Is man a happy creature? Is it in our nature to be happy? Blaise Pascal in his Pensees, translated as ‘thoughts,’ muses over these questions in his chapter on diversions and concludes rather pessimistically that we are not happy creatures. The book is a collection of his notes and was not meant by him to be published in its current form. Hence a reader of the work might find it fragmentary and incomplete. This is not a terse and rigorous philosophical treatise. He makes non-sequiturs, repeats himself often and some sentences are merely phrases. He wasn’t being intentionally cryptic -- this is his notebook we are reading though he did have in mind for it to serve as a basis for a work on Christian apologetics, i.e. a defence of the Christian religion. Unfortunately, this project still remained incomplete upon his death in 1662. Pascal is not a theologian, in fact most people would recognise his name from his theorems in mathematics but he was more than that, he was also an important and interesting thinker. There are some valuable jewels in this work such as his chapter on diversion which I would discuss here. 265. He starts by asking, is man a happy creature? Is it in our nature to be happy? He wonders why we continually search for amusements instead of just being satisfied and contented in our solitude and rest. After all, we do derive pleasure, and in that way happiness, from amusements. The problem with such diversion-seeking is that because amusements come from outside us, from somewhere else other than within us, it makes us dependent on external forces and exposes us “to a thousand accidents that inevitably lead to affliction.”
266/267. We can’t help but wish to be happy. Pascal suggests that for us to be completely happy, we need to be immortal but since it is not possible, all we can do is to try to stop thinking about it. We are “unable to cure death, misery [and] ignorance” and so we avoid thinking about such topics and we do so by distracting ourselves.
269. He writes: “I have often felt that men’s unhappiness is due solely to the fact that they are incapable of sitting down quietly in a room and relaxing. If he were capable of staying at home and enjoying it, a man who has enough to live on would not abandon his home in order to go on a sea voyage or take part in the siege of a fortified city.” Indeed, why can’t we just be contented and be calm and peaceful in calm and peaceful surroundings such as our homes? Here, you might be wondering what he is talking about since you often sit at home. But when you do, do you just sit quietly and contemplate or do you switch on the tv, the computer, play on your phone, read a book, listen to music, or talk to others? Imagine the same room now in your home, but emptied of everything except you and the chair you sit on. How long do you think you would enjoy being in that room before you get completely bored?
Pascal does recognise that we first need to meet our basic needs, which if not met, would bring a different kind of misery from what he is exploring here. He is not talking about the suffering from hunger or being unable to breathe or poverty. He is talking about how, even after we have met all our basic requirements, and might even be living in luxury, we still are afflicted. Why do we feel we need to go on holidays where we expose ourselves to all sorts of expenses, difficulties and discomforts? At least with holidays, we are expecting new experiences and pleasures but he talks about going to war, where we put ourselves at peril. He attributes it to a “natural misfortune of our feeble and mortal state,” i.e. it is our nature, as limited and weak beings, which means we cannot help our condition, at least not by our own efforts, making us wretched and inconsolable.
Even people who are in the best positions, who have every material thing they could possibly want, for instance, kings, cannot escape this affliction. So you can see clearly that Pascal is talking about a more profound kind of suffering. Not the suffering of poverty or fear which is indeed a great suffering but is not his topic. He is talking about how anyone, anyone at all, who might have all the material conditions of their lives met, and who might even have plenty more, will still suffer from the afflictions he is talking about. Such a person, and you may be able to identify with such a person, will still be bogged down by his wretched condition, where whatever satisfaction he derives from the rich conditions of his life is still not sufficient to “keep him going”. He will still brood over other people’s opinions about him which might threaten his position in his work or in his social circles. Those in power might face revolts. Death and sickness still remain. Hence our unhappy thoughts remain lurking in the background and they surface if we do not shut them out through distracting ourselves.
We distract ourselves in several ways. It can be work, where we busy ourselves with business matters. It can be hobbies or other pursuits undertaken as entertainment such as gambling or hunting (yes, you have to remember he lived in the 17th century) or watching a show. He believes that we crave such things not because they bring happiness. If we saw that same animal that we hunted in the market, we might not be interested to buy it or want it even if it was given to us for free. Have you ever gone fishing and thrown the fish you caught back into the water or given it away since you had no intention from the start to eat it?
If we were simply given the money we won at a gambling session but had to give up the gamble, we might not be interested. This means that we seek out these amusements, these diversions, not because we are interested in their direct products, for e.g. the winnings from gambling or the food from hunting. We carry out these diversions for other reasons. “We do not seek the soft and easy life, which leaves us time to brood over our unhappy lot,” he writes. Instead “we seek the fuss and flurry which stop us from brooding and keep us amused.” In other words, “we prefer the hunt to the kill.” We do these activities simply to distract ourselves. He observes that this desire for diversions is precisely why prison is “such a frightful punishment” since it reduces to almost nothing our possibility of finding distractions, leaving us with nothing to do. Even having something to worry about is better than the pure rest of having nothing to do. Hence, the pursuit of amusement is not blameworthy in Pascal’s eyes since it is simply our nature. However, we must understand that all we are doing is distracting ourselves. The mistake will be when we think that our distractions, our possession of material goods, are what truly will make us happy.
Pascal believes that this mistake is common because people do not “know themselves.” They do not realise this fundamental truth about themselves. People sincerely seek to find “rest,” believing that if they managed to acquire what they pursued, be it amusements or material possessions, that would give them contentment and hence they can then be at rest. Pascal proposes that we have two opposing drives, the first which he had already elaborated – we seek amusement and even work because we are aware of our unhappiness if we have nothing to do. The second comes from our original nature where we were made perfect by God, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, with the idea that happiness can “be found only in repose and not in turmoil.” Because of these two conflicting drives, we try to “seek repose through turmoil,” thinking that contentment would be ours once we managed to overcome some obstacle. Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘I’d be happy if I could get my dream job/toy/watch/house/car?’ However, when we finally do manage to achieve these things, and can finally rest, instead we get bored. Pascal is describing the hedonistic treadmill where we have to then start again and find some other new thrill or aim. He asks, what is the kind of happiness that human beings can have when all we do, due to our nature, is to go from one diversion to the next.
He points out the flip side to this. We may have many causes for real unhappiness but small diversions such as playing a game or sport can take our minds off them. He does not mean this in a good way however, calling it “frivolous.” Pascal suggests that should we be confronted with terrible things like death, that we don’t think about it, making the pill easier to swallow. He writes: “It is easier to accept death without thinking about it than the idea of death when we are in no danger of dying.” [271]
He thinks our vanity is part of the reason why we act like this. So we can boast to others how we have played a game well, convince others that we are smarter than them since we managed to solve a difficult mathematical problem, or even expose ourselves to danger so that we can boast later of our escape from it. Even philosophers such as himself who think about this nature of man have no recourse. In fact, he thinks that “they are the most foolish of the lot because they are aware of their foolishness.”
To compound our misery, it isn’t just any simple diversion that will satisfy us. “A vapid amusement which rouses no passion will weary him,” he says. So we need the diversion to not only distract us but also to excite us. We need to be fooled, to be tricked into believing that we will be satisfied once we achieved whatever the diversion is about. He goes back to gambling as an example. If a gambler used to playing for money had to play the same games but with no stakes, he would get bored. He will not get excited and the diversion would be ineffective.
This same affliction befalls seemingly successful people. He talks about judges, chancellors and financial leaders who are kept busy with work all day with hardly a moment for rest or for themselves. While they are still in the working phase of their lives, they may be hoping for retirement but when retirement finally arrives, even in their condition of wealth and comfort with servants to tend to their needs, they become lonely and unhappy, having lost the distraction of work.
272. “How hollow is the heart of man and how full of vileness!” laments Pascal on the human condition.
Well, there it is, this short chapter on diversion from Pascal’s Pensees. He offers no solutions here though his bigger project is to argue why we need god in our lives. Putting that aside, I guess the main consolation we can get from this is to know we are not alone in feeling this way. If anything, our quest for distraction has become more intense, with hardly a moment to just be quiet. Do you use your phone while you are sitting on the toilet bowl? Are you one of those people who try to occupy every moment even when you are walking in the streets with your eyes glued to a screen? Do you think you do it to try to fill an unfillable void in your heart? Do you think you need to disconnect to connect, to connect to yourself first of all? Let us know in the comments section and remember to subscribe to the PB channel.
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