Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!

There is a common phrase, “Life is nothing but a series of moments.” Modern philosophers—the mass-marketing, coffee-table-book-selling sort—have most likely popularized such a phrase upon a whim, faltering to find any substance or gravity in such a meandering statement. In comparison, adolescents from my generation, so often placated as “Generation X,” (namely anyone born after 1980) often find the urge to express a similar idea. Phrases like “Just takin’ shit day by day, you know,” or “Ain’t nothing changed every day,” are as common to my generation as wartime propagandized slogans have been to those of the past. In respect, I believe that the phrase “Life is nothing but a series of moments,” is largely recognized and accepted by many Americans today. Just thinking about it pragmatically makes it seem so simple—one minute we’re at school, studying; a moment taking notes, a second to sharpen a pencil, the next we’re surrounded by loved ones; laughing, talking, just passing time or “shooting the breeze.” When I first heard this phrase in high school, someone was remarking on how poignant it was, and I indeed felt inscribed with an all-together empty sense of philosophical meaning and self-awareness:

“It’s true, life is nothing but a series of moments. If I have something terrible in my life I can easily file it away as just a single moment and live for the next!”

I was elated. To think, that my parent's recent divorce or my father’s loss of job—those things are restricted to the single moment in which they occurred in my world. I felt a connection with Buddhism, which I had learned about entirely from James Clavell’s Shogun. A well written novel concerning feudal Japan’s emergence into the modern period and the struggle of the Westerner in Japan during those times, but by no means a basis for an understanding of Buddhism, a religion at the core of Asian spiritual consciousness. The brief understanding of Buddhism I had at that time has flourished, if only minutely, throughout my study of Asia and time in Japan. Yet then, it was the utter nothingness, the lack of significance attached to the single moment and the corresponding ability of human beings to bear any series of events or catastrophes that pulled so fiercely at my consciousness. Raised as a Christian in middle America, I had previously felt a strong sense of personal responsibility and guilt surrounding my father’s loss of job and the resulting divorce of my parents. To wish it all away, to succumb to that vestige of eternal nothingness—this became a source of healing for my harrowed soul.

Then I began to understand what this common phrase really represented to my generation. It was not any means of personal reconciliation. It was a simple excuse, a way to forget something stupid that you did the day before.

“Whoa, I don’t even remember a thing that happened last night!”
“Yeah? Shit happens eh?”

Such dialogue would seem completely ludicrous to past generations of Americans. Yet for us of this generation, it is all-too natural to refer to incidents in this manner. Upon being confronted with responsibility—either given a slight chance to affirm one’s own downfalls or foolish mistakes, or shed light on a personal reason for striving onward day by day—any definite thought or even minute sense of responsibility is readily replaced with any of set phrases stated: “Shit Happens,” “Same old shit everyday,” or “You know me.” It is disheartening to know that numberless adolescents around America are adulterating an idea—to sickening proportions, at that—that has been popularized and accepted as Philosophy in the mind of the average American.

* * *

Nought loves another as itself
Nor venerates another so.
Nor is it possible to Thought
A greater than itself to know.
And father, how can I love you,
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like a little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door.

-William Blake, Songs of Innocence

I came upon this quote from Blake while reading Kenzaburo Oe’s Rouse up O Young Men of the New Age! It was my love of Oe’s work that brought me to this novel, and through a deliberate reading of the first chapter in Japanese, and then English, I have developed a fine perception of both Oe’s relationship with his son, Hikari, in intermediate years, as well as a redefined love for the slow read. Reading in the world of modern literature is all about volume—how many pulp-fiction paperbacks, news magazines, or polemic piles of pro-American anti-Islam tripe you can swallow, digest (and most often defecate) within a workweek. I have always fancied myself a slow reader, yet perhaps the most accurate term is a deliberate reader. Of course, preference and necessity may vary from person to person. Many in academic vocations can probably be master skimmers and virtuosos of speed-reading without sacrificing any value of the material they’re dealing with. For anyone in the intellectual world, however, in order to unearth the deepest meanings of a certain work, a deliberate, steady-paced, insightful reading is a must.

For myself, a deliberate read can often lead to new discoveries and pertinent sections of text that could easily have been neglected or passed-over. The above quote from Blake is a fantastic example. The first time through I regarded these lines as archaic, oddly worded verses of English poetry. Being unfamiliar with Blake, I had no reason to stop and consider them from a different angle. Yet, upon reading on in the chapter and visualizing the importance these verses held in Oe’s world—it was only then that I went back to read them again.

Nought loves another as itself –I can perhaps surmise as to why Oe chose a stanza that begins with such a line. Yet, that is the beauty of a deliberate read endowed with literary precision. Often times, to truly understand a work means not only to understand it in the context of itself—in this instance, a grasp of Oe’s personal and family life is critical—but also to understand it as the work of another human being, as the heartfelt expression of another human being who lives on the same very planet that you do. Furthermore, to overlay the context of one’s one life with that of the work, or with any specific lines that grasp one’s mind, and to re-interpret them as a message aimed directly at one’s self. For me, this line—Nought loves another as itself—refers directly to human morality, to a struggle between the power of ego and the compassion to relate to others. Even in daily life, we can find startling examples of a “self which loves itself above all others.” From breaking up with a girlfriend (perhaps one of the tougher things for even a hardened heart to deal with) to telling your friends that “I’m staying in tonight,” a sense of personal awareness and self-identity is critical. For the intellectual, having the consciousness and facility—and often times gall—to adhere to one’s personal values in the face of ridicule from society, family, friends and god. That is self-respect and self-love. Even for a Christian, to be aware of the facilities and mental prowess that God has gifted humankind, to utilize the consciousness that is the essence of the being God has breathed into one’s self—that is self-affirmation and a pure love and thankfulness for human existence.

From there, the Blake stanza continues:
Nor venerates another so. This continuation further sheds light on the human condition and spiritual consciousness. The god-like deity at the center of Blake’s world and the sense of spiritual responsibility entailed there is unequivocally representative of Blake’s own source of veneration toward another. And thus is the same for humans around the globe. Despite our own self-affirmation and sense of egoism, humans will find a person, object or idea to venerate without fail. For the Christian, of course God is venerated—the redeemer, holiest of holies, Yahweh, the creator, Jehovah—the list of worshipful names goes on and on. Secular youth in our world also find things to venerate, to worship as something desirable or awesome. Popularity emblazoned with the brand of a particular group; alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine; sex, physical beauty and lust are all venerated to the utmost by young people in the world today.

Any Christian would acknowledge such things as true and irrevocably evil, yet the majority of them (especially those of an older generation) do not understand the degree to which these things have become objects of veneration in today’s world. Myriad newspaper articles and recent surveys—I’ve participated in them as a high school student—will tell you that drug use and preteen sex is on the rise, and consequently fear and apprehension for our youth’s future will rise accordingly. But it will no doubt be brushed off as only that, a simple fear. A fear as simple as the threat of a second terrorist attack on the United States, the fear of stuttering when talking to an important individual or the fear of contracting herpes simplex A or B from your girlfriend who has a cold sore—in the end, such fears are molted by day’s end, leaving a flaky, incorrigible shaft of dead skin behind.

For myself, someone who has personally declared a desire for core consciousness and intellectual existence, the sense of self-awareness and self-respect (Nought loves another as itself) is only compounded upon by veneration for other people. Friends I consider striving forward towards intellectual principles, authors and thinkers (Oe being at the center of these true intellectuals) who have become critical supportive role models throughout my own rationalizations, thought processes, failures, and forbearances—all these are highly venerated in my personal view. As an imperfect human being, vice and other evils are most likely included in my list of personal venerations. Yet it is through repentance—one Christian value that I would regard as utterly parallel to those of the humanist—that veneration becomes as integral to one’s existence as a sense of self-affirmation.

A young boy is delivering these lines to his father in Blake’s Songs of Innocence. In lines five and six, he says:

And father how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?

These lines are most significant viewed in light of Oe’s work and personal life. The son protesting against his father in Oe’s world is Hikari, Oe’s firstborn son. Hikari was born mentally handicapped and to this day remains a child in the ungainly body of a forty-year old man. Yet Hikari too has found his own source of self-affirmation and a love for human existence. Through his composition of music, the mentally damaged son has found his own mode of self-expression and a reason to strive on living. However, due to his mental condition and inability to communicate directly using the language of human beings, it is Hikari’s ability to venerate another human being or object that comes into question. Despite his own source of self-awareness and personal consciousness, Hikari cannot grasp human emotion to the level where he would feel enraptured or worshipful of another human being or human construct (including ideology and moral behavior).

Oe utilizes Blake’s lines to question his own son’s behavior towards his family and father. During a rough period in Hikari’s existence where dealing with him at home was causing stress on the family, I believe these lines were deeply engraved on Oe’s heart and mind. In the extreme, the father of a mentally damaged child may question if his son can actually love, can actually feel any sense of veneration or thanksgiving towards individuals or other aspects of human society.

It is Oe’s stark mode of expression, this direct confrontation with reality that sets him apart in my mind not only as a Japanese novelist but as an outstanding example of a humanist intellectual in our world today. It is only through a deliberate and insightful read (slow, well-contemplated reading being another of Oe’s impervious standpoints) of Oe’s works that I have been able to fully realize the importance of self-affirmation and humanistic reconsideration. It is an unruly road that knows no end, but will therefore stop at nothing to bring reconciliation—it is the only path towards attaining core consciousness in our world. Through self-affirmation achieved in light of the inevitable venerations of the human being, the intellectual’s vocation and road to enlightenment shine through with a brilliance unmatched by the whole of every star in the cosmos.