The Discontents of Philosophy
A short play
Setting
The scene unfolds in a café at a railway station amid the hustle and bustle of travellers. The curtain rises as two people are engrossed in a conversation.
Act
“Aren’t all lives the same?”
“What do you mean?”
“The same. How is our life different from any other life? It’s the same story over and over again.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Well, you know, all lives are the same in the sense that what is happening today has always happened. What you feel right now has always been felt. All lives are the same. You are born and you grow up wanting things. A life is just an endless struggle to get what one wants. It’s as if we’re born on rail tracks where the only way to go is where the tracks take you.”
“Yes...so what? What-”
“So nothing, it’s just an observation. And you know what’s worse? What’s worse is the attempt to get off the tracks. The belief that not running after your desires is somehow better. But not wanting to run after something is a desire too. We are born on the tracks of desire. Stuck in a loop forever.”
“Fine. But let me ask you this - do you consider self-denial to be a virtue? If our tracks are fixed, is there any merit in finding contentment in being virtuous? It’s still a desire, but isn’t that a better desire?”
“Too much of a good thing is bad. For me, self-denial falls in that category. That’s what I’d say. Aristotle wrote about this. He talked about the ‘virtuous mean’ - the idea that our conduct should lie between the extremes. Denying your desires and sacrificing them totally is an excess.”
“But wouldn’t you rather be at the extremes? Somehow being in the middle feels like being average. You’re neither here nor there.”
“I think that...I think that each position on the spectrum is unsatisfying in its own way. We are condemned to a life of confusion. The pursuit of your ideal life is a mirage, yet it is a mirage which we have no choice but to run towards.”
"Well, you make it sound as if we’re forced to run towards it. But it’s not that we’re forced to run towards it but that we want to run towards it. Life’s a bit like...a bit like a weekend. You enter it with great expectations only to watch it slip away as you long to hold on to it."
"Errrmm-"
“But then what's the solution?”
“There is no solution. That-”
“Why discuss it then?”
“Well, the fact that Aristotle was discussing exactly what we’re discussing just shows that what is happening today has always happened and will always happen. Like I said, there’s only one rail track, and we’re trains doing endless circuits of it.”
"You're obsessed with that analogy."
"But-"
"Well listen - we better get going or we'll miss our own train."
Exeunt
