Bronnen bij Het alfa- en bèta-denken: psychologiseren
Een van de grote verschillen tussen de alfa- en de bèta-geest is de houding
tegenover het eigen individu. Daar waar de bèta geneigd is zich bezig te houden
met zaken die zich buiten hemzelf bevinden: de levende en de dode natuur, de
werkelijkheid, gaat de eerste aandacht van de alfa uit naar de zaken in zijn
eigen hoofd. Waar de alfa een psychologische roman leest, leest de beta een
sciencefictionboek - en er staat niet veel gepsychologiseer in sciencefiction
boeken. Een reden dat sciencefiction door de alfa's, die de smaak in dit soort
dingen bepalen, niet tot de literatuur wordt gerekend.
Je zou zeggen: zo veel zelfstudie dat moet toch wel iets moois
opleveren ... Wat natuurlijk een ironische opmerking is, want iedereen weet dat
het tegenovergestelde het geval is: de ultieme alfa, kunstenaar, is een neuroot,
die zwelgt in Weltschmerz en ook op allerlei ander manieren zich niet
gelukkig voelt. Wat zich onder andere uit in een redelijk hoge frequentie van
drugsgebruik in die kringen.
De relatie tussen dit soort Selbstanschauung en de wat
minder gelukkige gevolgen is heel treffend beschreven door Bertrand Russell, in
zijn The Conquest of Happiness (Hoofdstuk 1: What Makes People
Unhappy)
| |
... Perhaps the best introduction to the philosophy
which I wish to advocate will be a few words of autobiography. I was not
born happy. As a child, my favourite hymn was: `Weary of earth and laden
with my sin.' At the age of five, I reflected that, if I should live to be
seventy, I had only endured, so far, a fourteenth part of my whole life, and
I felt the long-spreadout boredom ahead of me to be almost unendurable. In
adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from
which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics.
Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year
that passes I enjoy it more. This is due partly to having discovered what
were the things that I most desired and having gradually acquired many of
these things. Partly it is due to having successfully dismissed certain
objects of desire - such as the acquisition of indubitable knowledge about
something or other - as essentially unattainable. But very largely it is due
to a diminishing preoccupation with myself. Like others who had a Puritan
education, I had the habit of meditating on my sins, follies, and
shortcomings. I seemed to myself - no doubt justly - a miserable specimen.
Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came
to centre my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the
world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection.
External interests, it is true, bring each its own possibility of pain: the
world may be plunged in war, knowledge in some direction may be hard to
achieve, friends may die. But pains of these kinds do not destroy the
essential quality of life, as do those that spring from disgust with self.
And every external interest inspires some activity which, so long as the
interest remains alive, is a complete preventive of ennui. Interest
in oneself, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a progressive kind. It
may lead to the keeping of a diary, to getting psycho-analysed, or perhaps
to becoming a monk. But the monk will not be happy until the routine of the
monastery has made him forget his own soul. The happiness which he
attributes to religion he could have obtained from becoming a
crossing-sweeper, provided he were compelled to remain one. External
discipline is the only road to happiness for those unfortunates whose
self-absorption is too profound to be cured in any other way.
Self-absorption is of various kinds. We may take the sinner,
the narcissist, and the megalomaniac as three very common types.
When I speak of 'the sinner', I do not mean the man who
commits sins: sins are committed by everyone or no one, according to our
definition of the word; I mean the man who is absorbed in the consciousness
of sin. ......... |
Maar geen kunstenaar die er vanaf zou willen.
Naar Alfa en bèta denken
,
of site home
.
|