Part 6: On Diversion

Part 6: On Diversion

Introduction As a careful and insightful student of human nature, Pascal comes to the conclusion that man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. In another pensées, he makes a universal claim: All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions (148/428). Just how many times have marriage counselors heard these words from a miserable spouse: I just want to be happy. Just how many crave excitement and surround themselves with friends and activities to distract them from their painful thoughts and lives? Seeking personal fulfillment and happiness, they have failed to grasp the reality that without diversion there is no joy; with diversion there is no sadness (136/139). Today we will invite Pascal to be our guide as we explore his staggering insights on diversion.

Peter Kreeft on Pascal s Jeremiads In his jeremiads (lamentations; complaints) against diversion and indifference, Pascal is at his most terrifyingly incisive, unendurably intimate and devastatingly unanswerable. My students are always stunned and shamed to silence as Pascal shows them in these pensées their own lives in all their shallowness, cowardice and dishonesty. He keeps doing the same thing to me all the time. Like the Holy Spirit. Peter Kreeft, Ph.D.

Diversion: A Relief From Unhappiness Diversion, n., the turning away of the thoughts, attention, etc., from fatiguing or sad occupations, with implication of pleasurable excitement; distraction, recreation, amusement, entertainment (OED). Distraction, n., the drawing away (of the mind or thoughts) from one point or course to another; diversion of the mind or attention. Usually in adverse sense (OED). Pascal: If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it (70/165b).

The Unhappiness of Man We are so unhappy that we can only enjoy something which we should be annoyed to see go wrong, and that can and does constantly happen to thousands of things. Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point. It is perpetual motion (56/181). Ecclesiastes shows that man without God is totally ignorant and inescapably unhappy, for anyone is unhappy who wills but cannot do. Now he wants to be happy and assured of some truth, and yet he is equally incapable of knowing and of not desiring to know. He cannot even doubt (75/389).

The Unhappiness of Man we have an idea of happiness but we cannot attain it (131/434). Man is so unhappy that he would be bored even if he had no cause for boredom, by the very nature of his temperament, and he is so vain that, though he has a thousand and one basic reasons for being bored, the slightest thing, like pushing a ball with a billiard cue, will be enough to divert him (136/139). There is no surer sign of extreme weakness of mind than the failure to recognize the unhappy state of man without God (427/194)

The Unhappiness of Man Diversion. From childhood on, men are made responsible for the care of their honor, their property, their friends, and even of the property and honor of their friends; they are burdened with duties, language-training and exercises, and given to understand that they can never be happy unless their health, their honor, their fortune and those of their friends are in good shape, and that it needs only one thing to go wrong to make them unhappy (139/143). Despite these afflictions man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop himself thinking about it (134/168).

Even Kings Are Unhappy Imagine any situation you like, add up all the blessings with which you could be endowed, to be king is still the finest thing in the world; yet if you imagine one with all the advantages of his rank, but no means of diversion, left to ponder and reflect on what he is, this limp felicity will not keep him going; he is bound to start thinking of all the threats facing him, of possible revolts, finally of inescapable death and disease, with the result that if he is deprived of so-called diversion he is unhappy, indeed more unhappy than the humblest of his subjects who can enjoy sport and diversion (136/139).

Man s Attempt To Be Happy Denial, n., the denying of the existence or reality of a thing (OED). Diversion. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things (133/169). who by their unrighteousness suppress (hold down; blot out) the truth (Rom. 1:18). The natural man is such a one as constantly throws water on a fire he cannot quench (Van Til).

Hunting Hares and Chasing a Ball Men spend their time chasing a ball or a hare; it the very sport of kings (39/141). The only good thing therefore is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their mind off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion which keeps them busy, like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short by what is called diversion (136/139).

Chasing Hares A frenetic activism is sometimes a compensation for some private anxiety, a flight from oneself, or the consequences of unresolved conflicts. Dr. Paul Tournier 1898-1986

The ostrich cannot defeat the tiger, but he can hide his head in the sand (Kreeft). Ostrich Epistemology

We Want The Agitation That is why gaming and feminine society, war and high office are so popular. It is not that they really bring happiness, nor that anyone imagines that true bliss comes from possessing the money to be won at gaming or the hare that is hunted: no one would take it as a gift. What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the burdens of office, but the agitation that takes our minds off it and diverts us. That is why we prefer the hunt to the capture (136/139). The hare itself would not save us from thinking about death and the miseries distracting us, but hunting it does so.

Boredom Ennui, n., a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement; boredom, tedium, malaise, melancholy, depression (OED). How tiresome it is to give up pursuits to which we have become attached. A man enjoying a happy home-life has only to see a woman who attracts him, or spend five or six pleasant days gambling, and he will be very sorry to go back to what he was doing before. It happens every day (79/128). A given man lives a life free from boredom by gambling a small sum every day. Give him every morning the money he might win that day, but on condition that he does not gamble, and you will make him unhappy (136).

Man is so unhappy that he would be bored even if he had not cause for boredom, by the very nature of his temperament, and he is so vain that, though he has a thousand and one basic reasons for being bored, the slightest thing, like pushing a ball with a billiard cue, will be enough to divert him (136/139). Boredom

Pascal s Critique of Man s Unhappiness Man is unhappy, demonstrated by the following: He diverts his thinking to other things He is annoyed when things go wrong He is unable to do what he wills or chooses to do He is easily bored He only needs one thing to go wrong in his life to upset him He does things only that he may boast about them afterwards He wants to brag that he solved a difficult problem He wants others to see just how smart he is

Is There Not Delight In Diversion? Diversion. If man were happy, the less he were diverted the happier he would be, like the saints and God. Yes: but is a man not happy who can find delight in diversion? No: because it comes from somewhere else, from outside; so he is dependent, and always liable to be disturbed by a thousand and one accidents, which inevitably cause distress. (132/170). A man is a slave to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself (George MacDonald). George MacDonald 1824-1905

The Sole Cause of Man s Unhappiness Diversion. Sometimes, when I set to thinking about the various activities of men, the dangers and troubles which they face at Court, or in war, giving rise to so many quarrels and passions, daring and often wicked enterprises and so on, I have often said that the sole cause of man s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room. A man wealthy enough for life s needs would never leave home to go to sea or besiege some fortress if he knew how to stay at home and enjoy it. Men would never spend so much on a commission in the army if they could bear living in town all their lives, and they only seek after the company and diversion of gambling because they do not enjoy staying at home (136/139).

Peter Kreeft s Experiment Once I read this answer, I felt insulted and then challenged by Pascal. Am I really incapable of the simple deed of staying quietly in my own room? Could I endure my own company alone for one hour, or am I so bored with myself that I have to invent some trouble to divert myself? I resolved to refute Pascal s implied insult and failed flat. I went into the smallest and darkest room in my house and turned off the lights. To drown out distracting noise, I turned on an electric fan to make white noise. I set an alarm outside the room for one hour. I then prepared myself to have a good, instructive, happy time meeting myself. After ten minutes, I checked the alarm and was surprised that the hour had not yet passed.

Peter Kreeft s Experiment After another ten minutes, I woke up to find myself asleep. I deliberately didn t think about anything outside the room. I didn t bring in other people or my relationships with them or my work or my plans for the future or my past. For all these things were not really there in that room with me then. Only I was. I thought I should be able to endure my own presence without running away from myself into something external, even relationships, good and important as these are; for I wanted to encounter who it was who had all these relationships. If I can t meet him, if everything I do is a diversion from the doer, I m in big trouble. I think I m in big trouble.

The Importance of Solitude Solitude is a terrible trial, for it serves to crack open and burst apart the shell of our superficial securities. It opens out to us the unknown abyss that we all carry within us and discloses the fact that these abysses are haunted (Louis Bouyer). Thomas Merton writes: That is the only reason why I desire solitude to be lost to all created things, to die to them and to the knowledge of them, for they remind me of my distance from You.

Understanding The Nature Of Man They are not wrong to want excitement if they only wanted it for the sake of diversion. The trouble is that they want it as though, once they had the things they seek, they could not fail to be truly happy. That is what justifies calling their search a vain one. All this shows that neither the critics nor the criticized understand man s real nature (136/139). They have a secret instinct driving them to seek external diversion and occupation, and this is the result of their constant sense of wretchedness.

Kreeft Holds The Mirror Up We want to complexify our lives. We don t have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.

Neither Indifference Nor Diversion No one is so happy as a true Christian, or so reasonable, virtuous, and lovable (357/541). If man was not made for God, why is he only happy in God? If man was made for God, why is he so opposed to God (399/438). Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God (131/434).

Our Desires Are Too Weak Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased (C.S. Lewis). C.S. Lewis 1898-1963