Advice from somewhere, someone

I do not, customarily, consider advice provided. As a statement of what is right and good, advice must rightly emerge from a framework of what is right and good. Within such a model, the very best advice—that advice which is always right—is tautology; a piece of advice which adheres to a system of values which has already been accepted cannot have been provided, because it already was, inherent to those values. This sort of advice was already knewn; one simply hadn’t been practicing it to as full an extent—receiving the advice was perhaps helpful, but more in the way of nagging reminder than profound revelation.

I cannot say much for profound revelations—possibly, but not necessarily, because I haven’t achieved any, or perhaps because I don’t remember and recognise any. Still, it is so apocalyptic advice, if to a lesser extent, which might be considered advice which can be provided: advice which is not in every case in accord with one’s priors. Advice which is provided must be advice which introduces a new aspect into (or overturns altogether, though mere advice which does this much seems rare) one’s judgment of what is good and right.

Now, if a certain Stephen Crane of the nineteenth century happens to have written, and published in a collection (War is Kind and, and Other Lines) a brief poem, reproduced below:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
”A sense of obligation."

—then, shall we say that this advice, or at least the sentiment, was provided to me Stephen Crane himself?

There are at least three quite distinct elements in this story, which are to great extent separated in continuity but united by an overarching theme.

Of the formers, one first intersects with our third fully three years ago, with a contemporary schoolteacher’s and its declaration. The former is Thomas Jacobs, and the latter is, variously, “I don’t care how you feel,” “I don’t care about your feelings,” “I don’t care about student [sic].” (This latter has been accompanied by “I care about students,” which tends to be contextually the implication of the the formers as well.)

A second is an introduction to the Stephen Crane cited above, in the form of handout distributed by Marissa Smith, closer to two years ago, a piece of American literature.

A third comes as parts of the closing lines of two different translations of Albert Camus’ L’Étranger (The Stranger), the Matthew Ward and the Stuart Gilbert, distributed by the same, as the same piece of world literature. Respectively, they read:

As if the blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

Shall we consider this three items of advice? Or shall we, rather, consider this a single item of advice—and then, which did it come from—if any?

Perhaps a better question would ask whether this is good advice.

I consider this in whole to be a single item of good advice. That is to say, this sentiment, conveyed to me by three paths, contributes to a single whole which agrees in large part with my definition of value, of what is right and what is good. It has been, or it has become, or it has been incorporated into, a defining element of my Weltanschauung.

I would not say it has done me any favours in suggesting courses of action; perhaps even very much the opposite. But it has provided me with a framework in which to accomodate reality. An uncaring world of uncaring others driven by uncaring phenomena is a world with plenty of room for pleasant things. It is a pleasantly simple world of itself.