Augustine

With the lackadaisical air of a second-semester senior, my philosophy class is grudgingly working its way through Saint Augustine’s The Confessions. As our progression clomps along, halted frequently by the obligatory dialectical quibbles and questions that crop up via my (perhaps overtly) argumentative peers, a vein of time has been opened in which I’ve found a few interesting quotes from this book.

Augustine’s stories and perspective on the world are, at times, scarily similar to things and ideas I hear about or personally experience. Now, this is a guy from 354 AD (BCE, have what you will), or 1657 years ago. And yet I can’t help but laugh or agree with some of his resonant and applicable ideas. Plus, he’s a bloody genius and, of course, rather loquacious. So the odds of something being true are good. But still, look at the below quote. How many of you tired teenagers have not shared this sentiment?

“I was thus weighed down by the pleasant burden of the world in the way one commonly is by sleep… No one wants to be asleep all the time, and it is generally agreed among sensible people that being awake is a better state, yet it often happens that a person puts off the moment when he must shake himself out of sleep because his limbs are heavy with a lassitude that pulls him toward the most attractive alternative, even though he is already trying to resist it and the hour for rising has come…”

Thus writes the most influential interpreter of the bible (up to his time, that is), commiserating with all who face the daily grind of this waking life. This may be a touch irreverent, but it’s amusing to picture Augustine lying in bed, discoursing with himself on the merits of rousing or sleeping. If I had more skill I’d draw a comic, but alas imagination will have to substitute for whatever pathetic images I can generate.

Not only does Augustine relate the allure of a blissfully warm bed, but his take on peer pressure and gossip are also interesting. This sentence, for example, in which he recalls his mother’s ability to avoid gossip:

“She would hear many a bitter accusation from each against the other, of the kind that lumpy, ill-digested discord is wont to belch forth when someone dyspeptic with hatred spews out acid talk to a present friend concerning an absent enemy”

Fantastic wordage and verbage, potent imagery; and look at its relevance! How many times have we heard, or, Augustine-forbid-us, personally flailed at the images and reputations of others when they are not present and able to defend themselves? What terrible ego-buffing occurs among the high school comrades, those that cruelly reveal other’s shortcomings, use the inevitable human failings of others as their own stepping stones to rise higher in the social circle of vicious treachery, maliciously laughing as they pass the trailing strands of broken trust that they have so readily severed. For shame, you belching dyspeptic discords, for shame.

And where would gossip be in the social setting without the co-villain, peer pressure? …Look out! You’re rushing into the same trap that Augustine and other children fell headlong into a millennia and a half ago.

“I rushed on headlong in such blindness that when I heard other youths of my own age bragging about their immoralities I was ashamed to be less depraved than they….when I had no indecent acts to admit that could put me on a level with these abandoned youths, I pretended to obscenities I had not committed, lest I might be though less courageous for being more innocent, and be accounted cheaper for being more chaste.”

How many boasts and brags, bets and fools, have been made among the students and adults who care for these petty appearances? How many trivial competitions flourish within our hearts, oh Augustine? Apologies; I facetiously am mocking no singular being, but the stereotypical image I find some peers conforming too. But to lighten this lengthy preachy compilation of denunciation and condemnation, here’s an interesting statement.

"Even the natural pleasures of human life are obtained through distress, not only through the unexpected calamities that befall against our will but also through deliberate and personal discomfort. There is no pleasure in eating and drinking unless the discomfort of hunger and thirst have preceded them".

I have to agree with the above, and this time less scathingly. How miserable I am, the odd times I find myself in a car, being shuttled from my warm home to this cozy school; how infinitely better it is, the trauma of waiting for the bus in sub-zero temperatures only to be joyously relieved by the warmth, once taken for granted, now greedily cherished. How peaceful it is, to bask in the warm environs of the rickety MTD, how basic the pleasure of a warm enclosure. Current depravations and wants only make their later deliverance all the more powerful. Food, water, Starcraft. Sleep!

It’s odd, the resonance and fraternity I feel for the occasional anecdote in Augustine’s writings. Perhaps my mind happily latches onto the more vituperative statements because, like Augustine, the vile debauchery of society has overwhelmed my soul. I jest, though, rather I’m simply anti-social. Woe to me!

“… the woe I felt over my woe was yet another woe, and I was distressed by this double sadness.”