- I had considered writing a retrospective for many years, but the challenge was to stay focused on the philosophical issues, rather than make this a memoir or a documentary. I certainly knew I needed to avoid the awful introspection and cheesy reckoning with suffering and guilt that characterize the ghosted autobiographies that are popular today. I think I avoided cheesiness, but the way I did it was to leave out many personal interactions that most people would have included. There were many people who were a part of my life and affected me deeply but aren’t mentioned here. That’s not intended as a slight—it’s just the way this narrative needed to be developed. A constant temptation in writing a retrospective is to go back and fill in more detail or discuss other events that affected you or left an impression. But the more narrative you add, the harder it gets to keep the focus on a single thread, and instead of writing a philosophical retrospective you end up with a memoir.
- Having put so many thoughts on paper, I would recommend the writing experience to anyone. Writing about your thoughts forces you to think things through and to see arguments and positions more objectively and to untangle inconsistencies. It’s a way to understand yourself and the world around you with greater clarity, and those insights by themselves are worth the effort. This exercise also requires that you research and reread many sources to substantiate your arguments, so it ends up being a valuable and satisfying learning experience. To borrow some engineering terms, I did more receiving than transmitting in writing this.
- The most unsatisfying part of this retrospective is dealing with my failure to change the people and the world around me to a greater extent. I admire the instructors I had in college who put themselves in a position to change so many lives and who could affect social change through publishing their work. I feel that I have neglected a social obligation by not trying to teach others and help a few more people lead more productive and better focused lives. As I noted in the previous sections, I’ve got plenty of excuses for not doing more to interact socially and help others, but I’m not convinced those excuses are adequate, so that remains one of my big regrets. Maybe this retrospective will help someone find more clarity and meaning in their life, and if so, it will help absolve me.
- The reader might notice something missing from this retrospective that they may have been expecting—some deep, dark secrets that were hitherto unrevealed about myself. Sorry—but that is none of your business 😊. I firmly believe, for several reasons, that everybody should have secrets that they don’t share with others, even though it is fashionable and supposedly therapeutic nowadays to “reveal all”. It takes time for truly interesting ideas to sprout and flourish and exposing them too early to harsh public opinion can ruin their growth before they flower and bear fruit. And sometimes those personal ideas don’t flower and bear fruit at all, they just come and go, and turn out to be whims or fantasies that you later see as just failed experiments or as passing “brain farts”. I can’t find the quote, which I believe was from Kierkegaard, about how a genius does the things in private that the lunatic does in public. It is important to be able to entertain private thoughts, and to protect them from the leveling and distorting effects of popular opinion, as you never know how thoughts might blossom, and you don’t want those passing whims to define you publicly.
- The reader might also notice that there is very little information on how to be “successful” by adopting “positive attitudes” and a “winning personality” or becoming “well organized” or any other of those life-guides that a motivational speaker might offer. Sometimes these keys to success in business or life can help you achieve goals that you need to fulfill, and it is worthwhile to listen to people who can offer proven techniques for achieving certain types of goals. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had much need for that type of guidance, as I’ve been able to earn a living and feel successful without the need for a social idol or role model to emulate. However, the world has changed a lot since I had to compete in the workplace, and it seems like there are more professions where the inspiration and guidance you would get from a motivational speaker is helpful or necessary. I view that type of lesson as well beyond anything I care about for this retrospective, so if you are looking for guidance on being successful in a particular field, you need to look elsewhere.
- There is also little mention of civic duties and obligations. I have always felt a strong sense of civic duty, but I always fulfill those obligations when asked, rather than seek them out. That’s due to a bit of laziness, but also being fortunate enough to have good things fall in my lap without having to seek them out. At Raytheon, I was part of our country’s intelligence-gathering force, and I always felt that our primary job was to help our military customers do their job, and that our jobs were patriotic. And I’ve served as our local HOA Board president. I don’t actively seek out those civic duties, but rather wait for the invitation to come and I do the work as my civic obligation. I respect those who are committed to social causes and feel a strong sense of civic duty. I would fight for my country or community or some political or social causes if asked, but I would not enlist.
- I realized after writing this that I left out two important topics: reverence and the sublime. The capacity to revere things is an important human dimension, and the integration of reverence into organized religions is one of its saving graces. Similarly, the sublime, which overwhelms us with awe, is another important aspect of human being. Kant describes the sublime in the Analytic of the Beautiful as a confrontation with disorder and “purposelessness”. We have all experienced the sublime in watching a powerful storm, or some catastrophic event that is totally beyond our control, and we respond with fear and anxiety. This postscript item is a “note to me” to address these two important topics in a subsequent iteration of this retrospective.
- And, to close one of the issues presented on the first page, here is what everyone should say at my small funeral gathering: “He would have made fine compost”. This is merely allegorical, of course, as it is illegal to use human remains to help your garden grow, at least in Maryland. It refers to the writings of Hebel, who Heidegger quotes in his address “Discourse on Thinking”:
We are plants which—whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not—must with our roots rise out of the earth to bloom in the ether and to bear fruit.
If you read that memorial address, you will understand why I think the comment about compost is an appropriately light-hearted thing to say at my funeral.