Optimistic Nihilism

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by David Landers


  It was Christmas break, and I had driven down to Dallas from Lawrence to trudge through another holiday. After a long day of Christmas-ing I retired to the guest room, with its nicotine-stained walls, prehistoric blue shag carpet, and crappy TV. And gross: that decades-old reject mattress that must have housed an inconceivable number of dust mites.

  To wind down, vent about the depressing holiday, and postpone what was sure to be a horrific bout of insomnia, I called my ex-girlfriend, Victoria, who was now my regular friend. She had been the longest romantic relationship I ever had, at a not-very respectable two years. As I tried to engage Vickie on the phone, she seemed uncomfortable, eventually disclosing that she was now in a committed romantic relationship with some other guy, her first serious gig since we parted ways not that long ago.

  I felt a grotesquely uncomfortable tension, a feeling I now recognize as being emotionally crushed, but I was unwilling to admit it; I was defending against it. Of course, I didn’t let her know I was even feeling uncomfortable. When we got off the phone, there was a sense of finality, and it was so fucking quiet. I could hear the goddamned dust mites crawling around in that godforsaken mattress.

  Then, Mark’s advice kinda snuck into my thoughts. Striking while the iron was very hot and not feeling that I had anything to lose, I decided to do what he had been suggesting: Just relax and pay attention to whatever I was feeling, without expectation or judgement. Let go of the reeds and just let the River of Distress take you wherever it would.

  Somehow, I was able to let go. I laid down, lights and crappy TV off, just me and that comically lumpy bed and the nicotine stains hiding in the dark.

  It hurt so bad, but I just sat there and let it flow over me, like the Holy Spirit did when Patsy touched me at camp decades prior. I didn’t cry this time, but it hurt as bad as that had felt good. I felt like a needy person, a needy person who now felt lonely and helpless because my girl was finally gone—for real this time—and I don’t like to be rejected, because I do the rejecting in my relationships.

  And then, the damnedest fucking thing happened. After about—I don’t know, not too long, ten or fifteen minutes … half an hour?—it started to hurt less. And then, guess what: The next thing I knew, I was waking up from what appeared to be a full night’s sleep! Unfathomably, I felt rested. It was one of those awakenings like on a sleeping pill commercial, with the stretch and the sun on my face, hair looking just fine, beautiful, fluffy white sheets, not a dust mite around, and a big, fat smile on my face.

  But no, I wasn’t cured. It did hurt some more over time, waxing and waning, but I’m sure it didn’t hurt as much as it would have otherwise. If nothing else, I felt less tense about being hurt. I just hurt, without the American side effects of being upset about my hurt. I would be okay, and keep on truckin’. The pain that remained did not have me. I now had it … or at least we both had each other.

  Keeping the aforementioned defense mechanisms in mind, one that has particular relevance for my book is sublimation: when we cope with our pain by compensating or distracting ourselves through productive or prosocial behavior. Dramatic examples come from psychology textbooks that often cite, for example, a physically abused child who grows up to become a professional boxer. Another example might be a mother who has lost her child to bullying who then becomes an anti-bullying advocate. More relevant for the masses, one might cope with chronic loneliness or the loss of a loved one by taking on extra duties at work or by filling his spare time volunteering.

  It sounds fine; however, even productive, prosocial behavior can be unhealthy if it has control of us, develops into an obsession, or otherwise blinds us. Just as projection or intellectualization or other defenses can be a way of life for some people, so can sublimation. Here, Irvin Yalom summarizes the thoughts of his colleague, Salvador Maddi:

  Crusadism … is characterized by a powerful inclination to seek out and to dedicate oneself to dramatic and important causes. These individuals are demonstrators looking for an issue; they embrace a cause almost regardless of its content. As soon as one cause is finished, these hard-core activists must rapidly find another in order to stay one step ahead of the meaninglessness that pursues them.8

  Staying ahead of the meaninglessness that pursues us. That’s a very provocative thought, that sometimes our ambitions are motivated by fears of meaninglessness.

  One important difference between crusadism and healthy sublimation is that the person engaged in the latter is more in touch with why she is doing what she is doing. She would be willing to acknowledge that she is an activist for anti-bullying legislation because she lost her own child, and she would be consciously aware that this simply makes it hurt less and benefits society, and that although her child would appreciate it, it does not bring her child back. Alternatively, the crusader would more likely deny unconscious motivations, and become uncomfortable and even irritable when accused of them—similar to how the person with unhealthy, narcissistic pride becomes angry when you insult him.

  If you think I’m a downer for questioning sublimation, you should hear Ernest Becker. His scathing assessment, The Denial of Death, earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1974. I find Becker’s book one of the most intelligent and provocative works I’ve ever read, and definitely the most courageous, at least among legitimate literature. Like Candide, The Denial of Death should be required reading in typical curricula; both should be as popular as Romeo and Juliet.9

  Becker, like countless Introduction to Psychology professors throughout history, noted how we humans are different from other animals because we are endowed with the most miraculous abilities that neurons can possibly muster: self-consciousness and abstraction, particularly, foresight.

  However, unlike the vast majority of those psychology professors who relentlessly applaud our self-awareness and abstract thinking—as if these traits necessarily warrant celebration and pride because they distinguish us from the lower animals—Becker courageously acknowledges that there is a cruel, horrible side effect of putting the two together: terror.

  What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating yearning for life and self-expression—and with all this yet to die.10

  Becker’s book is way too intricate for a summary to do it justice, but the essence of his point is this: We all know that we’re gonna die, but the notion is so unsettling that we devote most of our lives trying to ignore or deny the fact. In one of the greatest ironies in the history of existence, we can become so obsessed with denying our fate that we often compromise the quality of the limited time we do have!

  One might assume that ignoring something as profound, ubiquitous, and glaring as mortality would be much more difficult than denying, say, one’s alcohol addiction. However, the denial of death comes with surprising ease. First, of course, the notion is inherently distressing so we actively avoid contemplating it deliberately. Otherwise, there are some more interesting psychological dynamics that help us to keep those terrifying thoughts at bay.

  Healthy humans, regardless of how rational and intelligent they may be, simply have difficulty appreciating their mortality. Part of our brains knows that we’re mortal, but our guts just don’t buy it. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman coherently summarizes the post-Freudian (that is, object relations) notion that healthy parenting during infancy instills in us a sense of invulnerability that ironically can prevent us from fully contacting reality as adults.11 A sensitive parent listens to her baby’s cries and responds appropriately, whether covering him with a blanket if it seems that he’s cold or offering her luscious teat if he’s hungry. Alternatively, maybe the kid is just feeling alone and having some sort of disorientation freak-out and just needs to be held and soothed. The baby’s mind is too simple to comprehend the complexity of the world around him and simply learns that every time he feels a nee
d or urge it is somehow magically resolved. He develops a grandiosity, essentially concluding that he is the center of the universe, that it’s all about him, a perspective called infantile omnipotence or infantile narcissism. Despite its “infantile” origins and nature, as Ronnie explains, the “illusion of invulnerability” endures into adulthood, in some form, so that even the most intelligent of adults cannot readily appreciate her mortality deeply. Studying Ronnie’s book, I suspect that it’s no coincidence that someone like me, who has virtually no memories of being comforted during childhood, grew up feeling the opposite of invulnerable, that is, particularly vulnerable—and would eventually be writing a book about getting in touch with our vulnerability.

  Colluding with the omnipotence with which many are blessed (or cursed) are more fundamental cognitive obstacles to contemplating our mortality, even when we are willing to try. As we discussed earlier when considering the conveniences of believing in God, a consciousness cannot really contemplate itself no longer contemplating. Trying to imagine no longer imagining is a paradoxical task, like trying to force two powerful magnets together at their positive poles. Mundane thoughts are much more accessible, so this is where we spend most of our time by default.

  Perhaps an amalgamation of the two aforementioned issues, our experience of self is simply too compelling to equate with the “selves” of other creatures that we know are mortal, such as people who live on the other side of the world or even our beloved pets. Now, I’ve been doing this psychology thing for a while, but I’m not going to pretend that I understand self-consciousness or that I can explain what the self is. But what I do know is that mine—my self—is the most salient experience I have—to say the least! I’m the most real thing there is to me. In fact, I’m the only thing that I really know is real, à la Descartes’s cogito ergo sum. How could the universe possibly continue to exist without me—I am reality! My self-consciousness (whatever it is) is so conspicuous and distracting that it overwhelms my ability to appreciate my true essence, that I’m really just biology, chemistry, and physics.

  But sometimes when I’m looking at and contemplating my cat while she’s engaged in her feline business, I have these brief Beckerarian moments of clarity in which I can’t help but see that we’re really not that different. We’re both just biological tubes. On one end of our tubes, we each have this mechanical device with exceptionally strong and hard parts fit to consume nourishment. Also on that side of our tubes are the perceiving parts: the eyes, ears, and nose that direct the rest of our tubes towards things that they need and want, like food and sex, and away from things they don’t, like big scary dogs. Farther down the line, our tubes digest the food that we’ve crunched and—with a peculiar circularity—nurture all the parts necessary to sustain our tubes and ambulate them around the world in search of more food. And, of course, we both have backsides, where all of our nonfood matter is purged from our systems.

  It seems that the only real, qualitative difference between me and my cat is that the frontal lobes of my brain are more developed, having apparently exceeded some sort of critical mass that has afforded awareness, both of my “self” and of the future. And sure enough, here I am, terrified, while my cat doesn’t give a shit. She’s over there taking a nap right now, and I haven’t had a great night of sleep in months. Ultimately, all because she doesn’t realize that we’re both food for worms, but I do.

  And of course this is the primary reason we defend against our true fate. If we ever are able to appreciate our mortality, we simply can’t tolerate it. The notion that we are merely animals, that our existence is finite just like our pets, that our inconceivably magnificent selves will someday no longer be evokes terror in us. In fact, it’s wholly unacceptable.

  So, we don’t accept it. We defend against that terror, using the same defense mechanisms we use to fend off any other pain and discomfort, like when we get fired from our jobs, when our ex-girlfriends start dating someone else, or when our parents didn’t pay us attention growing up.

  We suppress the terror consciously. We repress it unconsciously. We distract ourselves from it. We intellectualize it, we rationalize it, we even try to laugh about it, but deep down we know it’s not really funny and all we want is to be young again, or at least to not age anymore. The irony of all of this is so profound: We’ve developed frontal lobes to our brains that allow us to think abstractly, to marvel at existence, but this very gift scares us so much that we have to dumb it down in order to function! “The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”12

  Back to sublimation, in some ways it seems to be the perfect defense mechanism against existential terror. Becker felt that the fear of death is “a mainspring of human activity.”13 Beyond the traditional, obvious rewards of staying busy (such as making money and gaining notoriety from our peers), rat-racing keeps us distracted and therefore shields us from contemplation and the discomfort that it brings.

  If we’re lucky, we may even create something that will endure beyond us. Now that’s good treatment for one’s terror: Sure, worms may eat me, but I’ve left my mark. A part of me will still exist, even when my body is gone. I will not be completely forgotten. Any time even a single person, some other existing entity, is interfacing with my mark, it’s almost like I’m still existing.

  Personally, I’m ready to admit that a large motivation for writing the book that you’re reading—with all of its narcissistic autobiography and egocentric grandstanding—is to cope with my own anxiety about not existing anymore. The thought can horrify me, but there’s something about putting my life story and thoughts into a book that makes it hurt less. At times while writing I’ve felt almost frantic, wanting to finish this thing before something happens to me, like a car accident or stroke or something. I don’t have a problem admitting all this; it’s all so simple and obvious. And again, being honest with myself and embracing my insecurity makes me feel more real and alive than when I try to deny it.

  Such acts of creating are also great for a society en masse, so no one else is complaining. Indeed, Becker asserted that rat-racing as such “is the repression on which culture is built.”14 If I’m following him correctly, he’s suggesting that culture (that is, society) is, to some degree, an epiphenomenon, a side effect of the cumulative effects of each individual’s fear of death. I’m sure it’s more complex than that, but I also think there’s more truth to it than it may seem at first glance.

  Cultures come in all shapes and sizes: nationalities, ethnicities, political parties, states, cities, football fan bases, criminal gangs, people who are hearing impaired, and those who make movies. Culture offers much more than the societies from which they are born: like-minded camaraderie, a place to belong.

  And with belonging, we begin to experience something transcendent: that sense of security, maybe even some semblance of immortality. Our cultures are bigger than us and will continue to exist after we’re gone, just like some other guy’s book will for him. Belonging to something that is relatively eternal is at least as good as producing something that is relatively eternal. It’s more accessible by the masses, that’s for sure.

  No wonder we are so proud and defensive of our cultures and even aggressive when they are offended. However, the prospect that cultures acquire some of their appeal because of our fear of death should cause us to question whether our radical devotions to them are healthy. Jiddu Krishnamurti had the courage to acknowledge the danger of so strongly identifying with culture. It’s a radical stance, if not hyperbole, but bear with us:

  When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belo
ng to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.15

  If you don’t want to hear it from a hippie Indian, here a blue-collar Caucasian conveys the point just as well:

  Culture and tradition is always used as a positive thing, but I think there’s many negatives to it, because it drives a wedge between people, because one of the things about culture is that my culture is better than yours. Who cares? … That’s why I’m not patriotic. I’m not a flag-waver, I couldn’t care less. Because to me, the most important thing in this life is being a human being … I have no shame, you know, in saying that I’m not patriotic, or anything, because it’s irrelevant to me.

  That’s Mark “Barney” Greenway, the lead singer for iconic death-metal band Napalm Death.16 I know: I don’t have any quotes from mainstream, popular sources—which is a point I’m trying to make. Mainstream society doesn’t make such comments because it’s blasphemous to criticize culture, just like it is to criticize optimism. Such thoughts are demoralizing and unacceptable, at least partially because culture is so deeply associated with belonging and all the good stuff that it brings, perhaps even the denial of death.

  Is all culture and tradition bad? No, of course not. As with anything else, we need to practice rational, educated moderation. But culture and tradition do become toxic when they begin to impose on the more important rights of individuals. Iraqi founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement, Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar, asserts most succinctly: “Society, Culture, [and] Tradition don’t have rights. Individuals have rights.”17 When I preach similarly and people try to argue with me on this point, I cite how, for example, that physically beating one’s wife, female circumcision, and even “honor killings” are practiced and accepted in some cultures. Obviously, that shit’s not okay, regardless of how long the respective culture has been doing it. Amazingly, some people will still look at me puzzled, at least in response to some examples. And it’s not just right-wing, patriarchal traditionalists; some ultra-liberal folk will as well, because they’ve become overly respective of culture. These are people who are so obsessed with being liberal that they’ve actually become closed-minded. “Crusaders,” according to Salvador Maddi.

 

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