Monday, 23 December 2019

Serotonin by Michel Houbellebecq




A few years ago I read Atomised by Michel Houbellebecq and there is a particular line from the book that I think about periodically. 'It is a curious idea to reproduce when you don't even like life.' This line summarises a reality for a lot of people who have kids because they think that will miraculously solve all their unhappiness and general dissatisfaction with life. The line also encourages us to pause with regards to reproduction, to look beyond biological impulses and to no longer take reproduction for granted. With the state our planet is in; it is prudent to realize its possible inhospitableness for future generations. Such is Michel's books; they leave ideas that bounce around your mind long after you've read them.

Returning to the topic of unhappiness and general dissatisfaction with life; Michel's latest book, Serotonin, chronicles the life of Florent-Claude Labrouste. A middle-aged man who has failed to deliver according to those expectations. More specifically, he realises how much of his life is his own fault; his own doing. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter also known as the happy chemical. Labrouste takes SSRI's to supress his depression. This description of drugs, however, does not make him happy. It allows him to barely cope with his existence. A case of money not being able to buy happiness, albeit not in the conventional sense. Labrouste has to contend with a number of conflicts which have caused their fair share of dissonance and anguish within him; which I will explore in this review.

The Hero and The Princess:
Labrouste finds himself in a toxic relationship with a very high-maintenance younger woman, Yuku, who has pretty much reduced him to his utility. The only reason she is with him is because he is able to afford her the lifestyle she has grown accustomed to. Parted from him and his pecuniary benefits; she would have to return back to her family in Japan or live in obscurity. This is the hook that makes him stay in that poisonous arrangement for as long as he does. He wants to be a hero and save the princess but this does not serve him and actually causes him great harm. Labrouste suffers because the hero archetype is a boyhood archetype of masculinity and his chronological age conflicts with this archetype. The hero is meant to die and in that be initiated into manhood by adopting the warrior archetype. He is in pain because his feet are too big for the shoes he insists on wearing.

Love and Lack:
With most couples I know, they are the centre of each other's existence but the birth of a child changes that dynamic completely. The child becomes the sun with the parent's in planetary orbit around him. In an episode of The Big Bang Theory, Bernadette and Howard speak about how they would die for their children but only get seriously mutilated for each other. This makes sense from an evolutionary biology perspective; ensuring gene survival. Labrouste's parents are an exception; even with his arrival they remain each other's priority. They love him and take care of him but they remain devoted to each other primarily. When a tumour is discovered in his father's brain; his parents take pills together and die together in bed because a life without the other was plainly inconceivable. That is the standard of love that informs his conceptual understanding of love and colours his romantic experiences. He squanders opportunities to encounter deep love and colours his romantic experiences. He squanders opportunities to encounter deep love and has to live with the debilitating regret. He also has to contend with the fact that, at the centre of the life of the woman he loves (Camille), is a son. A position he didn't get to experience with his own parents. He wasn't the centre of his parents' lives; neither will he ever be Camille's . He is without anchor; cast out to sea. His parents' standard and his regret over Camille and Kate drive him to the extremes of having to ultimate his place in Camille's life. Labrouste's life is an illustration of what Stephan Labossiere (relationship expert) said on Lewis Howes' show, that people usually have two deep love connections throughout their lives and they hardly ever marry or end up with those love connections. This is disconcerting because love is such a primary driver in humans but we always seem to make a mess of it. 

The Sacred Cows:
Thich Nhat Hanh says he walks the earth to relieve his alienation. I think coming to terms with the fact that we each have a separate consciousness and that we each have an egoic-self to deal with can be very alienating. Even the word 'I' creates a distance; it is an introduction to an objectifying tale. When Labrouste encounters the cows and actually sees the cow, the chasm of alienation narrows and he experiences a oneness with them, a peaceful inclusive feeling of being a part of something. When we really see nature, when we remove our carnistic consummatory lenses, we witness creation and we realise that we are a part of that creation. We don't feel alone or far removed any longer. We are comforted to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. We move beyond the ego. What we, humans, have treated as beneath us; actually redeems us. 

Voluntarily Missing:
Labrouste describes a social phenomenon where people basically up and leave their families, jobs, and earthly possessions and begin anew elsewhere. Labrouste is inspired by this and follows suit. This morning while listening to Aaron Alexander (author of The Align Method) on Aubrey Marcus' show; he said that if you place someone in a different environment, they change. He event quotes Einstein and says that the filed informs the particle. Similarly to how genomes work; one gene, different environment, different expression. Even with 'feng shui', the idea is rearranging your furniture and the objects in the space around you has a positive effect on your overall disposition. But I don't think this is enough though, especially if we wish elicit a more sustainable change. Michael Pollan, in how to change your mind, says there are two factors that influence psychedelic experiences. Set and setting. Setting being the environment and set being your priming, your inner condition. Both of these have to be considered for lasting change. Labrouste move did not alleviate his depression. The environment changed but the inner disposition remained the same and like Any Stanley is known to say, 'wherever you go, there you are.'

Careers and Best Friends:
Another notable conflict is that his lucrative job in agriculture has an adverse effect on his best friend, Aymeric's, own livelihood as a local farmer. He has to watch his best friend shoot and kill himself as a desperate act of showing the plight of the local farmers. Labrouste is indirectly complicit in his best friend's demise. When I read that part of the book, I couldn't help thinking of the Vietnamise Buddhist monk Mark Manson mentions in his book who immolates himself in Saignon, June 11, 1963. The insane thing about that historical occurrence was that the Buddha did not utter a single sound as he was burning to death. In both instances, there is such a brevity, a slowing down of time, a clarity, a stillness in those moments that you know something consequential is about to happen. Fire played an integral part in both events, the phoenix rising from the ashes type of imagery. Using a horrific act to hopefully produce a better outcomes for those who are being served in the martyrdom. Labrouste's masculinity takes another hit here because he knows his life was too lukewarm; that it would not require of him such a sacrifice. Labrouste pursued a job while Aymeric lived out an ideal and made the ultimate sacrifice for that ideal and for the wellbeing of other people (the remaining farmers). 


What I was reminded of in this book was that life doesn't wrap up nicely and neatly with a beautiful bow. We prolong things we ought to do and conversations we ought to have with the people who mean the most to us because we think there is always a later. Life is characterised by incompleteness and demythologizes the whole concept of closure. Your mortality is not holding off until you reconcile with life. There are no do overs. There is only the now, which too, is sinking sand beneath our feet. Regrets are a luxury we cannot afford. As the stoics say 'Memento Mori'; remember you will die. 

Monday, 28 October 2019

I can only ever concern myself

I can only ever concern myself 
with the love that I have 
for myself and for others

the love others have for me, however, 
is entirely up to them

Sunday, 22 September 2019

In light of the Group Areas Act of 1950

Pilchards in a can
Sardines in a tin
Society’s red herring

Carbon dioxide poisoning
Where you breathe out
I in

These short, shallow, sporadic breaths
Ill -at-ease breaths of consideration
For those who live on top of us

They took our expanse
Confinement that clipped wings
They poked a hole in our growth, deflated

Robbed of height
Not just nutritional, gravitational
Force increases as distance decreases

Our centres of mass have dropped
Living too close to the ground
We belly, crawl, wriggle, grovel


To then be confronted by both vastness and height
Is to rattle the bones in our bent backs twice over
We have yet to learn to stretch and fill our lungs


Monday, 19 August 2019

Some times its not about you

The person 'to have and to hold'
Is he who celebrates your successes with you first
Before thinking how those successes affect him

'you can't make homes out of human beings; somebody should have already told you that' Warsan Shire

We make homes out of other human beings
Human beings 'prone to wander' and leaving
Who then become our Horcruxes

We are meandering about in incompleteness
Not because we lack an Other
Rather, we have left pieces of our souls
In the possession of others

This was the dark lord's undoing
Why would we, creatures of light, be spared this myth?

It is easier for them to kill us, slow agonizing deaths, this way.


Listening to Plantrae's Seeing in the Dark

Oh hail!
Music
That breaks our hearts tenderly
And heals them stronger than before

Unlike most people
Who break our hearts into fine powders
That get blown away by the wind

Some people, however,
Are songs worth listening to
Over and over again

In the words of T.S. Eliot
'You are the music while the music lasts'

Wednesday, 10 July 2019

Be good to me

We live in a world
where jaded men and women on the brink of relationships
feel compelled to plead of each other
"Please, be good to me."

We live in a world
where goodness is not forthcoming
it has to be solicited

The Love You've Given

Dear Friend

For you I pray
the next man you encounter

GIVES

freely, generously, selflessly

oh, what joy!
to know that you are on the receiving end
of the Love you've given
have always given
are incapable of not giving

I know it will be warm
so familiar
yet like nothing you've ever experienced before

an arrival
yet, still, only a beginning