Shining Light into the Darkness.

On Unconscious Desire, Mimetic Rivalry, and the Spiritual Life.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but instead do the very thing I hate. —Romans 7:15

Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord. —Psalm 130

Deep down I'm a very shallow person. — Charles Haughey

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The moon is currently waning out here in the Western mountains of the United States. In Advent, at the darkest time of the year, the nights too are getting darker. The new moon is on December 23rd, a few days from Christmas. There is a primal wonder that is awakened in being beneath the depths of the night sky. Walking back from the chapel after Compline to the hermitage in the cold, crisp air I only have to look up to be bathed in its mystery. How did all of this happen? Why is there something rather than nothing? Where is all of this headed? In the cold darkness, there is a kind of inarticulate revelation of what the light can tend to obscure. In the cold darkness, there is a kind of dark clarity. In the darkness, there is a faint illumination that only deepens the strange mystery of one’s being alive at all. Only in the dark do the stars come out.

Yet, that said, the greater mystery still, is the very fact that we are here to be aware of it all—of anything at all, for that matter. That whatever understanding we have gained of the physical depths of the cosmos we inhabit, we exist in a much greater mystery, one which is all too easy to forget. Even the astounding complexity and depths of the physical universe cannot compare at all to the fathomless depths of our own inner lives. One that all too often remains hidden from us. Thus far we have only scratched the surface—if we have even done that much—of what it means to be human. We can no longer afford to be ignorant of ourselves. What we don’t understand may very well be our undoing.¹

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Like most people I have tried to live my life in pursuit of what I thought most intimately mattered to me. Yes, indeed, I have followed my bliss. Yet that is exactly the problem. Though I have frequently pursued these goals with a single-mindedness that often bordered on obsession,² it wasn't always clear to me why I have so vehemently pursued the things I have. My assumption has always been that I have done so out of some pristine inner prompting of my soul. That I was doing what I was called to do. Rather, to put it bluntly, I have pursued many things because what I really sought was the esteem of others. This hasn't been easy to admit to myself.

I have wanted to be a musician since I was probably thirteen years old. This is itself a curious thing. I remember the day in middle school when this desire awakened me. While in art class, as I recall, and loosely supervised, a friend whispered to me that I should come out into the hallway. I was then quickly ushered into a nearby stairwell. I found that a classmate I knew had somehow gotten his hands on an acoustic guitar. There were a few of us intently gathered around him. He was in the midst of playing songs by Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Kinks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Sabbath, and on and on. All of the songs that a Gen-X teenage boy would then consider being of great value. I was astounded that he was capable of this.

I had previously started guitar lessons myself a year or so earlier. I was learning the instrument from a kindly but somewhat ancient woman who taught down the street from my childhood home. To my then immediate and unmistakable disgrace, I realized that in comparison to him I had not gotten much further than playing the likes of “Polly Wolly Doodle.”³ The seemingly unbridgeable gap of what separated my abilities from his was readily apparent to me. My classmate became something of a magician, a wizard even. He had mysterious powers and conversely I had none. I wanted what he had and I wanted it badly. More than that I wanted to be better than him, i.e., I wanted to defeat him for his effrontery of having more skill than me⁴. I went home from school that day and immediately asked my mother to switch my lessons with my classmate's guitar teacher. My search for my own social power and musical wizardry had officially begun. This pursuit lasted for decades of my life.

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Throughout my life, I have been a fervent exponent of what Rene Girard has called the Romantic lie. This is defined as the idea that "our choices are completely autonomous, independent, and self-directed. Someone under the power of the Romantic Lie never thinks of their behavior as mimetic”⁵ Now don't get me wrong, by being a fervent exponent of the Romantic Lie I don't mean that I was ever anything than under its spell. My high school yearbook quote, to take one example, was from Beethoven, "there is no rule that cannot be broken for the sake of greater beauty." From this, there are at least two takeaways. The first is that teenage pretentiousness was alive and well in me. And secondly, if I did ever break any of the musical rules--a dubious assertion--I don't think it ever resulted in anything resembling a "greater beauty". In my own juvenile mind, however, I had myself taken up the same path as Beethoven⁶.

If Girard is correct about what drives us, the troubling question becomes who isn’t under the thrall of the Romantic Lie?⁷ Particularly since ours is said to be a culture of individualism our mimetic tendency is even further hidden from us than it might otherwise be. To openly imitate is anathema to us and to admit to doing so is to admit to being less than others.⁸ The imperative is that we must be completely original and unique⁹. This is a very strange thing--and completely impossible. Nonetheless, it just seems to be a completely natural thing to do¹⁰. But it isn't natural. Being unique was something that not too long ago--and throughout all of human history--most people would have avoided as being socially dangerous. Certainly being too unique might threaten your chances of survival.

The paradox is that to become "unique" first we must find somebody to imitate. Our consumer economy is constantly providing this for us whether we want what it offers or not. It is almost inescapable. For all the posturings of rebellion that constitute rock 'n' roll, for example, those who seek to be successful at it are simply seeking to become an employee of a large corporation called a Record Company.¹¹ Of which there are far more job aspirants than available positions. Competition is fierce and the social rewards are great. Perhaps the only thing worse than not making it is to make it. Though, that is easy for me to say.

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Is there any way to avoid this trap? We are intensely social animals who don’t know what we truly want. We look to others to help us to do find out who we are. This, according to Girard, inevitably leads to rivalry. There is no way around it. Yet to opt out of the game is to opt out of large swaths of our social existence. No matter how much we say we don’t like it there are great rewards for playing this game well. We are socialized and educated to compete well in this game no matter how much we pretend otherwise. Hopefully, most of us will try to keep the uglier side of things in check and play the game well and with kindness.¹² But if truly honest about our thoughts and behavior towards others who want what we want, maybe it isn't as clear as all that.

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Little did I know that what started so long ago in that middle-school stairwell would turn out to direct the bulk of my adult life. I have seen some incredibly ugly behavior among musicians, myself no less than anyone else. The kind of rivalries, backstabbing, gossiping and reputation destruction was all part of being in the scene. Few things, other than romance perhaps, have caused me to despair more about human behavior than playing music seriously with others. The whole endeavor is shot through with a motivation that is quite destructive, everyone sees it, but few are free from its grip.

I don’t regret my life as a musician. Not entirely anyway. Even among the most ambitious, there is still a sense of the transcendent beauty that one can cultivate and be involved in. Even between the most rivalrous group of musicians, it is possible to create something together that greatly surpasses what we are able to do alone. I have experienced it myself many times. Too many to count. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does it makes the whole awful mess worth doing. In that sense, I wouldn’t trade those fleeting moments for anything. There is something of the Divine in that.

And yet it is impossible for me to avoid admitting how destructive it all was. Finally, I had to admit to myself that as much as I loved music being part of the scene was making me a far worse person. No, that is quite right. The really troubling realization was that I saw within myself someone who continuously choose to be a far worse person than I would have been otherwise in order to try and be successful.

At some point, I realized how miserable I was making myself and had to choose differently. This was not as easy as it might sound because my whole identity was wrapped up in being a musician. It was how I had tried to distinguish myself from others—which ironically only made me exactly like everyone else but only unwilling to admit it. I didn’t know who I would be otherwise. Still, giving up music was one of the best things I have ever done for myself, as sad as that is to say.¹³

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I don’t think I would have been able to see this in myself if not for the time here spent in silence and solitude. But not only that. While here I have attempted to more deeply examine my life through sacramental confession and the spiritual guidance of the Abbot¹⁴. There is certainly something powerful in simply admitting the worst one has done to another and receiving compassion and counsel rather than condemnation. It is not only a great relief but profoundly healing. There isn’t nearly enough of this in our lives.

It is becoming unavoidably clear that we can no longer afford the kind of destructive rivalries that constitute the human condition. As the world grows increasingly intertwined and becomes smaller through technology and travel, this tendency will not serve us well. This is a vast understatement. As I game this out over time I don’t see how we avoid destroying everything we have achieved because we have no other way of being in the world. The music scene of a small Western city is hardly the world stage, but it was a laboratory of human behavior in microcosm. What I saw there—both in myself and in others—does not bode well.

There is, of course, another choice we can make. One that has always been available to us. But it will cost us no less than everything. We can choose to continually relinquish the social game of rivalrous desire. This would require us to see this desire in ourselves down to its roots. This is, suffice it to say, no easy task. It is also the only alternative, at least as far as I can tell. So once again I propose the Arsenios Option. Flee Ambition, Sit Silently in Silence, and Dwell in Stillness. And watch. Because even in silence and solitude we can get caught up in mimetic desire to seek to defeat our rivals. But at least we might begin to see it.

It is my firm conviction that we are entering a very dark time in the human experiment. In fact, we are already there. This is the dark night of Civilization. This will require a much deeper response from us than we have heretofore been able to give. But this night, I think, is no reason for resignation or despair. This night can be a kind of hope, even if only a dark one.

Only at night do the stars come out.

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Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Little Gidding. Four Quartets. T.S. Eliot.

1. And unless we can better explore the depths of our inner lives all the understanding of the external world matters very little. The alternative to this exploration is to admit that, “Every man is a mystery to himself. And then we die, unsolved.” This is a quote by the writer John Farris. I found it nosing around the internet. I have not read John Farris previously or had even heard of him. I like the quote. Ultimately, no matter how successfully we search we aren’t likely to finally “solve” the mystery of ourselves. But we don’t have to die in total ignorance either.

2. Well, not even “bordered on” obsession, but in the capital city of obsession. But who needs to keep score like that?

3. For reference here is Shirley Temple singing Polly Wolly Doodle. Needless to say, this wouldn’t nearly do in comparison to being able to play Freebird, or Stairway to Heaven.

4. A few years later he and I would be in a band together. He was the lead guitarist and I was the rhythm guitarist, aka the second banana. As my skill level improved I eventually worked with others to get him kicked out so that I could be not only the lead guitarist but the only guitarist. And to be honest, he was only the first of many models/rivals that I would encounter in my musical life. It was a constant fact of my musical life.

5. "Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires." See also the definition of the Romantic Lie here.

6. Beethoven is the Grandfather of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Or the Romantic Myth of Beethoven is the source. One that I think Beethoven helped create and under the spell of which he himself was under. Did Beethoven create the myth or did the myth create him? I think it is telling that one of the early Rock hits was, “Roll Over, Beethoven”. Rock music was declaring its desire to out Beethoven the myth himself. Beethoven is both model and rival.

7. Admittedly there is something circular about the above definition as it implies that if we don't believe in the Romantic Lie that means we must be under its influence. Still, I hesitate to dismiss it so easily. If nothing else it seems good to let that sink in and see what insights it might yield.

8. Being in a cover band is not for the serious musician. Though you might actually be able to make a living playing cover songs at weddings. We’d rather starve playing the role of the original artist. Bob Dylan is the great archetype of the myth of originality. Yet nonetheless, as Picasso is attributed to saying, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Imitation is unavoidable.

9. The so-called “herd of independent minds.”

10. I remember being in college studying music thinking to myself if I couldn’t be original, why bother? I have come up against this same attitude countless times since. I had a coworker that wanted to learn to draw, but felt his first attempts were unoriginal, so why bother? We imitate each other in desiring never to imitate one another.

11. See Steve Albini’s classic description of the ugliness of the music business here.

12. “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game” is true, but not usually how we play the game.

13. Since coming to the monastery I have had the opportunity to chant the Divine Office with the monks and sing in the choir for Mass. Which is a beautiful gift to me. I can offer what I have to God. That said, I see in myself that even there I am hardly free from mimetic desire. The path continues.

14. The relative absence of elders is a great tragedy of our time.