A couple of reviews of
Elizabeth Pisani's Indonesia Etc.
have remarked on the complex mix of Christianity and paganism on the
Indonesian island of Sumba. As Pisani puts it, “The
people of Sumba are nominally Christian, though . . . many still
cleaved to the ancient Marapu religion, guided more by what they read
in the entrails of a chicken than by what they read in the Bible.”
Traditionally, sophisticated
Christians see such acts as reading entrails (or tea leaves, etc.) as
a superstition rooted in the physical world that is demeaning to the
spirituality of religion. They would prefer to understand the
physical world via the guidance of the abstract ideas of their
religion. I was thinking of such practices and their relation to
metaphor as I was later reading an essay on Hinduism in the New York
Times.
In this essay Jonardon Ganeri, a scholar in Indian philosophy,
explains why Hinduism tends to be tolerant of other other religious
beliefs:
“[In Hinduism]
religious texts are often not viewed as making truth claims, which
might then easily contradict one another. Instead, they are seen as
devices through which one achieves self-transformation. Reading a
religious text, taking it to heart, appreciating it, is a
transformative experience, and in the transformed state one might
well become aware that the claims of the text would, were they taken
literally, be false. So religious texts are seen in Hinduism as
'Trojan texts'. . . . Such texts enter the mind of the reader and
help constitute the self.”
In reading, there is a
meeting of the ideas presented in the text and the self of the
reader. In part, yes, the ideas of the text “enter the mind of the
reader and help constitute the self.” But reading also involves
the opposite process—the pre-existing self of the reader making
sense of the ideas of the text, projecting his own understandings and
expectations onto the text. That's why one person can read the same
text several times during a lifetime and understand it somewhat
differently each time—a somewhat different self is reading it each
time. In literary texts in particular, several readers can
understand one text in several different ways, and that reality
enriches the text rather than diminishing it. We too often forget
what the mind brings to the text.
So, when a shaman is looking
at chicken entrails or tea leaves or any other external object that
is supposed to reveal some truth or prophecy, what happens might
be a case of the thing itself giving meaning to the mind, as it seems
to be in Sumba, according to Pisani: if the fatty tissue of the
chicken is “thick and yellow, the owner has a marvellous year
ahead”; if it is “thin and whitish, . . . the owner leaves in
tears.” But what if the shaman is dealing with tea leaves or
patterns of smoke, manifestations that don't assume an either/or
form? And what if, as is likely, the shaman knows the people of his
village well? Is it not likely that the shaman's conscious or
unconscious understanding of a person's or a people's abilities and
disabilities might be projected upon the external image? I would
think so.
We really should not scorn
such pagan practices as reading chicken entrails, since it is really
just another form of metaphorical thinking. The concrete object
functions as the image, the vehicle that is used to carry and present
the more abstract thoughts and perceptions of the shaman. This seems
to me a very efficient way to transfer wisdom. The entrails operate
essentially like a book; the shaman attaches certain ideas to the
chicken, and the “reader” takes in those ideas.
Think of the image of the
U.S. flag; think of what different thoughts and feelings patriotic
Americans and extremist Muslims project upon that same concrete
object. So much of meaning is what we project onto a text or an
object. As long as we don't read literary or religious texts
literally—so long as we don't abandon our own knowledge in the face
of what we see in the text, then certainly reading helps us to create
a self. And reading is, essentially, a metaphorical process—the
meeting of marks on a page with the abstract capacities of the
individual mind.
I'd like to point out a great
essay on how things get messy in society when metaphors are misused
or outright abused: John Lanchester's “Money Talks,” New
Yorker online, 4 August
1914.
Lanchester discusses a process he calls “reversification” in the
“language of money”--the tendency of financial terms to come to
mean the opposite of what they seem to mean in ordinary language. He
illustrates his argument with a discussion of the term “hedge
fund.”
“The idea is that, by putting a hedge around a bet,
clever gamblers can delimit the size of their potential losses, just
as a real hedge delimits the size of a field. . . . A hedge is a
physical thing. It turned into a metaphor; then into a technique;
then the technique became more sophisticated and more and more
complicated; then it turned into something that can't be understood
by the ordinary referents of ordinary language. And that is the
story of how a hedge, setting a limit to a field, became what it is
today: a largely unregulated pool of private capital. . . . This is
reversification in its full glory.”
Lanchester also discusses the
misuse in financial circles of the terms “securitization” and
“austere.” Those terms are, of course, not metaphors, because
they are not based on concrete images. When Lanchester refers to “a
real hedge” as being part of “the ordinary referents of ordinary
language,” he is obliquely referring to the hedge as an image, as
when he more clearly describes a hedge as “setting a limit to a
field.” I want to stick in this discussion to the misuse of this
metaphor and not get into the misuse of abstract terms like security
and austerity—because we can do something to monitor the misuse of
metaphors.
What Lanchester says happens
in financial language is a removal of the meaning of words from
ordinary people—when we can't correctly understand what a hedge
fund is, we need an interpreter to guide us—a “priest” of
financial mysteries. And as soon as we do that, we tend to enrich
the priests and impoverish ourselves, in several different ways. As
Lanchester says about the misuse of the word “austerity,” “The
word 'austerity' reflects an attempt to make something moral-sounding
and value-based out of specific reductions in government spending
that result in specific losses to specific people. For people who
don't use any of the affected services—for the rich, that is—these
cuts may have no downside. They're a case of you lose, we win.”
But back to the hedge. The
reason that speaking and thinking in real metaphors can protect us
from such avaricious financial priests is that we can relate to an
objective thing, an image, with our senses within our imagination.
In other words, the basis for understanding reality is within
ourselves and not vested in outside authority when we use metaphors.
The deception comes when people in power (often politicians and
financial experts) move language away from the images we can easily
relate to and understand. A “hedge fund” is still based on an
image, but it deceives us in that, as Lanchester explains, it is
really the opposite of a carefully hedged bet.
When we allow
authorities to misuse metaphors (or to use too much abstract
language, lacking imagery), we give up our own power to judge for
ourselves and we place our futures in the hands of people who wish
mostly just to enhance their own power—the very people who brought
about the recent financial crisis that affected so many of us! Our
language is literally our power; to let some people redefine or
obscure what words mean is to yield our power. We need to use
language that we can think with and understand—and, even more
importantly, we need to insist that others do that also when talking
to us.
When I taught literature in
college, I came to feel that the literary theory that was taking over
basically all English departments was seriously disadvantaging
students. Their professors became a kind of priesthood that could
decipher the very abstract thinking of literary theory, and this put
an unnecessary step between the student and the literary work.
Literature is based on metaphor; theory is based on abstract ideas.
I sought to return students to the literary text in front of them by
getting them to respond sensually, imaginatively to the images and
metaphors within it.
Lanchester believes that the
misuse of language by financial experts is “not a process intended
to deceive,” but in fact it does deceive—and, personally, I
cannot see how the financial experts can be not aware of that.
Results in a case like this matter more than intentions, which are
always slippery. (You can never really know an author's intention,
but you can know how his language affects you—and that's what
matters most. The author is not in your head; her words are.) But
Lanchester calls for a new insistence on honesty in language.
“The language of money is a powerful tool, and it is also
a tool of power. Incomprehension is a form of consent. If we allow
ourselves not to understand this language, we are signing off on the
way the world works today—in particular, we are signing off on the
prospect of an ever-widening gap between the rich and everyone else,
a world in which everything about your life is determined by the
accident of who your parents are.”
Education should be the
process of achieving equality, since in part education guides us
toward metaphorical thinking (as long as we are studying the liberal
arts, anyway). Personally, I think private schools and charter
schools and religious schools and home schooling are a really bad
idea, because they lead to impoverishment of the public schools and
to our children growing up without a common cultural language, in
effect. But I can't do anything about that. What I can do is insist
that the people I talk to use language I can relate to, so that we
are sharing an idea and so that I am not wholly dependent on the
other person to guide me toward a decision that would be in my best
interest. As someone said of World War I, war is too horrible to
leave to the generals. Any process that removes the power of
metaphorical thinking from us disempowers us. We need to insist on
the integrity of our own language.
Bravo, Mr. Lanchester!
I've been following the New
York Times's
admirable series on the Civil War, harking back to events of 150
years ago. Recently I also began to read Adam Phillips's wonderful
quasi-biography of Sigmund Freud, which begins with this quote from
Freud: “. . . these psychoanalytical matters
are intelligible only if presented in pretty full and complete
detail, just as an analysis really gets going only when the patient
descends to minute details from the abstractions which are their
surrogate.”
This quote certainly explains the attraction of the Disunion series
in the Times.
We all learn the basic outline of the Civil War in school, but not
always the kind of details from particular soldiers and about
particular battles that we get in Disunion.
We all learn that the Civil
War was fought to preserve the Union, to achieve equality among its
peoples, to achieve the abolition of slavery, to secure states
rights—and these are all abstract ideas, even ideals, that drove
the soldiers through the war. But after reading the Freud quote, I
began to think about how the North and the South used these abstract
ideas differently. Most Northerners fought for (along with
preserving the union) ideals that in many ways did not benefit
themselves, but other people. Thus, they were not hiding behind
ideals but seeking to root them in the reality of people in need.
Undoubtedly, many Northerners were racists, but many also set up
underground railroads to help slaves escape from the South into the
North, despite the fact that many of those slaves would one day be
competing with the Northerners economically. The Union army also
harbored escaped slaves and helped them to freedom, even though this
action sometimes reduced the resources available to the soldiers
themselves. In other words, the Northerners joined ideals to
concrete reality, a metaphorical way of being in the world.
The Southerners wanted to
preserve slavery, under the guise of states' rights. Certainly
slavery was an institution very beneficial to their economy. Also,
many Southerners seemed to accept that the black people who were
their slaves were subhuman, an inferior race that needed guidance
from whites to know how to handle themselves in the world. Some
Southerners thought of their slaves as children, whom they were
protecting and nurturing. But they also, of course, often treated
their slaves like animals, or worse—certainly not as equal human
beings. So, white Southerners fought against a federal government
that would tell them how to think, how to live, especially in regards
to their treatment of slaves.
Where Northerners held ideals
of abolition and equality, they also saw the Southern black slaves as
people (“created equal”), who had the right to determine the
courses of their own lives. Southerners, largely out of
self-interest, saw their slaves as not being capable of equality or
freedom; thus they could justify slavery and treat these people like
property. Where the Northerners were able to root their ideals in
the wellbeing of actual people, the Southerners neglected and abused
actual beings in order to uphold their ideas. Here's another way to
see it: the Northerners were able to think and act metaphorically,
while the Southerners upheld ideas without rooting them in reality.
Can an idea like states' rights be an ideal
when it involves the sufferings of others? The South never honestly
linked their abstract ideas to reality—such abuses as separating
families and rape were overlooked in the effort of Southerners to see
themselves as benefactors of their slaves. Many white Southerners
never sought to benefit anyone other than themselves via their
participation in the Civil War. Most white Northerners pursued an
ideal and acted on it for the benefit of people other than
themselves.
So, I guess you could say
that the metaphorical way of thinking (joining ideals to reality) won
the Civil War, but the South's desire to hide behind abstract ideas
that deny reality is still a great threat to equality and democracy
today—not just in the South, but anywhere people embrace abstract
ideas that benefit themselves but also cause the sufferings of
others.
I've been thinking more about
the dangers of abstractions that are not tested against individual
realities lately, after reading a few essays in the press that have
taken up this issue.
In a very interesting
retrospective review of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le
Petit Prince,
Adam Gopnik reads that twentieth-century fable from the perspective
of the French experience of occupation by Germany in World War II and
the phenomenon of Vichy. Apparently, many French intellectuals were
quite shaken by the quickness of France's fall and sought in their
writings to understand it. As Gopnik puts it:
“Exupery's sense of shame and confusion at the
devastation led him to make a fable of abstract ideas set against
specific loves. . . . [similar
to] his contemporary Albert Camus, who also took
from the war the need to engage in a perpetual battle 'between each
man's happiness and the illness of abstraction,' meaning the act of
distancing real emotion from normal life.”
I find this so interesting
because I feel that I have witnessed a similar phenomenon on a much
smaller scale. I taught in university English departments for about
thirty years, beginning in 1980. During that time, the focus of the
English department evolved from teaching literature to teaching
critical theory primarily and then literature in the light of theory
secondarily. Many of the theorists were French intellectuals.
Toward the end of my career in the department in which I spent the
great majority of my teaching time, there was only one course
required of all English majors, and it was a critical theory course,
not a literature course. A graduate-level course in Shakespeare was taught without
any readings of Shakespeare, only of theoretical writings that could
be applied to Shakespeare. I was a reader on one PhD dissertation in
which the student really did not engage with the text from her own
perspective at all, but simply took certain ideas from a famous
French critic and showed how aspects of certain modern novels fit
those ideas. This was not unusual—this was how many in the faculty
were teaching students to think: not about the specifics of
literature or their own individual responses to it but about the
abstract ideas of thinkers who were not even an important part of our
culture.
I eventually left that
university in part because I could not in all conscience tow that
line. The great strength of literature to me is that it brings us to
consider very important human ideas and emotions, but through the
very particular feelings and experiences of specific characters or
through concrete imagery that ties us to the reality of earthly
existence. Abstract ideas hold us in thrall; concrete experiences
free us to know the world and know others without blending all into
one grand generalization. As the poet William Carlos Williams has
said:
“Being an artist I can produce, if I am able, universals
of general applicability. If I succeed in keeping myself objective
enough, sensual enough, I can produce the factors, the concretions of
materials by which others shall understand and so be led to use—that
they may the better see, touch, taste, enjoy--their own world
differing as it may from mine. By mine, they, different, can be
discovered to be the same as I, and, thrown into contrast, will see
the implications of a general enjoyment through me. That is what is
meant by the universality of the local. From me where I stand to
them where they stand in their here and now—where I cannot be—I
do in spite of that arrive! through their work which complements my
own, each sensually local.”
The relationship between
writer and reader is at the primary level intimate—a sharing
between two consciousnesses of thoughts, experiences, emotions.
Theory, abstraction leaps over this intimacy so that idea is more
important than being, experiencing, feeling. Gopnik describes the
“French habit of abstraction”
as coming from “the French tradition that moved,
and still moves, pragmatic questions about specific instances into a
parallel paper universe in which the general theoretical question—the
model—is what matters most.”
Thus the reader is enthralled by/to the ideas and loses her grounding
in individual consciousness of experience. When people are not
grounded in their own experiences, atrocities can happen, as we have
seen repeatedly in human history. Gopnik refers to “those
abstractions that keep us from life itself”
and urges, “The world conspires to make us blind
to its own workings; our real work is to see the world again.”
I would add two words to that statement, two very important
modifiers: “The [human]
world conspires to make us blind to its own
workings; our real work is to see the
[natural] world again.”
Thus, as Gopnik roots this in Le Petit Prince,
“You can't love roses. You can only love a
rose.” Really, we
often think that we love roses in the abstract, but this is an idea,
separate from a real relationship with a real plant, separate from
our own experiences and feelings. It's like saying “I love
humanity but hate particular people.” Baloney!—humanity is an
abstract idea that exists only in our heads. It's much more sanitary
to love an ideal, but real love is given to real individuals, if at
all.
Abstract thought of any sort
is dangerous if not tied to specific realities—thus the importance
of metaphorical thinking. In the ongoing Stone series of interviews
with philosophers on religion, Gary Gutting (the series moderator)
recently spoke with Philip Kitcher, who advocates a “soft atheism”
and what he calls “refined religion.”
Kitcher is wary of religious doctrine, to the degree that
worshipers take it literally and thus subordinate their own
experience of the world to it—that dangerous ascendency of the
abstract over the concrete. But Kitcher argues that if we can see
doctrine as metaphor, rather than literal truth, then religion still
has something constructive to offer the world:
“'Refined religion' sees the fundamental religious
attitude not as belief in a doctrine but as a commitment to promoting
the most enduring values. . . . doctrines are interpreted
nonliterally, seen as apt metaphors or parables for informing our
understanding of ourselves and our world and for seeing how we might
improve both.”
Eventually, says Kitcher, we will not need religious doctrine
anymore, as secular humanism more and more absorbs the most important
values. “I see refined religion as a halfway
house. In the end, a thoroughly secular perspective, one that
doesn't suppose there to be some 'higher' aspect of reality to serve
as the ground of values, . . . can do everything refined religion can
do without becoming entangled in mysteries and difficult problems.
Most important, this positive secular humanism focusses directly on
the needs of others, treating people as valuable, without supposing
the value derives from some allegedly higher source.”
I have been for some time
reading through the historical novels of Sharon Kay Penman, which
focus on the impact of the Norman French on medieval England.
Characters in these novels are constantly assuming God's approval and
then questioning why, if God favors them, they suffer misfortunes and
defeat. Because they presuppose the existence of God and their own
favor in his eyes, they cannot see the reality of their situation—or
even truly take responsibility for their actions and the consequences
of their actions. Because all believe God is on their side, they
proceed almost unceasingly to slaughter each other, as well as
innocent civilians on their way to each other. The abstract in the
absence of respect for reality enthralls and degrades, as the
histories of the three major monotheistic religions have shown—and
continue to show. The secular humanism that Kitcher depicts
celebrates individual human existence and moral coexistence over any
abstract idea, which seems to me much more like Christ's golden rule
than any truly dogmatic religion can manage.
As a long-term teacher I know
that students wed to abstract ideas cannot easily learn; their minds
are closed. In a private religious university I heard students spout
such ideas as there is no unconscious mind and secular humanism is
evil. In a public university I had students who could not read
classical texts with open minds because they were sure they knew how
people really thought in those times, based on their previous
readings in history. Abstract ideas close the mind unless
accompanied by individual realities of text or experience. An
Episcopal priest once said to me that many theology students reach a
crisis of faith when they come to the point of understanding that
biblical texts cannot be read literally, must be read metaphorically,
which is surely what Christ meant by his parable of the seeds falling
on different soils.
In another interview by Gary Gutting of Jay L. Garfield, Garfield
says quite as a matter of fact, “In Buddhism, as
in Christianity, for many lay people the religion is about daily
rituals and practices, and doctrine is left to scholars and clerics.
And ideas that are complex metaphors to the erudite are literal for
the laity.”
My whole effort in teaching
literature to college students was focused on getting them to
respond directly to the text before bringing in abstract ideas—in
other words, to get them to think metaphorically. I fully believe
that the more people can think metaphorically the more empowered they
are in a world rampant with abstractions, the more they can think for
themselves. There will always be people who choose to shelter behind
doctrine and authority rather than think for themselves and take
personal responsibility for their actions. I fear this tendency is
increasing, as we are more and more pressured by the social media to
share all our experiences and ideas and feelings with others and get
approval and recognition from them. But hopefully we can get to the
point where metaphorical thinking and understanding is not just left
to the authorities. Think of the Grand Inquisitor section of
Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov,
in which a priest turns a newly present Christ away because he (the
priest) knows that the people cannot deal with the reality Christ
represents (in part, individual free will) and must be protected by
priestly authorities keeping them in ignorance of what Christ really
represents. Symbolically, is this what we want for ourselves?
I would hope the point of
education would be to help people think for themselves and not
shelter behind authorities and abstract ideas. But I am fully
retired now, and this is an issue to be carried on by others, in a
world in which administrators are cutting out courses and tenured
faculty and reaping the highest pay for themselves.
It's very important that the
image that accompanies an abstract idea in a metaphor have
characteristics that can “carry” the idea,
in the sense that the physical characteristics of the image are
relevant to the mental characteristics of the idea as well.
Otherwise, you are just thinking or speaking gobbledy-gook, not truly
metaphorically. I'd like to illustrate this with reference to an
article on the mudslide in Washington state that recently took so
many lives and so much human property: the New York Times
article “A Mudslide, Foretold,” by Timothy Egan.
I agree with Egan's thinking
all the way through this article, up to the last sentence, where I
think he tries to tie an abstract idea to the concrete image of the
mudslide that does not establish a legitimate relationship between
the two and thus undercuts his whole argument. Egan notes that there
were plenty of studies and warnings about slides in this particular
area and that the trees in the area above the slide had also been
over-harvested, so that when a great deal of rain fell, the earth had
nothing to anchor it in place and simply turned to mud. As Egan puts
it, “. . . enough with the denial, the willful ignorance of cause
and effect. . . .” He continues, “It is human nature, if not the
American way, to look potential disaster in the face and prefer to
see a bright and shining lie. . . .” I agree strongly with all
this; it is certainly human nature too often to see what we want to
see rather than objective reality. We too often live in a state of
denial, especially about our own power over nature: “. . . the
delusion that large-scale manipulation of the natural world can be
done without consequence.”
But here is Egan's final
line: “. . . you love the land, but you should never forget that
it can turn on you.” First of all, the phrase “it can turn on
you” is an abstract idea that Egan is seeking to connect to the
image we all have in our minds of the mudslide, thanks to the media.
But think about this metaphor—the mudslide representing or carrying
the idea that nature can “turn on you.” What does that phrase
mean, really? Doesn't it connote betrayal? Someone or something can
only “turn on you” if there has been a previous implicit or
explicit relationship of trust. So, one person can turn on another
person: a husband, perhaps, can become enraged and physically
assault his wife. This is a betrayal because the state of marriage
presupposes that married people will love, comfort, honor, and keep
each other (to use words from the old Episcopal marriage ceremony).
An assault is a betrayal of that understanding held in common by virtually all
people who accept social conventions.
It is even possible, I
believe, for a domesticated animal to turn on a human being. There
is a compact between humans and their domesticated animals, as well,
though it is not necessarily part of any social code. I feed my dog
and provide comfortable shelter and medical care, take care of all
her basic needs. In return, I expect that my dog will relate to me
and other humans close to me in a friendly manner. If my dog bites
me for no reason that I can see, then, yes, I would probably be
justified in thinking that the dog has turned on me, though we tend
to give domesticated animals more leeway than humans in reacting to
violence or hostility from them, because we view our domesticated
animals as closer to nature than we are.
On the other hand, if I
starved and beat my dog, then I should not be surprised if the dog
turns on me; in that case, I have broken the implicit compact with
the dog first—and the dog has just responded in kind, in
self-defense. But nature in the wild simply cannot turn on you,
because there is no compact between us and nature that governs our or
its behavior. Yes, we are creatures of nature—and would do much
better to remember that, but nature and all the individual entities
that make up the abstract idea of nature do not owe us anything. A
grizzly bear that attacks you is just following its nature, not
turning on you—because it has never accepted a curb on its behavior
in exchange for benefits from you, as domesticated animals have. A
hill that turns to mud because of a lot of rain and a lot of
tree-cutting and then slides to a level plain is not turning on you;
it is simply obeying its nature—it is a matter of physics, nothing
else. There is no intention involved on the part of nature at all.
Even if the grizzly bear intends to eat you, there is nothing
personal in its actions—you are just warm meat in its path. There
is absolutely no betrayal of humans in the actions of wild nature; to
put the two ideas together is simply a contradiction of terms—and a
dangerous way to think.
Part of the problem with
global warming, mudslides, and other objective reactions by nature to
our own activities is that we do not have any formal compact with
nature. Perhaps we should have. Nature cannot make a compact with
us in any intentional sense, because it behaves objectively, not
subjectively. But we violate nature in so many ways; we treat nature
as if it is there only to serve us. That mental attitude ignores the
independent and objective existence of wild nature, and so long as we
work through that attitude, we will increasingly suffer from nature
the longer we fail to respect it. That's why using images in
metaphorical thought and speech that are accurate is so important.
Wild nature actually provides us, at least a little still, an
objective measure of our own thoughts and actions. If we romanticize
nature, as Egan says those who settled in that valley in Washington
state did, and ignore the independent objectivity of nature (it is
not just a nice view, but a cluster of living entities in their own
right)--then our images are skewed by our wishes and will not temper
our thoughts and actions. If we think not of the beautiful view but
what is happening to the ecosystem when many trees are cut and much
rain falls, we will not delude ourselves into thinking we are safe
when we are not. If we use images of nature that are objective and
concrete, then they can perform as a reality check on our thoughts
and actions. And it seems so clear that more and more as each day
passes, we really need that reality check.
This post is meant to be sort of a
footnote to my previous post “Fear of the Deep” (February 2014).
David Brooks' latest column in the New York Times
is about depth, and I think it provides a good example of not
understanding depth. One thing conservatives do very often (and way
too successfully) is to redefine terms to fit what they want reality
to be. In his column, Brooks, a conservative, works hard to redefine
depth as not having anything to do with the unconscious mind, or even
really with the evolving scientific understanding of the human mind:
“[The]
evolutionary description [of
the human mind] has become the primary way we
understand ourselves. Deep down we are mammals with unconscious
instincts and drives. Up top there's a relatively recent layer of
rationality. Yet in conversation when we say someone is deep . . .
we don't mean that they are animalistic or impulsive. . . we mean
they have achieved a quiet dependable mind by being rooted in
something spiritual and permanent.
A person of deep character has certain qualities: in the
realm of intellect, she has permanent convictions about fundamental
things; in the realm of emotions, she has a web of unconditional
loves; in the realm of action, she has permanent commitments to
transcendent projects that cannot be completed in a single lifetime.
. . . depth, the core of our being, is something we cultivate over
time. . . . We begin with our natural biases but carve out depths
according to the quality of the commitments we make. Our origins are
natural; our depths are man-made—engraved by thought and action.”
OK, where to start? First,
please notice the fluctuating and very vague definition of “we.”
Brooks wants to appear to be stating what is obvious to all of us, so
he includes us readers in his thoughts as if we automatically agree
with him, as if he has the ability to speak for all of us.
Personally, I don't agree with his description of depth at all and
thus resent his use of “we.” As my posting on smarm discussed,
smarmy people (who are often conservatives) value “right”
thinking over any kind of equal communion among peoples. We are only
part of Brooks' “we” if we agree with what he is saying;
otherwise, we are not a part of that we. The reader is excluded by
not agreeing, by questioning.
Secondly, take a look at the
adjectives Brooks uses in his description of a person of depth:
“quiet,” “dependable,” “spiritual,” “permanent” (used
thrice), “unconditional,” “transcendent.” This is another
characteristic of conservatives; they do not deal with the world as
it is but with the world as they wish it were. What or whom do these
adjectives benefit? I mean, why is Brooks using them as positive
descriptions of the deep person? What value does a quiet,
dependable, spiritual person with very permanent, unconditional, and
transcendent interests have? It seems clear to me that such a person
would be of great value to an orderly society based on stable
religious values. But that kind of society is a pipe-dream, and that
kind of person would be devoid of truly creative thought and
awareness of the way things really are or might be. That sort of
person would be a prop to existing social structures, not a freely
thinking being. Note that Brooks uses abstract terms in his
definition almost entirely, but when thinking metaphorically about his
description of what he calls a deep person, it seems quite clear that
he is not describing depth but width or breadth, perhaps. His
description reminds me of the pressure my generation got from
guidance counselors in high school to participate in the broadest
range of courses and activities possible, to present a person of
breadth of experience to colleges. And, indeed, such a person
undoubtedly is of great value to a static society or religion, but
again such things really do not exist.
The greatest artistic
geniuses (whom I think are often deemed by some as people of
depth) tend to go very deep into the area of their talents but not
worry so much about being quiet, dependable, permanent,
unconditional. Picasso most probably did not worry too much about
how many wives and mistresses he had. James Joyce left behind not
only the society that educated him but also an increasingly indigent
birth family, in order to pursue the depths of his own literary
talents. I'm not saying that these people are socially
admirable—that's not the point about these people. I'm saying that
depth is absolutely not
a character trait that we can concoct for ourselves by being the kind
of people that a stable society approves of. And I do argue that
depth is greatly dependent on access to the unconscious mind, which
Brooks relegates to being only the realm of the “animalistic
or impulsive,” a
realm in need of control by our rationality.
The guide I choose in trying
to understand depth is the psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung felt he
found certain universal archetypal images in the unconscious mind
that we humans all share based on our common evolutionary history and
our common nature; I believe that art bears out Jung's findings. We
respond to great art because it reaches something deep inside
ourselves that we might not be consciously aware of otherwise. It
expands our sense of our own nature and therefore of humanity itself.
Society has a very great
interest in keeping its citizens quiet, dependable, permanent in
affections, etc. We are socialized to be this kind of dependable
person as we grow up, but hopefully at some point (perhaps in
college, perhaps in middle age) we learn that we are so much more
than our social personas—that we have creative depths that allow us
to be active thinkers, to question given truths, rather than (or in
addition to) being a quiet, dependable participant in social
institutions.
Brooks speaks of how
suffering can deepen a person; I'm fully with him there. If your
place in society causes you little pain, why question it? What
motivation do you have to see beyond the surface? But, again, Brooks
chooses a rather tame definition of suffering: “So
much of what we call depth is built through freely chosen suffering.
People make commitments—to a nation, faith, calling or loved
ones—and endure the sacrifices those commitments demand. Often
this depth is built by fighting against natural evolutionary
predispositions.”
This kind of “suffering” doesn't sound too awful, does it? Yes,
parenting involves some sacrifice, and certainly being of a
particular religious affiliation can cause suffering (though I don't
think Presbyterians in this country suffer too much for their
religious commitment). This is sunny thinking that assumes we can
become the best a person can be by living quietly within social
institutions; again, this type of thinking is entirely unrealistic.
If I were going to talk about how suffering can deepen a person, I'd
inquire about the father whose son was killed in a car crash on
graduation night, so senselessly. I'd take a look at the soldiers
and veterans of our current wars who are turning to suicide so much
more frequently these days. Does their suffering make them deeper
people because they suffered for their country—or just people
suffering because our society does not want people to be aware of and
educated about the unconscious mind of the individual or the nation.
Otherwise, we might question what we are doing, what we are being
asked to do.
One time Brooks uses
metaphorical language is when he paraphrases the theologian Paul
Tillich on the experience of suffering: “. . . suffering
scours away a floor inside themselves [sufferers],
exposing a deeper level, and then that floor gets scoured away and
another deeper level is revealed. Finally, people get down to the
core wounds and the core loves.”
I wonder if that world “finally” is Tillich's word or Brooks'?
I don't think there is any finally, any end to how deep we can go; I
think the ongoing evolution of art and culture shows that.
Conservatives like to believe there's a permanent structure that we
only have to identify and live within and then we will be safe. They
are afraid of the deep because the deep challenges us to question and
be creative and improvise. Anyway, I assume the metaphor of scouring
a floor is Tillich's, and I can agree with this metaphorical
definition of depth—it's a going deep into the structure of one's
self, including one's unconscious self—especially one's unconscious
self, and it's done not by making broad social commitments but by
questioning and moving beyond socially imposed definitions of the
self. The father may decide that alcohol should not be so widely
available in our society; the soldier may have to accept that he has
killed innocent people. It seems to me that Brooks here has used a
metaphor that contradicts his own argument, but then he is very
clearly not a metaphorical thinker. If you want to believe in
absolutes, you have to think in abstract terms—not the concrete
terms that can remind us of how things actually are. The concrete image in the metaphor is a reality test of sorts.
Brooks is a smarmy thinker
and writer. I don't know if my posts in this blog mean anything to
anyone other than myself—perhaps not. It feels to me that we are
being swept away into Brooks' kind of world—a world of breadth and
not of depth. My experience in life has been that individual depth can be salvific. I write mainly as a witness to a world or at
least to an individual possibility that I think we are fast losing.
Speaking of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . . . .
I'd like to add a bit to Tom Scocca's essay “On Smarm” (on
Gawker.com) from the point of view of metaphorical thinking.
Here's how Scocca characterizes the social phenomenon of smarm:
“Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms
of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the
substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. .
. . the major themes or attitudes of smarm [include]
the scolding, the gestures at inclusiveness, the appeal to virtue and
maturity. . . . It expresses one agenda, while actually pursuing a
different one. It is a kind of moral and ethical misdirection.”
I feel like I understand
smarm pretty well. I grew up in its culture; I see it all around me
even now. In some ways, it is the very fabric of society, which is
why (as I explained in an earlier post) I have learned to prefer the
hammock to the canopy.
It is essentially conservative; it passes its users off as cultured
and thus superior. The liberal economist Paul Krugman has often used
his blog on NYTimes.com to discuss the great need of the super-rich
to be respected, their insistence on good manners by others toward
them, their need to be not questioned. Here's a recent example:
“They [plutocrats]
can and all too often do surround themselves with courtiers who tell
them what they want to hear. . . . They're accustomed to being
treated with deference, not just by the people they hire but by
politicians who want their campaign contributions.” And
yet, because their money insulates them from the reality most of us
live in and also gives them so much power, they develop “political
and economic views that combine paranoia and megalomania.”
Hence, the danger.
Thinking metaphorically,
however, has given me some new insights into the problem of smarm.
Let me tell you of one of my own experiences with it, as an example.
I was once pressed to lead a group that I had only recently joined.
The group had just come through some rending experiences (before my
arrival), which had reduced the size of the group and left a fair
amount of bad vibes. I will take on leadership positions when it's
helpful, but I much prefer to be a thinker in the background. I
liked the people in this group for the most part and no one else
seemed able or willing to do the job, so I accepted the role.
Shortly after I did so, great problems among members of the group
arose again. One person decided to leave the group but wanted to
speak to the group openly first. I thought this was a good idea,
considering that old issues were still obviously simmering and
affecting the group negatively. I believe that it is better (more
constructive) to be honest than to be polite, when possible. This
person showed me a written copy of what he wanted to say, and I told
him to go ahead with speaking out his ideas at our next meeting.
Well, his hurt and negative
feelings were not appreciated by the group. One woman in the group
said to me later, “Obviously, none of that should have been said at
all.” I took this to be a critique of my leadership, and I very
much disagreed with that word “obviously” but there was no
opportunity to discuss this. Not long afterwards, the previous
leader of the group (a woman I felt very warm towards) strongly
suggested that I should move on to another group—I was no longer
wanted there. I had broken the facade of smarm, or had allowed it to
be broken, so I no longer had any place in the group. There was no
discussion of why I made the decision I did to let that member speak
openly; there was absolutely no consideration that maybe there was
some virtue to that decision; there was no open discussion among
members. I had apparently committed a great sin and was simply
encouraged to leave.
It seems that the group
needed to preserve a facade of friendliness and happiness at all
costs and that that facade was much more important than any real
group or individual experience. As Scocca has put it, the smarmer
“is disgusted and wounded by it all. To say
nothing of disappointed that the [truth-tellers]
should have betrayed the promise of a more civil world.”
In my experience, women tend to be much more smarmy than men, and I
have throughout my life felt a great deal of pressure, as a woman, to
falsely support certain groups (starting with family) even when they
have caused me much unhappiness and had problems that really needed
to be addressed. It has been a clear message throughout my life:
the well-being of the group should be more important in your life
than your own individual well-being. Perhaps I would have been
better prepared for this experience if I had previously understood
consciously what Scocca has expressed: “The
evasion of disputes is a defining tactic of smarm. Smarm . . .
insists that the audience accept the priors it has been given.”
In other words, a group implicitly defines its own reality, which
all its members have to accept or no longer remain in the group. The
problem here, of course, is that smarm thus allows for no growth or
creativity. Also, since I was so newly a member of the group, I did
not understand the “priors” of the group very well or the nature
of the troubles it had been having.
Anyway, what happened with
this group, what happens with smarm generally, is that an abstract
concept is given great priority over concrete realities. Any real
fact that doesn't fit the abstract self-understanding of the group
must be ignored or even punished. As Scocca has said, “A
disagreeable attitude is one thing, but a disagreeable fact is much
worse.” I find
Scocca's theory that “Smarm hopes to fill the
cultural or political or religious void left by the collapse of
authority, undermined by modernity and post-modernity” very
interesting and quite possibly true. But anytime abstract goals are
given precedence over individual experience and thus cause individual
suffering, those abstract goals must be questioned lest they lean
toward the inhumane.
I do agree with Scocca that
smarm, or the preference of the abstract over the concrete, is a
serious problem in our society and in our world. And that's why I
write this blog—to ask again and again that we at least balance the
abstract with the concrete, if not give preference to the concrete.
Giving preference to the concrete might mean overdoing generosity
(thus conservative concerns about welfare, etc.), but giving
preference to the abstract can create monsters, like Dr. Jekyll, the
creator and enabler of Mr. Hyde.
