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GREEN PARADISE LOST |
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5. The Threat of Death and the Appeal of Mastery The Hurricane The hurricane came last night. It had been raining for three straight days and everything was damp and sodden when yesterday morning we learned from the radio that the storm was indeed heading up the coast and straight toward us. Everyone within five hundred yards of the shoreline was being advised to evacuate before the storm struck. So the day was spent in frantic preparations for the storm. An extra high lunar tide would crest about midnight at about the expected arrival time of the center of the hurricane. On the beach figures draped in slickers or wet to the skin were laboring to bring in several heavier sailboats and pull them over rollers across beach and lawn to waiting boat trailers. The raft that on pleasanter summer days had been for sunning and swimming now had to be pulled in and secured as best they could. The winds that were expected could move and hurl anything not fastened down, so porch furniture, trash barrels, window boxes, awnings, everything was brought into the living room. An expected tidal surge of ten to fourteen feet above high tide had been announced so the basement level that faced out onto the lawn and beach had to be surveyed for what could be removed to the crowded safety of upstairs. Then quickly the heavy hurricane shutters were pounded into place over the beachside windows and doors. The radio told of traffic jams as people tried to evacuate and the Civil Defense announced evacuation centers. We had the kerosene and lanterns out, and a hurried trip early in the day brought fresh batteries, some dry ice, and a few replacement canned goods. Finally we sat down for a last supper while we discussed where to go to evacuate. Should we stay with a friend in the city? Or can we share in the excitement and danger and watch the storm's coming? We compromise and go to a friend's house that perches high on a bluff above the water and storm. We pack quickly and wonder what we will find when we return in the morning. At the friend's house we admire the large ocean-view windows and watch the rising waters and winds which darkness will soon hide from us. By eleven o'clock the winds really begin. We can hear their shrill whistle up and down the chimney and feel the tug of their power as the massive overhanging deck begins to shake slightly with the strongest gusts. Everyone is getting into slickers again to go outside now to experience better the full force of the storm. A teenager observes that he may never be in another hurricane and that he wants to feel this one! So wrapped in slickers we slip out a side door and staying close to the house we turn the corner into the slashing rain and wind and the crashing roar of waves. The wind is blowing so hard you can lean with all your weight into it and not fall down. Giant waves are rolling in, crashing again and again and again against the seawall and casting spray upward into the winds. We estimate the wind as about sixty miles an hour now, and we know the eye of the storm has not yet come. But it is time for the tide to be turning. The storm is late. And we know now that we will be spared the conjunction of high tide and the worst of the storm. The tidal surge almost certainly won't come. Back inside the electricity flickers and then fades. We scurry for candles and gather around the battery radio as people all up and down the coast phone the local station about trees down, electricity gone, high water marks, and wind directions at different locations. It is somehow comforting to have the communication of phone and radio as the power of the storm isolates everyone in their homes. The candlelight is soft on our faces as drowsiness overtakes us about 3 A.M. and we begin to curl up with the dog and the cats against each other. We stir ourselves and get to bed. As we lie in bed the house is shaking slightly with the wind gusts, and we wonder what may happen to the large old tree we know is almost dancing to the wind overhead. We awaken in a few hours. It is a windy morning but the rain has gone and the wind has shifted into the west. We dress and eat quickly for we are anxious to explore the aftermath of the storm. The girls are still asleep but we find the boys are already out and come back with reports of trees down and moorings dragged and two boats totally destroyed. The water and the shore are littered with debris from broken docks and rafts, and lawns have gone from lush green to dead grass. Everyone is out inspecting; there is a camaraderie after a storm as we congratulate and commiserate. There are several huge trees uprooted, ripped up like giant onions, exposing six to ten inch thick taproots which have snapped in two. One wonders why some trees bend and survive, and others are ripped up or simply broken. The capacity to bend with the violence of nature, to batten down the hatches and retreat like a turtle within your shell -- or to sway and dance and move within the wind as the trees do which survive -- these are valuable capacities for humans to have. Why is it that we feel sometimes that we must confront nature, as with a gun, standing up to do battle and seeking to conquer, when it would be more appropriate to shutter and bend? In his pioneering book Design with Nature Ian McHarg contrasts these two ways of meeting the violence of the sea: In their long dialogue with the sea the Dutch have learned that it cannot be stopped but merely directed or tempered, and so they have always selected flexible construction. Their dikes are not made, as are our defenses, with reinforced concrete. Rather they are constructed with layers of fascines -- bundles of twigs -- laid on courses of sand and clay, the whole of which is then armored with masonry. The dunes, stabilized with grasses, provide an even greater flexibility than dikes, accepting the waves but reducing their velocity and absorbing the muted forces. In contrast, concrete walls invite the full force of the waves and finally succumb to the undercutting of the insidious sea. The Dutch dikes are fitting. [1] The Need to Control The male need to control and dominate has been little examined by our male-dominated culture and male-dominated psychology. It has been accepted as a natural and necessary human instinct, but one that is magically present in one half of the human race and magically missing in the other half, except for a few perverted, disturbed, aggressive, dominating females who got some of the magic potion by mistake! As we look at others in the animal kingdom, we can speculate that this male need to dominate may be a hold-over from primate behavior. Carl Sagan, writing about the evolution of human intelligence, tells us: Squirrel monkeys with "gothic" facial markings have a kind of ritual or display which they perform when greeting one another. The males bare their teeth, rattle the bars of their cage, utter a high-pitched squeak, which is possibly terrifying to squirrel monkeys, and lift their legs to exhibit an erect penis. While such behavior would border on impoliteness at many contemporary human social gatherings, it is a fairly elaborate act and serves to maintain dominance hierarchies in squirrel-monkey communities .... The connection between sexual display and position in a dominance hierarchy can be found frequently among the primates. Among Japanese macaques, social class is maintained and reinforced by daily mounting: Males of lower caste adopt the characteristic submissive sexual posture of the female in oestrus and are briefly and ceremonially mounted by higher-caste males. These mountings are both common and perfunctory. They seem to have little sexual content but rather serve as easily understood symbols of who is who in a complex society.... In a television interview in 1976, a professional football player was asked by the talk-show host if it was embarrassing for football players to be together in the locker room with no clothes on. His immediate response: "We strut! No embarrassment at all. It's as if we're saying to each other, 'Let's see what you got, man!' -- except for a few, like the specialty team members and the water boy." [2] Charles Ferguson in The Male Attitude puts the control and dominance issue in interesting historical perspective: What was involved in both the slave question and in the revolt against Britain was the whole doctrine of control. ... It was not merely that some men favored slavery and some did not; that some wanted to rebel against British rule and some wanted to remain loyal. The thing that mattered was that the emotion of the total society in America revolved around questions of status and dominance and control. [3] The Desire for Mastery Writing from a very different perspective Langdon Winner in Autonomous Technology is very clear that science and technology have been focused upon control: The concern of science and technology with the possibilities of control have often found expression in terms which closely parallel the language of politics. This is perhaps not surprising if one recalls that both politics and technics have as their central focus the sources and exercise of power. Our thinking about technology, however, seems inextricably bound to a single conception of the manner in which power is used -- the style of absolute mastery, the despotic, one-way control of the master over the slave. Other notions central to the historical discussion of political power -- membership, participation, and authority founded on consent -- seem to have no relevance in this sphere. In our traditional ways of thinking, the concept of mastery and the master-slave metaphor are the dominant ways of describing man's relationship to nature, as well as to the implements of technology. • • • The theme of mastery in the literature of technology is even more evident with regard to Western man's relationship to nature. Here there are seldom any reservations about man's rightful role in conquering, vanquishing, and subjugating everything natural. This is his power and his glory.... Nature is the universal prey, to manipulate as humans see fit. In no place is this theme more clearly stated than in the writings of the most famous early advocate of a world-transforming scientific revolution, Francis Bacon. *** Men shall "obey" nature for as long as it takes to learn her secrets. They will then command her as tyrants once commanded their political subjects. Bacon clearly means to say that this change will benefit the human race not only because science will improve material well-being but also because those who crave power will turn to more "wholesome" pursuits. Apparently an ambitious man must subjugate something. And nature, unlike human beings, will not mind subjugation. [4] The Dread of Helplessness The woman psychoanalyst Karen Horney is the only one I know who has analyzed what she calls "The Appeal of Mastery." In Neurosis and Human Growth she says that this kind of neurotic individual has both a "superior proud self" and a "despised self": If he experiences himself as a superior being, he tends to be expansive in his strivings and his belief about what he can achieve; he tends to be more or less openly arrogant, ambitious, aggressive and demanding; he feels self-sufficient; he is disdainful of others; he requires admiration or blind obedience. *** In the expansive solution [of these two neurotic selfhoods] the individual prevailingly identifies himself with his glorified self. When speaking of "himself" he means, with Peer Gynt, his very grandiose self. Or, as one patient put it, "I exist only as a superior being." • • • The feeling of superiority that goes with this solution is not necessarily conscious but -- whether conscious or not -- largely determines behavior, strivings, and attitudes toward life in general. The appeal of life lies in its mastery. It chiefly entails his determination, conscious or unconscious, to overcome every obstacle -- in or outside himself -- and the belief that he should be able, and in fact is able, to do so. He should be able to master the adversities of fate, the difficulties of a situation, the intricacies of intellectual problems, the resistances of other people, conflicts in himself. [When I listen to these words of Karen Horney, I cannot help but hear also the male voices in our contemporary scene insisting that they can handle nuclear power without disaster, they can find a solution for radioactive nuclear waste, they can do recombinant DNA research without imperiling all of us.] The reverse side of the necessity for mastery is his dread of anything connoting helplessness; this is the most poignant dread he has. [5] (Emphasis added.) In the sexual realm such a compelling need to "master" situations and challenges would obviously result in viewing the female as submissive and compliant, and needing her to be such in order that he can continue in what he sees as essential for his selfhood, namely, mastery. A book about sexual love advised in 1973 that "Every sexual encounter must be a pitched battle between your sureness and her timidity.... What you want is automatically best for her.... Nothing is more pitiful, pathetic, and even contemptible than a man who yields his position of masculinity to his woman. He is abandoning his fight and allowing himself to be led by his woman -- something which no normal man can ever possibly tolerate .... She wants to be a woman -- and she can only be a woman if you are really a man." [6] (Emphasis added.) As David Halberstam and Marc Feigen Fasteau have pointed out, it is not just in bed that the male in our culture is haunted by the compelling need to be "really a man." Fasteau writes that "the feeling that the United States must at all costs avoid 'the humiliation of defeat' is the unarticulated major premise of nearly every document." [7] So is there any way that some of these same psycho-sexual drives can not also be operative when "men" view nature? Rebelling against any dependence upon "Mother Nature," he must of necessity put "her" down into the dominated, submissive compliant-wife and sexual-woman role. Like the sexologist, he easily convinces himself that "What you want is automatically best for her," because nothing he can imagine would be worse than if Man lost his sense that his is the control or mastery of the situation on earth. Death and the Heroic "Proving Oneself a Man" The heroic mode is closely allied to the need to master and to conquer. All are expressions of the masculine that are commonly found in patriarchal (male-dominated) cultures. In countless myths and stories the strong man is portrayed as struggling against a problem -- nature, fate, countless "odds" that are against him struggling to overcome and prove himself "a hero." In the challenge and response syndrome of the heroic mode, mountains exist to be climbed, problems exist to be solved, records exist in order to be broken, obstacles are to be overcome. This pervasive heroic stance Ernest Becker finds rooted in "man's" questioning of "his" value in the universe: In childhood we see the struggle for self-esteem at its least disguised .... They so openly express man's tragic destiny: he must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe; he must stand out, be a hero, make the biggest possible contribution to world life, show that he counts more than anything or anyone else. [8] (Emphasis added.) Becker continues with the varied ways in which this heroic need for "proving oneself" is manifest: It doesn't matter whether the cultural hero system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feeling by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a skyscraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count. [9] (Emphasis added.) Becker finds this heroic need to prove oneself and count for something is human and rooted in the human fear of death. I find it male -- and see the heroic need to prove oneself rooted in the male envy of the female's sense of intrinsic worth which needs no proving and which is based upon childbearing. Let us examine this alternative to Becker's interpretation of the heroic. The Heroic Impulse and Males' Envy of Women The male envy and dread of the fertile woman is rarely discussed in psychoanalytic circles. Freud made a great deal of penis-envy, but he never seemed to have perceived the existence of "uterus envy," although Bruno Bettelheim is very clear in Symbolic Wounds (1962) that there is a lot of evidence that such exists: Parallel to women's envy is the desire of men to possess female genitals in addition to their own.... We have observed similar desires, though less frankly expressed, in adolescent boys. • • • Each of these boys stated repeatedly, independently of the other and to different persons, that he felt it was "a cheat" and "a gyp" that he did not have a vagina. • • • We are hardly in need of proof that men stand in awe of the procreative power of women, that they wish to participate in it, and that both emotions are found readily in Western society. [10] David Riesman, in reviewing Bettelheim's book, comments: On the whole, men, by virtue of the very patriarchal dominance which puts them on top, must repress the extent of their longings for the simplicities and indisputable potentialities of being a woman, whereas women are much freer to express their envy of the male's equipment and roles. [11] Bettelheim's thesis is that in more primitive cultures this male envy of the procreative power of women is not repressed but is expressed in the initiation ceremonies of the young boy into manhood, which incise the penis so that it bleeds in imitation of the female's menstruation. Rivalry with Women as Goad to Male Achievement Karen Horney goes beyond Bettelheim's description of males' envy of women to talk about males' "dread of women." This dread of women she sees as "an immense incitement" for male achievement: Mother goddesses are earthy goddesses, fertile like the soil. They bring forth new life and they nurture it. It was this life-creating power of woman, an elemental force, that filled man with admiration. And this is exactly the point where problems arise. For it is contrary to human nature to sustain appreciation without resentment toward capabilities that one does not possess. Thus a man's minute share in creating new life became, for him, an immense incitement to create something new on his part. He has created values of which he might well be proud. State, religion, art, and science are essentially his creations, and our entire culture bears the masculine imprint. • • • Even the greatest satisfactions or achievements, if born out of sublimation, cannot fully make up for something for which we are not endowed by nature. Thus there has remained an obvious residue of general resentment of men against women.... hence their tendency to devalue pregnancy and childbirth and to overemphasize male genitality. [12] The Machine as Male Means of Productivity Charles Ferguson in The Male Attitude sees man's love affair with the machine not only as "the normal outgrowth of man's effort to extend his effect and control over unseen forces" but "the machine actually offered him the possibility that he might create something that had the semblance of a human being." For all his growing sense of strength and his power to destroy by means of the gun, the male could not get any real satisfaction from producing. A god could, but he couldn't. And a woman could. She could bring forth life, produce it, hand it to him. Of course the male could procreate. He had an essential part in the life process. He could start it, but it was the woman who finished. By the time of the birth act, his role seemed remote and obscure, far away and all but forgot.... By means of combat, questing, holding onto his prerogatives, doing things that women were not permitted to do, the male could in some respects escape frustration but he could not fructify. • • • The machine, if fully developed, offered Man the prospect that he might become as important as woman in the life process. This was part of the vision and the imagination. With the machine he could produce. Like an ancient deity, it would enable him to do what he could not do otherwise. More exciting, it would enable him to feel what he had not been able to feel before. Through the nexus of the machine he could exercise the function of both the male and the female. What the male produced, he produced. He himself personally. Except as menials, there would be no woman in the process of production. None at all, at any step, either at the beginning or the end. Men made the machines that made the machines and the machines they made made things that weren't there before. And no woman around, just as there was no man around in any significant way at the birth of a child. [13] The Polynesian myth of Maui is a fascinating example of how there can exist, all scrambled together, (a) the heroic male challenging death, (b) male envy of the female reproductive power, and (c) the denigration of the female's role in childbearing. The heroic figure is Maui, a strong young man who sets out to conquer death. Death of course is a terrible female ancestress with a mouth like a barracuda! In order to conquer her (Death), Maui must go inside her clad only in his trusty knife, and she will die if he can emerge (return) without waking her. Unfortunately for Maui his bird companions are overcome with the absurdity of his attempt and they giggle out loud, waking the terrible ancestress, who strangles Maui to death. At the end of this incredible mythic attempt to recreate childbirth, these classic words appear: "Men make heirs, but Death carries them off." [14] Time, Death, and Decay: The Ultimate Challenge to Mastery Ernest Becker is right. The threat of death does impinge upon the male need for heroic achievement. The male does feel a great need for immortality as he confronts the possibility of death. And he does not, as the woman does, find that need assuaged through his male involvement in the passage of the generations. He desires to leave majestic footprints upon the sands of time, great achievements in business, philosophy, science, government -- the public life. Such a male orientation -- which tends to see all of his achievements in the mental or cultural realm and none in the bodily realm -- results in a mind/body dualism. As a result death becomes the great threat that reaches out to darken the whole human participation in the body, rather than death being a natural end to a bodily life. Thus the body itself as well as sex, nature, and woman-as-she-intersects-the-life-of-the-body are all tainted with the dark threat of their involvement in mortality and decay. That is precisely Ernest Becker's vision. There must be another way.
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