Why do they call it the blues? Blue is the color of the sky, which symbolizes transcendence of earthly labors and woes. To be blue is to yearn to be free, whole, and complete, but to have that longing abort. It is to long to soar into the sky of hopeful possibilities, but to have life’s disappointments leave one earthbound.
What follows is a very incomplete analysis of the experience of being blue, melancholy or depressed. Our search for clues will take us to Abraham Lincoln, to an old 1960s song, to Casablanca and then back to Lincoln.
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Consider those occasions when you’ve been down, depressed, or had the blues. What have they in common? They emerged out of the gap between what you wished life to be and what it actually is. You might, for example, have hoped that someone you love would love you in return, but your affection goes unrequited. Or you would like life be fair and just, but it’s often quite the opposite. Or you wished that your pet collie could have lived forever, but it had to die, like all mortal beings.
That gap feels like a fissure in your world, a black hole sucking all dreams of a happy life into oblivion. The particular disappointment, setback, or tragedy you experienced made your world no longer seem a place of hope and possibility, but a broken, or fallen world, a wasteland. In the words of Matthew Arnold:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Here’s the curious thing: the perception of the fundamental gap — between the ideal and the real — doesn’t always engender tragic sadness. Sometimes, it results in laughter. Consider any comic situation, whether it be from a play, film or TV series. The real belly laughs come from the gap, or discrepancy, between what the protagonist attempted to accomplish and what actually befell him or her.
Obviously, it is more pleasant to laugh at the gap than to cry about it. What, then, the tears? Horace Walpole offers us a clue when he writes: “Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.” Are feelings, then, the culprit?
Of course, it is one thing to be occasionally sad or even to be temperamentally disposed to sadness. But it’s another matter to feel blue for long periods of time, with little or no respite, as in the case of melancholy, or depression. Might it be that those who suffer from chronic depression tend to dwell in their feelings?
Lincoln’s Melancholy
The life of Abraham Lincoln might offer us some clues to the mystery of depression. Lincoln suffered throughout his life from melancholy. His life might afford us some insights into that affliction. According to historian Joshua Wolf Shenk, in an article entitled “Lincoln’s Great Depression” (Atlantic Monthly, October 2005), Lincoln’s depression was pretty much continual and it was serious. It was serious enough, according to Shenk, that Lincoln would often talk and write of suicide.
Lincoln had a powerful intellect and was of course a deep thinker, which might lead one to conclude — by Horace Walpole’s reasoning — that Lincoln viewed life as a comedy. But, that is not so, for Lincoln was a man with strong feelings, especially those that arise de profundis, from one who knew heartbreaking calamities from his early years. His sentiments were also a function of compassion, which latter found expression in his second inaugural address: “With malice toward none; with charity for all…”
There is no denying the truth of the tragic vision of life, that the world is a “veil of tears,” but heartfelt caring need not lead to melancholy. It can lead to the effort to redeem our fallen world. Furthermore, decisive action is an antidote to melancholy and Lincoln certainly acted decisively. Comedy, too, is an antidote, and Lincoln was an avid collector of jokes and funny stories. How, then, are we to explain Lincoln’s chronic depression? Indeed, how can we explain any persistent depression?
We are back to the question of feelings. Are dark feeling, such as melancholy, addictive in some way? If they are, they must fulfill some psychological need. Perhaps sadness is orienting in its constancy. We might say: Same gloom, different day. We know what’s coming. The danger, of course, is that we might, when we least expect it, be surprised by joy. Certainly, joy is one of the most disruptive of emotions.
The End of the World
“Why does the sun go on shining?
Music has the power to stir up emotions and feelings. That, according to Plato, is dangerous, who would have us live the life of reason. In so far as songs make us feel, do they evoke, by Horace Walpole’s logic, the tragic sense of life? Not at all, for not all songs are sad, or in a minor key, but as Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote: “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts…” Back in 1965, Skeeter Davis sang a plaintive love song called “The End of the World,” which includes the lyrics:
One could substitute any lost hope for the romantic one that is the subject of this song. Although it might be a bit less lyrical, one could say: “How does the sun go on shining? It ended when I failed to make junior partner at the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.” Or “It ended when the town’s zoning commission turned down our application for an easement, which would have allowed us to open a hotdog concession across from City Hall.” Or “it ended way back in 1957, when the Dodgers left Brooklyn.” It can be anything that should have happened, but didn’t, or that didn’t happen, but should have. Either way, it creates the gap, that we discussed earlier, between the way life should and the way it is.
Most of the time, we soon get over such passing disappointments, but to be depressed is to allow the disappointment to feel like the end of the world and an occasion for eternal gloom. Moroseness involves a self-indulgent clinging to despair. That clinging prevents the buds of a new life from allowing something new to emerge.
We cling for we fear an apocalypse of a deeper sought, one in which we are called upon not just to passively be in despair, but to actively despair, to use Kierkegaard’s language, of our present way of living. It means to “put away childish things.” When that happens, it really is the end of the world, as we know it, which can be a very good thing.
In Skeeter Davis’ song, the world doesn’t really end for the lovelorn woman. Rather, the world has a fissure, or hole, in it, the correlate to what people mean by a broken heart. And so she wonders how the sun can go on shining and the world can continue to exist. Indeed, she is puzzled how it is that objective reality belies her inner state of sadness. The contrast between inner and outer even creates a certain wonderment, which might even launch a philosophical question.
In any case, there may come a point, in our inner-development, when our world, whether it be fallen or not, must really end, in a very real way. More specifically, our particular mode of existence — and the world we create, which is a product of who we are — must come to an end, so that something new can emerge. It must end in the way that a dream must end, when it is time for the dreamer to awaken.
In the film Casablanca, Rick went through a long period of bitter melancholy and despair following
The temptation to be depressed
his romantic disappointment in Paris. When he sells his restaurant and go off to war, it’s the beginning of a new life for him.
Thus, oftentimes, the end of the world is the end of the life that we have been living. It may, more specifically, be the end of a career, a marriage, etc. But, more essentially, it is the end of a certain mode of existence, the end of a certain worldview. Might we say, then, that the clinging to past dreams — which are the fabrications of outmoded ways of being and seeing — after it’s time to awaken, is the ultimate source of melancholy?
Kierkegaard argues that melancholy is a hysteria of the spirit. When the spirit is ready to transform, it faints out of dread before the terrifying openness of freedom. Might our fainting — and falling back into the grounding darkness of feeling — be a flight from spiritual freedom and the key to melancholy?
Addendum: On the Sadness that Arises from Compassion and How It Needs to Be Balanced with Wisdom
Not all sadness, melancholy, or depression arises from compassion. But it does, in some instances, as in the case of Lincoln’s melancholy. Compassion is a feeling and we should remember Plato’s warning about the dangers of the emotions and feelings. And yet, feelings can be elevated to a very lofty level. We see that elevation, or sublimation, in the lives of noble souls, in great works of art, literature and music, and in Lincoln’s speeches. In his
Contemplative Lincoln
First Inaugural Address, he wrote:
“Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Lincoln meant by “mystic chords of memory” that the sacrifices by patriots and soldiers connect to our everyday lives as Americans. But it might be fair to say that bonds of affection and mystic chords connected Lincoln to the entirety of human suffering.
Is it possible to be attuned to those “mystic chords of memory” without being knocked over by tidal waves of fellow-feeling? For those waves can drown one in melancholy, as they often threatened to drown Lincoln. What’s required is a difficult balancing act. Certainly, those bonds of affection didn’t prevent Lincoln from defeating the Confederacy by whatever means possible, including having General Sherman burn Atlanta to the ground and all else in his path. So Lincoln’s affection for his fellow man was not sentimental, but was made of sterner stuff. His compassion was tempered by a keen perception of life’s sometimes agonizing realities.
Apropos is Mahayana Buddhism, whose goal is to balance compassion (karuna) with wisdom (sunyata). Wisdom, in this case, is not simply a sober-minded acknowledgement of life’s realities, but mystical insight into the ultimate emptiness of all phenomena.
But what a paradox! It means awakening to the unreality of the world and of the self, and to the illusoriness of human suffering and yet to devote ones life to ending that suffering. How does one devote one’s life to ending that which — according to the deepest insight — does not really exist? Such is the paradoxical task of the Bodhisattva, he who awaken others so as to release them from their suffering.
A well-balanced life really calls for us to accomplish difficult feats of equilibrium. In addition to balancing compassion and wisdom, life calls upon us to balance this-worldliness and otherworldliness. That, too, is quite an accomplishment — no matter what one does for a living and no matter what one’s role in life may be — for worldly affairs have a way of making us lose awareness of the big picture, such that the world, as Wordsworth wrote “is too much with us.”
It takes a Marcus Aurelius to balance active life in the world (he was emperor of Rome) with being a profound philosopher. And in the Bhagavad-Gita, it takes a mystical intuition for Arjuna to be both warrior and sage. Balancing acts are significant accomplishments, for the rope we must tread hangs over the abyss of despair.
The historical evidence suggests that Lincoln never overcame his proclivity for melancholy. But history also suggests that Lincoln found his balance, among life’s polarities, as he walked the path that leads to glory and salvation.
The sadness that grows out of fellow-feeling cannot be avoided, nor should we attempt to do so, for as Franz Kafka advised: “You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.” In any case, melancholy is another matter. Unlike sadness, who visits for a time and eventually departs, melancholy seeks to become a permanent resident of one’s heart.
Anyone on life’s journey is likely to encounter the demon of melancholy. The best defense is to illuminate the dark demon with the light of insight and understanding. The light will cause the demon to wither, like a witch that’s been drenched with water. Then, we should prompt the weakened demon to flee, by evoking the spirit of laughter. (It is not advised to skip step one, for laughter without insight is not powerful enough to exorcise the demon.) Having subdued the demon, we can continue on our journey. But we must stay on guard, for the demon of melancholy shall bide its time, waiting for another opportunity.
P.S. I can imagine the response of many a reader — including many a therapist — to my analysis of melancholy: “Balance, shmalance! Lincoln Sminkin! My depression is purely chemical. I’m a victim! So just prescribe me some Prozac. Let me remain in life’s shallows!” The problem is that perplexing questions are like sharks. From time to time, they swim from life’s depths into the shallows. And then they gleefully consume those who inhabit those waters.
Once again, we analyze a joke for insight into life’s deeper questions. Apparently it’s an old joke, but I only first read it in the June 2010 issue of Commentary Magazine.There it appeared, along with a contest, officiated by Joseph Epstein, to see who, among the magazine’s readers, could offer the best exegesis. The contest’s winner was a certain Manny Sherberg. His interpretation then appeared in the July issue.
What follows is not from the article in Commentary Magazine, but a more contemporary version of the joke. It appeared on an internet website, several years ago. I hope that I am citing the source correctly: posted by BitterOldPunk http://www.metafilter.com/user/12903 at 3:45 PM on December 8, 2008 http://www.metafilter.com/77219/Some-Jewish-Humor. I have revised the wording very slightly.
So I get on the plane and settle into my seat and as soon as we take off, the old guy next to me starts talking.
“Oy, am I THIRSTY!” he says.
A moment later:
“Oy, am I THIRSTY!”
Every fifteen seconds, like clockwork.
“Oy, am I THIRSTY!”
Finally I can’t take any more. As soon as the seatbelt sign flickers out, I get up, go to the back of the plane. I get two of those cone cups, fill them with water. I walk back up the aisle and wordlessly hand the man the two cups.
He brightens. “Thank you, young man!” He eagerly drinks both cups of water and smacks his lips in satisfaction. He’s silent for a moment.
Then he says, “Oy, was I THIRSTY. Oy, was I THIRSTY.”
OK, why is it funny? According to Mr. Shriberg, Jews are enjoined to remember grievances. The Jewish holidays commemorate them. Mr. Sherberg makes the point that there is a conflation that occurs between grievances to the Jewish people and personal grievances, such as being thirsty. Mr. Sherberg’s perceptive analysis offers us insight into the premise of the joke, but he doesn’t explain why it makes us laugh. After all, where’s the humor in the fact that Jews remember grievances?
The Fundamental Contradiction
There’s a key to discovering why any joke makes us laugh. All humor is founded on an incongruity, or contradiction. Therefore, to discern why a particular joke is funny, one must detect the particular contradiction at its heart. Let us see if contradiction is the key that can unlock the mysterious risibility of this joke…
It’s often funny when what initially appears to be a significant change turns out to be no change at all. It points to a fundamental discrepancy in our lives between what we seek to effectuate and the actual result. Sometimes we are rewarded by our labors, but oftentimes well laid plans and assiduous efforts come to naught. That is the bitter truth that the heroic Simone Bolívar experienced. He said that all if his efforts had been like “plowing the sea.” Sisyphus also comes to mind as an image of futility. We struggle to roll the boulder up the hill and down it comes. Elsewhere, we had discussed the Conservation of Suffering Principle. The basic idea is that suffering, like energy or matter, can neither be created nor destroyed. Only its form changes. For example, we solve our problems. The result? Instead of being anxious, we become bored. In that sense, human suffering is eternal.
Of course, there’s neither anything intrinsically humorous about labors that prove to be Sisyphean, nor about the conservation of suffering. They seem redolent of tragedy rather than comedy. It’s only when we gain an emotional distance from contradiction that we are able to let go and laugh.
Consider some instances of this phenomenon from classic comedies. The film “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” (1948) is a case in point. After an enormous effort to bring the gold down from the mountain, a dust storm comes and blows it back to where it came. The same sense of “back to square one” is the case in the plays “The Front Page” (1928) and in “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” (1939) Laurel and Hardy were masters of the art of depicting futile efforts, in a comic way.
The perception of the ultimate hopelessness of human endeavor — seen from the emotional distance that comedy invokes — releases us, if only for a moment, from our overly-serious effort to make significant changes in our own life.
Of course, there is a change in the water situation. The old man has gone from saying “Oy, AM I thirsty” to saying “Oy, WAS I thirsty.” What is constant is his preoccupation with suffering. If he isn’t suffering, then he is reflecting upon suffering. It makes sense that this should be a Jewish joke, for the Jews, as a people, have certainly suffered these past few millennia. It would seem that most of the Jewish holidays celebrate how the Jews survived. Indeed, it’s been said facetiously, although with much truth, that all Jewish holidays have the same premise: “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat!” Mr. Shriberg is, therefore, correct in respect to why it’s a Jewish joke.
Youth Versus Age
But the joke really has a universal appeal, in so far as suffering is a preoccupation of all people, although particularly older people, as they have usually been through a good deal more than younger people, especially in terms of physical ailments, but really in terms of all suffering.
One could object, though, that in the version of the joke that appeared in Commentary Magazine it was not an old man who says “Oy, am I thirsty!” On the contrary, a woman says it. We do not know her age. But when reading the joke I couldn’t help infer that it was an older woman, one who was at least middle-aged. A young woman would, more than likely, have gotten up and got herself some water. And a young woman would be less likely to say “Oy.”
Those who are young look forward to life with enthusiasm, as does the fool in the tarot deck, who is just about to walk off a cliff. The energy of youth is predicated on that naïveté. And it’s just as well, for otherwise they wouldn’t attempt anything and wouldn’t learn anything, and human evolution would come to a standstill. That is why there is much wisdom in Erasmus’ praise of folly.
But those who are elderly view life in a different light. They see it as a series of beatings, assaults, and trials. So it is not surprising that they pride themselves in how many diseases they survived, how many family conflicts they endured, how many tragedies they made it through — indeed, how many of life’s arrows they either dodged or managed to endure.
Thus, if they aren’t suffering, they are reflecting on how they had suffered in the past. When together, they even compete in a kind of tsuris Olympics: “You think you’ve had it bad? Well, I survived cancer, three heart attacks, gout, stones, gingivitis, the Black Death, AIDS, beriberi, tuberculosis, rickets, chronic stink foot, an impacted molar, tennis elbow, and acne! Furthermore, my left leg hurts when I dance the Hora!”
Implicit here is a sense of moral purification for suffering. Dostoevsky often presented characters whose suffering constitutes a kind of moral catharsis. “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” as Shakespeare tells us. It is sweet, for it tells us who we are, as it exorcises pride, hubris and egotism in its many form. Adversity is grounding, in that regard.
Consider, by way of contrast, the superficial optimism of youth, with it’s denial of old age and death. To quote the Bard again: “Men turn their backs on the setting sun.” That has always been so, but it’s even more true today, due to our youth-oriented culture.
The joke is as symbolic as a dream. The young man thought that by relieving the old man of his thirst, he would no longer be reminded of old age, suffering and mortality. Alas, the young man finds himself subject to the Conservation of Suffering Principle. More specifically, instead of having to endure the sight of suffering, the young man must now hear suffering memorialized. “I WAS thirsty” is just as bad as “I AM thirsty.”
We laugh along, for we too are subject to the conservation of suffering. And here, again, we are for a moment — due to the emotional distance that comedy engenders — released from our problematic and exhausting efforts at selfhood, as everything we take most seriously explodes into laughter.
Sometimes a psychological problem has its day in court. Last year, I was contacted by a middle-aged woman from Pennsylvania, who had been arrested by the local police for having shoplifted in a supermarket. Now here is the interesting thing: she claimed to have no memory of having shoplifted (and I still believe her). But the supermarket had video tapes of her having stolen food and other items, on at least three separate occasions.
Ellen (I’ve created that name to protect her identity) certainly didn’t fit the profile of a typical shoplifter. She was neither an indigent person in search of her next meal, nor a rich, but neurotic, Hollywood movie star afflicted with kleptomania. On the contrary, she was the image of middleclass respectability. More specifically, she was the principal of a Christian-based high school in Pennsylvania.
In her position as principal, Ellen certainly earned enough money. Obviously, there was little practical reason for her to have stolen, on each occasion, a handful of food items, flowers, etc. It was apparent that something deeper was going on with her.
Ellen feared that if her employer, the high school, found out about her arrest she could lose her job as principal. Certainly, it would tarnish her reputation in her local community. I mention that fact because she really had dual motives for seeking my assistance. She wanted to be cured of her malady. More importantly, though, she hoped that seeing a psychotherapist about her shoplifting might inspire the local district attorney to convince the supermarket to drop the case against her. At least that was the strategy of her lawyer. The fact that I am not a psychotherapist, but a philosophical counselor — who insists on delving into the deeper meaning of life’s problems — was of little concern to Ellen and her lawyer, who requested that I write a letter on Ellen’s behalf.
Attention Deficit?
The day after meeting with Ellen, her lawyer telephoned me to offer instructions regarding the letter. Over the years, I’ve known some modest lawyers, but far more who were arrogant. Alas, Ellen’s lawyer clearly belonged to the latter category. Rather than asking to hear my diagnosis, he immediately told me that he had diagnosed her.
“And what have you concluded?” I inquired. He then told me that it was a clear case of Attention Deficit Disorder. I started laughing, for Attention Deficit Disorder has become the psychological flavor of the month, used to explain and to justify a multitude of sins. In other words, according to the lawyer, Ellen had become so distracted by her problems that she had simply forgotten to go to the cash register, prior to leaving the supermarket, on at least three separate occasions.
I told Ellen’s lawyer that his diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder was very dubious. I then offered him my own diagnosis, which he in turn found to be dubious. It was clear that I was dealing with a well-meaning but narrow-minded and psychologically provincial person who had absolutely no understanding of the symbolic dimension of human desires and actions, nor was he interested in acquiring any understanding. I asked him to at least to consider it, but he said: “Well, I know the DA and he would never believe in such an explanation.” In any case, here is what I believe to be the key to the mystery of Ellen and her shoplifting…
What the Supermarket Symbolized
Now here was a real mystery. Ellen didn’t dispute that she had shoplifted, for she had seen the store’s video, but she insisted that she had no memory of having done so. Was Ellen telling the truth? It appeared to me that she was telling the truth for, on a rational level, it would have been insane for her to have jeopardized her career and reputation by engaging in petty larceny. Whatever were Ellen’s motivations, they would therefore have had to be unconscious. But what could they have been?
Let us consider her background for clues. To begin with, she has been emotionally overwrought for over a year. In addition to the quotidian pressures, concerns and anxieties endemic to being a principle at a Christian-based high school, she has been caring for her sister and her best friend, both of whom are dying of cancer. Ellen has had no one to turn to for support in these matters. Her parents are deceased and she is unmarried.
Might it be that life’s pressures had caused Ellen to undergo psychological regression episodes? Exhausted from her role as caretaker — for her friends and siblings, as well as for the students and teachers at her school — she has been psychologically longing to assume the reverse role, i.e., to be taken care of by someone else. Although it may sound strange, I believe that Ellen had, in essence, projected the role of nurturing mother on to the supermarket. The friendly and pleasant atmosphere of that particular supermarket invites that sort of projection. There are no guards standing by the doors nor other evidence of store security in view. When you arrive on the checkout line with a bag of bagels (or muffins), the cashier doesn’t look inside the bag, but simply asks you how many bagels you have. The pleasant staff and friendly store announcements augment those maternal vibes.
The mother, archetypally speaking, gives freely, without expecting anything in return. Therefore, it wouldn’t make any sense to pay the mother. Rationally, all this is absurd. But we are not rational beings, especially when under some real psychological stress.
It, therefore, makes sense that Ellen would have no awareness of having shoplifted on those occasions, for she was not in the mode of awareness of being a responsible adult, a citizen who is required to engage in fair and honest monetary transactions with other citizens. On the contrary, being in that supermarket invited a regression to that mode of awareness in which she was a child being fed by her nurturing mother. It is important to understand that none of Ellen’s thinking or actions, in this regard, occurred on a conscious level.
I never saw Ellen again, after the initial intake session. I didn’t think that I would, based on the expression that on her face upon hearing my analysis of her malady. The popular expression is “deer in the headlights look.” Yes, the look was one of complete incomprehensibility.
That was a disappointment, for I had thought that since she was educated in the humanities she would be open to the possibility that a persons’ everyday life has a symbolic overlay. But, if we are dark to anything, it is to our own psyche and educated people are no exception.
Japanese scientists have been making rapid strides creating automatons that look and act like human beings. But, in recent years, they’ve encountered a disturbing phenomenon. Mori Masahiro, the roboticist, named it “uncanny valley.”
Here is what happens: Up to a point, the more lifelike a robot appears, the more favorable will be our emotional response to it. Were we to represent this on a graph, we would see an upward pointing diagonal line, representing the positive correlation between a robot’s lifelikeness and emotionally warm feelings on our part.
But, at a certain point — when the robot’s looks and actions become almost indistinguishable from that of a human being — the robot will elicit, in us, feelings of revulsion. Indeed, it will elicit, in us, that horrifying sense of dread associated with the uncanny. By the uncanny, we mean the supernatural, strange, eerie, or weird. The encounter with the uncanny can be the most terrifying of all experiences.
To represent this shift — when the correlation between lifelikeness and affection becomes negative — the line on the graph precipitously descends, creating a dip, or valley, known as “uncanny valley.” (For more information on this, see the article in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)
A number of “scientific” explanations for uncanny valley — from the fear of death to poor mate selection — have been proposed, all of which derive from theoretically ungrounded abstractions.It is not surprising that scientists — tending to be out of touch with their emotions, fearful of the irrational and disdainful of metaphysics — would formulate such farfetched theories.
What, then, is really involved here? The revulsion to hyper-realistic robots is but a species of the uncanny. Exploring some of its other varieties may offer us clues to this intriguing mystery. As we’re about to discover, the dip, or valley — that these robotic engineers have stumbled upon — leads down the metaphysical rabbit hole, through a kind of worm hole, to the edge of the intelligible world.
When Home Sweet Home Becomes Dreadfully Unfamiliar
In his intriguing essay on the uncanny, Sigmund Freud offers a valuable clue to its meaning:
“The German word ‘unheimlich’ is obviously the opposite of ‘heimlich’ ['homely'], ‘heimisch’ ['native'] the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude that what is ‘uncanny’ is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar. Naturally not everything that is new and unfamiliar is frightening, however; the relation is not capable of inversion.” (Essay on the Uncanny, by Sigmund Freud)
Freud then proceeds to analyze what he considers to be the factors that, under certain circumstances, make the unfamiliar frightening. We wont explore Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of repression and the uncanny. Suffice it to say that like other theories of the uncanny, Freud’s theory fails to discern the very key to the phenomenon.
It is neither the unknown nor the revelation of that which had been hidden (or repressed) that is most terrifying, but rather the loss of the familiar! Another way of saying this is that it is not leaving home that invites the uncanny. What is most frightening is when home begins to look disturbingly strange. Let us consider several instances of this phenomenon, before finally returning to the subject of robotics.
An example from my own life comes to mind. It is akin to the Uncanny Valley in so far as it involves a disturbingly close resemblance between the real and the unreal. As a child, I remember getting lost several times and, just for a
Brooklyn Apartment House
moment, being relieved to find my apartment building. (see photo)
Ah, but then a moment latter I realized that it was not my apartment building, but one that looked just like it. That was an easy mistake to make, because the apartment house in which I grew up, as a boy in Brooklyn, NY, was identical to about thirty other apartments in the same building complex.
The feeling of being lost is very unpleasant, and can be a dreadful one for a child. But the feeling of mistakenly taking the wrong house to be one’s own evokes the horror of the uncanny. The same sort of horror is evoked when as a child I became lost and would, for an instance, think that I recognized one of my parents, only to realize that it was a stranger who resembled either of them.
Alfred Hitchcock has a moment like that in his classic film “The Lady Vanishes.” (1938) There is a moment when the protagonist believes that he has found the missing Ms. Froy, sitting on the train. But when the women turns around, he realizes that it is someone else, who vaguely resembles her. The viewer of the film experiences the queasiness associated with the uncanny.
The Uncanniness that Emerges from Self-Reflection
A particularly powerful experience of the uncanny can occur at a moment of self-reflection. Indeed, imagine looking into a mirror and feeling like one is viewing a stranger. The sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann suggest that that experience is not uncommon. But human beings have ways of fleeing from the import of such metaphysical terrors. The authors offer an example of how a morning train ride to work is used by many people to exorcise such uncanny perceptions.
“The individual may not know anyone on the train and may speak to no one. All the same, the crowd of fellow-commuters reaffirms the basic structure of everyday life. By their overall conduct the fellow-commuters extract the individual from the tenuous reality of early-morning grogginess and proclaim to him in no uncertain terms that the world consists of earnest men going to work, of responsibility and schedules, of the New Haven Railroad and the New York Times. The last, of course, reaffirms the widest coordinates of the individual’s reality. From the weather reports to the help-wanted ads it assures him that he is, indeed, in the most real world possible. Concomitantly, it affirms the less-than-real status of the sinister ecstasies experienced before breakfast — the alien shape of allegedly familiar objects upon waking from a disturbing dream, the shock of non-recognition of one’s own face in the bathroom mirror, the unmistakable suspicion a little latter that one’s wife and children are mysterious strangers.” (“The Social Construction of Reality.” Anchor Books: 1967, pp. 149-150)
And, as Berger and Luckmann point out, one can have the perception that one’s spouse and children are complete strangers. In a very real sense, it may be true. It’s just that one never realized it before. There was a film very aptly named “Lovers and Other Strangers.” (1970) In any case, these are powerful perceptions of the uncanny.
A Schlemiel Experiences the Uncanny
Let us consider one last example of this phenomenon. Some years ago I read a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer entitled “When Schlemiel Went to Warsaw.” (1979) It is about a foolish fellow, a schlemiel, who decides to take a trip from his home town to Warsaw Poland. As far as I can recall, about half way to Warsaw, he takes his boots off, and points them in the direction of Warsaw. Then he goes off to sleep.
If I’m not mistaken, an elf of some sort reverses the direction of Schlemiel’s boots. Consequently, when Schlemiel awakens the next morning — not realizing that his boots have been turned around — he unwittingly proceeds back to his hometown imagining that he has arrived in Warsaw.
How strange, Schlemiel foolishly thinks, that everything in Warsaw is exactly like it is in his hometown. There is even a house like his house, with a woman who claims to be his wife!
Singer’s story about Schlemiel is invariably mistaken for a humorous children’s story, but beneath the surface of this amusing tale lie the terrors of the uncanny. Singers story resonates with his readers, for there are frightening moments when we awaken to realize that everything appears to be the same but is not at all! What, then, is the difference? It’s rather hard to get a hold of. In truth, the place is the same, but something has happened to the person, thus making the place look different to him or her.
Singer’s story illustrates what happens when we begin to awaken, not just literally as happened to Schlemiel, but in the deeper sense of the word. The world then appears to be unfamiliar; it appears as an unfathomable mystery. Furthermore, we neither recognize ourselves nor the people we’ve known for many years. (There are certain resemblances, in regard to a journey back home, to Carlos Castaneda’s “Journey to Ixtlan.”
It’s not that the world has become mysterious for the first time. It always was mysterious. Here, again, it’s just that we never realized it, that is until now. Why, then, is this so horrifying? Plato may offer us a clue.
Leaving the Cave
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, from “The Republic,” invokes the uncanny. The basic narrative is that we are, metaphorically speaking, prisoners viewing shadows on the wall of a cave, imagining that these shadows are the real thing. What is disturbing is not that Plato takes us to strange lands, but that what we ordinarily take to be true reality is seen to be unreal, or at best half-real. Films, like The Matrix, have had plot lines based on one or more characters realizing that their world is no more than an illusion.
In Plato’s Allegory, one prisoner is released from his bonds and allowed to leave the cave of illusion. But he doesn’t want to, so two guards have to drag him out of the cave and to the light while he is kicking and screaming! You can’t really blame him, for it means the end of his world, and the end of his world means the end of who he take himself to be. But isn’t it liberating? Indeed, it is, but due to what the Buddhists call “attachment,” we stubbornly cling to ourselves. Without that clinging, there would be no terrors of the uncanny. Why, then, the need to cling? That is a mystery we shall need to explore on another occasion.
Return to the Robot
What light can our previous examples throw on the uncanny and its relation to the Japanese robots? Certain qualities that we normally attribute to people — freedom and autonomy — are lacking. We don’t mean that everybody is literally a robot or a mechanical assemblage of parts. Rather, the uncanny valley evokes, in a symbolic, way, a fundamental truth: people really are mechanical, or robotic, in the metaphysical sense.
To be mechanical is to lack volition, as well as self-awareness. As P.D. Ouspensky expressed it: “Divide in yourself the mechanical from the conscious, see how little there is of the conscious, how seldom it works, and how strong is the mechanical — mechanical attitudes, mechanical intentions, mechanical thoughts, mechanical desires.”
Most people are mechanical because they are born with certain attitudes that are not challenged in college or else are given a new form of propaganda, politically correct beliefs, which are no more than shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. Inner freedom, on the other hand, is a serious accomplishment, for it requires self-knowledge, which is very rare is people.
Witnessing a lifelike robot unconsciously invites the dangerous perception that the planet is peopled by robots. So do films in which characters — believed to be human beings — are discovered to really be robots. “The Stepford Wives” (1975) and “Aliens” (1986) would be examples. It’s a dangerous perception because, on a deeper level, it is a true perception.
Here, again, I do not mean robots in the literal sense, but rather robots in the sense of people living mechanically, as Ouspensky meant it. As in all cases of the uncanny, the world that one had been familiar with and comfortable with threatens to disappear, to be replaced by the world as it really is.
To summarize, the uncanny fear that people are really robots is based on a true perception about life. But 99% of the people who have such uncanny fears — whether all the time or just when viewing horror films or seeing robots, like the one pictured above — have no idea what it is that they really fear. They fear the truth about life.
An Antidote to the Terrors of the Uncanny
Awakenings happen, whether or not we seek them. For life is essentially about awakening, despite the fact that we arrange our lives so that we may continue to sleepwalk. Any awakening, to any degree, will evoke the terrors of the uncanny. A life devoted to self-knowledge — assuming that it is genuine and not yet another hideout from the truth of human existence — will evoke it all the more.
The remedy to life’s terrors involves balance. In one of Carlos Castaneda’s books, his teacher Don Juan Matus recommends balancing the terrors of life with the sense of wonder. There are other transcendent emotions, in addition to wonder, including: amazement, awe and, for want of a better term, cosmic laughter. This balancing act is, in its own way, as artful as anything that the tightrope walker, Philippe Petit, has attempted.
If we are to survive the rigors of the journey to self-knowledge and inner freedom, we must walk the tightrope that hangs over that abyss — known as the Uncanny Valley — at every moment of every day.
As fans of comic book superheroes know, the one thing that can weaken Superman and eventually kill him is a substance called green kryptonite. Why green kryptonite of all things?
A valuable clue to this mystery can be found in Greek mythology, more specifically in the life and death of the legendary superhero, Achilles. No, Achilles didn’t die from kryptonite, but there are certain intriguing similarities between Achilles and Superman, in regard to their weak points, where they were vulnerable to attack.
As Homer tells it, when Achilles — the hero of the Trojan War — was born his mother had dipped him in the magical river Styx, to make him immortal. Alas, she held the baby by the heel, with her thumb and forefinger. Consequently, the heel was the one place that the elixir of immortality didn’t touch, making that the one vulnerable spot on his body.
Achilles died when a poison arrow, shot by the archer Paris, struck his heel. That is why a person’s weakness is sometimes metaphorically referred to as his Achilles Heel.
Yes, everyone has his weaknesses — from alcoholic beverages to gambling, from argumentativeness to poor judgment of other people, from a proclivity for get-rich-quick schemes to indolence. In one episode of the Simpsons, Homer states that beer is his Achilles Heel. There are thousands of possible weaknesses. No doubt there is one such weakness which, for each person, constitutes his fatal flaw.
But the stories of Achilles and Superman do not really seem to be about tragic character weaknesses. Achilles was prone to an anger that could become madness, but that is not what killed him. Nor does green kryptonite have anything to do with a fatal character flaw on Superman’s part. It would appear, then, that both Achilles’ vulnerable heel and Superman’s vulnerability to green kryptonite have a deeper symbolic meaning.
Why the Heel?
In myths, as in dreams, there are no arbitrary elements. On the contrary, every detail exists out of an artistic necessity. So we may ask, why was Achilles’ weak spot his heel? Why not his arm or some other part of his body?
There exists a symbolic connection between the soles of the feet and the soul in the metaphysical and spiritual sense. That’s where our bodies touch the earth. Even with the advent of shoes, the symbolic significance of feet is still evident. The feet connect and root us to the earth, belying whatever claims we make to being self-sufficient individuals.
What then is the meaning of the earth, upon which we trod? It symbolizes our home, the place where we began. That’s why, archetypally speaking, it’s called “mother earth.” The earth appeals to us as an image of a primordial unity and oneness that existed, before we emerged as a separate individuals. It is interesting, in that regard, that Achilles’ mother was, by her actions when he was a baby, both the source of his superhuman strength, but also accidentally of his downfall.
Consequently, that most vulnerable part of the feet, the soul, is that dimension of the self that seeks to transcend its separateness. That is why the soul is associated with our feelings, longings, and aspirations. It is the locus both of our humanity and of our longing to transcend our humanity. For Plato, the soul is a kind of daemon, connecting our finite, mortal being to the eternal.
In the case of Achilles, it is the heel that is key, but the heel is contiguous to the sole and can be considered an extension of it.
The Unbearable Greenness of Kryptonite
In the case of Superman, it is not some truly alien element that threatens him. On the contrary, it is a substance that comes from his native planet, Krypton! So, here too, archetypal connections exist between home, one’s native soil and one’s mortality.
As we learn from the comic books, kryptonite comes in a variety of colors, each color having a different untoward effect on superman. Why, then, should the deadly type of kryptonite be green? Green is the color of life which, by its very nature, has within it the seeds of death. As Dylan Thomas states: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower is my destroyer.”
Thus Superman — that flying man who symbolically is associated with the transcendent heavens — is weakened or destroyed when in contact with kryptonite, which is a certain type of debris from his home planet, Krypton.
We might add that many people have fled toxic families, marriages, neighborhoods, organizations, and nations. But memories of the past can still haunt them. Freud called it “the return of the repressed.” Thus they find themselves weakened by the kryptonite of the memories that follow them to their new abode, like kryptonite followed Superman to Planet Earth.
We find nightmarish examples of the return of memory in dramas, such as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire. Haunting memories are the green kryptonite that helps to destroy both Willie Loman and Blanche Dubois.
Memory and all that is associated with home can, of course, be a source of great strength. But we are, for purposes of analysis, focusing on its dark side.. Maybe we’ll consider its salutary effects in another essay.
The Refusal of Immortality
How dull would be the stories of Achilles and of Superman if they were immortal! The fact that they are mortal men is what makes them heroic and interesting to us.
In Homer’s tale, it was prophesized that Achilles would die in battle at an early age. Achilles knew of the prophesy, which means that he could have forsaken the life of a warrior. The fact that he continued to do battle was what made him heroic.
There was no such prophesy in the story of Superman. All the same, Superman knew that there were evil men, like Lex Luther, out to kill him. He refused to settle down to the life of a news reporter, disguised as Clark Kent, and to a marriage to Louis Lane. He refused because of his commitment to “truth, justice and the American way.”
It is interesting, in this regard, that Soren Kierkegaard, in his diaries, describes his decision to break his engagement to his beloved, Regina Olsen, as analogous to Achilles’ decision to refuse the temptation of a comfortable life, so as to pursue the destiny that the gods had created for him. Kierkegaard’s destiny, of course, was to be one of the great philosophers.
And so, anyone, who aspires to the glories of a heroic life, must in essence declare: “Green kryptonite be damned! I shall follow my destiny, though it lead me to my doom!”
“…for the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem.”— Longfellow
Faux Brownstone
There’s an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York that’s not really an apartment building. On the contrary, it’s really a secret subway entrance! [See photo of faux building.] Furthermore, there are secret subway entrances, disguised like this one, throughout New York City. A news item about the faux brownstone recently appeared in a number of New York City papers. Apparently, it captivated quite a few readers, as it did I.
What is it about this fake building that is so fascinating? Why are such appearance/reality mysteries so intriguing?
Classified Secrets of the Manhattan Transit Authority
Before we delve into the heart of the real mystery, which is metaphysical, let’s try to understand the ostensible mystery. Why did the MTA — the agency that runs the New York City subway system — wish to build a subway entrance at that particular location? One cannot, from the various newspaper accounts, discern precisely why. Some suggest that it has something to do with counter-terrorism. But it’s unclear as to how these disguised entrances would function in that capacity or as part of any other stealth operation.
Furthermore, the people living in the neighborhood of this particular faux brownstone have long known that it’s a secret subway entrance. We also learn, from the newspaper articles, that workers with the MTA will often enter and leave the secret entrance and have their lunch on the steps of the building. So it can’t be all that much of a top secret.
Let’s say that, for whatever the reason, the MTA needed to have a subway entrance at that particular location. Perhaps, then, they thought that it should be aesthetically pleasing, that it blend in with the surrounding buildings and not be an eyesore. All that is reasonable enough.
Yes, the MTA used both security and aesthetics to justify the project. All the same, unless city workers have souls of mud, the clandestine project must have really intrigued them, even if they could not admit it, for fear of having the expenditures for the faux building scrutinized by the taxpayers. Perhaps, they thought to themselves: “Wow! We’re building a secret subway entrance, disguised to look like a brownstone. Holy James Bond! This is super cool!”
The secret entrance certainly evokes images from spy stories, as well as films of intrigue. One can imagine Orson Welles emerging out of the brownstone, like he emerged from the secret entrance that led from the sewers of Vienna, in the film “The Third Man.”
Evoking Appearance and Reality
The deeper question here is not about the motives of the MTA. It’s really about why secret entrances — and all things disguised — engender a certain thrilling sense of wonderment and perplexity? They seem to tap into the fundamental metaphysical belief that things are not what they seem. Indeed, it evokes the appearance/reality distinction, that lies at the heart of philosophy, mysticism, and paranoia. The notion that we are sleepwalkers in a dream — one from which, with great effort, we can awaken — is a very old notion. We find it in the ancient Hindu Upanishads and in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in The Republic.
If the defining moment of ancient philosophy was Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the seminal moment of modern philosophy was Descartes’ metaphysical doubt, which he resolved — perhaps a bit too facilely — by his realization “I think, therefore I am.” And we find this same doubt expressed in films like The Matrix, and The Truman Show.
Odd though it may seem, everyone suspects that things are not what they appear to be. We seem to be born with such metaphysical doubts. But rather then turning to philosophy to resolve their perplexities about the true reality underlying appearances, many people will instead become interested in conspiracy theories.
For example, it may appear that a lone, deranged gunman assassinated President Kennedy, in truth it was either the CIA, Castro, the Mafia, Richard Nixon, or some other group that had reason to assassinate him. This is not to deny that actual conspiracies do exist. But the interest in them involves a kind of primitive appearance/reality distinction. The fascination with the Faux brownstone belongs to that conspiratorial sense.
Buildings and the Uncanny
Let us conclude our investigation by turning to two painting that evoke the appearance/reality distinction. De Chirico’s “Mystery and Melancholy of a Street” is replete with a sense that there is a mystery lurking here. It’s simultaneously hidden — for the viewer is not clear on what’s really going on in this scene — and yet apparent, for everything is infused with by an uncanny sense of an enigma, even if it remains beyond our conceptual grasp.
Early Sunday Morning, by Edward Hopper
Now consider Edward Hopper’s painting “Early Sunday Morning,” with its row of shops and second floor apartments. Here, too, dark emotions find expression, as in De Chirico’s paintings — loneliness, an eerie and uncanny silence, a sense of foreboding and a deep longing, perhaps for the divine to shatter that unearthly silence. In a certain sense, Hopper’s painting is more unsettling than De Chirico’s, because it’s able to evoke the omnipresent enigma of everyday life without recourse to surrealism. Thus the viewer can’t easily reject it, for it’s all too familiar.
Thus if it’s mystery we crave, we need not travel to Brooklyn in search of faux brownstones. It’s always there, right before us, if we dare turn our head to gaze upon it.
On the first Friday of every month, various cities throughout America hold an art walk. If you’ve never been on one, it simply consists of strolling from gallery to gallery, looking at art, partaking of wine and cheese and schmoozing. I’ve been attending Binghamton’s art walk, for over five years. Being that I’m on a limited budget, I’m not much of an art collector.
But two weeks ago, I saw a sculpture, in the Orazio Salati Gallery, that really intrigued me. It’s creator, Richard Birkett, entitled it “Fantasy Clock.” He’s done an entire series of these mechanical assemblages. The one that was on display was keeping good time. And when I wound a certain knob, it played the old standard “As Time Goes By,” while a miniature airplane circled overhead.
I was intrigued enough to purchase the sculpture and to give it a new home, my living room table. Strange though it may sound, I find gazing upon it to be therapeutic, centering, restorative of my wholeness. There are beautiful works of art, works of literature and musical passages that have that salutary effect. Of course, if this be beauty, it is of an odd sort, for the fantasy clock consists of an assemblage of knobs, screws, and bolts, some of which are rusty.
I’ve been perplexed by this strange contraption. Why do I find it visually pleasing? And what is the source of its power as a healing talisman?
Collectables, Antiques and Nostalgia
The Fantasy Clock evokes nostalgia for an earlier time in history, as suggested by the airplane from an earlier decade of the last century, by the song, “As Time Goes By,” and by the antique photo of a woman wearing a peculiar looking hat. All of this is congruent with the mechanical parts, suggesting the technology of an earlier age, before gadgets became digitalized and run by microprocessors. Antiques and collectables have the power to draw us into the past.
Nostalgia is really a longing for home, not just the place of our birth, but our home in the ontological sense. By this I mean the longing for a time when we were not alienated individuals, fallen beings, but experienced a oneness with the world. The scholar of comparative religion, Mircea Eliade, has referred to that time as Illo Tempore, which, as Eliade understands it, is that mythical time before the fall into historical time.
But an age of innocence is essentially a psychological construct for, as Eliade informs us, even inhabitants of the most primitive societies, jungle dwellers, have a longing to return to an earlier time, for they too feel like fallen beings. So it is that to be human is to feel alienated and to long for home, i.e., for our lost wholeness.
Of course, an antique or a collectable can no more bring us back to an earlier age then can an historical novel or a film about the past. But it is healing, all the same, for we imaginatively participate in those mythic events.
The Sublime
There are, according to philosophers, like Burke, Kant and Schopenhauer, two types of aesthetic experiences — the beautiful and the sublime. The beautiful reveals that we are harmoniously connected to the world. The sublime, on the other hand, threatens to engulf and overwhelm us, destroying — by its majestic power — any harmony that we might seek with the world.
The sublime is often rendered artistically, in paintings of the 19th Century Romantic era — such as those by Casper David Friedrich — as gigantic mountains, raging seas or scenes of terrible destruction. The destruction wrought by time also has a sublimity. Indeed, one of the most sublime passages in all of literature is from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” As Prospero, the plays magical protagonist, states:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich
The ultimately destructive effects of time make the world seem no more substantial than a dream. And yet, the experience of the sublime can be joyously liberating. How so? According to Karsten Harries, in The Meaning of Modern Art (Northwestern, 1968), the sublime reveals the numinous, the mysterious, the divine. It reveals the works of a god that cannot be measured by finite human reason. But the sublime also reveals our inner freedom. In other words, the sublime invites transcendence from the prison house of this world, from the daily struggles, concerns and anxieties that fill our days.
Back to the Fantasy Clock
So the question arises as to the type of aesthetic experience that the Fantasy Clock elicits. Is it the beautiful or is it the sublime? I had suggested that the clock imaginatively evokes an earlier age, as do antiques and collectables. In so far as it evokes feelings of harmony with the world, it is beautiful. Indeed, the arrangement of the various parts of the clock is displays a beautiful sense of proportion and harmony. In gazing upon the clock, it brings sweet harmony to the chaos of our lives.
But the Fantasy Clock is composed has metallic parts which are covered with rust. It is that rust — as well as the old song, the photo, and the antiquated technology — which evokes the destructive and yet liberating dimension of time, the mood captured by Prospero’s speech. In that sense, it evokes the sublime.
Perhaps, then, the healing power of the Fantasy Clock lies in its ability to balance the beautiful with the sublime, to balance harmony with the world with a world transcending freedom.
Postscript
There are other ways to conceptualize Birkett’s Fantasy Clock. It can be viewed through the prism of sculptural collage, steampunk, abstract expressionism and other artistic genres. Each conceptual schema is a doorway into life’s enigmas. In this short essay, we have entered through only one of them.
Believe it or not — on the floor of the US Senate — the majority leader Harry Reid, voted against the healthcare bill. After his fellow senators burst into laughter, Senator Reid realized his mistake. He then quickly changed his vote to “Yes,” affirming that he was in favor of the healthcare bill.
It’s doubtful that Senator Reid made a simple mistake — once in December and again the other day — for there was too much at stake for him. What could have prompted his error? There is something akin to a Freudian slip at play here. More specifically, it is a strange psychological force called “The Imp of the Perverse.”
In his famous essay, Edgar Allan Poe explores this odd phenomenon. As Poe describes it, the Imp of the Perverse consists of a certain self-destructive impulse. He employs the image of a person standing before a dangerous precipice:
“We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss – we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness, and dizziness, and horror, become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling… And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge… If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.” (“The Imp of the Perverse,” by Edgar Allan Poe)
Just as a person has a desire to plunge into the abyss, so it is that he may feel compelled to say exactly what he knows one shouldn’t. Poe offers the example of a man who commits the perfect murder, but then some inner demon compels him to blurt out a confession. Why does the murderer make this confession? Out of guilt? Out of a desire for punishment? A need to brag about his crime? An inability to keep a secret? A longing for self-destruction? Maybe all of the above, but maybe something else as well. There is certainly a certain obsessive-compulsive quality dimension to performing the very action that we know we shouldn’t perform. But that still leaves us wondering as to the cause of these compulsions.
The Roots of Self-Destruction
I suspect, that at the root of this self-destructive compulsion, lies a mad desire for freedom and wholeness, a desire to demolish anything that appears before one as a limit. So strong is this desire that the one thing that appears to be an obstacle to freedom, namely oneself, must be obliterated.
The desire to violate limits, even if its means one’s own doom, is as old as the story of Genesis, from the Bible. As soon as God prohibits eating from a certain tree, there arises a desire to eat from that very tree. Thus do Adam and Eve fall to their doom.
Sexuality also comes to mind as an example of an instinct that is simultaneously creative and destructive. Indeed, all forms of self-transcendence involve a certain self-destruction, for if that self-destruction wasn’t there, nothing new could emerge. In the case of sexuality, what of course emerges is a baby. One’s ego interests are negated to further the development of another being. So it is that Thanatos, the death instinct, is inseparably blended with Eros, the life instinct.
Another example of this blend is capitalism, which the economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative self-destruction.” So is that the dying of one industry makes possible the emergence of new industries.
That form of Tourette’s Syndrome, in which a person feels compelled to blurt out foul and obscene curses, may also be an example of this self-destructive compulsion. Here, again, it consists of a desire to violate limits, in this case one’s that feel socially imposed.
Harry Has a Fleeting Moment of Conscience
Could it be that an unsettling thought emerged from the shallow recesses of Senator Reid’s mind? Might he have entertained the notion, if only for a fleeing second, that he may be wrong about imposing — upon the unwilling American public — the particular version of universal health care that was up for a vote? It would be hard to believe that his act of political hubris didn’t cause at least the shadow of a self-doubt.
Perhaps Senator Reid had a brief moment of clarity and conscience, a moment of lucidity in which he looked in the mirror and saw himself, in all his arrogant wretchedness. And so, it came to pass that the Imp of the Perverse got a hold of Senator Reid causing him to plunge into the abyss. I.E., the imp made him blurt out the truth of the matter, which he voiced, before the Senate, as a “Nay.”
But no sooner had the imp or the doppelganger spoken then Senator Reid recovered his insanity. And so, he corrected himself, voted “Yea,” and gave voice to a lie.
“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail, it has the characteristics of a comedy.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer”
“Man plans, God laughs.”
— Ancient Hebrew sayin
Is Schopenhauer correct? Is life in its details — meaning our everyday encounters with the world — really a comedy? Few of us experience it that way. On the contrary, most feel burdened with responsibilities, cares, anxieties and woes.
This is not to deny that every life has its moments of laughter, the extent of which is dependent upon a person’s disposition. Some people are more saturnine, and others more jovial. But, all in all, the average person doesn’t view their life as a cause for levity. So, even if Schopenhauer is correct about life being a comedy, most people don’t get the joke.
Indeed, life can all too easily become overly serious and oppressively heavy. That is why most of us are in desperate need of comic relief. We find it in TV situation comedies, comic plays and films, stand-up comedians, and jokes. Indeed, sharing jokes constitutes probably the major reason why people e-mail each other.
But here’s the problem with relying on comedies and comedians for our laughs. It can easily become a crutch. It points to an inability — either due to laziness or incapacity — to find our own laughs. And so when suffering comes knocking at our door, our comic sense is too atrophied from relying on jokes and situation comedies to discover, by ourselves, the humor in our predicament.
The other problem with comedies or comedians is that the laughs they provide are generic. They are, for example, about the conflicts in marriage, the workplace, and so on. Thus, they are broad enough such that everyone can relate and share the laughter. The problem is that they lack specificity. They cannot pinpoint the exact nature of one’s own particular life crises and their comic possibilities.
Even were we to attend 20 comedies during the course of the week, there would still exist vast tracks of seriousness — in our own particular life — unilluminated by insight and unrelieved by laugher. Is there a remedy? One idea would be to hire a humor consultant to follow us, through the course of the day, helping us to see the joke in our various activities. But that could be an expensive proposition, as humor consultants have recently become unionized (just kidding!)
Furthermore, even if we could hire a humor consultant, it would still be a crutch. Thus we must learn to develop our own comic capacities. We must strengthen our humor capacities every day. We must, as it has been suggested, press irony.
The Laugh Track Machine
A few weeks ago, I had an epiphany. It was about how to keep continually mindful of Schopenhauer’s insight about life being a comedy. It utilizes what one might call “Mark’s Walking Laugh Track Device.” Here is how it works. Laugh tracks are available from the internet, or from a CD that has sound effects. They can then be downloaded to an I-pod.
Thus, at any moment, while walking along, one would easily be able to hear an audience exploding into healthful belly laughter. Ah you are thinking that my new idea does utilize a kind of crutch. But I conceive not as a crutch, but as a training aid. Over time, a person would no longer need the devise. One would then cast aside Mark’s Walking Laugh Track Device like Forest Gump abandons his leg braces.
When, though, would this devise be utilized? There is a Hebrew saying that goes: “Man plans, God laughs.” In other words, life rarely go as planned. Yes, it’s true that something unexpectedly good can happen to us, but that is rare. Of course, the fact that we woke up this morning and so aren’t dead yet is itself a great blessing, but it is hard not to take being alive for granted.
In any case, for the most part life’s everyday surprises aren’t pleasant. We might, for example, had planned to transfer the eggs from the frying pan onto our plate, but the phone rang and we got distracted and the eggs ended up on the kitchen floor. Or our auto mechanic tells us our car now runs like new, but as we drive home we begin to hear a loud clunking sound. Or we planned on a pleasant evening of poker, but our friends get into a fight and the neighbors call the cops. Or we were banking on getting a raise, but our boss tells us that due to a lack of sales everyone is going to get a pay cut. It could be argued that life essentially consists in Charlie Brown running up to kick the football and Lucy pulling it away, at the last second. Upon which Charlie ends up on flat on his back.
Immediately after any such upset, reversal or disappointment, we could turn on the laugh track, and then our I-Pod would send into our ears the therapeutic: Ha! Ha! Ha!, Ho! Ho! Ho!, He! He! He!, etc. We would then remember that our life is but one big situation comedy. This would certainly help us to see the lighter side of everyday annoyances, upsets, and frustrations.
But is It Really Funny?
It could be argued that there is nothing funny about so many of mishaps that befall us everyday. Our eggs on the kitchen floor seem more annoying than anything else and losing a job can be a catastrophe. That is no doubt true. But consider the stuff that comic dreams are made of: humiliations, embarrassments, mishaps, misfortunes, plans backfiring, everything going wrong. Yes, suffering is the cause of laughter.
But here is the thing. When we see people suffering on stage or in a film or a TV show, we laugh. That is because we have a certain aesthetic distance. As its often said, suffering plus distance equals comedy. We laugh at something that happened long ago because we have acquired a temporal distance. Either way, laughter requires the perception of suffering at a distance.
But why wait ten years to find something that happened to us funny? Why not, Laughter Now! Thus my notion of laugh therapy involves helping people develop the necessary distance such that they need not rely on comedians or on jokes for their laughs, and they need not have to acquire an aesthetic or temporal distance. They can acquire a distance based on insight into life. They can, in other words, acquire transcendence.
As the poet Baudelaire wrote: “The man who trips would be the last to laugh at his own fall, unless he happened to be a philosopher, one who had acquired by habit a power of rapid self-division and thus of assisting as a disinterested spectator at the phenomenon of his own ego. But such cases are rare” The quality of being disinterested comes from that distance or transcendence and is the key to being able to laugh at oneself.
Thus time, Mark’s Walking Laugh Track Device would no longer be needed, for in one’s mind’s ear one will hear the laugher — resounding at appropriate moments — as one proceeds through the day.
“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
Greenest state in the Land of the Free
Raised in the woods so’s he knew every tree
Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three.
Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the wild frontier!”
— The Ballad of Davey Crockett
The Davey Crockett TV show — which was launched in 1954, by Walt Disney — spawned a huge fad. Indeed, it was as powerful as the arrival of Elvis. Forty million people watched every week, which was an enormous number, in those days.
Fess Parker played the part of the legendary American frontiersman, congressman, champion of Indian rights, and hero of the Alamo. He did so both on the weekly TV show and in a number of Disney films. He was great as Davey Crockett. (He also played Daniel Boone, but let’s not get sidetracked.) Mr. Parker died the other day, at the age of 85.
Thanks to Mr. Parker’s portrayal, millions of boys came to idolize the frontiersman, sporting all sorts of Davey Crockett paraphernalia, especially coonskin caps. And I, growing up in Brooklyn New York, was one of them. Through a kind of mythic childhood identification, I imagined myself to be the heroic American frontiersman. I even insisted on my mother calling me Davey.
Davey Crockett and the Mystery of the Bears
According to the TV show’s theme song, Davey Crockett, killed him a b’ar (bear) when he was only three. As to whether he actually did may be dubious, but mythically understood the legend makes sense. This is because the bear is a mother symbol. We might recall, in this context, that the bear is the symbol for “Mother Russia.”
Freud might have thought that the song is about a conflict with one’s actual mother. But Jung might, more perceptively, contend that the bear symbolizes not one’s actual mother, but the mother archetype. More specifically, the bear symbolizes what Jung’s student, Eric Neumann called “The Great Mother.”
But the bear symbolizes the mother, not as kindly and beneficent, but as dangerous and maleficent. The real danger of the mother, to the young man, is her lure. He is seeking to become independent, but he is still lured to dependence. It’s not the fault of actual mothers, but of the inner archetype. So, killing the bear symbolizes overcoming the lure to be taken care of, when the time comes to become independent.
Interestingly enough, I was three years old when I heard the song, the very age when Davey Crockett, as the song alleges, killed a bear. I distinctly remember being very much afraid of bears. My parents sought to comfort me by explaining that there aren’t any bears in Brooklyn, New York (well, actually there were some residing at the Prospect Park Zoo, not that far away from our apartment house in Coney Island.)
But my parent’s assurances did not serve to comfort me, for it was not really bears, but what they symbolized, that I feared. So, I set out to protect myself by sharpening sticks, of all sorts, into weapons and kept them next to my bedside, for it was when the sun set that the bears came out. And there were nights when I could have sworn to have seen them. I’ll get back to the bears in a moment, for the fear, strangely enough, turned out to be justified.
The Mystery of a Fur Cap
By the time I was seven or eight, I’d all but forgotten about Davey Crocket. Fast forward, over half a century, to March 21, 2010. That’s when I came across an obituary photo of Fess Parker, dressed in a coonskin cap. As I gazed upon the photo, I was jolted by a kind of epiphany. On some deep unconscious level — I was still seeking to be Davey Crockett!
To be more specific, several years ago, I had purchased a winter hat made of coyote fur. “Why am I spending $135. on hat?,” I asked myself. I answered my question by replying, “Well, if I’m going to be living in chilly Binghamton, New York, I may as well dress right. And being that I’m balding, I all the more need to protect my skull on cold days.”
We often seek a practical excuse to rationalize a symbolic activity. This is not to deny that the hat is really warm and comfortable on frigid winter days, but I could have purchased a wool cap for a good deal less. Obviously, there was something symbolic about the coyote hat that appealed to me.
And so, when I gazed upon Fess Parker’s photo, it dawned on me that my interest in wearing a coyote hat was my unconscious channeling Davey Crockett, my childhood hero. I was not, essentially, interested in Davey Crockett himself, but rather in the values that he embodied, including rugged independence, bravery, and patriotism. And I admired him for being a killer of bears.
Every Man and Woman a Davey Crockett
For the past several winters, I would wear the hat everywhere. Probably, the most crowded store, in the Binghamton area, is Wegmans Supermarket. When I would wear it there, people would invariably compliment it. They would often will ask me questions about the fur hat, for there was something about it that intrigued them.
I doubt that they think of Davey Crockett. After all, his hat was made of coon fur and mine of coyote. And besides, the hat in conjunction with my beard probably makes me look more like a Russian fur trader than an American frontiersman. [See photo.] But I have an intuitive sense of what I look like to them, or at least to some of them: a visitor from an earlier age, from a time when America was younger, tougher, nobler, and more confident about itself.
This is not to say that I embody that ideal. I don’t live in the woods, hunting my next meal. Rather, I live in a warm apartment and get my food from Wegmans Supermarket. But the ideals that the frontier symbolizes — on a deeper level — have always been my guiding star. And whenever I have lost my way in the darkness, those ideals have reoriented me again.
Davey Crocket in the Age of Obamacare and What it Has to Do with Bears
There exist, in many of us, an ambivalence. We have a childish longing for security, but we also have an adult longing to be independent.
In regard to the former longing, we wish to be taken care of by the government. The emergence of the “nanny state” — derives from that puerile longing. The original function of government was to have it protect us from each other, and from foreign nations. But over the years the function of government has changed. Now it is there to protect us from ourselves. Now, if we are improvident, government supplies us with funds for our old age. It makes us wear a seat belt and may soon penalize us if we don’t eat the approved of diet. Since the founding of America, we have been slowly but surely drifting in that direction.
We have been moving, in other words, towards statism, towards socialism. Obama’s universal health care constitutes a giant step in that direction. It entails a fundamental shift in our relation to government, from being citizens to being subjects. As subject, we have rulers telling them how to live. Actually, under Obamacare, we become wards of the state.
That is why Obamacare constitutes a shift from liberty to tyranny. It is destructive to our values and ideals and to the American sense of self, of the grit, the moxie and the daring, which expresses itself in a life of rugged independence. It is one hell of a psychological regression, spawned by a narcissistic villain, by a ruthless tinpot tyrant, by a well-dressed thug from the gutters of Chicago, and his repulsive minions. And so it has come to pass, that the fear of the bear, who consumes everything in its sight — American prosperity, independence, hardihood, and liberty — is not groundless at all, for the mother bear, for the regressive longing for dependency, now takes the form of socialism.
But here is where we are ambivalent beings, for just as we have a longing to be protected by “Leviathan,” by the state, so it is that we long to be rugged individualists. That longing is never lost, despite our nation’s current drift to puerility and weakness. The frontier is still part of every American’s collective unconscious, even if — as the historian Frederick Jackson Turner pointed out — the ending of the end of the frontier was a decisive event in American history and perhaps in the American character.
Thus does the site of a fur trapper’s hat evokes memories of a lost age and its values. May those dormant values reawaken. There will always be inner frontiers to conquer, and there will always be bears to engage in battle. They are no less dangerous than actual ones. Indeed, America is now in mortal danger, for it is being strangled by a deadly bear hug. Let us, then, remember the heroes of Alamo, our spiritual ancestors and derive faith and courage from them. We shall need it for the battles that lie ahead. Viva Davey Crockett!
