The bourgeois is assailed by doubts. Constantly. The purchase of a car, or phone, or a computer, becomes a brain twister, more than it would be for someone who has very little money or a great deal. An instant after the purchase, even as he’s leaving the dealership or the shop, he’s already thinking: I bought the wrong thing, or else, I paid way too much, or even, I bought it now instead of waiting for the new model, I bought it but actually no one else is going to like it, or it’s me who isn’t going to like it, or the truth is I don’t need it, so why did I buy it in the first place? But he can’t retrace his steps. You can’t go back, because that would mean confirming a mistake, reiterating it. In the fields of taste and culture, this happens even more frequently. Let’s take shows. Once you’ve bought the ticket, you feel obliged to use it, even if you don’t much want to. You can’t stand the idea of having wasted your money, and you’d rather inflict two hours of utter tedium upon yourself. And so you’ll wind up suffering twice as much. The curve of human benefits never matches the curve of economic costs. If, at the insistence of his wife or friends, he goes to a concert, for example, to hear classical music, paying top dollar for the seats because it’s a famous conductor or a great orchestra or a fantastic virtuoso, and the tickets are practically impossible to get hold of, or else if he subscribes to an entire cycle of concerts, or a theater season, for the simple reason that by going to the opera or the theater he can prove to others and, first and foremost, to himself that he’s doing something of cultural relevance, something that qualifies him as person, even if he actually understands little or nothing when it comes to music and theater, and they bore him to death, well, this man will suffer twice, the first time as he lays out the price of the ticket or the subscription, the second time as he sits through shows he doesn’t like but for which he’s already paid a head-spinning price. From these two torments added together, paradoxically, a certain pleasure may spring, a pained, contradictory, ecstatic pleasure, because the bourgeois is forced to leave his body, transcend himself, twice in order to conquer his greed and his inner grumblings. If he were seriously to apply the economic principle that his class is said to have been guided by since the Middle Ages, and which is highlighted in textbooks as the first rule of his way of life, then he ought by rights to avoid spending to suffer instead of to enjoy himself, and if he truly isn’t able to enjoy himself, at least let him be bored for free, the way you do when you go to a terrible show but with tickets you didn’t have to pay for, so at least you can tell yourself: “Just think if I’d had to pay for that!” The idea that he might have wasted his money is enough to drive him crazy, and that is why he prefers to lie to himself, proclaiming himself well pleased. The funny thing is that sometimes he’s truly convinced that he is delighted, because he has mistaken the uproar in his heart over his authentic discontent for an aesthetic afflatus. The transfiguration will take on enduring features, and he will be able to be deeply stirred by the memory of a trip through artistic cities and castles during which he was truly bored, feeling nostalgia for places and events that at the time had only disappointed him.
Therefore, the idea of some shabby bourgeois utilitarianism is, in its turn, a legend: the idea that the bourgeois acts in accordance with a clear-eyed calculation of convenience and self-interest is one of the fables of the theory. Equally off-target is the idea that competition pushes people toward progress and that it rewards only the best: maybe so, if they don’t have many competitors, if individuals can manage social comparisons and are motivated to make a rational choice, but if there are too many social actors at play, if the competition tends to fall into uniformity, then the choice becomes bewildering. Those who are forced to evaluate themselves in relation to a great number of competitors, in terms of personal resources, ability, and success, over the long term will tend to perform less and less well, in both professional and human terms. Instinctively, we tend to compare ourselves not with those who are in our same social position, but instead with those who are at least one step above us. This is a natural inclination, often a mortifying one, offset from time to time with the consolatory corollary of measuring ourselves against those who are one step down. But the frustration engendered by the first tendency will never be wholly compensated by the relief prompted by the second.
(DO YOU REMEMBER? When the lights were turned out and the children were lined up by age, starting with the youngest little cousins all the way up to the adults and bringing up the rear of the procession was the grandmother, and each one carried one of those little candles that spray sparks and spread fear and astonishment because they don’t burn your hand but only tickle it, prickling it enjoyably, and you can wave them around, creating luminous streaks that linger in your eyes, with the one shortcoming being that by the time you light the last in line, already the candles of the littlest children are already starting to burn down, they’re just about to flicker out, hurry, we have to get moving into the dark room full of gifts, singing, hurry! before the sparks die out entirely . . .)
18
SUBMIT, subjugate. The bourgeoisie is capable of fostering both instincts, simultaneously and with the same force, which by and large are distinctive features of, respectively, the lower and upper classes. The dichotomy is caused by that law of society, valid for one and all but almost pathologically vivid in the middle class (as if it had been created especially for that specific class), which obliges us to submit to conventions and, at the same time, stand out against them, distinguish ourselves, lest we become anonymous, nondescript. To obey, to fit in, to conform—to be independent, to differentiate ourselves, to distinguish ourselves. The bourgeois institution par excellence, the institution in which the middle class had found its most classic expression, with all that is solemn, ridiculous, cruel, and piteous that can be concentrated in a human relationship, that is to say, matrimony, lends itself ideally to perform this twofold function, whereby with the foundation of a new nuclear family unit, one separates oneself, one emancipates oneself—and at the same time, one goes along, one settles, and in certain cases, one actually resigns oneself to the greatest possible degree of conventionality. We have all experienced this sentimental-economic short circuit, this paradoxical point of fusion between two urges that, in any case, remain irreducible, generated by eroticism with the end result of killing that same eroticism, the culminating point of identification of self and other (only you, you alone exist for me, and only by your side do I exist), which inexorably plunges into the most obvious and banal of liturgies, the wedding registry, the in-laws, the mantra of evening soups, the nauseating byplay of faithfulness/betrayal, the skyrocketing utility bills, the children’s orthodontist and their braces, the mismatched silverware, the measurement and purchase of matrimonial linen, deciding where to spend the vacation, wherever you like, it makes no difference to me—in other words, the sublime and monotonous muddling through of life. You save your skin and you commit suicide in one single act. The acid test that proves the physiological necessity of settling is the fact that even homosexuals, previously excluded, or should we say, exempted, now demand the right to “be like everyone.”
BOURGEOIS MATRIMONY, then, is a tightrope stretched between two mountains, to be walked without ever looking down: on the one hand there is the social utilitarianism of the classical conception, on the other, the aspiration to the erotic fusion of the romantic, modern world. Matrimony ought to contain at once self-interest and passion. If you stop to think about it, it may be the only institution that, in the transition from the ancient world, which considered it a necessary but purely pragmatic ritual, and the modern world, which exalts lovers’ free will to choose, rather than being desacralized over time and directed toward the pure principle of utility, as has been the case with all other forms of human expression, art, politics, and work, has instead been spiritualized, idealized . . . It was the introduction of the sacrosanct “right to happiness” that first sabotaged marriage. The expectation of happiness has rendered intolerable the fact of no
t being happy, or of not being happy anymore. By basing marriage on emotion, which is as exciting as it is capricious, it has been undermined and made unnecessary. If I no longer love my husband, the honesty of my desire authorizes me to get a new one. Now, instead of taming a shrew, you just dump her.
THE DECISION TO LIVE a bourgeois life often comes before its concrete achievement (alongside who to live that life, where, exercising what profession, etc.), presenting itself as an overarching plan, a sketch full of blank spots still to be filled in, whereas in other cases it is precisely the details, the preconditions, or the underlying context (a girlfriend eager to become a wife, an apartment that was supposed to come on sale and finally does, your father’s office that is in need of young blood . . .) that dictate the transition from a bohemian lifestyle as a student to a very different one, of rigidly observant bourgeois ways: children—office—German sedan—business dinners—carefully planned vacations—cancer of the uterus or the prostate. You suddenly find yourself at age thirty, then forty, then fifty, with no idea of how it happened.
The change came about little by little—and then, all at once, from one day to the next, an avalanche.
And you may find yourself
in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife . . .
And you may ask yourself
well . . . how did I get here?
CERTAINLY, NOTHING COULD BE more bourgeois than to reject bourgeois conventions, so that from a certain point onward, acceptance or rejection end up becoming the same thing, morally speaking. To oppose resistance, rebellion, is not always a sign of firm resolution; on the other hand, there can be something truly courageous, almost heroic, in the acceptance of a state of fact. It is clear that those who are always forced to distinguish themselves and in any case fear that they may not be particularly recognizable, often choose to avail themselves of controversial poses, the display of eccentricities and idiosyncrasies. On the other hand, sensitive people may choose to don the mask of conformist behavior, adhering to it without argument, so as to preserve intact a margin of inner freedom.
Although it usually displays a very rigid table of commandments, along with an ample array of values to be observed, in reality the middle class is incapable of identifying once and for all with a single model that establishes a clear social contract. Not even the “morality of elderly aunts” can offer a permanent moral code, and in fact, if the bourgeoisie had ever seriously respected the code that it displays as its social ethics (parsimony, shrewdness, etc.), it never would have taken a single step forward, it would still be right where it was at the start, in the Middle Ages. It is therefore a class that progresses by contradicting itself, that defines itself by its opposite. Perhaps that is why, as perhaps its most illustrious bard, Thomas Mann, maintains, it is the class with the greatest number of points of contact and things in common with the human race as a whole.
If we wanted to send a paragon of humanity into space to meet the aliens, then we ought to send an accountant, or maybe make it two humans, and throw in a school principal.
19
WHAT FOLLOWS WAS WRITTEN while thinking of the QT.
The following coexist in the middle class:
• a gray zone of people who are indifferent to almost everything, pleasures, ideas, dangers, impulses, tragedies, even money, in a word, to life itself; closed up like snails in a translucent shell, they seem to withstand the pressure of the outside world, holding their breath the whole time; the slightest change would cause them pain and embarrassment, even if it were a change for the better; they’re afraid of being found out and judged for their detachment; in reality, it is they who judge the world, given that the indifference they display toward that world is perhaps far more ferocious than an openly leveled j’accuse; they love no one and no one loves them;
• the hedonists who chase after luxury and the superfluous, and who live for no reason other than to dazzle others with their suits and their watches and their jewelry and a style that calls attention to itself from afar;
• the good fathers and mothers who administer their patrimony as if it were a gift, without showing off, something to be preserved and not squandered, ensuring the members of their family a prosperity so solid and discreet that in the long run it becomes practically imperceptible, something that can cause substantial confusion, such as the sensation of being poor, since they never acquire the luxury goods that others instead possess and flash freely;
• those, increasingly numerous these days, who live just a couple of steps above the poverty line, obsessed by the limits of their budgets, and therefore forced to second-guess their everyday behavior and expenses, taking note of each day’s outlay on a monthly grid, so that a movie ticket, an espresso at the café, and the daily sports paper all become entries in a balance sheet.
No matter which of these categories they belong to, any member of the middle class feels that he is represented by no one, neither by the institutions, nor by the political parties, nor by the trade unions or the newspapers, and least of all, here, in the city of the pope, by the Catholic Church. Any direct involvement in political activity is viewed with skepticism, if not outright disapproval, in part because it is thought (not entirely mistakenly) that politics is the territory in which any individual’s worst inclinations tend to be freed.
Disenchantment has often prevented the inhabitants of the city from taking on positions that were either too fanatical or intransigent.
THE TRADITIONAL ITALIAN CHRISTMAS DINNER with eel, a cold serpent garnished with slices of hard-boiled egg—the farewell kisses on the hairy cheeks of the old women—confessing your own childhood sins, which were for that matter practically nonexistent, to a strange man hiding behind a wooden grate: the power of conventions is so powerful and binding that it makes us accept things that are annoying or incomprehensible, the enchantment of our subjugation. The more arbitrary a rule, the greater the obligation to honor and obey it. Being constantly subjected to the will of others was, once upon a time, the core of one’s upbringing, a sort of forced march into absurdity. If this explains, among other things, the unbelievable docility with which generations of men allowed themselves to be marched off into military bloodbaths, in wars fought over the possession of a few miles of weed-ridden land, on its flip side it clearly demonstrates that there can be nothing so absurd that it defies belief, and therefore that human beings are infinitely malleable, and that we are therefore willing to make incredible leaps of faith while remaining within our basic nature. That means that it is legitimate to mistrust any nature because it might contain the seeds of a character that is antithetical to the apparent one, and that therefore any convention, even one derived from the most innocuous proverb recited by a grandmother, is always on the verge of being reversed into its own opposite.
STANDING OUT isn’t that hard after all, except that those very signs of distinction, on the one hand, while they do separate you from the general code of taste, also tend to lump you with a smaller, more elite circle inside of which everyone is far too alike. Possessing as they do the same prerequisites and cultivating the same idiosyncrasies, the members of the club wind up becoming practically interchangeable. It’s the fate of restricted groups, of select bodies, that the very process of selection makes them as different from the outside world as they are homogeneous on the interior. A regiment of mounted cavalrymen engaged in the changing of the guard will certainly impress passersby with their extraordinary height and their plumed helmets, but it will then be very difficult for those same passersby to distinguish the new sentinels from the ones they just replaced: they all look the same. It is really rather frustrating to fight for the privilege to socialize exclusively with people of your same rank and, in the end, for that very reason, find them boring.
WE’RE TALKING ABOUT A CLASS THAT, in actual reality, aspires to possess what only a very narrow portion of its membership in effect owns. Thus, social affiliation is measured not so much in terms of the property or titles held as
of aspiration to do so. The more scalding that desire, the more marked the hallmarks of membership. To be dying of envy for something is far more typically bourgeois than to own it. This characteristic, emotional rather than economic in nature, has assured that, in the opinions of some, the proletariat strictly speaking has ceased to exist in Italy, not because it has been emancipated from the bonds of poverty—instead, it vanished at the point at which it began to share in the aspirations and frustrations of the bourgeoisie. Since nine times out of ten the outcome of any given desire is frustration, it might make better sense to redesign the profiles of sociological investigations to fit the curve of a (shall we say) “index of impotence.” What that would entail is taking into account not the actual consumption that single individuals or families can afford, but rather the one that it might lay claim to, even though it might be beyond their economic reach. Everything, in other words, that they feel, rightly or wrongly, they’ve been cheated out of. According to this new calculation, then, we are chiefly that which we lack in order to be able to be what we are. We consist, then, of our deficits, of the things that we lack. There is practically no family on earth in which everyone doesn’t feel they’ve been made the victims of cruel injustices and depredations on the part of their blood kin. Or else family members believe that they’ve done a great deal but that it will be others who enjoy the fruit of their labors. You have to work hard to conquer the right to leisure, but since the phases of that process cannot be synchronous, they are spread over numerous generations, so that it was the father who broke his back in order to allow his children to awaken at noon.
The Catholic School Page 68
