Letters to a Young Man

vandalpress (26)in #journalism • 8 years ago

An old man writes.

San Francisco, 2012.

A wise old man writes to advise me on a few points.

Dear – ,

These are the main points to remember:

Never tell a woman that you love her more than three times: once when you are married, once at the birth of your first son, and once before you die. Three times is probably three times too many. The truth is in the words of William Blake: ‘Never seek to tell your love/ love that’s never told can be.” What is told is frozen, and what is frozen shatters. Women are always much happier guessing, anyway. They lose interest once they know for sure.
You do not need to keep mistresses, but it does no harm to pretend that you have a few. It’s good for a woman to work for your affection. When she says, “Am I your Saturday girlfriend?” The correct response is, “Well, I suppose I can just about fit you in…on Saturday afternoon.” Never tell her that she is your girlfriend all week. She will be superficially delighted and inwardly disappointed. What woman wants a man who can only attract one woman?
Humans enjoy suffering. A few people enjoy making other people suffer, but most people enjoy making themselves suffer. Women particularly enjoy being martyrs. Cruelty is productive and thrilling. We worship a man nailed to a cross for a very good reason. Atheists claim to be disgusted by this, but this is because they have no stomach for the ugly truth. Consequently, they prefer the comforting deception of atheism.
Life is war (Heraclitus knew). You learn this when you see the boys at school hoisting a victim up by his underpants. The material slices through his testicles. They film the event, and send it round the school. Nobody is punished. The mob loved it. The teachers approve. This is the lesson that never appears in the timetable. It is occult and obscene. It happens in every school. Better toughen up, boyo. The exhilaration of group violence. It has happened in the Killing Fields, the concentration camps, the streets of Karachi, the Gulags, and just on the street.
Life is war. And war is a game of deception. Accordingly, we humans are lost in games within games. This is why we adore spy novels, murder mysteries, and anything involving deception. We suspect that we are being played by our boss, our colleagues, our lover, our government, and everyone.
There are very few people who can look on life and give a ‘yes’ to everything they see. For the most part people live within necessary illusions. And some people choose to blot everything out. There are many ways to blot everything out: drink, drugs, and television.
Never get involved with lawyers. Educated criminals, as Morrissey observed, work within the law.
The instinctive first answer is always right. We often go to considerable lengths to deny the first answer. And it is always right. If a person causes you fear, there is something wrong with that person. Forget rationalisation. Our mind sees more than our consciousness. Only your instincts will save you. “I just don’t like the man.” And that is the only answer you need.
Democracy dies in deception. That deception is the ballot box. As soon as men can conceal how they vote and lie about it to their fellows, responsible voting disappears. The public vote requires strong citizens. Consequently, functional democracy is the prerogative of an elite electorate composed of virtuous men.
Listen to your dreams, but not as the television advises the housewives. If you really listen, what you find will not be pleasant.
Never say what you are going to do. Our society has gone mad on reasons, but reasons never started anything. You should live so that when someone asks you, “Why did you do that?” You may answer, “I have no idea.”
Humans are monkeys wearing clothes.
Everybody says they want happiness, but nobody actually wants it.
You’re exactly where you want to be – even if you say you aren’t. The more you protest, the more you want to be where you are.
If it has to be stated, it isn’t true.
“Stop thinking!” the old soldier shouted at me. He was teaching me to fight, but I was always stalling. He did not really mean to stop thinking. He meant to stop being conscious. And we can think without being conscious. Lack of consciousness is a requirement for more than just fighting. We work at our best when our consciousness is bracketed [See: 11. and 8.]. We are at most despairing when we examine our own consciousness. Tell a person, “Watch yourself on the stairs!” And they become more likely to trip.
Consciousness was, quite possibly, a mistake. We still do not know what it is for. An evolutionary by-product? A freak accident? A touch from God? We are not even sure that all humans have it. And they are the lucky ones!
Sentimentality is cruelty. A Hallmark card is a knife between the ribs.
People do not want the truth. This is why they do not read the classics. They know the truth is there, but it is preferable not to know. Animals, philosophers, and poets know. But they live outside the city like feral dogs. Woof! Woof!
The best way to misunderstand a person is to try to understand them.
It’s all the same structure with another paint job.
When you give up, you get it. But it is very, very hard to give up.
The best way to get a woman, a job, money, or success is not to try.
It is almost impossible not to try.
When people cry they always cry for themselves.
Pornography is poison.
Obscenity is sacred.
Art is a true illusion.
Television is medically approved heroin.
God exists in your footsteps.
This is why a pilgrimage is the path to God. You walk to Canterbury, undertake the Hajj, or tread the Camino de Santiago. Werner Herzog and Bruce Chatwin knew this. But do people walk to Mecca anymore? Do people walk to Canterbury? Our static civilisation has given us the train, the aircraft, and the car. These are means to move without moving. And consequently we no longer believe in God.
The migrants are close to God.
God is savage. The path, as Chatwin noted, winnows out the weak. The nomad is close to God and close to violence. The city dweller has softness without godliness. The nomad extinguishes the city.
You have not really arrived in a country until you have walked there.
We are all pirates. But some pirates are jollier and kinder than others. Some pirates know they are pirates. The best pirates are only interested in geld and women. There is honesty and kindness in unabashed greed, lust, and cupidity. The worst pirates are the pirates who say they are not pirates. There lies the thinness and meanness of the fanatic. God is where you would not expect Him, with the whores and tax collectors. Those who say, “After all, he’s only human.” Forget the dry fanatics with their whitened sheets and soiled interiors.
“Doctors are all swabs,” says Long John Silver in Treasure Island.
All atheists are religious fanatics.
Men who give to charity publicly are always guilty of great crimes (see: Jimmy Savile).
Have you ever noticed that we have turned blind eyes to blind eyes?
Children are charming because they tell the truth unconsciously. Old men are obnoxious because they tell the truth because they no longer care.
Praising a man is the quickest way to destroy him.
Your best friend is like a virus. He is always testing your immune system, and so making it stronger. We must always have enmity and competition in true friendship.
You already know what’s going to happen to you. You just pretend that you don’t.
Women are more sociable than men, but they are never friends. They gather to compete over the achievements of their husbands, grandchildren, and sons. Then they boast about the fertility of their daughters – or complain about their frailties.
I would prefer you to do something constructive like calling me a bastard, rather than something really destructive like saying, “I love you.”
Competitions of the mind – Oscars, literary prizes, business awards, and some scientific prizes – are all rigged by politics and other interests. There is only one worthwhile race: eternity. Nature is always choosing what shall continue. She has her eye on you and me now. And she chooses harshly. Nature, God, and fortuna are the final judges, not a bought committee. In nature, we call this evolution. And we are an extension of nature. What has survived in art, literature, law, and science earns the laurels.