On priestly psychology per Nietzsche

In the first essay of his On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche spends some time talking about the psychology of the priest. 

Think, for example, of certain forms of diet (abstinence from meat), of fasting, of sexual continence, of flight "into the wilderness" ...: add to these the entire antisensualistic metaphysic of the priests that makes men indolent and overrefined, their autohypnosis in the manner of fakirs and Brahmins ... and finally the only-too-comprehensible satiety with all this, together with the radical cure for it, nothingness (or God—the desire for a unio mystica with God is the desire of the Budhist for nothingness, Nirvana—and no more!).  [Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section 6.]

What is the source of this priestly intensity? Why should priests be the ones in society whose behavior tends to extremes, the ones who are most likely to become fanatics? (As an aside, I'm not sure if priests really are the natural extremists, at any rate in today's society. But for Nietzsche they were.)

Nietzsche himself tries to answer this question by looking at diet and habits. But there is another answer that he misses, but which fits in exactly with the kinds of explanation he allows.*

Consider that part of a priest's regular job is prayer, and that prayer often takes the form of asking God for something. But we all know that God is not a vending machine; if you ask God for stuff, the odds are that sometimes you'll get it and sometimes you won't. Many volumes of theology and theodicy have been written to account for this outcome from the perspective of faith. (Meanwhile it's easy to explain it from the perspective of atheism. If God doesn't exist, then prayer is wasted effort; in that case, whether you get the thing you prayed for is a matter of random chance, which turns up now Heads and later Tails.)

But a priest's ongoing service of God generates a kind of relationship with God. And there is a huge literature in the field of psychology about the phenomenon of intermittent reinforcement in relationships. For a sample of what is out there, just now I did a quick Google search, and the following articles were among the first to show up: here, here, here, here, and here.

Briefly, intermittent reinforcement is a classic element of abusive or alcoholic relationships. It consistently results in the dependent partner becoming addicted to the intermittently reinforcing one, abandoning all other interests and any kind of self-care in order to get the love and attention that have proven so unreliable. What's more, if the dependent partner finds that a certain behavior increases the odds of getting the reinforcement they need, even by a little bit, she will repeat and exaggerate that behavior over and over, in ever more frantic efforts to tease out the needed reinforcement.

Isn't this an exact description of a priestly psychology, taking the form of a "crazy fool for God"? And doesn't this mechanism offer a simple, elegant—and, to qualify in Nietzschean terms, completely materialistic—explanation for the growth of priestly asceticism (and ultimately fanaticism) over time?

I think it does. If Nietzsche had known about this result, I think he would have mentioned it.

__________

* What follows is fleshed out from a Post-It note that I left in my copy of Walter Kaufmann's translation of this work, Vintage Books, p. 32. The note is dated 1992-10-12. So I've been sitting on it for a while, it seems.         

The function of the orgasm

I've never read Wilhelm Reich's famous book by this name. I don't know what he says. Probably it is a lot more complex than anything I have to say. Still, I've been thinking about this for a while and want to write it down.

Apparently there is a debate among evolutionary biologists -- or was ten years ago -- about how the female orgasm evolved. See, for example, this book review as evidence. Why only the female orgasm? Apparently the thought is that it is pretty easy to account for the existence of the male orgasm in evolutionary terms: it has an adaptive value because it encourages men to have sex ("with women" is clearly assumed) and therefore ensures descendants. But this explanation has trouble explaining why women have orgasms too. After all, they don't have orgasms every time they have sex, and an orgasm is not necessary in order for a woman to get pregnant. One theory is that they tag along as a by-product of men's orgasms, the same way men have nipples but don't use them for anything. But not everyone accepts this theory; and, speaking as a layman, I have to add that it is a pretty remarkable by-product which -- when it gets going -- is so much more powerful, more energetic, and more renewable than the primary phenomenon from which it is derived. Maybe that's not what biologists find wrong with the theory, but I think it will do for a start.

From my perspective, though, the whole approach is wrong, starting with the very first step. That first step, remember, is that orgasm is a kind of bait to lure us into having sex in order that we have lots of children who spread the desire for sex, thus having still more children, and so on. And I reply that using orgasm as a bribe to get us to do something (in this case, have children) is outrageously inefficient and unreliable. If the only point of sex were children, we could be prompted to do it a lot more often with a lot less fuss. Look at eating: it's necessary for life, and we do it because we get hungry. Look at sleeping: it's necessary for ... well, something, I'm not sure we know what but it is clearly important ... and we do it because we get tired. Any man, be he never so orgasmic, will over the course of his life eat and sleep far more times than he will have sex. So if the purpose were to encourage us to have sex (and therefore many offspring), it could be achieved with a lot less fuss by making sex an activity like eating and sleeping: one that we engage in because to avoid it makes us grumpy and uncomfortable. There would be simply no need for the ecstasy and sublime exaltation of the spirit that come from orgasm.

What's more, if the purpose of orgasm is to make us generate children, orgasm should be impossible from same-sex contact. It should be impossible from masturbation. Manifestly it is neither of these things. Therefore, mere reproduction of the species cannot be the real or ultimate purpose of sex and of the orgasm.

What is?

Let's look at how it functions. Orgasmic ecstasy doesn't just feel good; it's not just a reward. Orgasmic ecstasy makes love -- that is, creates or generates love where it didn't exist (or might not have existed) before. That is, orgasmic ecstasy binds us to our partner. This binding need not be exclusive: the history of monogamy is a very spotty one. But it is binding, all the same. And interpersonal bonds are the fundamental components that make human society possible. If we love each other, then -- other things being equal (and boy, is that a huge condition!) -- we are more likely to stick together. Note that it is possible to spin this as an argument for choosy, consensual nonmonogamy. I'm not going to push that argument but I recognize that it is possible and some people have made it.

For those who really want to ground any discussion of purposes in a Darwinian framework, the next step is to point out that humans are pretty much defenseless on our own. What gives us survival potential is our sociability, our ability to live and work in groups. Anything that sustains and encourages sociability therefore has adaptive value, and sex is surely at the top of that list. That sex is (of course) also useful in reproduction can be seen, in this light, almost as a useful side-effect, a case of nature generously giving us two benefits for the price of one. That said, though, the only plausible reason or purpose behind an experience as extravagant as orgasm has to be not merely children but love.
        

Asceticism and fragility

One of the points that makes Platonism a hard sell in the modern world is its asceticism.  The dialogs of Plato -- some of them, at any rate -- are rich with sensuous imagery, with the promise of wine and sex and song as well as brilliant conversation.  But the Platonic tradition as universally practised was in some respects a cold, colorless thing by comparison; and this coldness has its roots in the very same corpus of writings.  Taste the Platonic opus here and there almost at random, swirl it around on your tongue for a few minutes, and you find an unending struggle: against Plato's deep and urgent lust for the world tugs his equally desperate yearning to escape it.  For every Symposium there is a Phaedo.  And it is a bit of a puzzle, really.  Plotinus -- clearly inside the Platonic tradition -- wrote a long defense of the goodness of the material world, to refute the Gnostics who taught that the material world is evil.  And yet, notwithstanding this unyielding defense of the goodness of the material world (and so, implicitly, of the body), there remained in Platonism at exactly the same time a rejection of the pleasures of the body and a call to strict asceticism.  What gives?

Of course maybe they were just being inconsistent, but that's not an interesting answer and it should be our last choice ... when every other answer has failed us.  And I don't think we need to go that far.  I think if we look we can find more interesting -- and maybe even truer -- reasons to support Platonic asceticism.

What is asceticism, after all?  It's a way of life that rejects ... no, wait, hold up a minute.  To define asceticism, or anything, in terms of what it rejects makes it sound a purely negative ideal.  Is that fair?  Let's turn it around.  Platonist ascetics eat, but they eat a small amount and their food is simple.  They sleep, but without luxury and perhaps not for many hours at a time.  They drink water in preference to wine.  They may accept the company of others, but for the most part quietly, without a lot of talking or fuss.  And without sex -- another important qualifier.  And so on.  Now is it possible to characterize this way of life positively, rather than negatively?  In the abstract it may be a little hard; but when we are faced with concrete choices, nothing could be easier.  I'll eat this rather than that; I'll drink this rather than that; I'll sleep here rather than there; I'll get up again at this time rather than that time; I'll hold my tongue rather than gabbing; I'll sleep alone rather than with somebody else.  Each of these choices is as positive as the reverse choice would be: A rather than B.  And if you put it that way, the choices don't have to be motivated by a hatred or fear of the world.  They don't have to proceed from some fanatical belief that the world or the body is evil.  Seen in this light, simply as choices, they are no more than an identification that "That may be OK but this is better."

On the other hand ... Why, in real life, would anybody make choices after this pattern?  Why would anybody choose water over wine, or abstinence over sex?  It's all very well to say that formally speaking either choice is as positive as the other insofar as any choice is just a selection of A rather than B.  But is it possible for someone to make these kinds of choices consistently without being motivated by some kind of doctrinaire hatred of the world?  Can the Platonists really have it both ways, affirming the goodness of the world but not gorging on it?

Sure.  It all depends on what else they want too.  A man who is straining to hear a moth flutter by won't do a lot of talking, and he won't beguile his wait by listening to loud music.  He needs silence to be able to hear.  A man tasting the subtleties of a bottle of fine wine won't clutter his palate with a lot of salty, greasy, highly-spiced snacks.  A man straining to perceive anything wants all his other sensory inputs muted so tthat they don't drown out the thing he is looking for.

And so if you want to see the divine pattern back of the world, if you want to see how all the pieces hang together in one big organism, if you want to see how we are all just parts of a grand whole and if you want to feel the unsurpassable peace that flows from such understanding ... why then you also want to cut out the noise and the distractions in your life.  So that you can see.  So that you can feel.

For this reason alone, asceticism looks like a practical requirement of the contemplative life in the simple sense that you can't get this without that.  You can't pursue contemplation without attention, and you can't pay attention without a little peace and quiet.  But I think there is even more.

Speaking from my own experience, I can also say that sometimes I find myself feeling fragile.  I don't quite know how to explain what I mean, and I surely don't know what causes it.  Perhaps it is a form of depression, or some other minor aberration in the mood chemistry of my brain.  Perhaps it is something else.  But when the feeling steals upon me, I cannot tolerate loud noises or sudden interruptions.  When it starts to take me over, I have to back away quietly until it passes.  At times like this, I want nothing that will disturb my calm because I feel like too much noise or ruckus will make me shatter.  I may eat, but simple foods and not too much; I may drink, but water and not wine; I shun the company of others; I stop talking unless I absolutely must, and then I am stingy with my words.  And I am like this for a while ... maybe an hour, maybe a day, maybe more ... until after some time has passed I find I'm not any more.  If I lived in a place that had retreat centers set up for this sort of thing, it would feel the most natural thing in the world for me to check into one for a while so that I could be silent and alone, eating simply and sleeping on the hard floor, as long as I had to.  Then when I didn't need to live like that any more, I could come back to the world.

But of course I have a job and responsibilities that make this just a fantasy.  It won't happen, not any time soon.  The only reason it matters is that this is the kind of feeling which makes the ascetic ideal look like a positive one, certainly a happier choice than the noisier and more boisterous way of life that plunges into the world and grabs it with both hands.

The one time that I went on a week-long silent retreat, I found that as the silence deepened I felt more and more fragile.  This experience makes me think that the life of contemplation generally -- or of mindfulness, to the extent that those are the same thing -- probably encourages asceticism in a very natural way.  It's not that there is anything bad or evil or wrong with the world.  It's just that stepping back from the world can be -- especially for the contemplatives among us -- more comfortable.    

Pleasures, pure and mixed

There's a section of the Philebus where Plato has Socrates argue that the intensest pleasures are all mixed with pain – that, in fact, it is this very mixture with pain which makes them so intense.  He talks about scratching, which would never be a pleasure except that the itch which precedes it is so uncomfortable; but the combination (pain of itch + pleasure of scratch) excites us far beyond what any unmixed pleasure could ever do.  (Incidentally, the translation I own clearly uses the words itch and scratch as if he were talking about mosquito bites; but the elaborately overwritten way he describes the pleasure of scratching is utterly incredible unless he is really talking about sex and means us all to get the point without him having to say so.)  Besides scratching he also instances the pleasures of the theater, arguing that the enjoyment of drama – not only tragedy but even comedy – is a pleasure mixed with large quantities of pain, and that it is therefore more moving, more deranging, more maddening than any pure pleasure could ever possibly be.

His examples of pure pleasures include the pleasure of seeing clear geometric shapes, the pleasure of hearing pure tones, the pleasure of smelling delightful flowers, and so on.  Note that pure tones make the cut as pure pleasures, but not all music does.  I assume that Beethoven symphonies would be judged to contain a fair bit of pain (all that Sturm und Drang), thus explaining why listeners are so awed by them; and doubtless he would say the same thing about rock, but even more vehemently.

For the most part, the Buddha dharma agrees with this assessment exactly.  The whole explanation for why anyone would want to follow the Buddha dharma is that it brings you pleasure and the avoidance of all suffering.  When you look closely and realize that Buddhism offers you pleasure by asking you to give up (for example) sex and booze, the answer is that those things aren't really pleasures because they bring with them such a large quantity of suffering.  Since the whole point of the Buddha dharma is to avoid suffering, that means avoiding those alleged "pleasures" which are really just suffering in disguise.  Hence, for monks at least, no sex or booze, no ownership of stuff, and only one meager meal a day.

I've remarked before that Platonism and Buddhism seem to have a lot in common, and this teaching is certainly a prime example.  What is interesting is that in both cases the emphasis, so far as I can tell, seems to be on proving that this and that pleasure contains a large component of pain (or suffering).  It seems to be taken for granted that, once this point is understood, the result is obvious: if this or that intense pleasure derives its very intensity from containing a large quantity of pain, then it can't possibly be as good as it feels and any sane person will want to give it up.

Is it just me, or is there a step missing here?  Couldn't someone argue just as logically that if the reason this or that pleasure (sex, say, or booze or the theater) feels so intense is that it contains a large admixture of pain, well then pain must not be as bad as we thought it was?  Couldn't someone argue that if pain causes intense pleasure then pain is good and necessary?  (Or at any rate that if certain kinds of pain, at certain times and under certain circumstances, cause intense pleasure – then those kinds of pain, at those times and under those circumstances, are good and necessary?)  It sounds like a perverse conclusion when you put it that way, but I think it is just as logical as the other.  If it's perverse, ... well, and is it somehow not perverse to argue that we should give up sex and wine and Beethoven because they are insufficiently pure?  What?  Or do we have a competition here between two conclusions that both sound pretty weird, but that both follow equally well from a surprising (but valid) analysis?

Let me go a step farther.  It sounds perverse to say that pain is or can be good.  But what about saying that you have to be willing to put up with short-term inconveniences (small pains) in order to get long-term goods (greater pleasures)?  What about saying that it's better to do your homework even when you'd like to goof off (small pain) because you'll learn more that way and so become a success in life (greater pleasure)?  Isn't that a platitude?  Doesn't everybody believe that?  Do Plato and the Buddha really disagree?  Seen in that light, the "praise of pain" doesn't sound so weird after all.

So perhaps it's not quite so obvious which life to choose.  Plato and the Buddha recommend a life of pure pleasures unmixed with pain and suffering.  This ends up meaning a life of clarity and serenity, an abjuring of passion.  But I think it is equally logical to accept the joys of passion, in full knowledge that there are miseries there as well – that, in fact, the very word passion means "suffering".

At any rate, if that conclusion is wrong then I think it takes a deeper argument to show it.

Two kinds of joy

Last summer I went to a meditation retreat with a dear friend -- the one who introduced me to meditation in the first place.  I enjoyed it … part of me wants to say it was restful, but in fact I was exhausted when we got back.  But the quiet and clarity were delightful, and I can see why people love it so much.  Some of the people there were actually monastics – Buddhist monks – and of course that takes “loving it” to a whole new level.  Maybe not quite something I aspire to.  Still, it was a good way to spend the weekend.

Saturday evening there was a kind of “talent show” or fun get-together of all the guests at the retreat, where people could tell jokes or stories, recite poems, or whatever they felt like.  For a few minutes I debated internally about quoting the Sarah Teasdale poem "Barter", but finally decided against it.  The turbulence, or urgency, or passion of its last stanza seemed somehow out of place in a retreat devoted to calm, quiet, and mindfulness.

And yet, I wasn’t completely happy with that answer.  After all, Teasdale’s poem talks about the years of strife being in the service of that “one white, shining hour of peace”.  The hour of peace can’t be out of place as a Buddhist goal, and more than once the event organizers repeated that without suffering there can be no compassion.  So it was a puzzle, and I spent some time puzzling over it.

I’m not sure I came to any profound resolution, but in the process I did see a totally unexpected commonality between the way of passion and the way of mindfulness.  And over the next couple of days I tried to spell it out.  I came up with this:

The forest’s dry as tinder. Just a spark,

And all the hill will come alive with flame –

A shining beacon, bright against the dark,

That swallows whole your home and life and name.

Just so it is with passion. Once alight,

All obstacles restraining it are lost.

Friends, reputation, family, sense of right –

Joy torches in a smoking holocaust.

For quiet, seek the Joy of mindfulness:

A candle sheltered from the blust’ring storm –

No death nor ruin, anguish nor distress –

No bonfire, but a lamp that’s light and warm.

Yet e’en this lamp will burn up all you have.

For if you chase this Joy to where it lives,

You’ll leave your home, your work, your kin, your love,

Your very name when Dharm’ a new name gives.

What mystery for wise men to admire:

Why Joy must be an all-consuming fire!