David Sedaris thanks for “aggressive piglet” jokes
I could not meet Ernest Hemingway. I could not meet Kurt Vonnegut. I could not meet JK Salinger. But I could meet David Sedaris.
As a very special birthday present from my wife. On Thursday, April 7, we drove to Davenport, Iowa, to see and hear him. On the stage he seemed smaller and frailer than I had pictured him. But he was much funnier than I hoped he would be.
After the reading, I joined the long and winding line of one or two hundred autograph hunters. It took him about twenty minutes to start his signing session. He talked and smiled with each and all of us while trying to devour a huge steak. After another 30 minutes it was my turn to tell him a joke.
I decided to introduce him to a Hungarian joke character that portrays a facet of the Hungarian collective soul, the dumb and self-defeating ‘aggressive piglet.
‘ The aggressive piglet falls into a pit.The good fairy is coming along and notices the piglet at the bottom of the pit. She calls: - Hey Piglet, wait a minute I’ll go and get a ladder!
The aggressive piglet shouts back: – I won’t wait!!!
and another one:
The aggressive piglet goes to the railway station ticket sales and says:
- Give me a railway ticket!
- Where would you like to go?
- None of your damn business!
David seemed to enjoy the piglet, since he mentioned him above his signature (see picture above).
I have no picture with Ernest Hemingway. I have no picture with have no picture with Kurt Vonnegut. I have no picture with JK Salinger. My wife is a law-abiding lady and she just could not pretend the ubiquitous “No photos, please!” warnings.
My satisfaction could have been complete: I have seen and even talked with the best living American short story author. Except that David Sedaris said on the stage that the best living American short story author was Tobias Wolff…
I could have gone on wondering whether I have just met the best living American short story author or not, had I not taken a firm decision to ignore David’s ranking as less reliable than my own. Upon taking this decision my satisfaction was complete again. Irreversibly, this time.
Epicureanism = philosophy + practice + education
Epicureanism was much more than just another set of thought patterns to chat about the world.: besides the theoretical general world view (“Physics”), epistemology (“Canon”) and ethics it encompassed the daily communal practice of its tenets. The community members went through and education process to learn how to act and speak honestly and in harmony with their teachings (“parrhesia”), how to control their desires, how to manage their self-sufficient communities. For 800 years.
The philosophy of Marx and Engels, on the other hand, as interpreted and implemented by Lenin and his followers substituted the greed for money with the greed for power and served as “philosophical and scientific” foundation for the most oppressive and hypocritical communist regimes of almost half of the world for more than half a century.
electronic village?
Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford and the author of “How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks.” states in the New York Times that “You’ve Got to Have (150) Friends” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26dunbar.html?_r=1
and ends his theory with the words: „welcome to the electronic village”.
What kind of a village may he have envisaged, with no commitments, and no accountability?
Non-competitiveness: an evolutionary anabranch, backwater or dead end?
Tom Merle remarked in a comment that “our western free market societies are really built on greed”. (I must add that the communist experiment was just as much built on greed: on direct greed for power, without the transmission chain of a sophisticated financial system.) He quoted the now infamous words of Gordon Gekko as spoken by actor Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed…”
http://www.facebook.com/stressfreedomguide
The Epicurean communities, on the other hand, have always been based on a cooperative, non-competitive attitude and behavior.
How could such as subspecies not only survive for 2300 years but also positively thrive and flourish for almost 800 years?
Had they followed the laws propagated by evolutionary biologists they must have died out long time ago – just like many small religious communities, including Christian ones, based on non-competitive cooperation. The Scandinavian type of socialist economy based on cooperation could never function, either, according to mainstream economists. But, in fact, it not only does, but makes its “players” happier, more content and less stressed than the people forced to “play” by the rules of a competitive system based on greed. And numerous religious sects (like the Amish in the US), cults, fraternities and sororities, based on non-competitive sharing are still up and running.
I am not sure about the future of anything in general and Epicureanism in particular, but I can imagine that it might continue as a narrow or broad alternative anabranch or backwater, a tolerated or persecuted minority for another few hundreds or thousands of years. It might turn into mainstream only if and when the present mainstream lifestyle based on competitiveness and greed will prove to be a dead end …and leaves enough survivors for an Epicurean revival experiment.
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“carpe diem” instead of soul-searching for children?
Since my rare but aggressive little skin cancer was staged as “micro-metastasized” (meaning something between stages IIIA and IV with a survival prognosis of 50-65% in the first two years) I have become much more aware of the value of each day. This is normal for me in my predicament but I am trying to let others learn something about it, too, first of all, my children. (My wife and I have chosen not to name my disease to them at this point, so they do not start getting upset about the possibility of losing their father shortly after having lost their mother to a mental disease – on top of having changed their “country” for the second time.)
This is no easy enterprise since my children are no different from other children of their age (9 and 12) structuring time around the present-laden knots of Christmas, Easter, Birthday, Halloween. Luckily I do not have to start from zero. My daughter is taken to bed alternatively by my wife and by me each evening and part of the ritual is her remembering what the best thing that happened to her on each day was. We have extended the topic range now to mentioning all the good things that happened. If there are “not so good” things mentioned we talk about the chance of them happening again and whether she can do anything about it.
This little “spiritual exercise” is very far from the Ignatian Examination of Conscience I was taught by Catholic priests and nuns or the other Christian soul-searching practices that teach the children how sinful they are. It teaches them (or so I hope) the Epicurean joy of adding to our happiness account the mental pleasure of remembering pleasurable events and teaches them that there is something good to be experienced each day.
The part about “what was not so good and what can I do about it in the future?” might seem to be more in the Stoic and modern motives analysis culture tradition but we know that the Epicurean communities spent considerable time trying to improve themselves and each other by practicing how to speak honestly even when telling your mind might imply the risk of retaliation by someone stronger (parrhesia) and this practice must have been very much like what we do today in self-improvement life coaching or stress-communication training.
Now all I have to do is to extend the practice also to my prepubescent son…
Culturally correct communication of cancer?
There are 10 definitions of the word ‘culture’ in my favorite dictionary:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture
In my cross cultural communication workshops we used it in the sense described by definitions 5 and 6:
5. the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group: the youth culture; the drug culture.
6. Anthropology . the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.
There are lots of dimensions along which you can classify cultures and one of them is called: Boundaries of Privacy
Cultures that have a vertical hierarchy (class, caste, etc) often have rules about what are acceptable topics, and what are not. These can differ widely, and not knowing what is personal talk (and possibly offensive) and what is public talk (and safe) can create conflict.
<I tried to insert here a picture of Lewin’s circles, but it doesn’t seem to work>
Lewin’s circles tell us that some cultures have specific regions of privacy: these cultures have a very small amount of “personal” information that is shared in the public. Once a person gets into the “private” areas, all of the private areas are available. So a friend who knows about your relationship with your boss, would also have access to information about your personal finances and personal relationships. Withholding information in some area is seen as offensive, because it violates the relationship. Few people get this privilege.
In “Diffuse regions of privacy”, much is publicly available. People who become “close” do so in specific compartments or areas: so a friend may know everything about your relationship with your boss, but nothing about your personal finances or personal relationships. Withholding this type of information is seen as being normal and natural, and friends must be invited into each region specifically.
Friendship in the US and Germany belong to “diffuse regions of privacy” almost all of the rest of the world to the “specific regions of privacy”. My friends in America and Germany speak openly about having or having had cancer, whereas my friends in Austria, Hungary, Romania tend not to mention this particular kind of disease.
Back in the 70s I lived in Romania and I remember that my family members spoke openly and candidly about one of my grandfather’s dying of heart attack and the other of stroke. In 1982 I relocated to Germany and when I came to spend the last weeks with my father everybody seemed to avoid talking about his having lung cancer. My father himself insisted on “having TBC” if he had to mention his disease at all. I was forcefully recommended not to talk about “the C-word”, either.
Having lived for almost 30 years in the “diffuse regions of privacy” of Germany I had no problem adapting at least to this aspect of American culture during the last year.
Some of my friends in Austria, Hungary and Romania must have felt the disclosure of my diagnosis as incongruent with their cultural practices and some of them seem to be embarrassed, not knowing how to react.
I am writing these notes mainly to let them know that I remember the cultural environment they live in and I understand their reactions of reticence and embarrassment.
I know that their feelings for me is the same, no matter in which way they express or not express it.
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