. Spinning .

There’s no reason to believe that gender is not as strong an influence as experience on author input, and though I’d like to believe that I have a more balanced female/male way of thinking, I’m not quite getting Kundera’s statement on sex being the only real differentiation in women.

To be sure, the millionth part dissimilarity is present in all areas of human existence, but in all areas other than sex it is exposed and needs no one to discover it, needs no scalpel. One woman prefers cheese at the end of the meal, another loathes cauliflower, and although each may demonstrate her originality thereby, it is an originality that demonstrates its own irrelevance and warns us to pay it not heed, to expect nothing of value to come of it.

Only in sexuality does the millionth part dissimilarity become precious, because, not accessible to the public, it must be conquered. (p. 200)

I’m all for vive la difference! and certainly have enough experience to know that each man is different in the sack too, but frankly, I would still think that a good sit-down conversation over a glass of wine and plate of brie and grapes will reveal more of what is unique or particular to him.

Might I suggest that Kundera is giving Tomas an "out" or an excuse for his behavior–and he really needs none–because since his relationship with Tereza, it causes him some internal conflict.

So it was a desire not for pleasure (the pleasure came as an extra, a bonus) but for possession of the world (slitting open the outstretched body of the world with his scalpel) that sent him in pursuit of women.

Well, that’s a new one.

Wow. Looks like the last third of the book is going to be the best.  Okay, so I flipped through and scanned to see what was coming up and realized that before we get into the sex, we have to recognize it as a metaphor and understand what’s going on here.

Isn’t making love merely an eternal repetition of the same?  (p. 199)

(Which then would make it something of meaning, at least in Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return)

Not at all. There is always the small part that is unimaginable.  When he saw a woman in her clothes, he could naturally imagine more or less what she would look like naked (his experience as a doctor supplementing his experience as a lover), but between the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality there was a small gap of the unimaginable, and it was this hiatus that gave him no rest.

Ah, the "small gap of the unimaginable," is bound to intrigue. There we may find the hyperlink, the individuality of being that each reader writes with his own imagination because it leads to the unknown; unknown, because it is hidden from view and thus dependent upon what experience the reader/user brings with him.  Does he then in fact change that which is hidden into a new ‘history’ for himself?

What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common.  The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

Sex being the metaphor, I would think, for the mind, the individual patterns of thinking and experience that makes us ourselves. Does communication then become foreplay? Does it depend upon how much effort one puts into it?

Yeah, this is going to be an interesting part of the book.

Kundera has a novel way of developing his characters. The protagonist of the novel, Tomas, was rather briefly explained in the beginning chapters, mainly through his interaction with other characters such as Tereza and Sabina. What was painted of Tomas then came more strongly through indepth coverage of Tereza and Sabina and their own personal histories.  What Tomas came out looking like was sort of a real jerk who crossed his own boundaries only when he couldn’t have it both ways, i.e., love without commitment.

In this section of the story we are invited to see a side of Tomas that is not influenced by his emotional or physical drives, but more by his own facing of his character as it is questioned by that underlying force of government, a thread that has run throughout the story as a background to the people involved.

I like this:

People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.  (p. 192)

Once again Tomas must choose his direction in order to insure his safety within a shaky regime. When he is once again asked to recant his original article and to take it even further he decides to give up even his lowly clinic job, and for a rather strange reason:

The official with whom Tomas negotiated his resignaiton knew him by name and reputation and tried to talk him into staying on.  Tomas suddenly realized that he was not at all sure he had made the proper choice, but he felt bound to it by then by an unspoken vow of fidelity, so he stood fast.  And that is how he became a window washer.

Fidelity? The one thing that stood as a wall between him and Tereza? For this he is willing to make such a major switch?  But Kundera has given us insight into Tomas as well as human nature that makes this decision even more weighty:

Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one of another lifelong activity.  Every Frenchman is different. But all actors the world over are similar–in Paris, Prague, or the back of beyond.  An actor is someone who in early childhood consents to exhibit himself for the rest of his life to an anonymous public.  (…) Similarly, a doctor is someone who consents to spend his life involved with human bodies and all that they entail.  (p. 193)

Where does this fit, then, within the theory of "unbearable lightness of being?"  Does the role one takes on come with the burden of fidelity, much as Shakespear’s "to thine own self be true?" Is the burden one of lightness or weight; is the shedding of it one or the other?

I seem to have a knack for reading the right book at the right time, where its relevancy to current events can be easily seen. Although it’s more probable that my memory–which was never good at best–only retains the most recent happenings.

Here we have an official from the Ministry checking in on Tomas two years after he’s lost his job and is working at a small clinic:

There was a short pause, after which the man from the Ministry said in mournful tones, "Then tell me, Doctor, do you really think that Communists should put out their eyes? You, who have given so many people the gift of health?"
"But that’s preposterous!" Tomas cried in self-defense. "Why don’t you read what I wrote?"
"I have read it," said the man from the Ministry in a voice that was meant to sound very sad.
"Well, did I write that Communists ought to put out their eyes?"
"That’s how everyone understood it," said the man from the Ministry, his voice growing sadder and sadder.
"If you’d read the complete version, the way I wrote it originally, you wouldn’t have read that into it. The published version was slightly cut."  (p. 186)

Ah, the fine editorial skills of the media, politicians, and of the political mobs. That’s why we get the wrong information presented when it’s taken out of context or twisted. Who’s actually voted on this tax or that, and when and why changes meaning with the full story.  Or this:

If McCain is elected as President, Sarah Palin will be a heartbeat
away from running our country- and if that doesn’t scare the hell out
of you, it should. There is significant risk of this occurring in his
first term alone, augmented by McCain’s age and history of cancer. 18%
of presidents have died in office. The possibility that Palin could
become president if McCain is elected is very real indeed.

18% of the 43 elected presidents means that 8 presidents have died in office, and that in fact is true. But of those 8, 4 were assassinated, 2 died of pneumonia, 1 died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and one died of food poisoning from eating cherries in (likely spoiled) milk on a hot day. Now how does that raise McCain’s chances of dying in office?  How is it relative in any way?  Yet I found this as a headline in a major Facebook (Hate) Group.  I wouldn’t doubt that there’s a group that espouses some twisted version of fact against the other candidates as well.

The point is, something strange happens to a lot of people at campaign time; some kind of chemical gets released in the brain and produces some pretty weird stories and believers.

NOTE: I have purposely avoided providing links to the above quote though it can be easily found, or backup on the facts I’ve stated–which can also easily be confirmed in several sites online. 

Tomas has made a major decision in remaining with Tereza. In making that decision he has chosen a path. Now he faces another major decision, that of retracting a statement against the authorities that will cost him his position at the hospital if he chooses not to do so. These are major choices, ones that require consideration of outcome, though even the smallest choices in life, like going to the gas station before going to the bank hold the possibility of great change.

At this point I reread the back cover, which succinctly lays down the theory of "lightness of being":

In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

And yet we have Tomas making decisions of import, of weight; ones that will change his life forever. He can remain a surgeon, with the government’s shadowed threat of revelation, or he must leave and find a job elsewhere, branded an enemy of the state. Certainly life changing. Only one path can be taken, parallel choices do not exist. One would think that the choice then bears considerable weight by its impact on his life.

It may be difficult to understand the idea that in fact the decision made one way or the other is indeed meaningless, weightless.  But if you consider that only one or the other can exist, the one that is chosen is no more meaningful than the one rejected, as their values were equal before the decision was made, and just as one was chosen and the other was passed, either could have been selected, making the other the ‘unselected’ and so both still have the value of being meaningless.

It’s an interesting principle of life, and it would be eye-opening I’m sure to spend a couple days applying it to all choices faced.  It’s the Principle of Whatever…

Ah, you take a break and the thoughts continue on in hypertext threads to another universe of ideas: applying the principle of weight/lightness that Kundera is giving us.

Using the passages of the book noted in the prior post, let’s examine the theory. One would think that bearing the burden of guilt would be the weight, the responsibility, and that the declaration of innocence (even out of ignorance) would be the lightness and freedom of burden.  But wait–isn’t that the very essence of "the unbearable lightness?"

For those who may shout that "not knowing" frees them from the burden, also, if they have a shred of decency, understand that they do indeed bear responsibility and that’s what their burden is. Maybe it’s just conscience, or maybe it’s something within each of us that doesn’t let us off the hook with ourselves as easily as society might be willing to do. Maybe it’s that ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ that is a self-imposed standard that only each man knows for himself.

And, I think that we also impose a double standard; one for own behavior and one for that of others. Some people are more demanding of others than they are on themselves. Some are more forgiving of others than of themselves. But the unbearable burden is the one we take up and carry when we’re not looking to do so.