I think that what separates people more than anything, in politics, religion, or society, are the lengths we are willing to go to play fictional parts while believing they’re real. Telling the truth is applauded until it becomes too much truth. Then society pounces and condemns. Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange are exemplars of that (victims). But so are politicians, clergy, teachers, employers, and car salesmen (victimizers).
We all agree to play parts as if they’re theater roles. William Hazlett said, “Man is a make-believe animal – he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.” Each role is granted its latitude and breathing room, just enough to allow us to think we’re genuine. The irony comes when we get so good at it that it begins to offend. Then others call us out. It’s a sign we’ve crossed an interdicting line, some taboo that exposes the act itself. It’s a warning to back down again and use more discretion.
Consider those who, for one reason or another, are famous and admired for their roles. Take for example Bernard Arnault, the richest billionaire in the world (net worth $233 billion). What makes him famous, after all, besides his money-making skills? And reversely, what commonly brings someone like Arnault down? He simply plays his part well, and everyone genuflects to him for it. As a socialite he knows all the jingles and slogans, party faces and nonsense rhymes. He “works the room” and hangs with all his fellow heirs to huge fortunes. They know financial markets and all the right people. Some have even served in the military. They wear their bow ties and tell bad jokes back and forth, sip martinis and smoke cigars. They schmooze with celebrities and together they live lives they know are counterfeit. But no one says it.
They gain self-confidence and take on the rich man’s swagger. They appear invincible as long as the crest they’re riding keeps moving along. Until, that is, he gets so good at it that it separates him from the other players. Then two things happen: envy and conspicuousness (exposing too much “game”) which then endangers the others. Reversely, when something goes wrong or crashes, a scapegoat is required. And here is where it reaches the preeminence of a supermarket tabloid. The same people distinguished for the same self-deception accuse him of letting his own get out of hand. But also of a deeper (ethical, moral) hypocrisy while faking innocence and even naivety. He not only stole their thunder but (even worse) endangered the game. To be sure, those who are too successful often actually believe in their own purity. They wax sanctimonious and call out “the thieves” on Wall Street, everyone unlike themselves. They even confess their own sins in court and willingly pay millions in fines, knowing it’s just pocket change anyway. They want atonement and redemption with the public before publishing memoirs and doing TV shows.
Even going to jail means a commuted sentence to four months in a minimum-security facility, complements of a judge (or President) who is part of the same fraternity of thieves. Nixon is granted a full pardon, Reagan is fully pardoned for trading “arms for hostages,” Clinton is impeached and reinstated, Bush Jr, is pardoned for war crimes, and the ninety-one proven felonies changed to Trump are (hitherto) ignored – gamesters pardoning gamesters.
The ordinary citizen goes to prison for twelve years for tax evasion and five years for failing to pay alimony or possessing an ounce of pot. This is the “other end” of the game, when it comes home to the average Joe. Not because the top players are necessarily good at it, but because it has to claim its victims at the bottom. Shouts of hypocrisy are heard in the streets and citizens get violent. They can’t play the game anymore.
If America is about anything at all, it’s about the invention of the self. We are characters of those inventions. This is especially true in America because we are given the opportunity to invent; hence the expectation to invent. We must all have plausible selves, and what plausibility means is being a player at fictional parts. Historically, this was the country’s task as well, the search for a plausible national identity. Tocqueville observed the thousands of unsettled immigrants passing each other, always on their way to somewhere else in the American wilderness, sharing stories without endings, hasty entrances and departures, the pilgrim’s progress — not unlike passengers at airport arrival & departure gates. No one ever knew enough about anything, yet they all set out for El Dorado – the spring which fed the best fictions.
Prior to 1917, few people ever even described themselves as “Americans.” Most had just arrived from somewhere else, and they only knew themselves as Irish or German or Polish, etc. After settling, they still only referred to themselves as from a particular state or region. The country understood itself only as an assembly of regional interests, customs, dress habits and dialects. There was no national sense of itself.
The nation didn’t even begin seeing itself as “united” states until World War I, and even then not until 1918 when it entered the war. During this time it was Edward Bernays who invented America’s first “Public Relations Industry,” the official euphemism for a “propaganda” system. War required that citizens unite behind banners they had never heard of before; in wartime, the “pure and innocent” against the Hun. As serendipity would also have it, it happened to be when Hollywood’s silent film industry introduced itself. Uncle Sam and film producers started a long and lucrative relationship of waving the flag and promoting America as the land of milk and honey. Eventually Washington would make a permanent deal with Hollywood: “You wave the flag, and we’ll wave the regs” (the government waved fees and regulations for filmmakers). This threw the propaganda industry into full gear. Eventually, what were “united states” (plural) became “the United States” (singular).
But we digress. These are facts which only supplemented and encouraged the games Americans played, games which always perpetuate themselves through the rewards of “faking it.” And it begs the inevitable question: What would happen if we all agreed to stop playing? In other words, commit the most subversive offenses by stopping to kowtow to expectations? It’s what author Alfie Kohn referred to as “pop behaviorism” – exposing the rewarding/praising of expectations as a strategy to achieve conformity.1 Kohn’s thesis is that we reward each other with praise and incentives for all the wrong things. “Do this and you’ll get that.” “We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in the same way that we train the family pet.” But if we stopped negative rewarding it would allow us to think for ourselves and act responsibly, something which is critical for children.
At a national level alone, what would happen if we spilled the beans about the myths and folktales about the great myth which is America? The stuff which is purely the work of the imagination? The facts about who we really are and how this nation really began: the pogroms and planned genocides, barbarism and slavery, the wish for aristocracy, class division, betrayals, wildlife exterminations, unchecked environmental desecrations – that it was “customary” in the Old West to shoot someone in the back, that Davy Crockett deserted his wife and did not die at the Alamo, that the earliest students at Harvard were not chosen for intelligence but according to social standing and religious affiliation, that General George Custer “deserved” what he got, that America started as many wars as it didn’t start, that the USS Maine was blown up by the American government operatives, that the USS Maddox fired the first shot in the Gulf of Tonkin and lied that it was attacked (starting the Vietnam War), that the earliest settlers were not stalwart seekers of truth and virtue but sycophants and “courtiers” chasing new money wherever they could find it (said Tocqueville), that the Vietnam War had nothing to do with Communism, etc.?
What if we admitted that America had no national mythology of its own until Hollywood fabricated one out of whole cloth, invented by predominantly Jewish immigrants (screenwriters, editors, fiction writers, directors, producers, composers, authors) fleeing Hitler’s Europe, who barely spoke English, and who knew virtually nothing about American history? That our very first cowboy heroes (Tom Mix, William S. Hart, Harry Carey, Sr., John Wayne) owed their very careers to newly arriving (minority) immigrants willing to pander to anything/anyone if it meant not being deported back to Europe. – The point here is that nations and their citizens do not thrive by living the truth. They thrive by means of mental games and lies and “winners” who write the history – either by egregious lies, or lies so subliminal that they don’t even consciously know them.
Not consciously knowing them suggests that we veer into the depths of ego psychology. But for purposes of avoiding that, let’s just keep it simple and specific: We play the same games and condemn those who either don’t play them, or play them too well. We do so because we see ourselves in them and don’t like ourselves for it. The long-term consequence is a culture of people who never truly, thoroughly, trust each other about anything. There’s always a sense of mutual distrust going on (fears of betrayal), one which we cannot react to because we’re playing the game ourselves. We can’t shake it because our very filters used to analyze it is the problem itself – actors ridiculing the act.
Hence, the existential dilemma, once again. We preach the truth and strive for a perfect sense of honesty, but through the very lens which disallows it. We reach into ourselves for answers, but what we get is always tainted with “conditions” and “givens” which predetermine the outcome. There seems to be no way out until/unless we decide to extricate ourselves from the game, which means society. It’s no wonder that the craziest and wise are those who sequester themselves and live hermetic lives.
This is why nothing changes. At the same time everything changes because the game must be constantly reinforced as it morphs with the times and circumstances. We either role with the dice or “the game is up.” Meanwhile, the question looms: If we are characters of our own invention, is what we fight for and defend even real? Is it morally right to play; and if so, to what extent and for how long? Is it just Shakespearean psychodrama? If it’s just theater, are we not also the screenwriters and directors of our own play? We constantly and bravely wave the flag “of truth” and carry on as if believing in what we’re doing. We don’t question it or the psychological “dark nights” which follow in predictable cycles. Our only apparent solution (aside from leaving civilization) seems to be death itself. We intuit that “when it’s all over,” the game will finally end.
© 2024 Richard Hiatt
1Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
The Subversive Imagination: Dispatches from the American Frontier 