Lost in the Cosmos

(9) The Envious Self: (in the root sense of envy: invidere, to look at with malice): Why it is that the Self — though it Professes to be Loving, Caring, to Prefer Peace to War, Concord to Discord, Life to Death; to Wish Other Selves Well, not Ill — in fact Secretly Relishes Wars and Rumors of War, News of Plane Crashes, Assassinations, Mass Murders, Obituaries, to say nothing of Local News about Acquaintances Dropping Dead in the Street, Gossip about Neighbors Getting in Fights or being Detected in Sexual Scandals, Embezzlements, and other Disgraces

EVERYONE REMEMBERS WHERE he was and what he was doing when he heard the news of the Kennedy assassination — or, if he is old enough, Pearl Harbor.

Why?

The self deceives itself by saying that it is natural that such terrible events should be etched in the memory.

It is not so simple.

The fact is that the scene and the circumstances of hearing such news become invested with a certain significance and density which they do not ordinarily possess and with which ordinary events and ordinary occasions contrast unfavorably.

Two such recollections as reported to me:

(1) I was standing outside a grocery store on the corner of St. Charles and Jackson avenues in New Orleans when a stranger came up to me and said that the President had been shot and killed. I can remember noticing that the stranger wore an old-fashioned shirt, the kind with a tab collar and a gold pin which fitted little holes in the tabs and kept the collar snug against the neck. Everything seemed amazingly vivid and discrete. I could even see the threads sewn in the little holes of the man’s tab collar. Then he began to tell me the story of his life. He, too, felt curiously dispensed. I can even remember exactly where I stood on the sidewalk and a sycamore tree growing through a hole in the concrete. I can still see the bark.

Question: Had you noticed the tree before?

No.

Question: Have you noticed it since? No.

(2) I was watching the soap opera As the World Turns on TV. It was a scene between Chris Hughes and Grandpa. A bulletin was flashed on the screen. Bulletin: Shots have been fired into the Presidential motorcade in Dallas. As the bulletin came on, Grandpa was saying to Chris Hughes something like: “Now let’s don’t be too hasty, Chris. I don’t believe Ellen would do such a thing.” I can remember thinking how unimportant the soap opera seemed compared with the events in Dallas.

Question: But before that, the soap opera seemed more interesting than the events in Dallas?

Yes.

Question: And since? Have you resumed watching As the World Turns?

Yes.

Question: During the week following Pearl Harbor, the incidence of suicide declined dramatically across the nation. Was this decline a consequence of

(1) A rise in patriotic fervor and a sense of purpose?

(2) A new sense of interest (e.g., something, even war, is better than nothing. Peace in the 1930s was like nothing)?

A Short Journal Chronicling Certain Events in Our Town

Monday. Everyone is cheerful today. Mr. D—, a well-known judge and gubernatorial candidate, was detected in an act of fellatio with a bellboy in the men’s room of the Roosevelt Hotel during lunch hour. He was arrested by the vice squad. It is on the five o’clock news. Men stop each other in the street, shaking their heads: “Did you hear the awful thing that happened to Judge D—?” “Yes. I don’t believe it. I think it’s political. He was set up.” “Right. Clearly, entrapment.” Telephone lines are buzzing all over town. Housewives stop watching talk shows and soap operas to call each other.

Tuesday. Everyone in town is moderately depressed. Mr. L—, a highly successful attorney, a cheerful and generous man, wins the biggest lawsuit of his career, a ten-million-dollar judgment against A.T.&T. On the same day, he learns that his wife has been awarded the Times-Picayune cup for outstanding service to the community, his son has won a Rhodes Scholarship, and his daughter has been chosen to be Queen of the Comus Ball. His friends congratulate him. “You really hit the jackpot!” they exclaim and turn away with preoccupied expressions. The telephone wires do not hum. Housewives watch more soap operas than ever.

Wednesday. The ex-Premier of France, General de Gaulle, has died and the President of the United States attends his funeral. He looks very solemn and dignified sitting in Notre Dame cathedral. Later he confides to an aide that he enjoys state funerals more than anything he does in Washington or even Camp David because he can relax and let his mind go blank and yet be admired for paying his respects and taking so much trouble when all he has to do is look solemn. And also because there is de Gaulle dead as a duck and here I am alive and kicking.

Questions: Imagine yourself in a place most familiar to you and therefore most nugatory; e.g., standing on the platform of the commuter station at 8:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning waiting for the 8:05 to New York. Or walking across your front yard in Montclair for the eight thousandth time to pick up the morning paper.

Now imagine that in these circumstances you receive a piece of news, either by way of a newspaper headline, by word of mouth from a neighbor, or perhaps by overhearing a radio bulletin from a black youth carrying a Sony CF-520.

In each instance of news, check the correct answer. Hint: Use as your guide your altered perception of your surroundings and any change in mood — e.g., whether, as a result of hearing the news, your front yard becomes visible for the first time since you moved in, or whether it becomes more nugatory than usual; whether your usual morning depression deepens or lifts.

There are four possible answers: (a) The news is unrelievedly bad. (b) The news is putatively bad, that is, news which by all criteria should be bad but in which you nevertheless take a certain comfort. (c) The news is unrelievedly good. (d) The news is putatively good, that is, news which by all criteria ought to be good but which you find secretly depressing.

(1) News bulletin: A UFO has landed in Nebraska and vaporized Omaha. This news is for you

(a) Unrelievedly bad: After all, there is nothing good about the loss of several hundred thousand people.

(b) Putatively bad but secretly not so bad: I don’t know anybody in Omaha and there is something extremely interesting about an authenticated UFO visitation — which I had never really credited until now.

(CHECK ONE)

(2) While you stand at the paper-tube reading the morning headlines, a highly localized yet extremely violent tornado descends upon your house, carrying it aloft and away like Judy Garland’s house in The Wizard of Oz. Your wife is in the house. Nothing is ever heard again of the house or your wife.

This event is

(a) Unrelievedly bad news: You love your wife. She is a good woman, your companion and helpmate for these twenty years. Your house, moreover, is underinsured.

(b) Putatively bad news: All the above is true enough, yet if the entire truth be known, your wife is also a shrew; you are sick to death of her, the house, your job, and your life. Since your wife has vanished through no fault of yours, cannot indeed have suffered much, whatever her fate, could indeed have been set down in a new place and a new life of her own like Judy, you are free to begin a new life without guilt.

(CHECK ONE)

(3) You are a woman whose husband has taken early retirement. He is a decent fellow, a combat veteran of Korea, and has been a good provider for thirty years. Money is no problem. Now, even though he is seriously overweight, all he does is sit around your pleasant Lake Wales house polishing off six-packs and watching golf, the NBA and NFL on TV. For months he goes without touching you and hardly speaking. Or he’ll have spells of satyriasis when he’ll want to have beery sex twice a night. What do you want? (What do women want?) You want to take a cathedral tour of Europe, or a leisurely barge voyage through the canals of France, stopping off at quaint French villages, or a cuisine tour through the vineyards and kitchens of the Loire Valley. Or visit the Galapagos Islands with your local Audubon Society. He won’t go. Why do I want to look at a bunch of turtles? What does he want? He wants to go to Vegas to catch Wayne Newton and Liberace, or to Augusta to follow Nicklaus. You won’t go. Yet you don’t feel free to go off without him — you have duties as a housewife.

So one day you pick up a brochure from a travel agency in Orlando about a thatched-roof-cottage tour of England and a hot-air balloon ride down the Loire Valley and get in your car and start home. From the radio comes news of yet another sinkhole in the fragile limestone crust of central Florida. When you arrive in your block, you discover that your entire lot, house, husband Ralph, and the Zenith Chromacolor have dropped out of sight and disappeared forever into the Eocene muck.

This is

(a) Unrelievedly bad news: Ralph, a good man, a good husband, is gone. You, a good Christian woman, have lost your better half. You are alone in the world.

(b) Putatively bad: This is all true, but on the other hand Ralph is gone through no fault of your own and you are free. Frankly, thirty years of Ralph is enough. Moreover, Ralph was well insured.

(CHECK ONE)

(4) You are picking up the morning paper before going to work. It is a big day in your career. You are making a sales presentation to representatives of the biggest prospective corporate customer in the history of your firm. You’ve been suffering some anxiety and sleepless nights, and with good reason. In recent months you’ve been somewhat depressed and you’re drinking more than you should.

A young insane person, totally unknown to you, drives slowly past your house in an ancient VW, takes aim with his Colt Woodsman.22-caliber pistol, and shoots you in the armpit just as you reach to take the newspaper from the paper-tube.

The wound is probably not fatal. The bullet hits a rib, flattens, ricochets into the substance of your lung, but without injuring heart or major vessel. Your neighbor comes to your aid, calls an ambulance. Feeling faint, you sit on the grass of your front yard. You notice a dogwood tree which you planted ten years ago. It is doing well.

In the emergency room of the hospital, you feel a strange euphoria. You joke with the doctors. Even though you’re spitting blood and growing fainter, your mind works wonderfully well. To the amazement of the doctors and nurses, you remember a remark of Churchill’s, which you quote: “Nothing makes a man feel better than to be shot without effect.”

Is this occurrence

(a) Unrelievedly bad news? It is not good to get shot. One could die of it.

(b) Putatively bad news but secretly good? The incident somehow dispenses you. The single irrational act of a madman changes the entire state of your life in an instant — from that of an anxious worried businessman in danger of losing a big account, to that of an innocent victim, not only not guilty but also unfailed, a patient who finds himself not only in the peculiar role of hospital patient with its peculiar prerogatives, that of being the passive and blameless recipient of the expert services of highly trained people, but of a certain honorific status as well, better than a business bonus: that of being a kind of surrogate victim for all of us. After all, it could happen to any of us in this crazy world, and here it has happened to you, a highly respected and successful member of the community. You took a round which any of us could have taken.

What is more, you’ll probably get the account for your firm — which in your anxiety you might have lost — without lifting a finger. What corporation would turn you down?

Why did President Reagan feel better after he was shot than he has felt since?

(CHECK ONE)

(5) You are standing by your paper-tube in Englewood reading the headlines. Your neighbor comes out to get his paper. You look at him sympathetically. You know he has been having severe chest pains and is facing coronary bypass surgery. But he is not acting like a cardiac patient this morning. Over he jogs in his sweat pants, all smiles. He has triple good news. His chest ailment turned out to be a hiatal hernia, not serious. He’s got a promotion and is moving to Greenwich, where he can keep his boat in the water rather than on a trailer.

“Great, Charlie! I’m really happy for you.”

Are you happy for him?

(a) Yes. Unrelievedly good news. Surely it is good news all around that Charlie is alive and well and not dead or invalided. Surely, too, it is good for him and not bad for you if he also moves up in the world, buys a house in Greenwich where he can keep a 25-foot sloop moored in the Sound rather than a 12-foot Mayflower on a trailer in the garage in Englewood.

(b) Putatively good news but — but what? But the trouble is, it is good news for Charlie, but you don’t feel so good.

(CHECK ONE)

If your answer is (b), could you specify your dissatisfaction, i.e., do the following thought experiment: which of the following news vis-à-vis Charlie and you at the paper-tube would make you feel better:

(1) Charlie is dead.

(2) Charlie has undergone a quadruple coronary bypass and may not make it.

(3) Charlie does not have heart trouble but he did not get his promotion or his house in Greenwich.

(4) Charlie does not have heart trouble and did get his promotion but can’t afford to move to Greenwich.

(5) You, too, have received triple good news, so both of you can celebrate.

(6) You have not received good news, but just after hearing Charlie’s triple good news, you catch sight of a garbage truck out of control and headed straight for Charlie — whose life you save by throwing a body block that knocks him behind a tree. (Why does it make you feel better to save Charlie’s life and thus turn his triple good news into quadruple good fortune?)

(7) You have not received good news, but just after you hear Charlie’s triple good news, an earthquake levels Manhattan. There the two of you stand, gazing bemused at the ruins across the Hudson from Englewood Cliffs.

(CHECK ONE)

In a word, how much good news about Charlie can you tolerate without compensatory catastrophes, heroic rescues, and such?

(6) On the station platform, a fellow commuter, a stranger to you these past six years, approaches you and tells you of the news bulletin he has just picked up from his Sony Mystereo. Not Manhattan but San Francisco has at last suffered the long-awaited major earthquake, magnitude 8.3 Richter. Casualties are estimated at near two hundred thousand.

(a) Unrelievedly bad news? How can there be anything good in such massive suffering and loss of life?

(b) Putatively bad news? Else why is your fellow commuter so excited that, even as he shakes his head dolefully, his earphones come loose? Does he take comfort in what he does not say but perhaps thinks, that it is Gomorrah getting its due, what with the gays, creeps, and deviates who must comprise at least half the casualties?

(CHECK ONE)

(7) You are an astronomer, starship designer, TV personality. You write about the Cosmos. You live next door to another astronomer, starship designer, TV personality. He also writes about the Cosmos. You both are employed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, not so much for your scientific abilities as for your PR value and your skill at popularizing science. You both have written best-sellers about space travel, ETIs (extraterrestrial intelligences), the necessity for nuclear disarmament, and so on. You are both aware that man might well destroy himself and the earth before he can explore the Cosmos and establish communication with other civilizations. There is a friendly rivalry between you. You two have different solutions to man’s problems with himself.

You believe that wars are the consequences of sexually repressive societies, especially Christian. You have evidence that in more primitive societies, where sexual freedom is encouraged among both the young and adults, where there is an uninhibited display of affection and sexual contact, there are few if any wars. Your all-time favorite book is Coming of Age in Samoa. Your own latest book, Space and Sexuality, a best-seller, advances a proposal to create just such a society in miniature, a small community which is not only scientifically advanced but also loving and sexually unrepressed. Toward this end, you have designed a starship adapted from the Bussard fusion ramjet, which will accommodate a crew of ten (five men and five women), chosen not only for their technological skills but also for their freedom from sexual hang-ups, for a journey of several years to the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. The starship has already been jokingly nicknamed the Love Boat by your colleagues. But in all seriousness, you propose that NASA initiate a crash program to launch the ship before what you are almost certain will be the last war on earth.

You have been invited to appear tonight on the Tom Snyder Show to promote your new book, Space and Sexuality.

Your neighbor and friend has also written a book and has been invited to appear on the Johnny Carson Show — which has a higher rating in the sweeps than Snyder. To tell the truth, his book sales exceed yours. You two do not disagree in your understanding of the Cosmos and in your assessment of man’s danger to himself. Yet your solutions are different. He believes that world peace can be achieved only by uniting the Western tradition of science and technology and the Eastern tradition of self-transcendence, especially Zen and Tibetan Buddhism.

In his book, Space and Satori, a version of the British starship Daedalus, powered by nuclear fusion, is proposed, the crew to be commanded by an experienced astronaut but with a spiritual leader on board, the noted Tibetan mystic Ti Chen.

Tonight, your neighbor, Dr. L___, and Ti will promote their book, Space and Satori, on the Carson Show. Both of you know that it is more desirable to be on the Carson Show than on the Tom Snyder Show.

As you make your morning trip to the paper-tube, you meet not Dr. L___ but his wife, who has bad news. She has reached her paper-tube first and is holding aloft the L.A. Times. There on the front page is an article exposing a sexual scandal at the Ti Chen Institute at La Jolla. Described by a disaffected disciple as an orgy, an incident is described in which Ti Chen is alleged to have engaged in a debauch with some of his young male disciples, in the course of which your neighbor, Dr. L____, appeared unexpectedly, flew into a jealous rage, and assaulted Ti Chen with a broken bottle. Everyone at the institute, in various states of undress, was arrested by the La Jolla police.

“Can you believe such crap!” cries your neighbor’s wife, in a tearful rage, and slaps the L.A. Times. “I mean, my God, this you would expect from the National Enquirer. The same tissue of lies. I’m going to sue the bastards. Wouldn’t you?”

You nod gravely and solicitously. This is bad news, indeed. This could mean the end of Dr. L__'s career at NASA, the end of his “scientific Buddhism.” His wife says: “Would you believe Carson canceled him tonight?”

You shake your head, one arm around Dr. L__'s wife, patting her solicitously.

You grow thoughtful. Taken altogether, this is

(a) Unrelievedly bad news.

(b) Putatively bad news.

(CHECK ONE)

(8) You are one of two distinguished Southern writers in residence at Yaddo and living in neighboring cottages. You are both men of letters, noted for your poetry, fiction, and criticism. For years, even though you both live in Massachusetts, you have both attacked the crass, materialistic, money-grubbing society of the North and defended the traditional, agrarian, Christian values of the South, with its strong sense of place, family, and roots.

After a day of work, Writer A meets Writer B, as is their wont, on a pleasant woodland path to the dining room. The excited hostess of Yaddo breaks the rule of silence and accosts them in the woods. She has news that won’t keep. Dan Rather has just announced it on the six o’clock news: Writer B has just won the Nobel Prize for literature!

Writer A embraces Writer B warmly. B shrugs: We both know what we think of the Nobel, etc. Yet B looks pleased. Whatever they think of the Nobel — e.g., people like John Steinbeck and Pearl Buck getting it, Joyce not getting it — it comes to over $200,000. Writer B looks pleased. Writer A horses around a bit, dares B to do a Sartre and turn it down, but still and all shows his pleasure: I’m so damned pleased for you.

If you are A, are you

(a) Unrelievedly pleased.

(b) Putatively pleased.

(CHECK ONE)