So I've been trying to force myself into writing something for the last two hours.
I cleaned up the apartment a little bit. To distract myself. It worked for a little bit, but I think I lack that gene that allows me to glean enjoyment from cleaning things.
When I was a kid, my Mom always had me clean my room on Saturdays. And I cared about cleanliness about as much then as I do now. So one Saturday when I've carefully shoved all my toys into drawers and jammed the closet door shut so she can't see the stack of dirty laundry all mixed in with the clean clothes, Mom comes in to inspect the place. Naturally, it takes her about three and a half seconds before she realizes I haven't really cleaned the room at all and I'm just trying to skip to the fun part.
(Which at the time meant playing baseball or Spyro the Dragon with the neighbors.)
So when she makes her verdict known, I respond by saying, "You and I just have a different definition of clean."
Which didn't get me out of cleaning the room to her satisfaction, but it did give her a story to tell to embarrass me whenever she felt like it. I'm convinced that the primary reason people have children is a totalitarian desire to humiliate and embarrass another human being with impunity. The desire to control others stemming from a lack of control over oneself.
And personally I'm pretty pleased with my answer at the time. It's reasonable, it's accurate, and it gives grounds for coming to a mutual understanding.
But obviously, Mom didn't see it that way. There's no use arguing with a child about why it's better for things to be clean than for them to be unclean. Authority must be applied and compliance must be gained. And if the child wants clear definitions of what constitutes cleanliness… well, obviously the child should just know what cleanliness means. The whole point of authority, the point of power, is that you don't make it clear what you want. Keep them guessing and keep them dancing.
Until the revolution comes or they get to pick your nursing home.
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about parenting, cleanliness, or authority. What I'm wanting to talk about is something more general and at the same time more subtle.
Let's talk about control.
Google defines control as "the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events." And there are at least two schools of thought when it comes to the subject of control:
The ones who say all control is an illusion and ultimately the only thing we have power over is our reaction to a terrifying world we can never understand. We'll refer to these as the woo woo mystics (WWM).
The ones who say there is some mechanism that will reliably increase our degree of control over our own destiny. That it may be painful, it may be slow, and it may not have any guarantee of success… but maybe, just maybe, it's possible to impose our vision on the world. We'll refer to these as the asshole promethean rebels (APR).
Now, strictly speaking there may be no deciding between these two alternatives. Just as soon as the APRs make a move, the WWMs can point the finger and say, "Well lookie here, you're causing a bunch of unintended consequences, now aren't you?"
To which the APR responds: "Sure, but if you really believed control was an illusion why did you bother pointing that out?"
See, the APR doesn't really believe the WWM is arguing in good faith–it's obvious that the WWM is just peddling "Control is an Illusion"-branded merchandise as a ploy to get more control. But don't go feeling too bad for the WWM, who tends to think of the APR as an overgrown rambunctious toddler. One of the shared requirements of both types is the need to feel like they're just about the smartest and best looking sunza bitches this side of next year.
But when it comes to choosing a camp to throw your sock in… I have to personally opt for the APRs. Yes, they have a penchant for catching fire and yes, they tend to be a little prickly, but at least they leave us open to the possibility that we can actually do something about the fact that we were born. The best the WWM can offer you is a lot of hand-waving about not getting attached to the things of this world and you're gonna die anyway and the things you desire probably aren't as good as you think and anyway the sun's gonna die someday so nothing at all matters…
Which may all be true, says the APR, but what the hell am I supposed to do? Just accept the conditions of existence as I find them?
No, thank you!
But let's give the WWM his due. First, he has raw numbers on his side: there are without a doubt more things in this world that are not under our control than there are that are under our control. You're gonna die (probably). The day/night cycle will take approximately 24 hours, no matter how hard you push in the other direction. You're always gonna have days where you hit every single red light on the way to work.
(And you're gonna have to work, unless you belong to that lucky portion of the population to whom work is optional.)
And plenty of the woo woo mystic's woo woo methods can be helpful, even if we don't happen to be WWMs. Some kind of self-mastery is necessary to even the most committed APR, and self-mastery is what the WWM is always preaching. Being able to forego immediate pleasures for the sake of a better long term outcome. (Wait a minute… does that sound like the kind of thing somebody who isn't trying to control the situation would say?)
But the APR has to aim beyond the needs of the moment. Pretty much the essence of what a human being is, is a weird kind of animal with a painful consciousness of existing in time. And sure, that means the obvious things like, "I was born, I'll live a little while, and one of these days I'm gonna die."
But more to the point, it means a lot of more everyday sorts of things like, "I'm gonna exist fifteen minutes from now, and a week and a half from Thursday, and probably fifteen years from now too." And we're all more or less aware of that kind of thing, even though we hide it away from ourselves in a million different ways.
Why? Well, simply put, because if I know I'm gonna exist fifteen years from now (probably) it means I'm responsible for who I'll be when that day comes. And that's an anxiety-producing thought if there ever was one.
What should I do with myself? What might I do with myself? What horrible fate could I set myself up for and not know anything about it till it's too late? What if my neighbors all gang up on me because they found out I'm really a no good piece of shit? What to do what to do what to do…?
At this point the WWM or the purveyor of garden variety so-called Common Sense will say something like, "You're overthinking, you just need to enjoy life."
Yeah. Sure thing, buddy. I'll get right on it.
Now, this post is about control, not anxiety. But anxiety is a fascinating little phenomenon and it's worth digging into in more detail someday. (The short version is that if you're anxious, the real cause of your anxiety is that you want something unspeakably horrible to happen to you. Sad but true!)
So: how do people cope with the unbearable consciousness of inhabiting a body that's constantly in the process of falling apart and living in a world where they know they're gonna die someday? The answer: the vast majority of human activities. Things like:
Giving up their agency to others.
The girl who wants to be seduced but would never dream of making the move herself.
The businessman who tries to make more and more money in order to reassure himself that his status is higher than the others.
The old fogey who obsesses over politics and political debates online even though they're not a senator, will never be a senator, and have no tangible connection whatsoever to the real levers of political power in this or any other country.
The common factor here is that you allow yourself to get caught up in what other people want and expect, because this reassures you you're doing the right/expected thing. You don't trust yourself and lack the confidence to stake your future on your own judgment.
Seeking distractions.
Trying to numb your consciousness through pleasure, routine, novelty, irony, entertainment, reading blog posts, writing blog posts, etc.
If the last category wants to escape the problem by running away from themselves into the collective, this one wants to deny the problem exists. Which can happen on a number of levels–there's no successful means of numbing yourself to the consciousness of your existential condition, but knowing that doesn't stop you from trying.
Think of the lengths to which ironic consciousness will go. Memes capture this so well–just think of the one with the dog sitting on a stool with the room on fire around him, while he says, "This is fine."
Even your awareness that you're in a burning building isn't enough to get you to leave the burning building or make a move to put out the fire. You even use your consciousness of this situation to ironically detach yourself from your consciousness of this situation.
You're fucked up, you know that?
Obsessively seeking power and control.
The obverse of the type who habitually gives up their agency to others. And you might think this type is more powerful (or at least more fully realized) than the follower type. But not so fast!
Managing others is at least as painstaking and effortful a process as being managed. You'll have heard phrases like 'servant leadership' before. Well, I'll gamble here and say just maybe there's more to that than putting pretty decorations over the realities of management. Most people can't manage themselves, or at least they don't. So when somebody comes along who can manage themselves there's automatically this counterforce of people wanting to be told what to do.
And I know, I know, you'll say, "But nobody wants to be told what to do." Please tell me all about it down in the comments… 👇
Creating products for others to consume.
In a more aristocratic age, we would say something like sublimation here. Turning the experience of life into forms for entertainment and moral instruction. Today, though, the only people with the money to be able to create products with no consideration of market forces whatsoever are the ones who are rich enough to be too lazy to create.
Even back in the aristocratic ages, artists were up-and-comers who managed to get aristocratic patrons. Go read Henry Fielding's Tom Jones–it starts out with this five-page dedicatory preface praising the virtues of whatever Lord or whatever paid Fielding's bills while he was writing the thing. And you'll say I'm making it look like art is necessarily a scam, but I'll have you know I never said that.
So now that we've gone over a few of the ways people distract themselves from the inevitable, we're almost ready to really get into some of the issues of control.
Because we haven't really done the hard thing and, you know, actually defined the things people are always trying to leave vague and undefined. Things like, "Well, if I'm not gonna just be whatever other people want me to be, just what am I gonna do with myself till I can finally die?"
Tune in next week (or maybe sooner) for the exciting conclusion (which will probably be just as inconclusive as this post was)!
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