“How Should We Live?” Someone Asked Me in a Letter, Part 3
On Human Darkness and Possibility
Kierkegaardian “individuals” vs. “organization types”
Devotees of character will be well-served by taking up the exquisite writing and moral example of Pulitzer Prize-winning psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist Robert Coles at some point in time. I had the excellent fortune of corresponding with Coles for some years after meeting him in a now defunct Harvard Square cafe several decades ago. Coles knew and worked with seemingly everyone from Anna Freud to Erik Erikson to Ruby Bridges to Robert F. Kennedy (the father, that is, not the son) to Dorothy Day—even Bruce Springsteen and countless others. Like May, Coles was a major contributor to a literary psychology that resonated with huge swathes of thoughtful readers during the latter decades of the 20th century, a sensibility and literature that has largely disappeared from the contemporary scene.
Coles’s enthusiasm for my personal writing came as a godsend at the time of our meeting. Our correspondence was remarkable in its essential goodwill and abiding integrity; for me personally, it was hugely encouraging and helpful. Coles’s exemplary literariness, decency, and gifted pen bequeathed to the world an all-but-forgotten essayistic approach to things requiring rare sensitivities and sustained attention. One reads as much with the heart and intuitive mind as with the head—“thinking with the heart,” as Rollo May put it in musing one evening upon “the joys of thinking.” Although still in good health in his middle nineties, Coles has not published in recent years. I’m not at all sure his voice and modest demeanor have any longer a realistic space or place within our increasingly packaged organizational realms or upon a larger image-obsessed world stage wherein the surreal dictates of professional wrestling are blithely employed even to elect presidents. There is a very real sense in which individuals like Coles or May become too refined for the world as what once fit instructively, indeed evocatively, decreasingly fits at all. The Czech writer Milan Kundera refers in this sense to “the trap the world has become” as it enters a “historical phase of total ugliness.” Consortium readers may wish to click on the link above to learn a bit more about Coles and what has been lost.
“I see Organization Men in psychiatry, with all the problems of deathlike conformity. Independent thinking by the adventurous has declined; psychiatric training has become more formal, more preoccupied with certificates and diplomas, more hierarchical . . . Today we are obsessed with accreditation, recognition, levels of training, with status as scientists. These are the preoccupations of young psychiatrists. There are more lectures, more supervision, more examinations for specialty status, and thus the profession soon attracts people who take to these practices. Once there were the curious and bold; now there are the carefully well-adjusted and certified.”
—Robert Coles, “A Young Psychiatrist Looks at His Profession”
“Abroad, she discovered that the transformation of music into noise was a planetary process by which mankind was entering the historical phase of total ugliness. The total ugliness to come had made itself felt first as omnipresent acoustical ugliness: cars, motorcycles, electric guitars, drills, loudspeakers, sirens. The omnipresence of visual ugliness would soon follow.”
―Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Trouble in the new world
In Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson, a novel about Holocaust-obsessed Jews in the New World of Manhattan during the years immediately following the incinerators and jackboots of Auschwitz, a man laments the hypocrisy even of the recently damned as he reflects on sainthood and human fallenness. His interlocutor responds quizzically:
“There are no saints. You’re still clinging to outmoded notions. If you see someone ready to sacrifice himself for you, you ought to know that he gets the greatest pleasure from it. Try to stop him from sacrificing himself, and he’ll stick a knife in you.”
—I. B. Singer, Shadows on the Hudson
Skeptical to the core, the Yiddish master understood that it’s all too easy to leap over the fathomless entanglements of life in order to prove our virtue. By way of contrast and with Taoist intuition, the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick discerns virtue, counter-intuitively, in negative terms, humility, and smallness:
“The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do . . . and . . . will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequence of this resistance. Their deeds may be small and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did [they] expect [them] to be . . . I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals . . . [T]hey cannot be compelled to be what they are not.”
—Philip K. Dick, “How to Build a Universe that Does Not Fall Apart Two Days Later”
Students of human nature do well to take note of a study by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram (consortium readers can check out the link below for a concise overview of an experiment justly famous both for its implications and controversies) about too many people who turn up the voltage and look away from the pain, experiments that should have reminded us of what we’d already surmised about the many and the few and the just and forlorn—and, yet, even still, Kafka’s “attendance upon grace.”
Thoughts that come on dove’s feet guide the world
One of the more heartrending meditations on the nature of good and evil that I have personally encountered during my own finite journey on what Beckett had called, not without irony, “this bitch of an earth” was engendered through my work over many years with Kristyna, a young woman struggling with dissociative identity for very nearly the entirety of her life. Early in our work together, “the Unseen” (a mysterious ensemble of poetic voices within) send me an epigrammatic poem entitled, “God.” The poem echoes Kristysna’s childhood conjecture that God, who must surely have witnessed the torture endured at the hands of her abusers, had wanted to help yet was not, apparently, powerful enough to do so:
if there is a god
maybe even he is
so high
he cannot see clearly
—the unseen
Considering the state of things, who would reasonably dismiss such a hypothesis?
A chorus of wisdom teachers on good and evil
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages . . . I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.”
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
—Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
“It is a state composed of the recognition of another, a fellow human being like one’s self; of identification of one’s self with the pain or joy of the other; of guilt, pity, and the awareness that we all stand on the base of a common humanity.”
—Rollo May, Love and Will
And in Kafka’s Third Blue Octavo Notebook, we find this philosophical reverie on what May had called “the significance of the pause”:
“All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing.”
“Error” in other words, as Camus observes, “comes from exclusion.”
It is worth noting that Kafka bore himself with remarkable decorum in his professional life, once even going so far as to refer a man who had been wronged by a company for whom Kafka was tasked with providing legal counsel to a prosecutor Kafka knew would defeat him. Needless to say, this was done without self-aggrandizement or social media posts, nor did photo opportunities or press conferences ensue.
In the waning pages of Singer’s novel, a conversation occurs in which a struggling artist discusses ethics and belief with a woman who has long admired him:
“I have abandoned Judaism. I am no longer a Jew,” Anfang rapped out . . . Frieda felt as though her brain were rattling in her skull like a nut inside its shell . . . She had no idea what to say. “Why, exactly?” she finally managed to ask.
“You’re shocked, aren’t you?” Anfang demanded. “I was reading, and the New Testament attracted me. There I found an answer to all my questions.”
“What does it say that cannot be found in our own sacred books?”
“I don’t know. But at least there is no brutality, and no animal sacrifice.”
Frieda’s eyes filled with tears. “Perhaps not, but the Nazis exterminated six million Jews and the Christians were silent. The murderers carried out the slaughter and the priests looked on.”
“Those were not the true Christians.”
“Who exactly are the true Christians?”
“We Jews.”
“Why should we call ourselves Christians? God isn’t three persons and has no son.”
“It’s all symbolism.”
“The Inquisition was no symbol.”
Anfang did not answer. Frieda looked at him. Through her tears his face seemed blurred, distorted, shapeless. He smiled weirdly. Frieda wiped her eyes. God in heaven, have compassion upon him, she prayed to herself. This poor man is in great anguish.
And it is mortifying, really, to consider how much blood has been wantonly spilt over the lunatic confusions between indoctrination and awareness, mindfulness and fanaticism, faith and parochialism informing so many of our theological and political abstractions, in-groups, out-groups, and codes. By their fruits we shall know them indeed.
Words within and without
One day, Kristyna’s “inner guide,” Cara, forwards to me a written dialogue that has occurred during the course of a counseling session with her pastor. The cruelty inherent even in the everyday world and oftentimes insufferable pain of her own existence have pressed her to the limit. Note that writing (rather than verbalized speech) has always been Kristyna’s preferred means of communication on matters of import as a way of honoring the sanctity of the word:
Doctor,
I send these session notes along to you because in some ways they remind me of how you and I so often spoke those first years in your office, when I felt separation from all that was around me yet a strange sense of peace about the entire thing. Knowing I wasn’t quite right, but knowing also that normality was a societal notion. And here we find ourselves once again. Today we mostly wrote to Pastor William and sometimes spoke. This time we said exactly what it was I was thinking despite the puzzled looks. And it’s funny because I felt peace, as if I were being real for a moment in time. I made sense to myself at least. I miss that so much. It was the first time in a long time. I know no one could tell me I was wrong because we’re not.
Some of this is very choppy because he is asking me questions or talking in between what I am writing. I will try to fill in his words for clarity:
I want to leave the world. Inside I can cut myself to pieces. If we want we can kill ourselves a million times a day, and it doesn’t bother anyone.
(He asks me what that imagining does for me.)
Let’s me be OK for a while. I’m not cutting on the outside where I get in trouble for it. So I’m “OK” for a while. Nobody can take that from us.
(He asks again for me to clarify what it does for us.)
It makes things feel less out of control. I want to live inside again. It’s the only place we fit.
(He wants us to try to live outside.)
I tried.
(He asks if it works at all.)
For a short space. It’s not worth it though, not one part anymore.
(He tries to tell us that it is worth it.)
How can you define my universe? How can you tell me what is my truth? I just told you my truth, and you disagree with me. How can you do that?
(He says he sees hope.)
Is it possible you are seeing what you need to see? Hope that we’ll fit in someplace in your world.
(He says there must be hope.)
I’ve looked for it. We’ve tried to build it ourselves or take it from others. But it doesn’t work in the end because it’s fake.
(He can’t believe our hope is fake.)
Hope is like a costume I put on for a play in which I really don’t want to act.
(He disagrees.)
You have to disagree with us because it’s your role in the play. Maybe God wants us to stay inside too. We want to kill ourselves. So we do that inside. What’s so wrong with this? It works.
(He asks who told us this.)
God. God is more perfect inside. We can communicate better there. I’m OK just with him and myself. He says don’t do what you hate, being part of a world that never worked for me.
(He says God makes the world work.)
God doesn’t make the world work. People do. I can’t though. I never have. Nobody around me has ever made it work either. With other people sometimes I’m not working well. That makes me unhappy.
(Pastor William says it doesn’t have to be that way.)
You say “have to” or “not have to” when it just “is.” You might not understand what I’m saying. I’m saying that when I’m with someone I get along with there’s always a part of me that hates it. And I’m so unhappy with that part. Because I know I’m just pretending to get along. Inside I don’t know what we’re doing there. Inside I’m saying, “What am I doing here? What’s supposed to happen now?” I’m just confused all the time. And that hurts me. I hate this whole world. I just want to stop trying to make it work if it’s so much trouble. I’m mad at you too. I’ve realized I’ll never fit in anywhere. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be upset. I’m over the mad part.
(He asks why I’m so worried about him being mad.)
Maybe you’ll stop trying to be nice or helpful to me. I don’t want you to hate me if I’m hard to talk to. I want permission to leave. And I know you can’t give it and that frustrates me. But I need someone to understand how much I hate living. That’s why I don’t want to talk to you or M. Because you’ll make me stick around. Why can’t I find someone who sees it my way and says, “Yeah, get out of here!” God sees my pain. He would want it to go away.
Another chorus of wisdom teachers on good and evil
“The child is an ever-attentive witness of grown-up morality—or lack thereof; the child looks and looks for cues as to how one ought to behave, and finds them galore as we parents and teachers go about our lives, making choices, addressing people, showing in action our rock-bottom assumptions, desires, and values, and thereby telling those observers much more than we may realize.”
—Robert Coles, The Moral Intelligence of Children
“I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule—and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me as a sign of inner weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak . . . The powerful natures dominate, it is a necessity, they need not lift one finger. Even if, during their life time, they bury themselves in a garden house.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks
“‘Most men are not wicked,’ said Kafka, talking of Leonhard Frank’s book Man is Good. ‘Men become bad and guilty because they speak and act without foreseeing the results of their words and their deeds. They are sleepwalkers, not evildoers.’”
—Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka
“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
—Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
“Compassion is the name of that form of love which is based on our knowing and our understanding each other. Compassion is the awareness that we are all in the same boat and that we shall sink or swim together.”
—Rollo May, Power and Innocence
The Ten Commandments in downtown Warsaw
“I have this idea about a trilogy on heaven, hell and purgatory, set in three different cities. I don’t know yet where I’d set heaven or purgatory, but I think I’d set hell in L.A.”
Krzysztof Kieslowski reflecting on his uncompleted trilogy of screenplays shortly before death
“‘Man doesn’t choose between good and evil,’ is how [Kieslowski] put it in interviews. ‘He chooses between greater and lesser evil.’ . . . The acute probing of psychological states in the hope of uncovering a sliver of illumination is why Dekalog was made.”
—Kenneth Duran, L.A. Times fim critic
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s most sublime work, arguably, is Dekalog, a series of ten one-hour films originally made for Polish television, each corresponding, loosely, to one of the Ten Commandments. It is thought by many to be one of the filmic masterpieces of our time. All of the films are shot in and around a single apartment complex, one of the more fashionable in Warsaw but simple, even austere, by Western sensibilities and tastes. As we watch, we become aware of the eerie interplay of persons and events, protagonists in one film making fleeting appearances in some of the others—“a poetic universe,” observes cinephile Annette Insdorf, “of convergences.” A man appears in all but one of the films, remaining absolutely silent yet functioning as a witness of sorts, someone who faithfully observes all that transpires while influencing nothing. His presence is meant, Kieslowski had stated, to “engender self-examination.” Our collective sense of conscience perhaps, a biblical “still, small voice” for those within range of inward Kafkasque trial and a greater jihad.
“His camera shows a destroyed world—not just the physical landscape but the human. In terms of Polish art, this is a new form of melancholy—not despair, but a deep melancholy where every act is drained of meaning. His films [are] a kind of intellectual and spiritual cleansing for viewers accustomed to seeing the world through images approved by the government.”
—Josef Tischner, Polish priest and philosopher commenting on the filmmaker’s work at Kieslowski’s funeral while invoking Auschwitz as the context out of which that work had emerged
“If I had to formulate the message of my Dekalog, I’d say, ‘Live carefully, with your eyes open, and try not to cause pain.’”
—Krzysztof Kieslowski
One finds neither grandiloquence nor meta-analysis in Kieslowski’s moral universe. Rather, authentic depictions of life in its myriad iterations premised on a feeling for complexity and the ubiquity of suffering no less than humankind’s equally ubiquitous flights into imagined safety—all too often at others’ expense. Kieslowski’s articulation of the abiding message of his film cycle is movingly Buddhist and bears repeating for its precision, simplicity, and grace: “Live carefully, with your eyes open, and try not to cause pain.” A difficult yet foundational ethical touchstone and truth, one Kieslowski reluctantly concedes as “metaphysical” as much as moral when all is said and done.
Albert Camus and his self-proclaimed “Greek heart”
“Admission of ignorance, rejection of fanaticism, the limits of the world and of man, the beloved face, and finally beauty.”
—Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
“All is disgust when one leaves ones own nature and does things which misfit it.”
—Sophocles, Philoktetes
“What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful. Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us.”
—Sappho, Poems of Sappho
Briefly, we live. Briefly, then die. Wherefore, I say, he who hunts a glory, he who tracks some boundless, superhuman dream, may lose his harvest here and now and garner death. Such men are mad, their counsels evil.
—Euripides, The Bachhai
“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad . . . But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything . . . The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”
—Albert Camus, The Plague
References
Camus, A. (1948). The Plague (S. Gilbert, trans.). NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Coles, R. (1995). The Mind’s Fate (2nd Edition). Boston: Little, Brown & Company. Coles, R. (1999). The Secular Mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Insdorf, A. (1999). Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzyzstof Kieslowski. NY: Hyperion. Kafka, F, (1999). The Blue Octavo Notebooks (E. Kaiser and E. Wilkins, trans.). Cambridge, UK: Exact Change. Kieslowski, K. (1987) The Dekalog. Poland: Ryszard Chutkowski/Polish Television. Kundera, M. (1986). The Art of the Novel (L. Asher, trans.). NY: Harper & Row. Janouch, G. (1971/1985). Conversations with Kafka (G. Rees, trans.) London: Quartet Books. May, R. (1969). Love and Will, NY: Norton. May, R. (1972). Power and Innocence. NY: Norton. Nietzsche, F. 1966. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (W. Kaufmann, trans.). New York: Random House. Sappho (2011). The Poems of Sappho (B. Carman, trans.). Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Publishing. Singer, I.B. (1957-8/1998). Shadows on the Hudson. NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Thoreau, H. D., (1854/1996). Walden. Cologne, Germany: Konemann. Weil, S. (1997) Gravity and Grace (A. Wills, trans.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.