Roger Catlyn's

Adelaide 2004

I do not claim to be a happy man, or even a well adjusted one.

But when I was fifty, I solved the problem that was killing me.

Perhaps I can help you do that too.

This book is called THE DARK: a philosophy of the negative.

It runs sideways to present thinking.

Most of us follow the rule of thumb: Seek the positive, sun the negative, This obviously makes sense.

It gets into trouble when we discover that we don't know what is positive, and we don't know what is negative. Some necessary experiences hurt, and many pleasure are damaging. Also, we get into groups run by a dominant person, and what is positive mean whatever this dominant person would like, and what is negative means whatever this dominant person would not like.

So where are we?

We have to deliberately ask the question: What is good for us, what is bad for us? We have to move into unpleasant areas, and think about them for a while.

Do you feel ashamed of your life?

How many of us are actually proud and happy about our situation?

There are many who would reply "positively", putting a smile on their face and only talking about the minor pleasantries of their experience. Others might give a more balanced account. What about you?

Most of us find it difficult to talk about our problems. There is a feeling of shame about them, as if there were something wrong with not finding life perfect. There is also the problem that if we say that something is wrong, then others will come in with hasty advice.

There are many who do not discuss what is really wrong.

Do you?

Do you know what is really bothering you?

Often problems are unthinkable and unmentionable. We aren't certain what we really want to say about them, and feel isolated when everybody else seems to be producing bright, happy chatter.

Is there any way of getting some real conversation going?

Ask the dark.

When people tell you to be nice, why are you angry?

Do you feel that there is something important that they are ignoring?

Are there rocks and storms in life as well as pink sunsets?

This author once knew a man who went off into indignant speeches about any tiny matter. What was he really angry about? Is there something deeply offensive about life as most of us live it? Could the man who was endlessly angry be talking about something he could not talk about, and we won't?

Ask the dark.

Do people understand what you say to them?

Are you understanding what I am saying to you?

They don't, and you probably aren't.

At the risk of getting incredibly complicated, let us look at what you mean when you use the word "understand". Do you mean "are you sympathetic to my feelings?", or do you mean "Do you see what I am trying to explain?" There is emotional understanding, and mental understanding.

Which do you want? There's very little of either. Is there any way of living without being understood?

Ask the dark.

Does no one believe you?

Do you try to tell them that certain things are important, and they just go on with their own priorities?

Do you try to tell them that they are wasting their lives on things that don't matter?

Does no one believe you?

Are you some sort of wrong-thinker? Why can't you agree with all the stuff that they seem to think is so obvious? Why does it bother you so much when you hear such nonsense? Why are you so offended when people act from wrong beliefs?

Ask the dark.

Whose communication problem is it, anyway?

Do you find it difficult to talk to people?

If you take a few courses in communication skills, you will start to see that you aren't the only person with communication difficulties. If you are worried that you can't talk to your mother, for example, maybe it's her, not you. It takes two to communicate. If the other person is vague and sullen, you could be the greatest communicator in the world, and you won't get anywhere.

Make a list of those you would like to get through to. Do they want to talk to you?

Ask the dark.

Where can you go? We live in a society with large rotten spots where little truth can penetrate and all people do is crap to each other.

Is your family such a rotten spot? Your school? Your friends? Your job? Your church?

Where can you go?

It may not just be a problem of escape, of going somewhere else. You may have to admit that you are just as vague and rotten as the people around you. You must get your own act together before you could handle anywhere else that is better. How can you do that?

Ask the dark.

Do you have trouble keeping your temper?

This usually happens when people keep doing what you don't like.

Sometimes you're in the right. People can behave very badly.

But it has to go on a scale. Small things should only make you slightly angry. Only make a fuss about important things.

I know a man who gets upset for half an hour if his brother frowns and walks away. His brother does this half a dozen times a day, so this man is always upset. Why is he so over-sensitive?

Ask the dark.

Can you keep a secret?

It's sometimes hard to judge what is confidential and what isn't. Also, people have such complicated attitudes about private information.

Also, there is often the problem that you hear something really alarming that you need to discuss. As you get older, you become more able to think about shocking things all by yourself, but you do need, often, to talk something over.

Have you any older person who will respect your confidences? Confidentiality is always under attack by all the arguments about need to know, but who can you trust.

Ask the dark.

Do you know when to shut up?

Suppose you're in the right and everybody is unfairly ganging up on you. Do you speak the truth regardless? Do you go down fighting?

Or do you sense total resistance, and retreat for a while?

There is a saying:

He who fights, and runs away

Lives to fight another day

There's another saying about not beating your head against a brick wall. If you become silent, you will feel like a coward. Is that intolerable?

Ask the dark.

Can you live without being understood?

Life sometimes offers the cruel choice between accepting crap and fitting in, or trying for some sort of mental integrity and being isolated.

How do you handle that? Having basic doubts about the commonly accepted beliefs?

I can only advise you to keep your temper. Firing off into lifelong fury at the limited thinking of others is the classic error.

There are much better ways to spend your life. What are they?

Ask the dark.

In conversations, do you know what to say?

It may not be your fault that your conversations don't flow. Who do you talk to?

Many people are full of bad habits, like making one word answers, or making general comments containing no hard detail. It's likely you have such habits yourself, but you will see, as you become alter to such things, that you aren't the only one.

This author has known long periods of "screaming silence", when many bad talkers and poor conversationalists got together and weren't able to say anything.

But the dark will talk.

What do you get out of your experiences?

Most of us would have to reply "very little" or "almost nothing".

This is astonishing.

When you consider the complexity and variety of life, it is astonishing if you get to the end of each day without at least one new idea.

But we do.

What is it that prevents observation and learning? Where did we get the idea that there is such a thing as boredom?

Ask the dark.

Do you have peace?

This author has peace for about five minutes at a time, every six months.

Is that a problem?

It's a common thing to believe that the point of life is to have good feelings. But good feelings just aren't available to so many. If you look at the blind of sex, health, and financial security that we call happiness, you would be forced to admit that few have it, and few are likely to.

Is that a problem? Is there some basis for life that is separate from our feelings?

Ask the dark.

Do you have trouble sticking to a plan?

Is it the right plan?

You might decide to go to a gym regularly. Do you have the symmetrical shoulders and the straight back of a weight trainer?

You might plan to avoid arguments with your mother. What happens?

If you choose the wrong thing, of course you will fail.

What are your real interests and abilities? How much spare energy do you have?

Ask the dark.

How much do you depend on others?

We want to depend, and we want to be free.

The price of freedom is loneliness.

How much input and support do you actually need? At what point do you collapse?

Is some balance possible? Can we simplify our lives down to those who actually help us, and not worry about the others? How do you decide is you really need someone?

And what happens if we are stuck to someone who is bad for us? This author knew a woman who could not live without her destructive mother.

She should have turned to the dark.

Do you watch useful institutions collapse?

This is more political that personal. Still, it does affect the individual's attitude when something useful falls apart or has its funding cut. You see the efforts that people make to band together and tackle a common problem, and then you see how these efforts are neglected or treated like political footballs, and it does shake your faith a bit.

Can the dark have any effect on events? Can God? Can positive thinking? What do you feel about the way that any human effort is like wading through sludge and tends to sink?

Ask the dark.

Do you work hard enough? You probably work too hard.

The workaholic is not an effective worker. If you look at his or her desk, you will see the same tasks being done too often, and you will see great future problems being set up by the neglect of important things.

Why do they do it?

They do it because they want to fit in. Exhausted frustration is normal in this civilization, and if you are not exhausted and frustrated they don't know what to do with you. So flee from the dark. If you do know what's going on, they will think you a weirdo.

Do people pay you too little attention, or too much?

There are many who never find a balance in this, cycling forever between neglect and interference.

When do you feel neglected?

When do you feel interfered with?

Is that two questions, or just one?

Are neglect and interference the same thing? Have you ever asked yourself this question? Is neglect actually very intrusive, and is interference a way of tuning you out? Notice the times where you feel all of these things.

And then take it to the dark.

Does the random jostle of life oppress you?

Sometimes we are lucky, and life supplies us with something good. At other times, things are just snatched away from us.

How do you feel about luck?

It's oppressive to see that so much of life does depend on luck. If you look at your life, you will see a tiny freedom to manoeuvre, in the centre of a vast and complicated trap, most of which you did not build.

How much power do we actually have to steer a course?

Ask the dark.

Have I done what I said I was going to do?

I promised some discussion of what is positive and what is negative.

Have I done that?

Yes and no.

Yes, I have probed certain unpleasant thoughts that many of us would see as negative.

No, I haven't come up with a definition or a list of what is good for us, and what is bad for us.

You should do that.

Just begin by understanding that what is unpleasant isn't always negative. There are some pains we need. There are some problems we must think about, however much we dislike them.

Need I say any more than that?