The Revenge of the Nerds: Critical Theory

Every morning a carpenter and his apprentice march past a glorious tree while on their way to their workshop.  The apprentice finally inquires one morning about why they had not yet felled that tree.  Because the tree is too gnarly, the carpenter explains.  It would yield little in the way of long, fine-grained boards.  “This tree is worthless,” he declared.  And, so, no one violated the tree.  “That is why it could grow to be so old.”  Indeed, that is why it could grow into the glorious specimen that it became.

That is a Taoist parable from about 2,500 years ago.  One can find versions of it in Mair, Victor, Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu (1994).  Not much happens in this parable, such as it is.  And what is the point?  Is there a point?  Is it a parable?

There are at least two very profound points, both of which motivate this short essay.  First: If you want people to leave you alone, then demonstrate incompetence.  Uselessness.  But – and this is the real point – be willing to accept the consequences.  Specifically, be willing to be perceived as useless or incompetent.  If you’re willing to do that, then other people will leave you alone.  They won’t try to channel you, control you, force you to be something that you are not.  You are more likely to become something glorious. 

Another, more modern tale that supports much the same interpretation would be Bill Cosby’s sketch about the chocolate cake.  An online search for “Bill Cosby” and “Chocolate Cake” will pull up any number of videos of the sketch.  In that parable, Bill Cosby’s wife gets him up early one morning and instructs him to make breakfast for the kids before they go off to school.  He’s not too keen about this, but he gets his grumpy self in to the kitchen and starts rummaging around for implements and ingredients he might assemble.  Long story short: He ends up feeding everyone the chocolate cake.  The cake, after all, is composed of eggs and wheat and milk, much the same ingredients he would have assembled were they to have had a proper breakfast.  “That’s nutrition!”

His wife descends from the bedroom to the kitchen.  Cosby explains, that, in a fit of fury, his wife “sent me to my room, … which is where I wanted to be in first place!”

Cosby has made his point.  He demonstrated useless; he could anticipate not being recruited again to make breakfast first thing in the morning; he was willing to bear the cost for the luxury of enjoying his militant, studied uselessness.

On to the second point: The tree may not have conformed to conventional ideas of utility or beauty, so people left it unmolested, in which case it was able to realize its full potential and become the glorious and – dare we say it? – “diverse” creature that it was.

Suppose, now, that the tree had self-awareness and had gotten down on itself for being perceived as “useless.”  That would be a tragedy.  Instead, no one tried to control the tree, to turn into something it would not have been suited to be, and the tree did not lament the fact that it was a specimen not conventionally appreciated by others.  It could glory in its own glory.

In at least one rendition of the parable, the carpenter had a dream.  He dreamt that the tree had, in fact, been invested with self-awareness, and it did glory in its glory.  “I have sought for a long time to be useless,” the tree (a great oak in this telling) declared.

Now, on the verge of death, I have finally learned what uselessness means – and (ironically) I’ve learned that it has been of great use to me.  If, after all, I had been useful, would I have been allowed to grow so big?  Furthermore, you and I are both things.  Who are you to appraise another thing?  You’re a defective person on the verge of death.  What do you know of “defective timber”?

There is greater irony: The great oak tree actually came to be very useful to people simply by virtue of being itself.  “The tree was so big that several thousand head of cattle could take shade beneath it… And those who came to gaze upon it were as numerous as the crowds in a market.”  It ultimately came to serve as a shrine for the local community – a shrine to its own great spirit.

In this more elaborate rendition of the parable of the “useless” tree, one might discern strains of the Taoist notion of “action through non-action”.  By merely being itself – by not trying so hard to be something it isn’t or to achieve an egoistic result – the tree actually becomes great and useful and appreciated.  Paraphrasing William Makepeace Thackeray from Vanity Fair (1848): One may get stuck in this trap of striving for what is not worth having, but sometimes you really do get what you want by giving up on wanting it and by getting on with being oneself.

Just be oneself.  It sounds so easy.  But, paraphrasing William Makepeace Thackeray, again, this time from Barry Lyndon (1844): It would require a great philosopher, anthropologist or evolutionary psychologist to explain why it may not be so easy and that, indeed, one may find it easier to assume something of a guise and conform to the expectations of others of what one should be.  Take for example, the protagonist, the un-named “engineer”, in Walker Percy’s The Last Gentleman (1966).  The engineer is a master at blending in, in “snowing” others in to believing that he is just one of the guys.  He was, if not necessarily loved by many, not hated by any.

The engineer, it seemed, relished this game of figuring out how to blend in.  He was “all ears and eyes and antennae,” passively absorbing signals from others and then figuring out how to make others feel comfortable with him.  His case might be a little unusual, but suffice to say we are social animals; getting along in groups is what we’re wired to do.  And, yet, not everyone feels like they can easily blend in and just be one of the guys.  They might feel alienated from a given group, and that brings us to a topic we hear a lot about these last few years: “inclusiveness”.

Contrast the engineer with Chance the gardener, who others came to know (mistakenly) as “Chauncey Gardiner” in Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There (1970).  Chauncey Gardiner is something of a selfless Zen master upon whom others unwittingly imposed their prejudices.  Fortunately for him, those were all positive prejudices.  People elevated him into someone he was not, even though he made no pretense to being anything other than what he was: a gardener.  Chauncey Gardiner blended in (rather too well, perhaps) even though he made no effort to blend in at all.  Action in non-action.  He was the “useless tree” in the Taoist tale, giving shade to other creatures in the world – without even knowing it.

Now consider two characters, from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877), each of whom made a point of being themselves but also learned to be masters of engendering genuine inclusiveness.  “After filling, for three years, the post of president of one of the government boards at Moscow, …”

… Stepan Archadyevich [Oblonsky] had won the respect, as well as the affection, of his fellow officials, subordinates, and superiors, and all who had done business with him.  The principal qualities in Stepan Arkadayevich which had gained him this universal respect in the service consisted, first, of his extreme indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness of his own shortcomings; second, of his perfect liberalism—not the liberalism he read of in the papers, but the liberalism that was in his blood, in virtue of which he treated all men perfectly equally and exactly the same, whatever their fortune or calling might be; ...

Oblonsky stands out, like the engineer, as good at reading people.  But, unlike the engineer, he was not occupied with the egoistic pursuit of blending in or making himself feel included.  Rather, he occupied himself with being open to others just being themselves.  Without any other effort, everything else in his world would fall into place in a good equilibrium.  Action in non-action.

Then there is the mysterious Mademoiselle Varenka.  Varenka becomes an important companion to the eighteen-year-old Kitty Shcherbetskaya, and Kitty is the protagonist of one of the many subplots in Anna Karenina.  One of those subplots involves Kitty’s “disappointment” in her relationship with the charming, dashing and irresolute Vronsky.  Kitty allows her disappointment to consume all of her energies to the point that she becomes very ill and consumed with hate.  It was not long after, that Kitty had the great fortune of getting to know Varenka, and it is to Kitty’s credit that she allowed herself to hear Varenka speak good sense about how to deal with “disappointments”: “If everyone were as sensitive as you are!” Varenka exclaimed.  “There isn’t a girl who hasn’t been through the same.  And it is all so unimportant.”

Varenka does not get around to explicitly explaining, point by point, why “disappointments” are ultimately not that important, but Kitty does develop some idea of what Varenka might have meant.  Varenka, she thought to herself, had experienced her own “melancholy disappointment in the past,” but “desiring nothing, regretting nothing, [Varenka] was just that perfection of which Kitty dared hardly dream.  In Varenka she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy and noble.  And that was what Kitty longed to be.”  Action in no-action.

Kitty’s thinking about how Varenka relates to people has some of the structure of how, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera, 1984), Tereza relates to Karenin – her dog:

It is a completely selfless love: Tereza did not want anything of Karenin; she did not ever ask him to love her back.  Nor had she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me?  Does he love anyone more than me?  Does he love me more than I love him?  Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.  Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company. 

And something else: Tereza accepted Karenin for what he was; she did not try to make him over in her image; she agreed from the outset with his dog’s life, did not wish to deprive him of it, did not envy him his secret intrigues.

In contrast Tereza experiences much anxiety about her relationship with Tomas, who is neither a dog nor a cat.  But feeding that anxiety, and actively trying to resolve that anxiety, has the effect of merely putting stress on the relationship and generating more anxiety.  She falls into a bad equilibrium.  But, in her relationship with her dog, she just lets the relationship unfold like the universe: on its own schedule.  She doesn't try to channel it or force it along.  And it proves to be a productive relationship.  That's the Taoist result: getting what you want by not trying to grab for it.  The relationship becomes satisfying on its own terms.  Action in non-action.

Karenin, the dog, is named after Karenin, Anna’s husband in Anna Karenina, notwithstanding the fact that Karenin, the dog, is female.  (Long story.)  Tereza, meanwhile, expends as much energy worrying about her relationships as does Konstantin Levin in Anna Karenina.  Levin is Tolstoy’s alter-ego just as Pierre Bezukov is Tolstoy’s alter-ego in War and Peace.  Both Levin and Pierre are big dorks, awkward in female company.  Each one is occupied with thinking about what, if anything, he could do to make the world a better place, and both quietly experience their own “disappointments”.  But, long story short: they both end up “getting the girl,” although all parties experience a lot of manufactured crisis along the way.  Being more Zen, more Taoist, might have allowed them to avoid much of that crisis.

The Bible is not a Zen Buddhist document, of course, but one of the more Zen passages in it that some number of people might know from having attended wedding ceremonies involves that bit about how “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong-doing but rejoices in truth.”

That passage, ironically in my mind, comes from St. Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13:4).  Ironic in that Paul was not a man of action-in-non-action.  He was a man of great enterprise and fearless determination.  He trekked through the Aegean world with his side-kick Bartholomew, setting up secret cells of Christians as they made their way all the way to Rome.  Without Paul, Jesus of Nazareth may have remained nothing more than a few footnotes in the Roman records of the late years of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius.  But that is not all.  Paul started his career as Saul the Inquisitor, and it was Saul who had set off to Damascus to persecute Christians.  But, after recovering from the experience of being blinded by the light on the road to Damascus, he changed sides, changed names, and became the greatest impresario of the early Church.  He was not a very stable genius, it seems.

Let me turn, now, to a passage I was asked to read at a wedding ceremony: “Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you.  We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love one another.  Whoever does not love abides in death.”

That comes like a splash of icy water, no?  Some people will hate you, just because.

That passage comes from the First Epistle of John (1 John11:13), and it sets up something of the antithesis of inclusiveness.  And that gives us one hook into Critical Theory.  What I specifically have in mind is a pronouncement that came out of “second wave feminism” in the late-60’s, early 70’s: “The personal is political, and the political is personal.”

From the perspective of the great oak tree in the Taoist parable, the counterpart to the pronouncement might be, “The personal is personal; the political is political; the public policy sphere is not the place to work out one’s personal issues.  There is nothing wrong, per se, with being unhappy or being angry or feeling inadequate or feeling excluded.  But, assume ownership of one’s unhappiness, one’s anger, and one’s self-perception.  Don’t blame others for these things.  Rather, assume personal responsibility for those things.  Basically, ‘Own your shit!’ or ‘Hate is a choice.’”  Assuming responsibility empowers oneself.  Having accepted one’s own imperfection, one can accept imperfection in others and, like Oblonsky or the great oak, provide a shaded space for others to be themselves.  Most will appreciate one for it.  Others will yet hate you, just because.

There is nothing to do about those who choose to hate.  The Consolation of Philosophy, composed by Boethius in a prison cell in the year 523, does come to mind.  The ultimate thrust of it is: People consumed with hate already suffer the indignity of being themselves; there’s no need to pile on; they are already their own worst punishment.

“The personal is political, and the political is personal,” is the antithesis of all that.  It is an invitation to blame others, “society,” for one’s unhappiness.  It is an exhortation, a license, to choose hate and anger.  It is a call to appeal to public policy to extract accommodation from others.

In a beautifully crafted piece titled “Sad Radicals,”[1] a young man named Conor Barnes, a recovering “anarchist,” posed the following idea:

Radical communities select for particular personality types. They attract deeply compassionate people, especially young people attuned to the suffering inherent to existence. They attract hurt people, looking for an explanation for the pain they’ve endured. And both of these derive meaning for that suffering by attributing it to the force that they now dedicate themselves to opposing. They are no longer purely a victim, but an underdog.

Note the hazard.  “Underdog” contemplates opposition to a Top Dog – the whole of society, it turns out.  The prescription that proceeds from that opposition is that society must be made to accommodate one’s personal issues.  But, that is an emotionally immature thing to demand.  That amounts to abdicating personal responsibility for one’s own discontentment and “disappointments”.

Barnes goes on to ask, “What is the alternative to radicalism, for the disillusioned radical?”  And Barnes goes on to propose important ideas.  The suggestion here would be: Have the courage to own your shit.  Do not give in to the temptation to perceive oneself as a victim.  Rather, assume ownership of one’s discontentment and become like Oblonsky or Varenka, open to allowing others to be themselves.  Doing that, one yet becomes like the great oak, affording a shaded and – dare I say it – “safe place” for others to be their defective selves.  Yet, be cognizant of the prospect that some people will yet hate you for it.  But, like Boethius, don’t take it personally.  The hate of others is the choice of others – nothing to be done about it.

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[1] Barnes, Conor, Sad Radicals,” Quillette, December 11, 2018, https://quillette.com/2018/12/11/sad-radicals