On the way to class Tuesday evening, I was listening to the radio and decided to scan the FM stations. So I go from classical 98.7 WFMT to Q101, the, um, alternative/thrash/metal station. Quite a change. But as it happened, the song "Scars" by Papa Roach came on. I don't know these guys from Adam, but the chorus runs:
I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut
My weakness is that I care too much
My scars remind me that the past is real
I tear my heart open just to feel
The song epitomizes with angry emphasis the inability of the protagonist to break out of his narcissistic bondage to the extremes of experience and emotions. It is, it seems to me, emblematic of our U. S. society. We are suffering from a pandemic. It's called the passions.
The protagonist of the song is drunk and depressed. An old flame ("Tonight is our last stand"?) or an old acquaintance, themselves damaged and needy, comes round. The protagonist is pissed. Not really wanting to help, the protagonist acted "against [his] own advice" and did help once. Now the flame/friend has come back around, and the protagonist just wants her to "go home" (he says it twice). He can't help her fix herself and all this is just making him "insane." But "compassions in [his] nature" at least give him the freedom to say "he tried." Now get lost.
Here's the problem: Life for modern Americans has been reduced to the body. Everything we do is oriented around the biological life, which includes, especially, the emotions. After all, once one has gotten the perfect night's sleep on an adjustable-comfort bed, eaten ready-made cereal out of boxes, drank pre-ground coffee, driven the ten blocks to work, consumed a supersized lunch, worked out at the gym, eaten a meal-in-a-box for supper, and sank comfortably into an overstuffed sofa to engage in an activity that requires less mental energy than sleeping (i. e., watching television), and gone to bed once again--well, it's pretty much the same ol' same ol'. When large is the new medium, and supersized is the new normal, when a meal at a restaurant is actually the caloric equivalent of three-fourths of one's daily food intake, and just enough physical exercies (in a climate-controlled environment, with accompanying juice-bar, and in clothes colored and striped in such a way so as to already make one look thinner than one actually is) to rid oneself of some of those extra calories, there just isn't really much more out there. One can eat more or eat differently, but it's still eating. One can change the bedding, but you can't really sleep more or sleep less without really messing things up eventually. But there are natural limits here that the body imposes. Extremes too easily and noticeably damage one.
The only place left, in the biological life, is the arena of the emotions. But if one is judging the quality of one's life by one's emotions, then the only remedy are the extremes. Things become "real" only to the extent that they are felt deeply and even violently. Where does the Papa Roach song begin: in the excess of alcohol consumption and the nadir of depression. Compassion is rejected and ridiculed, in part because of the remains of "scars"--though we are not given any clue as to what those are--but also because, really, compassion is rather bland in comparison.
Americans take their cue from music culture where love must be passionate, overwhelming, controlling. Sex must be a pounding, driving red-filtered haze of writhing and sweat underscored by guttural moans and cries. Television only reinforces that genuine emotions are raw, unbridled and uncontrolled. We have soap operas entitled "Passions." We have reality shows, in which we can vicariously experience the "fear factor." Our "news" and political debate and commentary comes packaged so that we can experience moral outrage over the views and actions of others, without ever having to examine the manner in which we blare our car horn and lift a clearly communicative finger in the air. Something like Orwell's "the Great Hate." Our movies are extravaganzas of unfaithfulness/adultery (because sexual stimulation combined with guilt/thumbing one's nose at social/religious mores is more deeply felt than mere sex alone), violence, and humanly impossible feats (the "wire-work" of the Matrix and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon).
But as "Scars" shows, such living at emotional extremes leave us incapable of the really genuine human emotions. Our irritation at city drivers should just be that. Irritation. Instead, it manifests as violent anger: we attempt to speed up and cutoff the driver merging illegally, thereby endangering everyone within reach of our careening automobiles. The normal human expressions of play and goodnatured laughter at our imperfections and failures that are at the heart of sexual intercourse we only consider as some sort of problem that must be fixed--and an indication that we have a "failed relationship." Since only extreme emotion is legitimate, we are afraid to open ourselves to another that they might see we are, well, boring, normal. Or worse, unable to feel at all.
When exposed to excessive light, our eyes go blind, even if momentarily. After a concert spent in front of audio equipment the size of a bus we suffer temporary hearing loss. A significant time spent in yelling leaves us unable to talk. And a life lived at the extremes of emotion can only leave us numb and unable to handle the ordinary, everyday, gentle emotions of normal human living. Anger. Sexual dysfunction. Inability to relate. These are all consequences of such a life.
This is why one of the most important of the spiritual disciplines is silence. Hesychia. We are infected, all of us, by the passions, those things within us that tempt, distort and disfigure our humanity, which is to say, the image of God in which we have been created. The passions always tempt us to extremes. If Wednesday and Friday fasting from animal products and olive oil is good, then a water-only fast for the whole week is better. If repentance is good, then seeking feelings of remorse in every prayer and service is better. If praying the "Our Father" thrice a day is good, then observing the full monastic daily office is better. If I'm doing too much prayer--and thus neglecting other God-ordained duties--and must reduce my prayers to the "Our Father" three times a day, then not praying at all would be better. Temptations to gluttony or abstemiousness, to avarice or to wastefulness, to lying or to gossip are, among their other characteristics, temptations to abnormality, and we then lose the capacity to judge what is normal. Gluttons lose the ability to discriminate among foods. The greedy lose the ability to understand a thing's true value. Liars lose the ability to distinguish between the real and the fictional--even within their own memories. And so it goes.
The only way to escape "scars" then, is to repent of these passionate extremes, and seek stillness in Christ. Because only in stillness can we become attuned to the subtle shiftings of the work of God with which we must cooperate.
Posted by Clifton at December 9, 2004 11:00 AM | TrackBack