Upon the Virtues of Folly

Black Swan

Arturo Perez-Reverte in The Fencing Master inspired this folly piece, for what it's worth, if anything. He interpreted "Aeneas fleeing Troy" as it burned in a novel way (pp 102-3) that suggested people hide (a form of fleeing) their past follies, to remain there as ghosts that occasionally appear in fleeting memory moments triggered when something or someone reminds them of their past. When young, such ghosts may painfully sting upon recall, and were often exacerbated, not lessened by "live and learn" or "take it on the chin" or "that's life" cliché and paternalistic comments of older persons, who have learned to hide their ghosts better.

It follows that the longer we live the more chances we have to experience follies of our own making, as well as when we had been seduced by other persons to do so, which at their beginning may have appeared worth the days, months, and years of dedicated work and commitment, only to find disillusionment and disappointment at the end.

For example, when we work for pay, we generally produce more value than paid, the owner then deducts the costs of doing business from the revenues received for products or services generated by our work, keeping the net profits as a return on his investment. In time we may learn and know as much about the business as the owner, and although we may receive raises in pay, we never realise the returns on the investment derived from our labour that the owner does. If we stay until retirement, we are given a party, or certificate, or gold watch, or some other token, extraordinarily far below the value of our accumulated surplus labour profits since joining the business, which the owner harvested to pay for his mansion, expensive cars, trips about the world, etc. Was this folly for the worker, or survival, or what?

He goes further to suggest, with subtle irony, that advancing beyond middle age persons often accumulate and surround themselves with tokens of past follies, framing them on the wall, or pinning them to their uniformed chests, or repetitiously recounting them in chats with similar old folks about a cafe table. Thus, with advancing time the specter of folly regret has been transformed and replaced paradoxically by its opposite: The virtues of folly.

Balf

Black Swan wrote: »

<..>, or repetitiously recounting them in chats with similar old folks about a cafe table.

It strikes me as a similar version of reality, if a different viewpoint, to Guy Clark's song "Desparados waiting for a train", particularly that line:

There were old men with beer guts and dominos
Lying 'bout their lives while they'd played

The theme of much of life being taken up with the care and maintenance of illusion is quite commonplace. Tons of examples come to mind. Like MacBeth

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Or Bruce Springsteen

End up like a dog that's been beat too much
'til you spend half your life just covering up.

I suspect the Christian conception of sin and redemption is and was successful because it struck a similar chord with people.

Torakx

It reminds me vaguely of Nietzsche's writing on slave and master morality.

To the slave, it would be virtuous or noble to serve a master, not take the greater share and look back at that life as a job well done. "The meek shall inherit the earth".
While living in and recounting such "folly" it can be viewed and felt as noble, in a slave.

To a master, that same life's work might be seen as folly and coated in regret.
The master sees self serving as noble. As it allows them to go on to do things for many others. Like running a business that can hire more slaves, who need to work for food and survive..
The selfishness of the master is for the greater good. The big house and car are justified in this way.

Here is where it gets interesting for me.
Both of these moralities are built into all animals that work in groups.
The human virtues, are instinctual mechanics overlayed with culture(self to group) and religious belief (death conciliation).

I'll focus on the foundational animal instinct, as the human additions, in my view, are just an abstraction to cope with higher intelligence and future thinking.

Simon Sinek has some good lectures on leadership. He speaks a lot about human instincts and our biochemistry, which would explain more of animal instinct in humans.

The pack leader(master) takes the risks and glady, because he get's first dibs on the gene pool and the larger portion of everything.The caveat is that he must also be the first to die, to protect the pack.
Supply of security = first dibs.
The rest of the pack(slaves) will gladly give the leader all these things, in order to have security.
I say he, because the ability to plant seeds, allows them to be sacrificed more often.
This could be a nice intro to a conversation on feminism and cognitive or instinctual dissonance.

On the human side of things.
The framed trophies, stories and memorabilia, can be viewed in retrospect from either slave or master perspectives by anyone. Because every animal/human has it in them at some level, to step up and lead when a situation forces it.
And so, they have the ability to view it from either master or slave perspective.
I think it depends how much a person has become a master and how much a slave, in their lifetime.

Maybe the important question is not so much whether the work or time spent was folly, but whether the perspective and retrospective is that of a master or slave.

A slave looking back on a life of big houses and fast cars at the expense of others, would be filled with regrets... or maybe emptiness.
Their job was to serve the leader and pack.

A master looking back on a life of slavery/servitude, would have the same regret and emptiness.
Their job was to serve themselves and the pack.

And to get to the source of my existential angst
There are those who are too weak to take lead, but too strong to follow.
Those animals usually are chased away from the pack, by the leaders.
In human culture this might describe the Shaman,priest,philosopher and other modern cultural pariahs too.
What I like to refer to as, "the thing that should not be"
The Shaman, I guess, would have a conflicted view on their virtues and follies.