December 13, 2021

Reflection and writing about my inner self is complicated but revealing to me since I'm never sure what I'll discover during my foreighs into writing this blog. Many issues come to mind but I shall begin with Vanity of Vanities. 

Please forgive my copying the following article since I am not a scholar of the bible but I'm intrigued by Ecclesiastes.

https://interestingliterature.com/2021/07/bible-vanity-of-vanities-all-is-vanity-meaning-analysis/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bible-vanity-of-vanities-all-is-vanity-meaning-analysis

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.’ These words, along with ‘to everything there is a season’, are among the most famous in the Book of Ecclesiastes, part of the Old Testament. The Bible is full of well-known quotations which are often cited in a way that floats quite free of their original context; so what does ‘Vanity of vanities’ and ‘all is vanity’ actually mean?

There’s a simple answer to this, but it’s also – like many simple answers – imperfect. But let’s begin with this answer, in any case:

1:2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

In summary, the Preacher who is the author of Ecclesiastes tells us that everything we do is ‘vanity’: empty, futile, and short-lived. It doesn’t matter if you’re wise or a fool, ultimately, because everyone ends up dying. The author goes on to encourage wisdom as something to strive for in order to ensure a well-lived earthly life, but he is sceptical of whether it carries any long-term benefits beyond this life. 

‘Vanity’ here, then, is not quite the same thing as ‘conceitedness’: we’re not talking about the kind of vanity where people are obsessed with their appearance and keep checking themselves in the mirror, although there’s a faint sense of that meaning of ‘vain’ here. But ‘vain’ also means ‘futile’ or ‘pointless’, as the English phrase ‘in vain’ denotes. And we all know what it means if we do something in vain.

Curiously, the word ‘vanity’ in ‘Vanity of vanities … all is vanity’ is an imperfect English rendering of the original Hebrew. The Anchor Bible produced in the mid-twentieth century, for instance, translated the original word as ‘vapor’, giving us ‘A vapor of vapors! … All is vapor.’ Which is still poetic, but unlikely to catch on in such a way as to rival the majesty of the King James translation of 1611.

Smoke, vapour, vanity … they are all an attempt to grasp the (suitably elusive) meaning of the original Hebrew, but they all capture something of the original’s emphasis on emptiness. ‘Vanity’, indeed, means ‘emptiness’: it’s from the Latin word vanus denoting a state of emptiness. And the formation ‘X of Xs’ is a peculiarly Hebrew idiom denoting a maximum: compare, in this connection, ‘King of Kings’ or, indeed, ‘Song of Songs’, another name for the Song of Solomon (Ecclesiastes, like the Song of Songs, is attributed to Solomon, the ‘son of David’, even though both were written some time after the time of Solomon).

The key point, then, is that although it sounds like ‘Vanity of vanities … all is vanity’ is calling out the conceited self-indulgence of humankind, this is only because of the baggage that our English word vanity brings with it. As Isaac Asimov points out in his brilliant Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The Old Testament by Isaac Asimov (September 19,1973), it might be more accurate to paraphrase the meaning of ‘Vanity of vanities’ as ‘All is nothing … nothing means anything.’

And Ecclesiastes is a book preoccupied not with God and the heavenly, but with earthly or temporal things in this life. But the author is interested in them only because he wishes to highlight the emptiness of them, the ‘vanity’ at the heart of them.

The significance of this message – which has struck a chord with readers and listeners down the ages – is that, even though the ‘Preacher’ who wrote Ecclesiastes was not King Solomon, he is attributing this sentiment to him. Even a mighty king with as many wives and concubines as he could wish for, with as much wine as he can drink and as much food as he can eat, is ultimately discontented because he sees through everything. All of it is, fundamentally, for nothing. It’s all empty, meaningless. ‘Vanity of vanities.’

This is one of the many reasons, along with its peerless poetry, why Ecclesiastes is one of the more accessible books of the Bible: its message has remained the same as when it was written more than two millennia ago. The Existentialists of the twentieth century were merely rediscovering what those who’d gone before had already realised: that life doesn’t appear to come with any in-built meaning. We have to create some kind of meaning and purpose for ourselves. After all, the earth has been here long before us, and will endure long after we have gone:

1:3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? 1:4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

And, as the Preacher continues, he expresses another sentiment which has been often quoted:

1:9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

‘There is no new thing under the sun’ or ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ (as it’s often repurposed): what is the point of striving to do anything, then? All is vanity.

Everything man does is ultimately futile, for the world continues to turn and the sun rises and sets as before, and man cannot alter things in any meaningful way. The preacher tells us that he set out to learn great wisdom and knowledge, but this has come at a great cost: the more you know, the sadder you become.

In light of the meaninglessness and futility of all human endeavour, he tells us that we should strive to enjoy the simple pleasures found in life: eating and drinking, and taking enjoyment in our work.

Thought to have been written between 300 and 200 BC, the Book of Ecclesiastes is an example of biblical ‘wisdom literature’, which is usually attributed to Solomon. One of the most valuable qualities of Ecclesiastes, along with its remarkable poetry, is its honesty about the way the world works: its author urges us to accept what we cannot alter, even though this often means having to swallow some rather unpalatable truths about the way the world works. Time is against us, the powerful want to keep the poor and downtrodden in their place, and whatever we do, the sun will continue to rise and set, and everything will go on without us. Or, as Tennyson would put it much later, in his In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850),

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Man weaves his petty cells, spawning the generation that will succeed him, and that is all that will last of him. All is vanity, then?

Indeed, throughout Ecclesiastes the Preacher’s advice might be aligned (tentatively) with Stoicism and Epicureanism: try to accept what you cannot change and control your response to things which should make you angry or unhappy, and strive to attain a moderate amount of pleasure from the simple things life affords you in the present moment.

Although the author of Ecclesiastes makes reference to God and the importance of belief, it’s unusual for the tone of scepticism which pervades it: ‘vanity of vanities’, everything is ‘vanity’, pointless and ultimately meaningless, and happiness, whilst worth striving for, is evanescent and difficult to attain.

https://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Ecclesiastes+3

I came across Ecclesiastes while reading The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier. The book brings us into a world in which there is a duplication of a Air France Flight three months later than the original flight with the same passengers on board. Just stop and think about it. The "reality" that a duplication of a plane and all its contents including live human passenger lands again three months later. We find out that the Chinese had a similar happening in another flight but so far have kept it under wraps. The lives of some of the passengers before the landings are described and then their post landing meetings and interactions leads to great literature creating a world we can imagine but is not real except as you read you begin to wonder what is real? Literature does that for me brings me to an existential wonder and puzzle and these days reading the newspaper sometime is another take on fiction or is it fact? I won't go into detail about The Anomaly since I want you to be curious enough to read it. However, I came across a creative artist who has a strong following as a conspiracy theorist John McIndoe twenty three years old. He grew up in a very conservative family who endorsed conspiracy thinking and strict bible interpretations for living. In college, he dropped out and started a movement Birds Are Not Real. You got it birds have been replaced with drone like spying features that are observing and tracking you. He hired an actor to play the part of a CIA employee who is "interviewed" on video disclosing the pseudo-classified government program. To support his effort he has a website that sells tee shirts, hoodies, flags, stickers, etc. He rallied his many many followers to disrupt an anti-abortion rally in Texas which successfully silenced these demonstrators. And he now is coming out describing it was all a hoax to show how we can be hoodwinked to believe all sorts of strange things! This article concerning such a brilliant creative media artist who has upended our media craze for sensation, conspiracy, group think etc. while catching our attention to disrupt group think rallies and make us aware how easily we can move from fiction to belief that belies our senses is truly a minor miracle to me of our ability to be hoodwinked. In my day I bought into EST with Werner Ehrhart. He took quantum mechanics and Heisenberg uncertainty (and Bohr’s duality), Scientologies being clear, Buddhist (mostly Tibetan) meditation etc. and packaged it so in very large groups we got away from our deluded ways of thinking and behaving. A great salesman who made a lot of money and got a lot of adoration. So is the Anomaly really fiction could it be fact?  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/technology/birds-arent-real-gen-z-misinformation.html

Kohelet is the "writer" of Ecclesiastes. He points out that what we value, know, love, and care about from a different perspective is vanity or whisper in the wind soon to disappear from view and awareness. There are parts of this book of the bible that may cause some concern for being misogynistic and endorsing slavery but the body of this book reiterates in many ways that can stand as proverbs that whatever wisdom, how many and varied words you write, how much power and wealth, wisdom and influence you may have ti is all meaningless. My dear friends are struggling with this now at their home where life in his beloved is so precarious and may end at any time. Disabled nearly bed ridden weak and sometime confused due to low oxygen level she sometimes attempts to get up to shuffle stooped over with severe lumbar lordosis but unfortunately falls injuring herself but so far has not yet broken any bones. Readmitted to the hospital her attempts to get out of bed by pulling off her oxygen mask, monitors, and IV's result in the staff tying her down which infuriates her loving partner who desperately wants her to rally, be stable, and at home he'll manage to have caregivers prolong her life. I have written him and spent sometimes directly talking with him and see that the author of Ecclesiastes and my friend are unsettled with accepting the state of the universe. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande is a very well written book concerning the end of life deep emotional journey many families go through. My late wife Ann and I read this book along the way and took to heart his wisdom when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. You can choose either quality of life and absence or amelioration of suffering at the end of life or longevity and more medical and surgical interventions that may prolong the life a few months but leads to suffering and ignoring the free will decisions of the sick person. We chose quality of life which led to end of life sooner but clearly well reasoned and respected by our family. 

If we only want to relieve our suffering as a grieving hurt loving partner we may cause our loved end of life partner loss of her dignity and decisions to have a better quality of life but this may somewhat shorten her life. My good friend does realize that his consternation, anxiety and grief are so immediate and overwhelming he can not be rational and instead his default emotion under these circumstances is to be angry and seems hell bent on insisting he's correct in his assessments and decisions when in fact he's full of doubt and indecision. When calmer he sees that Ecclesiastes is more real. Maybe he can find the second flight with his loved one restored!

Family interactions can be so wholesome and supportive though many family interactions have veered away from this ideal into miscommunications that perpetuate themselves. Fractured childhood experiences can cause such havoc later in life through stunted growth of the person into a more fully independent person. Lately, I'm sometimes immersed in attempting to communicate with these "wounded" who manage to recreate the traumas of their childhood within their older families, children, and friends. For example, imagine you grew up in a family in which your mother did love and care for you but the household was dominated by a very angry bully of an alcoholic father who you had to be on your guard about. Later in life after overcoming drug abuse and alcoholism now clean and sober you find a woman who had positive characteristics but unbeknownst to you really hated men and wanted to get what she wanted without reciprocating. Now you have children who are suffering at times and may be out of control at times but live away with their man hating mother. Well, I'm making a movie now except this is real life. 

Similarly, imagine you are the eldest a girl with a brother five and one half years younger living in a household where money is often a problem. Your father is often absent working hard. Your grandmother is around at time and your mother is unhappy making ends meet and feeling abandoned in her role. Mother is strict and harsher towards her daughter than her son, the prince. You wind up getting out of the household as early as you could so you marry young and immediately get pregnant. To late, you discover your husband is irresponsible, with little talent except to con other people and try to inflate his ego. So now with three children your alone, with no money and dependent on your parents who are available and do help as best you can. If that does not get your sympathy now understand that you're second son is so unhappy, hyperactive, out of control with temper outbursts, shit throwing, and malicious destructive behaviors that you can not handle him, the school throw up their hands, and he's carted off to a psychiatric institution.  Well, after this woman on a visit to her mother finds her mother unconscious with her head in the gas oven (she survives), life does turn for the better with her marriage to her love and partner. Her two sons thrive with the ups and downs of life affecting them so they are delightful people to meet and know. At the time of all this family turmoil her brother in medical school is peripherally involved but guess what he changes his professional goal to be a neurosurgeon to become a psychiatrist. We needn't wonder why. 

Well, I'm hesitating in describing what is really on my mind but I'll attempt it this way. Family interactions are often messy and communications can be confusing and irrational. Yet family interactions that have open system characteristics can help us navigate the problems we face in life. So I'm all for letting people I care about know what I'm thinking and feeling even though they may not seem willing to listen. When I listen even when I'm in the not listening mode I gain perspective in the long run even if the person wanting me to listen is wrong in my view. So for now I'll leave my concerns here.

Pedro Almodovar is a Spanish film director and writer who I plan to explore  and may be writing about in the future. He came to my attention in the attached article. Spain's history of genocide (200,000 people killed) has not been explored well due to the political forces remaining from the ultraconservative Franco era. The article is about his film Parallel Mothers. Throughout Spain are burial sites of mass graves associated with this holocaust. Political forces continue to want to bury these atrocities and resurrect harsh rules for behavior and conformity. Sound familiar to our good old U.S.A.  To me I'm sometimes stunned that their is so much credible information that Trump presidency lied and plotted the overthrow of our democracy and yet apologists and conspiracy followers echo the opposite that the election was stolen, the capital insurrection was just a protest, and fraudulent elections requires disenfranchising our electorate. I'm hoping that this film maker can help us see beyond our rhetoric to truth and humanity. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/magazine/parellel-mothers-pedro-almodovar.html?referringSource=articleShare

Leonard

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leonardsjacobs/albums/72157603520494610