Kafka's crap friend
Do you have any real friends? There are certain simple tests you can apply. On my old blog (the one in Spanish), which I have been increasingly tempted to revive over the past five days, I described one of these, the Cow Test, which, like this one, also allows you to determine whether a particular person is an individualist or a collectivist. I might get on to that later, if I can stay awake long enough. But the Kafka's Crap Friend test is, to my mind, the definitive one. It's also a reason, if you want one, to feel extremely lonely, since if you are anything like me you will find an approximate total of 0 people in your own social circle, with a small margin of error, who pass the test with flying colours. It goes like this. (I am quoting from Wiki simply to save a few keystrokes):
Yep. When I bought my first Penguin Kafkas, as a teenager (Our Franz is, like Poe or Salinger, a writer always destined to exercise a special appeal to lonely teens) probably in Edwin Muir's translation, I soon became familiar with the story of how this Brod had defecated on his friend's memory by going back on an explicit promise to destroy the works in question, and I remember marvelling at how poorly Kafka chose his friends. I even wondered whether reading the books in question might be classed as an immoral act, like snooping in someone's private diary, since the writer had not intended them to be public. I leave that question to be decided by the reader, having no particular agenda of self-justification here. What seems self-evident to me is that there is no morality or ethical code anywhere in the world which could adequately justify Brod's decision. To say that Brod ignored his friend's express instructions to destroy the books because he "knew" that they were works of immortal literature and thus of value to "humanity" is at best a non-sequitur, and at worse a contradiction in terms, since one cannot benefit humanity by performing acts of inhumanity, and breaking a promise to a friend, especially where keeping it would not have harmed anyone, is a self-evident act of inhumanity. (It is worth remembering the dictum of Unamuno here: "Cada hombre vale más que la humanidad entera".) Yet if you perform a straw poll among your friends (or alleged friends) asking how many would have honoured the express wishes and the memory of the deceased had they been in Brod's position, I warn you, the results will depress you.
Needless to say, someone who says they would have acted like Brod is someone who does not deserve your confidence or your loyalty, since they clearly do not understand the nature of friendship, regarding its claims as subordinate to those of an abstract collective (I'll spare you the EM Forster quote, but you know the one I mean) - an abstraction whose needs and wishes tend to accommodate themselves wonderfully to those of the person doing the abstracting. (Be honest: is there any particularly evil action you can think of which could not be justified by the perpetrator with reference to the presumed benefit of "humanity"?) And I offer this test in that spirit, since it seems to me that given the dominant collectivist cultural bias, there are many more Brods in the world today than Kafkas, many more who will see the dollar signs than the message, many more to dox you than offer you tea and sympathy. And you deserve (if you deserve nothing else) to know who they are, and who, if anyone, is really on your side.
As to why this comes to mind, well, there comes a time, and an age, and a state of health, where you can quite get where Franz was coming from. A life is always, by definition, a work in progress, and a work in progress is, again by definition, something you want to control access to. And as the circumstances of existence conspire to turn a large part of your personal demesne into the front window of an Amsterdam brothel, the little that isn't on public view becomes more precious to you. And you start sorting stuff into what you don't mind people finding out about, or reading, after you've snuffed it, and the stuff that you want to snuff it with you, always assuming you don't get time to finish it properly.
Kafka's unfinished works, including his novels Der Process, Das Schloss and Amerika (also known as Der Verschollene, The Man Who Disappeared), were ordered by Kafka to be destroyed by his friend Max Brod, who nonetheless ignored his friend's direction and published them after Kafka's death. (Uncle Wiki, 2016)
Yep. When I bought my first Penguin Kafkas, as a teenager (Our Franz is, like Poe or Salinger, a writer always destined to exercise a special appeal to lonely teens) probably in Edwin Muir's translation, I soon became familiar with the story of how this Brod had defecated on his friend's memory by going back on an explicit promise to destroy the works in question, and I remember marvelling at how poorly Kafka chose his friends. I even wondered whether reading the books in question might be classed as an immoral act, like snooping in someone's private diary, since the writer had not intended them to be public. I leave that question to be decided by the reader, having no particular agenda of self-justification here. What seems self-evident to me is that there is no morality or ethical code anywhere in the world which could adequately justify Brod's decision. To say that Brod ignored his friend's express instructions to destroy the books because he "knew" that they were works of immortal literature and thus of value to "humanity" is at best a non-sequitur, and at worse a contradiction in terms, since one cannot benefit humanity by performing acts of inhumanity, and breaking a promise to a friend, especially where keeping it would not have harmed anyone, is a self-evident act of inhumanity. (It is worth remembering the dictum of Unamuno here: "Cada hombre vale más que la humanidad entera".) Yet if you perform a straw poll among your friends (or alleged friends) asking how many would have honoured the express wishes and the memory of the deceased had they been in Brod's position, I warn you, the results will depress you.
Needless to say, someone who says they would have acted like Brod is someone who does not deserve your confidence or your loyalty, since they clearly do not understand the nature of friendship, regarding its claims as subordinate to those of an abstract collective (I'll spare you the EM Forster quote, but you know the one I mean) - an abstraction whose needs and wishes tend to accommodate themselves wonderfully to those of the person doing the abstracting. (Be honest: is there any particularly evil action you can think of which could not be justified by the perpetrator with reference to the presumed benefit of "humanity"?) And I offer this test in that spirit, since it seems to me that given the dominant collectivist cultural bias, there are many more Brods in the world today than Kafkas, many more who will see the dollar signs than the message, many more to dox you than offer you tea and sympathy. And you deserve (if you deserve nothing else) to know who they are, and who, if anyone, is really on your side.
As to why this comes to mind, well, there comes a time, and an age, and a state of health, where you can quite get where Franz was coming from. A life is always, by definition, a work in progress, and a work in progress is, again by definition, something you want to control access to. And as the circumstances of existence conspire to turn a large part of your personal demesne into the front window of an Amsterdam brothel, the little that isn't on public view becomes more precious to you. And you start sorting stuff into what you don't mind people finding out about, or reading, after you've snuffed it, and the stuff that you want to snuff it with you, always assuming you don't get time to finish it properly.
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