merely perpetuates.
Our ‘actions’, however, are what she says really count. It is not so much ‘what’ we are that matters but ‘who‘ we are. And who we are is best revealed through our words and deeds – when we go beyond our inherent selfish survival instincts and ‘act’ to bring something new and unexpected into existence.
Two key behaviours that Arendt identifies as bringing about this change are those of forgiveness and the making and keeping of promises.
Forgiveness is the behaviour by which it is possible to nullify past actions, releasing others from what they have done and enabling them to change their minds and start again. ‘Forgiveness‘, she writes, ‘is the key to action and freedom‘ and ‘the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history‘.
In contrast, our ability to make and keep promises marks us out as being able to make the future different from the past. ‘Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible‘.
Arendt believes that, to be fulfilled, we need to be able to act in ways that advance or better society as a whole.
And herein lies the clue as to why some of us may have lost satisfaction in our day to day lives.
Though we continue to seek happiness, so restricted have we become in public life, by the guidelines that we have to adhere to and the hoops through which we have to jump, that we have become like slaves who have no prospect of having genuine influence.
In Arendt’s terms, we can ‘labour’ and ‘work’ – but we cannot ‘act’.
Furthermore, having given up the prospect of doing something that might bring about real change and produce genuine benefit, we have retreated from the public sphere and been reduced to consumers who are content to amuse ourselves in private – with yet another bottle of prosecco, perhaps, and an evening spent bingeing on the latest Netflix TV series.
Arendt further suggests that ‘under conditions of tyranny, it is far easier to act than to think‘. Such then is the consequence of living in societies where conformity to a prescribed viewpoint is all that really matters. In such circumstances, we are prone to unquestioningly comply with what we are told we must do and, from fear of reprisal, anxiously seek to do so perfectly.
But, says Arendt, ‘In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism‘. By giving up the hope of genuine autonomous action we have given up our hope of fulfilment and with it our hope of happiness.
Thoughtlessly striving for perfect compliance, we therefore die.
This links into another idea of Arendt – that whilst we can know much about the objective world, we fail to understand what lies beneath the surface – that which is most important.
By stereotyping those who belong to groups other than those we belong to ourselves, we make the mistake of only recognising the ways in which they are different to us with the result that we can all too easily form a falsely negative view of them and thus justify our harsh treatment of them. But if, instead of lazily contenting ourselves with knowing only ‘what’ such people are, we seek to ‘know’ them as the individuals they are, those who just like us, long to live peacefully and bring up their children in safety, we would find it a lot easier to look for better solutions to our mutual problems than that of going to war.
Instead then of resorting to long range missile attacks and bombing campaigns, we need to spend more time in close proximity to those we are prone to want to attack – not just to end the killing, but also, Arendt says, for the joy of seeing them reveal their true character.
Because failure to know our imagined enemy, not only diminishes them in our own minds, it also diminishes us as well.
But seeing ‘who’ our neighbour is becomes increasing difficult in our relentlessly busy lives characterised as they are by a million and one seemingly more important concerns that press in on us daily.
Finally then, what of ourselves. Arendt suggests that we may never really know who we are ourselves because that is something that can only really be observed by others, those who see us act in ways that we cannot see ourselves.
This is most true when we love – for love, she says, reveals ‘who’ we are like nothing else simply because it is unconcerned with the ‘what’ of the one we love. ‘Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others’
To regain our satisfaction with life, therefore, we need to change. We need to stop behaving in the way that we have all too often been encouraged and, rather than focus on how we sometimes differ with others, recognise instead how much we have in common.
In short we need to care better about one another. Rather than mercilessly punishing others for their past mistakes, we need to show a little grace, forgiving them for the hurt they cause and thereby give them the chance to start again.
Because that’s exactly how we need them to treat us too.
We all need to give peace a chance if we are to have any hope of beginning again and creating something new.
I believe people can change. But only in the presence if someone who believes that they can who also promises all the help and support they need to avoid remaining stuck as they are.
And though it’s true that we will need someone infinitely better able to do this than we can ourselves, someone who really does represent us and has our best interests at heart, we all nonetheless need to seek to act in considered, creative and unexpected ways for the good of others. For if we do, as well as making a real difference in the world in which we live, we will begin to restore our own satisfaction with life as well.
Rather than simply settling for what is expected of us, we need to think for ourselves, challenge the status quo, and tackle head on the problems that the world is currently facing.
Because to live is about more than merely complying whilst being mindlessly entertained. The provision of ‘bread and circuses‘ is not enough for us to be happy.
Rather, to truly live is to be somebody who acts and brings about the change, the new start, we all so hope for. The change we very much need if we are to do more than just keeping on keeping on.
Eleanor Oliphant, the eponymous hero in Gail Honeyman’s novel captures the sense of this well.
“I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it seems, the possibility of change”.
Related post.
To read ‘On not remotely caring’, which considers further the dangers of living at a distance can be found here
Some musings 