2 posts tagged “denial”
I am in awe of this man. What an incredible artist. He writes children's books, but these are no ordinary children's books. I really need to buy more of them. The only one I own as of right now is this one: The Red Tree.
For those in the book club, I think this book relates really well to the movie we just watched and the concept of despair and how it separates you from hope through denial.
A little girl wakes up to disappointment. She has a memento of happier times hung above her bed: a red leaf. We follow her through dream-scape after dream-scape, emphasizing her loneliness, despair, and depression. She has the sense of a huge weight looming over her, and that wonderful, beautiful things are passing her by and leaving her in darkness.
Little does she realize, but in every place she travels, no matter how staggering the solitude, the red leaf is always there. But she's always turned away from it. She can't see it because she's so focused on herself.
But just as she is returning home, and the day seems to end as it began, she sees the red leaf and it grows into a beautiful tree right in front of her.
There's something so incredible about the world we live in. Even in our darkest times, there is something in reality that is constantly trying to pull us towards the light. We are constantly being offered a different way of seeing things. No matter how strongly we turn ourselves agaisnt it, hope creeps in uninvited, waiting for us to see it.
But in order to see the red leaf, we have to keep our eyes open. If we lose ourselves is depression and despair, we focus too much on our own pain to see the little red leaves in our lives. On the other hand, if we were to actively seek it, we wouldn't find the red tree. We can't force red trees into our lives or anyone else's. All we can do is remain open to the experience, and have faith that though we may not see it, the red leaf is always there, inviting us to life when everything looks like death.
If you have a chance, order this book, and anything else by Shaun Tan. His illustrations speak volumes, and he has a way of communicating tough truths that even adults struggle with to little children. In fact, children seem to be more open to the message. Seriously, do not miss out on this book, it really is incredible.
Many people have asked the question: Are we basically good or are we basically evil? Almost everyone wants to answer both, but almost no one investigates as to why. We give our opinion, the answer we believe in, and then walk away content.
I would contend that our basic nature is extremely obvious, and it stems from both our place in the earth as finite animals and our place in evolution as the only such animal to have conscious thought.
Man is paradoxical in nature. That is, he is a finite being who will wither and die, but he creates for himself a symbolic identity that does no such thing. Even if we ignore the debate about whether consciousness ends after death, there is no question that the person's identity and character lives on in the people they leave behind.
But these two parts to man don't seem to fit very well, and why would they? We usually end up trying to deny one or the other in sometimes large and sometimes small ways. Many people try to separate the two, and think that the self lies only in the symbolic identity. They become almost disgusted with the physical, as if it is somehow degrading. Others want to deny the identity, and try to lose themselves in physical feelings alone.
Why? At the deepest level, to deny the uncertainty in life, especially the uncertainty surrounding death. Man is the only animal that is consciously aware of the fact that he will die for his entire life. A deer might feel fear in the moments right before an impending doom, but if they survive it, forget until the next time they face danger. The human animal doesn't get that comfort. We *know* we will die, it's just a matter of when. We're like a ticking time bomb. To call it a fear might be a little over the top, but I would definitely say that it is a constant uneasiness that we try to bury and not think about.
The person who hates the physical? They want to deny it so that they don't have to deal with that uneasiness. If the true self is purely symbolic (or spiritual, as many claim), then death does not defeat it.
The person who hates the symbolic? They too want to deny to avoid uneasiness. Without the symbolic identity, we can revert to the same situation as the deer, and not deal with our death until the moment it arrives.
Even though most of us seem to be a mixture of the two types in different combinations, the way we think about ourselves is constructed in such a way as to deny our basic anxiety. We desperately need to control that unpredictable and uneasy feeling in the pit of our stomachs.
And so we build our lives in order to do just that. Our "sin" and selfishness is born from our will to control (our basic denial). Evil is born from the powerless trying to deny their state, and giving themselves the illusion of mastery. We cannot accept our own mortality.
And so where do good acts come from? The exact same place. If we cannot accept our own mortality, then we long for the opposite: immortality. We look for a way to in some way survive our death. If you believe in an afterlife, this is particularly easy. Just be good enough to go to Heaven. But this is a basic need that we *all* share. Most of us try to achieve a different type of immortality. Immortality in the eyes of others. We have to do great deeds, and be good people, and leave a mark on the world. We need to assert that we *do* matter, and that we're more than just tiny blips in the timeline of human history.
We see this all the time in our daily lives. The typical Hollywood romantic comedy, where no matter what, we always get the fairy tale ending. The person who, when something bad happens to them, tries to gloss over it, put it behind them, and think happy thoughts. The person who, when something bad happens to them, convinces themself that this is how the world is, and that they should *expect* bad things to happen to them. But this person is *still* lying. The reason the depressed person wants to expect bad things is to somehow lessen their power over him/her. We *need* to feel in control, especially of the things we have no control over.
The whole of our lives is built upon this denial, this will to control. It is, according to Ernest Becker, the "vital lie of human character." It is a lie because it is built from denial. It is vital because without it, we would have to face the uncertainty and uneasiness, we would have to face nothingness. To give you a mental picture, it's like we are born empty, and we can't stand it. We fill the emptiness with whatever we can find, whatever seems appropriate. We fill the emptiness with a lie.
But if it is a lie, we should try to rid ourselves of it, shouldn't we? If we want to get closer to the truth, we must shed this vital lie no matter the cost, right?
More to come later, perhaps, about what ridding ourselves of the vital lie might look like, and how to go about doing it.
