Dear reader,
Sometimes a comment on a column can sound like a cry of agony, and a cry of agony can sound like a question. So today I respond to the below comment, posted on last week’s column. The author apparently read my 2006 Salon.com column on suicide which after 15 years still attracts fresh readers and comments. (The comments section is still open!)
However, it all boils down to Hamlet: “Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” as he cried out.
Exactly, there is no other question. If I’m reincarnated, then why would I care? I could already be a reincarnation and not know anything about it.
Therefore, I ask mankind — at least all who believe in Christ — to kneel down and ask Him what the point of this horrible world and existence is. We only exist because of a rather disgusting, wicked drive, a drive that has no place in Heaven or even a Platonic ideal sphere, as Andy Nowicki rightly noted in “Confessions of a Would-Be Wanker”.
A pipe dream, I know, God won’t answer. I rather see sex as a result and curse of the Fall. There is no better explanation. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weininger et al all understood that sex poses a deep existential problem. It is indeed “forbidden knowledge”, changing one’s outlook on existence forever and to 180 degrees.
* https://www.salon.com/2006/03/06/suicide_23/
Dear Hunchback,
Your comment startled me, confused me, caused me to seek knowledge about your world and also to meditate on this “rather disgusting, wicked drive” commonly called sexual desire. I was startled because in my ignorance I had considered your view of sex to be a relic of a bygone time. That was a lazy and privileged assumption.
Nothing human dies. It is all here, forever, in each of us. We all contain within us all the virtues and the crimes, the full history of man, everything. So it should not surprise me that, driven by some form of suffering, you would feel as you do about sex.
But because it is understandable does not mean it cannot be changed. Here I will attempt to create for you an escape route, a way out of the suffering so evident in your comment.
Why? For our good if not for yours. Because that shooter in Atlanta, the spa shooter, had sexual guilt and professed Christianity. He sought expiation. His method was murder. So I do not think that your views are harmless. Your pain troubles me but that is not my sole reason for responding. It is evident that such pain can lead to violence against innocent others. So it is in the interest of society to come to you with some compassion and some ideas for healing, for feeling less pain, less anguish, less bitterness and anger.
To my way of thinking, anger arises out of pain and out of fear. Your words are angry words. The intellectual content is brittle like glass. The heat beneath it is, for me, the point of it all. One reason I think your anger and pain are the cause of your views is: Why, otherwise, would you bother? What satisfaction would there be, if this tortured ratiocination were not giving you some kind of relief?
Here is what I think: No matter how sophisticated your argument is, I sense your anger, and anger can lead to the illusion of justifiable homicide, of the reasonableness of antisocial acts that bring horror and revulsion to others–the horror and revulsion that you feel can, in an act of violence as expiation, bring suffering to others. Your suffering is yours. I pray that you seek to ease your suffering before it leads you to cause suffering to others.
Perhaps, consumed with your own pain and insensible to the pain of others, you assume that we also are only concerned with our own suffering. But many of us respond with alarm to signs of agony, no matter how erudite its wrapping. And we know, as I have mentioned, that such agony can manifest as criminal violence. So it is not a selfless mission to try to ease your suffering.
Here is how you might ease this suffering. First, stop thinking. No matter what you may believe, no matter what you know, stop thinking. Seek out the miracle that is our world. If you believe our world is God-created, then seek out the miraculous works of God. For instance, after pondering your words, I needed a break. So I walked outside to look at the sky. There are roses growing outside. I stopped at a pale pink rose to inhale its fragrance and noticed a white spider conducting an orchestra on its petal. A puff of wind knocked the spider off the rose and it clung by its thread, swinging in the breeze. Then it ascended and retook its position. I put my nose close, aware that I was putting my nose close to a spider. The rose smelled terrific.
I looked at the flowers, the vines, the sky, the clouds, the bell tower of the church that has been ringing at 7:30 in the morning every day for a long time. I directed my attention to the miracle of existence and this displaced, for a moment, the anxiety of being. This anxiety of being is always with us, like the background noise of the Big Bang. And if we are filled with anguish and turmoil, that, too, is with us all the time. But it can be pierced by directing the attention to evidence of miracles all around us.
Simple breath is one such miracle. By sitting in meditation, focused on the breath, one can come to appreciate the miracle of breath. In, out, in, out. It’s not sex. It’s biology. And what is biology if not a fabulous miracle?
I wish I could talk to you. I wish I could ask you questions and listen to your response. I would ask you, do you desire sex but feel the desire as pain? Have you acted on your desire and afterwards felt disgust at yourself? Have you acted on your desire and been rejected? Have you lacked the courage to act on your desire, deciding that it is all garbage? Have you performed the act itself and found it disgusting? Do some of your desires disgust you because they do not seem mainstream, i.e. normal?
But I fear such a conversation would lead us back into the awful prison of your agony. So again I suggest that you begin to climb out of this well of suffering by regarding the world around you as a miracle, a miracle of God if you wish, a miracle with the power to impress upon us the majesty and magic of the world.
I think this majesty, this magic, is holy. If anything can be holy this contraption, whoever its author, is holy, worthy of wonder, worthy of humble attention. And I believe that a course of such attention to the wonder of the world around us can heal the anger and emptiness that wrack your soul. I also think that if you are in pain it is not the fault of a God, but the fault of man, the traps and circumstances men have created, the inhuman routines we are forced to run.
In seeking the cessation of psychic pain, I think it’s more useful to blame Walmart than to blame God. For who knows what God has in mind? We know what Walmart has in mind: Domination, control, dominion, power, authority, eternal life.
I use Walmart as a metaphor for most of what is odious in our culture. I could use other symbols but I prefer Walmart.
Our culture is odious, I agree. We are driven to be selfish and cruel in fulfillment of some cultural mission we do not even fully understand. I get that. I get it about Hamlet and Kierkegaard and the rest. I even looked up Andy Nowicki. I just think that your opinions, though cloaked in reason, emanate from an emotion of deep pain, which left untreated will continue to grow until you feel compelled to do something awful, something you don’t have to do, something which will not help anyone.
I do note you used an email cloaking device in your correspondence, and I understand the unpopularity of your views might otherwise expose you to abuse. I don’t condone such abuse. I believe the route to a better world lies in compassionate listening and problem-solving. I feel like you are standing on the ledge of a building threatening to jump, and I am down here yelling Don’t Jump! Don’t Jump!
Please don’t jump. Please find some divinity in this world, something powerful enough, beautiful enough, to fill your soul with wonder and gratitude.
Another beautifully written column, Cary. I applaud your restraint, compassion and clarity in writing to this tortured man. I myself would be unlikely to hold back comments about the toxicity and danger of extreme religious belief – how it creates insidious shame, a poisonous force.
Directing our attention to evidence of miracles. What a great antidote to our Walmart culture. YOU are a miracle, Cary. I think when you noticed his letter was in a cloaking device is noteworthy because his words are also a cloaking device for the rage he is in as he tries so hard impress you with his references to philosophers etc. Compassionate listening and problem solving. You have such a gift for being in this world and I just loved how you responded to this person’s agony. On a personal level I thought it was really interesting that the last thing I saw before going to sleep last night was an interview in jail of a young man who had just killed 17 people, mostly young and injured many others. In the interview he had already been cleared by a doctor to be stable enough to be interviewed and what he tried to do was to feign mental instability. He didn’t realize a camera was on him at first and so as soon as the policeman left the room the young man changed his demeanor, then changed back when the policeman returned. He said he heard a voice in his head. Then the first thing I read this morning is this letter and your response. I think there are parallels between the thinking processes of your writer and the murder of innocents by this other young man who once apprehended is trying to appear crazy to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. . He talked about wanting to hurt himself and was picking at his skin. I guess having disassociated himself with the unbearable hurt he had just done to so many lives. I hope your writer finds the beauty and miracle that is his very existence. Imagine how unlikely it is to get as far as being born in the first place. I hope he is able to feel this. And thanks again Cary for sharing yourself.
I simply love this line: “This anxiety of being is always with us, like the background noise of the Big Bang.” What an insight!
Your compassion and insight is always compelling, as is your desire to help others.