"In Search of Lost Time" and a new Theory of Time and Social Interaction...

It may seem like I have been writing a lot lately but it is insignificant compared to what is about to follow. I intended to publish what I had to write about my reading Marcel Proust but that would go against much of what I profess to love in life; that is, the sharing of information and the vanity and subsequent ignorance inherent in intellectual property rights. So, whatever I gather from the novel the reader will acquire here. I will make my living some other way.

Anyway, Marcel Proust. I got sick in December and stayed under the weather for almost thirty days. Rather than attempt to relax and enjoy my new good health I plunged forwards into "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust, a novel that I knew was going to be life-changing and in which I would recover a large part of my forgotten identity. What I received instead was an obliteration of all my convenient world-views, which were subsequently replaced with a more wonderful, connected unity amongst species.

Marcel Proust does not fail in any respect in making a devastating, yet constructive philosophical work on humanity and human nature and potential. Some call it a personal mirror of his identity and life- a broken mirror- but there is more substance than that; it is a mirror in the abstract. Philosophy, psychology, sociology, history; they are all captured with eloquence and a finesse which certainly would take fourteen years for a man to contrive and to write. Proust's theories on human identity are limited by his experience within a blind-sighted social framework but his intense introspection becomes an abstract tool for mutual understanding. It is as though all the human sincerity and honesty is brought to the surface, and the result is overwhelming.

I particularly like Proust's theory of history in The Sweet Cheat Gone:

"The Muse who has gathered up everything that the more exalted Muses of philosophy and art have rejected, everything that is not founded upon truth, everything that is merely contingent, but that reveals other laws as well, is History."
-"The Sweet Cheat Gone" vol. 11 "Remembrance of Things Past" (Chatto and Windus, 1944), p335

And then shortly after:

"Everything that seems to us imperishable tends to destruction; a position in society, like anything else, is not created once and for all time, but, just as much as the power of an Empire, reconstructs itself at every moment by a sort of perpetual process of creation, which explains the apparent anomalies in social or political history in the course of half a century. The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day."
- "The Sweet Cheat Gone" vol. 11 "Remembrance of Things Past" (Chatto and Windus, 1944), p348

So, in conclusion:

The sense of time as an occupied space, occupied by memory, physical change and maturation, makes the present an area wherein realms of truth and seeking in the right areas can happen. The limitation of education, mutual experience and knowledge, the decline of cultural and moral values, and idleness can render that cultivated space barren, regardless of its previous richness.

That is a revolutionary concept, and applicable to latter day capitalist society. Capitalism thrives on specific ventures and does consider all the avenues and internal developments which could lead to a stronger society, built on the strength of solidarity and cultivation of an internal framework. This leads to degeneration and cultural/ social atrophy. I know from reading Proust that a lot of his views on society can be transformed into a new framework which focuses less on the acquisition of capital and more on cultivating and transforming its society and system of government. Re-creation, according to Proust, happens every day, yet we allow for systems based on habit and convenience dominate our society, ignoring the possible consequences.

No, to try to preserve a changing form is nonsense; history denies us this convenience. History is an unfolding of time, and a space on which we can look back on and learn from. Our society cannot depend on capital venture and fragmented privatised industry; it is dehumanising and degrading to human nature. Human nature should be alert to change at all times; convenience leads to atrophy, both psychological and physical, and our society must come to terms with looking itself for what it is and changing its fabricated perception of the individual so that we return to co-dependence and mutual responsibility. We must be encouraged to see history as something to be learned from, not repeated. We are currently repeating the mistakes of the 70s but the ground is falling from our feet.

This is it for the time being, and later tonight I have three social proposals, one quite universal and two localised. It is time for people to start reading, looking at the world around them, and- most importantly- looking each other in the eyes and seeing their own dependence and livelihood in each other.