come_to_think | Entries tagged with shame

In 1996 or thereabouts, for reasons I do not remember, I did some browsing in the Harvard library among books by & about Henri Poincaré, an important French mathematician of the late 19th & early 20th centuries. He participated in the ferment that led to the theory of relativity, and there is a fringe literature that maintains that Einstein (or his wife) plagiarized Poincaré. Crackpots are sometimes right, and intellectual history is always complicated, but it seems that Poincaré fell just short of Einstein's dispensing with the luminiferous ether, and that what held him back was not lack of intelligence or knowledge, but of audacity.

Nosing around, I found other evidence that he was an intellectual Tory. He rejected a lot of modern mathematics, beginning with Cantor's transfinite cardinals, on intuitionist grounds. In one essay, he ridiculed an elementary logic text that gave, as an example, the alternation "x is rich or x is bald". "Rich" & "bald", he maintained, are predicates that have no relation to each other; to couple them in the same alternation is a form of "mania". That made me think of a woman who wanted a rich husband, but also had a thing about baldness (somehow, I even seemed to imagine her as French), saying "The man I marry must be rich or bald" --- inclusive "or", of course. It is, it seems to me, a virtue of logic that it does not constrain what one might imagine.

Poincaré was an expert on nonEuclidean geometry, so you might have expected him to anticipate general as well as special relativity; but quite the contrary, he thought it unlikely that nonEuclidean geometry would have any application in physics. Confronted with an experimental crisis, he said, one would always choose to modify the force laws rather than monkey with the kinematics on which so much else depends. That was a smart remark, but not, it turned out, a wise one.

After all that, a wicked thought occurred to me: "I'll bet that man was an antisemite." So, over the years, I kept an eye open for anything he might have had to say about Jews (most likely, I supposed, some catty remark about Einstein). I was rewarded in 2006 by extracting from the Web the news that during the Dreyfus affair (a notorious frameup, 1894-1906, of a Jewish army officer) he had testified on Dreyfus's behalf. By now, one can find quite a bit about that. The occasion is of interest to legal historians as an early, crude example of the forensic abuse of statistics. It seems that a police chief involved in the accusation, in an attempt to prove that a certain forged document really was written by Dreyfus, had conducted an "analysis" of the frequencies of certain handwritten letter forms. Its absurdity was widely noted, and the policeman did not require the services of a first-rate mathematician to make a fool of him; but Poincaré lent a hand, for what it was worth (nobody paid much attention that that particular "evidence" anyway). So there you have it -- a furious, highly politicized trial, all the antisemites in France on one side, and Poincaré on the other.

A little while after, after lovemaking with a man of blessed memory, we talked about a lot of things as usual, and I mentioned my delight at exonerating Poincaré, and said that if he had actually been an antisemite, he would have been displaying a devotion to scholarly integrity that was rare among antisemites. That whimsical reductio ad absurdum charmed my friend as well as me, and recalling the pillow talk just yesterday was consoling for a while.

But no! I was bluffing, and (as usual) I was lucky. I don't know much about antisemitism. For all I know, there actually have been conscientious scholarly antisemites. Germany might be a good place to look. I am adept at that kind of knowingness without knowledge. I can say everything I know while giving the impression that I know more. In that way, I get a lot more fun out of life than I deserve.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Most recently, Pete Seeger, losing his voice

Of the two characters in literature I most identify with, one is a drunk and the other is a robot. I am neither, but I often wonder why not.

1. The drunk

The drunk is James Agee's uncle Frank in A Death in the Family. (He is called "Ralph" in the abridged edition published in 1957 by David McDowell, but is revealed as Frank in the full edition published in 2007 by Michael A. Lofaro. I strongly recommend the latter, whether or not you have read the former.) The book is autobiographical in that the people in it are real (and even, in the restored edition, are called by their real names), but fictional in that the author applied his astonishing powers of empathy to imagine how the grownups around him saw things when he was six years old (in 1915) and his father Jay was killed in a car accident. He spells everything out, which is a great help to me, because my own powers of empathy are as stunted as his were prodigious. Largely for that reason, A Death in the Family is one of the great books of my life.

Frank is Jay's brother, and is the closest man available when their father, who lives some miles north of town, has a heart attack. Frank is impressed with his responsibility in that situation, and that causes him to exaggerate the seriousness of the attack. He calls Jay, who can tell he is somewhat drunk and "whickering up his feelings", but who doesn't dare take the risk of being skeptical. (I am a sentimentalist of Frank's kind, always trying to have appropriate feelings.) "Wants babying, Jay realized.... Of all the crybabies,...". (Just the kind of thing people must think of me, when I'm not careful.) So he has a hurried breakfast & rushes off. When he gets to his father's, his skepticism is confirmed. Frank goes on being sentimental & officious & embarrassing. Out on an errand, he humiliates himself with grievance-hunting fantasy:

His first impulse, when he saw the horse and rider ahead, was to honk, both in self-advertisement, warning and greeting, but he remembered in time the seriousness of the occasion and did not do so, reflecting, after it was too late, that Thomas might feel he was snubbed, as if he had passed him on the street without speaking, and he was angry with Thomas for possibly having such feelings about such petty matters, at such a time.

The way I do. Whatever he tries, he can't pull it off:

...and he called, in a voice which sounded unfriendly, though he had meant to make it sound friendly to everyone except Tom,....

Eventually he gets drunk & makes a complete fool of himself. Then he bangs his head & more or less comes to his senses:

And looking at himself now, he neither despised himself nor felt pity for himself, nor blamed others for whatever they might feel about him. He knew that couldn't ever really know what they thought,.... He was sure, though that whatever they might think, it couldn't be very good, because there wasn't any very good thing to think of.... And it was respect he needed, infinitely more than love. Just not to have to worry about whether people respect you. Not ever to have to feel that people are being nice to you because they are sorry for you, or afraid of you....

Right. But how am I different?

I'm smarter, for one thing. I am sensitive to such patterns in my own behavior, and recoil from them. That doesn't do me any good, but it makes me less of a nuisance. In particular, I have some astonishingly effective feedback loops that protect me from addiction. The recognition of incipient dependence on anything external, such as alcohol or pornography, turns me off, I think because I am afraid of its being recognized by others. My addictions are internally satisfied --- I have a man within, as Burroughs puts it. That saves me from some humiliations.

Also, I am lucky in belonging to a class that didn't put a lot of pressure on me to be normal --- in particular, to get married & have children. What is more, it has trained me to value & emulate independence of mind, tho I do not have the courage that ought to go with it. Thus, I have been saved from Frank's biggest mistakes.

2. The robot

The robot is the protagonist of a charming little sf story, "Period Piece" (1948), by J. J. Coupling. (The author's real name was John R. Pierce, and he was an important electrical engineer. He wrote a good popular book on information theory, Symbols, Signals, and Noise. For some of his fiction he named himself after JJ coupling, a limit used in the quantum-mechanical theory of atomic structure.)

The robot was made, in the 31st century, to simulate a man from the 20th century as an amusement at parties. People ask him questions about the 20th century, and he comes up with canned answers:

Smith could not remember having been asked just this question before. For a moment he could think of nothing. Then suddenly, as always, the knowledge flooded into his mind. He found himself making a neat little three-minute speech almost automatically....

The people do not tell him he is a robot, and he does not tell them that he is conscious. Eventually, tho, he figures out the situation and, after a "little review of twentieth century psychology", jumps off the tall building where he lives. Alas, that only wrecks his body; his mind is a computer program that was controlling it from the building. He hears his owner and a technician discuss turning it off & (to put it anachronistically) finding the bug in the program.

A directory of 3-min lectures seems like a pretty good model of me. I produce them in response to questions, with little thought of the people who ask them. It is hard for me to ask other people questions. Maybe Pierce was like that too, but escaped.

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: Most recently, Ian Robb

My daily journal form contains such a heading. Today it said "See Trips".

Trips (purchases): On the Orange Line, a woman with a child got on, and set the child on the seat next to mine on the right. The man to the right of the child stood up to let her sit down. The seat to my left was vacant; I could easily have moved over, but it didn't occur to me. At Downtown Crossing, the same man got off & took the stairs down to the Red Line, as I did. A woman coming up the stairs was struggling with a wheeled suitcase; he stopped & helped her; that, also, would never have occurred to me. -> Davis Sq.: Johnny D's for bi brunch. I got there just on time (11:30) & waited 15 min; nobody else showed up, so I got seated. (Bacon scallion goat cheese quesadilla, oatmeal, coffee.) I was served promptly & had finished & paid at 12:15, when ***** (21ja10, 20my10) showed up. I said I was willing to hang around for her to get something; she said she would go for a drink. I asked "Here?", and she answered, here, or down the street where her car was parked. For some reason that caused me to decide to leave; I said "I have things to do", and she was offended. Of course, it never occurred to me that she would actually want my company. -- In the summer of 1958, I noticed that other people had helpful thoughts that I didn't, and started a notebook, How to Be a Neat Guy, in praise of them. But I soon discontinued it, and the intervening 52 years have not improved me. On the other hand, what is my petty self-centeredness in comparison with the gigafilth on Wall St.? -> Malden: ATM near the station has disappeared.

Current Music: Most recently, Margaret MacArthur

I am tired of being reminded, again and again, of things I am ashamed of. I never live anything down -- showing off, giving offense, being involved in conflict, whether justified or not -- and the memories of such things have priority access to my association paths, no doubt rendering my more stupid than I would otherwise be. On being reminded of them, I twitch, call myself names, and wish I were dead. Eventually, I am likely to escape into fantasies of rudeness.

Here is the earliest one I can remember; I must have been about 10, so, more than 60 years ago. I was talking about chemistry with another boy, and I was showing off my knowledge of a long word, "phenolphthalein", by asking him if he knew how to spell it. In doing so, I mispronounced it ludicrously, so that he asked mildly "Is that how you pronounce it?".

There are hundreds of such memories, all filed for instant retrieval. It does no good to say to myself that other people get away with far worse outrages, because what I used to call "my unsane subconscious" (Korzybski + Freud) retorts, in effect, "You are different. You are only pretending to be human, so you have to be much more careful. Pretense must be more perfect than performance. Once people see thru your bluff, the game is up." That is almost certainly not so, but it is hard to disprove.

Current Mood: gloomy
Current Music: Most recently, Leslie Fish

I was going to pick something I am ashamed of, among the hundreds of such things that come to mind. But that's not the same as regret. For one thing, shame is only an emotion; it doesn't prove you were wrong, any more than being proud proves you were right. In order to regret something, I would have to imagine that it could have been otherwise, and for the better. I can't think of any action of mine that actually made any difference. Even when I have managed to hurt people (which AFAIK is rare), it is hard to know whether it would have improved the world if I hadn't. I suppose I could say I regret my character defects, tho they have always been there, and it is hard to imagine life without them.

Well, then, cowardice. I am terrified of conflict. This seems to be mainly due to incompetence at losing gracefully, tho it must have been exacerbated by pacifist propaganda in childhood. I make up for it by frequent fantasies of outrageous behavior, which distract me from shame. I wrote in my journal 7 January 1997:

Emotions: Continual hate fantasies (every few minutes) all morning. In almost all such fantasies, my offendedness & offensiveness are a surprise to their object. This suggested to me, some time ago, an explanation for them in addition to the mere fact that they are a distraction from shame & fear. Namely, it seems likely that in childhood I once gave offense to someone unintentionally & was mortified to find that I had done so (a Freudian would say, all the more so in that I had unconsciously willed the offense), and that, in my fantasies, I am trying to avoid a recurrence of the surprise by giving offense deliberately. Of course, there is also mixed in a wish to be punished, due to shame at being spoiled. Finally, there is also overcompensation for shame at not having kept up my side in past conflicts.

I have sometimes thought that if I had been plunged into a fearful environment in childhood, I might have been forced to fend for myself. At times in my life I have had fantasies of doing so (joining the army, emigrating to Israel), but of course, I never dared. Later on, at age 40, I was bowled over by reading Captains Courageous: maybe all it takes is falling overboard & getting punched in the nose. %^)

Or, one could say, I regret that I am alive.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Most recently, David Jones