Epilogue:
AN INVISIBLE SUN
"
Life is a pure flame, and we live by invisible sun within
us. "
Sir Thomas Brown, 1658
We’re now at the end of the spins cycle. I began the Deadly
Spins series with gluttony, by doing some investigative
research on the seafood buffet at the MGM Grand Hotel in
Las Vegas. For lust, friends and I navigated the aisles of
vibrators and lotions at the Everything About Sex Show at
the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre. For sloth, I
recalled sitting at home, staring at the floor for hours at
a stretch, during a struggle with depression. Greed had me
shaking my head at the infantile excesses of CEOs and other
assorted masters of the universe. I finished on pride,
profiling a nameless acquaintance with a Napoleon complex,
who gave me the finger in stereo when I failed to recall a
television series he was producing. I can’t say all of it
was giddy fun; but I can say it was instructive.
Superbia,
ira, invidia, avaritia, acedia, gula, luxuria:
Pope
Gregory compiled the list of deadly sins 1400 years ago.
Pride, or superbia in Latin, heads the list, followed by
envy, anger, avarice and sloth. These are all sins of the
spirit, the mind, the soul: the true or higher self.
Gluttony, or gula in Latin, is near the end, next to lust.
These are the sins of the flesh.
Throughout this series I have argued that we've spun the
medieval concept of the seven deadly sins, by default
rather than by design, into something new and psychically
seismic. What began as a form of social control built on
self-denial has been inverted into a form of social control
built on self-absorption.
Envy, anger, greed, lust and gluttony all move product and
services, as does pride, in its latest incarnation as "high
self esteem." Even sloth, in its original sense that the
church fathers meant, a torpor of the soul, has found a
new, market-friendly form as clinical depression.
We live in a world of marvels; of just-in-time inventory,
and globe-girdling communications systems that help mediate
a lifestyle of great comfort and enjoyment for a great many
of us. Never before have so many been exposed to so many
life-affirming possibilities in the arts and sciences. To
deny the positive aspects of hypercapitalism would be
one-sided and simplistic. Yet as Buddhists say, all things
have both a hellish and heavenly aspect. The flip side of a
robust, high-tech economy is a regime of time-gobbling,
unrewarding work for a great many of us, along with
shrinking community. Weakened by the system, we risk
allowing it to sicken us further into cynicism, by
internalizing the false gods of competition and capital.
Greed, anger, and all the other so-called sins are normal
human emotions. They have always been with us, and always
will; and surely such feelings are, to a certain degree,
unavoidable and perhaps even necessary. The difference
today is the messaging, both overt and covert, that these
are somehow laudable states of mind. The paramount
signature of the Deadly Spins is separation. They separate
the individual from others, the world, and one's own inner
resources. They promote a worldview that is grasping,
fragmented, fearful and perpetually dissatisfied. Greed,
anger and all the other spins tend to shrink the world to
the boundaries of the "skin-encapsulated ego." This mindset
threatens the very species it has infected like a spiritual
bacillus, and is pushing the biosphere to its limits. The
ideal is to keep the citizen-consumer always looking to the
market for solutions to his or her discontent; the
monstrous nature of consumerism can make monsters of those
it touches.
In bringing this series to a close, a story of one
particular "monster" comes to mind. The life of John
Merrick has much to tell us of how the human spirit can
rise above circumstance, and the demands and commands of
the market.
One day in 1884, Dr. William Treves, a lecturer in anatomy
at London University Hospital, crossed the street from
work. He noticed a gaudily painted sign above a
recently-vacated greengrocer shop, announcing a showing of
The Elephant Man inside. Intrigued, Treves entered, and
gave a few pence to the showman at the desk, who rose and
casually swept aside a curtain in the back of the room.
In the faint blue glow of the gaslight, Treves witnessed a
figure crouching on a stool, covered by a worn brown
blanket. The figure sat before a brick warmed by a Bunsen
burner, huddled close for warmth. The showman yelled "stand
up!" as if commanding a dog. The figure slowly rose to his
feet, dropping the blanket to its feet.
The anatomist was horrified by the sight. A few lank hairs
were draped over the man's massive skull. A mass of bone
projected from his mouth, turning the upper lip inside out
and making of the mouth a "mere slobbering aperture." (In
the painting outside of The Elephant Man in the storefront,
this growth had been portrayed to appear to be a
rudimentary tusk.) "The nose was merely a lump of flesh
only recognizable as a nose from its position," Treves
wrote 20 years later of his first meeting with John
Merrick. "The face was no more capable of expression than a
block of gnarled wood." The body was even more appalling,
with huge sacks of cauliflower-like flesh hanging off
Merrick's trunk and appendages.
His right arm was a disfigured stump, with the tuberous,
root-like fingers giving his hand the appearance of a
"radish." The other arm was a remarkable contrast in its
normalcy. Treves remarked on its delicacy and fine skin,
and Merrick's "refined hand." It was the one outward sign
of his fundamental humanity. Yet his speech was almost
unintelligible, and Treves imagined him devoid of reason or
any deep emotion. From the showman he learned that The
Elephant Man was English, aged 20, and went by the name
John Merrick. As a doctor, Treves recognized the
monstrosity represented some acute medical condition, what
today we call neurofibromatosis. He arranged with the
showman to interview the "strange exhibit" in his examining
room at London University Hospital.
Merrick showed up a few days later, a shambling figure with
a walking cane, disguised with a cloak and an enormous
peaked hat with a curtain draping his face. The elephant
man was "shy, confused, not a little frightened and
evidently much cowed," wrote Treves. The doctor determined
through careful listening to his garbled speech some of the
details of Merrick's life. "Here was a man in the heyday of
youth who was so vilely deformed that everyone he met
confronted him with a look of horror and disgust." Shunned
like a leper and housed like a wild beast, the young man
"was taken about the country to be exhibited as a
monstrosity and an object of loathing."
At the age of 20, Merrick had no plans to look back upon or
a future to look forward to. "There was nothing in front of
him but a vista of caravans creeping along a road, of rows
of glowing show tents and of circles with staring eyes,
with, at the end, the spectacle of a broken man in
an…infirmary."
After the examination, Merrick returned to his abode across
the street. The next time Treves returned for a visit, the
display, the showman, and Merrick were gone, shunted along
by authorities who had determined the show offensive to
public order and decency. That might have been the doctor's
final encounter with The Elephant Man, had not Merrick and
his promoter experienced a similar fate with police in
Belgium. The promoter, tiring of the constant harassment
from officials, gave his former meal ticket just enough
money to get back to London. There police picked him up off
the streets, and delivered him to London Hospital. Merrick,
fortuitously, still had the business card of Dr. Treves,
who was immediately contacted.
Treves, arriving to rescue the frightened Merrick, realized
he couldn't turn this pathetic creature out into the world
again. By publicizing his case in the local papers, the
doctor gathered enough funding for permanent lodging at the
hospital, in two unoccupied rooms overlooking a courtyard.
Merrick, who had been on the move for much of his life,
couldn't believe his great good luck, and for weeks after
asked the doctor repeatedly when he would be relocated to
less agreeable quarters. (His fondest wish was that it be
an asylum for the blind, so no other resident could see
him.)
As he got to know his new friend better, Treves came to
understand that Merrick was an eager conversationalist. He
described his young friend as "a being with the brain of a
man, the fancies of a youth and the imagination of a
child." A surprisingly good artist, he was also a
voluminous reader who wrote with flair. The permanent
resident of London Hospital "possessed an acute sensibility
and – worse than all – a romantic imagination, that I
realized was the overwhelming tragedy of his life."
One day the doctor asked a personal friend, a young and
pretty widow, to visit Merrick, wish him good morning and
shake his hand. She agreed, but the effect on the young man
was not quite what the doctor expected. "As she let go of
his hand he bent his head to his knees and sobbed until I
thought he would never cease." The interview was over. John
later told him that this was the first woman other than his
mother who had ever smiled at him, and the first woman to
ever shake his hand. "From this the transformation of
Merrick commenced and he began to change, little by little,
from a hunted thing into a man."
So what does this have to do with the Deadly Spins?
Mid-Victorian London did not have our contemporary glut of
public relations, advertising and media. There were no
horror movies or video games, no high-tech passion plays
like The Apprentice or Fear Factor. There were no monstrous
parables of beastliness and transformation like Extreme
Makeover or The Swan. Accidents happened then as now, but
bloody collisions between carriages and rag carts weren't
fastidiously recorded for dinnertime viewing. Instead of
such amusements, there were circuses and sideshows. In this
sense, The Elephant Man in London's Mile End was, in
miniature, a predecessor of some our contemporary
diversions and scare schemes: he was a congenital monster
without a tabloid, a fright without a pharmaceutical
campaign, a reality without the television.
Merrick was a terrorist of the mid-Victorian visual
imagination, and a template for the paying voyeur's Shadow.
Given his years on display, and the cruelty visited upon
him, Treves found it a wonder that Merrick didn't end up a
"spiteful and malignant misanthrope, swollen with venom and
filled with venom for his fellow-men." The doctor never
heard him speak badly of his captors or express regret over
his circumstance. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who
brought Treves and Merrick back to life in his 1971
book The
Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity,
puts it
succinctly. "The truth seems to be that in most ways he
achieved the kind of mental health that defies most human
beings, the ability to love, to work and to play."
In Montagu's reexamination of Treves' account, he counters
the doctor's implicit belief that Merrick was taken from
his mother in infancy. Citing his ability to read and
write, including his fond reminiscence of his mother,
Montagu argued that he had been on display only from the
age of 12 to 20. During that time, the anthropologist
reasoned, Merrick's recollection of his mother's love had
sustained him throughout his years of isolation and
indignity.
Merrick received many well-bred visitors in his apartment,
who gave him books and gifts. He had portraits of many of
his well-dressed, attractive callers upon his settee,
including Queen Alexandra, Princess of Wales. Enlisting the
aid of the wife of a famous actor, the doctor once arranged
for Merrick to visit the theatre, by having him carefully
concealed from the rest of the crowd by a curtained
proscenium. The spectacle on stage left him speechless;
Treves heard his companion gasping and panting in
excitement, at "a vision almost beyond his comprehension."
Perhaps the greatest day in his life came when wealthy
visitors arranged for him to spend a weekend on their large
country estate, free from prying eyes. For a good portion
of his life, Merrick's view of the world was through a
peephole in a showman's cart. Now he was "alone in a land
of wonders," wrote Treves, with "the breath of the country
passing over him like a healing wind."
"The Merrick who had once crouched terrified in the filthy
shadows of a Mile End shop was now sitting in the sun, in a
clearing among the trees, arranging a bunch of violets he
had gathered."
The doctor noted that his friend now appeared to be one of
the most contented beings he had ever been fortunate enough
to meet. "More than once he said to me, 'I am happy every
hour of the day.' " Certainly Merrick's ecstatic feeling
was in no small part due to his incredible reversal of
fortune; but it seems that this boundless happiness drew
upon something already deep within him. All it required was
someone like Treves to bring an ember, previously tended by
his mother, back into flame.
Even though he was now treated as a human being, John
Merrick still keenly sensed the great gap between himself
and others. More than once he had expressed his wish to
sleep like normal people. The Elephant Man never slept
recumbent but had always tucked himself into a fetal
position and dozed sitting up, with the weight of the head
supported by his knees. One night, Treves later surmised,
he must have decided to attempt the experiment. Nurses
found the young man dead the next morning. His neck had
apparently snapped from the enormous weight of his head, as
he attempted to lay back on his pillow. He was 26 years
old. Shuttered up in darkness for much of his life, his
human encounters limited to the gasps and jeers of
horrified spectators, John Merrick very likely saw no way
out of his situation. (He told Treves what he looked
forward to most during his time on display was crawling
away and hiding). He didn't have the luxury of grasping
for, or holding onto, attachments. He didn't have the
option of what we now call "status anxiety," or any other
urbane malady of the soul. There was no direction for
Merrick to go other than inward.
There is tragedy in his story, but sublimity, too –
especially when we recall the meaning of sublime: "a
terrible beauty." Human transformation is often only
achieved with some effort, and often at a terrible price.
The situation is paradoxical. Consider the situation today,
when so many healthy, well-educated people in the Western
world are so thoroughly dissatisfied, and looking for
personal liberty through a pill, a portfolio, a water view,
bottle, lottery ticket, sports team, or flag. Yet their
opportunities for love, for personal and professional
reward, for inner transformation, are much closer at hand
than anything Merrick could have ever hoped for. That is
nothing if not paradoxical.
Every day, in innumerable, carefully researched ways, the
market tries to convince us of our limitations, and prey on
our fears. This is accomplished by appealing to envy,
greed, anger and the other deadly spins – all to keep us
running like rats on the wheel of market relations, chasing
the "frozen desire" of money. The greatest irony is that we
have built this wheel ourselves, and take turns playing
captives and guards in a virtual prison of our own making.
This explains why television viewing in North America has
always been free. Because, you the citizen-consumer, or
rather a demographic of which you are a part, has been
presold to advertisers. YOU are the product, and YOU are on
display. The monitoring may be more subtle than a Mile End
mid-Victorian freak show, but that only makes the process
all the more insidious. The ideal consumer is the one alone
in the dark, in front of a television or computer monitor,
watching, paying, ordering, and suspended in a purgatory of
passing sensation and vague unease. One might speculate
that the final dream of the high-surveillance,
database-driven world of hypercapitalism is to turn us all
into distorted, isolated specimens. Elephant folk.
In spite of this, the wonder isn't that many of us have
been led to believe we are freaks – by appearance, status,
or nature. It's a wonder that so many of us have not. There
is a rubbery resiliency to the human spirit that snaps back
from the hectoring message that we are fearful, finite
beings, only in it for ourselves.
John Merrick looks out at us from old daguerreotypes and
medical etchings, his face a gnarled mass in which we can
read no recognizable emotion. But that face whispers
something to us about the nature of the human spirit. In
his time alone, he had no formal education, no media, and
no clever arts of distraction. Cast out of human society
and made into an object of revulsion, all he had left was
what remains after the normal touchstones of
self-definition are removed. With little more than a memory
of his mother's love, Merrick connected to something that
sustained him for his remaining time on earth. Montagu
believed that Merrick's suffering, "like a cleansing fire,
seems to have brought him nearer to that human condition in
which all that are essentials of life having fallen away,
only the essential goodness of man remained."
Merrick's friend and saviour, William Treves, summed it up
best in the final words in his monograph. "As a specimen of
humanity, Merrick was ignoble and repulsive; but the spirit
of Merrick, if it could be seen in the form of the living,
would assume the figure of an upstanding and heroic man,
smooth browed and clean of limb, with eyes that flashed of
undaunted courage." It was a wonderful disguise.
We cannot control the world, but like John Merrick, we have
some control over our response to it. His story was simply
an extreme variant of a common human experience. For all
the joy of all living, we are born into bodies subject to
all sorts of disorders and diseases, with minds and hearts
that can imagine or experience all manner of hells.
Meditating on our fates, we may grow to wonder what purpose
all our struggling accomplishes, when it's all over in the
wink of an eye. But something keeps us going regardless –
whether we are happy by nature or otherwise – and pushes to
seek something deeper than impermanent shadows. I suspect
this is something more than the brute will to live, or
"selfish genes." The joy of living is its own reward, but
that joy draws from a deep well.
Underneath the places we've been hurt, or hurt ourselves
and others, past the memories of failure and
disappointment, the "thousand shocks that flesh is heir
to," and all the phantom fears pushed at us and on us, down
at the foundations of our being, there is not darkness, but
light. This light is the healing force that burns up
illusions and unites us with fellow beings. It lives in a
quiet place beyond the screaming headlines of our twilight
world, and away from the din of the market – the land of
shadows where the beautiful John Merrick was once paraded.
Geoff Olson