The Problem of Nothing to Do

Fiction, poetry, art, even mythology pose a problem for utopians. Upholders of utopias supposedly like all that stuff (one is supposed to appreciate Art) but art has this difficult-to-monitor tendency to break out in unexpected ways. The Bible is a great example since no matter how many times people attempt to reduce it to a specific set of rules suitable to a specific social order, other people come along and said, "Hey, look! This story of Joseph--or Exodus--can be used in a completely different way."

Luther started a religious revolution and then lost his cool (which he never had much of anyway) when people said, "Oh, does that mean I can start my own religion!?" 

Consequently, many utopian so-called novels turn into polemics. Even Lost Horizon--which gets the closest to pure story--falters in the middle so Conway can reflect on the meaning of life. 

Preachiness is an aspect of the form. In fact, some utopia tracts are tracts, not novels. Even Samuel Richardson, while writing the Twilight of his day (Pamela), spent a great many chapters wittering on about social propriety and the role of servants, etc. etc. etc. 

The central chapters of Herland are almost entirely "here's how the society works" exposition as opposed to the novella's earlier action and dialog. 

I give a number of characters in His in Herland various reflections on life, religion, industry & economics, education. But I didn't want to lose sight of the narrative arc. I needed to add action! 

Terry was the action! 

Terry's disruptive influence is mentioned in the book, but Gilman restricts that influence to constant arguments between Terry and Alima. In the book, they are basically Ross & Rachel. 

The revolving door relationship actually makes sense but the lack of other avenues doesn't. It is unimaginable that the men wouldn't be put to work doing something. All those jobs Gilman pretends don't exist or, rather, pretends don't take time and grinding effort (as long as they are done by professionals), like washing dishes and changing dirty nappies. Hauling firewood or whatever fuel the country uses. Building stuff. 

Her men are products of their class and seem to take for granted that they don't have anything to do...so they hang out with their foresting girlfriends/wives all day.

Reality: nobody, male or female, agrees to be bored for that long. Victorian men going to their "clubs" without fail sounds impressively dull. Some men did do this, but many more were involved in philanthropic and scientific societies; the ones who weren't got into trouble with cards, duels, opium, and STDs. 

Van, at least, has the benefit of continuing his work as a sociologist and writer, but there is no good reason he couldn't also be put to work on printing or transcribing books. Doctor Jeff is not expected to keep regular clinic hours, and Terry--the planner and explorer (businessman)--is entirely at loose ends. 

In the central part of the novella, Gilman implies that the men are free to go where they want. There's no reason Terry couldn't simply walk away from (another) argument with Alima and start exploring the way he wants to. Yet he doesn't.

To forestall the obvious, I keep the men more monitored.

And I get Terry into trouble. In his own words, "I was getting ready to broach the subject [of Alim leaving] when I nearly blew everything by behaving like a character in a Rider Haggard novel."

Chapter 11 not only contains a scene of Terry getting into trouble, it challenges an utopian ideal, namely that removing ornamentation (jewelry, hair ribbons, makeup, sports apparel, etc. etc.) will also remove the desire to peacock. The women wear a kind of uniform (Van never notes any radical dissimilarities in dress). Herland heavily implies that the end result is more freedom of the self and equality.

Terry doesn't believe it.

Terry is (mostly) right, as an Ohio State University study discovered. And as Mrs. Pollifax notes in Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station, despite China being a supposedly classless society, demarcations of class are still noticeable: "[P]erhaps [Mr. Li's] attire wasn't modest at all, she thought, as she glanced around and compared him with the other Chinese waiting in line, for his sandals were leather, not plastic."

The individual wants to be heard.  The individual wants to do "my own thing," and should the individual get paid, the individual wants to spend that money on whatever the individual desires. 

No utopia can simply expurgate those impulses. No matter how abstract and philosophical utopians try to be, all those Rider Haggard behaviors--making the wrong things, pursuing the wrong ends, exploring the wrong places--keep throwing characters back into story. 

Thank goodness! 

Chapter 11

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of Abstract Religion

In a post about a Christmas romance series, I tackle the issue of the physical versus the ineffable:

The series--about an angel ornament that helps couples--starts in the mid-eighteenth century and ends in the modern era. The first three books use the angel in frankly paranormal ways (but not so much that a plot is lost). In addition, the angel in the first three books is frankly pro-physical love, neither embarrassed nor squeamish that each couple has a sexual relationship.

Over the course of the books, the paranormal element fades while the angel becomes a far more fastidious character than established originally. Less the frank and fleshy nuns of Brother Cadfael (or even the well-lived nun of the Father Dowling Mysteries--or Sister Mary Clarence) and more like...I'm not sure. I have a hard time thinking of a literary comparison since I don't read religious books with prudish nuns or angels. (Or watch shows with them either.)

The change from a non-prudish angel to a prudish one matches similar changes in the last 300 years, changes that result in modern shock and reproach.

We 21st Century folks like to imagine that we are so bold and frank and open-minded or--depending on who's talking--salacious and obscene and indecent.

The fact is, we aren't anywhere close to any of those things, no matter how we present or castigate ourselves.

Mostly, we're offended by everything: women breastfeeding in public, the idea that God might not be opposed to sex, bare bodies bathing or dressing together, religious ceremonies that focus on the physical form, frank discussions of sexual matters, women as sexual beings, men as sexual beings, people as biological beings, people sharing rooms, people sharing bathtubs, women giving birth, women giving birth at home, other people being present during births, National Geographic magazines, the nude in art, romance paperbacks, romance paperback covers, songs that mention sex, manga, bawdy humor.

The testicle joke in Witness is

far more realistic to agrarian cultures

than modern attitudes account for.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that all this offense is coming from the right. Or that all this shocked unease is coming exclusively from religious people. Christianity makes a good scapegoat. But old-time Christianity had no trouble discussing sex as a reality. From Paul to Augustine to young pregnant single girls praying to the Virgin Mary, sex was something real to grapple with.

I maintain that the two biggest influences on modern attitudes regarding sexual matters are the growth of privacy and the worries/theories of intellectuals. As human beings gained privacy (post 1750), they become far more prudish. In an earlier post on Votaries, I call this "prudish prurient permissiveness whereby a partially clad body is instantly sexualized by those who take offense and by those who take an interest while both the offended and the interested are scandalized at the idea of having to share a bedroom or bathroom."

Reality: Puritans told bawdy jokes. And slept together before marriage. And knew all about sex since living near animals kind of gives the plot away. They were well-aware of the palpable vagaries of the human, physical form.

Never trust a historian or a politician or an offended commentator (and there are lots of those out there) who tries to tell you that once upon a time, people were ever so naive and closeted--or innocent--and didn't know all the things we know. Instead, ask yourself what our ancestors would find to laugh about when it comes to us.

The connection here to utopias is that utopias almost always fall to pieces around the subject of sex. I will come back to this issue in a later post. Here I want to comment on the utopian penchant for purely abstract/philosophical religions--so much so that one of my idealistic students once passionately try to convince me that the "good" Ancient Egyptians didn't have any of that dark, sin-oriented, negative stuff in THEIR religion(s). 

The student was, of course, wrong, which I pointed out. But I've encountered the same attitude regarding cleaned-up, prettified Eastern religions in America. I am sorry to say that I didn't know until quite recently--within the last ten years or less--that Buddhism even has a hell.

It does. I immediately become more interested in Buddhism. 

It isn't that I like the idea of hell. It is that a religion without one seems to be lacking a basic connection to what Stephen King would call "the alligators" in our minds. No id. No ego. Just a lot of rules and proper attitudes. 

My Terry tackles the problem in chapter 13 of His in Herland. He has just violated a sanctuary, an act that in another setting would get him in far more trouble.

“But Troas is too rational for that.” I turned to the mentors. “Your religion is about kindliness and good conduct. God—the Goddess—is a force, a feeling, a pervasive aura of love, yes?”

Silence while Jeff sighed and wagged his head.

“They worship Motherhood,” Van said. “An Earth Mother.”

“You know as well as I do how other cultures have worshiped Earth Mothers. They killed Winter Kings. They sprinkled blood in the soil for their crops. They sacrificed—”

“It’s not the same!” Van said sharply before I mentioned what some cultures did with “babies.” I wasn’t going to. I was going to mention what some cultures did with the aftermath of childbirth. Then I was going to move on to female and male temple prostitution.

I’m not religious. Agnostic probably describes me best—but I’ll opt for a dangerous, in-your-face, tangible religion any day over a “nice” one.

Somel said, “Our religion was like that, long ago. During our early years, after we came here, our religion was harsher, crueler, more—”

“Physical,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And now your religion focuses on good thoughts and rational discourse, proper terminology and endless discussions—”

As if human beings have no dark sides, no stirrings from the deep, no infernos, no demon royalty, no savage cries to the moon.

“They have rituals,” Van, the sociologist, pointed out.

“Pageants in service of the state,” I told him.

A religion needs to do better than pageantry, though pageantry helps, if it is going to be more than a country club, if it is going to offer something distinct from philanthropy clubs and education clubs and social clubs and political clubs. And if it doesn't connect to the human physical experience, it isn't doing its job (see Napoleon and the Catholic Church for an example of "the people" being offered an intellectual abstract religion and finding it less than appealing).

In other words, utopias that replace a religion's dark-side with either a mass of rules or a mass of acceptable ponderings will fail to connect to fundamentals within human nature. Even if a religion's purpose is to remind people of the need to rise above the "id," such improvement can only happen if the religion also remembers (1) the dark-side doesn't magically disappear; (2) the sins of the spirit are worse. 

Chapter 13

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of the Closed Narrative or The Problem of Theory

On the surface, identity politics shouldn't be evil. Although I'm not a fan of labels, hey, language is language. It has to exist for people to communicate. Identifying a group is part of that process. (Historically speaking, "stranger" shows up in nearly every language early on in that language's development.)

Unfortunately, inevitably, identity labels get linked to a "closed" narrative, a story that is self-explanatory and set in stone.

An "open" narrative in which people may change based on new information, new goals--where to live, whom to marry, what to work at, what to eat, how to behave--entails two things: (1) risk; (2) responsibility.

That is, a person in an open story will say, Maybe I made the wrong choices. But I made them, and I can't go back, so I'll live with them. But what does that mean for the next choice? After all, I'll have to answer for it.

The popular version of CRT--the secular version of "the Spirit made me do it" (John McWhorter is right about the religious conflation)--is the exact opposite. The underlying ideology propounds that a theory or label supplies all the explanation a person should need or want; recognizing the validity of that explanation will, like recognizing the Spirit, supply all the required (entirely abstracted) sense of self and responsibility. 

Unfortunately, as Jonathan Edwards and other New Calvinists discovered, all the revivals in the world don't necessary lead to anything but...another bunch of revivals. The experience or "performance" becomes its own pursuit.

That is, adopting the group's identity or explanation doesn't automatically entail self-understanding or critical thinking or personal change or long-term change. 

In Chapter 17, Terry is on trial for his attempted assault on Alima. In my version, of course, the assault is a contrived event between Terry and Alima. However, Terry objectively accepts that by all appearances, he did break the law, violate a social standard. 

During the trial or hearing, Terry suggests a reason why people so readily adopt theory--ready-made identities--when life--relationships, communication--gets messy. 

I [Terry] said [to the Councillors], “I assumed agreement existed.”

Rather to my surprise, many of the Councillors nodded. Apparently the “you should ask at every stage of the seduction” approach hadn’t arrived in Troas.

Of course, the women of Troas are realists. People make assumptions about others’ needs. That’s life. Since we are not (yet) tools of A.I., we don't spend every minute of every day filling out questionnaires: check Box A or Box B.

No one wants that form of communication anyway. We want to be instantly understood—the centers of others’ universes—which wish inspires its own problems. Because--also reality--since we don’t adopt others' versions of our best selves, why would they agree to ours?

I waited resignedly for the Councillors to suggest the contemporary alternative. Since most people don’t halt their behavior to ask permission—and only compulsives and high school bullies justify continual “I saw you do that!” policing—the compromise is usually, “But the proper path should have been obvious."

Not obvious due to honor or training. Obvious because of identity. Join the group, adopt the designated label. Proper attitudes will be downloaded into your brain. All answers delivered. All stories decided upon. A closed book.

Don’t tell me modern Westerners don’t believe in fate.

Terry goes on to consider that being excused because of membership in a group sounds good but lacks the moral punch of "you messed up; you should pay." 

And Terry gets thrown out. Luckily, he wants to go. 

Chapter 17

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding