“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Blade Runner
I wonder if there is any symbolism in this artwork? I guess we’ll never know.
Recently I’ve been reading Philip K. Dick’s novel VALIS.
It’s interesting. I enjoy it.
Philip K. Dick’s work (you never see him referred to as “Phil” or “Phil Dick”, it’s always Philip K. Dick, just like John F. Kennedy is always known as “Sassy”) has taken over Hollywood. From Total Recall to Minority Report to Blade Runner to The Man in the High Castle, Dick’s work has been made into something like 14 movies and an entire series of shorter television episodes available on Amazon® Prime™. In what might be the most ironic ending ever, he only really became popular after his death, with Blade Runner being released just a few months after he died at the age of 53.
The story themes that he visited during his life were fairly consistent:
- What is the nature of reality? What if it’s a lie?
- How do we know that we are sane?
- What if reality is insane? What should our response be?
- What is information? Is it living?
- Where can I get more drugs? I mean a LOT more drugs.
VALIS is based on (at least partly) a vision that he had in February and March of 1974, and describes a lot of things that Dick said personally happened to him, which include a secret Roman Empire that still existed, aliens, and the fact that his son had a hernia that would kill him if he didn’t have the doctor look at it. The hernia part is verified. The secret Roman Empire? Not so much. Oh, did I mention he did a LOT of drugs? Yeah. He made Hunter S. Thompson seem like a virgin.
However, as a writer he had an amazing amount of insight, which may account for the popularity. One quote that struck me was an interesting philosophical digression in VALIS:
Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form. The basic dynamism is as follows: a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way that he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain – any kind of control will do. This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery. So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him: he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it. This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain. Not so. It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness. But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes automatically, anhedonic (avoiding pleasure – JW). Anhedonia sets in stealthily. Over the years it takes control of him. For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia. In learning to defer his gratification, he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse. He has “control”. Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation. He is a controlled and a controlling person. Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation. He becomes a manipulator. Of course, he is not consciously aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence. But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others. Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essentially negative.
This idea is fascinating to me. In this case, a virtue, self-restraint and stoicism, is turned into a vice. And not only a vice, a vice that replicates itself and spreads its misery around.
I see this most often among people who have no real control or power in their lives – the people who sit on Homeowner’s Association boards and send out little notes that my grass is too long, or that my siding needs to be washed, or that they object to the new “sheet metal hammering and shredding at midnight with strippers” business that I set up. The phrase that I’m reminded of that describes these people is: “The fight is so bitter because the stakes are so small,” which is a paraphrasing of Wallace Sayre’s original quote, “I hate going to the Department of Motor Vehicles”. So, not only do you not like going to the DMV, we’ve learned that they hate being there as much as you do, so they share their misery as much as possible.
But Dick’s quote also explains why people become self-destructive. If they sense that they’re going to fail, well, they’ll toss some gasoline on that fire and get it going now. The logic becomes simple – I don’t really fail if I control my failure. Or deprive myself of pleasure. I know I don’t deserve the money, so I’ll just save it until I die and leave it to my cats. My ability to defer today’s pleasure becomes . . . a way to punish myself today.
And yet . . . there’s that leading stoic, Seneca:
“Therefore, explain why a wise person shouldn’t get drunk, not with words, but by the facts of its ugliness and offensiveness. It is easy to prove that pleasures, when they go beyond proper measures, are punishments.”
Could it be that people subconsciously (or consciously!) punish themselves through pleasure as well? Theoretically, being a philosophical stoic isn’t about avoiding pleasure, it’s about striking that balance. Seneca himself was very, very, rich, but struggled with whether or not he should be a vegetarian. Seneca decided not to be a vegetarian – it might have been seen as being pretentiously virtuous, like the vegan who does Crossfit™ and drives a Prius© – what do you tell people first???
Absolutely there is virtue in self-control. Right up until it becomes a vice. Like lots and lots and lots of drugs. Lots of drugs. And maybe Crossfit™.
