Margaret Foley

As a die-hard advocate of self-awareness, The Iceman Cometh was an interesting challenge to my current creed. In this play, Hickey, a reformed party animal, tries to sell a new philosophy to his old friends.

“Give up your impossible dreams,” Hickey urges his friends (paraphrased, of course), “reclaim the identity you’ve hidden from so long–be free. Free from yourself, free from nagging pipe-dreams, free from escapism.”

Buying his philosophy, however, leads them to a state of suicidal nihilism–even beer can’t get them drunk. O’Neill is, perhaps, then suggesting the importance, then, of pipe dreams to the human being–or, at least, to the human being’s  survival, however dark and hopeless that survival may be.

From a Christian perspective, though, the fascinating thing is that coming to the nihilistic rock bottom place that many of the characters do is when most people learn to lean on Jesus–when most people decide to change the direction in which they’re heading.

Not these characters.

Pearl and Marjory admit that they’re prostitutes, but don’t find the ability to change where they are in life. Harry and Jimmy Tomorrow come to the realization that they won’t be able to get the jobs they want but refuse to look for new ones.

“I was born this way,” the saying goes, “I can’t change.” But the thing is, everyone has a choice–especially when Jesus is brought into the picture. I wonder if, without Jesus, mankind needs some sort of pipedream to keep them alive.

Most Christians I am familiar with wince or scoff at the idea of reading horror. They see it as demonic–and in some cases, I am prone to agree. But in many cases, I find that the genera of horror contains within in many opportunities for good philosophy–especially for Christians.

The Horror genera often employs the idea of a world beyond the physical.
This is what makes the horror genre so terrifying–everything we as readers know is yanked from underneath us and we are sent plunging into a drop of the unknown, the metaphysical, the uncertain. Nothing mankind has developed–no laws, no expectations–carry over into this new realm, a realm the protagonist hadn’t thought imaginable.

To the Christians, we are well familiar with this idea of a “spiritual” or “different realm”–mostly because we live in it. While our realm doesn’t require us to fight off long-dead serial killers or grapple with vengeful ghosts, we live in a world separate–yet entwined–with the secular one. Like the protagonist with a sixth sense, we are able to see the darkness of this world–a darkness others aren’t often aware of–and the havoc it wrecks. Also like the protagonist, we are fully capable of being assaulted by this darkness, being strangled by it. We must remember that we are no better than anyone else–no purer. The only difference is we can see something they can’t–and we have to deal with it.

Unlike the horror protagonist, however, Christians do not depend solely on their own cunning to free themselves from this darkness–we depend on Jesus. On our own, we can’t survive constant waves of darkness striking us, we can’t be the ones to make the brave decision to take the haunted house down with us. We need Jesus.

The Horror genre strips humanity to its bare bones.
To me, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the Horror genre. We often begin with a character to whom anyone can relate to. Just like us, he or she has grown up with the secular world, with science, with its expectations–and then he or she is thrown into hell.

There are no more comforts and there is no more civilization: what is the protagonist going to do about it?

From a philosophical standpoint, people have been arguing over this for years. What is man like without civilization? Honestly, I would like to see Hobbs and Rousseau write their own horror novels to back up their claims.

That would be awesome.

I, personally, want to try and write from the perspective of a Christian. How, for example, would you reveal Christ to that vengeful ghost? What about Freddy Krugar? In the midst of a war between vampires and werewolves? To pick the most unlikely situation, the most unlikely people–that is what I would like to do.

In their book, The Myth of the American Superhero, John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett discuss something they call “the Werther effect.”

In the Werther effect a [reader or audience member] (a) experiences a work of fantasy within a secular context that (b) helps to shape the reader/viewer’s sense of what is real and desirable, in such a way that , (c) the reader/viewer takes actions consistent with the vision inspired by the interaction between his own fantasy and that popular entertainment. (Myth, 10)

In other words, the readers (or audience members) experience the story in a personal way and shape their opinions, beliefs and desires from these false experiences as they would real ones. For example, if there is a movie or novel that promotes war, the Werther effect would instill upon its readers/viewers this pro-war sentiment. The same goes for anti-religion or anti-establishment–through the Werther effect, any philosophy–even if not consciously propaganda–is absorbed and adopted by the readers/viewers.

The namesake for this effect comes from an eighteenth century author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote a story about a young man named Werther. Now Werther was a romantic fellow who only had eyes for one woman–and she denies him. So he commits suicide. “Within a decade of this novel’s publication,” the authors explain, “it had become an international sensation.” (Myth, 10) Young people loved the book–they could relate well to the protagonist and his deep desires for another. In fact, they loved the book so much, they could relate to the protagonist so well, that they decided to immitate him.

They committed suicide.

“All over Europe large numbers of young people committed suicide with a copy of the book clutched in their hands or buried in a pocket.” (Myth, 9) Walter Kaufman explains.

That is why Lawrence and Jewett call their condition “the Werther effect.”

Every book–however cliche and contrived–has a philosophy to it. Harry Potter, among other things, stresses the importance of equality, The Dresden Files praises the strength and cunning of the individual, Beowulf teaches the qualities of a “good king”–no book is without its Philosophy. A good book, however, often creates its own Werther effect–the readers relate to the main character, live through the story themselves, and adopt the character’s own conclusions.

This is why we as authors must be careful.

Words are powerful. Powerful enough to destroy establishments, change cultures and take lives. We must be careful what we write, what we promote, in case our readers experience a Werther Effect when reading our work.

Poor Johanne Goethe was held accountable for all of his readers that committed suicide. Preachers, families, friends, all of them chastised him and threw the blame of these suicides on his shoulders. Goethe hadn’t wanted to promote suicide–of course he hadn’t–but it was his writing that twisted these youth’s hearts to the point of suicide. It was his writing. What a terrible thing to live with.

As authors we must be careful. We aren’t simply writing something we find “fun” or “interesting.” We are writing a scenario for our readers to live through, giving them a chance to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.” They gleen their own conclusions, their own beliefs, from what they read, but we need to be very careful as to what we promote. We don’t want it blowing back in our faces.

Oh boy, where to start. There were so many things in this book that I learned from–probably because I had trouble putting the book down as a reader. Stephen King knows how to work suspense, that’s for sure. I would plan on reading three chapters and stop for the day, but he’d build up so much tension, so much suspense that I had to read on. One more chapters, two more chapters… I almost wasn’t sorry that I went to work sleep deprived.

Almost.

1) Always get people invested in your characters

I loved each and everyone one of King’s characters in The Shining even though they were hardly perfect. Jack’s temper and Wendy’s naggy-ness (word?) did bring quite a bit of judgement on their characters, but they were so human. I could feel Jack’s desperation to stay sober and calm for his family and could relate to Wendy’s need to have a semi-normal family.

I absolutely loved them and so when conflicts arose (Jack losing his mind to the house, Wendy and Danny’s nearly fruitless attempts to survive) I suffered with them. I silently urged Jack on as he battled with temptation and I think my heart froze as I read about the horrors of Room 217 and Danny’s narrow escape from the horrors on the playground.

I wanted the characters to be happy, to survive.

That’s why it’s important to spend the time to acquaint the readers with the characters–a book with loveable characters practically reads itself. And I don’t think the characters have to be perfect either–but there has to be something in them that we can relate to, that we love.

2) Never make things too easy

It was impossible to put the book down when any of the characters were staring death in the face.

Impossible.

I’m the kind of person who skips to the end of the book at the first sign of tension, but I still had to read on during conflicts. Even if I know the ending, I don’t yet know how things turn out that way. If the conflict is boring, if the answer to the conflict is obvious, I shrug my shoulders and give up on the book.

Sure perfect characters are easy to write and sometimes it’s satisfying to keep conflicts small and easy for them to solve–but those are the most boring stories to read. The best books–the ones I have to devote an entire day to reading because I know I won’t be able to set them down–are the ones where the characters MESS UP, where they’re thrown in the middle of hell and have to find their way out.

Of course, as a Christian, I don’t agree with the solution of non-Christian authors. They think that men can solve the problem. That if we gird our loins and think outside the box, we can do anything. I don’t think so. I can’t think so. It’s insanely fun to read, sure, but I know the only one who can get you out of a hole is God, so it will be interesting to figure out how to create tension in a Christian novel.

3) Evil is more terrifying when it’s human

This I don’t think King emphasized, though he did employ it. He gave Jack a personality, a character, a past. Jack was a person. A person with flaws, sure, but a person, none-the-less.

And he succumbed to the house’s corruption and malice. It was terrifying to see him do so too. I love how the evil seeps into his brain through the house and yet he accepts these warped ideas without a second thought.

Beautiful.

I do think it might have been more terrifying if the House (or, rather, Hotel, I suppose) had a hold on him, but it hadn’t killed Jack. If each of his choices had been fully his–even the one to kill his son. That would have been terrifying–especially if King had created a rational path between the loving father and the murderer rather than falling into dementia and irrational thought.

Still, his methods were terrifying and I learned a TON.

There’s so much I still want to touch on, but I need to be sure that I don’t skip another night’s sleep for this book.

Christianity stirs up a lot of feelings in people. Some feel immense guilt at the mention, others are shaken with anger or filled with passion. Somewhere a long the line, Christianity has become the grounds for a war. Christians feel as if they must  defend their faith and some non-Christians feel the need to demolish Christianity, as if it’s the final obstacle in mankind’s epic journey to happiness–a seven headed hydra of sorts. Why is this?

Most non-Christians I have spoken with relate Christianity with a white supremist bastard with no common sense. Christians, in their opinion, have no interest in Science–and if they do, their religion hinders them in the field. They are uneducated, pompous and live their life with an eternal “holier than thou” attitude.

As Christians, we really don’t do much to help Jesus’ PR, either.

Throughout history, there have been records of Christians who abuse the faith and twist it into a method for raising themselves above others. “We’re Christian,” some people wrongfully think, “and you aren’t, which makes us better than you.”

But where is that in the Bible? Where is the Bible verse that says it’s okay to hate people because of their sexual orientation or their addictions or their skin colour or their religions or their culture? Where does the Bible say that Christians are better than non-Christians? I don’t know where these scriptures are, but I do know in Luke Jesus warns us that “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11) and the Bible prizes humility over pride. “After all,” Jesus says, ”if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!”

As Christians, we are called to mirror Christ into the world–and Christ never looked down his nose at people. He stayed true to God’s priciples and laws–as should we–but he ate with sinners and outcasts, he befriended the least likely in his society and he saw women as something other than just belongings.

Being a Christian, therefore, is not an excuse to mistreat others or to see yourself as better than the rest of humanity but a promise to God that you will mirror His Love into the world.

To the Ethical Egoist, a Martyr is a person who sacrifices themselves  out of self-interest. Rather than being motivated by  God or selflessness, Martyrs, they argue, sacrifice themselves to earn a good name for themselves, to earn a good name for their cause. Along these lines, the conversion of Christians in places and times of persecution can also be seen as an act of self-interest.

According to Sartre, however, this isn’t the case.

In Republic of Silence, Sartre, a Frenchman of Jewish descent claims that he was “never more free than during the German occupation,” despite having spent this time in a concentration camp. The reason why, he explains, is that his actions were not influenced by societal limitations or expectation–every action he took was of his own will and no other. His words to describe this are: “rather death than…”

In other words, during German Occupation Sartre found that his actions truly defined his person-hood because each action was preformed in the face of death. Using the example of the early Christian, “if I commit myself to this religion, I could–I will–be killed. But I truly believe that Jesus died for my sins and so I will follow it regardless. Better dead than caught denying God.”

Early Christians and Martyrs knew what it mean to take up their crosses. According to Sartre, their choice–made in the face of death–is a true decision, made in the face of death. Of course, one might argue that their decision wasn’t to mirror Christ but to prolong their own name in the process, so I’m not sure where I was going with this post, but I do think there’s something to Sartre’s logic.

Sartre’s Republic of Silence  excerpt may be found here.

As I make my way through Nietzsche, I’ve discovered I have a love-hate relationship with him. His melodramatic writing style is beautiful, though. I wish I could write essays touching on the stench of the “entrails of a deformed soul.”

The most interesting idea I have uncovered in Nietzsche’s Geneaology of Morality–so far, anyway–is the idea of Ressentiment, or the directing of hate toward something undeserving of it. Nietzsche claims that Judeo-Christian societies use Ressentiment as a means to place the weak over the strong, that they blame all of their misfortunes and trouble on the strong in order to see themselves as “good” and the strong as “evil.” I, however, thought of something else entirely when I discovered the concept.

As an undergraduate student, I’ve found that most of my generation responds violently to Christianity. They scoff at Christian ideas and feel oppressed by Christian people. Some students claim to have “escaped” from Christian parents, others talk about being bullied and hated by Christians when they were younger–and yet, after hearing what they’re opposed to, I’ve never found that anyone is opposed to Christianity, itself. Just Christians.

Perhaps my generation experiences a different form of Ressentiment than Nietzsche’s? Perhaps my generation takes all of the neglect, all of the hatred, all of the isolation, they have experienced and blames it on Christians.

“This is who I am.” They say. “And it is the Christian’s fault that I am unhappy, for the Christian does not accept me.”

But often “who they are” can have disastrous effects in it of itself. Someone who drinks risks making horrible decisions, for example. But often when confronted with these consequences, my generation blames Christians or God. The man who gets into an accident will think, “if there really was a God, I wouldn’t have gotten into this accident” or “if my parents weren’t such hypocritical Christians, I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess.”

Like Nietzsche’s generation, many of us have forgotten the idea of “personal responsibility” completely. Epictetus says that it is not things, themselves, that upset us, but our judgement of them.  That we are responsible for our own happiness. That we are responsible for our own actions. My generation doesn’t understand that. We blame God, we blame our parents, we blame anyone but ourselves, refusing to believe that we’re better than the action we’ve preformed. That we’re more than it.

I wonder why this is?

It’s curious.

Through my greatest efforts to become a historian, I have become a philosopher instead. Not only with regards to my major but, hopefully, in thought as well. Though this dream, as I have already learned, will take much time and nurturing through my decisions and outlooks.

Here’s not only to a change in blog topics but a change in self-direction as well!

Hooray!

“Some things are up to us,” Epictetus says, “and some are not up to us.”

He explains that there are internal things (things like “opinions, impulses, desires and aversions”) and external things (things like “bodies, possessions, reputations and public offices”) and that we should only feel responsible for the internal things, the things he describes as being “up to us.”

Happiness, as Epictetus sees it, is not an emotion but a decision. It is a decision to keep the external events from overwhelming the psyche. We aren’t in control of what others do, Epictetus explains, so why let what they do dictate the direction of our day?

I was so fascinated by his Enchiridion that I just had to try putting his ideas to work.

I work at McDonalds, see, and this morning was a particularly terrible morning. I got very little sleep last night and we just so happened to be understaffed today during a hectic rush.

But all of those things are external, aren’t they?

So I had to focus on my internals.

“What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgements about the things.” Epictetus says.

In McDonald’s terms this would probably mean something like this: the lack of sleep and lack of people and the overwhelming amount of customers are not terrible things in it of themselves. It is my judgement about them that makes the experience so miserable for me. So it is the judgement of the experience that I need to change in order to change my perspective.

I have yet to understand what the correct way to look at these externals is but I thought about “as long as people come I can keep my job” which did seem to turn the day around after I focused on it for long enough.

I can’t wait to practice again this weekend!

In history there is a constant danger of observing only facts, stories and theories. It is very tempting to assume that mankind has held the same values and ideas over time–many of my colleagues default to this when history buries them under dates and names. Refusing to give culture the room to breathe, however, makes understanding the past near impossible. In Medieval History class, I know students who try to pretend that the religious aspects of the time were either non-existent or primarily malign or unimportant–this limits their understanding of the time as the Church was central to the lives of everyman during this time. A similar thing happens with Classical History as well. People are hesitant to acknowledge the blatant disregard and degradation of women or the Greek’s cultural acceptance, and preference, of/toward homosexual relationships. Denying either of these attributes, however, leaves the historian with a massively biased version of their subject and prevents them from truly understanding their subject.

Learning a language is a perfect example of cultural gaps. Today in German we were working on translation and a class discussion broke out over the structure of a sentence.
“Why can’t you just say, Ich fahre? I drive?” My class wondered.
“Because the Germans don’t think about things that way. You need to say, Ich fahre mit dem Auto, or I go by car.” My teacher answered.
“But why?”
“Because that’s just the way we say it.”
“But why?”
My professor always says that it is easier to teach children a language. Why is that? Because they simply accept differences in the language. Unlike my colleagues who need a reason for every incongruency between the German and English sentence structure, a child would simply soak in the information.

Historical culture is no different.

Culture is ever changing. Whether it be the difference between China and Canada or Iron Age Britain and the British Empire. Our minds are infested with our own culture and, like the students in my language class, we often find ourselves annoyed when we aren’t allowed to simply slip our own culture into the past. However, we must learn to be like a child where as we see these differences and keep them in mind, finding it natural that different times and places have/had different cultures. It is not the Historian’s job to judge the ethics of his or her time period of interest but to understand it.