Night Will Fall

[Orion]

I watched a movie recently called "Night Will Fall". It's about Alfred Hitchcock's only documentary that he made about the death camps of WWII. When the Russians and the allies first entered the camps, military filmographers were instructed to document everything they could, resulting in thousands of reels of footage. Hitchcock underwent the laborious task of compiling this all into a single documentary, a piece which was unreleased (effectively banned) for 70 years until recently. 

 

We can see why... the movie is a very graphic portrayal of what the soldiers found on arrival. Tens of thousands of dead bodies in various states of decay, strewn around the camps among the living and the half-dead who were living in unfathomable conditions. One filmographer described it as literally being in hell, and that if rescuers working in the camps didn't find a way to mentally detach themselves from what they were doing (i.e. digging mass graves and hauling countless bodies all day), they would have gone insane.

 

It's a movie worth watching, but not for the faint of heart.

 

For me, the movie was disturbing/awakening on another level and it has taken me more than a week to put words to it. At one point a witness said that the bodies were like lifeless dolls, nothing like living people, yet they were once living, and it was hard for the mind to reconcile this. After watching the movie I found myself seeing people out in the world this way, like walking dolls filled with narratives, stories, and egos of purpose, contrasted against the memory of mass graves in the movie. It's a life where nobody is special, but does that mean we're unimportant as well?

 

Let me point out that I've seen dead bodies before. I've seen loved ones die, but that was different. There were rituals surrounding their deaths, like funerals, proper graves and rites, etc. Seeing countless naked humans tossed into mass graves is a completely different story. The whole thing is stripped bare.

 

The Nazis meticulously saved everything, including hair, personal belongings, dentures, eyewear, etc. It was all repurposed in factories that the S.S. had investments in, and then the materials were re-sold back to the camps or to the war effort. In 2009 I visited a death camp museum in Phnom Penh, from the Pol Pot / Khmer Rouge era. I remember seeing all the personal belongings next to the skulls of some of the victims. Thousands of skulls. Nearby were the rooms where people were tortured every day, often to death. The floors were still stained with human contents. Everything was preserved for posterity.

 

All of these items were part of the costumes of the living, part of the living narrative. And all this past week I keep seeing flashes of the graves of mass bodies, reflecting on my own nothingness, and trying to reconcile the inescapable free fall of an ultimately narrative-less reality. These thoughts have begun to permeate every aspect of my life... like how much food one person eats in their lifetime, the amount of jet fuel required for a person to go on vacation on the other side of the earth, the countless daily activities we engage in and that we tell ourselves have purpose, how many babies are born and how many people die. It's a ticker tape that goes on and on. It's dizzying. It's also a bit crazy-making.

 

How the people at the death camps who were near-dead skeletons themselves could suddenly be revived with the right resource, and begin behaving "normally" again as their faculties come back into play, also shocked me on some level. In death we are all dehumanized yet the staples of survival and civility allow us to construct a sort of safety and comfort.

 

Less than a year ago I was like a skeleton, laying apathetically in bed preparing for the end; apathetic to my own stories, and awake to the pure awareness of emptiness. Then I was nourished and healed. Now I can be any story again, or no story.

 

I am having a lot of trouble reconciling these lifeless dolls with a so-called meaningful life. It seems like there is no escape, and any escape is really still partaking in it; and that you can't get anymore into it no matter how much you try; and that all you can really do is abide in any given moment, whether it's a suffering one or a blissful one, because there is no goal. The downside is: you're free. The upside is: you're free.

 

How do you transcend it when it seems like there is clearly nothing to transcend? Do you put faith into the soul? The subtle mind? Enlightenment? An afterlife? When you turn off a computer, does the software go to heaven? What about turning off a lightbulb? What "leaves" and "comes back" when a person is revived from beyond the pale? When lightning strikes the Earth, does it become something else when we no longer see it or is it just done? Why are humans supposedly any different than that?

Edited March 17, 2017 by Orion

[Seeker of Wisdom]

After watching the movie I found myself seeing people out in the world this way, like walking dolls filled with narratives, stories, and egos of purpose, contrasted against the memory of mass graves in the movie. It's a life where nobody is special, but does that mean we're unimportant as well?

 

A person is just a bunch of processes, but just because 'substantialist' ideas are wrong doesn't mean nihilist ideas are right. You can see people as important (to you and to themselves) at the same time as seeing them as a bundle of narratives.

 

I would argue that the desire for wellbeing, in various forms, is a key component to all these bundles of narratives walking around in the world. And it's that same desire which prompted you to bother posting this thread, to an extent. I think there's something significant in that. Even the most nihilistic person imaginable holds to their philosophy because they think they get some benefit from it, so their philosophy contradicts itself. 'There is no meaning, so I'll spend all my time thinking about it and trying to convince others of it' - see how that's absurd?

 

How about 'there is no meaning (to the universe), but I can't do anything without it being related to this 'wellbeing' thread anyway, so let's investigate that'?

 

And all this past week I keep seeing flashes of the graves of mass bodies, reflecting on my own nothingness, and trying to reconcile the inescapable free fall of an ultimately narrative-less reality. These thoughts have begun to permeate every aspect of my life... like how much food one person eats in their lifetime, the amount of jet fuel required for a person to go on vacation on the other side of the earth, the countless daily activities we engage in and that we tell ourselves have purpose, how many babies are born and how many people die. It's a ticker tape that goes on and on. It's dizzying. It's also a bit crazy-making.

 

Yeah, the universe doesn't give a shit. But just because nothing matters to the universe doesn't mean things can't matter to you. Things will in fact matter to you regardless (though what things and in what way may well change).

 

I am having a lot of trouble reconciling these lifeless dolls with a so-called meaningful life. It seems like there is no escape, and any escape is really still partaking in it; and that you can't get anymore into it no matter how much you try; and that all you can really do is abide in any given moment, whether it's a suffering one or a blissful one, because there is no goal. The downside is: you're free. The upside is: you're free.

 

If there's no goal, why did you post this thread? Why abide in any given moment? What do you want to do with your freedom?

 

How do you transcend it when it seems like there is clearly nothing to transcend? Do you put faith into the soul?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'it', but in any case, I don't think the answer is to swing back into a substantialist lie like 'oh there actually is a soul and it's inherently meaningful in a cosmic way and permanent and special' whatever. The abyss is showing you a side of things people shy away from, and I think you really have the opportunity to go somewhere from here without denying its lessons.

 

When I read your post, I thought of this quote from Nanavira Thera's Clearing the Path:

 

 

 

At the time I read [Joyce’s Ulysses]—when I was about twenty—I had already suspected (from my reading of Huxley and others) that there is no point in life, but this was still all rather abstract and theoretical. But Ulysses gets down to details, and I found I recognized myself, mutatis mutandis, in the futile occupations that fill the days of Joyce’s characters. And so I came to understand that all our actions, from the most deliberate to the most thoughtless, and without exception, are determined by present pleasure and present pain. Even what we pompously call our “duty” is included in this law—if we do our duty, that is only because we should feel uncomfortable if we neglected it, and we seek to avoid discomfort. Even the wise man, who renounces a present pleasure for the sake of a greater pleasure in the future, obeys this law—he enjoys the present pleasure of knowing (or believing) that he is providing for his future pleasure, whereas the foolish man, preferring the present pleasure to his future pleasure, is perpetually gnawed with apprehension about his future. And when I had understood this, the Buddha’s statement, “Both now and formerly, monks, it is just suffering that I make known and the ceasing of suffering” (M.22:38), came to seem (when eventually I heard it) the most obvious thing in the world—“What else,” I exclaimed, “could the Buddha possibly teach?”

[rene]

Orion, hello

 

Please take gentle care of yourself. ((hugs)) I fully understand the impact this has had on you. My method, at these times, has been to embrace the idea that two seemingly opposites can exist simultaneously: both the universal coldness AND the love we intentionally choose to dwell in. There is so much wrong in the world, and so very much right. We each need to carefully choose what we let in, imo. I choose love. Peace to you, friend, and warmest regards.

[Orion]

 

At the time I read [Joyce’s Ulysses]—when I was about twenty—I had already suspected (from my reading of Huxley and others) that there is no point in life, but this was still all rather abstract and theoretical. But Ulysses gets down to details, and I found I recognized myself, mutatis mutandis, in the futile occupations that fill the days of Joyce’s characters. And so I came to understand that all our actions, from the most deliberate to the most thoughtless, and without exception, are determined by present pleasure and present pain. Even what we pompously call our “duty” is included in this law—if we do our duty, that is only because we should feel uncomfortable if we neglected it, and we seek to avoid discomfort. Even the wise man, who renounces a present pleasure for the sake of a greater pleasure in the future, obeys this law—he enjoys the present pleasure of knowing (or believing) that he is providing for his future pleasure, whereas the foolish man, preferring the present pleasure to his future pleasure, is perpetually gnawed with apprehension about his future. And when I had understood this, the Buddha’s statement, “Both now and formerly, monks, it is just suffering that I make known and the ceasing of suffering” (M.22:38), came to seem (when eventually I heard it) the most obvious thing in the world—“What else,” I exclaimed, “could the Buddha possibly teach?”

 

I get where this mindset comes from, I really do, but the reading of it feels hollow. There's no denying that pain and pleasure are guiding forces in our lives, but it can't all be reduced to that. There is such a thing as self-sacrifice and altruism, versions of which transcend their self-reflexive pleasure mechanisms, versions which place love above all else. Maybe our world doesn't have enough examples for us to really know this and so we turn to reductionism and biology to explain all our impulses.

 

The quote about the Buddha... we have to be careful because sometimes he is talking about suffering in terms of pain, and other times he is referring to "dissatisfactoriness". The latter arises in all situations no matter how contrived we make them in order to avoid the inherent emptiness of existence. Even people experiencing bliss eventually experience dissatisfactoriness.

[thelerner]

and that's why we shouldn't stare into the abyss to long, or too hard.  Its there in much of human history.   scattered in modern newspapers.  very very dark stuff.  It can cling to you, draw your soul down. 

 

History shouldn't be ignored though, past or present.  Yet the darker things need to balanced by the 10,000 ordinary good events we take for granted.   The common love and sacrifice in families.  The everyday smiles, blue in the sky, green of grass, the jokes that make us laugh.  Needed anti-dotes to the darker studies.  

[Seeker of Wisdom]

I get where this mindset comes from, I really do, but the reading of it feels hollow. There's no denying that pain and pleasure are guiding forces in our lives, but it can't all be reduced to that. There is such a thing as self-sacrifice and altruism, versions of which transcend their self-reflexive pleasure mechanisms, versions which place love above all else. Maybe our world doesn't have enough examples for us to really know this and so we turn to reductionism and biology to explain all our impulses.

 

I'm not saying that that passage is a perfect understanding. And I don't think Nanavira would have said so either, it was just the start of his path. Him seeing life as meaningless lead him to start to understand why the Buddha was all about dukkha (of course, you're right that this doesn't mean just 'suffering'), its cause, its cessation, and the way to its cessation. That is meaningful, and compassion absolutely comes in here as well. IMHO there is a middle way here, between the falling night and rising dawn.

 

Best wishes, Orion.