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| Happy Cupcakes |
Boredom is not a phenomenon of the world (Greek -physis) – rather, it is an echo from an inert mind (Greek -kosmos).
In Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal writes of his 19th century protagonist, Julien Sorel, that he scares his youthful peers because of his ‘energy’. Just to introduce the character briefly, Julien is a bourgeois clerk/librarian who is employed by a wealthy Peer of the French aristocracy; he is poor, a country bumpkin from ‘lesser’ France (i.e., the provinces), and has the (mis-)fortune to be transplanted from the hinterlands of France into the brilliant and complex aristocratic ecosystem at the center of 19th century Parisian society (i.e., the enriched, endowed, entitled, and ennobled). Julien is educated (in the tradition of poor humanist priests although he is not yet a member of the clergy), but he is also socially ambitious in a world where the social classes can never successfully mix. Stendhal’s plot hinges precisely on this “caste” tension, in which the irresistible force of a socially humble man’s individual merit and ambition is pitted against the immovable rock of society’s enshrined rules of inherited rank and lethargy.
Because of Julien’s education and his personal
intellectual merit and efforts (as well as a little pushing from his priestly
teachers), once our budding Tartuffe becomes established in his clerical employ
in Paris, he discovers that his learning and his reflective habits of mind intimidate
the indolent but aristocratic young people in his entourage, who have inherited
their merits and their high-society positions from their wealthy families and connections.
From this strain between Julien and his social milieu shall unfold more
complexity in the plot intrigue, of course; and so, writes Stendhal about this
bourgeois arriviste Julien, “Dans ce siècle, où toute énergie est morte, son énergie leur fair peur.”
The first Characteristic in the story for our
consideration is énergie, which it seems should be understood as being something
like intellectual daring, emotional drive, or just simply commitment to an idea
that inspires and moves our hero to action. In the context of this description
Stendhal creates an additional tension between ridicule, which serves to oppress and enthrall Parisian society in
general, and an intriguing notion of personal
vitality, which makes of certain individuals social mis-fits who seem always to be crusading for some greater fairness
in, or amelioration of, the social context. To be exact, Stendhal’s reasoning
is that the fear of ridicule has long
since died in his 19th century, leaving behind a particular hardened
‘moral’ shell for the coming generations of society; and this moral shell of
codified and inflexible opinion both dominates individuals and transforms them into
a homogeneous flock. This Staid Mass, in turn, demands from its younger constituent
elements that each should conform to inherited ideas and usages, and it uses
ridicule and mockery to subdue and beat the wayward down into submission. The
idea is that we grow up into this cupcake mold, which in turn comforts the
previous generations of our society because they can rest assured that one young
cupcake will look just like another and that all cupcakes will look just alike
for the foreseeable future. The promise of success in such a world lies in conformity—everyone
is and acts like everyone else.
(P.S.- John Locke, in his “A Letter about Toleration” §4 The
limits on toleration, also writes about the zealotry that accompanies this
type of imposed and imposing conformity in the Christian religious communities
of his day; but he studiously avoids using the language of cupcake…)
The second Characteristic to
which Stendhal draws our attention is the adhesive that unites the herd, this
society, into one homogenous group. The binding glue for this particular 19th
century Parisian society, which is so tightly girdled and entrapped inside the
mold of its received ideas, opinions, manners, etc., is ridicule. The vital piece of information here is that the younger
generations are not even bothered by the fear
of ridicule, because they have simply slipped into the dead, but actively
constraining cupcake mold as inheritors of a previous generation’s battle of
words and ideas. The young themselves have no intellectual or emotional
investment in the mold that is imposed on them, and which they unwittingly
adopt. They are taught the “proper” way of doing things, and their world asks
of them not that they should have their own ideas and battles, but only that
they should conform to what they have received from those who have gone before.
The (intellectual) battles are long over; theirs is now simply to continue to
change the dressings on the metaphorical and never-healing wounds.
In his chronicling of 19th
century France, Stendhal minutely observes and dissects the phenomenon of
cultural transmission. There is an inherently dialectical and dialogical tension
among and between generations. One generation fights for its manners, usages,
and beliefs, and then passes that acquired ‘body’ of beliefs and actions onto
the children and the children’s children, who receive and believe because they respect
(fear?) their parents and their elders. In the best of cases, from the point of
view of a Nietzschean philosopher anyway, as the child becomes the adult of the
new generation he will challenge the teachings he has received, fighting his
own battles and winning through to his own understanding of the world. In most
cases, though, this struggle will not
occur (so also says Nietzsche!); and the next generation, aimless, will meekly ramble
around until it comes together into a free-ranging herd, conforming to and obeying
the cupcake-type precepts and “truths” it received in the mother-milk.
This brings us to the 3rd
characteristic that interests Stendhal in Le
Rouge et le Noir – ennui, or
boredom. Cupcakes are inherently bored.
They are not encouraged to challenge their shape, nor the color of their
sprinkles, nor their position on the serving plate; they are simply expected to
sit patiently, in all the glory of their cupcake-ness, and wait until whatever
is going to happen inevitably happens. So it is with every generation’s children.
Except on the rare occasion, coming-into-adulthood is not
marked by us personally doing battle with the dragons that live in the hidden
places of our minds, dragons that have snuck in through the education we have
received and tucked themselves away in the corners of our imagination, dragons that
have carefully secreted themselves in our most shadowy places and there
patiently await the Dawning-of-Their-Day. (P.S.- The image of dragons is from
the first discourse in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra;
Immanuel Kant would have very properly called such ‘mind-critters’, Verstandeswesen).
More typically, coming-into-adulthood tends to be marked
by acceptance of and conformity to the teachings and traditions received from
the hands of the Elders. This means that the excitement of discovery for self, the
heuristic call of the wild, and of engaging in one’s own personal and private ‘heroic’
tussles against the demons that attend us and stalk us, is not only not
an outcome desired by the Elders of our societies (including our educational
institutions), but is aggressively discouraged, indeed excluded from those individual
right-of-passage experiences that are considered, at least by Nietzschean
philosophers, to be healthy and good. So it would seem that we may conclude
that it is therefore ‘the way of things’ in society that we should be
profoundly bored.
Stendhal, like Nietzsche after him with his ideas about
the world’s Great Men and of social evolution through their Will to Power,
understood that each generation is automatically the hero of its own stories.
However, while this may be true of generations,
most individuals probably will not ever
become authentically heroic, precisely because they are being pressed and molded
into the societal cupcake patterns (teachings and traditions) that require no individual
thought or action, but only obedience to the principles of conformity and a
passive mind. This irrepressible ennui
at the heart of Stendhal’s vision of 19th century France, whose controlling
mechanism is ridicule, is directly translatable today by our alpha-state
inducing relationship to technology, which first lures our eyes to the screen,
then dulls our brains and senses. Ennui
– the emotional flat-line of the Nietzschied masses. This is the defining
characteristic of the Merseaults (…remember Camus’ L’Etranger) of our world, of the “outsider” who does not remember
whether his mother died today, yesterday, or whether she is still sitting at
home right now having her afternoon tea and crumpets.
The world become existential,
and therefore ultimately unpredictable, still however invites us to dare. To dare to rebel; to dare to
listen to the sound of the different drummer; and to dare to follow the path
toward that new beat by taking the high road of our own thoughts and dreams and
visions, that most solitary and desert way which so titillated and so seduced Stendhal’s
Julien Sorel and Mlle de la Mole, and which so profoundly enthused Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra. To be sure, the terminus of this journey is seldom, if ever, happiness. But then how could it be? Are
we not, after all, daring to break the cupcake mold, and thereby necessarily drawing
down upon ourselves the disapprobation, indeed the wrath, of the Elder generations
of cupcake makers? But while this journey’s end may not be happiness in the
sense of social contentment, Nietzsche has argued that we will finally find
there freedom in the truest
philosophical sense.
And what will these new cupcakes-without-molds look like?
Some will make great contributions to the world of men; some will wreak great
havoc. Some will become admired; some reviled. All will be Rebels in courage. Thinkers
of thoughts independent. Ayn-Randian-type Architects of their own realities. New-world
Iconoclasts. The Ridiculed. The Isolated and Insular. The Street Fighters of
the world. The Alive. And, at the end of the day –the
Dead.
Further reading: Roland
Barthe’s essay, “Toys”.
