Insouciance Über Insecticide (Another Moth Post)

 

'I've always preferred moths to butterflies. They aren’t flashy or cocky; they mind their own business 

and just try to blend in with their surroundings and live their lives. 

They don't want to be seen, and that's something I can relate to.' 

- Kayla Krantz, The OCD Games (2020)

 

 

I. 

 

And so ends National Moth Week; an annual (and global) event designed to celebrate 'the beauty, life cycles, and habitats of moths' and to collect much needed data about these fascinating (mostly nocturnal) creatures, which are among the most diverse and successful of all organisms, ranging in size from as tiny as the head of a pin to as large as an adult human hand.

 

I have to admit that I didn't officially register to participate in the event. However, I did take some photos of the moths in my backgarden, including the one above (don't ask me what species it is, as I've no idea, but it was about an inch big and reminded me of the moths I used to regularly encounter as a child, but which now, sadly, are hardly ever to be seen). 

 

 

II. 

 

Readers familiar with this blog will know that I've written before in praise of moths and why they appeal to me more than butterflies, which, in evolutionary terms, they long predate (some moth fossils have been found that are thought to be 190 million years old); they just seem to me so much more punk rock in comparison to the latter. 

Readers might also recall that I recently published a post on the necessity of killing carpet moths, in which I adopted a Lawrentian argument to justify why it was the right thing to do to reach for the insecticide in order to safeguard one's clothes and home furnishings from the hungry mouths of moth larvae. 

 

Some readers will be pleased to know, however, that, in the end - even though I bought a spray - I didn't have the hardness of soul needed to use it. Ultimately, it transpires that moths mean more to me than even a relatively expensive pure new wool carpet: I simply don't care if they eat holes in it.

 

Insouciance über insecticide!

 

 

Is Anything Really Worth Fighting For?

"I know that for me, the war is wrong. 

I know that, if the [Russians] wanted my little house, 

I would rather give it them than fight for it: 

because my little house is not important enough to me." [1]

 

I. 

 

I said in a recent post with reference to the current situation in Ukraine, that it might have been a wiser diplomatic move on Zelenskyy's part to have attempted to appease Putin - making whatever concessions were needed in order to avoid war - rather than have flirted with the West and indicated his desire to not only join the EU, but NATO.  

Still, it's a bit late for such a policy now that Russia has invaded and major Ukranian cities, including the captal, are being bombarded even as I write. And I'm aware also that appeasement is a dirty word in the political lexicon these days - not least here in the UK, following our experiences in the 1930s with Hitler (give him an inch ...)

 

However, there's really no need for the Ukranians to martyr themselves and I would advise that they capitulate and seek terms with Russia as soon as possible. For there's no shame in surrendering to a massively superior force and, again as I said in the post prior to this one, discretion is the greater part of valour.

 

I don't think this makes me a coward; for it often takes much greater courage to live and refuse to die. 

 

And neither does it make me a pacifist in the conventional sense: I don't have a moral objection to war and certainly don't subscribe to an ideal of peace, love, and the brotherhood of man. I am simply of the view that, in this case, non-violent resistance and civil disobedience makes better strategic sense than armed conflict and self-sacrifice.  

 

 

II. 

 

My thinking in this matter has not, then, been shaped by the likes of white worms such as Bertrand Russell and Mahatma Gandhi. 

 

Rather, it's been influenced by D. H. Lawrence, who, whilst writing in favour of combat in the old sense - "fierce, unrelenting, honorable contest" [2] - abhors the thought of war in the modern machine age; "a ghastly and blasphemous translation of ideas into engines, and men into cannon fodder" [3]. 

It's a beautiful thing, says Lawrence, for a man to die "in a flame of passionate conflict [...] for death is to him a passional consummation" [4] and his soul can rest in peace. But to be blown to smithereens while you are eating a kanapki is something obscene and monstrous. 

 

Thus, the Ukranians should refuse to die in such a manner and refuse to fight an abstract invisible enemy whom they will never meet face-to-face on the battlefield. If the Russians are that desperate to occupy territories in the East of Ukraine, then let them ...   

 

Ultimately, it might be the case that the only thing really worth fighting for, tooth and nail, is not your spouse, your children, your country, your fellow citizens, your money, your property, or even your life, but that bit of inward peace, that allows you to reflect with a certain insouciance ... [5] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell (9 July 1916), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp.625-628. Lines quoted are on p. 626. 

      I have slightly modified what Lawrence writes, replacing the word 'Germans' with 'Russians'. In this crucial statement of Lawrence's views on what is and is not worth fighting for, he continues:

 

"If another man must fight for his house, the more's the pity. But it is his affair. To fight for possessions, goods, is what my soul will not do. Therefore it will not fight for the neighbour who fights for his own goods.

      All this war, this talk of nationality, to me is false. I feel no nationality, not fundamentally. I feel no passion for my own land, nor my own house, nor my own furniture, nor my own money. Therefore I won't pretend any. Neither will I take part in the scrimmage, to help my neighbour. It is his affair to go in or stay out, as he wishes." [626]

 

      See note 5 below for a reference to a later poem in which Lawrence returns to this theme. 

      And cf. with what Birkin says in chapter two of Women in Love when asked whether he would fight for his hat should someone wish to steal it off his head; "'it is open to me to decide, which is a greater loss to me, my hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent man'". See the Cambridge edition (1987), ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, p. 29.         

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 158-59. 

 

[3] Ibid., p. 159.

 

[4] Ibid.

 

[5] I am paraphrasing here from Lawrence's verse 'What would you fight for?' in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 431.

In Praise of Vintage Fashionistas (With Reference to the Case of Anastasiia Grigoruk)

Miss Anastasiia Grigoruk

Vintage fashion model

I.

Vintage fashion is an attempt to harvest the glamour of the past by wearing the clothes, accessories, hairstyles and makeup from a previous era, sometimes creating an entirely new look by mixing and matching styles and periods. Nietzsche might describe the latter chaos of styles as a form of barbarism, but as someone with a punk background this doesn't greatly trouble me.

That is to say, whilst I want people to invest care in their sartorial ensembles, I don't demand absolute authenticity and I'm happy to see non-vintage elements added, including retro designs that merely imitate the originals.  

II.

I'm particularly smitten with some of the vintage fashionistas who go to extraordinary lengths to create a stylish and sovereign model of agency and find a new mode of relating to contemporary reality and the passing of time; of capturing something of the eternal feminine that is not beyond the present but still immanent within it.

Those puritans who criticise these young women for being vacuous and conceited and sneer at their constant posting on social media, are simply not Greek enough to understand what their passion for artifice and things of the surface tells us.

Such moralists think it's just a silly game of dressing up and recycling appearances; a nostalgic exchange of real history for hopeless fantasy. But the revolt into vintage style, like other forms of dandyism, signifies something philosophically important; for it transgresses the principle of utility and seriousness to which the grey-beards would keep the world tied and affirms instead gay insouciance.

III.

What's more, to be successful within the terms set by such an elaborately mannered ethic requires admirable self-discipline; thus one might even suggest there's an element of stoicism within the world of vintage fashion. Again, the idea of building and maintaining a lifestyle is often derided, but people who think it's easy obviously haven’t tried it.

In order to become who she is, a girl like Anastasiia Grigoruk has to spend many long hours before her mirror and display an almost fetishistic obsession with the smallest of details. The adding of style to one's nature is much more demanding than accepting a pre-given way of being. It demands sustained activity and knowledge of what Foucault terms the arts of existence and techniques of self:

"those intentional and voluntary actions by which [individuals] not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria."


IV.

Finally, I'd like to close by commenting on the notion of community within the world of vintage fashion; for it strikes me that amongst those who devote themselves to such there's a good deal of shared kindness and mutual support. 

If, first and foremost, vintage fashionistas are driven by a will to create a singular existence, they nevertheless seem to instinctively understand: (i) this is not something that can be carried out in isolation - that giving birth to the dancing star of the self is not an experiment in solitude, but a true social practice; and (ii) that when a line of narcissistic flight collapses into the black hole of solipsism, this is a sign of failure. For being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with, as Heidegger says. 


See: Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 10-11.

For a sister post to this one on the fabulous French vintage fashion model Miss Alba Banana, click here. 

Dandelion: D. H. Lawrence and the Question of Care

Dandelion: photo by Greg Hume (2006)

As much as Lawrence may wish to sit like a dandelion on his own stem and concern himself exclusively with those objects existing within his immediate physical environment - refusing to care about abstract issues, faraway places, or unknown peoples - he’s conscious of the fact that such insouciance can lead to parochialism and might easily be mistaken for indifference on his part; something he’d very much regret.

For Lawrence is very keen to sharply differentiate between insouciance and indifference. The former, he says, is a refusal to be made anxious by abstractions, or swept off to into the empty desert spaces inhabited by idealists gripped by a compulsion to care about everything under the sun. The latter, however, Lawrence defines as an inability to care resulting from a certain instinctive-intuitive numbness or nihilism, which, like Nietzsche, he posits as the great malady of the modern age; a consequence of having cared too much about the wrong thing in the immediate past.

The apathetic or indifferent individual, the nihilist, is essentially an exhausted idealist; they have none of the carefree gayness of the insouciant man or woman and do not know how to live on the spot and in the nowness of the actual moment.

That said - and as indicated - insouciance can itself become problematic and serve to isolate the individual, cutting them off from the wider world and from history. We can’t be entirely self-sufficient and concerned only with our own musings and sense impressions. Nor can we only be concerned only about those with whom we have a direct relationship; our immediate family and friends, or kith and kin.

Ultimately, as Lawrence was reluctantly obliged to concede, feeling a sense of solidarity with all mankind isn’t entirely fraudulent and the love of humanity stands for something real and vital; "that feeling of being at one with the struggling soul, or spirit or whatever it is, of our fellow men". Lawrence continues:

"This caring about the wrongs of unseen people has been rather undone. Nevertheless ... still, away in some depth of us, we know that we are connected vitally, if remotely ... [and] we dimly realise that mankind is one, almost one flesh. It is an abstraction, but it is also a physical fact. In some way or other, the cotton workers of Carolina, or the rice-growers of China are connected with me and, to a faint yet real degree, part of me. The vibration of life which they give off reaches me, touches me, and affects me unknown to me. For we are all more or less connected, all more or less in touch: all humanity."

What’s interesting about this passage is that not only does it demonstrate that Lawrence was not an individualist as many critics mistakenly believe, but it also shows that his love of humanity was born not of some transcendental attempt to develop a conceited cosmic consciousness, but out of a sense of class consciousness; it’s the workers and the peasants of the world that Lawrence primarily feels connected to and sympathetic with.

Those who cultivate indifference to the point that they lose any compassion for others are mistaken. Lawrence understands their frank egoism, but refuses to share it - worried by the effect it has on the individual who refuses to care. Their intellectual honesty is fine and it’s good to cast off all spurious sympathy and false emotion, but not if this entails the death of all feeling and one becomes empty inside (believing in nothing, standing for nothing, caring for nobody).

Lawrence admits, however, that some can find perverse pleasure in precisely this becoming-void and take "real pride and satisfaction in pure negation". These he calls the perfect nihilists: those whose shallowness is mistaken for depth; whose false calm is mistaken for strength; whose indifference is mistaken for insouciance. Nietzsche termed them the last men; those who sit grinning furtively in the triumph of their own emptiness.

See: D. H. Lawrence, ‘Insouciance’, and ‘Nobody Loves Me’, in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). The lines quoted are from the latter text.

Towards a Doctrine of Non-Necessity

Whilst I'm perfectly happy for philosophers to discuss the concept of necessity (be it logical, empirical or transcendental in nature), or spend many long hours thinking through related ideas of determinism and contingency, it increasingly seems to me that many of the malicious and often murderous stupidities that confront us in this life are, for want of another word, completely unnecessary. 

Nationalism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, sectarianism and all those forms of what Nietzsche memorably termed "scabies of the heart" [GS 377] are things that we could happily do without and the absence of which would instantly make the world less ugly and unpleasant.

Hopefully it's clear that I'm not speaking here as a liberal idealist of some description. For as Nietzsche also says, one has to be "afflicted with a Gallic excess of erotic irritability" [GS 377] to dream of embracing all humanity with fraternal affection and, despite having been born in Paris, I'm simply not French enough.

So no, I do not love mankind. If anything, it's because I'm too indifferent and ultimately too uncaring to spend time hating that I'm led towards a nihilistic doctrine of non-necessity. It's insouciance and a certain cool irony that saves us from that violent rage and ressentiment that grips those who subscribe to a puffed-up politics of identity and self-assertion.