On the Unchangebility of Selves and Narratives
Abstract: I briefly argue that there is an analogy between Machiavelli’s notion of the unchangeability of the political self and narrative structure more generally.
Machiavelli’s notion that one of the greatest challenges to the potential man of virtu is the inability to change one’s character in the face of radically new circumstances might also apply to narrative form as well: I think here of the popularity of Game of Thrones, and my own interest in the show’s first three seasons—but how it has come to truly bore me, despite its focus on shock-and-awe depictions of “artistic cruelty”[1] and the excessive use of narrative “twists,” which approach the exaggerated mockery of M. Night Shyamalan’s films, or the stale explosiveness of Michael Bay. Here we might say that a narrative, like a would-be prince, must invite a certain type of structural elasticity in order to remain not only relevant, but credible.[2] The repetition of any trope grows old far quicker than an author ever supposes; I think here of Coleridge’s division between the stasis/entropy/desiccation of convention and cliché cast against the life-affirming energies of creativity and novelty—the paradigm of the romantic spirit which feeds directly into its appropriation as progressivism. I think, too, of the problem of daily (re)enchantment and the aesthetics of wonder[3]—Rilke’s observation is here germane: “I realize with a sense of dread that one grows numb with regard to even the most wonderful things when they become part of one’s daily interactions and surroundings.” (Rilke, Letters on Life, p. 58) The lack of novelty in any system seems to fall into a spectrum that moves from boredom/rut to what we might call gross political obstinacy: there is a lesson here concerning the moderation of stability and instability. Even the most stable, dogmatic discourses must alter—but, in line with their stability, they entropize inward rather than outward.
I would further note that most people seem to become more of what they already are: those who possess an in-built moral compass generally seem to experience a spiral of improvement, those who harbor and accept deep flaws condemned to an ever-more dramatic and cumulative descent into ignorance, vanity, laziness, and even evil. Measuring alterations in an individual, in this light, follow an internal logic, a type of Calvinistic determinism of a quasi-preordained persuasion—the modern campaigns to “love me for who I am” fit into this category. How does this cultural Dove-campaign of validation square with someone like Michael Sandel’s notion of the encumbered vs. unencumbered self?—I would say that we find in this discourse an inherent contradiction, one that pleads the intrinsic unchageability of the self (“love me for who I am”) while blooming this ideology against the background of a presumed tabula rasa, where the self can become anything and suffers from no inherent limitations. And so we come to a sort of dead-end: a self that is infinitely changeable, that can take any and all forms, but which is justified in its commitment to a singular manifestation, which refuses to “budge.” A field of infinite dynamism filled with unchanging entities: a paradox at the core of the modern self, that sees change everywhere but the site of the individual. Ironically, it is the very call to explain oneself as “fluid” that seems to now permit some of the least variable and most obstinate personalities to “double down” on the inherent immovability of their self-trajectories. People, like narratives, are more likely to follow themselves to the grave then they are to self-transcend, adapt and prevail.
To this end, antinomianism therefore has a privileged relationship to unconcealed forms of exploitation. In a society where the truth emanates from the self, a shared sense of unreality is the necessary and emergent consequence. What tone this unreality takes, which would be coherent in the mind of a sovereign, is incoherent and schizophrenic in the hive-mind of the masses. This seems to suggest that the “open-myth” phase of democracy, where mythmaking has seeped into the mortar and is shared entirely, is most effective if it is accordingly accompanied by a sovereign power that may now counteract and counterbalance the unique power now claimed by the people. This, too, is a problem of consistent “character.” The strengthening of state sovereignty therefore removes limits to state intervention while also providing the room for unparalleled individual “freedom”—here extended over the domain of truth itself. Just as we may speak of the comportment and demeanor of certain umpires and referees, describing the state as “neutral” tells us only of its station and responsibilities, not the attitude it is to take toward any of that. Barring a noble lie (which is an option in itself), the state need only perform a consistent narrative—it need only provide a reliable attitude. This attitude need not be “just” or “noble” or “beautiful” or “good”—it simply needs to work consistently.
It is funny how, at the undergraduate level of education, the most beloved professors tend to either preform a radical laissez-faire attitude toward their class and students, or are known as executors of deadline and order; it is the moderates in between, those with less consistent frames of behavior, that fall from memory. What matters less than the content of one’s performance (though this is obviously significant) is often just how often it is disclosed in consistent ways—what is at stake is not whether or not one is loved or hated, which are secondary resources, but whether one invites coordination through and with that hate/love.[4] It is amazing how consistently a man will happily live next to a neighbor he hates due to regular, habitual forms of annoyance rather than one he is tasked to love one day and despise another.
This is where even Eric Hoffer misses a key subtlety. It is not so much that weakening of a unitary framework is reducible to the weakening of the harshness that regime maintains over the political order; it is rather a function of the consistency of performance/attitude a regime takes toward its designated roles. If there are exceptional moments where adaptability becomes key (the Machiavellian insight), then most of the “normal” functioning is simply a matter of routine, expectation, reliability. Scheduled whippings are oddly tolerated—so long as they are on time, not late, executed well.[5] The best way to permit violence and evil is simply to institutionalize it.
In fact, formal roles may even change, and so long as the mood of the state remains the same, little is lost and even less is weakened. As a friend might change over time—incurring scars from experience, a new countenance and an evolved torso—so too might the state; we do not question these changes so long as they are 1. gradual, e.g. not too much change all at once; and 2. consistent with the character of the state. And just as defining a friend’s character is amorphous and subject to change, the indeterminacy of democracy’s long-term character does not cancel out a more general consistency of behavior over time. The operative model for state conversion has always been the passioned and committed, but oft-confused and questioning, metamorphosis of Augustine—not the revolutionary lightning-strike of Saul into Paul. In terms of modes of conversion, Locke, Rawls and Habermas see a gradual conversion at the level of society but usually a Pauline conversion, like Jefferson’s consideration of the force of the better argument, at the level of the individual engaged in enlightened debate, a quasi-utopian Bolean updating proceduralism; it is Burke’s committed anti-abstractionism, his focus on experience and empiricism and reform, which inherits the crystalline model, and provides the greatest insight into the modern variant of state character.
[1] See Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov
[2] See Aristotle, Poetics; Alex Woloch, The One vs. the Many
[3] See Jane Bennett; Schiller, Chytry.
[4] See Thomas Schelling and Michael Chwe on customs and coordination.
[5] Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” is here an interesting example of this type of institutionalized violence.