On May 28, WBUR’s program “Here and Now” aired a segment about Wagner’s opera “The Ring” and its influence on comic books. (I’d embed it here, but they don’t let you download the MP3. You can listen at the link. Just scroll down the page when you get there.) Apparently many characters from graphic novels of the 20th century were shaped by Wagner’s four-part work.

This seemed relevant to me for a variety of reasons. I’m currently obsessed with Wonder Showzen, a heady spoof of Sesame Street that came from the Brooklyn group PFFR before they made Xavier: Renegade Angel. In one episode of Wonder Showzen, a child journalist goes around asking people, “What’s a hero?” The goal was to point out that we may be tricked (by movies, news and other media) into thinking that Superman or Iron Man or 9/11 firefighters are going to “save us.”

I’ll try not to wander too much here. It’ll suffice to say that I’ve become very interested in the topic of “heroes.” I wanted to write about this “Here and Now” show because I just finished the book Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson first published the revised version of his psychology PhD dissertation in 1983. Chapter 17 in the book — entitled “Quantum Evolution — contains a discussion about the modern symphony orchestra interpreted through the book The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler.

The coincidence of the radio show and my reading the book seemed to be a synchronicity (also mentioned in Wilson’s book), a Jungian concept meaning “an acausal and/or holistic principle in nature that acts outside the linear past-present-future of Newtonian time” (p. 152). But I’m straying again…

Wilson brings up Toffler to explain the quickening pace of “domesticated primate evolution” — that is, the ongoing development of human beings. According to Toffler’s model, the “First Wave” was a shift from tribal to “feudal-agricultural” societies. The Second Wave came in the mid to late 19th century, and was a shift from a feudal-agricultural system to an “industrial-urban-market economy.” That can also be described as the “Age of Reason” or the “Industrial Age.”

Now we’re in a sort of transitional period as the Third Wave passes through and creates the Information Age (many other potential titles have been proposed). As Wilson explains, “Each wave is faster, by a factor of 10, than the previous wave. And each wave is more total in that it changes more people…and in the process transforms our concept of human nature and human society” (p. 255).

This section turns out to be highly prophetic in what it says about the effect of computers on society.

Toffler does not claim that the computer is the whole of the Third Wave, but merely that it is the synecdoche or paradigm of what is happening. In this sense, the factory was the synecdoche of the Second Wave. It was not merely the agent by which ‘indust-reality’ spread across the world and multiplied our collective wealth (and illth); it also became the model for everything else (p. 256).

You might be wondering about Toffler’s term “indust-reality.” Essentially it means the mass reality tunnel that has been prevalent during the Industrial Age. In effect, “…’indust-reailty,’ the reality of the industrial age, moved everybody into the robot lockstep of the factory system” (p. 256).

This brings us back to the idea of the symphony orchestra:

‘Indust-reality’ is still so pervasive that it is…mostly invisible. For instance, the feudal age never progressed beyond chamber music—trios, quartets, etc. The modern symphony, with its huge orchestra, its Promethean themes, its god-like conductor (‘capitalist’), its concert-master (foreman), its string section moving in harmony with its brass section, etc. is a beautiful artistic expression of modes of mass human organization appearing usually in less beautiful forms in the factory assembly-line. (The factory also demanded cities—massive concentrations of labor in one place—which made the symphony economically possible…) (pp. 256-257).

Now to synthesize this information. The music of Wagner is wholly representative of the Second Wave, the Industrial Age, the Age of Reason — the military-industrial-capitalist complex that has dominated our civilization for the last 150 years. This point needs no further proof than the scene in Apocalypse Now when Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall) blasts Wagner as his fleet of helicopters takes a Vietnamese town by storm.

As I said before, Wagner’s music also contributed to superhero characters and their stories. And we are likely duped into thinking that the problems facing mankind will be resolved by some benevolent source of power. But the most powerful role in “indust-reality” is the capitalist — i.e., whoever has the most money. Wilson recognized this as well, and he thought “it was inevitable in a domesticated primate species”:

Neither capitalist indust-reality nor socialist indust-reality have been able to give humanity what most of us really want: liberty and justice, freedom and the abolition of poverty, continued growth and continued security. [...] The Third Wave can, and will, transcend this problem within industrialism. [...] It will demand a whole new economy… (p. 257).

So as you can see, I think it’s a little humorous that “Here and Now” is celebrating the performance of Wagner’s opera. “Indust-reality” is becoming more irrelevant by the day, as computers and related technology help us bridge into the next phase of our evolution.

I feel like everything I’ve been working on is suddenly coming together with a new clarity. On March 18 NPR ran an excellent interview with Tom Burrell, who worked in the advertising industry for 40 years and just published a book called Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority.

I find Burrell’s story to be so interesting because he worked much of his adult life on the other side of the smoke screen, without even realizing the harm his industry inflicts on society. The other reason I want to read the book is that it seems to be parallel with The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan’s landmark 1963 book in the modern feminist quest. What I mean is that the brainwashing of and about African Americans is likely very similar to the brainwashing that contributed (or still contributes, depending on your opinion) to the feminine mystique.

Burrell explains that, in our materialistic society — especially to those who are struggling financially — the only apparent path to status and recognition is to buy stuff. This phenomena is worsened by the way popular culture depicts wealthy African Americans only as MTV stars and professional athletes. It sounds stereotypical to suggest that an ethnic group could share a common desire for Escalades and mansions — but that’s the intent of the ones doing the brainwashing, so it must be addressed. As one caller says, her son assumed that their dentist would be white, because “if he was going to be black he’d be a rapper or basketball player.”

You can listen to the interview with this embedded player. My post continues below.

Later, in response to a caller, Burrell says “what that brainwashing does is gets you to a point of being so insensitive — or desensitized, that you become unconscious of what is going into your head, what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing. You also become a party to the brainwashing, or black people become a party to the brainwashing. But that’s the nature of brainwashing. You join in and become your own victimizer.”

Neal Conan points out that the Cosby Show was a notable example of black people being portrayed in a positive light — which is exactly what I was thinking as I listened. I used to love the Cosby Show, partly because the Huxtables seemed to be a healthier, more balanced, and more well-rounded family than most that I knew in suburban Detroit (most of whom were white). Just the fact that the dad was a doctor and the mom was a lawyer seemed cool to me. That kind of thing was so uncommon, for any ethnicity. But Bill Cosby was in charge of that show’s production, and he clearly had his priorities straight.

Probably my favorite part of the interview is when Burrell discusses the way black people have taken ownership of the “n word.” He claims that using the word gives black people a false sense of empowerment, since they’re actually contributing to the problem. Every time the word is uttered by anyone, it furthers the desensitization.

Burrell says we have to “turn those images around” in mass media, and Brainwashed reportedly describes ways that can be accomplished. One idea relates to creating your own media using a personal computer, which is pretty much equivalent to one suggestion in my essay “Indecision Over Michigan“! Of course, I was talking about the broader effects of TV addiction, not just racial brainwashing.

The website for Burrell’s book, stopthebrainwash.com, features an interesting intro video as well as updates on his work. There’s also an excerpt from Brainwashed on NPR.org.

I have a feeling that when I’m older and reflecting on my experience as a young man, there will be a vital point in the story when I exclaim, “And then I found The Feminine Mystique!” It’s bewildering to consider that the work — which launched the modern feminist movement almost 20 years before I was born — could relate in any significant way to my own life. In fact it’s more than just significant; the application to and explanation of my own life is monumental. But I’m not alone there. I think Friedan’s work applies to our entire society. My new theory is that many of the forces affecting women in the ’50s and ’60s now affect both genders equally.

I’m only halfway through the book, so I can’t summarize the entire thing yet. I’m trying to get in the habit of posting little bits as I read, instead of trying to cover the whole whopper once I’m done. (That’s been difficult since I’ve realized I’m kind of like an Ent — those tree-like creatures from Lord of the Rings. Treebeard’s saying went something like, “It takes us a really long time to say anything at all, so we don’t say anything unless it’s worth taking a really long time to say.”)

My statement about the book’s ongoing validity relates to Friedan’s thesis:

“It is my thesis that the core of the problem for women today is not sexual but a problem of identity… Our culture does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings, a need which is not solely defined by their sexual role” (p. 77).

I don’t know if it’s pure coincidence or if my reading habits are starting to converge towards a single subject, but this statement was a perfect follow-up to a book I just finished reading: The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung. In that short book the famous psychologist seemed to be inviting someone to tackle the subject of feminism by taking the individuality angle. As Jung wrote:

“The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses” (p. 12).

In the natural progression of my independent studying, I’ve noticed a shift from fiction and philosophy to nonfiction and psychology, with the dividing time period being the 1950s. Both of these books fall in the second category, and I’m sort of surprised by Jung’s near-total absence from The Feminine Mystique. Jung’s book was published in 1957 and Friedan’s in 1963, so maybe there wasn’t enough lag time between the two.

Like I said, I still have a large chunk of it to read, but while Jung’s name has only been mentioned once so far, an entire chapter was dedicated to Sigmund Freud. In a way I’m glad about that, though, since it’s now obvious that I had a very skewed idea of Freud’s work. What I mean is, I only knew about the beneficial (or potentially beneficial) nature of his theories of the subconscious mind. I had no idea that he was sexist, or even hated or feared women. And I took a class in college called “Freud and Psychoanalysis”!

Apparently Freud was “a prisoner of his own culture,” by which Friedan means Victorian Europe at the dawn of the 20th century.

“In Freud’s time, evidently, cultural hypocrisy forced the repression of sex. [...] He then developed his theory by describing all the stages of growth as sexual… Something that could be described in physiological terms, linked to an origin of anatomy, seemed more comfortable, solid, real, scientific, as he moved into the unexplored country of the unconscious mind” (pp. 106-107).

Friedan explains that, while psychoanalysis was helpful in the therapy setting, its interpretation by mainstream culture was very damaging. Almost all the freedoms that women fought for from the mid-1800s (including the right to vote, which wasn’t granted to females until 1920 — though I didn’t know that!) until the end of WWII had reportedly vanished by the early 1960s.

“What happened to women is part of what happened to all of us in the years after the war. We found excuses for not facing the problems we once had the courage to face. The American spirit fell into a strange sleep; …the whole nation stopped growing up. All of us went back into the warm brightness of home…

“It was easier, safer, to think about love and sex than about communism, McCarthy, and the uncontrolled bomb. It was easier to look for Freudian sexual roots in man’s behavior, his ideas, and his wars than to look critically at his society and act constructively to right its wrongs” (pp. 186-187).

But as she goes on to say, “the individual” couldn’t solely be blamed for what happened in our culture. Psychologists, anthropologists, guidance counselors, professors and magazine editors all began taking Freud’s “lead,” telling women that self-fulfillment came from staying in the home, serving their husbands and children in their biological role. Once that caught on, highly paid marketers and advertisers took it to a new level of absurdity, manipulating the fear and guilt of women, knowing that these newly created housewives were responsible for 75 percent of spending in the home. (By the way, British documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis is the only person I’ve found today who seems to care about this topic. His documentary The Trap explores the ways that Edward Bernays, Freud’s own nephew, became rich by applying Freud’s theories to propaganda and brainwashing efforts in post-war America. Although, Friedan doesn’t seem aware of this either. Edward’s mother is mentioned in passing as a “strong” woman from Freud’s life — but Edward himself is totally omitted.)

So ladies and gentleman, we enter a new phase of the mystical creative journey. From not on there won’t be so many muddled, abstract philosophical explorations. Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus marked the end of that painful phase for me. Now I set out to explain the real world and what might be the most bizarre mystery of the universe: PEOPLE!

I asked the reader to post his email as a comment on the original article, but then I figured I would just put it in a brand new one. His note made me think that I hadn’t expressed myself very well, so I want to elaborate. Here’s his email:

Dear Mr. Meador,

I’ve been reading your Refractor post dated July 10, 2008, in which you express doubt of Thoreau’s virginity. Personally, of course, I have no way of knowing whether Thoreau was a lifelong virgin or not, although I plan to read Walter Harding’s biography of Thoreau which, according to another Web site, describes him as such. The reason I’m writing to you, however, is to say that I find your reasoning curious or, if you will, “slightly bizarre.” You state that:

“I couldn’t believe that anyone who hadn’t devoted their life to priesthood, a convent, or a monastery would ever maintain a strict code of sexual abstinence. It’s not that I’m pushing promiscuity, but I am at the core a scientist, and Darwin’s work is always at the back of my mind. In other words, humans reproduce through sexual intercourse, so a lifetime spent without a single sexually intimate relationship is slightly bizarre.”

What I find curious about this is that Darwin’s Origin of Species was published only two and a half years before Thoreau’s death. I doubt Darwin’s ideas could have had much impact on Thoreau’s way of life (unlike today, after 150 years). To see someone in Thoreau’s time who is a lifelong virgin as not fulfilling their “survival of the fittest” role is a conceptual mismatch. The reason Darwin’s thinking was so revolutionary is that people didn’t think in such terms before his book.

With consideration,
Gordon W (name abbreviated for privacy)

Here’s my response to Gordon:

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for writing. It seems that my point was miscommunicated. I don’t think that Social Darwinism will ever be a sufficient paradigm to explain human life or behavior, so I didn’t mean that Thoreau wasn’t “fit” in that sense. Furthermore, I didn’t mean to suggest that Darwin’s work has influenced the way that people live, or the way they make conscious decisions.

What I meant was that lifelong abstinence is simply unnatural. A person has to actively oppose their natural instincts in order to fulfill such a goal. Most people who make the claim are lying (like Tolstoy — as I wrote in the post: “Tolstoy preached celibacy, but fathered something like 13 children.”). And most people who actually go through with it are doing so for religious reasons (i.e. – priests and nuns).

The reason I even mentioned Darwin was to clarify how lifelong celibacy is unnatural. It’s more a sign of fear over the power of sexuality, a neurosis brought on by the repression of sexual feelings and acts. This relates to the incidence of child molestation among Catholic priests, men who never progressed past adolescent sexual maturity.

I’m not as concerned with whether or not Thoreau was actually a virgin as I am about the underlying psychology behind his writing and philosophy. If he was really so guarded as to avoid sexual (or even chaste romantic relationships) in life, then his worldview was inevitably incomplete — and that will color how I interpret his work.

I still haven’t returned to Walden, partly because of how serious I am about my point here. Forced virginity is one of the tools employed by Islamic Fundamentalists to make suicide bombers! Remember how the authoritarian government in Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 uses sexual deprivation to stir up fervent nationalism? Coincidence? No way!

Anyways, please share your thoughts!

Thanks to the wonderful serendipity offered on a regular basis by the Internet, I recently found an amazing Vimeo channel called Tryptophanatic Netvision. Or I should say, the channel found me. Kaliptus, the channel’s creator, added two of my creations to the list of mind-bending videos. So you can get an idea of what it’s all about, here’s the channel description:

Welcome to Tryptophanatic Netvision, where the screenings you are about to witness may reveal some of the deepest secrets of the universe! If you are ready for consciousness expansion, use this channel as a tool. The contents herein vary in style, quality, and nature… ranging from psychotropic animations to mystical videos, tripadelic motion graphics, mind warping experiments, occult surrealism and lots more. This Netvision is geared to alter your very being to a higher level of super hue-man exaltation & inspiration. “Caterpillars” beware!!!
This is “Butterfly” territory.

After reading that I was practically drooling with excitement. I swear I had just been pondering that same metaphor about the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. I’ve no doubt left hints on this blog about my own efforts to transcend the bizarre situation I find myself in, one that is in no way conducive to the type of creative activity I desperately crave. Somehow I feel oppressed, yet I can’t identify any oppressor. Maybe it’s just a state of claustrophobia brought on by the tight confines of a coccoon, as my organic plasma cooks into something that can lift me off this unsatisfactory plane of existence…

But I’m wandering. I highly recommend that you check out the Vimeo channel. Get comfortable, turn the lights down, and (if at all possible) watch on a large screen with a good sound system.

If you’re not familiar with Vimeo, it’s an alternative to YouTube that is quickly rising in popularity. It’s more stylish and more conducive to social networking. Furthermore, the people on there tend to be more dedicated to creativity — not just posting their home movies or pretending to be TV news anchors. Vimeo is a well sculpted garden, while YouTube is a stinky bog.

The main reason for this post is that Kaliptus is organizing an event in NYC on February 13, 2010, called Tryptophantasia. They’ll be screening experimental animation from the Vimeo channel, so if you’re in the area, please consider checking it out. It’ll probably be un-fricking-believable.

To download the event flier, right click HERE and choose “save link as.”

Also, I have some good news! Kaliptus has agreed to sign on as a new blogger at Supraterranean. Look for updates in the next week or so. It’ll tentatively be called “Tales from Tryptophantasia,” and will focus on many of the same topics as his Vimeo channel. Now please check out the promo video for the Tryptophantasia event below!

Phew. Now that I got that out of my system, let me get to the point. I think the long-running appeal of absurdist stories like Alice in Wonderland (based, let’s not forget, on the book by Lewis Carroll) is related to a few themes that aren’t often acknowledged. The Wizard of Oz is a similar example. In each case, a young woman bored or frustrated with her surroundings dreams (or hallucinates) that she travels to a land where things are more exciting and unpredictable, but a land that’s also more dangerous and terrifying. (Also note: the 1986 cult classic Labyrinth, featuring David Bowie and an early performance from Jennifer Connelly).

It’s clear that the characters whom Dorothy meets on her journey bear heavy resemblance to her friends and family back home. But since we don’t see as much of Alice’s life, we can only infer that her trip down the rabbit hole closely resembles Victorian England. Alice still escapes her boredom by traveling to a mystical place, but what she finds is even more defined by madness than the Land of Oz. It’s a madness that she cannot tolerate. She seems to think that people are not only capable of acting logically and responsibly, but they ought to do it all the time. I would argue that our society is more like Wonderland; it’s in a state of constant, rumbling madness. Yet the citizens of Wonderland are convinced that all is well — that they’re doing exactly what they should be doing, and it’s Alice who is acting peculiar.

It seems symbolic that a young girl is the protagonist in each story. It’s a literary device used by the author to express his (or her) own feeling of inadequacy. That’s not to say that little girls are actually powerless — but in the old British sense of “seen and not heard,” little girls are sort of at the bottom of the social structure in terms of who decides what. And of course this isn’t unique to gender or time period. South Park uses the exact same storytelling device with the four young boys. Almost every episode points out how dumb adults can be, as if they were ruled by madness but certain of their sanity. The unfortunate person who points out the truth is deemed to be insane — and, if the reaction is sharp enough, the person is destroyed for their inconvenient observation. (Here Bill Hicks would have called attention to Martin Luther King Jr, John Lennon, etc.)

Aside from the pervasive madness and the young female protagonist, the third important theme or concept is that, when things get out of hand, the main character simply wakes from the dream and is returned to “normal life.” This is such a ripe fantasy that no one even wants to admit that it exists. So many would like to “wake up” from what we take to be reality, saved by some greater force and reassured that this couldn’t actually be how the real world operates. (See: most major world religions)

A.O. Scott recently suggested in a New York Times article that Where The Wild Things Are contains a theme similar to the Wizard of Oz. Scott felt that Max was seeking a place where he could do whatever he wanted, and more importantly, where he’s in charge of his social circle. According to Scott’s essay, Max’s view of reality changed for the better after living with the Wild Things. Max decided that his imperfect life was worth putting up with. (Scott noted a similar theme in Coraline, another well-received 2009 film.) But the message behind Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz is actually quite the opposite. I think a story like Alice has endured because of what it says about the real world, not what it says about the dream world conjured up by the main character.

This is what Normon O. Brown was getting at in his Freudian study Life Against Death. In Chapter 2 he references the James Joyce quote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken” (p. 15). And while Brown failed to fully answer my questions on this subject, he did make it clear where this points. He said that by gaining a better sense of consciousness, “man would be ready to live instead of making history, to enjoy instead of paying back old scores and debts, and to enter that state of Being which was the goal of his Becoming” (p. 19).

That leads to another conversation entirely — one I’m not going to spoil here, but one I can assure you I will (finally) be able to provide some context on in the near future. For the time being, I’ll just reiterate the three most important — but unrecognized — themes in these tales of absurdist fiction: the protagonist (or author) feels surrounded by madness, completely powerless to change it, and unable to wake from the nightmare.

Now, have you fulfilled the necessary materialistic rituals to prepare yourself for the Holiday Season? Have you been thinking about the themes hidden beneath these worn-out traditions? This is, after all, how we claim to celebrate the concept of annual renewal — regardless of which religious jersey you wear. The more important question is, are you renewed?

I expect to be re-reading books more often in the years to come. So many that I’ve read seem distant and vague now, probably because I encountered them before I had gotten enough reading practice. If I haven’t explained it yet, I was a late-blooming reader. I never saw the point when I was younger… or maybe I was just too busy playing Nintendo. Either way, I didn’t retain much from books I read in school — even the ones I enjoyed — or the first few I read on my own volition.

Earlier this year I re-read and wrote about The Great Gatsby. Then this summer I cracked open my copy of Lord of the Flies. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I first read the book (it seems like it was ninth grade). And I didn’t remember every major plot development in the story. What I do know is that it was the first book to affect me profoundly. The Call of the Wild came close, but it didn’t reach the same level of real-life application.

One of the things I didn’t recall was how much I related to the character of Ralph. Of course, I may be relating to Ralph more as a 26-year-old than I did as a 15-year-old. I’ve been through so much more in the past decade than I had experienced in adolescence. Perhaps that’s why teachers yap and yap about symbolism in books like LOTF; it’s a short-cut way to explain the story in comfortable terms.

I think it’s funny how the textbook symbolism nonsense often gets carried on longer than other important elements of the story. Before this re-read, I glanced at user comments on Amazon.com. One person stated frankly, as if it were an undeniable fact, exactly what Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Roger and Simon “stood for.” The comment author was implying that these were cardboard cutouts inserted for only one specific purpose. I wasn’t convinced in high school, and I’m not convinced now. But then again, I never accepted the lazy ways of most English teachers. What’s the point of teaching symbolism if you don’t acknowledge each and every time that there isn’t just one explanation — that there is no right answer?

I also hated when teachers would suggest that every word in a book was there because the author wanted it there. They’d argue that every phrase and passage must have a specific purpose or the author would have omitted it. That’s bullshit. Or at least, if it’s true, then none of those books are literature or art; they’re textbooks.

But as I was saying, I don’t think the main characters can be adequately explained with a single interpretation — though they do have their obvious traits. Ralph is a benevolent, intelligent leader devoted to goodwill and progress, while Jack is a violent, disturbed leader fueled by insecurity and anger. Piggy is the brainy problem solver who provides fire with his glasses despite constant rejection from the other boys. Roger is a sadistic creature who waits until Jack leads a tribe to unleash his fury. Simon is the mystic, the schizomaniac, the visionary, and who prefers solitude to the creeping madness of the tribe.

I acknowledge that Simon is the most interesting character in the book, but he’s also the most complicated. He’s the only one who can see past reason and logic and fear and anxiety, and get a sense of the bigger picture of life. He’s also the only one willing to climb up the mountain and examine the so-called “beast,” instead of going to war over frail beliefs. Simon tries to save the boys from themselves by offering the truth, and for that the mob destroys him (sound like a Bill Hicks segment?).

Here one is tempted to refer to him as a “Christ figure” who seeks to awaken the crowd to the truth around them and who is then crucified for it. I’m not sure if that’s appropriate. Maybe this kind of 20th Century literature was pointing towards the necessity for a new kind of leader, a post-Christian spiritual guide. But any attempt to describe such a leader in common terms only alludes to trite stereotypes of the past (although that could just mean that my theory is far from complete).

Obviously the concepts of leadership and governance were at the front of Golding’s mind during the writing process. “Everybody wants to rule the world,” as Tears for Fears sang over ’80s synth pop. But there are endless ways that people go about exerting their influence on the world, and endless aims that they hope to achieve through that influence. Aside from Simon’s story, another mysterious element of the book is Ralph and Jack’s development into arch-enemies. It brings to mind all the “fevered egos” (to reference Bill Hicks again) that run our world today. Most of those egos are trying to make money, regardless of what other goals they may purport. Greed isn’t much of a factor on the island, so the two oppositional goals take shape as (1, Ralph’s) keeping the fire lit in order to be rescued and (2, Jack’s) having fun, hunting pigs, wearing tribal paint, and generally acting like savages.

Somehow this brings to mind the American Civil War. It seems that, in addition to the more discussed abolition of slavery, part of Lincoln’s high regard arose from his determination to hold the states together. He thereby guaranteed that those two very different cultures and often conflicting forces would have to live with one another. So are we ultimately better off because of that… or might the United States have been better split into two separate countries? (Try to answer that question without considering your fondness of Florida’s beaches.) The older I get, the less tolerant I am of the conservative American mindset. And yet, it will always be there, no matter how I feel about it — and (of course) regardless of geography.

It’s clear that Ralph didn’t benefit from having to tolerate Jack’s psychotic tendencies, but Ralph didn’t necessarily have the best plan for island life either. As I was saying before, I relate to Ralph in a very unique way. I had an experience like his while acting as president of Spartan Ski Club at Michigan State University. I wanted to lead the group to progress through logical reasoning, but always felt that some of theme resented me for it. My reasoning was simple: stay organized and do the hard work in advance so that events are more fun for everyone. Their reasoning was more like, “We do this for fun. This isn’t a job. I don’t care about your rules. I do what I want! Let’s get drunk!” We even had a talking stick at our meetings, like the conch! So club leaders were left with the choice of being alienated (an maybe punished) or abandoning the quest and joining the savages. Naturally there’s not much room for Simon’s enlightenment or spiritual awakening in a ski club, but you get the point.

I also related unexpectedly to the afterword by E.L. Epstein, in which he wrote: “Conrad was appalled by this ‘heart of darkness,” and existentialists find in the denial of this freedom the source of perversion of all human values. Indeed one could, if one were so minded, go through the entire canon of modern literature, philosophy, and psychology and find this great basic drive defined as underlying the most fundamental conclusions of modern thought” (p. 206).

Upon reading this I thought, “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing!” And, appropriately, Lord of the Flies was one of the first creative works to propel me down this winding path. I still haven’t gotten to the level that Simon had reached, but I intend to keep the fire lit… or keep hunting… or keep gazing at a rotting pig head on a stick — or maybe all three.

I can tell you right away that this will be a two-part analysis of Sisyphus, because I feel that I must provide an overview of the topic of suicide in literature and philosophy — at least how I’ve perceived it. Then there are two aspects to Sisyphus itself: an eloquent statement of the dilemma, and the closest thing to a solution that Camus — or anyone else, for that matter — has ever devised.

Camus discloses that the book was written in 1940, which I find extremely interesting, if only in terms of what came before and after it. Just scanning my favorites, Henry Miller published his first works in the ’30s — but Kerouac’s first book wasn’t published until 1950. Even earlier, Hesse’s Steppenwolf saw publication in Germany in 1927. I point these out initially because it seems that Sisyphus is a landmark in 20th Century philosophical development — yet in some ways it represents a transition that was never completed (I’ll expand on this later). By transition I mean that Camus essentially broke with the Existentialists of the ’40s and ’50s, most prominently Jean-Paul Sartre.

Camus and Sartre both recognized the absurd nature of life, but while Sartre and others sought to transcend it, Camus thought that required a leap beyond human certitude. As Camus put it, “I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone” (p. 40). Seen in this light, Sisyphus becomes a sort of poetic mathematical exercise in which Camus affirms the absurd life instead of evading it. And according to the Wikipedia page on Absurdism, this book is practically the manual.

Camus argues his case succinctly, acknowledging how deeply he could go into this subject, but at all times subjecting himself to a rigid set of guidelines. The main point of the book appears early: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy” (p. 3).

He attempts many definitions of the absurd condition:

“Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering” (pp. 5-6).

“What is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?” (p. 20)

“That struggle implies a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest). […] A man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it” (p. 31).

This blog is riddled with discussions of Existentialism and Absurdism. Two posts that come to mind focus on Sartre’s Nausea and Hesse’s Steppenwolf. But while Sartre’s Roquentin never really considers suicide, Hesse’s Harry is obsessed with the concept. He finds a “Treatise of the Steppenwolf” that explains:

“Suicides present themselves as those who are overtaken by the sense of guilt inherent in individuals, those souls that find the aim of life not in the perfecting and molding of the self, but in liberating themselves by going back to the mother, back to God, back to the all. Many of these natures are wholly incapable of ever having recourse to real suicide, because they have a profound consciousness of the sin of doing so. For us they are suicides nonetheless; for they see death and not life as the releaser” (p. 48).

“All suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide. …It is nobler and finer to be conquered by life than to fall by one’s own hand” (p. 49)

But that’s it???!!! That’s all he could offer us? A sense of despair that drags one through life? Isn’t that just making oneself a prisoner of inertia, unable to improve upon any aspect of existence and thus resigning onself to it? Of course I should give Hesse more credit than this. Steppenwolf is a novel, not an autobiography or a philosophical essay. If you know the ending (I won’t spoil it!), it’s believable that Hesse was mocking Harry’s mode of living, even after the awakening inspired by the treatise and his wise lady friend Hermine. But even when more concrete suggestions arise, they’re often vague and difficult to adapt to the context of the 21st Century.

Plus, this book was published over a decade before Sisyphus. But that’s not to say that the literary community made a convincing progression beyond Harry’s position in the subsequent decades. The most prominent example is Jack Kerouac. He wasn’t a philosopher, but he remains one of the most beloved literary figures in American history. In his books he claimed that he could never commit suicide because he was a Catholic and that would mean he’d go to hell. His alternative? He basically drank himself to death. Big Sur outlines part of this irreversible decline.

Obviously the world of literature is very familiar with alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide, but Kerouac was always his own protagonist and thereby immortalized his story. And when examining this twisted path, it’s impossible to maintain a separation between philosophy and psychology. But this existential despair is an important characteristic of modern humanity, and one that cannot be ignored. In Steppenwolf, Hermine tries to calm Harry by saying, “The image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity” (p. 153).

Camus recognized this tendency in existential thought, and he made a point of ruling that out of his possible conclusions in Sisyphus. “I am taking the liberty at this point of calling the existential attitude philosophical suicide. […] They always lay claim to the eternal, and it is solely in this that they take the leap” (p. 42). The “leap” mentioned here is applied to any bridge beyond what a human can comprehend. That more commonly means religion, so it was strange for me to see such a term applied to Existentialism, which I had previously seen as an answer of sorts.

In reality Existentialism is a statement of the problem; it’s where Camus begins and quickly dashes off. He’s not convinced by the idea of eternity, whether in organized religion or just broader spirituality. He’s not content to stubbornly hope that the basic condition of life will eventually improve.

Camus began to wonder if the desire to escape is an even bigger problem than the nausea inspired by existence. In other words, what if there was a way not only to endure the situation, but even capitalize off of it? It’s a very slight twist of the mirror that could produce an extraordinarily different outcome. “The danger…lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap. Being able to remain on that dizzying crest – that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge” (p. 50).

Next I’ll explore what one is to do on that dizzying crest, and why and how Camus felt it could be accomplished.

Most of the world was introduced to his wily behavior in Borat, the 2006 film of similar format (and from the same director Larry Charles) in which a TV reporter from Kazakhstan travels to America in order to learn what it’s all about. I was a fan of Cohen’s Da Ali G Show, which HBO has re-aired in recent years after initial broadcasts in the UK. That program featured alternating clips of Ali G, Borat, and Bruno, three characters designed to catch people off-guard, pull them out of their comfort zone, and elicit an outcome that is equal parts humorous, humiliating, and offensive.

So Bruno the character was no surprise to me, but Bruno the movie was. After the stir Borat caused, I couldn’t believe that Cohen could still dupe anyone into signing a filming contract without reading the fine print! I went into it thinking that I’d be one of the few people not offended by the film. I wasn’t totally wrong, but perhaps “offended” isn’t the right word. It’s not that anything offended my customs or beliefs; it’s that I felt extremely uncomfortable at multiple points in the movie.

I wasn’t uncomfortable about the fact that Bruno is a homosexual or because I had to watch a plethora of bizarre, unexpected nude scenes and sexual acts; I felt uncomfortable because watching Bruno was like living through a nightmare. It seemed that I was asleep and had no choice but to process the horror (a feeling that reminds me of an essay I wrote last year). Upon exiting the theatre, I remarked that — whether or not we perceive it on a daily basis — this nightmare is the world around us. And no, I’m not referring to Bruno; I’m talking about everyone that Bruno encountered on his journey through America.

I’m a generally pessimistic person with many strong reservations about American society, and yet Bruno still stirred me out of a general contentment with my surroundings. The film reminded me of Alice in Wonderland, which these days gets a lot of uninspired comparisons to the psychedelic drug experience. Many people gain satisfaction from knowing that they can expose themselves to wilder, more extraordinary sensory stimuli than their predecessors. We can’t necessarily be richer or possess more property or money, but we do have the power to live to greater extremes. Our wealth is our experience and our ability to retell it, to share it with others, to help them learn from it…

But I’m wandering. I thought of Alice in Wonderland even though that comparison isn’t often made to American culture. I usually think of Carrol’s absurdist satire as very specific to that British world of the 1800s. Of course I know America is just as pretentious and depraved, and the American Empire thinks it’s the best at everything. It was still a strange experience having this brought to mind. We don’t like to think of our culture as evil and infected. Even when we do, we usually project it on other groups or places. “The American South is so messed up” or “those west coast people are really strange.” To reference Norman O. Brown’s Freudian study Life Against Death, neurosis is everywhere, and it’s there all the time.

In reality, our world is only as strong as the dumbest, most backwards person around — in other words, the weakest link is the collective weakness. Yes, Bruno provoked people into acting the way they did, but once provoked, they were all too happy to continue behaving that way. That’s because the Mad Hatter is a Dallas talk show host; the White Rabbit is a candidate for the American presidency; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are cage fighters entertaining in-the-closet gay men struggling to deal with their inconvenient sexual preference (Is that one a stretch? I’ve always said those extreme fighting shows are soft-core gay porn); the Red Queen is…well…a dominatrix at a swingers party in your neighborhood.

I’m disappointed in the professional critics who bashed this film, reporting that it was basically just more of the same from Sacha Baron Cohen. Many also claimed that it shocked for the sake of shocking. Their unwillingness to challenge themselves and their perception of “good filmmaking” is a big reason why people are losing (or have lost) faith in critics.

This film is nothing like Borat. Obviously the xenophobia has largely been replaced by homophobia. But instead of inspiring laughs and an occasional sneer, Bruno makes us cringe and even infects us with a bit of despair. Bruno is ten levels beyond Borat in every way possible. And let me be very clear: Bruno is arguably a terrible film, but it wasn’t intended to be a “film.”

Even more so than Borat, Bruno is a documentary posing as a comedy. Presenting it as a film was just the best possible choice in terms of distribution. Think of all the oblivious middle Americans who will pick it up from their local Blockbuster store later this winter, expecting an edgy comedy about some idiot foreigner trying to find his way to fame — whether it means moving to Hollywood, feigning charity, or even attempting a conversion to heterosexuality. Every single one of them will have their third eye pried open.

While sex only came up occasionally in Borat (with the exception of that nude hotel fight…), Bruno is all sex, all the time. Likewise, sex is at the very core of what it means to be human. It is responsible for more of our thoughts, feelings, and actions than any of us would like to admit. Sex goes deeper than customs and traditions; it goes deeper than national pride; it goes deeper than religious beliefs. Bruno spanked all our asses, but he was able to do so because of everything we take for granted.

We think we’re so advanced (hell, even the Republicans finally agree that something needs to be done about global warming!). But we have so much more progress to make. Actually it’s not a certain point we need to progress to. It’s that we, as a society, tend to lounge on the couch unless we have a fire lit under our ass. Say what you want about Al Gore’s electric bill — An Inconvenient Truth is the primary reason why our culture is currently obsessed with becoming more environmentally friendly. Environmental destruction is no longer a myth that happens in faraway rainforests; it’s happening in the tailpipe of every car in every driveway in the world.

Again I digress. The point isn’t that people reacted to Bruno’s flagrant homosexuality. Actually I’m not quite sure right now what the point was (apparently the film deserves a quick assessment and additional viewings). As one guest on NPR said last week, there are so many levels to Bruno that it’s hard to be sure who’s getting made fun of, who should be offended, and what we’re learning from the situation. But we are learning, nonetheless, even if we’re not quite sure what the lesson is.

The overall lesson, I think, is that even the most open-minded and enlightened of us still hide behind conventions and institutions. Perhaps this relates to my realization halfway through the movie, that the whole audience was unexpectedly watching a gay love story, and most (if not all) of us were emotionally involved in it.

We are capable of adapting to almost any situation that is forced upon us, so why do we have so much trouble adapting to what arises naturally from our peers and our unconscious? So many humans think of themselves as divine creatures on the path to eternal greatness. We ought to be a lot more aware of the true nature of this world, particularly the cultural world that we alone create. Awareness feeds the inspiration to change, and as we’ve all seen with the Twitter response during the recent Iran election conspiracy, our global awareness is growing at a rate never before possible.

If Bruno accomplishes anything, it will be to further raise awareness about the absolutely horrifying nature of the land we call America. We may be more culturally advanced that some places in the world, but we also have a greater responsibility to advancement. I don’t mean to say that we are entitled in any way, but just that we have absolutely no excuse to give Cohen enough material for not one, but two of these satirical films.

Until the material disappears, I’m so thankful that movies like Bruno exist, and I can’t wait to see what Sacha Baron Cohen comes up with next.