The Message in the Bottle and Lost in the Cosmos

by Walker Percy

  But Kierkegaard gives us leave to see both, both Jerry Falwell and Bob Guccione, from a different perspective, as if the TV camera had been dollied backstage, from which vantage point we can see both Guccione and Falwell plus the talk-show host plus the studio audience and form some notion of what is going on with all of them.

  Even more valuable is Kierkegaard’s characterization of “the spirit of the sensuous-erotic” and his use of the quaint word “demoniac.”

  “Demoniac” implies possession of the soul by an unbenign spirit. Such a notion comports well with our far more modest semiotic description of the self, not necessarily as a soul or spirit, but in minimal terms as that semiotic entity which is unique in its ability to understand the world but not itself. The science of the scientist can understand everything in the Cosmos but the self of the scientist. It, the self, is therefore a “spiritual” entity, if you like, but an entity anyhow subject to its own modes of existence, triumphs, and disasters and, in this age, its own peculiar predicaments. Not the least benefit of semiotics and Kierkegaard is that we are delivered from the debilitating strictures of modern psychology, which has not the means of saying anything at all about the self, let alone spirit.

  Both Kierkegaard and modern semiotics give us leave to speak of the self as being informed—“possessed,” if you like, at certain historical stages of belief and unbelief. It becomes possible, whether one believes in God or not, soul or not, to agree that in an age in which the self is not informed by cosmological myths, by totemism, by belief in God—whether the God of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam—it must necessarily and by reason of its own semiotic nature be informed by something else.

  Kierkegaard wrote of the relationship between Christianity and “the spirit of the erotic.” I wonder what he would have made of the influence of the technological revolution on the spirit of the erotic and whether it is a coincidence that this country is not only the most Christian and most eroticized of all societies but also the most technologically transformed and the most violent. Is there a relationship between the “spirit of the erotic,” technology, and violence?

  At any rate, one may state the fact in Kierkegaardian terms without pretending to solve the riddle of the relationship:

  The fact is that, by virtue of its peculiar relationship to the world, to others, and to its own organism, the autonomous self in a modern technological society is possessed. It is possessed by the spirit of the erotic and the secret love of violence.

  The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.

  As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

  Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.

  Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.

  School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone’s bridge in Physics.

  Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media—one of technology’s greatest achievements.

  The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.

  Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by group, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection.

  But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of the dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation.

  Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only unambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.

  Five modes of recreation might be deduced from the semiotic which follows upon the placement of an autonomous unspeakable self in its world. The recreational modes of the autonomous self are understandable in terms of the semiotic options open to it, that is, those transactions with its world, itself, and other selves which are specified by its own placement in its world and its perception of itself as unspeakable.

  They are:

  Travel, the actual movement of the self in its world.

  Sports, the disposing of oneself by contest and in team sports, the creation of a quasi community and territory, and the consequent identification of self with us against them.

  Media, those transactions in which the self receives signs from other selves through a medium. Such a category can include sign-transactions as diverse as reading War and Peace, watching Dallas on TV, listening to The Grateful Dead on tape, hearing Dan Rather on the five-thirty news.

  Drugs: the alteration of consciousness or the anesthetizing of the unspeakability of self.

  Sex: the cheapest, most readily available and pleasurable mode of intercourse with our selves and the only mode of intercourse by which the self can be certain of its relationship with other selves—by touching and being touched, by giving and receiving pleasure, by penetrating or being penetrated.

  Polarities of the “authentic” vs. the “inauthentic” are easily discernible in recreational modes. The criteria of authenticity are not necessarily objective but have rather to do with the rules by which the self allows or disallows its own experience.

  For example, in travel, the actual movement of the self in the world to escape the expanding nought of the autonomous self at home, different selves will be disappointed or satisfied or delighted according as the trip falls short of, meets, or exceeds the expectation of the self. But the expectation of the self, to be informed in its nothingness—if only I can get out of this old place and into the new right place, I can become a new person—places a heavy burden on travel.

  Three people take a bus tour of Mexico.

  The bus breaks down and the tourists have to make an unscheduled stop, an old abandoned monastery converted to a questionable hotel by a questionable hotelier, like Ava Gardner in Night of the Iguana.

  Traveler A is unhappy. She paid for certain accommodations and expects them. Things have gone awry. She makes everyone miserable with her complaints.

  Traveler B is delighted. Having set great
store by this trip, he is disappointed by its routineness, by Latinized Holiday Inns, by condo-rimmed beaches, by his boring fellow tourists. Now the unexpected happens. He feels he has left the beaten path. With satisfaction he surveys his new lodgings, a monk’s cell with adobe walls yea thick—he tells his friends later—and a single window overlooking a lush jungle. An adventure. What next?

  Traveler C is neither happy nor unhappy. She knows all about standard bus tours of Mexico and she knows all about the unhappiness of Traveler A. But she also knows all about the happiness of Traveler B and the getting-off-the-beaten-path syndrome. In fact, she’s even heard of certain tours where “breakdowns” and “wrong turns” by wayward buses are prearranged. There are any number of converted monasteries in Mexico ministering to this new spiritual need. Yet she wants to make the tour, if only to get away and be let alone, and with minimal expectations. In fact, it is the very ordinariness of the tour and the ordinariness of the breakdown which she enjoys. She cultivates the routine as such. Rather than watch the picturesque Mexicans, she finds herself watching her fellow tourists watching the picturesque Mexicans. Joan Didion immortalized Traveler C.

  Question: Do you identify with one traveler more than with the others? If you do, are there objective grounds for your preference?

  (a) I might identify with one or another traveler but it is a subjective choice depending on one’s own experience—how many Mexican bus tours you’ve made, your life situation, and so on. One might be looking for adventure, sex, who knows?—or perhaps one has a rotten job and a rotten marriage and so may want nothing more than a mindless hiatus, so that it doesn’t matter whether the bus is lost or found or touring Mexico or Ireland. It’s too bad that A is unhappy, it is nice that B is happy, and a matter of indifference that C is neither. But what more is there to say?

  (b) No, an objective judgment of sorts can be made. Traveler A is a nerd, your sub-ordinary unreflective American tourist, not to be identified with and certainly not to be preferred. B is better off, but not much. C knows this, and though she may not be happy and may not have any expectations, she is nevertheless to be preferred to A or B. For she is at least coming to the end of her rope, the same rope A and B have hold of, and will at least find out what is at the end. It is better to know than not to know.

  (CHECK ONE)

  The expectations of the autonomous self, to be informed in its nothingness—if only I can get out of this old place and into the right new place, I can become a new person—pins a quasi-religious hope on, of all things, travel.

  It is notable that when travel as a recreation mode is experienced vicariously through the media, it undergoes a shift toward the erotic. The old film travelogues of the 1930s give way to TV’s The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, where the boat of the former is an instrument not of travel but of liaison, and the fantasies of the latter are not insular but sexual.

  It is otherwise with sports and the media. There, too, a shift has occurred, from active participation to the vicarious participation of spectatorship. Four people used to go bowling, but 100 million watch the Super Bowl. Football, where men try to hit and hurt, has replaced baseball as the national game. It is as if the demotion from participant to spectatorship and from live spectatorship to TV spectatorship has to be compensated by upping the ante in violence.

  The passivity of TV and film watching contrasts with the violence with which the watcher identifies.

  The two most popular film stars in the world are Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. Each kills a great many people in each movie, the former casually, the latter by way of revenge.

  Scene from A Few Dollars More: Clint Eastwood is a bounty hunter who is after a wanted man for the reward. As he closes in on his quarry in a saloon, three friends of the wanted man come to the latter’s rescue. Clint Eastwood kills all four without changing expression. This pleases us, even though Eastwood, unlike Ulysses or John Wayne, is killing just for money.

  Recreational drugs offer a spectacular remedy to the disappointed self. Rock star to his chauffeur: “Don’t let anybody kid you—nothing, not sex, not music, not adulation, can compare with the rush of intravenous Dilaudid.” There are only these contraindications: expense, crime, illness, death.

  There remains sex as the recreational mainstay, the cheapest, most available, and most pleasurable of recreational options. By “sex” let us specify the entire spectrum of the erotic, from the “romantic” encounter—cool Audrey Hepburn meeting testy Cary Grant by accident when their dogs’ leashes get entangled on the Left Bank—to the cruising homosexual fellating his five hundredth stranger in Buena Vista Park.

  The mystery of the erotic is that it seems to be proof against the disappointments of other sectors of life and to transformation by the media. Travel may be eroticized by the media, but the erotic is never travelized.

  Compare the disappointment of ordinary social life, the traditional recreation of society, with the erotic encounter.

  Scene in one thousand movies: a party, formal stuffed-shirt party, NYC cocktail party, country club party, New Year’s Eve party, hippie party—any kind of party—but with the one common denominator of a failed festival, a collapsed and fragmented community. There is always the painfully perceived gap between what is and what might be. If there were such a device as a social-relationship indicator and one could quantify the relationship what-is/what-might-be, most parties would register less than 5 percent. Hence the booze. Unlike the use of spirits in the past, the purpose of alcohol is not to celebrate the festival but to anesthetize the failure of the festival. The locus of the failure is the self. Richard Pryor: Why free-basing? Because it wipes out the self.

  But then at the party, the failed festival, one meets the eye of who else but a stranger and where else but across a crowded room. Eye contact, as the pathognomonic expression of the times goes, is maintained one tenth of a second longer than socially prescribed. It is enough. One approaches. A conversation takes place. Its chief characteristic is that, no matter how banal it is, it is charged with significance.

  I feel that I know you.

  I don’t think.

  I feel that I do.

  Do you know what I mean?

  Yes.

  The social-relationship indicator would jump to 95 percent.

  The exit line is another one thousand movies: Why don’t we get out of here—I know a little Italian restaurant around the corner.

  Change of scene: from a failed festival to the last remaining unfailed festival of the twentieth century: the erotic encounter.

  A quiet place. Two glasses of wine. Now the alcohol celebrates the festival: The music? Perhaps the Muzak of the cocktail lounge, but it sounds like the dancing violins of Mozart. A touch of arm to arm. A brush of knee to knee. An arrangement. Could you meet me at— A liaison …

  The sex and violence in Western life, especially American life, are commonplaces. But the important questions do not have commonplace answers. For example: What is the relation between the two? Are they merely, as one so often hears, the paired symptoms of a decaying society like the fifth-century Roman Empire? Or is there a reciprocal relationship? That is to say, is a thoroughly eroticized society less violent and a thoroughly violent society less erotic?

  Or, the more ominous question: Suppose the erotic is the last and best recourse of the stranded self and suppose then that, through the sexual revolution, recreational sex becomes available to all ages and all classes. What if then even the erotic becomes devalued? What if it happens, as Paul Ricoeur put it, that, “at the same time that sexuality becomes insignificant, it becomes more imperative as a response to the disappointments experienced in other sectors of human life”?

  What then? Does the self simply diminish, subside into apathy like laboratory animals deprived of sensory stimulation? Or does the demoniac spirit of the self, frustrated by the failure of Eros, turn in the end to the cold fury of Saturn?

  It is no longer open to Clint Eastwood to do what Cary Grant
did. In fact, Eastwood’s character, Dirty Harry, doesn’t like girls. But he has his .44 Magnum.

  Will the bumper stickers of the 1990s read Make Love Not War or Love Is Gone but War Remains?

  Hold on, says the reader. Just a minute.

  Yes?

  Are there not plenty of good people left? decent folk who have no truck with what you call the spirit of the erotic and the spirit of violence? millions of people, in fact, such as those described by Charles Kuralt on the road in America, who are without exception good, kind, neighborly, generous, patriotic folk?

  I am willing to believe it, but where do all the child molesters come from? Look out for benign types like Charlie Kuralt.

  And are there not millions of ordinary American families with hardworking devoted husbands, loving wives, good kids, who live happy lives, have a good time without promiscuous sex, drugs, or violence, and on the whole turn out well?

  Undoubtedly. In fact, I am amazed how extraordinarily nice most young people are, extraordinarily nice and extraordinarily ignorant.

  And don’t some people fall in love with their heart’s desire, marry, and live reasonably happy lives?

  Some. For a while. Maybe. I can’t say.

  Don’t you believe in love?

  Yes, but the word has been polluted. Beware of people who go around talking about loving and caring.

  And are there not plenty of sincerely religious folk left, Christians and Jews, whose lives are filled with the joy of the love of God and who go about doing good?