On Spontaneity

I remember once having a conversation with a friend about the nature of mind in which I remarked that even if the mind was ultimately no more than a collection of neurons, that it was never the less quite profound and mysterious that these neurons should fire spontaneously of their own accord. My friend as I recall immediately took issue with my dreamy profundity and reminded me that every-time a neuron fires it is simply because it has received either an internal or external input to make it fire; thus there is really nothing mysterious or profound about the process at all.

While this seemed plausible enough at the time, in retrospect it seems to me that to get rid of spontaneity by finding something else that caused it, is really to conceal spontaneity by pushing it so far out of the way that we forget its really there. To use a imaginary example; although we may say a thought we just had about an Indian head-dress was caused by the bird we momentarily glanced outside our window, we might just as well ask where birds come from, which if we traced its origins back far enough would lead us to the birth of the very first cell, which if we traced its inception back far enough would lead us to the inception of the universe itself - an event which for most modern people was neither caused nor preplanned but rather occurred spontaneously. If we are religious we may of course object and say: “Well God created the universe and he certainly had a plan” but if his creation is anything to go by it is a plan so perfectly concealed amongst chance and spontaneity that we might suspect there is really no plan at all.  

For a certain breed of fundamentalist to say that God is not in control of his own creation is a clear case of heresy. But if God is anything like our best artists, his ability to let his work run away with itself is if anything, a testament to his divine skill. A good director after all, cannot become 'brilliant' until he has learned that the best performances happen when the actors are allowed to direct themselves. A competent musician cannot acquire the mantle of "virtuoso" until he has abandoned the sheet music and permitted the instruments to play of their own accord. It is only in other words, when the music is allowed to play itself or the performance is freed up from the script that true art presents itself. To otherwise take charge of our creation without permitting it to deviate one inch from our plan, is to create something devoid of art and thus bereft of life. And in this respect it should be apparent that it is when we call God the ‘Grand Designer' or ‘Chief Architect' that we commit the true act of heresy; since this is to find creation empty of life and barren of anything we might call 'art'. 

In practice It should not be necessary to coerce ourselves into religious feeling in order to appreciate the fact that life at its root is fundamentally spontaneous.To appreciate that life is fundamentally spontaneous only requires us to reflect upon the most pivotal point in our lives; our own inception. Since as much as your parents might insist that they ‘planned' you, in actuality they weren't expecting you at all. The fact that you were born on a particular day, with a particular character and set of traits was as much a surprise to your parents as it probably is to yourself now. This is surely what parents mean when they talk about the ‘miracle of childbirth - it is not that they are not being naive about the mechanics of sex, rather it seems they are expressing the wonder that the most precious thing of all came about with the least amount of planning, care or attention.

Science may of course inform us that to call such events ‘spontaneous' is really to apply an uneducated person’s term for that which cannot yet be predicted, and that one day all phenomena, including the exact appearance of children, will be predictable and there will no longer be any need to apply these sorts of superstitious terms. But even if it were possible to live in a depressingly predictable world free of surprises like this however, it does not necessarily follow that this would be a world free of spontaneity. We can for instance, predict with relative safety that the sun will rise in the morning and then set in the evening, but this surely does not make the event any ‘less’ of spontaneous. That is to say, there was no prior arrangement between the sun and the earth to a line roughly as they did the day before, the two planetary bodies did not meet up behind Jupiter the Monday previous to hash out their maneuvers - the event occurred without plan or for any reasonable purpose.  

For a human race obsessed with reason, to exist in in an unreasonable universe such as this might be so alarming to even consider. But to be alarmed by the lack of reason in the cosmos in this way is really no more ridiculous as being scared by one's shadow or frightened by one's own reflection, since you yourself are unreasonable. As we have already seen, even assuming you were the type of person to set deadlines and meet them, to draw up five year plans and rigorously sticks to them, like everyone else you still failed to plan for the most important event in your life of all - your own birth. And so to feel that you have any control over life is really as ludicrous as saying that you are the master of your own destiny while riding a runaway horse which you do not even remember agreeing to ride in the first place - no matter how well you are able to steer in your direction, it is still you who is being taken for the ride.

To feel that we are as helpless in life as a person on a runaway horse may be even more terrifying than the previous suggestion that life is essentially unreasonable. But I have not illustrated life in this way to show that 'you' the 'spontaneous you' is helpless. I have only illustrated life in this way to show that the ego; the part of you that insists that it is in control despite having had nothing to do with its own coming into existence, is the thing which is beyond help. This of course does not offer us very much hope if we are particularly ego-driven people who will not hear of loosening the reins on life and allowing it to follow its own direction. But for this type of person it should be pointed out that much like the creative who refuses to 'give in' to creativity does not get very far in being creative, the egoist who cannot relinquish their own ego now and then will not get very far in their egotism. If in other words, we really want life to go our way, it is essential that we are at some point able to permit life to go of its own accord. This does not mean allowing life to control and push us around, it simply means allowing ourselves to become as one with it so that the whole process becomes natural and undivided. When we approach life like this, the artificial division between controlled and controller should eventually begin to dissolve away, and as every good horse-rider knows this is when cups begin to spontaneously arrive on shelves, when bottles of champagne suddenly appear in your hand, and there is a glorious joke at play where everyone commends you on your force of will and determination when you know full well that the whole thing simply happened by itself.

In this sense my friend was perhaps quite right right; there is nothing profound or mysterious about spontaneity. To harness events in such a way that they happen by themselves is really just to practice the basic truisms we are all familiar with - that love cannot be forced but must be allowed to happen, that all great art is the product of happy accident rather than laboured design. If such common sense facts do appear profound at all, it is apparently only because we are looking out at the world with our ego; the part of ourselves naturally finds the idea of anything occurring with our its own conscious intervention completely inexplicable. If however we look out at the world in the same spirit that the world considers us; as a spontaneous happening of itself, we find that spontaneity no longer presents any mystery, for this is the world as it has always been.

The Perfect Line

While most of us probably agree that for for a life to be meaningful it must be given over to some purpose, what this purpose should actually amount to is usually not so easy to agree upon. Some of us may feel that the meaningful life is best attained by raising a family, others through the creation of wealth or employment, while a number of us may believe that meaningful life is one in which we seek spiritual advancement or the pursuit of our hobbies. Although each of these possible ways of leading a meaningful life has its own merits, it is perhaps the artist Will Eisner who provided us with the best solution when he once remarked that the purpose of his existence was no more than to “attempt to draw the perfect line”. Since Eisner was an artist there is a good chance he was speaking literally at the time rather than metaphorically, however taken liberally ‘the perfect line’ might just as well refer to the pursuit of any endeavor or action perfected – our desire to paint the perfect picture, to run the perfect business, to cast the perfect line, to raise the perfect family. In every case our pursuit of flawlessness provides us with the excuse to get out of bed every morning, since we can always try better than we did the day before.  

While this might initially seem reasonable, if we understand perfection as that which can never be fully attained, we may be worried that by constantly pursuing it we are in no more enlightened a position than a person running around chasing shadows. If on the other hand, we are able to recognise that perfection is really no more than the 'carrot on the stick' we place under our nose to spur us on, such issues are immediately put to rest: Perfection is really just a means of benign self-deception. This is surely what is meant when people tell us to: “grasp the world in your hands” or “reach for the stars” It is not that anyone is suggesting that these things might actually be possible; but that if we set our sights high enough not only we will succeed in our more realistic ambitions, we will have endless room for improvement too.

Occasional successes in our goals may of course temporarily delude us that we are on the right track towards the complete fulfillment of our ideals, but as life plays itself out it should become ultimately clear that there is no end to our personal improvement; we can always be better siblings, better artists or better employers. While to be continually thwarted in our ambitions like this might strike us as depressing, this is in fact a great cause for celebration as the complete fulfillment would ultimately entail a complete end to our purpose. It is only when there is nothing left to strive for at all that we have genuine cause for worry. This is perhaps why every businessman who starts out with the ambition to make their millions and retire, upon achieving their goal continues to accumulate even more money past the point where it could make any tangible difference to their lives – it is striving itself that gives purpose and meaning to our lives, money or any other object of desire is only its side-effect.

This is not to say however, that whatever we strive for is irrelevant in itself: There will always be additional ways in which our ideals either uplift us those around us or alternatively impoverish our existence and others. The point is rather that journeys are always far more interesting than destinations, struggles infinitely more rewarding than successes. Why else would we continually find pleasure in those cartoons in which the coyote never quite catches the roadrunner, or the cat never quite manages to lay his paws on the mouse? The satisfaction we derive from them is surely the same pleasure we take in our own struggles, which despite so often leaving us empty handed, never fail to thrill us with the possibility of a good chase.  

Where Tom the cat is happy to go on forever being taunted by the mouse he can never quite catch however, we may find in our own lives there is a limit to how much humiliation we can endure at the hands of perpetual defeat. For this reason it may even become preferable after a certain period of time to begin pursuing abstract ideals instead of tangible successes, since our ideals, unlike what is fully actual, can never inform anyone of the fact that we have yet to possess them. Despite this we may still take great pride in tangible successes when they do happen to come our way, since after all, it is always preferable to have a symbol or objective testament to ones achievements than none whatsoever. But if we do place value on our symbolic achievements, such value is surely misplaced when we properly understand the nature of striving: A trophy does not tell us anything about the struggle to victory, a certificate says nothing of the hard work we endured in order to attain it. We are in other words, always sold short by anything less than a full biography of our blood, sweat, and tears that it took in order to attain victory, and always deluded in thinking that a prize could ever serve this function by proxy. This does not by extension however, mean that trophies and cups have no worth at all: Trophies and cups will always be valuable in as much as they carry the ability to promote further struggles and ambitions. It simply means that the only prizes that are valuable are those which are not on our shelf, and are not presently hanging on our wall, since only those have the capacity to make us strive for them.

The art of perfection then is the ongoing pursuit of what we do not have, rather than the veneration of what we already do. To go against this rule and convince ourselves that we have already attained perfection or that we are just in the process of doing so, would be to misunderstand the very artfulness in the 'art' of perfection - for all great works of art are works in progress and all great masterpieces a dim reflection of what the artist originally conceived. Pursuing perfection in other words, does not mean creating some unsurpassed and therefore perfect, but creating the foundation for ever more creative work and thus ever more reason to live. Where the true artist does 'aim' for perfection in practice, we may in fact observe that he or she does so only as a means of acquiring his actual target of progressive fulfillment - no more expecting to attain perfection itself than a fisherman who aims for the horizon expects to catch the horizon on the end of his hook, or the marksman who aims his bullet at his cross-hairs expects to shoot his cross-hairs straight out of his scope. If we can somehow learn to embody this same skillful distinction between our ideals and the actual targets they helpfully guide us towards, we can perhaps now strive for our 'perfect loaf of bread' our 'perfect family' or 'perfect work of art' in the same sense Eisner strove to create his 'perfect line': Not in the belief that our ideals are attainable, but that our ideals are worth pursing precisely because we can never quite attain them. And if we have understood why our ideals are so much more useful when we do not have them, it should be clear why this is the perfect reason to be thankful.