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June 2009

Is It Better to Follow Your Dreams or to Awaken from Them?

by Dr. Mark Dillof June 27, 2009October 12, 2018

“Life is a dream.” — Calderon

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.” — James Joyce

Susan Boyle chose the perfect song for her Cinderella-like debut, on “Britain’s Got Talent.” Her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream,” from the musical “Les Misérables,” instantly made her a symbol of hope for those longing to fulfill their dreams. “Never forsake your dreams” is the same message that has also launched the careers of thousands of motivational speakers, as well as a great many self-help books. The fact that she is frumpy looking and middle aged adds to the narrative of the ugly ducking making good.

But what exactly is the dreamlike image of happiness that Ms. Boyle evoked? What image of the good life did she conjure up? For some, it evokes the American dream of launching a successful business, of being one’s own boss, of having only oneself to answer to. For the aspiring singer, actor, artist, or writer, it evokes the hope that the world will recognize one’s artistry. There are many other possible dreams.

In truth, entrepreneurs have to answer to demanding customers, and very often to one’s partners, stockholders, board of directors, banker, accountant, lawyer, government regulators, suppliers, competitors, family members, etc. And those pursuing artistic endeavors often have to labor for years, if not all their life, at their day job, while working on one’s craft and auditioning during afterhours. But such negativities are not part of the dream. They’re the morning hangover after one starts awakening from the dream. All the same, there’s much to be said for having the courage to take risks, and of striving to improve our lot in life.

For many people, though, Susan Boyle’s famous performance does not evoke the American dream of hard work and achievement, but the Cinderella-like dream of simply being discovered, and the fortune and fame that will then follow. In point of fact, Susan Boyle labored hard at her craft, in obscurity, for many years, but that fact tends to be forgotten. As a way of getting clearer on the dream her song evoked, we may ask whether or not the good life depends on success, and, if so, what sort of success?

It’s been often said that a man is successful if he gets to do what loves doing. Is that true in the case of Susan Boyle? Prior to her meteoric rise to stardom, she did plenty of singing in her village in Scotland, both for her church and for various clubs. Apparently, that was not sufficient, or else she would not have auditioned for Simon Crowell’s TV show. What was lacking was fortune and world fame.

Here, again, there is certainly nothing objectionable with seeking to be well-known, but there is something more to the dream of fortune and fame. At its heart is the belief that the money and universal adulation will free us from the suffering intrinsic to the human condition. We need not have to deal with a demanding boss and difficult co-workers, nor need we wait on lines, nor live next to unpleasant neighbors, nor have to deal with any of the kicks and pricks to which most people find themselves subject. Implicit is the assumption that the winner of the singing competition will be allowed to go free, while the losers will be condemned to return to a wretched lives as wage slaves, having to defer their dream for another occasion.

What if Ms. Boyle had gone through life never having been discovered by the talent scout Simon Cowell? Does that mean that her life would have been a sad disappointment, if not a tragic failure? Would she have been akin to the protagonist of Hardy’s novel “Jude the Obscure”? If something doesn’t seem right with this picture, it’s because the dream of fame is a shallow one.

In point of fact, Susan the famous does not seem a whit happier than had been Susan the obscure. If anything she seems to have become quite miserable, exhausted, and suffering from a nervous breakdown. Then, again, all this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the lives of many of the most popular singers, from Janis Joplin to Jim Morrison, from Elvis to Michael Jackson.

Perhaps, then, the problem lies with our dreams. In Mark Twain’s unfinished story “The Mysterious Stranger,” the sagacious Satan advises mankind to “Dream other dreams, and better!” Offhand, that seems like sound advice. Certainly, on the face of it, some dreams seem better than other dreams. After all, few would choose the life of poverty to the life of affluence. And there is much to be said for the dream of marriage and family. Furthermore, some dreams are more elevating than other dreams. The dream of serving God, by helping humanity, as did Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa, is a spiritually more uplifting dream than that of the dream of achieving fortune and fame. Then there are the imaginative dreams evoked by science fiction writers and the transcendent dreams of those exploring the higher reaches of human potential.

But, on the deepest level, every dream is still a dream. As an old song says, “It’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory.” Here, again, there is much to be said for that dream, but, to quote the words from yet another song, “Is that all there is?” Is there another side to this life? We have elsewhere referred to the conservation of suffering principle. It states that our suffering will be equal no matter what our dream may be. The particular form that suffering takes will change but the quantity of suffering remains the same. That is why it is always foolish to envy the lives of other people.

What, then, is the alternative to dreaming? It’s certainly not “shrinking,” i.e., a dreary acceptance of a mundane life. The real alternative is waking-up. That life is essentially a dream and that we can awaken from it is the perennial wisdom of the ages. For example, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is about leaving the cave of dreams. (The popular film “The Matrix” has that same theme. Similarly, the notion of awakening from a long dream lies at heart of Eastern religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism.

The purpose of these short essays, or blog posts, has been to examine the warp and woof of this dream we call life, with the intent of awakening from it. Bearing all this in mind, let us hope that Ms. Boyle, comes to her senses and finds a new song to sing, perhaps one with a title like “I Awoke from a Dream.”

June 27, 2009October 12, 2018 0 comment

Everyday Symbolism Mysteries

Nuts are for Anarchists, Organic Foods for Fascists…

by Dr. Mark Dillof June 25, 2009January 16, 2019

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

Nuts are for Anarchists, Organic Foods for Fascists…

When is a hamburer not a hamburger? When the activity of eating is influenced by a host of complex concerns, from emotional needs to philosophical worldviews. For example, if we are religious, we might say grace before a meal, obey kosher laws, or fast. Aesthetic values also influence what and how we eat, which is why there is an art of cooking. But what interests us here are not the obvious social and cultural aspects of food, but the hidden meanings behind our choice of any particular food. For it is these hidden meanings that we are really seeking to consume.

Some “Ruminations” on the Secret Meaning of Food

The key to the psychology of eating lies in the equation “you are what you eat. For example, if we feel frustrated, we might wish to consume crunchy foods, such as nuts or potato chips. Crunchy foods are symbolic of the hard, rigid, limiting and confining structures of society. Our destruction of the nuts is, therefore, a symbolic victory over these confining social and political structures.

Of course, very few people who eat potato chips are aware of their anarchistic longings, at least on a symbolic level. They might claim “Well, potato chips just taste good.” Such denials of deeper meanings derive from: 1. Lack of introspection, 2. The false claim that one’s actions — including one’s food choices — are made solely on rational grounds. 3. Fear of life’s depths. We trust the reader does not suffer from these intellectual maladies or else what follows may be a bit hard to digest.

The desire for psychological wholeness is another fundamental need. That would explain the desire for wholegrain foods. Thus, if you want wholeness in your life, you must eat whole foods. Indeed, there a major food chain called “Whole Foods,” that caters to this unconscious demand. It is absurd, though, to think that eating whole foods will make us whole people. But, in lieu of any other answer to the question of how to be a whole person, we turn to symbolic solutions.

The quantity of food is also symbolically important. It has been said that the reason why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins is that it is essentially an effort to be God, by symbolically consuming the entire world. But, no matter how much we shovel into our stomach, the inner void still remains. Being filled full cannot be a successful surrogate for being fulfilled.

By contrast, the anorexic seeks to avoid the fault involved with eating by refusing to eat. The vegetarian, not quite as extreme, does eat, but only vegetables. The fault, of which we speak, involves the fact that eating involves a killing of some sort. Even if we were not the one’s who hunted or slaughtered the animals, the act of killing is still there psychologically. Vegetarianism, on the face of it, is motivated by compassion. And there are certainly vegetarians for whom compassion is the only motivation. But most vegetarians are driven by a certain quasi-moral perfectionism and hubris. After all, the god of Judeo-Christian give His blessing to man, to eat animals. Even those who have not read the Bible or who are declared atheists still share in what Jung called the “Collective Unconscious.” A vegetarian is, therefore, claiming to be morally superior to God.

The Mystique of the Organic and Fascism

What are we to make of the interest, that many people have, in organic foods? It is an expression of something much larger. The interest in the organic, the holistic, and the natural expresses a certain vision of life, along with a concomitant critique of the modern world. This criticism is that those living today have become separated, or alienated, from nature and its primal rhythms. An allied criticism is that the world has become too mechanized. What comes to mind, in such criticisms, is that period in cultural history, occurring in the Nineteenth Century, known as romanticism.

But there was another movement, emerging in the early part of the Twentieth Century, that also gloried the organic the holistic, and the natural. That movement, which was founded by the Italian dictator Benita Mussolini, was fascism. Fascists are critical of traditional Western liberalism and individualism, for they contend that it alienates us not just from nature, but from society, state, and nation, which fascists contend are more real than the individual. Fascism is, therefore a form of totalitarianism. What is key here is that the totalitarians, of all stripes, seek to appeal to our need for unity, even at the price of negating our individuality and freedom. Unity is to be found by joining together with others, in various social projects, created by the state.

Like Romanticism, fascism is thoroughly anti-intellectual. It regards a life of feelings as more authentic and better than a life of thought. Fascists view the modern world as fallen, or decadent. They see it as a fall from a state of purity, wholeness, and goodness that supposedly once existed in the world. But whereas Romantics mostly yearn for Paradise lost, fascists often have a political program for national revival.

Are those captivated by the mystique of the organic or holistic fascists? Jonah Goldberg, in his fascinating book “Liberal Fascism,” (Doubleday 2007), suggests that they are. But he points out that fascism is not a synonym for evil, even though the Twentieth Century produced some pretty evil fascists. Furthermore, Goldberg finds contemporary liberalism is thoroughly fascistic. He offers, as an example, Hillary Clinton’s book “It Takes a Village.” She advocates that the state take over the task of childrearing, from what has traditionally been the job of parents. The “nanny state” is a thoroughly fascistic notion.

In any case, the appeal of organic foods is certainly not just about health. It is about losing the burdensome sense of being a separate individual, alienated from both nature and from other people. Organic broccoli and carrots, for example are therefore not just broccoli and carrots. In consuming them, a person is symbolically consuming unity with the world and, as such, becoming a whole person. If only it was so easy, but it isn’t, for after the meal we remain just as alienated.

The Zen of Eating
It is truly amazing that eating…

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June 25, 2009January 16, 2019 2 comments

Mysteries Practices

The Transformative Power of Doing the Opposite

by Dr. Mark Dillof June 18, 2009October 12, 2018

written by Dr. Mark Dillof

The Transformative Power of Doing the Opposite

“The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority, have always done just the opposite.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

“If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” — Jerry Seinfeld

There is a classic episode of Seinfeld, in which George — in despair over the never-ending series of failures that constitutes his existence — tells Jerry and Elaine that since everything he does is invariably the wrong thing to do, that he will do the opposite. Thus, when the waitress arrives at their table, George decides to break with custom. Instead of ordering a tuna salad sandwich with coffee, he orders a chicken salad sandwich with tea.

George then sees an attractive woman sitting alone at the lunch counter. The usual thing he does, owing to a lack of confidence, is nothing. But, with the encouragement of Jerry, George gets up from the table and approaches her. George initiates a conversation with the woman. Here, too, he does the opposite; instead of trying to impress her with his usual blarney, George bluntly tells her the truth: “Hi I’m George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.” The woman, Victoria, finds George’s bold honesty refreshing and appealing. She becomes romantically involved with him, and then arranges an interview for George with her uncle, who works for the Yankees. Her uncle then introduces George to George Steinbrenner, who owns the Yankees. George then does the opposite of what anyone else would do at an interview: instead of fawning over Steinbrenner or at least being polite, he criticizes him for mismanaging the Yankees. Steinbrenner immediately hires him, and George gets his dream job.

Here is a link to the episode

Doing the opposite has completely transformed George’s life, both inwardly and outwardly. The amazing thing is that it all began by ordering chicken salad and tea instead of tuna salad and coffee. Can a seemingly trivial change really precipitate major changes in a person’s life? It often can, if we consider that all of our interests, desires, activities, and conflicts are linked together, in an invisible chain, in ways that we do not realize. For example, that George eats tuna salad everyday for lunch is not insignificant. On the contrary, it is intrinsic to who he is as a person and to his present struggles and conflicts. (I wont venture into what tuna salad might have meant for George psychologically, since he is a fictional character. But the episode rings true enough to actual life.) In any case, when a person changes one thing in his life, it breaks the chains of habit such that everything else — big things, like social relations and career prospects — can also undergo a transmutation. Here, then, in the words of the I-Ching, is the transforming power of the small.

In a prior blog essay, we soberly explored the binding power of fate, i.e., the fixity of our character, or personality, to determine our life possibilities. Can the leveraging power of a seemingly small changes free us from our fate? The prospect of inner freedom is intoxicating! But, there is a catch: making a small change can often be immensely difficult. That is because little things often symbolize really big things. For example, giving up a single scoop of chocolate ice-cream can symbolize the beginning of a life of self-renunciation. Certainly, a seemingly trivial change can evoke the fear of the unknown. We might, for example, decide to take a walk down a different street, but such as seemingly minor change can symbolize setting out in a new life direction.

Not all minor changes will lead to major life transformations, but most can still have a significant, if less dramatic, effect. A lot depends upon the ripeness of a person, his or her readiness for change. Such ripeness is a function of despair, the realization that one’s current mode of existence is hopeless, and cannot bring one happiness and fulfillment. Despair, as Kierkegaard knew so well, is the doorway to a new life. As to whether or not we enter the door is, of course, another story.

There is another, somewhat related, phenomenon that we should consider. It can sometimes happen that we do change in some significant way, but don’t realize it. Then, one day, we are surprised to discover that we no longer wish to do what we had always been doing. We might find, for example, that we suddenly have no interest in drinking a peach brandy, but would rather have a scotch on the rocks. Or, perhaps, we look in the mirror and, for the first time, feel that the hairstyle that we have had for many years no longer seems appropriate. These little things are often indicative of big changes.

Albert Camus wrote that “Great ideas… come into the world as gently as doves.” As such, they often enter unnoticed. The same is true of the great changes that can occur in one’s character. When a major shift occurs, it often enters “as gently as doves.” Of course, what led up to the change was the alchemy of insight. I.E., insight gradually illuminates our life experiences. Then, one day, a tipping-point is reached — we now know too much to be the same person — and the change occurs.

The thing to do, then, is to take an inventory of all one’s doings in the world, in all domains — from food preferences to one’s manner of dress, from how one sits, stands, and walks to the words or expressions one uses in conversation. After completing this inventory, one should follow George Costanza’s example and do the opposite of what one is wont to do. If, for example, one wears a knit shirt, one should then switch to button-downs, and vice versa. If one avoids striking up conversations with strangers, one should initiate conversations with strangers. If one frequents the ballpark, one should frequent the opera, or vice versa.

After his strategy proves successful, George says to Jerry and Elaine: “And it’s all happening because I’m completely ignoring every urge to common sense and good judgement I’ve ever had. This is no longer some crazy notion. Elaine, Jerry, this is my religion.” But we must beware, for here is where…