No matter how hard I have tried, for years I could never
find myself in complete accord with the feeling of disgust Jean-Paul Sartre
creates for his character Antoine Roquentin in his 1938 novel, Nausea. Simply reading the text left me
underwhelmed; then some close-reading of portions of the work still didn’t
resonant in the manner one would hope for. It was only after transcribing the
entire book that I started to get a whiff of Roquentin’s condition;
lamentations on his relationship with “Anny,” a long-lost love, were rife with
remonstration, regret and finally, mutual rejection, and were potentially, for
the susceptible at least, cause for the uncritical mind to view the attempts at
reconciliation as repulsive. Not for me, however. And Roquentin’s final
encounter with ‘the self-taught man,’ an uneasy acquaintance throughout,
wherein the autodidact is caught making untoward advances at teenaged boys and
is subsequently banished from his beloved library, had me riding along with the
protagonist in a maelstrom of pity, compassion and revulsion. But I didn’t feel
the need to reach for the Pepto-Bismol. I chalked it all up to the notion that
I needed to experience the queasy existential moments ‘in-situation,’ as Sartre
might put it.
Pretty much every day since Republicans were handed control
of the entirety of congress has for me been like adding pieces to a Jenga stack
of socio-political atrocities, each one worse than the last, and each one with
the potential to bring the whole thing crashing down. Racist policing, climate
change denial, obstruction of reproductive choice for woman; all of it and much
more a toxic soup of incomprehensible dimension. If the thought of imminent human extinction
due to anthropogenic climate disruption isn’t disconcerting enough, reading
about Fox News and their concoction of non-Muslim ‘no-go zones’ in Paris and
Birmingham would surely send some of us over the edge. I pondered Sartre and
Roquentin and their nausea.
Then I went to the movies…
My wife and I had wanted to see ‘Birdman’ mostly to witness
the resurrection of Michael Keaton. Because we see very few ‘mainstream’
American films, we are largely unaccustomed to being subjected to
gorge-crippling movie trailers. All three film previews paraded in front of us
before the feature, including the empire propaganda tool ‘American Sniper,’
were likely the wet dream of many a gun-toting, blood-lusting, cadmium-blooded
patriot; but to my eyes it was pure filth and a not at all subtle reminder of this
nation’s precipitous decline. However, it was ‘Birdman’ itself that provided
the cultural body-blow. In one of the most important scenes in the film, three
of the main characters, for approximately 3 minutes of screen time, discuss
what took place in a scene from the play they are rehearsing covered in fake
blood from a gun shot blast to the head.
We discussed the picture on our walk home; mostly marveled
at some of the performances, a few musings about potential Oscar nominations.
Then we skirted around the ‘meaning’ of the film, until I finally blurted out,
‘I feel the director was holding a mirror up to our sick society with
characters walking around covered in blood!’ The rest of the walk home I felt a
profound uneasiness and, indeed, a bit of nausea.
Then I went on a car ride…
I don’t spend much time in cars; my wife and I don’t own
one, so this was a bit of an event for us, occasioned primarily because we had
left our hometown and were visiting family in a place where it is difficult to
get around efficiently without a vehicle – the suburbs of Seattle. As we were
chauffeured around I was reminded of a George Carlin quote: ‘Have you looked
around at this country lately? It’s one big shopping mall!’ Amidst all this
incredible natural beauty, and in and around Seattle there is a lot of it, our
culture had managed to make it all ugly, with our cathedrals of material
abundance. I was witnessing a terminal ugliness, I felt; there was no escape
from it, and no end to it. Enormous signs and enormous putrid-looking buildings
advertising our gluttony. We have traded beauty for ugliness, I thought. I felt
even more sick than I had after the movie violence – and now I think I know
why.
“…I understand
absolutely why America is so violent. It’s because your wallpaper is so ugly.”
~ Oscar Wilde
“In a doubtful case, a
nation decides, not without painful conflicts, how much it will sacrifice to
its sentimental needs.” ~George Santayana
If we can agree that Santayana did not mean to trivialize
the immortal quest for beauty as ‘sentimental needs,’ what sacrifices are we
willing to make to reclaim the beauty that feeds our souls? To answer this
query with requisite heft, perhaps we should examine the forces that put this
ugliness in place. Some of my like-minded leftist friends continually decry the
material abundance and consumptive practices that have poisoned our society. A
few of them also are intrigued by or even promote the use of force to protect
theirs and others’ property. Yet force protects the very ugliness they condemn!
Our tax dollars fund the use of force to protect this way of life, this
ugliness. One of the best recent examples of this is given in Jerry Mander’s
2012 book, The Capitalism Papers.
Around that time the Chinese had proposed shrinking the exportation of rare
earth minerals, a resource of which they possess approximately 90% of the
world’s share. As Mander puts it, “The American government’s response was not
to send the commerce secretary for diplomatic negotiations; it was instead to
threaten military action, by way of the Defense secretary and the Sixth Fleet.”
It was further revealed that this action was at the behest of corporations such
as Apple Computer, which has a vested interest in the continuing cheap
availability of rare earth minerals – and the cheap labor that happens to be
located in the same country. Millions of Americans struggling to survive are
subsidizing, through their tax dollars, the protection of the corporations’
ability to continue to exploit human and natural resources all over the world.
Of course, many of those same Americans are complicit in this ongoing ecocide,
by purchasing products at those ugly shopping malls and strip malls. Meanwhile,
it is no coincidence that violence is increasing in our suburbs (McWhirter
& Fields, 2012). I thought about my first trip to Paris; and the experience
of seeing those majestic old apartment houses when I emerged from the Gare du
Nord. Compared to that, how could anyone find any beauty in the American
urban/suburban landscape?
“Beauty can be important in a person’s life.
And people beguiled by the beautiful are less dangerous to others than those
obsessed by the thought of supremacy.” ~Wallace Shawn
The cello is the dream. The gun and the person wielding it
are the destroyers of the dream. Those who would deny us beauty, whether
politicians, business leaders, or even religious leaders, are protected both by
wielding force and their ability to convince people that there are no
alternatives to this way of life. This ‘disimagination machine,’ as Henry
Giroux aptly describes it, can be seen in every segment of society: the
commodification and vocationalization of education; the destruction of labor
unions; and the inculcated belief that consumption is one’s only civic duty;
the glorification of sports and the sanctification of business gurus; all these
have conspired to render entire generations completely lacking in imagination
and critical thinking skills. Yet, those who can only chase money are fearful
of those who are beguiled by beauty, because of our ability to tickle the minds
of others. And, as any good leftist knows, there are alternatives; and there
are signs that some of the most vulnerable in our society, and some who are not
as vulnerable but are careening headlong into new socio-economic realities, are
beginning to see through the ugliness and are searching in the darkness trying
to reclaim beauty. The electrician who has had his hours at work drastically
reduced finds that he has time to pursue one of his true passions: woodworking.
The career computer engineer who can find only occasional contract work decides
to make the sacrifices necessary to start a spiritual healing practice. When
one considers that most of the jobs created in this so-called economic
‘recovery’ are low-wage with no benefits (Lowrey, 2014), more and more
Americans are coming to the realization that under-employment and long-term
unemployment is the new normal. Psychologists may find themselves with an
increased workload because of this; but perhaps the creative communities should
be filling that void as well. Still, millions of Americans must work two or
three jobs just to survive, leaving them with no time or the wherewithal to
pursue the beautiful. And of course that means if they are surrounded by the
ugliness, they truly cannot escape it! What can give their lives meaning?
Economic alternatives such as a universal living wage would be an excellent
place to start. Another more radical alternative is what could be called
‘Reclaiming the Office Parks.’ When I was doing temporary work in the suburbs
of Portland I noticed that the office park parking lots adjacent to my place of
employment were ½ to 2/3 empty, no matter the time of day; that’s a lot of
unused office space; something one would think would be a sign of capitalism’s
collapse. Regardless, what better use of this land than to have thousands of
Americans reclaim it as farmland; even one quarter of an acre would allow
someone to truly pull themselves up by the bootstraps; and it just might return
some of the beauty our souls cry out for.
In Greek myth, the titan Prometheus climbed Olympus to steal
fire and bestow it upon man, because he loved humanity. During the Enlightenment,
the English poet and playwright Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote ‘Prometheus Unbound.’
Shelley equated the ‘divine fire’ with knowledge, and that in the Enlightenment
humanity chose to caste off the shackles of the church and seize the fire of
knowledge, of learning, indeed of beauty. The elites in today’s world do not
want us to have any sense of knowledge or beauty; this should be obvious in
seeing the attacks on a well-rounded education and the onslaught of
anti-science propaganda, as well as attempts at privatizing cultural entities,
and of course convincing people that there only civic duty is consumption,
specifically of what the elites have to peddle, which by and large has nothing
to do with beauty. It is very easy to convince people to eschew beauty when you
advertise plastic trinkets and baubles and addict people to them through the
medium of television; beauty becomes even less attractive when it is
commodified and made unaffordable. How else to explain that it is cheaper to
purchase a chemical-laden McDonald’s hamburger than a single Washington apple?
Ugliness is sold by the ugly, those who cannot create, or at least not well
enough to make a killing at it. Beauty is the great equalizer; if you can
experience it enough you will, literally or figuratively, lay down your arms to
embrace it.
Sartre was primarily preoccupied with the absurdity of
existence, the banal and the beautiful, particularly as it relates to how he
perceived others and their navigation of the world around them; so perhaps he
wouldn’t be doing the Technicolor yawn non-stop if he were around today. Santayana,
on the other hand, inspires us to keep striving to beguile our fellow man with
beauty, even if it’s just convincing them to have a wholesome stack of pancakes
from a mom & pop diner instead of the non-food from the corporate chains.
More cellos, fewer guns means less Pepto-Bismol for everyone!
References
Lowrey, A. (2014, April 14). Recovery Has Created Far
More Low-Wage Jobs Than Better-Paid Ones. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html?_r=0
McWhirter, C., & Fields, G. (2012, December
30). Crime Migrates to the Suburbs - WSJ. Retrieved from
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323300404578206873179427496
