by Stanley
We
are the hollow men…
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
T.S.Elliot
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
T.S.Elliot
The ‘meaning of life’ is something people crave if they
haven’t got enough and are driven mad if they’ve got too much. Not enough 'meaning'
is what we call ‘depression’; and too much is what we call ‘manic’.
Too much and not enough meaning are both symptoms of despair. We meet the hollow men when our rage for life meets no one at home.
Depression is easily spotted. People will say there’s no point to life, nothing in it – life has no meaning. But the other end of the scale, the manic end, can be a bit more deceptive; largely because our whole culture tends to favour a manic lifestyle. Existence is like rugby game - all push and shove and fight, where triumph and glory await you at the end. This type of mania is quite mad, but normal.
Then there is the more 'clinical' mania regarded as abnormal. This is where a person turns the smallest details of life into stories pregnant with meaning and burgeoning with significance, where everything is monstrously larger than life, where a bird sitting on the garden fence is trying to tell me something; or spiritualising about the significance of the clock stopping at exactly twelve; or what did the postman mean when he said ‘good morning’ like that.
But the world fraught with meaning comes in all shades from simple faith to the most bizarre superstitious concoctions. The more outlandish beliefs and meanings, separated by the distance of history, are easily recognizable for what they are. The Incas, for example, knew quite well the meaning of life. It was simply that the sun was hungry for blood and human hearts. So, twenty times a year there would be these wonderful festivals. A thousand celebrants, one by one, would ascend the sun-temple steps where a priest would raise the sacrificial knife and surgically gouge out their living hearts and hold them aloft still pulsing with blood – a gift to appease the sun-god.
What is it? Is it the terror of nothingness that incites these profusions of significances with which we embellish life? It’s almost as if any meaning is better than none. When the Roman Empire was crumbling, astro-religion (astrology) swept through the population in a wild scramble for security – the stars as a comfort blanket. Every upper-class family had their personal astrologer who would daily announce the complicated conjunctions of the stars and what they meant – and god help the Emperor’s astrologer if he failed come up with a favourable prognostication or, if he did , it didn’t happen.
Then there are the deep meanings that the great thinkers have given us. Saint Thomas Aquinas probably wrote the most influential philosophical theology of all time, trying to reconcile paganism with Christianity. The work of Doctor Angelicus, as he was known, has been the bedrock of church thinking for seven hundred years and is so even today. He wrote the most profound and scholarly tomes of drivel you could imagine; they had meaning for the time, but we never get to the small things: we never get to hear whether St. Thomas was worried about his piles when he went to the toilet. We only get the up market Big Stories of the more grandiose manic mind-set.
Today some of the most revered masters of unfathomable meaning are our top physicists who search for a 'Theory of Everything'. even the authors themselves quite frankly admit that no one understands 'quantum mechanics' or 'string theory' or ' parallel universes'
I am impatient and sceptical with large-scale meaningful scenarios because they hide the really important issues in psychological life. Perhaps that’s their purpose. They encourage a cloak of grandiosity that covers up the small worries we think we should have grown out of. They inhibit reflection on the close, personal concerns in life that really mean something. Over and over in therapy we find it’s the small, childish things we overlook that really count. Simply acknowledging them can make a world of difference – helping us to be more relaxed about our frail humanity and what it all means.
Too much and not enough meaning are both symptoms of despair. We meet the hollow men when our rage for life meets no one at home.
Depression is easily spotted. People will say there’s no point to life, nothing in it – life has no meaning. But the other end of the scale, the manic end, can be a bit more deceptive; largely because our whole culture tends to favour a manic lifestyle. Existence is like rugby game - all push and shove and fight, where triumph and glory await you at the end. This type of mania is quite mad, but normal.
Then there is the more 'clinical' mania regarded as abnormal. This is where a person turns the smallest details of life into stories pregnant with meaning and burgeoning with significance, where everything is monstrously larger than life, where a bird sitting on the garden fence is trying to tell me something; or spiritualising about the significance of the clock stopping at exactly twelve; or what did the postman mean when he said ‘good morning’ like that.
But the world fraught with meaning comes in all shades from simple faith to the most bizarre superstitious concoctions. The more outlandish beliefs and meanings, separated by the distance of history, are easily recognizable for what they are. The Incas, for example, knew quite well the meaning of life. It was simply that the sun was hungry for blood and human hearts. So, twenty times a year there would be these wonderful festivals. A thousand celebrants, one by one, would ascend the sun-temple steps where a priest would raise the sacrificial knife and surgically gouge out their living hearts and hold them aloft still pulsing with blood – a gift to appease the sun-god.
What is it? Is it the terror of nothingness that incites these profusions of significances with which we embellish life? It’s almost as if any meaning is better than none. When the Roman Empire was crumbling, astro-religion (astrology) swept through the population in a wild scramble for security – the stars as a comfort blanket. Every upper-class family had their personal astrologer who would daily announce the complicated conjunctions of the stars and what they meant – and god help the Emperor’s astrologer if he failed come up with a favourable prognostication or, if he did , it didn’t happen.
Then there are the deep meanings that the great thinkers have given us. Saint Thomas Aquinas probably wrote the most influential philosophical theology of all time, trying to reconcile paganism with Christianity. The work of Doctor Angelicus, as he was known, has been the bedrock of church thinking for seven hundred years and is so even today. He wrote the most profound and scholarly tomes of drivel you could imagine; they had meaning for the time, but we never get to the small things: we never get to hear whether St. Thomas was worried about his piles when he went to the toilet. We only get the up market Big Stories of the more grandiose manic mind-set.
Today some of the most revered masters of unfathomable meaning are our top physicists who search for a 'Theory of Everything'. even the authors themselves quite frankly admit that no one understands 'quantum mechanics' or 'string theory' or ' parallel universes'
I am impatient and sceptical with large-scale meaningful scenarios because they hide the really important issues in psychological life. Perhaps that’s their purpose. They encourage a cloak of grandiosity that covers up the small worries we think we should have grown out of. They inhibit reflection on the close, personal concerns in life that really mean something. Over and over in therapy we find it’s the small, childish things we overlook that really count. Simply acknowledging them can make a world of difference – helping us to be more relaxed about our frail humanity and what it all means.
contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz
(03) 981 2264
No comments:
Post a Comment