house-ism

while in the US i finally took the time to buy an antenna for my condo tv. this means, for the first time since cancelling the cable, i can watch tv in the us again. it was getting too uncomfortable to use the excuse of no cable to try to hang around the ex-wifes house, so i can now watch tv in the comfort of my own home. my son and my ex-wife’s significant other are both almost as happy with this as i am, although for different reasons.

while there i was able to watch an episode of house. i saw other shows too, but this is the one i really wait for, one of the shows i will most excitedly buy on dvd here in malaysia. there is a certain mix of humor and self-inflicted pain that i love about house. its not really just him though, most of the people on the show have a dark side which just seems to be less prominent when contrasted with the over the top behavior of dr. house.

if you know me, you know i quote house’s most famous house-ism on a regular basis, “everybody lies”. i have written on this in past, it is no less true today than 3 years ago when he first said it. it is the most clear example of his world view which most people both think is sad, and which they tend to agree with.

as i watched an episode of series 4, one which i will watch again in 3 months when the dvds finally come to asia, there was a new quote, which i have been mulling. “the goal of life is not to eliminate misery, but to bring misery to a minimum”. this is such an irish-catholic sentiment that i immediately smiled when i heard it.

somehow it is not a deeply compelling as “everybody lies”, but that may be that is simply not ground breaking enough. as we were brought up, most of us are told that there are good people and bad people. good people tell the truth and help others; bad people lie and hurt others. the fact that house has put this on its head and pointed out that everyone lies means that either even good people lie, or that everyone is bad.

clearly, we all have a spectrum of good and bad within us. few people are clearly evil, and the sense that everyone has bad within us is not new to many of us, well at least to the more liberal and hopeful of us. the conservatives among us have always seen the world as full of bad people who needed to be controlled, if they did not believe this they would trust people to make their own decisions and act as they felt was best. clearly this is a recipe for disaster in the mind of conservatives. maybe this is a digression, but given the quote, maybe not.

you can not eliminate misery, just limit it. as we look at the world, as we teach our children, do we tell them this? do we tell them that life is as hobbs said, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, or do we attempt to tell them that life is full of hope and fairness. i guess it depends on the family and the dynamic, but as a rule i think most people choose to give their children hope and comfort and allow life to teach them any lessons counter to this philosophy.

the christian tradition since saint augustine is based on a life long struggle with sin, a life begun with original sin which comes to us through no act of our own and is outside of our control. the idea that children if they were to die outside of baptism would go to hell, is just one more example of how classical thought has carried its ideas into our times at the expense of good people and their good works. no child born into the world and then taken from its parents would go to hell if a good god were involved in the process. augustine is either wrong and the catholic church is teaching bad doctrine, or god is not good.

house is also reflecting a quote from buddha which said, “life is misery”. in the buddhist tradition, you overcome misery through meditation. you need to know and understand life and its pain to find enlightenment. only by accepting that life is both good and bad do you find the understanding that life can be happy and productive even with the existence of pain.

house is expressing a world view which one can understand and sympathize with, but it is also one which we work very hard to protect our children from. we put them in sports to allow them to believe that the world is based on “rules of the game” and that playing by the rules is the only course which is valid if you want to continue to play. “everybody lies” and “life is misery” are both quotes which show house through his pain and suffering, but which also somehow give me hope.

life is filled with pain, and it is also filled with joy. the trick is to enjoy the moments of joy and move though the moments of misery as quickly as possible. if we focus on one of these and ignore the other we eliminate our ability to learn from that which we are ignoring. even the people who only focus on the good are at risk, they may not be as dour as those that focus on the negative, but they will never learn from the pain. misery brings learning, unless we embrace it we will never learn. “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it” is a true-ism which we can imagine house using.

as i said, i smiled when i heard this house-ism. i do not find house to be angry, sad or jaded. i find him to be intelligent, aware and full of hubris developed through years of success. i also do not find him to be self destructive. house learns from his mistakes and attempts to teach those around him. this is a hopeful exercise of life, one that we should not forget.