Editor’s note: Patricia Reed sent out a letter to her many friends and followers, including yours truly, on October 12, 2022 entitled: SO PRETTY IT HURTS. The letter talks about human sensations, sensitivities, and emotional responses. It was the fifth paragraph that resonated forcefully with me. Specifically, the sentence that I put into bold type. This prompted me to write back. It was her reply to my response that blew me away.
SO PRETTY IT HURTS: Why do we humans sometimes respond to a positive experience with a physiological reaction that is normally associated with negative experiences? We cry tears of joy. We sometimes say, “It's so beautiful it hurts.” And it does. Physically. Sometimes in the throat. Sometimes in the chest. Sometimes in the gut. We get also get “goose bumps” from music, from an eloquent example of the spoken or written word, from a powerful scene in an enacted drama. And we get it from God's own beautiful world--from smells (like alfalfa, like leaf mold), from sounds (like birdsong, or a wind rustling in the pines), from textures (a baby's feathery hair, a horse's velvety nose), from feasts for the eye (oblique late-afternoon light, or light dancing on water, or a solitary churchyard).
Goose bumps are believed to be the side effect of an attempt to get our hair to stand on end, as does a threatened animal, such as a cat confronting a dog. They are intended to frighten any enemy by making us look larger and more formidable—while simultaneously signalling our hostility. Hair standing on end is our way of saying, “Approach at your own risk!”
So why do we also get those goose bumps from something like music? I have never found any explanation other than that our physical repertoire for expressing strong emotions is, for some reason, quite limited and thus the same response sometimes has to do “double duty” for any intense stimulus whether positive or negative. That's not totally satisfying, but right now it seems to be all we've got. I think it may be particularly true of those of us who are, for want of a better word, civilized. Our forebears in pre-industrial societies were sometimes stoic, but just as often they were less inhibited in certain scenarios than are we. For instance, they usually gave more extravagant vent to feelings of bereavement than we do: loud weeping, wailing, sinking to the ground, rending of garments. I've often thought that it would be a relief to be allowed to do that! But we've “outgrown” that. All that is left is a tear in the eye and a lump in the throat.
How about when survival—or even just victory-- is at stake? Our soldiers are taught to march off with grave but composed mien. Warriors in pre-industrial societies often austerely fast, pray, and abstain from sexual intercourse a day or two before a major battle. But just prior to the battle, both men and women engage in a frenzied war dance. The warriors then depart, to ride into battle with blood-curdling cries. They may return carrying the heads of their vanquished foes, and the womenfolk do a joyous dance with the severed heads! We find this repugnant, but it was human history for a very long time.
Where has all that tribal solidarity, with its other-side-of-the-coin dehumanization of enemies, gone? Has it gone to hidden places, possibly even darker? Nobody knows for sure. For eons, our identities were carved in stone from the womb onward. The needs of the tribe defined who we were, and it was unthinkable to question any of it. Today, we basically choose our own “tribes”, a process fraught with confusion. But it's also what freedom is all about. One of the things that most troubles me about wokism, is that it seems like a forced retribalization—but a stunted retribalization which violates so much that is natural and human, that it is doomed to cause mostly misery.
What about that feeling of actual pain in the presence of great beauty and/or power? I personally do experience that from time to time. I believe we can break it into three components: yearning for total immersion in that beauty; yearning for permanence of that beauty—it mustn't stop! It mustn't end! And yearning for total sharing of that beauty. Since these things are not attainable on this earth, the yearning can never be completely satisfied. We know that; we feel it at the very same moment we experience the pleasure; and that knowledge hurts.
People who experience these sensations with what is considered socially inappropriate intensity, are said to suffer from “Stendhal syndrome” after the author of Madame Bovary. Stendhal was greatly afflicted, in the opinion of some, to the point of wretched excess. Well, I mean, he was French. What do you expect?!!
Editor’s response 10/13/2022:
Re: wokism being a form of "forced retribalization"... I imagine quite a lot could be written about that. I think "recruitment" might also be applicable. I look back on the 60s when factions were forming among my fellow junior high and high school kids. I recall the pressures of being "in with the in crowd". What I don't recall, is feeling any particular compulsion to be in with any particular faction other than, perhaps, inclusion, which seemed illogical at the time. I do remember thinking, "I don't 'get' what the big deal is." Funny thing is, I felt most comfortable with a group of fellows who refused to subscribe to the various groups' mores. We would often talk about how silly it seemed to pretend to be someone we were not. Phony, as it were. Today, I'm not sure if wokism is being orchestrated by some anti traditionalist cabal, or what. I do feel that younger folks are being manipulated... somehow. But, for what purpose? To dumb down the population? Bring about a 'new world order'? But why? To make the sheep easier to control? To cull them? It all seems so strange. I don't see how wokism cannot be part of some grand scheme as it makes no sense. Seems insane from my perspective. Anyway, those are my random thoughts. Always appreciate yours. - Craig
Patsy’s reply 10/13/2022:
WILL TO POWER: I think that the self-interest (in terms of a will to power) of several different existing power centers in our present world (big tech, big finance, big pharma, big war-machine, and big government) have unfortunately realized that their interests coincide in many regards, and one of those is in destroying individual freedom, both as a realizable condition and even as a cultural value. To destroy freedom, they have to destroy freedom's institutional superstructure which includes the nation-state, limited government, the nuclear family, Christianity, the scientific paradigm, and universalism (as in "human rights."). They've all gotta go. And they are indeed going at an astonishing rate of speed.
That is an extremely abbreviated answer to your question. Throughout history, whenever opportunities for abuse of power presented themselves, usually in the form of valuable resources being fairly easy to seize and monopolize (examples being the robber barons in their castles on the Rhine, the railroad barons of the American West, the intermarried royal families of Europe, the mining of precious metals in many parts of the world), that opportunity will not go unnoticed and inevitably will be utilized and the resource(s) will be seized. Then tyrannies thrive for a time and people die, sometimes even by the tens of millions. Then we have to develop institutional structures and values to combat the monopolies (antidotes like antitrust laws, brilliant legal structures, strong militaries, etc.).
What I am worried about right now is that we populists, for lack of a better term, are in a race against the monopolists (of many stripes) who have banded together against us and could fairly easily get us all under universal surveillance and control before we have had sufficient time to develop appropriate responses. (When I am REALLY feeling pessimistic, I am not even sure that there ARE any appropriate responses, esp in the area of technology). It is a race we seem to be losing, unless there are wonderful things going on somewhere of which I am unaware. We have the numbers--people really do love freedom, and freedom really does produce the most humane and broadly equitable regimes--but the other side has the technology, the institutions and the structures. It is not clear to me why the institutions, esp in America, seem to have folded with such heartbreaking speed and thoroughness. It was almost.... dare I say demonic?
Editor’s note: Ominous as it sounds, Patsy and I are not the only ones who “feel” this impending gloom and doom. Some how, some way, we must not only resist the globalist cabal, new world order, or whatever you might want to call it… We must fight it if we are to maintain a semblance of liberty - Craig 10/15/2022