I Am, I Think
Revisiting doubt in Descartes
If the eyes of man, according to Rene Descartes, look like testicles from the point of view of someone about to be tea-bagged, then you may want to close your mouth.
Early conceptual models of man seem to dissect them; as if, under such grotesque vivisection, we may know our insides, that place where the spirit and flesh collide. That “these men will be composed, as we are, of a soul and a body,” points to the presumption the former, as Descartes may have softened in his later near-posthumous years, shyly eying heaven for possible entry. His most notable precept, stoic and rational, “I think, therefore I am,” rested the entirety of being on not just consciousness, but the cognizance of it. A hamster may happen to exist, but only inadvertently in space, as fluffy matter, because it lacks self-awareness. Thus, it is an it, not a he.
Heidegger took being to a whole new level, and by that I mean in a dimly lit basement of a library. In our competitiveness with other animals, we lean on philosophy, as if by distinguishing ourselves by it, we might become life’s sole commentators. We succeeded, the hamsters are caged.
I am an administrative analyst, after a pity promotion from administrative assistant, which is a politically correct euphemism for secretary, a surrogate position historically held by women, but now available to both genders for corporate humiliation. The punishment of majoring in art, literature, or philosophy may be the subsequent recourse in the “real world,” our naive co-op of dreamers now face in the mud. Secretarial work is indeed emasculating, especially, as in the past, assisting women who were younger than me. They climbed the corporate ladder in leather heels and banged business bros with better degrees, cars, and abs while I held in my pee at the receptionist desk. I spied on them through orchids, a haiku about them in my drafts.
I of course didn’t invent the writer-with-a-day-job thing. Jaime Sabartés, a Spanish poet and writer—which is a nice way to describe a poor introvert—was also Pablo Picasso’s close friend and administrator—which is a nice way of saying his secretary. He probably wrote swift break-up letters to his employer’s many muses. By 1939, Picasso’s models, including Jaime here, were all subject to plastic surgery disasters. The joggled eyes in his portrait faintly suggest some Descartian knowledge of his vocation’s absurdity, his gaze set in the opposite direction of his face, an identity torn between the idealism of literature and just making the rent. What a freak.
To abstract the eyes from one’s face, be it under the auspices of scientific illustration or fierce modernism, is perhaps our subconscious fantasy of being disembodied from human psyche. To finally be blind to the agony painted by light. To be a concept.
A lesser known translation, “Since I doubt, I think, since I think I exist” (Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum), despite being wordy and awkward, may actually point to something important: where mere thinking was reactionary, a secretion from the brain, doubt contained the intrinsic commentary, as an attitude, of being.
The first thing one bluntly thinks about meditation is to not think, which vacates the mind to do nothing but think. The junk one finds in their head is subduing. Then one day you realize that thinking may just be a thing the mind likes to do, and by recognizing thoughts for what they are—running stories about the world, as offered by a squishy organ with little room to breathe—you may find repose in their likely fallacy. The key to meditation is to become so bored with your thoughts that the mind defers to silence. There is something to be learned by this anticlimactic nothingness. A Buddhist might say—instead of “I think, therefore I am”—I am, therefore I am. Just exist, it’s okay.
I am, I think, right about this. Such are the perks of being the only one around, am I right?
