My friend Peter Wessel Zapffe

Peter Wessel Zapffe – and my philosophy.


I am against idolisation. I hate the idea about being a “fan” – but SHOULD I, in a weak moment, ever give in to this kind of unquestionable admiration, Zapffe would be very high on my list of idols. His philosophy suits me to the core; I understand what he says – with every nerve in my body; and I fail to see that his message is as negative as many people claim. In fact I find it a thoroughly positive, life-confirming message and it removes the mythological veil and gobbledygook, with which the human species constantly surrounds itself, leaving a clear and unpolluted message about our existence.

Zapffe was a prolific mountaineer and an author of many humorous short stories about climbing and other adventures in nature, taking a very early interest in environmentalism. He was also an atheist – and so am I. I used to be an agnostic, mainly from an intellectual point of view: you cannot prove or disprove what is improvable, so better leave the door open if one day something proving a god’s existence should turn up. But that is a stance that put me on the side of wet noodles while performing a mental balancing act leading nowhere. All religious people – without exception – can be pushed into saying: “I just know”, while having to admit that theirs is nothing but a firm, unwavering belief. And it remains a belief. Face it: there is no argument whatsoever that proves the existence of a god. Full stop. Luckily it is a prerogative of ours to believe what we want, as long as we leave people with different beliefs in peace. Unfortunately most religions carry an anachronistic luggage that doesn’t allow such tolerance.

Zapffe defined 4 dimensions describing the way we live our lives:

* Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling". We are probably all familiar with the tendency to ignore bad news, as it “disturbs our circles” – and if we can’t do it with a positive mind, there are plenty of drugs available that can help us. But it is hardly a viable way to help us live full lives. Living in isolation must be a short-term solution and as such good enough – just consider holidays, an evening’s binge drinking, an LSD-trip or falling madly and unconditionally in love with no thought for the consequences. The Chinese would probably add ‘gardening’ as a happy escape to a mental paradise!

* Anchoring is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the maelstrom of targets for our consciousness". The anchoring mechanism provides individuals with a value or an ideal that allows them to focus their attentions in a consistent manner. It is a hook to a virtual reality that saves us from drowning in unending possibilities. Zapffe applied the anchoring principle to e.g. society, and stated "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future" are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments. You could add ‘Political Manifestos’ to this array; this explains why someone claiming to side with e.g. the Labour party will believe blindly in – and fight for – everything the party gurus claim to be eternal truths and accepted values. Without ‘anchoring’ there would be total chaos within each party as everyone would have their own interpretation of the party-line. As we can see, this doesn’t happen, or at least only to a very small degree. Humans are indeed special!

* Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions". Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself. This is clearly related to the ‘Isolation’-dimension, but it has a more positive ring to it, as it is enforced by a level of activity. Distraction is perhaps more related to escapism in its pure form.

* Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, towards positive ones. The individual distances him / herself and looks at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g. writers, poets, painters.) Zapffe himself pointed out that his work was the product of sublimation. Should I be forced to choose any single dimension for my life, this would be the one. I have often described my mind as being lodged – like a donkey – between a carrot and a stick, but always seen the carrot more clearly than I felt the pain from the stick. I can assure any reader that it is a feeling that more than anything else will bring you rather unscathed through difficult periods in one’s life.
Here is a number of quotes that more than anything else illustrate “Zapffism”:

* "Each new generation asks - What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be - Why do we need a meaning with life?" Who says? Why can’t we just determine a set of sociological, political, humanitarian values and establish our own meaning? Where does this blind belief come from, that someone ‘out there’ should have introduced a higher objective with our being born and passing away? Why not accept that we are a fluke of nature’s many awesome processes?

* "Human beings are a tragic species. Not because of our smallness, but because we are too well endowed. We have longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfil. We have expectations of a just and moral world. We require meaning in a meaningless world". Where is the ‘fair and just’ world for ants when their hill is turned upside down by a passing deer in the forest? During billions of years we happen to have developed the incredible ability of abstract thinking, which has made life so complex for us. It is a curse as well as a blessing. An ant in Australia behaves by and large like an ant in Brazil and an English finch sings the same tune as a Danish one. Only humans develop and behave unpredictably. As a consequence of our possessing an incredible bio-computer we have the ability to create a multitude of behaviours. It helps us invent and use tools that empower our weak construction beyond the imaginable and enables us to create intellectual discontinuity jumps in areas we cannot even fathom ourselves. But when we compare with the rest of the animal – or plant! – world, each species appears to be endowed with an equally amazing performance ability – only far more selective and specialised and highly constrained in freedom. The difference is that humans have no preset level! We are a fluke of nature and it is up to us, whether we decide to use it positively or negatively. It does NOT prove the existence of a god. At best you can say that you BELIEVE, but that is a completely personal matter with no scientific value.

* "The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn't seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer". Why are we so hung up on the idea that there must be an answer to everything? Take the concept of ‘time’, for example. My childhood’s eternal questions were: when did the universe start? What is on the other side of the universe? And what was there before? The answer may be startling simple: time is our invention! It is irrelevant to talk about time, which we have defined as various fractions of the Earth’s movement. We must realise that Earth, in a cosmic sense, is nothing! We can of course use a more universal definition of time: the oscillation period of Caesium atoms. We know that time dilutes the closer we get to the speed of light or close to a strong gravitational field. This we can verify by experiment. But to make Einstein's equation E=mc2 work, he also made mass a variable. That is the reverse of science! New theories (Frank Atkinson) indicate that mass is constant while the speed of light varies. It may always be maxed out at 300,000 Km/sec - but if a second only lasts "half as long" in a different time domain, e.g. close to a galaxy, then - - - - ? Perhaps the Universe always was? perhaps the red-shift of light is NOT an indication of the doppler effect of the Big Bang, which therefore never was? Einstein can easily be debunked (see my 2011 blog entries), using his own relativity arguments and a speeding train. We are left with only serious mathematics in our attempts to explain cosmic theories, while the mind, that tries to perceive the existence of parallel universes or string theories and the concept of endlessness (both in time-terms and distance) has had to be parked in a quiet spot long ago. We are not built to relate to such metaphysics. We must give up believing that WE have invented everything. The only thing we have ever invented is a load of  religious nonsense, demonstrating our smallness. 
'Nature' is beyond our wildest imagination - from superfast Neutrinos to Galaxies 50bill light years away.
So what remains?
As long as we keep asking questions and are curious, we are alive.
Perhaps THIS is the true meaning of life?

* "We come from an inconceivable nothingness. We stay a while in something which seems equally inconceivable, only to vanish again into the inconceivable nothingness". And is that so bad? We came out of the primordial soup after the big bang - and may disappear in another big bang one day. I wish someone could tell me why this is such a negative notion. What it is all about is “what do we make of it while we are here”. I believe Zapffe had the same idea. When we disappear, someone else will take over and it is our responsibility to make sure that the heritage is worth while. We, ourselves, are left to become dust and time limited memories – and therein lies, hopefully, some value. The Ptolemaic Egyptians kept the richly decorated mummy coffins containing their ancestors piled up against the wall in the triclinium of their dwellings. That way dad, granny and great-great grand dad were kept integrated with daily life for a while. When none of the later generations recognised who they were, the coffins were dumped in the desert sand - and found by Flinders Petrie in the 1860s.

* "The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end". – We must concentrate on the consequence of our immediate decisions for the sake of ourselves, while we are here and able to create a brief flash of meaning, and perhaps to pass one iota of accrued knowledge to our children. Experience shows that they have little interst in receiving "old wisdom", but perhaps we become wiser in a billion years?

* "Death is a terrible provocation. It appears almost everywhere, presenting a stern but effective scale for both values and ethical standards. It is the most certain and the most uncertain event there is ". This is why we must learn to accept death as part of life. Darkness doesn’t exist without light and happiness not without pain. We must learn to accept it as natural for us, as for the ants we tread upon during a forest walk. Our routines and rituals around death ought to focus on the passing of learning, memories and values, which is what each generation has a responsibility to take on board. Sadly, our track record for learning in a historical sense is terrible – there is a lot to learn for future generations in this respect.

* "In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation". I disagree slightly with Zapffe. While there basically is no meaning with life as such, our existence only has value (if any) as a chain. Each generation is a link, but only the chain itself can have a value. Yes, we are terrible at setting our priorities, but ants don’t ask to be born either. They just are – like us! Where I agree with Zapffe is in the notion that if you don’t want to have children, it’s philosophically a totally defensible position. And here we differ from any other species: we may choose not to have children. The rest of nature sees it as its main objective to populate “the cosmic brutality”. At best, you can say it is a sign of our imperfection that we concentrate on the coin and not the question of children. That is our curse.

* "Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will". On this point I disagree completely with Zapffe. Unfortunately I can’t ask him for clarification – for me it’s better to be a Don Quijote fighting for unattainable ideals, than to consider suicide. Why? Because if there is any meaning with life at all, it is imbedded in the here and now. Let it last, for each generation, as long as it can and let’s cut as many windmills down as we can in that time!

* "I myself am no longer very much afflicted by the thought of my own death. The synthesis, Peter Wessel Zapffe, did not originate until 1899. It was spared from immediate participation in the horrors of the previous years, and it will not miss what awaits mankind at the end of its vertiginous madness". This notion supports my statement that it is the here and now plus the learning we may pass on to the next generation that counts. But should it happen that a black hole comes our way in the Universe and swallows our solar system, then I fully agree: no damage whatsoever will have been done! Not more, at least, than a dead ant under the foot on a warm summer’s day in the forest.

* "If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind"". I couldn’t agree more. I have never felt so much at ease with my own philosophy about life and death, as when I finally took the small step from agnosticism to atheism. Some people find peace in believing that the Easter Bunny can lay chocolate eggs – but isn’t it more relevant, justifiable and easier to believe in what I call ‘dust and worms’ than living your life in imagined guilt and anxiety about what awaits you on the other side? Have your 99 “white raisins” this side of the threshold, rather than losing out through a bomb around you waist!

Jorgen Faxholm, London 9 April 2010.