Notes From the Pod Part 3: Armour
Intro : Monster talk
Fidel Castro once said that Spielberg’s 1975 classic Jaws was a metaphor for global capitalism; a monstrous force terrorizing a local community. In Zizek’s Perverts Guide to Cinema, commenting on this claim made by the Cuban leader, Zizek stated that the shark in Jaws functions as a unifying object. It condenses a multitude of fears and anxieties into one single monstrous threat. This cathexis has taken many forms over time: Immigrants, peculiar weather patterns, UFOs, Satanists, Russian hackers, Russian military.(pretty much anything Russian).
As consumer cultures tends to compensate for what liberalism disallows theologically and politically by way of a recompense of consumption—the self has been the latest object of cathexis. The social media era has shown how much of this energy has been directed both at auto-stimulation and auto-aggression; at ourselves. Wide spread addiction to selfies could be explained as the inability to see an external object of spiritual or political (or even bodily) significance; and as a result, that cathexis gets turned towards the externalized (and commodified) image of oneself.
For understandable reasons liberalism has become suspicious of objects of cathexis within the political realm; whether those be the unifying objects of the enemy or the unifying objects of charismatic leadership. But this psycho-political task of mental unification of sporadic energies of hope, rage, admiration, fear, love and indignation, should not be so easily dismissed as purely negative.
The ‘century of the self’ has shown widespread mental breakdowns as a household occurrence—and not to mention the impossibility of governing an organized response of civic cooperation (outside market mechanisms) without using grotesquely superficial appeals to base level fear pornography and cheap status rewards. In other words, without appealing to a mixture of a herd mentality, consumer entitlement, and overbearing self-preservation—usually done by means of highly emotive media propaganda in which the manipulators are now entirely part of the herd. We could say that objects and means to unify political thought energies are not entirely bad, even if often grounds for abuse.
Despite the superficial visage of liberal openness and confidence, insecurities—and what seems like a tendency toward a self-destructive brand of narcissism—have emerged culturally victorious in the past decade, in particular. This is a rather dull version of narcissism which normally ends with psychotropics and binge watching television shows, rather than any Dionysian self-gratification, and so fits in well to the typical end of history character of modern, liberal man.
A large and unrecognized aspect of Fukuyama’s work has (at least implicitly) been the task of thinking about the longevity of this consumer-driven narcissistic mediocrity. For all its flaws it has done a rather superb job at keeping us from engaging in religious wars and blood feuds. But this de-sublimating force which has taken over the mind of ‘post-war’ culture may begin to appear unjustifiable in the next few decades to come. The 21st century has suddenly unleashed a myriad of rather defence orientated moralities and technologies. The post 9/11 security state, immunization from viruses, warfare on the border of Europe and of course the need to protect ourselves from changes in the climate, have began the foundations for a rather different sort of society to what the late 20th century was used to.
The expansive and consumptive culture of the late 20th century could see itself overtaken by a defensive and ascetic culture of the 21st century. It will require us—in all its aspects—to think about armour. And of course, where there is a need for arming or armouring, there is a need for a thing to armour ourselves against. Suddenly this object of cathexis doesn’t seem like something we could rationalize past.
The psycho political task of unifying that sporadic multitude of energies has had unignorably beneficial consequences which can’t be so prudishly dismissed. Referring back to Castro’s interpretation of Jaws, we can grasp that the story of Jaws—a sea monster who terrorises a peaceful community—is not exactly to be credited as a Hollywood original. Ancient Greek mythology is filled with similar tales. For example, the Neaman lion; an enormous lion which terrorized the Greek countryside tearing apart shepherds and livestock. The creature, being the son of Typhon the Titan, was so powerful, regular human weapons couldn’t harm the beast. It took a demi-God, Hercules, to finally slay. Hercules did this notably with his bare hands.
The ability for Hercules to kill the Neaman lion had nothing to do with technological advancement but rather his status as a demi-God. His mythological purposefulness is seen as that spirit to prevail in the face of horrors, of which the raw forces of nature often embody. This force so often sweeps aside human rational control like the wind blowing through fallen leaves; to re-collect these dispersed and broken parts is the task of the hero who—through this tension with natural violent forces—gives humans a higher form; a spark of courage/discipline/creativity. This task, as we will see, is more than technical skill with weapons or technological superiority over non human animals or other aspects of nature like weather (or death), but the ability to form into something which exceeds that of nature itself; or rather is the highest form of nature itself.
There’s no doubt that the rich mythology of monsters has something to do with a counter point (or perhaps necessary antagonist) to an ideal human form. The tension between heroes and monsters is a tension which brings out a culture of trials; hardships to endure which proudly becomes merit (or even spirit). Even in Christianity—although detached largely from the world of monsters and warring gods of sky heavens and underworlds—kept the component of a devil. The devil is after all, half human and half goat. A certain kind of monster which obscures a full human form.
The appetitive and consumptive primacy which marked the late 20th century meant that we’ve been bombarded with sex talk over the past half century; and how a fully satisfying sex life is a marker of fully happy (formed) subject. We’ve been bombarded with economistic obsessions with the material ‘progress’ of a fully formed individual and civilization. Now in the defensive/ascetic turn we are already seeing, the West will not just have to accept that God-talk is something we can’t politely socialize ourselves out of. It will also have to accept something just as old, of which affects our understanding of what it means to achieve a higher social or individual form: monster talk.
On a functional level we could make an enlightened assumption that these myths offered ancients the ability to focus a collective energy (cathexis) on something which made a unified object out of the most dangerous and threatening aspects of nature for the sake of a culture of courage, discipline or innovation to motivate a survival response. Making such enlightened assumptions as scientific statements, however, never asks what happens to these objects once we no longer live in such an environment where we need to overcome the threats of predators, raiding bands of pirates, invading neighbours or bad winters. Hollywood would contest the absoluteness of this pragmatic utility to these myths, as it shows that monsters and heroes seem to prevail even in the secure, prosperous world of the post war era. So, while these myths certainly do have some utility in that sense, they exist as something far more elusive, also. A return to the world of mythology monstrosity and heroism is in order.
In Greek mythology the beginnings of the world were structured around the conditions of war between Zeus and the Titans. Demi-gods (part humans, part God), became the recruits of Zeus, whose war against the Titans meant that human beings were given the militaristic conditions to be touched by divinity. As warriors of the Cloud Gatherer Zeus, humans became integral parts of the tension between Gods and Titans (nature and divinity). Much of these hero vs monster duels, which lit up the literary theatre of the ancient Greeks (and Norse), informed us that this tension (between Gods and Titans) requires objects of monstrous bare nature (like overgrown lions, 5 headed serpents or sea monsters).
The battle field of this cosmological civil war was the original grounds to which the heroic spark made a deeply intimate communion between humans and Gods. As Bruno Snell has pointed out, Greek mythology and Homeric figures depicted humans reaching a point where they were no longer simply pushed around by greater forces of the elements but began to have some say in the matter. We needn’t look at this as scientific hubris. We can infer it was through this cosmological tension between Gods and elemental forces that the dignity of humans was discovered; where humans were first allowed to show their quality through action. Humans in a heroic form—were not only pitted against the beast-children of Titans—they were given the room to become something far greater than other animals.
Hesoid’s account of this struggle between Gods and Titans shows a direct recruitment effort for humans into this militant divinity. ‘But now, Olympian muses, sweet utterance, daughters of aegis bearing Zeus, sing of the company of goddesses, all those who were bedded with mortal men, immortal themselves, and bore children resembling Gods.’ What we see here is a breeding programme which crosses ontological limits. The grounds for which were war—and the success of which was not simply a pious obsession with an all-mighty, but the seductive potential within man to bed these goddesses to begin with. This cross breeding was, of course, the birth of heroes. Half human, half God.
This intimate(and somewhat sensual) communion I speak of, has become rather dulled down (or perhaps totally lost?) over time. We now see something like heroism to be the mere place of children’s television shows; and we ignore the fact that these depictions of super-hero deeds, popular in Hollywood or TV series, are written by adults and watched as much by adults as children. Nonetheless, we hide behind a veil of bourgeois self-preservation and tell ourselves that this prolonged cultural fascination with the hero figure is just light entertainment; and not something which connects deeper into the human condition—something which remains even when no opportunity to overcome danger occupies our daily lives; or perhaps especially when no opportunity to overcome danger occupies our daily lives.
As this essay will attempt to outline. This prolonged fascination with the heroic, stems from the particularly complex meaning of human vulnerability and the mechanism of shielding or armouring to compensate for that vulnerability.
Returning to the re-emergence of the monstrous, it should be noted that since Jaws, shark attacks have been part of our modern monster mythology; and although our stories have protagonists and monsters, the horror genre showed us that we seem to lack the ability to insert a hero into the equation. Most of the time in the horror genre, the protagonist (if they survive) is just lucky—or perhaps have just postponed their monstrous doom until the next instalment. The horror genre is simply the absence of heroism turned into a story.
Regarding non fictional life, there was recently a sadly fatal attack in Sydney, Australia. The peculiar aspect to this attack had nothing to do with the attack itself. Sharks sometimes do attack due to the inability to catch other prey—or due to misidentification. The notable component were the bystanders. As the scene was filmed by a beachgoer, we were given a glimpse into what modern humans do when confronted with the fragility of humanness and the violence of nature.
One man’s reaction was to take out his phone to film the incident as the swimmer was being mauled by a large great white. One has to wonder what the logic behind the urge to film was. It’s not like the incident was recorded for reasons of legal prosecution (or prevention), as with CCTV. It’s not the like the man recording thought that this would in any way help the man being attacked. Other bystanders can be seen in the footage, standing around twiddling their thumbs. One fisherman just stares at the camera and doesn’t even look towards the attack, which although blurred out the by news broadcaster, clearly shows a large pool of blood and a large thrashing object.. He is likely more concerned with how he might appear on film when this all goes viral, than he is with the actual event; or person being killed (and possibly eaten).
Of course, there’s not a whole lot these people could have done to save the man. But that’s not the point. To stand in knee deep water, shouting, throwing objects at the shark, yelling to the man to swim towards the shore. Anything which could give the man enough sense of direction to at least know which way to shore, or to distract the shark for even a second in the hopes of an escape. Or to at least preserve the body for burial reasons, even if he was too badly injured to save.
To at least show (even if futile) that somebody tried to do something, would have been somewhat redemptive. Instead, the bystanders stood there as if what they were seeing wasn’t quite real. It seems the more we reduce depictions of horror and heroism to the side-lines of entertainment, the more we reduce actual material horrors to diluted or sub-reality; which, even if we experience directly, we seem to not entirely believe are happening.
One can only blame the overconsumption of fear(or other forms of stimulation-inducing events) through the mediation of screens. The screen technologies popular today undoubtedly operate as a quite pathological manner of dealing with this feeling of human vulnerability by creating existential armour from the horror of such violent forces (or even just forces of minimal discomfort such as erotic rejection or mild intellectual disagreement); and this could be the motivation to film, as a reaction to danger. What’s worrying is that it shows that existential armouring from the kind experience of these horrors—which stem from forces of nature—atrophies that heroic instinct which was once so common.
Our relationship to these mythological objects of monstrous power has become so pathological and disingenuous, it’s about time to re-evaluate it. We firstly need to admit that we can’t either technically fix away the threats of danger posed by natural forces because (here’s the catch)… we are part of that natural force. This task only becomes the attempt to mutilate the human being itself..to become the shark. The attempt to prudishly distance ourselves from nature ironically depicts human behaviour we struggle to justify as truly human (such as filming a man being killed rather than doing anything to help him).
Simultaneously, the therapeutic disposition to ‘integrate’ a shadow (monstrous alterity) on an individual level common to those who have experienced an intimate dose of existential pain such as violence, betrayal, grief, heartbreak (what we might call PTSD) must be supplemented by the political task of re-valuing shadows and other monstrous others. They don’t just drag us down from more civilized or rational state, they also create a sort of tension which creates the opening to lift ourselves up and become—if not gods—some peculiar stance, to quote Nietzsche, ambiguously (in the theme of ontological cross breeding) between both.
‘Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over an abyss’ 2)
The era of techno-optimism which wants to indefinitely extend life, free us from any risk of violence and map the entire planet and human genome—simultaneously has stripped us from the ability to even perceive danger as real, and certainly not see the beneficial or bittersweet necessity of it. Too many layers of mediation stand in the way. The cosmological tension which ignited the heroic spark seems to have run out of gas. Is it too late for a re-ignition?
A Cosmological Zoology.
To properly grasp this problem, we should return to a Platonic dialogue which deals with both the question of courage and the transmission of virtue. In Laches, Socrates leads us to the conclusion that courage is a sort of wise endurance. We could say it is the properly fostered innate knowledge of when it is inexcusable to avert pain and suffering because something greater than mere prolongation of life (or aversion to pain) is at risk of being lost. In more philosophical terms, an ontological death can be worse than a biological one—even if they are often very much intertwined. The threat of death or enslavement of a people being ontologically worse than the biological death of a people was likely so intimately understood by ancients, that it made the kind of confrontation with horrors much more intimate (lacking long range weapons), that would for moderns overwhelm them, absolutely. The Sydney shark attack event is perhaps a good example of where this innate virtue is either not fostered or perhaps non-existent by those involved.
Yet, this heroic component to pre-modern life was more than simply something which stemmed from conditions of insecurity. Another dialogue often seen in tandem with Laches, Protagoras, deals more so with the issue of how something which goes far beyond a technical skill or a rhetorical ploy, can be taught. We need this thing (virtue). We want it to be re-produced in others (especially intergenerationally), yet the task of identifying it, who has or does not have it, and how we can foster it, is all an extremely complex task; both a political one (justification of authority through virtue) and a philosophical task of properly identifying it and distinguishing it from false appearances.
Protagoras’ retelling of the myth of Prometheus and his dim-witted brother Epimetheus, concerns itself with this initial war of Gods and Titans, already described. It tells us something about the ancient view on this divine potentiality of humans. He begins with the zoological distribution of traits which Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus, took charge of:
‘There were some to whom he gave strength without swiftness, while he equipped the weaker with swiftness; some he armed, and others he left unarmed, and devised for the latter some other means of preservation, making some large and having their size as a protection, and others small, whose nature was to fly in the air or burrow in the ground; this was to be their way of escape. Thus did he compensate them with the view of preventing any race from becoming extinct. And when he had made sufficient provision against their destruction by one another, he contrived also a means of protecting them against the seasons that come from Zeus, clothing them with close hair and thick skins sufficient to defend them against the winter cold and able to resist the summer heat, so that they might have a natural bed of their own when they wanted to rest. Also he furnished them with hoofs and hard and callous skins under their feet. Then he gave them varieties of food-herb of the soil to some, to others fruits of trees, and to others roots, and to some again he gave other animals as food. And some he made to have few young ones, while those who were their prey were very prolific. And in this manner the race was preserved’. 3)
The initial thrust to this speech is to highlight the means of self-preservation and defence against other animals and elements of extreme hot or cold. But Humans, as we will see, were neglected.
‘Thus did Epimetheus, not being very wise, forget that he had distributed among the brute animals all the qualities which he had to give. And when he came to the race of men, which was still unprovided, he did not know what to do.’
Humans are described as ‘naked and shoeless, and had neither bed nor arms or defence’. As the story goes, Prometheus, when finding out about this deficit in men, ‘stole the wisdom of practicing the arts of Hephaestus and Athene, and fire with it (it could neither have been acquired nor used without fire), and gave them to man.’
But alongside this new found relationship to elemental power (fire), man lacked political wisdom;
‘Now man, having a share in divinity was at first the only one of the animals who had any gods, because he alone was of their kindred, and he would raise altars and images of them.’
In other words, this divine connection ignited in man, but the properly immanent form which would best embody that connection still lacked.
‘Thus provided, mankind at first lived dispersed, and there were no cities. But the consequence was that they were destroyed by the wild beasts, for they were utterly weak in comparison to them, and arts and crafts were only sufficient to provide them with the means of life, and did not enable them to carry on war against the brutes.’
When Zeus bestowed the art of governance on man, communal living in cities became possible, and so from the beginning, the art of war (a defence against forces of overpowering nature) and social conceptions of a political manner, were intrinsically fused. The power which fire ignited in man had to be accountable to political wisdom, or else this very power would be man’s destruction.(His means of defence would end up being his means of destroying himself). Yet without this dangerous, divine gift, he would have been destroyed by other animals or the elements. Mythologically speaking, the Titans would have won.
Protagoras’ speech then goes in more detail concerning his claim that virtue can be taught. Although certainly an underlying motif for the purposes of this essay, I will concentrate on the form of this zoological distinction between man and other animals, their means of defence and how this relates to political virtue.
The unique element to this interpretation rests in Irony. Humans excelled beyond all other animals by way of this forgetful mistake by Prometheus’ brother, to give men traits of adequate predatory and elemental defence. Through this ‘mistake’, formed what we might refer to as civilization; not mere technical skill to wield elements as power—but the grounds to cultivate a proper relationship to that power.. Remember, the power given to humans symbolized by fire, if lacking political wisdom, assures mutual destruction. Political wisdom without the fire, assures being overrun by the elements.
Let’s remind ourselves of the zoological observation and how this relates to human’s unique duty to balance fire(elemental power) and wisdom. Humans lack armour in the biological sense (compared to other animals). We are ‘naked and shoeless’. Other animals have armour built into their material biology. While animals have sharp teeth, claws, fur, hooves, exaggerated size or speed, built into their biological states as a default, humans have hyper-exaggerated traits which can far exceed those default, animal traits.
Let’s name some examples—and I don’t just mean examples of technological compensation, but also forms of self-design. Humans can run for longer distances than any other animals on condition of practice and building up cardio-respiratory conditioning. Humans can manipulate their bodies in ways which can make use of leverage, dynamical strength, balance and timing in ways which can far exceed the skill of many animals. Humans can, through complex speech, also organize collectively in ways which can overcome other forces far more powerful than an individual human. Think of groups of hunters taking down large pray like mammoths, while still being in a stone age level of weaponry. Of course, this excessive capacity is also something of which is not as universal or default as with other animals. The skill and power level of humans is far more distinct from culture to culture or individual to individual, as it is with animals of the same species. A very basic tool, such as a sword, shield or spear, suddenly moves humans from vulnerable prey to formidable master; but only a move which stems from practice, development of skill and intimate forms of courage, and not simply a biological ‘trait’.
This power is only made possible through this initial deficit ( with Epimetheus as the forgetful zookeeper). The technological understanding of modern vs ancients is perhaps a lot more distinct than we give credit for. While we moderns see this Promethean power as the constant addition of traits which make it easier to survive and/or thrive by way of technology (From spears to nuclear bombs or from mud huts to upper middle class metropolis), the ancients viewed this divine gift stolen from the Gods and handed to humans, as something imbued with a form of political intelligence that dissolves the barrier between war and politics, itself. For the ancients, the additional traits which technology provides was not about utility. The mythological component shows rather an expression of potentiality; a potentiality which is imbued with forms of heroic self design. A far higher potentiality than that of material biology, which flowed forth from this very nakedness (and not through technological utility)
Technological Detachment.
In other words: This deficit, for ancients, was not something to be simply ’evolved out of’…No theory of evolution existed for the ancients. This deficit was itself a sort of divine connection. This could be the heart of ascetic avoidance of material luxury or abundance for the sake of intellectual, athletic, militaristic or spiritual ambition— also the militaristic and monastic insistence on minimal living.
Ritualistic combat is often the task of stripping down (of limiting this elemental power by way of utility for the sake of a higher primordial connection). For example, duels in a pre-enlightened justice system: only an agreed upon limit of weapons are allowed. In terms of pedagogical teaching of courage or any other virtue, it is often a reduction in the technical extension of traits which is encouraged. In martial arts, for example, one learns nothing if they grab the hardest and sharpest object in the room; just like nobody learns how to think if they are simply told what to think. If technology stands as the product of convenience, humans must develop their own relationships to pain and inconvenience in order to bring out the excessive traits which other animals lack.
As we are learning in the age of ADD and distraction, intellectual heights cannot be reached without a disciplined reduction in immediate gratification. As psychology will soon learn, the feed back loops of consumer cultures and pharma-cultures are putting human’s ability to form emotionally stable characters at risk; at least the ability to do so innately, through practice, thought and dedication. In its place dependency on medical supplements or existential distraction takes over.
Militancy as Nakedness
In the cosmological zoology of Greek mythology, a technological nakedness is embraced to bring forth an innate capacity which exceeds the capacity of creatures just born with powerful tools attached to their bodies.
The social/political inference here is also obvious. In order for humans to cooperate in complex manners, some level of de-tooling is necessary. To behave as egotistically and utilitarian as possible in every case of daily life makes shared living (and believing) an impossible task. Humans must technically and psychologically disarm themselves to a large extent, in order to cooperate. (This includes cooperation for military defence or attack). Hobbes picked up on this element of disarming when he spoke of both the extremity of human capacity which both speech and feelings or impulses of glory or (a necessity for justice) opened up.
Humans, according to Hobbes were animals in which unity was possible for the very same reasons as horrors beyond the comprehension of any non human animal, was possible. Speech and impulses of honour—exclusively human traits—are both the conditions for civic cooperation which form the contract theory at the base of his work—and also open up the possibility for sectarian violence, at the same time. 4) This is again reflected in Protagoras’ claim that the art of war and the art of governance are of the same divine gift. It is the tragic irony of why the post war era is so void of leadership and wishes to replace politics with algorithms and markets.
Anthropologically, the fact that humans can attach or detach their tools is one of the distinct features of mankind with could be seen in the same light of feelings of honour and speech. While the buffalo has large horns on his head for defence by biological default, humans must often pick up and learn to use their means of defence. We could say that paradoxically humans tools (weapons or otherwise) are far more part of them than that of the hooves of a horse is part of the horse or that the claws of a lion are part of the lion. The ability to pick up and put down tools makes the significance of that tool far more part of our nature than the claws and horns of animals.
In modernity, which celebrates mans attachments; his technological capacity, his ability to create huge cities, economic abundance, methods of instantaneous consumption and transportation. This is not even to mention his methods of bio-technic controls and the weaponry of huge bombs or biological weapons. Even his ability to distort reality to unimaginable degrees through propaganda or even the attempt to manufacture augmented experiences, is more celebrated as a ‘revolution’ today, rather than it is warned as a fable of hubris, no matter how destructive it becomes.
What we can conclude from this over-praising of techno-attachment—which likely fears and resents that nakedness of humanity—has totally ignored or wilfully repressed man’s detachment capacities; the ability to remove these technological attachments, not just out of some luddite prudishness but out of a desire for those excessive, aspirational and courageous impulses which lead to something higher than the mere default practicality of animalistic tools.
It is through man’s tools being detachable, through which virtue, heroism and other higher aims are made possible. Through the conditions of that deficit which Epimetheus stupidly laid out, was ironically the means of that very connection to the divine aspirations which the heroic, the artistic, philosophical, the political and the spiritual are made possible by; in which survival, as a task of life, is exceeded, without being ignored.
This shouldn’t be misconstrued as a cheap humanitarian disarmament project against the ‘horrors’ of war. Remember, the art of war and governance are intrinsically linked. And here lies the paradox which is too bitter for passivism to stomach. Through our militaristic nature the possibly to negate total destruction and extinction is formed ; and not through our pacifistic/economistic or rational nature. At least according to this reading of Greek mythology. But it has something to it, does it not? Much of the biggest threats to shared existence stem exactly from overzealous technological reliance on ‘security’. The cold war era of pre-emptive aggression is a great example of a shared threat to existence which stems from overbearing security cultures and not from ascetic-militant ones. In other words, a badly developed relationship to our armour and our nakedness.
Man’s nakedness is his militancy; it is also where his virtue forms.
To re-value man’s detachment capacities, does require us to think an entirely new(and old) way of thinking. One in which these technological and existential armours and mediations which modernity has offered are no longer seen as the primary drive of man’s zoological deficit. The rational technical urge to overcompensate through rational and technical control should be put into a proper polarity with the detachment capacities of man; the deficit in which, paradoxically, the higher potential of man is formed.
Notes:
1)Theogony Hesoid P31
2)Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
3)Plato Protagoras
4) Hobbes, De Cive