Aftermath of a Brush with Death: Contemplating Existence

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies

Compared to the previous week, this one has been pleasantly uneventful—no brushes with death. I’ve been deeply moved and humbled by the overwhelming response from people worldwide to my last blog post. Thank you for the engagement; connecting with friends and colleagues globally is a core reason behind my blog. However, only a few of you engaged with the existential questions I posed in my blog regarding pondering our existence.

I wish to go down this rabbit hole today by doing some narcissistic navel-gazing and encouraging you to do the same thing. You need to look at your navel from time to time. Navel health is important. The framework I would like to use to explore our existence is to pose three very simple existential questions:

Who are you?
What do you want?
What are you going to do about it?

Let me now try to answer these questions for myself.

So, who am I? I’m an ageing, balding family man—an imperfect husband and father. I admit to my laziness—Nerine can vouch for that. I am a teacher, bloviator, and pontificator and someone who enjoys expressing opinions, sometimes provocatively. Only when you provoke people do you get to understand them properly. I’m an atheist but I am tolerant of different perspectives and will not debate that with you unless you explicitly want to go there. I have been labelled by some as an anarcho-capitalist which I think is a bit harsh but given the South African context, I do have some anarcho-capitalist tendencies as a reaction to the statist majority in South Africa and the students I teach. I am a white monopoly capitalist and because South Africa is poor and unequal I am part of the South African 0.1% and globally part of the 1%.  I am both proud and ashamed to be South African. I do not have a foreign passport. I am ashamed and frustrated by how the South African government is systematically destroying the country. I would like to stay in South Africa, and I would like to run away. I am the African bush and wilderness. There is nothing remotely like this anywhere in the world. I have a restless and curious mind and want to get into your head even if sometimes you don’t want me to. I’m a below-average club chess player who helps to run a social chess club. I have a disdain and disrespect for hierarchy and particularly government and their self-important blue light brigades. I am also not respectful of corporate executives with private parking next to the executive lift.

Given all this what do I want? It is not easy for me to answer that. I want to keep thinking about where my happy place is. I like to teach but I don’t like to prepare. Perhaps to be a good father and a good husband (not sure what Nerine will say because I’m not close to perfect) and a good friend. Then perhaps if I can have a positive effect on those around me including family, friends, students, staff, and the beggar in the street. The featured image shows me preparing to blunder and lose another game at the Rosebank Chess Club this Wednesday which I have helped grow. The club continues to grow. Anybody can play and there are no fees. Chess players are a bunch of eclectic weirdos including me. I love them all. Chess allows me to nurture my inner communist. So much for anarcho-capitalism. A chess club in New York serves as my inspiration for our club. The Rosebank Chess Club is one of my happy places.

I want to provoke you and for you to provoke me and for us to both learn in the process. I want to drive a fast car and drink good coffee. I want to communicate my contempt and disgust for the South African government, Donald Trump and so many politicians.  I want to expose and ridicule the industrial quantities of misinformation and bullshit that social media is enabling. I want to remind you about objective reality and our mortality. If you occupy a lofty position in the dominance hierarchy and think you are important, I want to pull you down a peg or two. You aren’t as important as you think you are.  I want to promote scientific and critical thinking, writing, and debunk pseudoscience.  I want to make you laugh, and cry even if, at times, I annoy you.

What am I going to do about all of this? I am going to continue to scream into the abyss and piss into the wind and generally annoy you. I am also going to listen to you because you know more than me. I’m going to continue to put one foot in front of another because the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate. I’m going to avoid bees as far as possible and carry two Epipen’s whenever I venture off the beaten track. I’m going to give you homework because that’s what teachers do. Your homework is to answer the three existential questions and then submit them to me for marking and adjudication. Take your homework seriously and apply your mind because I don’t want to write RUBBISH 0 in red pen next to your answer as the late Professor Donald Williams used to do when I was lazy and sloppy. By all means, be lazy and sloppy about how you dress but not about how you think. I have so much to learn from you and I’m curious. Don’t let the dog eat your homework.

I want to express my gratitude for all the ideas and comments received. I genuinely appreciate them, and please continue to share your thoughts.

Regards

Bruce