The Melancholy of Resistance
by
by
George Szirtes (Translator)
The Normality Of Chaos
Paragraph-length sentences; chapter-like paragraphs, book-length chapters; and a very different kind of stream of consciousness constituted not by random events but by the intentions which are interrupted or thwarted by these events. The events are only noticed because that is precisely what they do. They disrupt routine, inhibit political ambition, prevent family union, prevent family dissolution, and frustrate announced national purpose.
This is the central theme of Melancholy, suffering. Everyone suffers the consequences of their desires. The universality of suffering depicted is worthy of Emil Cioran or Thomas Ligotti. Everyone is their own worst enemy, being driven mad by the desire for the world, particularly other people, to be other than it is. The nexus of these divergent desires is disaster, seemingly inescapable suffering. Inexplicably, the more they suffer, the more they commit to their desires.
In the midst of this suffering arrives a whale, billed by its circus attendants as The Biggest Whale In The World. The whale - or its carcass - is accompanied by “signs and omens,” the inexplicable events that are so disconcerting and threaten the disintegration of each individual world of desire. The whale also suffers, more acutely than any other creature since it is caged in a steel aquarium into which its ‘followers’ have consigned it. The whale suffers, in other words, for the desires of others.
Whether the whale refers to the Buddha or to Christ - perhaps to both - or to other suffering gods of myth and legend is open to interpretation. What is relevant to the story is that it is a symbol of the train-wreck of not human nature but rather human civilisation as the diversity of ambitions, goals, ideals, and aspirations intersect. The remedy for this condition is not to be found even in religion, worship of the whale, since such devotion merely adds to the sum total of diverse desires... as well as the death of the whale.
In the end, some desires are furthered, others are not. But this is temporary. There is no equilibrium of desire, just arbitrary points from which to expose its persistence. Resistance is not just futile, it also adds to the problem. Hence the associated feeling of anxious sadness.
Postscript: Melancholy might be considered as a worked-out literary example of the Impossibility Theorem formulated by the economist Kenneth Arrow in 1950. According to this theorem, any situation requiring group consensus among people with even slightly different utility functions (that is, desires) will result in a further situation which all can temporarily accept but which none want. See here for further elucidation: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Paragraph-length sentences; chapter-like paragraphs, book-length chapters; and a very different kind of stream of consciousness constituted not by random events but by the intentions which are interrupted or thwarted by these events. The events are only noticed because that is precisely what they do. They disrupt routine, inhibit political ambition, prevent family union, prevent family dissolution, and frustrate announced national purpose.
This is the central theme of Melancholy, suffering. Everyone suffers the consequences of their desires. The universality of suffering depicted is worthy of Emil Cioran or Thomas Ligotti. Everyone is their own worst enemy, being driven mad by the desire for the world, particularly other people, to be other than it is. The nexus of these divergent desires is disaster, seemingly inescapable suffering. Inexplicably, the more they suffer, the more they commit to their desires.
In the midst of this suffering arrives a whale, billed by its circus attendants as The Biggest Whale In The World. The whale - or its carcass - is accompanied by “signs and omens,” the inexplicable events that are so disconcerting and threaten the disintegration of each individual world of desire. The whale also suffers, more acutely than any other creature since it is caged in a steel aquarium into which its ‘followers’ have consigned it. The whale suffers, in other words, for the desires of others.
Whether the whale refers to the Buddha or to Christ - perhaps to both - or to other suffering gods of myth and legend is open to interpretation. What is relevant to the story is that it is a symbol of the train-wreck of not human nature but rather human civilisation as the diversity of ambitions, goals, ideals, and aspirations intersect. The remedy for this condition is not to be found even in religion, worship of the whale, since such devotion merely adds to the sum total of diverse desires... as well as the death of the whale.
In the end, some desires are furthered, others are not. But this is temporary. There is no equilibrium of desire, just arbitrary points from which to expose its persistence. Resistance is not just futile, it also adds to the problem. Hence the associated feeling of anxious sadness.
Postscript: Melancholy might be considered as a worked-out literary example of the Impossibility Theorem formulated by the economist Kenneth Arrow in 1950. According to this theorem, any situation requiring group consensus among people with even slightly different utility functions (that is, desires) will result in a further situation which all can temporarily accept but which none want. See here for further elucidation: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ July 12, 2020
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