Running with the Pack (21 page)

After a while, the Cartesian phase usually gives way to my old friend, the phase of dancing thoughts. It now occurs to me that one might christen this phase after another philosopher. This is a Humean phase of the run, after the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume. There is a famous passage in his book
A Treatise of Human Nature
where Hume remarks: ‘Whenever I enter most intimately into what I call
myself
I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception and never can observe anything but the perception.' When Hume talks about venturing ‘most intimately into what I call myself' he is talking about what we, today, refer to as introspection. When you introspect, when you turn your attention inwards, what do you find? Hume claims, and I think he is right, that you find things like thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations. When you introspect, you encounter what it is you are thinking, what it is you are feeling and so on. Thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations are all what are sometimes called states of mind. Hume's point then is this: you never encounter your mind or self as something separate from ‘states of mind'. Or to put the same point another way: the only way you encounter your mind or self is by encountering its various states.

I used to think the Cartesian and Humean phases were separate phases of the run, each interesting in its own way, but for different reasons. I now begin to see that there is a more global pattern at work. We might think of Cartesian and Humean phases as part of a larger process: a process of dissolution of the self. I think back to how I began this run, a little over two and a half hours ago. Then I was a thoroughly embodied self. My iPod nano was turned up as far as it would go with suitably rage-filled music — things such as Saliva's ‘Click Click Boom', Rage Against the Machine's ‘Killing in the Name' (believe me, ‘Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me' is exactly what one needs to hear from twenty miles on), Kid Rock's ‘Bawitdaba' (the live version with plenty of profanity) and perhaps most testosterone-fuelled of all, the third movement of Beethoven's
Emperor Concerto
. My bodily awareness is razor sharp, keenly tuned to any disturbance in my reluctant calf — will it go, will it hold? — and, indeed, in any part of my more or less reluctant body. What does sensation in my calf mean? What is the significance of this pain in my Achilles tendon? What is the import of this this sensation in my back? At the beginning of the run, and in its early stages, I am the indivisible amalgam of mind and body in action. I am the self as imagined by Spinoza.

In the Cartesian phase, however, this heightened bodily awareness disappears. Far from being the centre of my experiential world, the body is largely dispensed with — relegated to the gullible recipient of promises unlikely to be kept. What I have now become is a mendacious spirit: a maker of promises to be broken. This is the first stage in the shrinking of the self. The embodied self has turned into a disembodied self. The body is no longer part of what I am — not the essential me — it is simply what I am using to get where I am
going. Nevertheless, despite styling itself as the master, the position of the Cartesian spirit is a precarious one. The flesh may become wise to its ruses, or for some other reason simply stop obeying. The master can quickly become the slave. The Cartesian or disembodied self is, by its nature, a troubled one.

The Humean phase heralds a further retreating of the self. The Cartesian phase of the long run is characterized by the feeling that there is a non-physical self running the show — giving the body permission to do this or do that if it meets certain specified conditions. But when I enter the Humean phase, the controlling ego begins to dissolve in front of my eyes. In the Humean phase, there is no obvious mind, no obvious controller or thinker. Instead, I am mesmerized by thoughts that seem to come from nowhere, and just as quickly disappear into nowhere. No longer the duplicitous master, what remains of the self is simply the dancing of thoughts in the empty blue sky where I took my mind to be. My mind is simply the transient configurations it adopts. The self is the dance — there is no dancer over and above the dance.

Far from being made up of different, unconnected parts or facets, I now see the long run as the unfolding of a process whereby the self is progressively transformed from the Spinozist embodied form, through the Cartesian disembodied version, to the Humean self of dancing thoughts. The long run does not have to unfold in this way. Any given run may contain all or none of these phases. And even if the Humean phase is reached, it is so quickly and easily lost again. But the run can unfold in this way. And when it does, I now understand the path I am running. With each successive phase, I am journeying deeper into the beating heart of the run.
And in this heart, with each successive breath I take, the self that I am evaporates.

The absence of the fifteen-mile marker is very worrying. The first mile after turning down the road of the damned had been surprisingly easy, almost pleasant. It was, of course, a mile dominated by the adrenalin rush that goes with starting something I have no idea if I am going to be able to finish. But the adrenalin is now long gone, just like the fourteen-mile marker, and there's still no sign of fifteen. I've become very, very tired since the last marker, and the pain is beginning — an aching in the groin and upper-thigh area. I've come prepared. I take a couple of tablets of ibuprofen I had inserted in my belt, and suck down my first packet of GU — a caffeine-infused carbohydrate gel. The fact that I didn't touch any of my four packets during the first 13.1 — that I was unconsciously saving them for something — was, I now realize, rather telling. When my calf didn't go early on, I always knew I was going to attempt the 26.2, and find myself here: a long way gone, and almost as far to go. I knew also — and I must keep this firmly in the forefront of my thoughts now — that if I made it this far, this was always going to be the hard part of the run. I'm running through some rather nondescript back-streets of Coconut Grove. If I can make it as far as the downtown Grove, see the shops of Cocowalk and once again hook up with the bright blue waters of Biscayne Bay, then I'll know I am going to be okay. Probably.

In this race I have already been through Cartesian and Humean phases, several times for each in fact. That is no surprise — but what follows is entirely unexpected. Seeing Spinozist, Cartesian and Humean phases as successive stages in the dissolution of the self, I had thought that was as far as
the process could go. I had assumed that the Humean phase was the culmination. I was wrong. I am now presented with a phase of the run that I have never experienced before; a phase I had no idea even existed. Initially, I was far too surprised to give it a name. But for some reason or other I seem almost preternaturally good at finding labels for things today. As the phase slowly unfolds, it occurs to me that it might appropriately be labelled the ‘Sartrean phase' — after the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The Sartrean phase is, fundamentally, a further stage in the shrinking of the self.

In the Humean phase, I discern no thinker behind the thoughts. But nevertheless I am tempted to identify these thoughts with myself. I may not be the dancer — not any more — but at least I am still the dance. I am still something. This feeling is tenacious. But it ends when and where the Sartrean phase of the run begins. In the transition from Spinozist, through Cartesian to Humean phases, the self shrinks from body-mind continuum to mind, then from mind to thoughts. In the Sartrean phase, the mind shrinks further — from thoughts to nothing. Now, finding myself for the first time in the Sartrean phase, I come to see these thoughts as not part of me at all. They are transcendent objects, existing irrevocably and decisively as things outside of me. And, gradually, like a smile that slowly comes to play on the lips, I begin to understand that this has an implication of overriding importance for my ability to finish this race: these thoughts have no authority over me.

I am getting weary, there's no getting around that. I'm somewhere past the fourteen-mile marker, but my scanning of the distance in front of me still reveals no sign of the fifteen-mile mark. I'm hurting: the pain is still pretty minor,
but I shall hazard a guess and say that it is going to get worse. I wouldn't say I was suffering yet, not much anyway, but I'm not too far off that point. In some ways, I want to stop, or at least walk for a while. On a certain level, I would be delighted to do either of these things. Weariness, desire: these are reasons why I might stop. But now I realize — not a sudden realization, more like a whispered rumour that slowly becomes audible — that there is no reason that can ever make me stop my plodding eleven-minute-mile, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other progress. I could add up all the reasons there are for me to stop, I could allow these reasons to congeal into a dark, persuasive mass, but still they have no power over me. All the reasons in the world to stop are still compatible with my continuing to run — with my legs continuing their stride-by-stride onward journey. There are no reasons that can make me stop. To this extent, I am free. In fact, I suspect this is the purest experience of freedom possible for a man of my age.

In his classic investigation of the nature of consciousness Sartre defended a rather remarkable claim, one that, I am beginning to suspect, few since have really understood. He wrote: ‘All consciousness … is consciousness of something. This means that there is no consciousness that is not a positing of a transcendent object, or if you prefer, that consciousness has no “content”.' Consciousness has no content — there is nothing in it. Consciousness is nothing — a little pocket of nothingness that has insinuated itself into the heart of being. To the extent that I am consciousness, I am nothing at all. And because I am nothing I am free.

‘All consciousness is consciousness of something.' When I think, for example, that the fifteen-mile marker can't be too
far away, my thought is about the marker and its likely spatial proximity to me. If I look up and see the marker — it is an electronic board that will read ‘15 miles' and also tell me the clock time of the race — then my visual perception is of the marker. States of consciousness — thoughts, beliefs, memories, perceptions and so on — are always of or about things. This ‘aboutness' — as philosophers refer to it, this ‘intentionality' — is, Sartre thought, the essence of consciousness.

However, no object of consciousness is ever about anything — at least, not in the way conscious states are about things. The expression ‘object of consciousness' means merely something of which I am aware or conscious; something I am seeing, or thinking about, or desiring, or hoping for, and so on. When I am thinking about the fifteen-mile marker, or if I see this marker, it is an object of my consciousness in Sartre's sense. The fifteen-mile marker may seem to be about something. It is about the distance travelled from the starting line, and the time taken to travel this distance. But it is about this only because we humans — especially, in this case, we human runners — interpret it that way. In itself, it is just a collection of lights on a board. We have linguistic and mathematical conventions that associate certain patterns — whether they are patterns of lights or patterns of ink on paper — with numbers and letters. It is because of us, and our interpreting abilities and conventions, that the pattern of lights on the marker means that I have run fifteen miles in two hours fifty minutes — at least that is what I hope it will say and mean when I actually get there. But in themselves, these patterns of light mean nothing at all. In other words, the fifteen-mile marker sign is about distance and time from the line and the start, but only in a derived sense — a sense that derives from our linguistic conventions.
And our linguistic conventions derive from our consciousness. However, our thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, expectations and other states of consciousness are not like this. My thought that the fifteen-mile marker can't be too far away is not about the fifteen-mile marker and its spatial proximity to me because I, or someone else, have interpreted it to be about this. The thought is intrinsically about things. And the same is true of my other states of consciousness.

Sartre claimed that any object of consciousness is only about things in a derived sense: what it is about, if it is about anything at all, is a matter of how we interpret it. This — and here we come to the really controversial part — is true even when the object of consciousness is a mental one. Suppose I close my eyes and start picturing the fifteen-mile marker. I form a mental image of the sign or of what I think the sign will look like. I am aware of this image, so it is, as Sartre puts it, an object of my consciousness. This image certainly seems to be about the fifteen-mile marker. But, in fact, it is about the fifteen-mile marker only because I interpret the image in this way. Taken in itself, the image could mean — be about — pretty much anything. It might represent the fifteen-mile marker. Or I could be using it to represent markers in general. Or I could be using it to represent things that display numbers, things with lights, things to be looked-out-for, and so on. In principle, an image like this could mean any one of an indefinite number of things. In order to fix its meaning — in order for it to be one thing rather than another — it needs to be interpreted. And this means that, in itself, it is not about anything. Its ‘aboutness' comes into the picture only with the consciousness that interprets it. All objects of consciousness, all the things of which we are aware, require interpretation if they are to mean anything. Therefore, they are not intrinsically about anything.

Consciousness is intrinsically about things. No object of consciousness — physical or mental — is intrinsically about anything. Therefore, Sartre concludes, no object of consciousness can be part of consciousness. The expression ‘object of consciousness', one should remember, simply means ‘something I am aware of'. Therefore, if Sartre is correct, nothing I am ever aware of can be part of my consciousness. And since I am consciousness, this means that nothing I am ever aware of can be part of me: it is an object ‘for' me — something I can interpret in one or another way — but it cannot be part of what I am.