The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is known to you.
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
It occurs to me that the consumption of art and the reading of horoscopes are two occupations with more in common than asunder. Since I have taken to enjoying my middle age crisis a few years ahead of schedule (I quit my job, moved in with people many years younger than myself and am about to splurge more than I can afford on a brand new road bike, of almost certainly red hue), Steppenwolf was a suitable enough read. Here is what I learned.
This habit of obsessing over coherent, first-person-singular storylines, necessarily of perpetual improvement - of who we are, what we have achieved and how we went about achieving it - really is a singularly boring and restrictive way to go about one's life. I remember reading a claim that the mass availability of novels was what originally spurred it. Someplace else, it was argued that this consciousness of ourselves as a singular being is but a useful evolutionary trick, perhaps come about for the better dodging of predators, or for reasoning about the minds of fellow humans, or for otherwise navigating the complex web of interactions in a social species. Hence, the notion of a 'personal history,' like a novel - with heroes, villains, worthy missions, challenges, setbacks and achievements - might be a natural extension.
Regardless, there is a scene in Steppenwolf that provides a visual for an alternative way of thinking about the self and one that I particularly enjoyed. Harry Haller is approaching the apex of his identity crisis when, after a night-long revel, he is guided by the mysterious, nebulous, bisexual, drug-dealing and enticing young Pablo to step into the 'Magic Theatre' - a wild, meandering, psychedelic ramble, through vast spans of time and space, in a series of introspective scenes. In one of these, a man sitting on the floor before a chess board will 'demonstrate to anyone whose soul has fallen to pieces that he can rearrange these pieces of a previous self in what order he pleases, and so attain to an endless multiplicity of moves in the game of life'. The many individuals of Harry's personality are the game pieces.
With the sure and silent touch of his clever fingers he took hold of my pieces, all the old men and young men and children and women, cheerful and sad, strong and weak, nimble and clumsy, and swiftly arranged them on his board for a game. At once they formed themselves into groups and families, games and battles, friendships and enmities, making a small world. For a while he let this lively and yet orderly world go through its evolutions before my enraptured eyes in play and strife, making treaties and fighting battles, wooing, marrying and multiplying. It was indeed a crowded stage, a moving breathless drama.Then he passed his hand swiftly over the board and gently swept all the pieces into a heap; and, meditatively with an artist's skill, made up a new game of the same pieces with quite other groupings, relationships and entanglements. The second game had an affinity with the first, it was the same world built of the same material, but the key was different, the time changed, the motif was differently given out and the situations differently presented.And in this fashion the clever architect built up one game after another out of the figures, each of which was a bit of myself, and every game had a distant resemblance to every other. Each belonged recognizably to the same world and acknowledged a common origin. Yet each was entirely new.
I think this captures what Steppenwolf is about - the idea that our identity is chiefly a story we keep telling ourselves, over and over, and by being merely a story it can be anything. The notion of ourselves as having such-and-such a personality, ambitions, opinions, mannerism, aspirations, tastes and preferences is an illusion wrought by our habit of constantly repeating to ourselves a story which makes sense of our actions: I am not a morning person, I am monogamous, I am shy, I disapprove of taking drugs, I believe in personal freedom, I never buy organic food, I would never vote for a Democrat, I support gay marriage, I am selective with my friendships, I like to enjoy life, I hope to earn six figures within the next three years, I will buy a house, I see family once a fortnight, I want to write a book, I have commitment issues, I love marmite. What if one morning you woke up and began telling yourself a wholly different set of things? Harry Haller is in the habit of thinking of himself as a deeply conflicted, haunted soul: half intellectual serving Platonic ideals, half antisocial, hedonistic wolf. This makes him unhappy and the Magic Theatre tries (unsuccessfully) to convince him to abandon this narrative.
What happens if you force yourself out of this staid, rehearsed notion that you are a coherent agency with a cogent story progressing unbroken through a linear time? It might sound fanciful, but really what if you woke up tomorrow and pretended to be a completely different person, acting as if your entire past was a story that happened to someone else? Feeling no duty towards your job, no affection towards your family, no compulsion from any habit and no interest in any of your connections?
You may notice three notable changes: that you are much freer than before; that you cannot derive your sense of self-worth from past achievements or present aspirations; and that what gives meaning to existence has to be firmly grounded in some kind of intrinsic enjoyment (whether of the sense or of the intellect).
That you should feel much freer to act in new and unprescripted ways should come as no surprise. We act rather a lot under the impulse of inertia: doing things because we've always done them, or because we feel some sort of connection to the past self that committed us to our current goals. There is also huge social pressure to act consistently, or else be branded as lying or mad or scatty-headed flakes, and other such denigrating labels. So we conform and submit, following the trajectory dictated by of our past actions. Where is the freedom of acting out of character? Or of swinging wildly from one state to another without being accused of bewildering everybody in the process? As a thought experiment, do question how many things you would do differently in a typical day if you woke up one morning in your body and life, yet completely unsentimental towards either.
That you cannot derive self-worth from past achievements or present aspiration is equally crucial. Without the unrelenting narrative of personal identity, you cannot feel either pride or shame over past events any more than you would feel these things over the contents of a film or novel. You cannot relish in your potential. You are only what you are right now. This bewilders most people and it bewilders Harry Haller: how can you be without a past and without committing to a future? Yet being you stand, perceiving and breathing in your body, and your existence certainly feels real enough. Do you have a right to be? This might seem a strange question, but most of us spend huge quantities of effort trying to establish self-worth, a notion whose very name suggests some sort of transactional requirement - as if the value of your existence necessarily has to outweigh its (imaginary?) cost. So once again: do you have a right to be? Can you feel entitled to your existence? I think this is the first question a human without a past or future must answer.
Finally, where do you go next, in the meaning-of-life sense? Many people derive meaning from external sources: religion, group affiliation or some other ideology. Others (existentialists) think the only meaning of life is what they give it. But all people require the accumulation of a past for meaning to flourish. Could life have meaning if you woke up a new person every day? Well, you could certainly live, maybe even enjoy the act of living. Even after dropping the illusory narrative of a personal identity, you may still become absorbed in the experience of existence. Indeed, when you are in flow, absorbed in the act of living, the mere notion of 'meaning' does not quite make sense, because interpretation implies stepping out of the experience and contemplating it. We give meaning to things in the past or future. In the present moment, we merely live. If we woke up a new person every day, we'd simply live a new life each time, like so many new games of chess: each equally compelling, wonderful and (in its short-span past and future) full of meaning.
Throughout his rambles in the Magic Theatre, Harry is continuously bewildered by his encounters with the great Immortals, timeless geniuses like Mozart and Goethe. He is bewildered because to his acute and harrowing inner turmoil they always make the same reply: laughter. Relax, they seem to say, you're trying too hard. The tragedy you feel yourself to be the hero of is merely an illusion, your illusion, of your own making. It is the personal identity tale you keep telling yourself over and over. But you are free to abandon it. You can tell yourself a different story. Or many different stories, in succession. Existence is a marvellous thing and you should revel in it, experiment with it, enjoy it. And laugh, relax, because what happens in the story does not ultimately much matter: from the vantage point of immortality all lives are wonderful, wondrous things that should be utterly relished. So have any of them. Better still, have several.
