PKD Trumps Harpur and Ligotti

Sometimes I wonder why I write a blog. When I write in my journal, I never wonder about this... I suppose because there is no potential audience to make me self-conscious. But a blog is a public spectacle... and so I wonder what purpose it serves. I sometimes hope someone reads it and at least finds it interesting, and at other times I'd rather be left alone with my rambling thoughts.

I'm wondering about this specifically in relation to my recent blogs about Christianity. I partly write just to give my thoughts form and to make notes about the subjects I study. However, I'm also trying to communicate... afterall, that is what writing is about. I'm sure like everyone my motives are mixed. There are various aspects to my personality, various hopes and fears. Plus, blogging is simply a good distraction from other more responsible activities such as washing my dishes.

In writing about Christianity, part of me wants to persuade. I believe in truth and I want others to believe in truth. I have this lingering faith that truth can somehow win out against all the BS in the world. Along with this, I'd like to believe that religion can be something more than history too often demonstrates it to be. Tom Harpur writes about the horrific side of Christian history, but he also writes about hope... about the possibility that spiritual truth (whatever it may be) can rise above the politics and superficialities that mainstream Christianity has consisted of for centuries. I was raised a New Age Christian and so this message resonates with a part of me that is still innocent and earnest in my sense of faith. Who knows, maybe society can change. Maybe religion can become something more than a means of social control. Tom Harpur believes that if Christianity was willing to face up to its own dark past that a bright future is possible. What a happy thought that is.

But then my inner Thomas Ligotti speaks up. Going by Zappfe, Ligotti the pessimist dismisses such New Agey hopes as just another attempt to avoid suffering. Life is suffering and everything we do is an attempt to avoid the awareness of suffering. Sadly or fortunately, we're simply incapable of even comprehending the horror of our existence. It doesn't matter what cruelties any particular religion was built upon because our whole society is built upon misery. We're just f*cked! Then again, if I have to waste my life in some manner or another, maybe that is all the more reason to sit around contemplating spiritual truths... even if they are nothing more than pretty lies.

I do on occasion think of myself as a Christian, in spite my constant criticisms. My friend tells me I'm a Christian... and, heck, why not? I'm a Christian and many other things besides. It's all good. To be serious, I actually do feel drawn to Christianity, specifically certain Gnostic ideas. Plus, I'm just fascinated by these great myths that percolated down through the millennia to finally take form in the figure of Jesus and the rest of the cast. When I contemplate these stories and symbols, I do sense a deeper truth, something that feels real.

In the end, neither Harpur nor Ligotti wins out. Their voices fade away, and I see Philip K. Dick sitting with one of his cats and he is bantering about something or another. It is true that he was crazy, but crazy in an entertaining and mostly harmless way. He had a playful imagination and an overactive one at that. Harpur and Ligotti, on the other hand, seem like such serious fellows. I can often be quite serious myself. Still, I'd rather be a fool like PKD. He took various random ideas (including ancient mythology and Gnosticism) and he made it his own. He wasn't a good person, he wasn't a bad person. He was just a guy who liked to tell stories and who had an insatiable curiosity. Who needs hope or pessimism if they have curiosity?

Too many people in the world have answers. Even though I have many opinions, I know I don't have any answer myself. But part of me wants an answer. And that is fine to an extent. Maybe we can't live without some answer or another to hold onto. Even so, I don't want to ever stop questioning. If life ever becomes so depressing or boring to me that I lose my sense of curiosity, then what would be the point?

So, I can get annoyed at fundies who present apologetic self-deception as truth. That is their answer and it seems a fairly stupid answer to me. Then again, I get annoyed at lots of things in life. I pretty much get annoyed at anyone who claims any final conclusion about anything. And I get annoyed at life for its lack of a conclusion, its lack of a clear point to it all. I must admit I get too easily annoyed. It must be nice being a fundie, or a fanatic of any variety for that matter, who possesses unquestioning certainty. There is no doubt that fundies get annoyed as well, but at least they have conviction in their annoyance. As for me, I just end up turning my annoyance back on myself. I get annoyed even at my own attempts at finding answers.

Its just with every answer comes a role to play. The fundie is playing their role of righteous believer and some of them can really embrace that role, but there are many other roles besides. I get tired of roles. I go to work and play various roles... for my supervisor, for my fellow employees, for the customers. And then there are all the family roles I'm stuck in... son, brother, brother-in-law, uncle, etc. It almost makes me feel envious of the people playing the role of homeless... a much simpler role to play in many ways even with its drawbacks. There is this one homeless schizophrenic guy that I often suspect has life figured out. That is almost the perfect role because then everyone leaves you alone.

It makes me wonder what conclusion I've come to in my own life order to play the roles I play. I guess any story has to have its roles to be played. Maybe I just don't like the story I'm in. When I'm blogging, I'm usually playing the role of the intellectual. It's a role I'm good at to an extent, but intellectuality can bring out the cynic in me. I suppose I could play the role of the person who has no opinion at all... except I'm too opinionated to attempt that role. I've tried many roles in my life. I've even tried to play the optimist a number of times, and I really suck at it. I'm almost attracted to the role of the Christian miserable sinner except that role doesn't seem like very much fun, and the dogma of the role of the righteous Christian would give me brain cramps.

I somewhat admire Ligotti in his adamant pessimism which almost feels like a stoic fatalism. His view seems so simple and straightforward. Ultimately, I don't understand such a view. I'm a spiritual person. One of the best roles I've found for myself is the spiritual seeker who never finds. It isn't always a perfectly satisfying part to play, but it keeps me occupied. As an endlessly questioning seeker, I feel some connection to Philip K. Dick. He definitely had restless mind syndrome.

Another aspect to PKD was that he had great interest in social roles. One of my favorite stories by him is his novel A Scanner Darkly. That story has a strong Gnostic theme. It's a bit dark in it's portrayal of society and relationships, but I oddly find it gives me a sense of hope or else something related to hope. The main character Arctor never gives up. He is confused and split, but he continually questions and in some ways sees more clearly than the other characters. Partly, he tries to step outside of the roles he finds himself in... even though he ends up stepping into other roles. No perspective gives him absolute clarity, but more significant is his nagging sense of doubt. In Arctor, I see something akin to my own seeking nature, my own seeking without knowing what I'm seeking. The seeker is just another role I suppose, but at least it isn't a mindless role. There is a sense in this that there is something more than the masks we wear. In Arctor's shifting perspectives, he at times nearly forgets all roles and a deeper aspect seems to emerge.

Arctor is very much a Christ-like figure. There is the dual nature, the sacrifice and suffering, the descent, the emergence of something new. The dual nature aspect is particularly compelling. Saviors tend to be dual natured in several ways. There is the well-known duality of God and man combined. However, saviors are unifiers of duality in general. Many savior figures combine human and animal features for instance. Another duality is that between good and evil personified as Jesus and Satan or Horus and Set. The relationship of the latter two is a really good example because they were even at times represented as a singular dual-natured god, Horus-Set.

What is interesting about Arctor is that he has a split personality such that one half of him is both spying on and looking out for his other half. Meanwhile, sweet little Donna is playing the role of Judas, but in a sense Arctor willingly plays into this betrayal by his past choices. Arctor is both outside and within the oppressive system, pretending to be a narc. Still, he holds something back from the drama of it all. Donna may think she knows the game, but she doesn't really know Arctor. Despite her larger perspective, she is more identified with the role she is playing than Arctor is. Most of the characters seem to be stuck in roles. Even though outwardly the story is about drug addiction, the story is really about social roles and social control, about how people get stuck in patterns of mind.

And beyond all of that, there is another message. Those who think they're in the know may not know as much as they think. Instead, at the bottom of loss of all certainty, one might discover something unexpected. It isn't nihilism for there is a different kind of certainty within the faith that allows one to survive the descent. There is some kind of balance in it however precarious it may be.

In real life, however, many people don't survive the descent. Staying within the confines of conviction is much safer. Although, how I see it is that such descents are part of a story, and I suspect we ultimately don't choose the stories we are in. I happen to be sympathetic to the story of Arctor, but I'm biased. Maybe ideally I should try to feel compassion for everyone in their respective stories. And maybe I should do many things. Compassion for fundies? I'll have to work on that.