Enormously popular in Europe, French author Michel Houellebecq (sounds like Wellbeck) writes about the pointlessness of modern life. One of the most controversial writers working today, he is thought by some to be a moody and decadent discontent and by others to be a visionary. At minimum, I think his work entertaining, but more critically, I think it a cautionary tale that should be taken seriously.
Houellebecq believes that the modern Western world is not up to promoting and safeguarding the values, meaning and enchantment that were once the province of God. Without such lofty authority, he feels we run amok and fill the void with mindless consumerism, hollow objectives and the many distractions afforded by technology. Photographs of him reveal a man subjectively defeated, absent hope, purpose and faith in the human ability to be responsible for autonomously leading productive and contributory lives.
No one would deny that life is a challenge and its certainties few. But we who have made it our business to acquire a pragmatic education in autonomy and life have accepted the struggle for existence, the struggle to make our lives matter, the struggle to overcome distraction, frustration, defeat and loss. We remain positive and optimistic about the future.
Ours is an examined life, a life that substantially vets the biological and artifactual or cultural forces acting on it.
We recognize that our felt response to life’s challenges is a subjective experience, one that we can reframe and rework. Instead of seeing the world bleakly—in terms of what is empty or spoiled—we are inspired to improve the causal efficacy of our thoughtful and practical autonomy and life. When we avail ourselves of the best of human ingenuity and generosity, we serve our commitment to live a life that matters to us as individuals and to us as participants in our families and communities in the mind/world continuum.
Of course, the creation of the perspective and substance of our minds does not come along with the purchase and download of an app. Science is years away from nailing down the neural correlates of consciousness (some say it will never happen). Moreover, the data mining so popular today is significant (or not) information in the way that our feelings are information, but it is just a piece of the whys, wherefores and distractions that encumber purposeful human activity.
So how do we learn to liberate ourselves from mindsets that inhibit our ability to say how life is going to be? We address these questions: How do we account for our subjective experience? How do we educate the senses and sensibilities that give it shape and resource? What practices must we acquire that will support the causal efficacy of our responsiveness to it? And what sort of a plan do we need to manage the whole enterprise of our autonomy and life—its mood, its attitude, its content?
In short, it is an inquiry and vocabulary reorganizing our approach to being in possession of our minds. And it is an opportunity not to be ignored as the advantage we gain by reframing our subjectivity is compellingly revealed to us time and again over the course of our lives. Indeed, with these resources, life is a gift to be celebrated and shared.
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Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes.