M
y last post could be read as saying that we should strive to do useful things as little as possible, and direct our energies immediately toward the useless things at hand. If useful things aren’t as good, why do them? Eating candy before bed is much more useless (enjoyable in itself) than flossing. So why not skip flossing and just go for the enjoyable thing?
We already know the answer to this—-it’s that the useless good of not-having-terrible-teeth is significantly better than the useless good of nighttime-candy, and we are therefore willing to endure the utilitarian act of flossing. Notice that flossing is not very good in itself (if we could be guaranteed perfect teeth without flossing, almost no one would floss), but it is useful to a very good end.
We know intuitively that some things are better than others, even if they are both useless. It is an obvious truth that night-candy is not as good as good-teeth. Even people who partake of night-candy would probably agree with this statement, and chalk up their actions to weak will, rather than sound judgement. In other cases, we may feel strongly about the goodness of one thing relative to another, but find ourselves in heated disagreement with others, as often happens when comparing musical tastes. And lastly, there are situations where it is unclear whether there is an answer about which of two things is better; for example, comparing a nondescript stick and boring stone. Until we need one of them for some reason, it doesn’t even seem to make sense to ask which is better. Better for what?
Comparing two things with the same external end is easy. Which bike is better, with regard to winning a race? The one that goes faster. Comparing things whose end is internal can be more difficult. This is speculative, but I argue that all things that are good-in-themselves offer some variation of a joyful rest. This joyful rest will typically be spent in some kind of contemplation of the object of that rest—whether it be savoring the taste of night-candy, exulting in a won game of chess, enjoying the cleanliness of one’s home, thinking back over an excellent movie, even enjoying the bodily strain and release of dance. In discussing useless things, then, it may be helpful to meditate on the quality and character of the joyful rest that attends that thing, and to organize one’s energies with that end in mind. It is often the case that the greatest satisfaction comes from that which took much effort to obtain, with many useful (read: bad, unenjoyable) things to be done along the way.
Zazenbozo writes:
As I putzed around my house today I thought about all of the things I ought to be doing or that I could be doing and the usefulness or uselessness of them.
What was a more use(ful)(less) thing to do with my time today?
- finish the shelf in the kitchen
- clear out some brush by the forest path
- build a bridge for the brook
- organize the shop a bit
- practice the violin
None of those things felt particularly useless, though I do feel pretty useless at the violin, so that’s good. This place, and when I say that I mean my house and the handful of acres around it, is an ongoing project that I will never complete. It’s a place to live, and, I hope, to do so well. It won’t stand the test of time, but nothing will. Does that make it useless? In a good way or a bad way?
Our lives are necessarily filled with things we would rather not, for their own sake, be doing. Yet these barriers, these chores that stand between us and our joyful rest, also serve to improve the quality of the final object. This is actually a basic law of economics; supply and demand. Effort required to reach an end decreases the supply of that end (if it were easy, we would obtain it more often), which increases its value.
Furthermore, as almost nothing is wholly a means, but also partially an end in itself, it is part of our task of living to attend to those good things that leaven even the most tedious work. Beyond this, we must keep our eyes focused on our true ends—recognizing and pursuing the genuine good, and putting aside the lesser. And for those who groan at the thought of an endless cycle of smalls joys and long toils, fear not.