Going Clear . . .

 

Do humans have an innate tendency to go insane?

I finally watched the HBO movie, Going Clear, about L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology last night. Now, I always knew that this particular organization was somewhat wacko, to use a technical term. But good God! I am sitting there on my couch watching this parade of intelligent adults discuss the long years of their lives that they wasted by devoting themselves fully - and sometimes acting as functionaries in positions of power - to this rich fabrication of absolute nonsense, and I am saying: wtf?

And suddenly I realize that this phenomenon is not at all unfamiliar. During one of the "Church’s" gala events, even the commentator compared it to a Nuremburg rally. And that was a big wait a minute moment for me!

What is happening when intelligent, rational people wrap their minds completely and totally around some sort of fictitious mythology that is so obviously inane and falsifiable, yet they identify themselves with it so strenuously that there is absolutely no shaking them from their completely solidified convictions?

This is a BIG question about the human race, folks, and I know I’m not qualified to answer it. Yes, I can understand (to a degree) a mind so gone awry that it will intentionally fly a loaded passenger plane into a mountain. But groups of people simultaneously flying four different aircraft into buildings to make some sort of vague religious/political statement?

I can somewhat grasp it when an alienated student or a single army doctor goes on a rampage and begins shooting everyone in sight. But a small army of people walking into university dormitories and carefully weeding out 140 young Christians for execution? What?

And this is not limited to so-called "religious" fanatics. How does an entire society accept mass slavery of another race to the degree that it takes the most destructive war in human history to eradicate it? How does a people justify the near-genocide of a native population in the name of "manifest destiny?" How can millions of people be starved, slaughtered and imprisoned in the name of "communal progress?"

And yes, how can one of the most highly developed, sophisticated, civilized nations in the world, almost overnight, succumb to the mad ravings of an ugly little guy with a bad moustache, attack the rest of the civilized world and put six million people of a slightly different cultural orientation to death in organized slaughterhouses?

To quote the late Mr. Frank Z., "People, we is not wrapped tight!"

Oh, I know, I’m taking the most extreme examples. But don’t these examples seem to dominate in an era wherein we are supposed to be more rational, more informed by science and the spirit of critical thinking than in pitiful ages of the past? If that is true, why then does this self-styled "caliphate" reign in Iraq and Syria, systematically cutting people’s heads off on videos and throwing them off of buildings?

Oh, and while we’re at it, why did this nation allow its president to order in troops to occupy and attack a country that was completely militarily contained by us, thus sparking a long-simmering civil war that lead directly to the creation of said insane organization? I mean, what was everyone saying or doing as our tanks started across the desert? I know I was standing up and screaming at the TV: "this is crazy!" Lots of people were. But still, we just let it happen. Why didn’t the masses take to the streets, a la, Viet Nam?

I don’t know. I guess because we didn’t personally have to go there.

But just look at religious conviction. Look at political conviction. Ever notice just how irrationally immovable it can be? Jesus is coming back to send all the gays to hell. Allah is bringing about a triumphant world jihad. The black president has never done anything good for this country, period. We all need to walk around with guns. Hello?

Now, I’m not telling anybody anything that they don’t already know, but seriously, what’s up with this species?

I mean when you look at all the b.s. that people swallow and their utter willingness to do anything - unquestioningly - to help bring about a certain loony agenda, this Scientology stuff just seems like a drop in the bucket. What is there about us that makes so many of us such suckers? Why is there such a strong will to believe in virtually whatever, just so long as it gives us some sort of sense of verification?

Is there really something deep within the human condition - in the human mind - that makes it want to latch onto things, however absurd, just so that we can comfort ourselves and tell ourselves that we at least have some ground or basis on which we can believe and to which we can commit? Is this some sort of built-in defense mechanism on our species’ part that ensures that we will, in some way, fight for survival if our minds get hooked on certain unshakeable beliefs, no matter what the content?

In my last post on Joseph Campbell, which very few people read (and no, I don’t blame you), I quoted him talking about a mental process which he described as a "seizure" that happens when an individual (or presumably, a group) begins to take its own mythology too literally. Let me just go ahead and reprint the relevant section:


"A professor," wrote Leo Frobenius in a celebrated paper on the force of the daemonic world of childhood, "is writing at his desk and his four-year-old little daughter is running about the room. She has nothing to do and is disturbing him. So he gives her three burnt matches, saying, ‘Here! Play!’ and, sitting on the rug, she begins to play with the matches, Hansel, Gretel, and the witch. A considerable time elapses, during which the professor concentrates upon his task, undisturbed. But then, suddenly, the child shrieks in terror. The father jumps. ‘What is it? What has happened?’ The little girl comes running to him, showing every sign of great fright. ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ she cries, ‘take the witch away! I can’t touch the witch any more!’"

"An eruption of emotions," Frobenius observes,

 is characteristic of the spontaneous shift of an idea from the level of the sentiments (Gemut) to that of sensual consciousness (sinnliches Bewusstein). Furthermore, the appearance of such an eruption obviously means that a certain spiritual process has reached a conclusion. The match is not a witch; nor was it a witch for the child at the beginning of the game. The process, therefore, rests on the fact that the match has become a witch on the level of the sentiments and the conclusion of the process coincides of the transfer of this idea to the plain of consciousness. The observation of the process escapes the test of conscious thought, since it enters consciously only after or at the moment of completion. However, insamuch as the idea is, it must have become. The process is creative, in the highest sense of the word; for, as we have seen, in a little girl a match can become a witch. Briefly stated, then: the phase of becoming takes place on the level of the sentiments, whilst that of being is on the conscious plane.

This vivid, convincing example of a child’s seizure by a which while in the act of play may be taken to represent an intense degree of the daemonic mythological experience. However, the attitude of mind represented by the game itself, before the seizure supervened, also belongs within the sphere of our subject. For as J. Huizinga has pointed out in his brilliant study of the play element in culture, the whole point, at the beginning, is the fun of play, not the rapture of seizure. "In all the wild imaginings of mythology a fanciful spirit of playing," he writes, on the border-line between jest and earnest." "As far as I know, ethnologists and anthropologists concur in the opinion that the mental attitude in which the great religious feasts of savages are celebrated and witnessed is not one of complete illusion. There is an underlying consciousness of things ‘not being real.’" And he quotes, among others, R.R. Marett, who, in his chapter on "Primitive Credulity" in The Threshold of Religion, develops the idea that a certain element of "make-believe" is operative in all primitive religions. "The savage," wrote Marett, "is a good actor who can be quite absorbed in his role, like a child at play; and also, like a child, a good spectator who can be frightened to death by the roaring of something he knows perfectly well to be no ‘real’ lion."

"By considering the whole sphere of so-called primitive culture as a play-sphere," Huizinga then suggests in conclusion, "we pave the way to a more direct and more general understanding of its peculiarities than any meticulous psychological or sociological analysis would allow." And I would concur wholeheartedly with this judgment, only adding that we should extend the consideration to the entire field of our present subject.

 The "present subject" to which Campbell is referring is the entire field of human mythology, something to which he devoted his life to studying. And I, in turn, am studying him - along with many others - in an attempt to forge some sort of understanding of these things we so glibly refer to as "life" and "reality." Not that I think I can really get that far. I believe that our human brains are designed to ask questions that they cannot answer, but I think that fact was one of the main things that Campbell was getting at. Here, for example, he goes on to make a distinction between mythology (or one could even say philosophy, theology, or any number of speculative terms) as a game - that is, a willing, knowing, understanding game of "as if . . ." as opposed to the tyranny of a literal seizure, where we are trapped in the surety of our knowledge, no matter how absurd it may be!

Let me try to be really focused here and say what I’m on about with this whole stupid project. (I’ll set aside my artistic obsessions for the moment, although I think they are, and can be shown to be, ultimately, related to my subject at large.)

I am conducting a personal inquiry based upon 57 years of observation and study, in the hopes of advancing my own understanding of some of the fundamental questions about life in this here universe. And a lot of my questions deal with the subject of speculative belief in the context of critical thought. In other words: what kinds of things can we really allow ourselves to believe without letting ourselves be led astray to the point where we start destroying one another and ourselves?

You see, I just happen to believe that there are a lot of fascinating possibilities about this grand existence in this strange universe, and I think it behooves us to explore them. This is all about a process that began at childhood - it’s called learning and growing. In my humble opinion, it is something that should never stop as long as one is alive.

Some people may think this is all a bunch of bullshit, boring, or a complete waste of time. I really don’t care. I do it because I want to - hey, i need to! I don’t know why. It’s what gets me up in the morning and keeps me busy all day. That’s just me.

But in the midst of all my analytical balderdash, I keep coming back to themes, thoughts and traditions that have served the human race in various positive ways for millennia, varying in each of our different cultural spheres and at different times. There is good in mythology. There is much of value, I believe, in religion - all religions. (Hey, there may even be some good at some level for Scientology - as long as you don’t take it too seriously.) I believe there is value in philosophy - even if we cannot answer the ultimate questions. (We can’t! Believe me!) And we are reaching a glorious new era where all the long chains of cultural experience are fantastically and rapidly intertwining with one another in a new global experience of interconnectivity.

And I think that’s going to lead us to some novel new places that we can’t even begin to imagine yet. I’m just following my instincts to put my little feelers out to make my own fundamental assessments of things I find fascinating, working (or playing, if you will) at my own level of competence to see what I can come up with. And it just so happens that I’m able to throw it out at you all and see if anybody has something interesting to add.

But the big question here is, how on earth are we going to keep expanding and learning, and adapting, as a race - collectively - if we, as a species are so inherently stupid, gullible and worst of all, so god-damned determined to be absolutely right all the time, no matter what the evidence suggests otherwise?!!

No, the whole Scientology scam is just the tip of the iceberg. Look around the country. Look around the world. How the hell are we going to survive (let alone thrive), if we all insist on certitude? And not just certitude that we’re right. We’ve got to let the other guys know they are wrong!

I know, it’s nothing new. But the stakes are getting higher, aren’t they? How long until everyone has a bomb . . . or perhaps the next big thing after that?

Look, there are all kinds of possibilities for ways of people to think, to believe, to create. Diversity is wonderful, and it will (or should) keep us rolling gloriously on through the rest of this century at least. But we’ve got to leave that bugaboo of certitude behind.

Hey, I don’t care what you believe. Just please be able to admit that you could be wrong!

I believe in a lot of things, all to varying degrees. And I could be wrong about all of them!

What’s so hard about that?

What on earth do I need to believe in so badly that I will hurt or even kill someone because of it?

The only belief that carries that much weight with me is the belief that I shouldn’t hurt or kill anybody!

Wow, maybe that’s all we need.

Joseph Campbell talked a lot in his later years about the planet’s need for a new global mythology. He saw all the old, parochial ones breaking down one by one, and he said, look: we’ve got to have something. We’ve got to have something that we all think is sacred. Otherwise we’re just going to kill each other. I don’t know what it is, but we need something.

I think that Scientology, radical Islam, Christian fundamentalism, racism, political reactionism, rabid conservatism, knee-jerk liberalism (sorry - the other guy being always wrong doesn’t make you always right), and our little excursions into fascism, communism and every other damn ism of the last century all make it perfectly plain and clear that we all need to be groping to find that something.

It needs to be humane. And it needs to be flexible, caring and accommodating for everyone.

And it needs to be sane.

And I don’t know what it is, but I’ll keep looking.

I hope you will too.

Sorry for the rant. I’ll get back to "monism," because I know that’s what everybody’s really interested in.


 

 - petey