_________________________
Philip walked for hours after the meeting, past the Palace of Fine Arts, that
decaying colonnade built for the 1915 International Exposition, circled the
adjoining lake twice while watching the swans patrolling their territory, and then
strolled along the marina and Chrissy Field path by San Francisco Bay until he
reached the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. What was it Julius instructed him to
think about? He recalled the instruction to think about Stuart and Rebecca`s gift,
but before he could focus his mind he had already forgotten his assignment. Again
and again he swept his mind clear of all thought and tried to focus on soothing
and archetypal images—the wake of swans, the pirouetting of Pacific waves
under the Golden Gate—but he continued to feel oddly distracted.
He walked through the Presidio, the former military base located on the
overlook of the mouth of the bay, and down to Clement Street with its twenty
blocks of wall–to–wall Asian restaurants. He chose a modest Vietnamese pho
shop, and when his beef–and–tendon soup arrived, he sat quietly for a few
minutes, inhaling the lemongrass vapor rising from the broth and staring at the
glistening mountain of rice noodles. After only a few mouthfuls he requested the
rest be packaged for his dog.
Generally inattentive to food, Philip had routinized his eating habits:
breakfast of toast, marmalade, and coffee, a main meal at noon at the school
student cafeteria, and a small inexpensive evening repast of soup or salad. All
meals, by choice, were taken alone. He took solace, indeed sometimes broke into
a full smile, when he thought of Schopenhauer`s habit of paying for two at his
eating club to ensure that no one sat next to him.
He turned homeward to his one–bedroom cottage, as sparsely furnished as
his office, situated on the grounds of a grand house in Pacific Heights, not far
from Julius`s. The widow, who lived alone in the house, rented the cottage to him
for a modest sum. She needed the additional income, valued her privacy but
wanted an unobtrusive human presence nearby. Philip was the man for the job,
and they had lived in isolated proximity for several years.
The enthusiastic greeting of yelps, barks, tail wagging, and acrobatic leaps
into the air offered by Rugby, his dog, usually cheered Philip, but not on this
evening. Nor did his evening dog walk nor any of his other routine leisure
activities bring Philip tranquillity. He lit his pipe, listened to Beethoven`s Fourth
Symphony, read distractedly from Schopenhauer and Epictetus. His full attention
was caught once, for only a few moments, by one particular Epictetus passage.
If you have an earnest desire towards philosophy, prepare yourself from the
very first to have the multitude laugh and sneer. Remember, if you are
persistent, those very persons will afterwards admire you.... Remember if you
ever happen to turn your attentions to externals, for the pleasure of anyone, be
assured that you have ruined your scheme of life.
Yet his sense of uneasiness remained—an uneasiness that he had not
experienced in some time, a state of mind that in years past had sent him out like a
sexually crazed beast on the prowl. He strode into his tiny kitchen, cleaned his
breakfast dishes from the table, turned on his computer, and submitted to his only
addictive vice: he logged in to the Internet chess club and played five–minute blitz
games silently and anonymously for the next three hours. Mostly, he won. When
he lost it was usually through carelessness, but his irritation was short–lived:
immediately he typed in «seeking a game,” and his eyes lit up with childish
delight as a brand–new game commenced.
25
Porcupin
es,
Genius,
and
the
Misanthr
opist`s
Guide
to
Human
Relations
hips
_________________________
Bythe time I was thirty I
was heartily sick and
tired of having to regard
as my equals creatures
who were not really so at
all. As long as a cat is
young it plays with paper
pellets because it
regards these as alive
and as something similar
to itself. It has been
the same for me with
human bipeds.
_________________________
The porcupine fable, one of the best–known passages in all of Schopenhauer`s
work, conveys his frosty view of human relationships.
One cold winter`s day a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely
in order, through their mutual warmth, to prevent themselves from being
frozen. But they soon felt the effects of their quills on one another, which
made them again move apart. Now, when the need for warmth once again
brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so they were
tossed between two evils, until they discovered the proper distance from
which they could best tolerate one another. Thus the needs for society, which
springs from the emptiness and monotony of men`s lives, drives them together
but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities once more drive them apart.
In other words, tolerate closeness only when necessary for survival and
avoid it whenever possible. Most contemporary psychotherapists would
unhesitatingly recommend therapy for such extreme socially avoidant stances. In
fact the bulk of psychotherapy practice is addressed to such problematic
interpersonal stances—not only social avoidance but maladaptive social behavior
in all its many colors and hues: autism, social avoidance, social phobia, schizoid
