Milan Kundera describes it with the life of Tomas:
"What is unique about the 'I' hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual 'I' is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.
Tomas who had spent the last ten years of his medical practice working exclusively with the human brain, knew that there was nothing more difficult to capture than the human 'I.' There are many more resemblances between Hitler and Einstein or Brezhnev and Solzhenitsyn than there are differences. using Numbers, we might say that there is one-millionth part dissimilarity to nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine millionths parts similarity.
Tomas was obsessed by the desire to discover and appropriate that one-millionth part; he saw it as the core of his obsession. he was not obsessed with women; he was obsessed with what in each of them is unimaginable, obsessed, in other words, with the one-millionth part that makes a woman dissimilar to others of her sex. . .
. . . We may ask, of course, why he sought that millionth part dissimilarity in sex and nowhere else. Why couldn't he find it, say, in a woman's gait or culinary caprices or artistic taste?
To be sure, the millionth part dissimilarity is present in all areas of human existence, but in all areas other than sex it is exposed and needs no one to discover it, needs no scalpel. One woman prefers cheese at the end of the meal, another loathes cauliflower, and although each may demonstrate her originality that demonstrates its own irrelevance and warns us to pay no heed, to expect nothing of value to come of it.
Only sexuality does the millionth part dissimilarity become precious, because, not accessible in public, it must be conquered. As recently as fifty years ago, this form of conquest took considerable time (weeks, even months!), and the worth of the conquered object was proportional to the time the conquest took. Even today, when conquest time has been drastically cut, sexuality seems still to be a strongbox hiding the mystery of a woman's 'I.'
So it was a desire not for pleasure (the pleasure came as an extra, a bonus) but for possession of the world (slitting open the outstretched body of the world with his scalpel) that sent him in pursuit of women."
"What is unique about the 'I' hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual 'I' is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.
Tomas who had spent the last ten years of his medical practice working exclusively with the human brain, knew that there was nothing more difficult to capture than the human 'I.' There are many more resemblances between Hitler and Einstein or Brezhnev and Solzhenitsyn than there are differences. using Numbers, we might say that there is one-millionth part dissimilarity to nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine millionths parts similarity.
Tomas was obsessed by the desire to discover and appropriate that one-millionth part; he saw it as the core of his obsession. he was not obsessed with women; he was obsessed with what in each of them is unimaginable, obsessed, in other words, with the one-millionth part that makes a woman dissimilar to others of her sex. . .
. . . We may ask, of course, why he sought that millionth part dissimilarity in sex and nowhere else. Why couldn't he find it, say, in a woman's gait or culinary caprices or artistic taste?
To be sure, the millionth part dissimilarity is present in all areas of human existence, but in all areas other than sex it is exposed and needs no one to discover it, needs no scalpel. One woman prefers cheese at the end of the meal, another loathes cauliflower, and although each may demonstrate her originality that demonstrates its own irrelevance and warns us to pay no heed, to expect nothing of value to come of it.
Only sexuality does the millionth part dissimilarity become precious, because, not accessible in public, it must be conquered. As recently as fifty years ago, this form of conquest took considerable time (weeks, even months!), and the worth of the conquered object was proportional to the time the conquest took. Even today, when conquest time has been drastically cut, sexuality seems still to be a strongbox hiding the mystery of a woman's 'I.'
So it was a desire not for pleasure (the pleasure came as an extra, a bonus) but for possession of the world (slitting open the outstretched body of the world with his scalpel) that sent him in pursuit of women."
Haruki Murakami describes in a conversation between Nagasawa and Toru:
"After you've done this 70 times, doesn't it begin to seem kind of pointless?"
"That proves you're a decent human being," he said. "Congratulations. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from sleeping with one strange woman after another. It just tires you out and makes you disgusted with yourself. It's the same for me."
"So why do you keep it up?"
"Hard to say. Hey, you know that thing Dostoevsky wrote on gambling?" It's like that. When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up. See what I mean?"
"Sort of"
"Look. The sun goes down. The girls come out and drink. They wander around, looking for something. I can give them that something. It's the easiest thing in the world, like drinking water from a tap. Before you know it, I've got 'en down. It's what they expect. That's what I mean by possibility. It's all around you. How can you ignore it? You have a certain ability and the opportunity to use it: can you keep your moth shut and let it pass?"
What's the difference between the two stories you ask? Well protagonist for womanizing for the first story is because of curiosity and the reason for the second story is because of endless possibilities. The thing about endless possibilities is that it robs men of their happiness. I once spoke to Kathleen on this- that the existence of mutually exclusive choices (resources) makes it impossible for men to be truly happy since there is always an element of regret when we pick one choice over an alternative (The benefit forgone or opportunity cost).
This was before I read Milan Kundera's book in the Unbearable Lightness of Being. A short verbatim in that book says:
"We can never know what we want because, living only one life, we can neither compare it to our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."
The similarity between both story is obvious. Both themes have to do with men conquering the girl (the challenge) with their ability. I think it's like hunting. There is no satisfaction in hunting for a prey that does not run away from the hunter. Likewise this is why most men cannot treasure a girl who they do not chase after. I keep an open mind to many things but one thing I cannot condone is accepting the new age culture of cultivating couch potato men and pro active girls. It's like the rabbit walking over to the hunter and saying "Hello I'm yours for the taking. No Price to Pay!" A friend once debated against me that, men going after a girl as proof as their ability and using their pretty girlfriend as a trophy prize to show off to the people around them is not love but a open display of ego. Yeah, that I don't disagree but the thing that I find hard to separate is the issue of ego and of pride. How do you know when you have crossed the fine line separating them?
And than some guys go to the other extreme, they keep their girlfriends away from sight of familiar faces. Their justification is that they do not see the need to haolian their girlfriend to the people around them, that their girlfriend is a private matter. So now which would be a better choice? For a guy to hang his girlfriend on the wall like some prized possession or kept protected from sight like a jewel in a treasure box? I am not talking about a balance of both. I am referring explicitly to a choice between two alternatives. If most girls choose the one relating to ego as preferred choice, than you risk more in getting a womanizer boyfriend because the day that he or his friends gets bored with seeing you as trophy worth mentioning, than like most hunters, they'll have a insuperable longing to go out for another hunting expedition. Don't get me wrong, it's not that they do not love you (if that makes you feel better). It is a age long problem since medieval times. Think. Why did Samson love Delilah? Why did Helen of Sparta have so many suitors? Sure, because she was the most beautiful woman in the world, but any relationship founded on external beauty cannot last because beauty based on looks is not eternal. Thus any form of happiness you have knowing that that is exactly the type of boyfriend you have is only a fleeting dream.
The next question I pose is this: As a girl which would you prefer given that he is the love of your life and you cannot tolerate infidelity?
situation 1: Your boyfriend cheats on you, and you find out
situation 2: Your boyfriend cheats on you. You will never find out the truth.
Both situation deals with a breach of trust. I hear this line a lot from my friends, "Don't tell me the truth if it hurts. I rather live in a lie unknowingly."
A familiar quote from William Shakespear in Macbath:
"Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence."
I opine that from personal observation, if you do not want to be hurt at all, get yourself a really messy boyfriend- one that won't be able to clean up after himself (and he'll know it). That would keep him from temptation to cheat on you (If he cares about you at all). Really neat and tidy guys who clean up after themselves know they can get away with it. They think to themselves : as long as nobody knows, nobody gets hurt.
Ok time to get back to projects. Haha. OLAY TO ALL THE UNTIDY GUYS. If you cannot remember anything thing I have said, just remember that I am really REALLY untidy. :D
OK back from project(s). Here is another verbatim I want to talk about from that same Milan Kundera book I quoted from before.
"Men who pursue a multitude of women fit neatly into two categories. Some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all women. Others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world.
The obsession of the former is lyrical: what they seek in women is themselves, their ideal, and since an ideal is by definition something that can never be found, they are disappointed again and again. The disappointment that propels them from woman to woman gives their inconstancy a kind of romantic excuse, so that many sentimental women are touched by their unbridled philandering.
The obsession of the latter is epic, and women see nothing the least bit touching in it: the man projects no subjective ideal on women, and since everything interests him, nothing can disappoint him. This inability to be disappointed has something scandalous about it. The obsession of the epic womanizer strikes people as lacking in redemption (redemption by disappointment)."
The way Kundera uses these two words, "Epic" and "lyrical" to categorize womanizers is simply beautiful. There are three kinds of people in this world. A maximizer, a perfectionist and a satisficer. A maximizer is one that see and accepts only the best. They are the lyrical men that Kundera describes. The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. They are the epic men in Kundera's description. The last is the perfectionist (I fall inside this category). They are similar to maximizers, that they have very high standards, except that a perfectionist have high standards that they do not expect to meet. Put another way, the perfectionists are a living contradiction. They are both dreamers and realists at the same time- They hope high, but expect less to protect themselves from disappointment.
According to Barry Schwartz, research have proven that maximizers experience less satisfaction with life, are less happy, less optimistic, and more depressed than their satificer counterparts. In other words, the lyrical men are "cursed" to be unhappy from their womanizing nature.
That is why, I believe, that the attraction that woman have for the lyrical men, is an attraction to the "curse" they carry. It is like the burden that superheroes carry (think spiderman), that they are responsible to save the world because of the superpowers (the curse or burden) bestowed upon them and it makes women believe (albeit fool-heartedly) that they can lift or share that same burden with the lyrical men. Or maybe it is because, in the women's mind, they think they can become the ideal woman in the mind of the lyrical men (an ideal within an ideal).
The epic men on the other hand, is the opposite. They carry neither curse or burden that women are allured to attempt to share nor any chance for women to occupy a special place in the epic men's heart. This makes the epic men unattractive and vulgar, although both epic and lyrical men are both philanderers by category.
Put simply, the sin is not infidelity, but is instead the lack of redemption from it.
Words can't describe how much I love this book.
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