I stand on the rooftop and see towers on all sides. A radio tower springs high from the roof of another building, and another. In the distance, over the water, a taller tower -- for a few years now the tallest tower again in the New York City. The Empire State Building is well known for its monumental height of course, an edifice contributing to the city's identity for generations. That height is at once preposterous, in the true sense of after coming before, out of order, and like Eiffel's tower made practical at first only because its height could be sold to radio broadcasters.
I wonder if this double function as a radio tower has been too long overlooked. New York is not the capital of America, it is the Empire City. I have called it the pons colloquium, a bridge where national culture crosses into the local, because it is the center of media -- that place where conversations and faces get reproduced then cast broad. New York's towers may be an evolutionistic response to running out of real estate in an overpopulated port, but they become spandrels giving rise to a new reach of technological communication. And communication's binding grip.
There are towers too without spires, with just water tanks, or nothing. Plain rooftops. Plentiful rooftops. New York is a city of rooftops above all, and from rooftops I have enjoyed many sunsets, a few daybreaks. Rooftops are the city's best yards, its choicest dancehalls. I will leave the city, but it pleases me to celebrate one last time from a roof. There is not much real estate left. Transmitting towers make provincial our cosmopolitan ground, but on the rooftops we can still stand and holler.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
California Dream On
We were driving from San Francisco up to my parent's home in Arcata, about five hours north. Me, my sister, my brother-in-law. We all live in New York City, but we were on vacation. As we passed through the Napa Valley and somebody said, "Ah, isn't it beautiful here? I do miss nature sometimes."
I looked up. Golden rolling hills, wisps of clouds in the azure blue sky, the flickering rows of the vineyards, perhaps a cow or a sheep. Since forever, as a child, a priori, I have believed in the beauty of California. It's a promised land. Even people in Wisconsin know that. But this time, after being away for several years, it suddenly struck me differently. I had the same feeling that one has upon seeing a Pomeranian. It's nature, but not really. It's an animal shorn of 99% of the things that make an animal an animal. Napa Valley: same thing. It's nature in its most domesticated, luxurious, simplified, soporific form. Now, I'm not opposed to Man conquering Nature. I can appreciate a quarry or a cornfield--they have aesthetics and purpose and they have meaning. But Napa Valley has none of these things. It's a playland, a trifle, a cupcake. It's a footnote to an idea of something that we want or once had, it's an allusion.
Take me back to New York. Or let's keep driving, all the way up to Alaska, where I once saw a moose so black it looked like a piece of the world had been punched out in a moose-shaped shape.
I looked up. Golden rolling hills, wisps of clouds in the azure blue sky, the flickering rows of the vineyards, perhaps a cow or a sheep. Since forever, as a child, a priori, I have believed in the beauty of California. It's a promised land. Even people in Wisconsin know that. But this time, after being away for several years, it suddenly struck me differently. I had the same feeling that one has upon seeing a Pomeranian. It's nature, but not really. It's an animal shorn of 99% of the things that make an animal an animal. Napa Valley: same thing. It's nature in its most domesticated, luxurious, simplified, soporific form. Now, I'm not opposed to Man conquering Nature. I can appreciate a quarry or a cornfield--they have aesthetics and purpose and they have meaning. But Napa Valley has none of these things. It's a playland, a trifle, a cupcake. It's a footnote to an idea of something that we want or once had, it's an allusion.
Take me back to New York. Or let's keep driving, all the way up to Alaska, where I once saw a moose so black it looked like a piece of the world had been punched out in a moose-shaped shape.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Beware the Goony-Bird
I recently watched the "Vengeance" trilogy by Korean director Chanwook Park: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. They are spectacularly, gorgeously bloody and disturbing films centered around elaborate fantasies of revenge. They are also seductive--Oldboy has become infamous for being an inspiration to Seung-Hui Cho, the young man who murdered 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech. Cho's careful planning and mad aesthetics are perfectly in line with Park's film, which was apparently not quite cathartic enough.
I'm don't care about the moral elements of the Park's films. I'm more concerned with how the theme of the films--vengeance--becomes increasingly pronounced until it ruins the final film completely. All three films are clearly cartoons. This is not, in of itself, a problem. Film, as we all know, is a cartoonish medium, and thrives on simplicity. However we still want our simplicity to be complex. The first film is simple enough, the second film is a bit too simple, the final film is stupid.
In Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, there are lots of characters, and they all have weird and confusing motives: One character gets revenge on the crooks who stole his kidney; another character seeks revenge on the young lovers who kidnapped and killed his daughter, even though the death was an accident. We feel sympathy for the vigilantes, even as we are appalled by their sick torture fantasies. There are myriad varieties of revenge, each accompanied by myriad varieties of love (an essential ingrediant in all revenge): love for a sister, love for a lover, love for a child.
The main character in Oldboy is seeking revenge for being imprisoned, but it turns out he is merely a puppet in a larger revenge plot. The mastermind of this plot is the mad genius, a diabolical villain. We are fascinated by him, but in the same way we might enjoy watching Hannibal Lecter eat someone's brain. He is a wonderful villain, and he has a wonderful scheme, but his psychology is pretty basic: his whole life is devoted to getting revenge. Beyond revenge, there's very little there.
The final film, Lady Vengeance, is utterly simplistic. A child killer is captured by the parents of the murdered children, and they torture and kill him. This is a propaganda for capital punishment, nothing more, nothing less. The characters have been reduced to nothing. Even the love is generic--why do the parents love their children? Because they are parents and the children are children. In each film the theme becomes increasingly vivid and pronounced--and each film is worse than the previous. It is like an animal that has been boiled down to a single bone. This is the tyranny of theme.
How did this happen? I imagine that the director, Chan-Wook Park didn't know exactly what he was doing when he made his first film. Then it was very successful, and critics said, "Oh, it's wonderful, it brilliantly explores the issue of revenge." Journalists interviewed Mr. Park about his film and he said, "I'm fascinated by the psychology and mechanism of revenge." So then he made a film with the most elaborate revenge scenario imaginable. After more critics and more interviews, Mr. Park had said the word "revenge" over 10,000 times. He had become famous and revered and he could not help but believe that it is because of this wonderful theme, this wonderful word, vengeance. By the time he makes his final film, the theme is a like a drumbeat in his mind, like a spotlight in the night, illuminating one thing while obliterating the world. A film can never be more than sound, light, and the world. Without the world, a film is just sound and light. Theme destroys the world.
I remember a New Yorker review of the Cohen brother's Intolerable Cruelty where Devid Denby wrote that "the Coens fall into their usual goony-bird comedy games." It was a great relief for me to read this sentence because Denby put his finger on something that had been bothering me for a long time. I loved early Cohen brother films, particularly Miller's Crossing and Fargo, but increasingly their films have had an unpleasant antic "gooney-bird" quality, like a comedian desperately trying to put some spin on their old shtick. Of course, this madcap silliness is what first earned the Cohen brothers such admiration. As in the "vengeance" films, it is no accident that the thing that taints their later films is exactly what made their earlier films so beloved. The same insidious recursive process is at work: a thousand reviews, a thousand interviews, a thousand mentions of the Cohen brother "style," until some part of the Cohen brother's brains begins endlessly chanting We. Must. Be. Whacky.
It is not just theme or style that endangers art. It is knowing yourself too well. How difficult life is! You spend years cultivating your interests, your talents, your opinions, your qualities, yourself. (Most never accomplish this: never become anyone.) But the few who do achieve this, this selfhood, suddenly face a new problem: they are so used to refining the self, that they cannot stop. They continue to refine, to reiterate, to sharpen, to become themselves. Until they are lost.
I'm don't care about the moral elements of the Park's films. I'm more concerned with how the theme of the films--vengeance--becomes increasingly pronounced until it ruins the final film completely. All three films are clearly cartoons. This is not, in of itself, a problem. Film, as we all know, is a cartoonish medium, and thrives on simplicity. However we still want our simplicity to be complex. The first film is simple enough, the second film is a bit too simple, the final film is stupid.
In Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, there are lots of characters, and they all have weird and confusing motives: One character gets revenge on the crooks who stole his kidney; another character seeks revenge on the young lovers who kidnapped and killed his daughter, even though the death was an accident. We feel sympathy for the vigilantes, even as we are appalled by their sick torture fantasies. There are myriad varieties of revenge, each accompanied by myriad varieties of love (an essential ingrediant in all revenge): love for a sister, love for a lover, love for a child.
The main character in Oldboy is seeking revenge for being imprisoned, but it turns out he is merely a puppet in a larger revenge plot. The mastermind of this plot is the mad genius, a diabolical villain. We are fascinated by him, but in the same way we might enjoy watching Hannibal Lecter eat someone's brain. He is a wonderful villain, and he has a wonderful scheme, but his psychology is pretty basic: his whole life is devoted to getting revenge. Beyond revenge, there's very little there.
The final film, Lady Vengeance, is utterly simplistic. A child killer is captured by the parents of the murdered children, and they torture and kill him. This is a propaganda for capital punishment, nothing more, nothing less. The characters have been reduced to nothing. Even the love is generic--why do the parents love their children? Because they are parents and the children are children. In each film the theme becomes increasingly vivid and pronounced--and each film is worse than the previous. It is like an animal that has been boiled down to a single bone. This is the tyranny of theme.
How did this happen? I imagine that the director, Chan-Wook Park didn't know exactly what he was doing when he made his first film. Then it was very successful, and critics said, "Oh, it's wonderful, it brilliantly explores the issue of revenge." Journalists interviewed Mr. Park about his film and he said, "I'm fascinated by the psychology and mechanism of revenge." So then he made a film with the most elaborate revenge scenario imaginable. After more critics and more interviews, Mr. Park had said the word "revenge" over 10,000 times. He had become famous and revered and he could not help but believe that it is because of this wonderful theme, this wonderful word, vengeance. By the time he makes his final film, the theme is a like a drumbeat in his mind, like a spotlight in the night, illuminating one thing while obliterating the world. A film can never be more than sound, light, and the world. Without the world, a film is just sound and light. Theme destroys the world.
I remember a New Yorker review of the Cohen brother's Intolerable Cruelty where Devid Denby wrote that "the Coens fall into their usual goony-bird comedy games." It was a great relief for me to read this sentence because Denby put his finger on something that had been bothering me for a long time. I loved early Cohen brother films, particularly Miller's Crossing and Fargo, but increasingly their films have had an unpleasant antic "gooney-bird" quality, like a comedian desperately trying to put some spin on their old shtick. Of course, this madcap silliness is what first earned the Cohen brothers such admiration. As in the "vengeance" films, it is no accident that the thing that taints their later films is exactly what made their earlier films so beloved. The same insidious recursive process is at work: a thousand reviews, a thousand interviews, a thousand mentions of the Cohen brother "style," until some part of the Cohen brother's brains begins endlessly chanting We. Must. Be. Whacky.
It is not just theme or style that endangers art. It is knowing yourself too well. How difficult life is! You spend years cultivating your interests, your talents, your opinions, your qualities, yourself. (Most never accomplish this: never become anyone.) But the few who do achieve this, this selfhood, suddenly face a new problem: they are so used to refining the self, that they cannot stop. They continue to refine, to reiterate, to sharpen, to become themselves. Until they are lost.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
The Call of Poker
In the middle of the night I went to get a glass of milk and found my roommate in his underwear underneath the dining table, unconscious, presumably inebriated.
"Lars, hey, are you okay?" I asked.
"I call," he said.
"What?"
His eyes were still closed but he put his hands up in the air, palms out, a surrendering gesture.
"I call," he said. "I call. I call."
We play a lot of poker, Lars and I. The sound of chips shuffling on the kitchen table is enough to draw us out from our rooms, to disrupt our reading and writing, to put our lives on pause. We're both sheepish slaves to it, to the endless hands, the infuriating beats, the rare moments of excitement, the even rarer moments of actual cleverness. I've been a casino poker dealer, and I've played to pay the rent, I've played in Vegas and AC and in underground clubs and at countless kitchen tables, and part of me always wants to give it up. On the whole, it's a masochistic activity. It's a game of confusion, of anticipation, of pain and self-doubt. And that's only when you're not bored. Often you do the right thing and pay for it. Often your wins are completely undeserved. You only feel confident when you've got the nuts, and even that can be painful if you don't get paid.
I do think poker teaches you something about life. It teaches the important lesson that no one really knows what's going on. It teaches you that there is only so much you can know and so much you can do and that fate doesn't care. It teaches you that people act in irrational ways, and just when you think you've got something figured out it will come un-figured. It teaches you that there's no good decisions, only 66% good decisions. Which means every decision is 33% bad. It teaches you that the best-laid plans of mice and men...
There are, of course, many pleasures to poker. Winning money is nice. Bluffing is a thrill. Also: being sneaky and being smart and being right. But as time goes on, as the years pass and I can't seem to shake the poker bug, I've increasingly come to appreciate the call. Let me be more specific, because there are several kinds of call. There is the "crying call." This is when you feel almost certain that you are beat, but you simply cannot fold. Perhaps the pot is just too big. Or perhaps you're just acting out of desperate hope. Sometimes the crying call pays off--a miracle!--but even still, it is a pathetic gesture, a kind of shrivel of the spirit, akin to begging or groveling. It doesn't make you proud. There is also the "good call." This is when you put in a lot of money with a mediocre hand because you think, based on brilliant logic or gut feeling or who-knows-what, that you're being bluffed. This is the heroic call--you slam your cards on the table and say, "Ace high!" Like the "crying call," like anything in poker, like anything, it can pay off. Your opponent shows garbage or mucks their hand and you feel like a genius. Other times, they show that they really DO have the flush, or the full boat, or even just a pair, and you look like a fool. The so-called "good call" is an attempt to beat fate, to take a stand, to turn something meager into something magnificent. It's prideful and foolhardy, with all the associated glories and ignominies associated with those qualities.
But I'm not talking about those calls. The call I am most fond of doesn't have a name, but I think of it as the "simple call." This is when you've weighed all the possibilities, and done all the tortured thinking, and you've replayed in your mind all the possibilities, and you've done your best to get a read on your opponent, and you still don't know what's going on. It could be this. It could be that. There is no new information coming. Your poor brain has done its best, and you're still trapped in the aporia. You will not be shocked by a loss or a win. You have accepted the possibility of both. Most importantly, you will not be tortured by what happens. You will not feel heroic or pathetic. You will not feel like a genius or a fool. You empty yourself of expectation and hope. You hold up your hands and say, "I call." And then, at least, at last, you will see the truth.
Slovoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher critic, once said that the only true emotion is anxiety. Anxiety is the human response to mystery. Most of life is a terrible mystery, full of terrible anxieties. We are buffeted by the unknown, battered by chance, constantly foiled by the capriciousness of people and the universe. We struggle mightily, like fish in a vortex. Our attempts to triumph and not fail are mostly useless. The world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik was once asked to bring his vast analytical abilities to bear on the situation in Iraq. He responded, "I have no idea how politicians proceed at all. It is as if they are playing a game of chess where only a single piece is visible." Life is impossible. Our happiness is unearned and our suffering is undeserved. When we are naked, when we are on the ground, when we are dreaming, there is only one thing we want from the world: Show me. We no longer care what turns up.
"Lars, hey, are you okay?" I asked.
"I call," he said.
"What?"
His eyes were still closed but he put his hands up in the air, palms out, a surrendering gesture.
"I call," he said. "I call. I call."
We play a lot of poker, Lars and I. The sound of chips shuffling on the kitchen table is enough to draw us out from our rooms, to disrupt our reading and writing, to put our lives on pause. We're both sheepish slaves to it, to the endless hands, the infuriating beats, the rare moments of excitement, the even rarer moments of actual cleverness. I've been a casino poker dealer, and I've played to pay the rent, I've played in Vegas and AC and in underground clubs and at countless kitchen tables, and part of me always wants to give it up. On the whole, it's a masochistic activity. It's a game of confusion, of anticipation, of pain and self-doubt. And that's only when you're not bored. Often you do the right thing and pay for it. Often your wins are completely undeserved. You only feel confident when you've got the nuts, and even that can be painful if you don't get paid.
I do think poker teaches you something about life. It teaches the important lesson that no one really knows what's going on. It teaches you that there is only so much you can know and so much you can do and that fate doesn't care. It teaches you that people act in irrational ways, and just when you think you've got something figured out it will come un-figured. It teaches you that there's no good decisions, only 66% good decisions. Which means every decision is 33% bad. It teaches you that the best-laid plans of mice and men...
There are, of course, many pleasures to poker. Winning money is nice. Bluffing is a thrill. Also: being sneaky and being smart and being right. But as time goes on, as the years pass and I can't seem to shake the poker bug, I've increasingly come to appreciate the call. Let me be more specific, because there are several kinds of call. There is the "crying call." This is when you feel almost certain that you are beat, but you simply cannot fold. Perhaps the pot is just too big. Or perhaps you're just acting out of desperate hope. Sometimes the crying call pays off--a miracle!--but even still, it is a pathetic gesture, a kind of shrivel of the spirit, akin to begging or groveling. It doesn't make you proud. There is also the "good call." This is when you put in a lot of money with a mediocre hand because you think, based on brilliant logic or gut feeling or who-knows-what, that you're being bluffed. This is the heroic call--you slam your cards on the table and say, "Ace high!" Like the "crying call," like anything in poker, like anything, it can pay off. Your opponent shows garbage or mucks their hand and you feel like a genius. Other times, they show that they really DO have the flush, or the full boat, or even just a pair, and you look like a fool. The so-called "good call" is an attempt to beat fate, to take a stand, to turn something meager into something magnificent. It's prideful and foolhardy, with all the associated glories and ignominies associated with those qualities.
But I'm not talking about those calls. The call I am most fond of doesn't have a name, but I think of it as the "simple call." This is when you've weighed all the possibilities, and done all the tortured thinking, and you've replayed in your mind all the possibilities, and you've done your best to get a read on your opponent, and you still don't know what's going on. It could be this. It could be that. There is no new information coming. Your poor brain has done its best, and you're still trapped in the aporia. You will not be shocked by a loss or a win. You have accepted the possibility of both. Most importantly, you will not be tortured by what happens. You will not feel heroic or pathetic. You will not feel like a genius or a fool. You empty yourself of expectation and hope. You hold up your hands and say, "I call." And then, at least, at last, you will see the truth.
Slovoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher critic, once said that the only true emotion is anxiety. Anxiety is the human response to mystery. Most of life is a terrible mystery, full of terrible anxieties. We are buffeted by the unknown, battered by chance, constantly foiled by the capriciousness of people and the universe. We struggle mightily, like fish in a vortex. Our attempts to triumph and not fail are mostly useless. The world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik was once asked to bring his vast analytical abilities to bear on the situation in Iraq. He responded, "I have no idea how politicians proceed at all. It is as if they are playing a game of chess where only a single piece is visible." Life is impossible. Our happiness is unearned and our suffering is undeserved. When we are naked, when we are on the ground, when we are dreaming, there is only one thing we want from the world: Show me. We no longer care what turns up.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Who's the Greatest?
Football fans in Atlanta and round the globe mourn today because it looks like the man heralded as the NFL’s version of Michael Jordan may turn instead into the NFL’s version of Barry Bonds.
Some might have hoped Michael Vick become football’s Muhammad Ali, now an American doll shivering and beloved but once an idol of angered spirit, the defiant harlequin who years before refusing to kill his “brown brothers” across the sea announced his allegiance to the Nation of Islam to a pool of reporters in Miami following his first world title: “I don’t have to be who you want me to be.” Vick did not become a critic of his country’s wars, or even a champion. He was poised most of all to become his sport’s Allen Iverson, a corn-rowed runner-up and symbol of a generation who looked menacing but said nothing and cashed the check. The two share a common home ground, for example, the desolate Hampton Roads area of Virginia Beach. Of course such comparisons fall apart upon inspection. Happy athletes are all alike; unhappy athletes are unhappy each in their own way.
Let us suppose Vick unhappy. Yesterday a grand jury indicted the pro bowl quarterback and three of his fellows on federal criminal charges. The Richmond U.S. Attorney reports: “The defendants were involved in an ongoing animal fighting venture based out of a property located in Smithfield, Virginia, from early 2001 through on or about April 25, 2007. The property was purchased by Vick in June 2001. Since that time, the named defendants formed a dog fighting enterprise known as ‘Bad Newz Kennels’ and used the property for housing and training pit bulls used in dog fights.” Vick is a gladiator. He is an outlaw now, like Ali, and he will like Ali battle the government for his survival as an icon and as an athlete. This is so. But what of the dogs?
The crisis facing the fighting dog is the increasingly bleak wasteland of your opportunities. You live in a cage. You will be a cannibal, or get murdered. You are both condition of and condition for your condition, a fabulous beast. You are existentially a made up creature, for no reason than to see what comes of you, like a piece of fiction led in this case onto the battlefield. The fighting probably hurts to hell. But is the fighting dog unhappy? Or any less happy than a character in a book?
Lurid details reach us from the kennels:
“15. In or about the summer of 2002,” the indictment reads, “PEACE executed at least one dog that did not perform well in a ‘testing’ session at 1915 Moonlight Road by shooting the animal.
“16. In or about the summer of 2002, PHILLIPS executed at least one dog that did not perform well in a ‘testing’ session at 1915 Moonlight Road by shooting the animal.
“17. In or about the summer of 2002, TAYLOR executed at least two dogs that did not perform well in ‘testing’ sessions at 1915 Moonlight Road by shooting one dog and electrocuting the other.
“…
“83. In or about April 2007, PEACE, PHILLIPS, and VICK executed approximately 8 dogs that did not perform well in ‘testing’ sessions at 1915 Moonlight Road by various methods, including hanging, drowning, and slamming at least one dog’s body to the ground."
The grand jury’s account delivers the repetitive cadence and setting (“Moonlight Road”) of a folk song, and even its violence contributes a mood like a specially Southern fable. The dogs are doomed, but is there a difference between that and the blues? The performer, an actor on the boards, Camus tells us, is preferably a hunted soul. "This is called losing oneself to find oneself," Camus says. "In those three hours he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover.”
We are tragic creatures where the dogs are not. All domestic animals are absurd. Their motives lack the authenticity of the wild. Cattle end in illness or the slaughter, collies get put down. They are perhaps our most modern creation. Pit dogs fulfill a paradox, domesticated and yet wildly savage, that lives in the meeting of id and superego. They are the canine image of the 20th century psychopath, whose alienated instincts, whose mortal imperative to act out, find no resource in the routine world. If they did not need to murder, why would they live?
Here is a proverb. “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.” The absurd man replies, “No, the bear always eats you,” and he is right, if only in allegory. Go ahead and carry a gun, the bear he is talking about you will not kill. But what happens when the bear fights another bear? Or the bear fights a mountain lion? Or this dog fights that dog? These are the absurd and philosophical debates that lead men like Mike Vick to pit dogs against one another, to bet on one or the other, to lead animals into glory or the fodder. I’m just guessing, but I suspect Vick has been unhappy for some long time. As any modern man Vick discovered he lives within an envelope very much like the pit. He was called to lead but by way of escape built, like a cult founder, a micromaniacal miniature of the arenas he found himself gladiating within day to day, against the Denver Broncos, against the ghost of Michael Jordan, against the valley of the shadow of death. Here is another proverb, this time from Pynchon: “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
The Emperor
According to an AP article on Monday "A man carrying a gun and declaring 'I am the emperor' was shot and killed Monday outside the offices of Gov. Bill Ritter by a member of the governor's security detail.... Before he was shot, the gunman, who was dressed in a dark tuxedo, said, 'I am the emperor and I'm here to take over state government.'"
There is something charming and innocent about this poor unnamed man who believed he was an emperor. His delusion of grandeur seems almost quaint. There are no emperors in the world anymore, and so they seem fantastical, even childlike. He might as well have said, "I am Merlin the Magician," or "I am a Tyrannosaurus Rex." The non-existent is always pure. If he had said, "In the name of the Ku Klux Klan I’m taking over the State" the story would be sullied because we would know that his delusions were shared by other people. Believing you are a dinosaur is a unique belief, and therefore rare and precious. Racism is commonplace, and therefore cheap and nasty.
But we should not be fooled by these distinctions. All delusional people are dangerous and all people are delusional. If Don Quixote had been a strong young man, he would have probably killed many innocent people in the name of chivalry. If he had his hands on any explosives, the windmills would have all been demolished. I know a psychologist who worked with schizophrenic patients and she asked them if they ever had any warning signs that they were about to suffer from a psychotic episode. One of them replied, "When everything starts to make a lot of sense, I know something really bad is about to happen."
If conviction and sense are so dangerous, should we all live our lives as skeptics? A skeptic is unlikely to kill anyone. But this is a miserable existence, an existence of fear and doubt and confusion and paralysis. For the skeptic, no decision is a good decision, and the world is a place of tricks and traps. The skeptic lives in a nightmare. The skeptic will never know the incredible pleasure of being an emperor.
What is the solution to this quandary? I think the solution is to be weak. The reason we love Don Quixote is because he was an old feeble man with a helmet stuck on his head. Only if we are powerless may we enjoy the fruits of our convictions and madnesses. So let us populate the world with impotent emperors. And the next time you march into the gold-vaulted Denver Capitol Building, do not bring a gun. But keep the tuxedo. It is befitting of your status.
There is something charming and innocent about this poor unnamed man who believed he was an emperor. His delusion of grandeur seems almost quaint. There are no emperors in the world anymore, and so they seem fantastical, even childlike. He might as well have said, "I am Merlin the Magician," or "I am a Tyrannosaurus Rex." The non-existent is always pure. If he had said, "In the name of the Ku Klux Klan I’m taking over the State" the story would be sullied because we would know that his delusions were shared by other people. Believing you are a dinosaur is a unique belief, and therefore rare and precious. Racism is commonplace, and therefore cheap and nasty.
But we should not be fooled by these distinctions. All delusional people are dangerous and all people are delusional. If Don Quixote had been a strong young man, he would have probably killed many innocent people in the name of chivalry. If he had his hands on any explosives, the windmills would have all been demolished. I know a psychologist who worked with schizophrenic patients and she asked them if they ever had any warning signs that they were about to suffer from a psychotic episode. One of them replied, "When everything starts to make a lot of sense, I know something really bad is about to happen."
If conviction and sense are so dangerous, should we all live our lives as skeptics? A skeptic is unlikely to kill anyone. But this is a miserable existence, an existence of fear and doubt and confusion and paralysis. For the skeptic, no decision is a good decision, and the world is a place of tricks and traps. The skeptic lives in a nightmare. The skeptic will never know the incredible pleasure of being an emperor.
What is the solution to this quandary? I think the solution is to be weak. The reason we love Don Quixote is because he was an old feeble man with a helmet stuck on his head. Only if we are powerless may we enjoy the fruits of our convictions and madnesses. So let us populate the world with impotent emperors. And the next time you march into the gold-vaulted Denver Capitol Building, do not bring a gun. But keep the tuxedo. It is befitting of your status.
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