What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

God Sustains
(But not in a good way)

There are two kinds of people in the world: psychotics and neurotics. Psychotics are obsessed with changing others; neurotics with changing themselves. I myself am hopelessly neurotic; as, I suspect most people who are attracted to this book. We like reading about the interactions of psychotics and neurotics. It gives us a measure of comfort to know that we are not alone, that others have even more profound neuroses that we have. Our sympathy for their suffering is also amplified by our resentment about the psychopaths who are the cause of such suffering. Reading becomes a kind of neurotic therapy for neurotics.

Psychotics come in a variety of forms but share the ambition to exploit the world in ways passed on to them by psychotic parents, charlatans, voices, spirits, Republicans, or God. Psychotics want and use power as a matter of entitled right. Neurotics are also a variable lot but generally feel that they are defective in some way - genetically, perhaps as a matter of education or background, or psychologically if they feel they aren’t appreciated sufficiently, or even in terms of location if their place in the world is dangerous or merely uncomfortable.

It is mostly psychotics who run things and take advantage of the neurotics who want some form of change in themselves. Sometimes any change at all is welcomed by the neurotics. And neurotics are willing to pay almost anything to get. Or more accurately, to pay for the hope that things will change for the better, that their deficiencies will be compensated, that they will be transported either spiritually or physically to some other place. In short, that they will find happiness.

One of the strangest aspects of the relationships between psychotics and neurotics is that in the absence of psychotics, any group of neurotics will generate their own psychotics. They’re the ones who want to “do things properly.” One character in the novel summarises the situation nicely: “It amazed him, how much chaos people can put up with, so long as what needs doing gets done.” One thing neurotics have is an excess of opinion. So they can’t get much done. This allows neurotics to play neurotics off against one another, and even to organise neurotics to oppress other bands of neurotics also, of course, led by psychotics. Neurotics look to psychotics to correct the wrongs of other psychotics. This does not reduce the quantum of suffering but it does allow everyone to maintain their relative roles in life.

People smugglers are psychotics. So are most businessmen, politicians, and others who want power. Their victims are largely neurotics, who know what psychotics do, how they make their living through exploiting neurotics. Yet they throw themselves into the diabolical relationship like emigrants paying well-known crooks for transport on the high seas to some unspecified destination. Neurosis will not be denied even in the face of likely death by drowning. Children being conned in such a way is understandable. But adults? One thinks of other examples of this strange behaviour - young men signing up for the armed services and police, consuming high-sugar soft-drinks or high-salt burgers because they are what the Pepsi Generation does or because it will Give You Giggles, or voting for an arch-psychotic like Donald Trump. The list is endless really. Psychotics are bullies; neurotics are mugs. The dipole seems baked in to human society.

There is an equilibrium, therefore, in the eco-system of psychotics and neurotics. They thrive on one another. Sometimes psychotics form implicit alliances (the people smugglers and the border patrol guards who both oppress neurotic emigrants). Sometimes neurotics form alliances to combat psychotic regimes (thus necessarily becoming psychotic themselves like antifa and any number of ‘cancel culture’ groups). The relationship between psychotics and neurotics seems stable throughout history and across cultures. It appears as almost a divine law that each group maintain its role to the benefit of the whole. Or as many philosophers and one of the doomed characters in Omar El Akkad’s novel has it “God sustains.”

And obviously God does exactly that - in a manner remarkably like what he did for William Golding’s Pincher Martin, another neurotic seafarer.

Postscript: I have been discussing my comments with another GR reader privately. I think some clarifications are necessary: First, not all psychotics are psychopaths, who may be classed as extreme psychotics. But we are all on the spectrum of mental illness. Trying to escape from our condition by turning to psychopathy (the usual route) is a losing strategy. It pushes us more to the extreme of mental illness. I was reminded by my correspondent that the idea of the American abolitionist’s to the effect that “If one of us is unfree, all are slaves,” applies to our human condition in general. The hypothesis, not unique to me of course, is that placing oneself at the service of those even more neurotic than oneself is the only effective therapy for improving our position on the spectrum, in fact for moving the whole spectrum up a notch toward sanity. To paraphrase the abolitionists: “Either we all get a bit better or none of us do.”

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