Tommy C's Blog

When we imagine back thousands, hundreds of thousands of years from today, in a thought-experiment to understand human nature from our first ancestors, we probably conjure up images of African grasses and huntsman, the women gathering up fruits, the fierce competitions for survival and sex. We zoom out from that image and picture the globe in a second, covered in routes pointing out of Africa that took early humans countless generations to follow; then, we refocus on a contemporary city, to see that raw, elemental reality still at work in modern humans: The woman with a mediocre husband who sleeps with a young hot lawyer-winner during her ovulation; the man murdering the leader of a neighbourhood gang to gain ascendancy in his.

We look back and think up ruthless stories from evolutionary psychology, in other words. It suits our individualized, demystified, uncertain times. In 1912, before World War I, before the Victorian era was fully gone, sociologist Émile Durkheim tried to do something similar. Although now his project seems so very different: His focus was not on individuality, but collectivity; not on our selfishness but our morality; not on savagery but on religion. Not evolutionary psychology at all, then, but something seemingly quite different.

What, exactly, did he do? He analysed the simplest, oldest religion he could identify at that time - that of Aboriginal Australians - arguing in his anthropological work that in elementary religion one is likely to find the basic building-blocks of religion, and thus of group life, that later evolved into our current forms. Are you thinking an imaginary system of all-powerful Gods, the consolation of an afterlife? Not so, says Durkheim, not in the elementary forms of religion.

Instead Durkheim's story is about rituals that bond groups, totems based upon nature, where modern metaphysical trappings are mostly absent. From this we find that at the core of religion, says Durkheim, the distinction between the sacred and the profane. And from this distinction religion builds up all other knowledge - the territory of the tribe, the timing of the seasons, say - and in so doing, creates a social bond through psychological similarity, and through the social bond, creates morality. The sacred and the profane, for Durkheim, are the basic mental cagegories of man under elementary religion, from which all other understanding stems, including space and time.

Probably already you are objecting: surely we think first individually, not socially? (I think therefore I am.) Surely morality can come from other sources but religion? (Atheists don't start wars.) Surely the way we think - say, the way we categorise time - comes direct from our nature, not inevitably from our social norms? (Babies want for the future, learn from the past.) Surely Durkheim's work - which was a longish book, in fact - said a bit more than that with a lot more sophistication than that? (In short: isn't Durkheim telling a just-so story, and aren't you, Tom?) Quite so; anthropology moved away from Durkheim, and I only mean to provide a brief and simplistic gloss for you.

Now, if you read up about the Pirahã, you find a very interesting people and language. You also will find them analysed by anthropologists, who are asking questions from cognitive psychology, from linguistics, etc. Interesting stuff, not really Durkheim's type of questions. Yet in some ways the Pirahã seem more elemental - if you will forgive the implications of right-thinking progress the term might seem to connote, but which I do not mean - than the Aboriginals. You can guess what I've been wondering about this afternoon, then, when you learn that (apparently) the Pirahã:

-speak only of the present, and only of direct personal experience
-so have no history beyond living memory
-have a kinship language and system consisting of only 'brother', 'sister' and (non-gendered) 'parent'
-have no numbers and no numeracy, no or limited materialism, with few possession or the desire for more, no or limited art-work, no or limited change, no or limited words for the colours

Some of these points are contentious (no versus limited), but Durkheim would presumably, rather than argue over them, ask something else: if these are what the Pirahã don't have or aren't important, what are the big building blocks of their culture? Well, this magazine article goes on to say the Pirahã

are very laid-back, accepting things as they are, not fretting about the future, and taking great plesure in life. Above all, these are a people who live for the moment...

This immediate and literal way of seeing the world fits with the Pirahã's apparent lack of a creation myth, but it seems at odds with one of the most important aspects of their everyday life. They believe in an elaborate spirit world, which takes the form of something like parallel universes, with evil spirits inhabiting their own realsm above and below the Earth. It may sounds suspiciously like mystical for a culture suppose to lack mythology, but [Pirahã anthropologist and linguist] [Dan] Everett notes that the Pirahã's relationship with their spirit world is remarkably practical. They claim to have direct experience of some of the evil spirits - a notion made only too real to him during his early days in the Amazon when he was awoken one night and asked to ward off an evil spirit ... [which turned out to be] a prowling panther.

A mythology based on good and evil spirits - but a practical everyday one, where good and evil literally exist. Spirits: perhaps just a way of intuitively knowing that things move and do things, that humans are not the only forms that appears to act with intention. Perhaps then, their core is good and evil. I wonder what Durkheim would have concluded from that, about the core of human nature and culture? Well, in 1912 he wouldn't have concluded something simple and smiley, like, to be honest, I naively feel like doing right now, as if finishing off a nice little dream, or writing a child's Just-So story. Good and Evil; Just So. Probably Durkheim instead would have studied more, theorized more, with his deep, serious hopes for the modern world and for our moral lives, his sense of our continuity with the distant past. I won't be doing such work, and perhaps his attitudes and beliefs, and his intellectual and social projects perished with him, for:

World War I was to have a tragic effect on Durkheim's life. Durkheim's leftism was always patriotic rather than internationalist — he sought a secular, rational form of French life. But the coming of the war and the inevitable nationalist propaganda that followed made it difficult to sustain this already nuanced position. While Durkheim actively worked to support his country in the war, his reluctance to give in to simplistic nationalist fervor (combined with his Jewish background) made him a natural target of the now-ascendant French right. Even more seriously, the generation of students that Durkheim had trained were now being drafted to serve in the army, and many of them perished as France was bled white in the trenches. Finally, Durkheim's own son died in the war — a mental blow from which Durkheim never recovered. Emotionally devastated and overworked, Durkheim collapsed of a stroke in 1917.

One wonder's what terrors he suffered during his "ferocious silence" after his son's death. A whole world passing, so much destroyed, so utterly painful, so utterly unavoidable to think of.

Certainly, Dan Everett isn't about to resurrect Durkheim's lost, broken spirit. Under their new influences of "settlers, diseases, alcohol," already he seems to mourn the Pirahã's end, which may "happen very quickly":

This beautiful language and culture, so fundamentally different from anything the Western world has produced, has much to teach us about linguistic theory, about culture, about human nature, about living for each day and letting the future take care of itself, about personal fortitude, toughness, love, and many other values too numerous to mention. And this is but one example of many other endangered languages and cultures in the Amazon and elsewhere with 'riches' of a similar nature that we may never know about because of our own shortsightedness.

For no particular reason, I got reading about porn this afternoon. Dick Nasty is a nice name, but is Max Hardcore a nice or nasty man? Some quotes, in case you don't know what he's about. First off (NSFW):

Interviewer: Why do you call your work your "revenge"?

Hardcore: I say a lot of things ... in an effort to describe all the things a viewer will encounter. One of those things is a common theme among men, and that is the grudge or revenge f-ck. Almost every guy has been unceremoniously dumped by a girl they thought loved them. After that, it's natural to get a little jaded about relationships and take out their frustration on girls they meet after that. But it's not always possible for a guy to do that, and that's where Max comes in. I'm simply a surrogate for all the men out there who have been sh-t on by selfish women.

Reflex response: Misogyny? On the other hand: he's "actually a nice guy. Just kind of kinky," according to co-star Kitty Yung. And from the interview above, again:

Interviewer: I knew an actress - ... who you shot with - who told me she was treated very nicely by you, and thought you were pretty cool.

Hardcore: That's the norm. I treat em like princesses, and explain all.

And then porn star Kelly Wells/O'Dell agrees: "In my opinion, you [Max] are one of the most professional people that I have worked for ON and OFF camera." That quote in its full context:

Well Max, in my opinion, every whore needs to take a turn with you. To get broken in. I still remember when I did my first scene with you...afterwards I said I will not do this porn thing again. Turns out that after that scene I found out that to work for anybody else in porn is a f---ing cakewalk. A lot of whores won't work for you because you will actually make them WORK for their money. But good whores like me understand, that taking an occassional ass wrecking is good for them. So, in the meantime take in mind that nobody knows what they are talking about, unless they have personally sat in on a set and documented "unusual" behavior. In my opinion, you are one of the most professional people that I have worked for ON and OFF camera. By the way, taking rounds with you on camera has convinced me that it is not so bad after all, to be a piss guzzling whore.

Or perhaps for the maker and star of over 100 films such as Extreme Schoolgirls 11, Gang Bang Girl 33, Anal Auditions 8, Hardcore Schoolgirls 17, Ass Openers 12, Butt Banged Bicycle Babes (just the one title there) it's just an act, after all:

The Max character is rough. I've carefully cultivated that image. Everybody, to be successful, has to be organized and have a clear goal of what needs to be accomplished. I like playing rough. It's not that I'm the heaviest hitter but I realized what would raise the heat level of the videos would be language.

And (NSFW): "This material [his pornography] is created to inform viewers of the wide range of adult relationships." Social purpose, eh, representing relationships where women dress up as schoolgirls whilst a grinning middle-aged guy, wearing only socks and a cowboy hat, humiliates them verbally and physically. Well, adult, yes; relationship, perhaps; but wide-ranging...

Cigarette Simon turns eighteen the same day his government bans smoking. Banned in the pubs and the bars and the night-clubs, banned banned banned. And boy, is he not happy about it. Suddenly Simon's old enough to stand looking moody and manly, shrouded amidst wispy plumes of blue, there on the edge of dancefloors, or lounge aloofly in the shadowed mysterious smoke of corner tables, and he can't.

Eighteen. A man now. Cigarette Simon decides to start a pro-smoking campaign. Protest against this outrage. Stick up a finger at authority. A finger flicking ash in their moralising eye. Where better than the internet? Screw health warnings. He's young and free and his rights just got taken away.

So, a blog. In Praise of Cigarettes, he wonders, In Celebration? The Ciggy Connoisseur? Smoker's Paradise? Settling on a name, he describes his first pack as if it was a glass of wine; the feel, the fragrance, the effect on the nose, the tongue. One brand down, all the rest to go, he writes in his mission statement, boasting how he'll never be an addict, he has the will-power of a man, and how he's young, he'll be fine. He's going to review with appreciation every cigarette the world has to offer.

Swapping with a drunk girl in a university corridor at 3am a cigarette for a snog, bonding with the aloof Professor in a break behind the lecture theatre, asking for a light a table of lovelies: the cigarette stories come too. Heh, have a cigarette, he comments on depressed blogs, that'll cheer you up, and Heh, it wasn't the cigarette to blame, but your mother's choices for her heart disease, on another. Charismatic and witty, irreverent and fun, his audience grows. As does the protestors. Anti-Smoking Groups. Give-Up-Guru's. A Coalition of Canadian Moms, along with the usual speculation about a spoof.

Cigarette Simon hits 21 with thousands of hits a day. Dunhill, he declares, are the most delectable of cigarettes; so smooth, so tasty. But, he's going to give up. Not because he wants to, but to prove he can; to prove that thousands of pounds and hours spent and three years of smoking don't matter one jot. So of course smoking should be legal everywhere, right? Just look at me. No problemo. By rights it should be all up to us, Big Brother.

Should we give up to? Are you serious? Can we trust you? ask some of his fans. You'll find it hard, impossible, you'll lie, you'll cheat, you'll think of suicide during withdrawal, warns one vehement critic who had her throat tore out two years back.

Well, just watch, says Simon. You all do and say what you like, and I'll do the same. And of course, he finds it easy. When 50-a-day desperados, whose New Year's Resolutions to quit have been broken each January 1 for decades now, say, but what about the head-fuzz, the tongue-fur, the hallucination? He says: uhh? It's all psychological. Grow up! It's easy.

Quit he does, just like that. Or only so he says, nag the doubters. And still he encourages people to smoke, describes the pleasure of the blood rush, the relief and the release, all in fond memory. And he carries a Zippo round to strike up a conversation when helping out a light-up. He's got a career, still that charisma, that cool calm character, is lucky in lust, spends cash on exotic holidays and big city night out. He's fans worship him still. His enemies are defeated in their doubts.

Then, disaster. On the same day he's sacked, he starts to cough. It's just a little cough, nothing to worry about, he writes. But, he splutters out of a job interview a month later, losing his chance, and starts to worry.

Nothing, says the Doctor.

Still unemployed. A fortune teller at a circus - he went in because his date dared him, expecting to hear back some great story about their future - says his halo lacks air, is dark, dark with dark spots of dark. What does it mean? Phone call, there and then: the Doctor. We made a mistake, mixed up your results. We can hardly believe it, you're so young, so fit, but please, you must come back in. Now? Right now.

Cancer is everywhere in Cigarette Simon. "One in a million like this, and your age too..." muses his Doctor. Not even worth treatment. He posts his first deep-down genuine post on his blog: he details his diagnosis, details his despair. Don't smoke. He's sorry, so sorry. He made it sound like fun, but really it's not worth it. Who was he kidding. So much beauty in the world, and to go out of it like this? His outburst ends suddenly: too many tears on the keyboard to go on, he writes. Back later. I hope. I at least have months, maybe a year.

He's linked to like never before, and the comments come in their thousands. Make every day special now. Mend bridges. Find love. Let's meet, I think you should make me pregnant. May as well start smoking again, eh loser? Told you so. And of course comments full of corresponding crying too. Some say they'll quit now, others say, heh, remember what you told that poor daughter about her mother? You were right, man! I aint quitting. His forum - he has a forum, strictly supposedly only for the celebration of cigarettes - is over-run too. He fires all the admins. No-one should do this kind of thing, he explains, and wishes them well. Advises them to quit, along with everyone else.

Then, a comment like no other. It sounds crazy at first, but the links are all there. A biomedical firm in the States has found a leaf used by a tribe, famous for longevity in the Amazon, that maybe holds amazing restorative properties for the lung. The drug they are developing is experimental and there are no guarantees, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars here.

His blog gets a PayPal box, and he begs. Begs, begs, begs. He's almost broke. His family can't help. He does work for anti-smoker groups. He writes letters of apology, sometimes in person. He visits one lady he mocked in her hospice, breaks down crying. He holds her hand; as he leaves, he realises she's left a fifty in his. A publisher offers to publish his blog as a book - provided he reflects on each post afresh, saying how wrong he was and why. It tears him apart, he blogs, to even look at this stuff now. But...

But, he wants to live.

He'll do it.

The will to live, to survive. He's a young man. And gradually, the money builds up. Gets closer to the target as the book starts to sell. Then, his blog posts start to drop-off; once every two days, once every three, five, a week; shorter, too... It's been almost a year since his diagnosis. I can barely breathe enough to get out of bed each day, his final post reads, and now I find I've just reached my target. I don't know if I'll get there in time, or if it'll work.

Wish me luck, his last line reads. And everyone wishes him luck; those he hurt, those who hated him, those who loved him, cocky smokers and angry ex-smokers, the sanguine and the bereaved. The Health Minister even sends him an open letter: wishing him well, hoping he understands now why they banned smoking in so many places. "If the worst comes to the worst," the letter concludes, "then at least take this as a consolation: from a foolish child emerged a fine man, who through his honest, anti-smoking writing, helped to make the world a little better a place."

And? And nothing. No more posts. No family or friends saying he died, and shutting things down, or leaving them as a monument, or donating the remaining money to charity. No Cigarette Simon bouncing back, saying it worked, or bought him some more time at least. And who has actually met him, seen a photograph? the people in the comments start to ask. That poor lovely lady in the Hospice? But she'd be dead by now anyhow. Is a writer somewhere very rich? Or, a smoker somewhere dead, the family paralyzed in grief - or just ignorant about the internet?

A coincidence? I have been having dreams about torture, pick up Milosz's superb book of lectures "The Witness of Poetry" - a book I've read several times before - flick through and instantly find this passage:

That voice of protest we hear in ourselves when we learn of places where human beings torture other human beings resounds in a void and has no justification other than itself.

Milosz, who in some of his best work recorded a kindly protest, writes this in the context of a chapter called: "The Lesson of Biology." The biology in question is the bastardized Darwinism that informed both Nietzche's idea of man transcending himself and becoming Superman, and also Marx's idea of historical (r)evolution. Then next, their even cruder social derivatives in the main two forms of twentieth century totalitarianism, fascist and communist. The so-called lessons of this biology are: that we are nothing but a cipher for the success of our genes or species or what-not, that not only are we not the centre of the universe or solar system, there is no God who made us central or special, in any way whatsoever, that there is no human meaning and the true patterns of our existence are measured only over thousands of centuries, in the relative success of species against other species. It is, in other words, a coldly deterministic, cruely dehumanizing lesson, defying our senses, spirituality, conscience, love, and capactiy for wonder, at their very core, the soul. The soul, a word James Joyce never surrendered.

Now there may be some of you who see in this coincidence my subconscious at play, at least if your comments to the post below this one are anything to go by: the dreams have been prompting me to reread this chapter, which I have indeed done so again. There will be another reason for that, guessable perhaps. If so, probably you agree with the quote above, even if you don't realise it, that there is nothing real, nothing worth telling of, in the content of these dreams. That is, nothing in them outside of the psychological battles in my head, which in their turn can be logically approached by one theory or another - this time, no doubt, one derived from Freud. Such is the automatic response.

On the other hand, some of you may instead prefer this, quote of the day, from the end of that chapter, a note of hope - a different kind of hope, I mean:

there are signs... that technological [and thus, demystified] civilization may begin to see reality as a labyrinth of mirrors, no less magical than the labyrinth seen by alchemists and poets. That would be a victory for William Blake and his "Divine Arts of Imagination" - but also for the child in the poet, a child too long trained by adults.