Of Self-ish Things

Socializers are always busy coming up with new ways to lose their inhibitions. Just when you thought drugs and alcohol were so seventies, someone invented foam parties. Nor is this phenomenon limited to crazy college students, who might be too new to full knowledge of self to be always comfortable with full expression of it. It takes partiers of some material consequence to create a market for giant jugs of Dewar's White Label.

I've always wondered why "fun" seems to require forgetting yourself. More "innocent" pastimes, like movies and books (learning's provocative and dangerous, no?) are equally culpable with drugs and drink, at least as far as self-forgetting goes. "Read a P.G. Wodehouse," a good friend in A Suitable Boy prescribes for a broken heart. Dancer in the Dark, a terrible movie which I suggest you avoid, tells the story of a factory worker who distracts herself from her life with movie musicals, the most classic example of "escapist" media. Actually, books or movies don't have to be especially fantastic or improbable to function as escapist - a story with a bit of danger and drama can do a better job of pulling us out of ourselves than one that makes us say "Life is never like that!" with every plot twist. Good "escapist" fare is lifelike, just a little funnier, scarier, easier and prettier - just the way life looks after a couple drinks.

I used to think "To thine own self be true" was a quote from the Bible! I was faintly surprised when I realized it's from Hamlet, largely because I've come across this idea often in the course of my theological searchings. I don't yet have a good grasp of how much self-knowledge might be prioritized in the Bible and in religious tradition versus how much the modern ethic of self-esteem has unconsciously been absorbed by theological thinkers. (Those who think modern "liberal" Catholics are alone in annexing the pet notions of their time should read Bernadette Brooten on Augustine's influence by Roman sexual mores. Everybody read it - it'll spin your head!) I am, of course, aware that Jesus called for death to self and giving of one's self: but this is clearly a different proposition from numbing your self-knowledge in your free time, and may not be inconsistent with the integrated self-knowledge that some modern religious writers call for.

What, then, bothers me so much about the human practice of pursuing "sleep to self" for the purpose of fun? Like anyone who's known a few college students, I'm well aware of the ossifying possibilities of sustained navel-gazing. I don't recommend that. I'm also a compulsive reader who likes her films and even her drinks from time to time - I'm as guilty as anyone of the practice of self-sleep under some of its milder forms.

I recall that I started this blog by talking about inhibitions, and I've veered a bit off the subject. Stifling inhibitions isn't quite the same thing as dying or even sleeping to self, because many inhibitions are societally imposed: they are not all authentic components of the self. It's because people experimented with disabling social inhibitions that we have treatment for mental illness and support for racial equality (and some less exciting innovations, like the male Speedo.) Tearing down inhibitions might cause social embarassment or medical damage, depending on how you choose to do it, but it's part of a continuum of behavior that sometimes shows us that taboos needs to be changed and sometimes reminds us of why they make life more pleasant.

What's nearly indistinguishable from the purposeful deadening of inhibitions is when people drink, or observe Mardi Gras, or (who knows) read excessively because they're unwilling to be alone with their own selves and their own lives. This, I think, is an active devaluation of their God-given lives and characters, a serious lack of pride in God's creation. The world we're born into is not all God would have it: people of good will have the power to make it a more Godly place. Similarly, not all aspects of the selves we know are God-given, although God can certainly make use of even a world-imposed bad trait, a hatred or hang-up or insecurity. Ignoring those bad traits is no way to deal with them; ignoring the good ones is no proper gratitude. This, I think, is the place that self-knowledge has in the life organized around God: to help us to better appreciate and use what God has created in our own selves.