I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
Last week I felt distracted from art and writing by what was happening in the Middle East, and, relatedly, in my investment portfolio. This week I’d like to think about something else, but I fear there is going to be serious carnage in both places. It will be hard to tear myself away.
Of course, the destruction in the Middle East is much more terrible than whatever might happen with my savings. The president has blamed Iran for the bombing of a girls’ elementary school in Southern Iran. But evidence suggests that the U.S. was to blame. More than 165 people were killed, many of them children. The school was reported to be a former Revolutionary Guard base, so one can imagine why the U.S. or Israel might have accidentally bombed it. But the U.S. won’t take responsibility despite all evidence that we were, in fact, responsible.
Our tax dollars at work: the operation so far has cost almost $6 billion in operational and munitions costs and losses of assets such as radar systems and drones. While this spending pales in comparison to our ongoing daily deficit spending of $5.2 billion, it is unbudgeted and not supported by the majority of the American people.
Enough of all that
I can’t do anything about our country’s misguided aggression, but I can think about how I want to go forward.
I’ve felt a lot of achievement society pressure recently, feeling like I better get out of the transition neutral zone and into a zone of ambition, productivity, goal achievement, and obvious reinvention success. This internal pressure to drive myself forward is exactly the dysfunction that philosopher Byung-Chul Han diagnosed in his book The Burnout Society. In that book, he contrasted our present neoliberal achievement society, where we command ourselves towards more and more productivity and participation in modern economic life, with the earlier obedience society, where we did what institutions (big corporate employers, a church or other religious organization, a prison) told us to do.
What is the alternative? Han proposed that deep contemplation and a willingness to endure boredom could be antidotes.
I’m wondering if living based on intuition and inspiration could be another way to let go of the demands of the achievement society. I don’t have to put down my activities around marketing and selling my art. I can do it from a joyful place of internal motivation, not a place of lack and desperation and “I better get going on this and do it right!”
The Fool as a role model
I did a quick Tarot reading yesterday about my urge to quit working on art as a business entirely. Last week I decided I would update my Saatchi profile with new artworks. But trying to get that done felt like moving through quicksand. I thought to myself, “maybe I should just paint for fun, not for profit.”
I’ve also been thinking about shutting down my various Substack newsletters. I think, “what is the point of all this? I have hardly any subscribers. I don’t write with any regularity. I’m not doing a good job!” But that is the achievement subject speaking. She says: don’t do something if it doesn’t result in subscribers, money, externally obvious value.
I asked Gemini to suggest a spread of cards for this crossroads. Here was the spread:
- The current energy – I drew Queen of Pentacles
- The hidden blessing of letting go – I drew The Fool
- The sustainable path – I drew The Lovers
Each of these had something interesting to say about my art practice and my art business practice, and my Substack newsletters too. I will focus on The Fool, because I think that card provides guidance for how I might exit the achievement society and live, instead, in the inspiration and contemplation society.
The Fool shows a young man wearing a vibrant tunic on a journey high in the mountains. A frolicking dog accompanies him. He is unencumbered except for a small bag of possessions. He holds a white rose, which perhaps represents purity or higher-level inspiration. He walks towards a precipice, seemingly unknowingly.
In Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack writes of this card:
The Fool represents true innocence, a kind of perfect state of joy and freedom, a feeling of being one with the spirit of life at all times; in other words, the ‘immortal’ self we feel became entrapped in the confusions and compromises of the ordinary world.
For the neoliberal subject, the ordinary world is the achievement society. In this ordinary world, she feels she must constantly seek after more external success, more money, a better and nicer house, a skinnier body, perfect health habits, an ideal romantic partner.
The Fool says, “Come with me (and my dog). You can leave all that behind. You don’t need much, probably less than what you already have.”
The Fool is numbered zero among the cards of the so-called Major Arcana (separate from the Minor Arcana, consisting of 13 cards each in four suits). As such, it is the launching pad for the journeys that you might take, with the guidance of the Tarot alongside.
Pollack writes of the Fool as the invitation to leap from the ordinary onto a path of your own choice:
Imagine yourself entering a strange landscape. A world of magicians, of people hanging upside down, and of dancers in the bright air. You can enter through a lep from a height, through a dark cave, a labyrinth, or even climbing down a rabbit hole chasing a Victorian rabbit with a pocket watch. Whichever way you choose, you are a fool to do it. Why look into the deep world of the mind when you can stay safely in the ordinary landscape of job, home and family? Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, warned his readers not to take even a step outside the ordinary path laid out for you by society. You might not get back again.
And yet, for those willing to take the chance, the leap can bring joy, adventure, and finally, for those with the courage to keep going when the wonderland becomes more fearsome than joyous, the leap can bring knowledge, peace, and liberation.
The Fool is the very opposite of an achievement subject, who is master and slave in one, exploiting herself constantly to demonstrate her fitness in the world of ambition and acquisition. The Fool doesn’t manage or command himself to do anything in particular:
For the unconscious Fool the spirit force remains always in potential, always ready, because he is not consciously directing it. We tend to misunderstand the colour black, seeing it as evil, or negation of life. Rather, black means all things being possible, infinite energy of live before consciousness has constructed any boundaries. When we fear blackness or darkness we fear the deep unconscious source of life itself.
The Fool is a symbol of transformation, says Pollack:
In the Minor Arcana the Fool relates first of all to Wands – action, eagerness, movement without thought. But it connects as well to Cups, with their emphasis on imagination and instinct. The Fool, in fact, combines these two suits. Later we will see that this combination, fire and water, represents the way of transformation.
What does The Fool mean in a reading?
In readings the Fool speaks to us of courage and optimism, urging faith in ourselves and in life….
The Fool can often symbolize beginnings, courageously leaping off into some new phase of life, particularly when that leap is taken from some deep feeling rather than careful planning.
In my reading, I think The Fool is saying to me: don’t think your way into a new way of life or command your way into it, achievement society style. Follow your instincts and inspiration instead. Write when you want. Paint when you want. Upload painting images to an online fine art marketplace when you want, if you want, not on any schedule or with any goal. Publish a newsletter article when you want, without worrying about how it will be received.
Yesterday I took that advice. I painted with abandon, without trying to produce something I thought might sell. I uploaded a few paintings to my profile on Saatchi Art without worrying about whether I did a good job with the photos or the descriptions or the pricing.
Living foolishly
This week I’ll live based on inspiration and intuition. Contemplation too (could I ever not contemplate life?) I’m not seeking productivity or setting out goals for myself.
I’ll write when I want to, paint when I want to, upload paintings to my website or Saatchi art if I feel like it. Maybe I’ll go skiing. Maybe I’ll spend time with loved ones.
This daily blog is maybe one of my most foolish activities. I do it for no other reason than because I enjoy it, and because it gives me a way to learn and contemplate. I have no external motive for it. I don’t write about what’s trending here — I wrote about the war because it’s on my mind only, not because I feel I must make some commentary on it.
I am living Han’s vita contemplativa here:
The vita contemplativa is not a matter of passive affirmation and being open to whatever happens. Instead, it offers resistance to crowding, intrusive stimuli. Instead of surrendering the gaze to external impulses, it steers them in sovereign fashion. As a mode of saying no, sovereign action [Tun] proves more active than any and all hyperactivity, which represents a symptom of mental exhaustion. [The Burnout Society, p22]
Another topic, perhaps for tomorrow: Is my current attempt to control my weight through intermittent fasting and taking bupropion something I really want to do? Is it a sovereign choice? Or am I simply applying the demands of the achievement society to my body’s size and shape?