The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to Be Happy (2010) (10 page)

This is the plot of
The Wizard of Oz
and also of
Gilgamesh
three thousand years earlier. The hero, Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian king, becomes disenchanted with his kingdom and life and departs on a quest, which involves dealing with ferocious lions, scorpion men and a beautiful goddess who attempts to detain him with surprisingly modern temptations: ‘Day and night be frolicsome and gay; let thy clothes be handsome, thy head shampooed, thy body bathed.’
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Nevertheless, the hero persists in his quest and, diving to the bottom of a deep sea, plucks the plant of immortality. But the ending has a nasty twist that would have to be changed in any movie version: when Gilgamesh lies down to rest a serpent steals the plant, eats it and attains eternal youth. In mythology the snake is always the villain.

Campbell argues that these narratives symbolize an essentially inward journey – the hero breaks free from the conventional thinking of his time, ventures out into the dark of speculative thought, finds the creative power to change himself and wishes to share this with others. The prize won after much uncertainty and danger is knowledge: ‘The hero is the one who comes to know.’
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So the narrative has four stages: departure, trial, prize, return; these are the same as the goals of the abstract seeker: detachment, difficulty, understanding, transformation.

A similar four stages are common in the initiation rites of ‘primitive’ cultures: separation, ritual wounding, initiation and return. The young person is taken away from the village, symbolically wounded in some way, instructed in the rites and returned to the community. So becoming an adult requires the same four stages – etachment, difficulty, understanding and transformation. It is only our own culture that believes in prolonging adolescence for life. In the contemporary version of the story the hero remains at home with his parents and ventures out into danger by playing EverQuest online in the basement.

As Campbell points out, the stories of Buddha and Christ also follow the quest saga structure. Both men reject their families, go forth, endure many trials, experience doubt and despair, but finally win through to transfiguration and return to share their knowledge with the world.

Only institutionalized religion demands passive conformity. In the iconography Christ is always sorrowfully submissive and Buddha smugly quietist. But neither man was remotely passive. They constantly questioned, prodded, goaded, unsettled and disturbed. Far from advocating passivity, they would let no one rest: Christ: ‘I came not to send peace, but a sword’
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; Buddha’s last words: ‘Strive unremittingly’.
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The problem with religions is that the inspirational founders become an embarrassment to the small-minded followers who turn ideas into dogma, principles into regulations and initiatives into ritual. The founders reject kin worship; the followers revere family. The founders go forth; the followers remain at home. The founders are tormented by doubt; the followers bask in certainty. The founders seek authority; the followers seek power. The founders attract and convince; the followers confront and coerce.

Frequently the followers are so successful at distortion that their message becomes exactly the opposite of the original. In the Irish Catholic culture I knew as a boy, the faithful – both clerical and lay – violated the principles of the New Testament so comprehensively and precisely that it almost seemed as though they had read it.

A perfect example was my mother’s repeated and vehement command always to go up to the front at Mass. Respectable people sat at the front, the lower orders in the rows behind – and only the worst kind of corner boy stood at the back. What would she have said if I had showed her Matthew 23:6 with Christ’s denunciation of the Pharisees for loving ‘the chief seats in the synagogues’? She would have become even more angry at this further example of smart-alec cheek. Slave all your life to give your children a higher station in life and what thanks do you get for it? Nothing but smart remarks.

The concept of the quest permeates all culture, religious and secular, early and late, low and high. Many of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century were quest stories. James Joyce’s
Ulysses
is the story of one ordinary hero’s going forth, trials and tribulations and return home to rebirth. Proust’s huge novel
A La Recherche du Temps Perdu
is the story of a lifelong quest for meaning, in which the meaning is eventually revealed to be the writing of the story. And Kafka gave the quest saga a modern twist by making the quest always futile and the prize always out of reach: ‘There is a destination but no way there.’
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So K, despite all his efforts, never manages to get into the Castle. Yet he never gives up – and neither do any of Kafka’s other frustrated seekers. In ‘Before the Law’ – a mere page and a half – a man comes from the country seeking admittance to the Law but is barred by a boorish Doorkeeper. The man tries various stratagems – wheedling, bribing, seeking intimacy – but none succeeds. The Doorkeeper remains adamant. Years pass and eventually the seeker, realizing that he is dying, puts one final question: ‘‘Everyone strives to reach the Law,’ says the man, ‘so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?’ The Doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: ‘No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.’’
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In fact, many versions of the quest acknowledge that the striving is endless – though not futile. The twelfth-century Sufi poem,
The Conference of the Birds
by Farid Ud-Din Attar, is like a parable by Kafka. The birds of the world meet for a conference, which turns fractious. A hoopoe rises and, quelling the multitude with natural authority, suggests that what the birds lack is a spiritual leader, a Simorgh, to show them an alternative to aggressive craving. They must all fly off in search of this Simorgh. But many birds are deterred by the prospect of a long and arduous quest. The hawks prefer the power of worldly princes, the herons their desolate shoreline, the ducks their cosy pond. The finches fear for their frailty, the nightingales for their song. But eventually a group sets off, traversing seven valleys – the Valley of the Quest, the Valley of Love, the Valley of Insight into Mystery, the Valley of Detachment, the Valley of Unity, the Valley of Bewilderment and the Valley of Poverty and Nothingness. In each valley they endure dangers, vicissitudes and temptations, and are told stories of exemplary characters. These include Jesus who says, ‘The man who lives and does not strive is lost,’ and Socrates who replies, to the disciples enquiring about where to bury him, ‘If you can find me you are certainly clever for I never found myself.’
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When the birds finally arrive at the court of the Simorgh only thirty remain and they are ageing, exhausted, bedraggled and soiled. A haughty palace herald flies out and, contemptuous of their shabby appearance, tells them they are unworthy and must return whence they came. But the birds demand entry, and are finally admitted. The palace is indeed glorious – but empty, save for mirrors. Around and around they fly, frustrated and heartsick – to have come so far and endured so much for no reward. But, bit by bit, a strange feeling of joy steals over the birds. Suddenly they realize the significance of the mirrors. They have found the Simorgh after all. They are looking at the Simorgh in the mirrors. Because
they
are the Simorgh (which in Persian also means thirty birds). The Simorgh is
them
.

This expresses a profound truth – that the search for meaning is itself the meaning, the Way is the destination, the quest is the grail.

Many others have discovered this over the centuries and expressed it in a variety of ways.
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One of the most memorable formulations was by C.P. Cavafy in his poem ‘Ithaca’.

Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.

To arrive there is what you are destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for many years,

So you’re old by the time you reach the isle,

Wealthy with all you have gained on the way

And not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey.

Without her you’d never have set out.

But she has nothing more to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won’t have deceived you.

Wise as you have become, after so much experience,

You’ll have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.
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The Strategies

The Undermining of Responsibility

A
student fails to submit a project on time and then misses an appointment with his supervisor to discuss the problem. The university sends the student a letter informing him that he has been given a mark of zero for the project. Now the student not only comes to the supervisor but barges into his office without an appointment.

‘This project must be accepted late,’ he demands.

‘Why is that?’

‘Because I’m suffering from TCD.’

‘Which is?’

‘Time-Constraint Disorder – a chemical imbalance in the brain that means I can’t meet deadlines or turn up in time for appointments.’

I invented TCD as a joke, forgetting that it is impossible to satirize the contemporary world, and then discovered that a Professor Joseph Ferrari of DePaul University genuinely wants procrastination recognized as a clinical disorder
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and included in the standard reference work for mental-health professionals, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM). This tome has already been through four editions, accumulating new disorders in each, with 297 defined in DSM-IV – and many more due in DSM-V. Consider, for example, Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), which is defined as a ‘pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood’ – in other words the vice formerly known as selfishness. So, the key to indulging a vice is to redefine it as a Disorder and give it a resonant acronym. ‘It’s a
condition
, ’ you then announce with aggressive outrage if your behaviour is challenged, ‘a
Disorder
’ Those who spend too much time online will be glad to know that surfing the web has just been identified as a clinical disorder by Dr Jerald Block of the Oregon Health and Science University: ‘Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in DSM-V.’
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My own candidate for inclusion in DSM-V is Disorder Addiction Disorder (DAD), an uncontrollable compulsion to classify all undesirable human behaviour as Disorders.

These new ‘Disorders’ are of course welcomed by Big Pharma because sufferers can be encouraged to buy drugs. But, in a classic example of cultural-conditioning feedback, the pharmaceutical companies also create their own Disorders by redefining previously normal states (a practice known as ‘condition branding’). So Social Anxiety Disorder, the attribute previously known as shyness, is now a ‘condition’ requiring GlaxoSmithKline’s drug Paxil or Pfizer’s Zoloft. Paxil and Zoloft were just two more anti-depressants until their manufacturers launched major campaigns to promote them as cures for Social Anxiety Disorder. Sales immediately soared. A major company may well seize on Time-Constraint Disorder (TCD) and promote one of its poor-selling products as a miracle drug that activates the urgency centres of the brain.

But the Disorder phenomenon is only one consequence of a contemporary desire to evade personal responsibility. No one is prepared to accept blame any more. Instead, everyone wants to be a victim – and frequently succeeds, even in the most unpromising circumstances. When Newham Council in East London pursued Z-Un Noon for non-payment of a series of parking fines, Noon was so outraged that he took the council to court for causing him ‘emotional distress’.
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Better still, he won his case and was awarded £5,000 for the distress caused by each of the four tickets, making a total of £20,000. And when the incredulous council ignored this ruling, bailiffs turned up at the council offices with a ‘notice of seizure’ and began to disconnect and take away computers. Faced with the prospect of total paralysis, the council paid up.

When was the last time anyone said, ‘It’s my fault? Already it seems like centuries since Sartre declared, ‘Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.’
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Now the opposite is true. Man is responsible neither for nature nor choices.

How has this come about? The concept of personal responsibility – that we can and should decide our own destinies – is at the heart of modern society and considered axiomatic by most of its citizens. Yet this concept is now being steadily undermined, from both above and below, from both high and low culture – from scientists, philosophers and writers denying free will and from the age of entitlement denying obligation. In science there is the Holy Trinity of Determinism – genetics (behaviour is determined by genes); evolutionary psychology (behaviour is determined by evolved survival mechanisms); and neuroscience (behaviour is determined by the modules of a hard-wired brain). Of course, many scientists have expressed reservations and qualifications, but the subtleties tend to be in the small print – it is easier to remember headlines announcing the discovery of genes for depression, obesity, criminality, homosexuality and, the latest, anxiety
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and male infidelity.
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And here is a contemporary philosopher with no reservations – John Gray, until recently Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics: ‘There are many reasons for rejecting the idea of free will, some of them decisive. If our actions are caused then we cannot act otherwise than we do. In that case we cannot be responsible for them. We can be free agents only if we are authors of our acts; but we are ourselves products of chance and necessity. We cannot choose to be what we are born. In that case, we cannot be responsible for what we do.’
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