Pubdate: Thu, 13 Oct 2005
Source: Republic, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 The Republic
Contact:  http://republic-news.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3518
Author: Michael Nenonen

ECSTASY AND THE TRAPS OF BEAUTY

A Friend Falls Prey To Ecstasy And May Not Escape Its Seductive Embrace

A friend recently told me that he'd tried Ecstasy--and, of course, 
whatever other unadvertised chemicals the pill was cut with. Having 
never previously used anything harder than pot, he wasn't prepared 
for the splendour he was so suddenly exposed to. He spoke reverently 
of the glory he witnessed, and bemoaned the personal inadequacies the 
drug revealed.

Immersed in radiance, the emotional wounds inflicted by a life of 
hardship were no longer invisible to his inner eye, and he despaired 
of ever healing them. He said he longed to free himself from the 
past, from the identity he'd come to despise over the last thirty-odd years.

His unspoken meaning was plain: "Before such Beauty, I beheld my own ugliness."

Though I've tried to dissuade him, he plans to regularly visit 
Ecstasy's domain. He believes this Beauty will liberate his mind, 
having forgotten that Beauty often conceals bondage beneath the guise 
of freedom.

As with many working class people, my friend's employment is 
precarious and his family, stricken by alcoholism and rage, certainly 
won't rescue him should he find himself imprisoned by his illicit saviour.

Whereas such an addiction might wound a younger, wealthier, and 
well-loved man, it would almost certainly cripple this man. I'm 
worried that these considerations weigh too lightly upon his thoughts.

Like all true romantics, he appears willing to let his Camelot 
collapse while he goes questing for his grail.

My friend's predicament demonstrates Beauty's peril.

Beauty tempts us with the promise of wholeness.

It offers a glimpse of what life would be like if we were complete, 
if we were to receive those things we yearn for so desperately, 
things like love and belonging, security and strength, dignity and grace.

Beauty is often overwhelming for people whose lives have been bereft 
of its blessings, for whom emotional fragmentation has been a constant torment.

For them, Beauty can be as maddening as a morsel of food upon a 
starving man's tongue.

Having little knowledge of Beauty's complexities, it can quickly 
bewilder them. If they fail to develop a sufficiently sophisticated 
understanding of the experience, they can find themselves in one of 
three traps.

The first trap befalls those who are so enamoured of Beauty in all 
its many forms that they allow it to supplant every other value.

There are among us hedonists whose pursuit of Beauty must never be 
delayed by moral considerations, and who disdain any discussion of 
ethics as repressive and life-denying. In like fashion, there are 
many modern occultists who avoid all talk of injustice because of its 
"negativity," and who prefer to spend their time in more "positive" 
pursuits--such as learning meditative practices that soothe the ego 
and stimulate the visual imagination. This trap turns Beauty into an 
anaesthetic, and reduces people to ethical imbecility.

The second trap captures those who've encountered and lost Beauty, 
who resent its enduring power over them, and who feel frightened and 
angry in its presence.

These captives try to control and punish Beauty, to render it 
helpless so they can consume its pleasures in peace.

Their very animosity towards Beauty demonstrates their obsessive 
attachment to it. Compulsive users of pornography often fall into 
this category, as do rapists and domestic tyrants.

I wonder sometimes if the violation of the natural world is driven at 
least in part by the same dynamic.

The third trap claims people who turn their encounter with Beauty 
into a fetish--those who, having seen the sunlight shine through 
their bedroom window, mistake the window for the sun itself, and 
forever afterwards frantically polish the glass.

I'm afraid this trap may claim my friend, just as it claims whoever 
finds their attention fixated upon any one expression of Beauty to 
the exclusion of all others.

In my friend's case, the expression is drug-induced; in others, it 
may be produced through such things as a romantic relationship, an 
aesthetic pursuit, or, perhaps most dangerously, an ideology.

I'm reminded here of Peter Cohen's documentary, The Architecture of 
Doom (1989). Cohen argues that the Nazi movement was fuelled by an 
"ideology of beauty" that used mytho-poetic romanticism and ideals of 
physical and social perfection to entrance the German people.

Accompanying this ideological fetishism was a denunciation of 
everything "non-Aryan" as degenerate and diseased.

It seems that when we're enraptured by our own panes of glass, we all 
too easily take to shattering other people's windows.

There are other examples of this principle.

The Christian Right seems less concerned with ethics than with 
fantasies of authority and order, of a world unblemished by dissent, 
chaos, and ambiguity.

Anything that defies their aesthetic program becomes "Satanic" in 
their eyes, and is persecuted accordingly. This aesthetic is so 
pervasive that it even codes the physical appearance of their 
televangelists, prescribing well-pressed suits, unmoving hair, and 
calcified smiles.

Similarly, the argument's been made that Neoconservatives are blinded 
by their own vision of Beauty, in this case a socio-political Beauty. 
As Seymour Hersch said in a speech to the American Civil Liberties 
Union in 2004, "A bunch of guys, eight or nine neoconservatives, 
cultists--not Charles Manson cultists, but cultists--get in and it's 
not, with all due respect to Michael Moore . . . it's not about oil, 
it's not even about protecting Israel, it's about a Utopia they have, 
it's about an idea they have." When Neoconservatives talk about "the 
clash of civilizations," perhaps they're referring merely to the 
refusal of other societies to buy into their Utopian program, and the 
war that must therefore be waged so ferociously against them.

If we avoid these three traps, then what's left for us? Perhaps we'd 
do best to love Beauty, but not too much, and to remember that unless 
it's enriched by wisdom, Beauty can fast become our jailer.

As for me, I'm left sitting outside the penitentiary doors, hoping 
desperately that my friend's incarceration will be a brief one.
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MAP posted-by: Beth