CASTLE ON THE HILL
JUNE 8, 2011. During his sessions with a psychiatrist, an artist named Gauguin P. Gauguin was asked to relate a dream.
He described it this way:
In the year 2078, a new category of crime was invented. It was called BI, Being Inhuman. A general charge, it could be brought against an individual who failed to exhibit a basic guilt.
Guilt about what?
No need to specify. Guilt about himself.
The new crime was placed on the books because it was finally acknowledged that guilt is the gateway drug into “the human condition,” and that condition is part and parcel of submerging one’s self in a GROUP.
Without pervasive guilt, there are no groups that make up the center of what we call civilization.
So why fool around? Go the heart of the matter.
Various tests were devised to measure the guilt index. A citizen could be dragged into an administrative court on the flimsiest of pretexts, where an examination would be carried out.
The central theme to be explored? Whose life is more important? Yours? Or your fellow human’s?
“That’s all?” the psychiatrist said. “That’s the dream?”
“Yes,” Gauguin said.
“Were you arrested in the dream?”
“Oh? Yes. Sure. I was brought in.”
“And how did you answer the question put to you?”
“I said my fellow human was of no importance to me at all.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“And what did they do to you?”
“Well, they wanted to hang me from a tree, but I escaped. I ran up to a castle on a hill. It was abandoned. So I took it over. I set myself up as king, and I began issuing edicts. From that moment on, no one would be permitted to care about anyone except himself. Violation of this law would result in electrocution.”
“Quite a radical step.”
“I thought desperate times required desperate measures.”
“And?”
“Everyone suddenly woke up. It was miraculous. Everyone realized we had been living a sham. This share and care nonsense was a social trap. It was operant conditioning. Mind control.”
“Did people start killing each other?”
“No, actually. Peace broke out for the first time in several centuries.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“It’s true. We were too busy pursuing our own futures to waste time on war. Besides, no one wanted to die bleeding on a battlefield.”
“But what about social conventions?”
“They fell away like old fungus.”
“So now it was about brutal honesty?”
“No, life suddenly became more…theatrical. Pretension was developed into a high art. High comedy.”
“What?”
“I can’t really explain it. I guess, underneath all the insanity that had been propagated, we wanted art. Theater.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, let’s see. Don’t you spend most of your days listening to people’s wretched stories? Aren’t you bored out of your mind? Don’t you wish you could find a better part to play?”
“Nonsense.”
“Sure you do. You’re the authority. You’ve got your own castle on the hill. You’d love to change the rules. You want to sweep away the bullshit. Well, that’s what we did.”
“We did? You’re describing a dream.”
“Oh, right. I forgot.”
“What’s going on?”
“Well, it’s not actually a dream. I AM from the year 2078. I’m here on vacation. Just dipping a toe in the water of the past. I can see you need some serious help.”
“You mean you feel an altruistic non-selfish impulse to help me?”
“No. I’m having fun. You’re in your castle, and you’ve lost the thread. You’ve become a megalomaniac. It’s interesting. See, doc, throwing away your guilt doesn’t mean you turn into a beast. That’s a fairy tale told to keep the rubes in check. To sustain an unworkable society.”
“I’m going to write a prescription for you.”’
“Sure. No problem. Write as many scripts as you want. You think if you drop your act about caring about everybody else, you’ll suddenly take off all your clothes and dance on your desk. You’ll be thrown into a well of infantile fantasies. But it doesn’t turn out that way. People have a natural sense of generosity. It has nothing to do with guilt or redemption or any of that crap.”
“But we have a system to run.”
“You sure do. How’s that working out?”
“It’s all we have.”
“Forget the we. Think about you in the castle. It’s pretty miserable, isn’t it?”
“You’re in serious trouble, sir.”
“From where I’m sitting, I’d say there’s something eating you up. And you don’t know what to do about it. I’m suggesting an out. But hey, if you don’t want to consider what I’m saying, no problem. I’ve got places to go, people to see.”
“In this dream of yours, what happens to the social system? What happens to the less fortunate?”
“They catch on.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“They stop looking up at the castle, for one thing. They realize the whole society was crazy, from top to bottom. They—well, all of us—discover we have our own resources. As individuals. It’s a revelation and it doesn’t come from the castle.”
“Sounds like self-serving doctrine.”
“Actually, it’s just the opposite. In a society of a little less than a billion people, we have a few hundred million theater companies.”
WHAT?”
“Last year, I played a guy like you. He tried to kill himself a few times. People would come into his hospital room and laugh at him. You should have heard the audience. People were wetting themselves.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Easy, doc. You’ll give yourself a stroke. At the end of the play, you wake up and see the future. For the first time in your life. You really see the future out there, hanging like a big moon in the sky. And you’re overcome with grief. It’s quite a moment. Not a dry eye in the house. Because we’ve all been through it. We thought we knew what the future was. But that was just a gray hazy light. It was all of us going down with the ship together. To wake up from that is quite, quite something. Believe me. Nothing quite like it.”
“You’re a madman.”
“For all practical purposes, I’m just you looking at you. If you want to take the ride.”
“And become a selfish greedy moron?”
“I guess you haven’t been listening. I thought listening was your specialty. You’re the priest, aren’t you? Maybe you’re the inquisitor type, trying to drive people into a sea of normalcy. That’s a nice theme for a tragedy. Of course, in the process, you become the most normal person in the universe. Then people start laughing. Fucked, straight up with a twist.”
JON RAPPOPORT