The scene in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, where the camera pulls back while simultaneously zooming in to create a dizzying effect from the point of view of the acrophobic, seems to represent well, at least literally, what really happens in moments of acrophobic vertigo. You really do feel the abyss is sucking you in, and as shallow as my knowledge is about certain biological or psychological phenomena that happens during vertigo, I’m almost certain that the threat is nothing so external as it is internal.
Kierkegaard discusses the experience of vertigo, convincingly saying that the fear one feels when standing over a cliff is not so much about the falling itself, but the fact that the threshold between my being safe and my jumping off is solely marked by my choice. Desire, contrary to what we might casually think, perhaps plays only a minor role in this process of decision-making – there are far too many incidents where people choose against their desires. What gives rise to that haunting feeling of vertigo is not merely because of the “I might fall” prospective, where possibility is measured by some external variable. (It’s interesting to realize that vertigo still occurs even when there is no external influence that can probably cause me to fall.) Perhaps it’s the acute – but still largely subconscious – realization that the only thing that keeps me from diving into my demise is that fragile thing called choice. There is no physical impediment that can guarantee me from making a certain choice. I just make a choice. And that’s it. I suppose it’s not too outrageous to say that I am alive right now because I chose to be alive. Conversely, I chose against putting an end to my life. After stripping away every factor that explains why I’m alive right now, something close to what we could call essence says that a single choice (or a series of similar choices) is what keeps me alive.
Now, this weight of choice seems to be a lot heavier than what I gathered from Camus or Sartre in college. This seemingly existential sprawl is stemming a lot more from an interaction with real life than with dead people. (I finally get a glimpse of how serious the French existentialists were when they wrote.) It dawned on me, quite unpleasantly, that there is no fundamental difference between ‘me’ and the people we usually consider ‘incarnations of evil’ such as Hitler or Kim Jong-Il. No fundamental dissociation or distance.
The feeling of nearness was a lot more nauseating than terrifying, and while there are still very justifiable reasons that explain the inevitability of one’s making certain choices or becoming a certain person, I can’t help but think that the ‘demonic’ Hitler is perhaps also just a composite of choices, or a result of choices made in series. And this opens up an entire realm that I only thought was irrelevant to me. And when the becoming of being unravels along the axis of choice alone, there is not much that can automatically eliminate me from becoming a being I do not desire. A choice made, and another made, are really the colors that paint the picture of who I am. A single shade of dark color probably would show no difference. You don’t know yet whether it is a shadow of an object, or the color of the object itself. Perhaps an accumulation of choices would gradually but surely lead one to a place where one taps into another set of choices that only seemed outrageous before. If the theory that says the prime-mover behind Hitler becoming Hitler is not an overnight ‘conversion’ to Evil, but a series of seemingly innocuous choices is a cogent argument, then that puts an enormous weight upon the choices that usually belong to the category of the quotidian. And the axiom that speaks of a responsibility for choices one has made multiplies the gravity.
But, it must be wiser not to let the weight overburden me. If anything, the Angelus Novus would be the very last of my last options. As long as my life is defined by the choices that I make, and as long as those choices rightfully determine who I become and who I am, and if choice, by definition, truly is the right and power and opportunity to choose, then ‘proactive’ must be the way to go. It would be dreadful to find out, on my death bed, that all my life I’ve only been swept along in the timeline of human history, stumbling upon chains of events, only by virtue of the passage of time.
The worst would be the inevitable truth that that, too, will have had been a choice. The kind of consequence I must pay for that choice, I refuse to imagine.
the wonder, the burden, the responsibility of choice. there is so much packed into this entry… and so many directions one can fling off into.
the thing that i couldn’t help but think about… or rather the question that kept coming up in my mind… was the realm of power/control in relation to the ability people have to choose. the gifts that existentialism has given the world is powerful… placing will and agency into the hands of everyday individuals. but then you also wonder how much of that is even possible within the confines of our world, society, community groups, etc. it’s like talking of what the characteristics of “human nature” are without thinking of the institutions/structures that actively, perhaps aggressively, coerce a person into submission without them even really knowing.
so in short, how much choice do we really have?
i suppose at the end of the day… it’s a dialectical process. the meeting place being between choice and coercion. and i’d love to believe that it’s malleable.
anyways… i just woke up. hope this made some sense. i enjoyed the entry. =) thanks for giving me to chew on.
so i just finished a run.. and i was thinking about this entry. and i realized that you expressed the battle between agency and being coerced in your fears of being swept through history. haha.
that’s all. =)
I know, it’s the most troubling concern that rises against extreme existentialism. The classic(?) battle is the one between the old idea of existentialism and ideas of postmodernism, where a lot of “choices” people make are attributed to external factors.
The extreme sides of this ’spectrum’ would either say, “we are choices and nothing else”, or “we are pure constructs of society.” But like you say, I really don’t know if it’s one or the other.
So I’m not sure if this is exactly like talking about characteristics of human nature without thinking of the institutions/structures that ‘coerce’ a person into submission. The choice I’m talking about is the kind that is, rather, very much affected by the confines of the world, society, community groups. The internal debates prior to a final choice are usually a battle between the things we ‘know’, the things we’ve ‘learned,’ the things we’ve ‘acquired,’ if you will. I suppose this is why choosing is such an aggrandized issue in the first place.
I had something disgustingly convoluted right about here, but I suppose a conversation would work better.
Because you mention power/control explicitly, I may add this: one of the fears that lie behind my awareness of this thing called choice is the fear that I, because of certain succession of my choices, would become someone who would deprive others of their choices. That’s as simple as this post is twisted. The burden is the realization that desire alone will not take me to the place I want to be.
Something tells me that we talking about two different ideas of choice. Or, to put it differently, we’re dealing with the idea of choice based on two different scales. I’m going to wait on this to see if it’s worth the discussion.
I also do hope for a malleable meeting place.
Hope summer’s treating you well =)
i brought up human nature in a pretty confusing way. what i meant by the comment was merely that when human nature is mentioned (particularly in church/theological circumstances)… there is a severe lack of discussion concerning external forces, institutionalization, and power/control (perhaps this is because theology on a popular is not as “up-to-date” with contemporary philosophical discussions on power). so when we talk of what human nature is… both as essence and state of being… we tend to view ourselves as depraved and/or good. i suppose it’s my own desire to see/read/hear dialogue concerning the state of a person’s being through a balanced lens of both what we are and the forces that have shaped us.
that said, thinking of choice occupies a peculiar place for us. because like you said, our choices may deprive others of theirs. what a scary place to be… particularly when desire is truly and indeed not enough. makes one rethink the phrase, “good intentions are a road paved to hell”.
how, then, do we come to view that terrible posture called agency? what are we to do with it? how do we view it? and perhaps most importantly… how do we democratize it on philosophical, spiritual, social, political, historical levels?
but i have a feeling these questions are outside the scope of this post. either way… provoking to say the least.
and one last thing… i feel so formal writing this comment.