Andrea Fitzpatrick lost her job last August and foundered for a while, as she struggled with her sense of self-worth. She had identified herself with her career, whatever it had happened to be. Corporate advance, money, and social status were the things that defined her. Unsurprisingly, they were not the things that made her happy, something she only truly discovered after being fired.

It’s an interesting story. On the one hand, it was heartening that someone had discovered happiness to come from something other than the superficial banalities of one’s life. On the other hand, it was sad that there are many people, perhaps most, who must actually learn this lesson.

A belief in fulfillment

And so I am not shocked that, like me, god believers are saddened by the hollowness of so many lives lived in emptiness, fulfilled by nothing and driven by the most amoral of motivations. I am not surprised at the satisfaction believers have in their lives, filled as they are with a pursuit that, no matter what unrecognizable form it may ultimately take, at the very least seeks meaning for themselves and everyone. I am not surprised by the confidence of their beliefs, by the resistance their faith has to that which disputes it.

Of course, I know they are terribly misguided for that faith, and the details of their belief are their ultimate undoing, and no reconciliation is possible between dogmatic positions and a truly happy existence. But I say that out of a need to clarify. It doesn’t really matter, this time.

It indicates that a life of true fulfillment comes from everything that seems not to define the majority of us. In the West, most have forgotten so simple a truth utterly. It may be cliché to bring up the fact that material pursuits have replaced our sense of satisfaction with ourselves and each other, but often truth is to be discovered anew in aphorisms like that.

It’s one reason for the divide and the ultimate conflict between those with faith and the secular world they inhabit. On a larger scale, it hints at more troubling issues: the conflict between Islam and the West, as an example, and the failure of either to find areas of common values and goals.

A flow of lives

But I must recede once again to the microcosm of a single life. Unlike James Randi, who is nearing the end of his journey, I can’t look back at a remarkable life to reminisce on scores of remarkable experiences. I’m far too ordinary.

There are issues to deal with, and things that seem like setbacks, but its very simplicity makes my life deeply fulfilling. Alex and I have a circadian beat to our lives that offers happiness I could scarcely imagine when I was in my twenties, clambouring for money and sex and superficial relationships and fun, and other trivialities. There is the expanse of Bronte Creek Park near my home, small though it might seem to some, that holds a portion of my consciousness in its fields and woods and paths. There are the hundreds of books in my library, holding hundreds of thousands of pages, that fill up the corners of my barely satiable curiosity. And there is the incidental interaction with people, acquaintances and strangers, offering the opportunity to imagine the details of another life, and, if I can, if only in the smallest of ways to make that other path slightly more navigable.

I like my work and I’m considered fairly successful, but it’s simply a lucky tool that allows me to live a life away from it. There are so many better things, more important things. The breathtaking breadth of human history in front of me at this very moment, for example, or living inside the cream-coloured pages of my library. I’m staggered when I think about the billions of lives that have shaped what humanity is right now; or the trillions upon trillions of beings that have directed the course of life on the planet.

Something in me goes very quiet when the sun sets beneath the purple clouds over the peaks of houses behind us. I feel as though I’m sharing the lives of the finches that wake me up each morning as they build a nest beneath the trough under my bedroom window, which they and their ancestors have done for as long as I’ve lived here. We’ve been here many years, but we’re still apart from virtually all the neighbours. Sometimes when we come home in the car, one of their kids waves at us, though we are silent strangers to them and their parents, and it makes me smile. Alex has a swimming friend that he picks up every Sunday morning. She usually bakes him cake on Saturday night, and he comes home full. Despite our shyness, and what must seem like stand-offishness, the neighbours directly beside us invite us for an hour or two of drink and conversation every Christmas and every summer, and have always been immeasurably kind to us.

There’s so much loveliness, so much fulfillment in life that I’m surprised when I hear stories of lessons learned, like Ms. Fitzpatrick’s. What deep pleasure there is to be found in the world’s accessible corners. What meaning there is in the most straightforward of relationships. How gorgeous things are. How important we all, each of us, are, to one another, to the flow of lives beginning in the incomprehensibly distant past and that builds our story for the sake of our existence alone. How completely beautiful, unknowable, and livable it all is.

Louis About me, Believers Believers, Bronte Creek Park, Happiness, Selfishness, Strangers, Vocation

There has been a discussion at DPChallenge.com lately about the nature of morality. Typically, the religionists are lined up on one side, arguing that the only moral source in the universe is their particular god. The atheists dutifully face off with them, presenting ideas about morality’s prehistory, its probable source in genetics, how it favours the survival of a species, or its otherwise innate nature. There is little agreement other than that morality is somehow desirable, and immorality is not.

Of course, it isn’t easy to define morality, especially when the waters are muddied with ideas about its paranormal origins, or the insistence of some people in equating morality with dogmatic adherence to their religious script. But at its most irreducible, morality is that condition in human beings that recognizes suffering in other beings, seeks to end it, and desires to replace it with happiness. There is little else that it needs to be concerned with, rules of copulation, or the hierarchical roles of certain members of society, for example. Conversely, immorality can be said to be that condition which is unconcerned with the suffering, or happiness, of other beings.

I think people tend to show their true moral fibre in dealing with strangers. I personally have a difficult time with strangers. I am usually suspicious of them, and it is with only a great effort that I can bring myself to give a stranger the benefit of the doubt. I seem to be predisposed to mistrusting those I don’t know at all. What comes along with this is a tendency to discredit the actions of strangers, to cast their most innocent actions in a bad light, to assume the worst in people. It’s a disheartening struggle, because I otherwise enjoy almost everyone around me. I’m endlessly fascinated by people’s behavioural minutiae; I truly love the humanity in people.

Alex and I are relatively new swimmers, and we inhabit the “slow lane” during our four-nights-a-week lap swim. We seem to be stronger swimmers than most in that lane, but neither of us are comfortable moving on.

An older woman, a very slow swimmer perhaps in her mid fifties, has been cajoling Alex, trying to get him into the intermediate lane. Her jokes are rather unsubtle, but her smile is genuine, and one day last week, we spotted her at another pool, where Alex had a short pleasant conversation with her.

During last night’s swim, she hinted once again that he should move on, in a pleasant, undemanding way. He responded that he lacked the confidence for the next lane, and that was that.

A young teenaged boy later got in her way. “Move,” she barked at him, jerking her thumb toward the faster lane. “Sorry,” he said quietly, and swam out of her way. “I’m fucking sick of this,” she growled.

It was actually quite shocking. One doesn’t expect an otherwise kind older woman to come up with that kind of language, let alone for a child. The dramatic about-face in her demeanor was appalling. I later reasoned that she was showing us what she truly thought of her situation in the slow lanes amongst faster swimmers, and that she could not until that moment vent her frustration on us, her peers, the way she could do on a young person.

We could do nothing but ignore her for the rest of the evening, and before the swim ended, she left, her face blank, but underwritten with some kind of negative sentiment — disgust (in herself?), dejection, weariness, loneliness.

She had, in that moment, displayed her true moral being, unconcerned for the welfare of anyone else. Her willingness to inflict this kind of suffering on someone, small-scale though that suffering might be, revealed her nature. Her behaviour was highly immoral. In that moment, there seemed no question for me that this woman should be ignored by us. She seemed a small entity, as unsympathetic as she was lacking sympathy.

Why would I concern myself with this kind of non-event? There was a momentary lowering of the guard on what appears to be a rather crass older woman, and some kid bore the brunt of it and moved on. That’s that. So why would I even give it a moment’s thought?

It is indeed for the way she left. The look on her face as she walked, alone, off the deck, was about as telling as the hissing profanity. She was indeed alone. She was indeed not proud of her reaction. She was quite friendless in that moment.

I see myself in that woman. I see the moral duality, the natural sympatico coupled with the innate dourness, the easy will to negativity. I see in her behaviour the same behaviour in myself — the path of least resistance in impersonal dealings with strangers, leading to minute forms of suffering that only add to the endless measure of unhappiness in the world. I see in her, and in myself, an agent of Sadness. Sadness doled out bit by bit, in increments barely noticeable, until their crushing weight destroys the equally minute measures of happiness that may have been offered.

Morality is the will to actively end suffering, and promote happiness. There is no small measure of suffering; there is no small measure of happiness.

Louis About me, Morality Happiness, Morality, Strangers

How many times have I been insulted in life? How many times has that been in the bodiless environment of the Internet?

Exactly. And so I wonder why one small insult out of countless others has me bothered.

I’ve had a lot of success on Craigslist. I recently posted an ad for an iPod Touch I no longer need, and got a bite almost immediately, but the individual wanted 20% off my listed price. I’ve always gotten exactly what I’ve asked for on Craigslist, so I replied in two curt words that I’d only be taking my asking price. “No, $300,” was how I put it.

An hour later, I got back a reply saying, “Get over yourself,” followed by a large ASCII Star of David. My name is Steiner, a classic German name that confuses some people, who take it to be Jewish. It seems this symbol was supposed to stand in for something, to intimidate me. A shaming device of some kind. A yellow badge, I think.

I immediately deleted the e-mail, then revived it a few minutes later. I looked at it for a while. I’m not the most charitable of men, nor the most even-tempered. Several replies came to mind as I wondered at what I should do. “Wow, I’m convinced, it’s yours — free!” was one. “Steiner is a German name, Genius,” was another. Various other flavours of sarcasm seemed apt. Later, it seemed to me that I could also take the route of pointing out how his message was received: with some alarm, and some sadness at its implications.

The young man was from Toronto. He’d used his full name in the “From” header of his e-mail, and, it being very unique, I looked him up and found a Flickr web page and a few other things. In addition to his likes, dislikes, the town in Romania where he grew up, friends, and hobbies, there were many pictures of him. Here he was with a few friends, also twenty-something, lounging in a nondescript apartment. Here’s a girl with him. He’s carrying an infant in this one, and here’s a picture he’s taken of himself, holding a point-and-shoot at arm’s length.

What path has led this ordinary person to the place where it seems acceptable to him to offer a stranger a deflating insult, and a veiled threat? And what’s the appropriate response?

The second question is easier for me to answer. In a case like this, the appropriate response is no response at all. For one thing, we are, unfortunately, forced to consider that an individual capable of a menacing text reaction like this is also capable of much more. Further, what could be gained by reacting negatively? Or even with sadness and alarm, my most sincere response? I couldn’t imagine this person responding well.

No, I quietly ignored his response.

About the first question, about how it came to be that he, or me, or anyone else, would think that such a response could be legitimate. There’s no real answer. The usual observations about faceless communication and the ease with which one can abandon civility while engaged in it come to mind. But it seems there has to be some larger issue, some explanation that would account for the willful injury people cause on a daily basis. It’s not that online communication engenders acting badly; it seems to me there’s a callousness inherent in many people that is exposed by online communication. Perceived consequences being minute, many feel free to act in whatever way is expedient to vent their ever-shifting negative emotions. Even a second’s worth of thought for how the other is made to feel seems too long.

Generally I love people, but it’s an on-again, off-again affair. They so disappoint. I am enthralled one moment, overjoyed at their complexities, torn to wonderful shreds by the fickleness of their delights and passions and pursuits, in awe of the heights of intellectualism they can climb to; and then I’m dashed again, brought down by their pettiness, by their dogmatic and inward-looking steadfastness to unreason, to selfishness, to emotional, intellectual dwarfism. I wish I knew what brings people to the very boundaries of supreme selflessness, only to be snapped back into their own self-concerned little world with the bright silent violence of a meteor crashing into the atmosphere.

I’m a victim of it and a perpetrator at the same time.

Louis General Communication, Morality, Selfishness, Strangers