The last note drew on the writing of Robert Musil, one further line of his has lingered in my mind: ‘a man can’t be angry at his own time without suffering some damage.’ It gets to the challenge of being out of sync with the moment one finds themselves in. And in this case, Musil’s observation not passing cleanly through the ages. Much as the gendered language of the quote reflects the dominant mentality of his time, so all of our thinking is unavoidably shaped, pushed and pulled by the moment in which we find ourselves. How to deal with the spirit of the times? Perhaps the most fitting metaphor for thinking about it is water. Staying afloat, going with the flow, swimming against the current, all are possible responses. These strategies all reflect the underlying truth David Foster Wallace famously reminded us of:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’
As Wallace explained, ‘the immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.’ And so, there is the ever-present challenge of recognizing the water, remembering it is there. It often can be difficult for us to appreciate the subtle, and not so subtle, ways the present moment shapes our thought. Even being cognisant of the water, we still need to decide whether and how to swim. Put differently, one can understand the setting, but left unresolved is the question of how to act. As Leszek Kolakowski surmised, ‘lack of courage is no excuse, even if it can be explained historically; we are responsible for everything we do.’
Returning to Musil, his quote captures the problem of being at odds with the world around you. The zeitgeist can make for choppy waters. Swimming upstream is hard, much easier to just go with the current. That does not work, however, if it sends you in the wrong direction. Too often, though, this seems to be an outcome many people are willing to accept. Why swim against the current when you can float, drift, or go along with it? Much easier, until you or others start to drown. Going with the flow becomes much less viable when it is a riptide pulling you out and sucking you down. Reflecting on the dilemma, Goethe observed, ‘it is hard to come to terms with the errors of the times: if you oppose them, you stand alone; if you allow yourself to be caught up in them, you get neither honour nor joy in the process.’ Just because a decision or outcome is binary, it does not mean the two alternatives are equal.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Perhaps, but it is still better to be damned if you don’t. And in many cases, it might be all that is necessary.