Why Things Will Always Be a Mess

Immanuel Kant, the legendarily stern and guarded German philosopher who attempted to reorganise human affairs according to patient and elevated principles of reason and logic, allowed himself – towards the end of his life – a rare moment of exasperation with our species. In a phrase that deserves to be heard in the emphatic original, he wrote:

Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden.

‘Nothing completely straight can ever be made from the crooked timber of humanity.’

We are – to hammer the point – an unholy mess. Families are furnaces of silence and rage, tyrants are never far from power, happiness is intolerable, every step forward automatically leads to a renewed exploration of stupidity, any sustained act of goodness must be punished – and we have an outstanding genius for destroying the most promising moments with sadism, regret and anxiety.

Love and the Art of Being Crooked

Kant’s dictum may not have been particularly aimed at lovers, but it lends itself especially well to their ceaseless peculiarities. In few other areas do we long for ‘straightness’ as intensely – or is our strangeness and perversity so exhaustingly in view. We claim, in our daydreams, to want nothing more than calm and goodness. We deliver speeches in praise of a simple life. We think of ourselves as straightforward, decent – and easy to please. We promise to be good, if only we could find ‘the one’.

Then we are graced with the sweetest and keenest soul; and – in short order – wreck them without restraint or explanation. We are terrified of losing them; and feel constricted as soon as they commit. Loneliness terrifies us; company suffocates. We vow to be infinitely grateful if they were to look our way; we wonder, in shorter order, if we couldn’t do a bit better. We build a happy home; and compulsively raze it to the ground. We promise to adore them till the end; and fondle their best friend in a lay-by. We begin full of appreciation; and end up irritable and paranoid. We give them everything; and are accused of limiting their freedom. We double our efforts to be affectionate; and come across as weak. We sit with them by the lake and tell them they resemble an angel; and they let out a small, oddly musical, high-pitched fart.

The Crooked Timber of Humanity

In the hands of a skilled carpenter, a plank of wood can be sawn and sanded into a summit of symmetry and precision. A chair can be made to stand on exquisitely slender, curved legs. Oak drawers can sail on invisible hinges to the gentlest of stops. Walnut commodes can remain unblemished for five hundred years.

Human affairs are open to no such engineering. Our laws may sometimes cooperate with our yearnings for neatness and purity. We can make a few renderings of paradise. We can draw up one or two ideal cities. For a few years, order may hold. One or two parks can be beautiful. We can – on paper – train 100,000 words to be exactly where they should be.

But humans aren’t, in the end, paragraphs; entire lives cannot be fashioned like maple or mahogany. We do not escape catastrophe. Misery is the rule.

Kant’s aphorism is an invitation to comedy. To fill the gap between our ideals and reality, the only dignified option may be to laugh – very darkly and every day. We wanted to be content; the divorce papers will be with us next week. We thought the gentle person with the beguiling eyes would save us; they’re getting married to a rival next summer. We finally learnt to trust them; they left shortly after. We were sure that spending a thousand euros on a beautiful room with a view to the mountains would allow us to reconcile and prove the strength of our love … It’s laughter or the asylum.

Well-aimed pessimism can usher calm; it might even make us a little happier. Aware of what is possible, we might stop feeling so persecuted by reality; we can take a more benign view of the waves of bleakness that roll in (of course they left, naturally they lied, obviously dinner was a disaster); we can gently step down from our more punishing and unwarranted fantasies.

What’s more, we can discover that we are in broad and good company. The communal script may speak of weddings and golden anniversaries; the reality is quietly bleak for everyone. No one gets through unscathed. We all end up suffering abysmally; we all watch our finer dreams implode, waste years wading through mud and confusion, wonder if we might be crazy (or may be being punished for having killed a child in a past life), we hope for purity, only to be met with paradox and evasion.

We can laugh richly once we let go of our more earnest and unwittingly cruel hopes. Nothing straight was ever promised or will ever hold. We’re a very wicked, exceptionally silly animal – the true crooked timber of humanity – as crooked as the worst bristlecone pine, and as ineffectual and irritating as sawdust.