Ontology is a subject that has fascinated and perplexed philosophers and theologians since the time when human beings first began trying to translate observable phenomena into words. Then, finding the translation inadequate, with the nature of the world a matter as much of the subjective mind and eye as it is of subjective reality, the search was afoot to see if the seeker could find a kind of philosopher’s stone that would serve to transmute the base metal of dark confusion into the shining gold, the sun if you will, of clear and incontrovertible truth and reality. That stone, of course, does not exist; but it’s the search that matters and what evolves from it. Now try to imagine that search on drugs, where the question of freedom in an inhuman, corporate world imposes itself.
The subject of fascism these days seems permanently fixed as a central meme, ubiquitous in all forms of art and thought, not just because of its 20th century manifestation in Europe, but also because it has taken hold in a particularly vicious way here in America, where corporatism has prevailed over every aspect of life and mind. It brings to mind the question of what it means to be human, and whether humans are meant to be controlled and manipulated for ends that are blatantly inhuman and ultimately destructive. Do we operate on the premise that freedom is an essential component of a human life, that a person who is not free cannot be fully human? If so, do we then dare ask whether the greater happiness and fulfillment derives from being free or becoming free, as we recall the former slave who felt that becoming free was the optimal experience? If that is indeed the case, we are presented with a considerable dilemma. If humans love the struggle and the feeling of becoming free, then how does a state or corporate entity succeed in keeping them under control, so to speak? The way it is now, it certainly appears that humans, even those who still have a struggle in them, are not only not free but are also losing everywhere in trying to become free. Yes, one might argue that a human can always be free in thought and never give up that last rebellious glimmer in the eye to the moment of death; and there is a terrible beauty in that truth, born everywhere and every moment a rebel decides to resist, as Yeats found in 1916. However, now in 2008, the poets and the artists themselves exist inside the fascist ties; all forms of expression are subject to the transformational words and images of those who control the media and further the meme of corporate think.
So how could a corporo-fascist state succeed in such a fantastic way if the ultimate human desire is to become free; if life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are actually self-evident and essential truths? Look no further than drugs my friends: to religion as “the opiate of the masses,” to addictive chemicals, to any form of entertainment, anything that distracts or diverts and promotes escape from any struggle that requires difficult or independent thought and action.
Thus we enter the bizarre, drug-addled world of Philip K. Dick’s great book, A Scanner Darkly. In that book, the central character of Bob Arctor is, unknown to himself, an undercover narcotics agent named Agent Fred, whose job is to spy on users and dealers of a special illegal drug by planting “bugs” and using a “scanner.” The drug in question is called Substance D, D for Death; and it is made from blue poppies, flowers that serve to become transmogrified into a mind-altering and brain-destroying potion, and which live somehow as symbols of a timeless yearning in the human heart once embraced by the German Romantics. Bob, the narrator of the story, knows all of this yet has no control over how or when it becomes the expression of his deranged and drugged brain. For Bob himself has become addicted to the drug which has caused the two sides of his brain to become incapable of communicating properly. In fact, he cannot even remember that Bob is the alias of his real self, Agent Fred; so he ends up spying on himself and reporting on himself as a user without realizing it.
It’s noteworthy that Bob is the narrator, and his story is one long descent into the deteriorating madness of a soul that can no longer distinguish its own identity, can no longer think coherently, and finds itself at the mercy of a brain that will only allow it to bring up snatches of memory from a mind whose greatness includes a wondrous familiarity with German Romantic poetry, along with the amazing advances of futuristic science and philosophical thought.
The quest, the romantic dream, exist at the heart of the drug-addicted mind. The utter perfection of a brilliant thought or dream, even in the midst of dark decaying chaos, makes one remember the idea of the ultimate happiness in seeking and becoming free. No, the darkness, the sordidness, the broken life and mind can never be forgotten or replaced; but there is a way that the beautiful, transcendent words of poets and their worlds seek to take over the ruins with beautiful blue skies and fields of blue flowers where life and rehab become one and the same eternally.
First, let’s take a look at the thought as it might be viewed as a reflective koan. In A Scanner Darkly, Agent Fred learns a great truth about himself as seen in a mirror, that others would see him the other way around. He realizes that he would have to look at a photo of himself to get the view of himself as others see him.
Then, while being tested for dysfunction that presents as competition between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, due to the overuse of Substance D, he is asked to look at a left glove and a right glove. He is directed to “define a left-hand glove compared to a right-hand glove so a person who had no knowledge of these terms could tell you which you meant? And not the other? The mirror opposite?”
So Fred starts thinking: “It is as if one hemisphere of your brain is perceiving the world as reflected in a mirror through a mirror. See? So left becomes right, and all that that implies. And we don’t know yet what that does imply, to see the world reversed like that. Topologically speaking, a left-hand glove is a right-hand glove pulled through infinity.” He continues: “Not through a telescope or lens system, which does not reverse, not through anything but seeing his own face reflected back up at him, reversed – pulled through infinity.”
The idea that a left-hand glove is a right-hand glove pulled through infinity makes a great reflective koan… something to contemplate, meditate upon, but never to understand. It requires a relinquishing of the controlling part of the brain and leads to a kind of awe. That idea of the glove reminds one of the Moebius Strip which is pulled to infinity in becoming the Klein Bottle with no inside or outside; but if you were to fall inside it, you could never get out.
The character relating his discovery about mirrors and gloves has suffered damage to the connection between each half of his brain such that each side competes with the other; and sometimes information leaks over into his conscious thought or speech, information which also happens to be related to the thought or situation of that moment… and that takes us to the world of 18th century German Romanticism.
For days before Fred is tested for problems with communications between the halves of his brain, snatches of poetry from German Romantics had already been percolating through his conscious thoughts about his life and what he is seeing through the hologram world of the scanner. Most of the lines are from Goethe’s Faust, and one set is the first stanza of Heinrich Heine’s “Der Atlas” … all in German without translation.
Wanting to know how these lines fit into the situation of Bob-Fred’s split persona and divided brain, and into the world of the drug users, I sought out translations. And behold, they synchronize nicely into the strange paranoid thought-world that has utterly consumed Bob-Fred. Here’s the first set of lines taken from Faust, which could also be a mirror reflective of the ultimate state of mind of the users of Substance D. There could be some ambiguity in these lines as well, meaning that the controlling world of the cops , the corporations, the rehab organization, and society itself are mistaken in the way they perceive truth. In fact, as the book progresses, we witness the rather eerie symbiosis of the two worlds, where the search for the ultimate maker and distributor of Substance D is found at the New Path rehab clinic… as the textual excerpts from Goethe become the metatextual interpolations of Bob-Fred’s damaged brain:
Was grinsest du mir, hoher Schädel, her?
Als dass dein Hirn, wie meines einst verwirrt,
den leichten Tag gesucht und in der Dämmerung schwer,
Mit Lust nach Wahrheit, jämmerlich geirret.
Why are you smirking at me, high skull?
As if your brain, like mine once confused,
Searches the easy day in the woeful twilight,
With lust for truth, miserably mistaken.
This kind of writing, showing the way one side of the divided brain leaks over into the thoughts of the other, is utterly brilliant. Both metatext and the text itself reflect both the inner and outer worlds of the person who operates unaware that his brain can no longer hold these worlds as coherent entities. The great irony is that the mushy fragments -are- the world, while the unperceived objective world seeks to destroy them by healing them.
Maybe that's why the last set of lines, the first verse of Heine's "Der Atlas," carries so much plangent pathos.
Ich unglücksel' ger Atlas! Eine Welt,
Die ganze Welt der Schmerzen muss ich tragen,
Ich trage Unerträgliches, und brechen
Will mir das Herz im Leibe.
I pityful Atlas! A world,
The whole world of pain I have to carry.
I carry the unbearable and my heart
Will break inside my chest.
Here are other examples:
FROM FAUST Part I
Ihr Instrumente freilich spottet mein,
Mit Rad und Kämmen, Walz' und Bügel:
Ich stand am Tor, ihr soiltet Schlüssel sein;
Zwar euer Bart ist kraus, doch hebt ihr nicht die Riegel.
You instruments truly scoff at me,
With wheel and combs, barrel and yoke:
I stood near the door, you should have been keys;
Though your beard is frizzy, you can’t open the bolts.
FROM FAUST Part I
Dem Wurme gleich' ich, der den Staub durchwühlt,
Den, wie er sich im Staube nährend lebt,
Des Wandrers Tmitt vernichtet and begrabt.
I resemble the worm, ransacking the dust,
That, as he feeds in that dust,
Is destroyed and buried by the wanderer’s step.
This is the part of Faust I where Faust hopes for redemption. Is there redemption, though, for the soul lost or imprisoned in a brain that can no longer function adequately to serve that soul’s need for expression? I think that is the central question of A Scanner Darkly. To continue with Faust.
Weh! Steck ich in dem Kerker noch?
Verfluchtes dumpfes Mauerloch,
Wo selbst das liebe Himmelslicht
Trüb durch gemalte Scheiben bricht!
Beschränkt mit diesem Bücherhauf,
Den Würme nagen, Staub bedeckt,
Den bis ans hohe Gewölb hinauf
Ein angeraucht Papier umsteckt;
Mit Instrumenten vollgepfropft,
Urväter-Hausrat drein gestopft--
Das ist deine Welt! Das heißt eine Welt!
Still this old dungeon, still a mole!
Cursed be this moldy walled-in hole
Where heaven's lovely light must pass,
And lose its luster, through stained glass.
Confined with books, and every tome
Is gnawed by worms, covered with dust,
And on the walls, up to the dome,
A smoky paper, spots of rust;
Enclosed by tubes and jars that breed
More dust, by instruments and soot,
Ancestral furniture to boot--
That is your world! A world indeed!
And indeed, the world of Faust and the world of Fred-Bob Arctor have become conflated in a very beautiful and bizarre fashion. It –fascinates- the reader in every Coleridgian sense of the word. We know that the protagonist has been confined by the Feds to the rehab center called New-Path, and we discover to our dismay that this center also functions as the ultimate maker and distributor of Substance D, growing hidden among the corn fields. Thus the beautiful fields, the blue flowers, the blue skies, and idyllic setting that seems so transformative and healing actually holds and conceals the agent of humanity’s destruction and huge profits for the corporation that uses destruction for its own ends.
Very surreal, yes; and very interesting with certain nuggets of Truth. The link made between the blue poppies.. from which Substance D, aka Death, is made.. and 18th century German Romanticism becomes a phenomenon in its own right. As Fred tries thinking through his problems, right before being brought in for testing and rehab, those snatches of German poetry had been leaking through, as cited above. And each group of German lines, mostly from Faust, also fits right in with Fred’s own thought. For example, he’d be thinking of the split brain, and lines about the skull would crop in; or he’d be thinking about his upcoming withdrawal symptoms and feel cold, and lines about how cold it is in the underground vault, which is natural, it is so deep, would creep in. Just great stuff!
Now let’s take a look at another book by Dick, The Man in the High Castle, premised on what this country would be like after losing World War II to both the Japanese and the Germans. This book is rather interesting, very imaginative, and creates a world that is somewhat implausible yet contains great truths and insights about psychology and human nature
What Dick does in this book is offer some intriguing alternatives, writing as though Roosevelt were assassinated in 1937, at which time Garner took over the Presidency and adopted an isolationist policy that resulted in defeat for the USA. Dick also has Hitler making some alternative tactical decisions, and he has all the major Nazi government officials and generals surviving the war to become big shots in the new Nazi global empire. In the new and remade USA, divided between Nazis governing the East and the South, and the Japanese governing the West, history is written from their point of view so that a general like Rommel becomes an idol and a legend, and the process of the war is told in a whole new way. Also, gasp, Churchill and the Brits are not portrayed as good guys according to the history books of –this- new world order.
Now for the fiction of it and the way Man in the High Castle segues nicely off of Scanner Darkly in bending the mind and shaping a whole new reality. It appears that Dick was on the cutting edge of using metafiction techniques which give to his novels such a compelling and absorbing complexity, while also affording a new insight into the workings of the psyche and society. As in A Scanner Darkly, where Dick created a metatext showing the way damage to the brain and the corpus callosum causes leaking from one side of the brain to the other, in The Man in the High Castle, Dick imagines a man like himself, named Hawthorne Abendsen, writing a book .. titled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy .. as if the USA had won World War II.
Remember, the book is premised on the notion that the USA has lost World War I and now exists as a region divided into three parts: the western third occupied by the Japanese, the eastern and southern third by the Germans, and the middle portion a neutral area where the great writer Hawthorne Abendsen lives high in the Rockies. Since Abendsen’s book imagines what the country and the world would be like if the USA had won World War II, the whole of the reader’s epistemological foundations are undermined and turned upside down… including any grounding in reality as it is perceived and understood in our own world. The description of this book within a book, this metabook, its author and its contents, forces the reader to step back from the magnetism of the story and examine both its truths and the nature of Truth and reality, just as the textual encroachments from Goethe and Faust do in Scanner. This scenario of course takes us back to the notion of mirrors and reflections, with the fictional Abendsen book as a kind of mirror image of Dick’s real book. It works in such a way that the shadow of Plato’s fire is reflected back into the fire of the mind that must look on itself and reality without any arbiter except the reflection itself and no grounding whatsoever in the original object.
Abendsen claims that the book was written “through him” by the I-Ching, that the title comes from Ecclesiastes (though definitely not a direct translation), and that it represents a way through illusion to true reality. The title contains within it both allusion and paradox, and it provides a path into seeing the yin and the yang, the good and the evil, as opposite sides of the same coin and as both illusion –and- reality. The grasshopper can be viewed both as a burden and as burdened, while it is traditionally thought of as light and capable of easy flight… though not necessarily in an oppressive swarm. That the yin of each human heart and mind has the potential of a single grasshopper to fly and alight swiftly and easily, yet finds itself both burden and burdened in the mass contaminated by the contrapuntal forces of the yang of work, selfishness, power, and control of others, makes marvelous analogy. Ultimately, it’s another kingdom that provides real life and solace, whether that be the kingdom of the eastern mind or that of the western god.
Now, on a side note, let’s look at the name Hawthorne and the nature of irony as defined by Colbert, an irony that can be seen as a kind of impressionistic realism. According to Colbert, the ironist is one who is always aware of the possibility of perceptual error. A mistake in perception or vision is always potential. This ironist is aware of incongruity, conflict, human frailty. Nathaniel Hawthorne serves as the great prototype of this ambiguous view of the world and the potential of humans to view it in different and often mistaken ways. And of course, the narrator’s view of the world can be just as ironic in that sense as anyone else’s view; and thus we get the conditional and temporizing language of uncertainty and ambiguity, with words like “if,” “seem,” “appear,” etc. Hawthorne, therefore, as a prime representative of the irony of ambiguity simply reinforces the idea that the fictional writer Hawthorne Abendsen, as the creator of the metabook within the book Man in the High Castle, provides the real view of the world in a most mind-bending way.
And that very neatly takes us back to the question of ontology, the nature of being, and the question of reality that has its roots in Plato and Aristotle at the foundation of our own view of the world. Do we see the world as a concrete empricial reality with secure objective foundations; or do we see it as a reflection as on the wall of a cave as explored in A Scanner Darkly? You decide.