Awareness

Last weekend I went out to celebrate Halloween (this is a dated entry). I had a great time, but there’s one particular not-so-great moment that stands out. Towards the end of the night, we stopped off at a bar, where I met, talked to, and exchanged email addresses with an attractive woman named Laura. She probably isn’t my type, but I was flattered by the attention and we were having a fun time together—so much fun, in fact, that when a homeless man entered and sat down a few seats away from us, I did everything within my power to ignore his presence. He didn’t do anything wrong—he didn’t act strangely, emit any body odor, or ask me for money—yet, as my body language no doubt made clear, he was an unwelcome intrusion into my life. The reason was obvious. I was having a good time, and I didn’t want anyone disturbing it.

It was pretty easy to ignore him, too. I can’t tell you how long he sat there; when, or if, he left the bar; nor would I even have a memory of seeing him if it weren’t for the fact that my housemate had spoken to him that night and later recounted to me his extremely tragic story (he killed his wife and kids in a drunk driving accident). Who’s to say how many people I casually dismiss from my life in the same manner—not only the homeless, but prison inmates, Native Americans on reservations, the disabled, the unattractive, the socially awkward, the depressed, the abused—anyone who fails to enhance my good time. And what does it mean to have a good time? In this case, it meant that I was fitting in. I was following the appropriate conventions of dress and behavior and, in turn, being included in conversations, flirted with, and acknowledged as a real human being. That’s rewarding. Shallow, yeah, but still rewarding. And that’s why acknowledging a homeless person beside me creates such discomfort. Acknowledging him means acknowledging the reality of life outside the group, which means acknowledging a threat to my good time. Acknowledging a homeless person also means that in some way I have to relate to him. That means becoming part of his world and experiencing a part of his isolation—an isolation I never feel too far removed from and which scares me more than anything else. Moreover, it means acknowledging my own privileged situation, which brings up the reality of my being an oppressor—or part of an oppressive system, at the very least.

And this is why I live the way I do. This is why I don’t buy some land in the forest and learn how to practice permaculture. It isn’t because life within civilization is safer or more convenient. (With crime, traffic dangers, air pollution, war, carcinogens, and terrorist activity civilization can hardly be described as safe. And working forty plus hour work weeks with two to three hour commutes tacked on is hardly my idea of a convenient lifestyle.) It’s because I don’t dare to become a social outcast. And this is why I so often fail to act on my beliefs. The opportunities to act on my beliefs and become the person I want to be are everywhere, but I don’t seize them because I don’t want to exchange social isolation for private fulfillment.

To some extent, compromise is inevitable. If we give up our membership in society we likewise give up our ability to influence that society—and that helps no one. Nevertheless, being a part of society doesn’t mean that we have to lose touch with everything outside of it—with the homeless, the Third World, the animals, and so on. We don’t have to surrender our natural selves entirely. Nor do we have to participate full-force in our society’s exploitation of the natural world and non-elites. Nor do we have to ignore the homeless and other outcasts. We can, with help—and only with help—learn to put up some resistance and become more aware of ourselves as repressive vectors and agents, and with that awareness we might gain the courage to live outside of the system. But we can’t do it alone.

Social isolation doesn’t just scare me; it’s an absolute terror. It terrifies me for two reasons: one, it’s a real and ever-present possibility in my life, and two, it represents the loss of the one thing I care most about—relationship. Anyhow, that’s what I tell myself—that’s how I rationalize my fear. In truth, you could argue that it isn’t social isolation that scares me but class isolation. But see, that’s part of the problem. You can’t separate the two. I think I would be content with the company of the underclass if the underclass would be content with me—but I don’t think that’s possible. In many ways, prison life represents my ideal lifestyle—lots of free time, no responsibility, relatively few stresses. In fact, my lifestyle now isn’t much different from that of your average inmate’s. And I could say the same thing about the lifestyle of the average homeless person or institutionalized mental patient. It’s pretty similar to mine (even in terms of income), except in one key respect—I’m a professional, and, as such, I have a degree of status in our society which confers on me a certain degree of esteem and the freedom that comes with that esteem. For that reason, my language is different, my dress is different, my habits are different, and my methods of relating to others are different. And those are the qualities that social interaction is based on. That’s what having a good time is based on, too, but, to be clear, having a good time has nothing to do with relationship.

Relationship depends on bringing your whole self to a situation, and you can’t bring your whole self to a situation if you’re in denial about the homeless person setting next to you. Having a good time, in most cases, is opposed to being authentic and authentically relating to others. You have a choice: put on the social mask and participate in our culture or tear the mask off and risk permanent exile and isolation. And I have to be honest. For me, the illusionary and egoistic pleasures of participating in society feel good—not as good as forging an authentic relationship with someone, but good nonetheless. On the other hand, loneliness hurts. It isn’t an abstract pain, either. It physically hurts. It hurts so bad that putting a bullet in my brain can strike me as a welcome relief—a lesser pain. And therein lies the rub. If social membership requires personal delusion, where do you draw the line? Where’s the circumference from which you can both be yourself and be in honest relation to other human beings?

I can’t remember what it’s called, but Sartre wrote a book about the Jew and the Anti-Semite, in which he suggests that secular Judaism might be a response to Jewish oppression. The secular Jew, Sartre contends, conceives of psychological processes as mechanical functionings. Being condemned by opinion, the secular Jew strives to negate the value of opinion in favor of rationality (today’s Liberalism). In this way, the Jew can recreate society in a manner which allows his equal participation in it. That’s one way of re-integrating yourself into the system—changing the system. But that method has its costs—namely, that you have to lie; you have to objectify yourself via scientific rationalism. You have to give up your humanity. That isn’t relating; it’s being co-opted. But for Sartre there is another option. You can choose to be an outcast. That is, you can will yourself into history as a doomed and exiled creation. You can accept the obligation to live an effectively unlivable life. By consenting to your isolation, you escape it. You discover your true humanity and the limitless possibilities contained therein.

And what, according to Sartre, is true for the Jew is true for all of us. You can’t become an authentic human being without renouncing the confines of society. You can’t live a dignified and truly free life, except in exile. But that doesn’t say anything about the political solution to the problems of classism, racism, sexism, or consumer capitalism. And neither does it say anything about fulfilling human needs. We need other people. We need relationship. But if our needs can’t be fully realized either in human relations or in isolation, then aren’t we doomed to suffer regardless of our choices? Isn’t life a ridiculous Catch 22?

I don’t believe so. But, for the moment, I can’t articulate why. In part, it’s because my life seems to have gotten so much more fulfilling since I’ve started to deliberately set myself apart from society. But that isn’t an entirely accurate description of what I’ve been doing. If anything, I’m becoming more involved in society, in the respect that I’m accepting more social responsibility, interacting with more like-minded people, doing more political work, going out more often, and expressing myself more openly. Concurrently, I’m more ignorant of popular culture, less willing to tolerate the company of assholes, and increasingly separate from modern interests and customs. And I’m a more complete person, too. Yet I still block out the reality of homelessness at times.

In addition, I block out women who have snubbed me, men who have exploited me, and authority figures who have failed me. It isn’t just my social inferiors I repress awareness of, I reject those higher up on the ladder, as well—those who haven’t accepted me as their equal and who thereby deny my reality in the same way that I deny the reality of homeless men who sit down next to me at a bar.

Yesterday I read an email about a woman who had been at a bar where a man tried to rape her. She yelled in fear and the man backed off. Then, as she returned to her friends she actually apologized to the man for yelling. She apologized to her would-be rapist! I’ve seen similar acts of self deference in the homeless, prison inmates (I used to teach in the prison system), and employees when confronted by acts of abuse by their superiors. It isn’t uncommon. From women loving their abusers to the poor admiring the rich, human beings find it easy to deny the realities of oppression. We deny it when we excuse our own mistreatment but also when we fail to acknowledge or thwart the mistreatment of others—or to see the abuser in ourselves. And when we deny oppression, we in effect deny reality. We enhance our good time at the cost of self (and other)-awareness. Acknowledging reality in all its ugliness, however, doesn’t have to lead to guilt and nihilism. It can be fulfilling, too.

Awareness, no matter how disturbing, doesn’t produce unhappiness. It may produce sadness, shame, gravity, remorse, or indignation—in other words, it might put an end to our superficial good time, but it doesn’t produce the inane and nauseating depression that typifies life in our culture. A good time in our culture is nothing more than a flight from discomfort, not the eradication of it. We prefer escapism because our society’s problems are seemingly so insurmountable that we can’t bring ourselves to confront them—so awareness of the disease, not the disease itself, becomes the agony we run from. When not acted on, awareness strikes us like a lost love. It hurts. It hurts in the same way that remembering the good times of a spoiled relationship hurts--it emphasizes everything that isn't. By the same token, it reminds us of the freedom and camaraderie with others we might create if we give up on having a good time—if we stop hiding behind intoxicants, religion, popular media, and Halloween costumes and face up to the suffering of our species and ourselves—a suffering wherein we might learn to be honestly happy and exceptionally sad and serious at the same time.



What isn’t conscious, can’t be consciously expelled.
Robbe Grillet (I think)