The Message in the Bottle and Lost in the Cosmos

by Walker Percy

  Perhaps. Some, I suppose.

  And are there not still religious folk, women who give their very lives to serve God and their fellowman, all for the love of God?

  Well, some—though for every Mother Teresa, there seem to be 1,800 nutty American nuns, female Clint Eastwoods who have it in for men and are out to get the Pope.

  Then what are you saying beyond the commonplace that there are now, just as there have always been, “good” people and “bad” people; or, if you prefer, people with traditional value systems and people with new life styles?

  I am only trying to make sense of a peculiar phenomenon, hardly to be ignored: the sudden and unprecedented appearance of florid sexual behavior and the overt and covert practice of violence to the point of rendering cities unlivable, of nice people like Europeans and Americans killing each other by the millions—and with it, the very real possibility for the first time in history that we may destroy ourselves in the near future.

  Decency is as may be, but decent or not, the autonomous self is devolving upon what seems to it a simple and reasonable view of sexuality. In view of its low cost and availability, the easy prevention of disease and pregnancy, could anything seem more reasonable than that the traditional Judaeo-Christian strictures against premarital and extramarital sex are anachronisms—especially the former in view of the fact that teenagers are at the height of their sexual powers? Even the good, gray New York Times takes it for granted. In an editorial protesting certain criticisms of the availability of contraceptive devices to teenagers without parental consent, the Times editorialist wrote: “Some Americans apparently find emotional satisfaction in encouraging teenagers to deny or postpone their sexuality. It is a costly fantasy, diverting attention and resources from a real world.”

  Why indeed postpone or deny the sexuality of teenagers? Admitting the true state of affairs is surely more honest than retaining a Christian veneer and practicing the sexual mores of Dallas and The Love Boat.

  Does it only remain then to pause and wonder how such a mistaken view of sexuality could have informed the entire Western world for two thousand years? One needs to speak plainly here. It is, after all, not a small matter to discard such a traditional view so casually and so quickly. Nor should one deceive oneself about the consequences of “correcting” the mistake.

  The deception may come from concealing from oneself the inevitable nature of sexuality in a post-Christian and technological society by substituting for the lost god and the lost commandment such surrogate goals as “responsible” sexuality, “commitment,” “sharing,” and so on.

  These humane and in fact admirable properties of a good sexuality as opposed to a bad sexuality may in fact obtain, but it is necessary to note without prejudice that once sexual behavior is viewed objectively as an option of the autonomous self, it will also be viewed necessarily and quite reasonably as a source of pleasure and a need-satisfaction and as such subject to those techniques of the age by which such satisfactions are best arrived at and with the least damage to others. And why not? Cannot recreational sex be enjoyed responsibly, that is, without damage to one’s health or the health of others, physical health and emotional health? One can eat one’s cake and have it too. The words responsibility, mutuality, sharing, caring, are easily added, the cake’s icing.

  A SHORT HISTORY OF THE DEMONIAC SPIRIT OF

  THE EROTIC AND THE VIOLENT IN THE CHRISTIAN

  ERA,

  IN THE TRANSITION FROM

  THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE TECHNOLOGICAL ERA,

  AND FINALLY IN A PURELY TECHNOLOGICAL ERA

  St. Paul: The triumph of the spirit over the flesh, but still bothered by a “thorn in the flesh” (unlike Socrates, who wouldn’t have worried).

  St. Augustine: The triumph of the love of God in the City of God over lust in the city of man, but—“Grant me the gift of continence, but not just yet.”

  Dante: Sexual sinners in the outermost, least punitive, circle of hell, storm-tossed, blown to and fro like birds on the winds of desire, yet still together and still in love. Cf. traitors and murderers in innermost circle, up to their necks in boiling pitch.

  Chaucer’s Miller and Wife of Bath: The frankly erotic harmonized comically and humanely as earthy transgressions, committed and recognized as sins, but without neurotic guilt and to be forgiven by the loving Lord and Master, the goal of the Canterbury pilgrimage.

  Don Giovanni: The appearance of the pure demoniac spirit of the erotic; the Don’s seduction of 1,003 women set to the joyful music of Mozart; yet this same spirit of the erotic posited by Christianity, e.g., the damnation of the Don and his descent before our eyes into the fires of hell.

  Fanny Hill: The spirit of the erotic in English pornography; the sinister charm of secret sex under the veneer of Christian proprieties and layers of Victorian clothes; the white skin of thighs against black stockings.

  World War I: Joyce Kilmer’s poetry, Colleen Moore in Lilac Time, “Mademoiselle from Armentières”; the erotic diminished to the sentimental and to good-natured sex between the doughboy and the French farm girl; with a decline in passion and the spirit of the erotic, and an increase in violence with the rise of technology; 20,000,000 dead.

  World War II: Betty Grable, Anne Frank, Adolf Eichmann, Stalin; the subsidence of the erotic in favor of a rise in the dispassionate, abstract violence of ideology, Fascism, Nazism, Communism; war increasingly in the hands of technicians; the decency of Truman and Oppenheimer contrasted with the death of 100,000 women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Arendt’s banality of evil = the growing disparity between the monstrous violence of technology and the smallness of the technician-perpetrators; World War II as a transition period between the decline of the Christian era and the rise of the age of technology; 50,000,000 dead.

  Period between World War II and World War III: The ascendancy of the erotic; the eroticization of all sectors of culture: work and play, films, TV, novels, plays, commercials; yet the spirit of the erotic is still posited and specified by lingering Christianity, e.g., the charm of the secrecy of sex under clothes, the charm of “forbidden” sex, liaisons, pornography; pornography as “dirty” yet interesting, or rather, “dirty,” therefore interesting; the hypocrisy of some critics: critics who say that pornography is dull, whereas in fact pornography is for many readers the last resort of interest after the disappointments of age; the critic, of all people, knows that the non-pornographic novel is generally so boring that he hopes for the “dirty part” like a schoolboy looking for the “good parts” of Ulysses.

  The spirit of violence vented in spectatorship sport, either through mass TV viewership or surrogate participation, e.g., 100 million people watching the Super-Bowl; Little League moms screaming curses at umpires, and dads punching out other dads and later beating up their own kids; the ultimate inadequacy of the spectatorship safety valve: thirty-eight dead in a riot at a Buenos Aires soccer game; war.

  World War III: The year 2000 +, the demoniac spirit of the erotic no longer posited by Christianity but triumphant in its own right, perfected as genital technique but deprived of the charm of the forbidden, the secret, the “dirty,” “sinful,” “extramarital,” “fornication,” “adultery”—even the word fuck has by now lost its homonymous semantic charge and is neutered as fish, fowl, fix; the perfection of contraceptive technique; the conquest of Herpes II virus and all homosexual AIDS diseases; the perfection of visual and tactile aids (no longer called pornography, from porne, harlot) as sexual stimuli; erotica elevated to a major literary and art form. War without passion: one billion dead.

  The spirit of violence in the coming technological sexually liberated age? Here is the great problematic.

  Question (The Great Problematic): Will the ultimate liberation of the erotic from its dialectical relationship with Christianity result in

  (a) The freeing of the erotic spirit so that man and womankind will make love and not war?

  or (b) The trivialization of the erotic by its d
emotion to yet another technique and need-satisfaction of the organism, toward the end that the demoniac spirit of the autonomous self, disappointed in all other sectors of life and in ordinary intercourse with others, is now disappointed even in the erotic, its last and best hope, and so erupts in violence—and in that very violence which is commensurate with the orgiastic violence in the best days of the old erotic age—i.e., war?

  (CHECK ONE)

  Question II:

  (a) Will World War III happen absurdly, by an accident in a purely technological, sexually liberated age, e.g., by computer malfunction, misinformation, misbehavior by a small-time Qaddafi madman?

  or (b) Will World War III erupt because of the suppressed fury of the autonomous self, disappointed now even in the erotic, that very demoniac spirit which is overtly committed to peace and love but secretly desires war and apocalypse and nourishes hatred of all other selves and perhaps of its own self most of all?

  (CHECK ONE)

  THE BESTIAL-SEXUAL

  Thought Experiment: The Confrontation of the Autonomous Scientific Self with the Eruption of the Spirit of the Erotic, Issuing in Two Kinds of Violence, one the Bestial-Sexual, the other the Banal-Lethal

  SCENE I: Open house at the Maison Burgundy, a French Quarter hotel in New Orleans, celebrating Mental Health Week, open to the public and hosted by mental-health workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, et al.

  The most popular hostess is “Dr. Betty,” a visiting radio “personality,” a nationally known talk-show psychotherapist (known in the business as a “psych jock”), a pleasant, fortyish blonde just this side of the overblown and overweight, but in an attractive, even voluptuous, way. A small crowd has gathered around her. She fields questions in her best low-keyed, cheerful radio style.

  Someone, a thin intense young woman, has just asked a question about how to overcome sexual inhibitions: “I like men, they like me, I want a rewarding sexual relationship, but I turn myself off,” etc.

  One of the listeners in the small crowd is a young street person known hereabouts as a “chicken,” that is, a teenage male prostitute available to either sex. Streetwise, somehow managing to swagger standing still, in his short leather jacket he looks like a muscular, coarse, slightly out-of-focus John Travolta. While the others smile and nod, he stands, thumbs hooked through his belt loops, and watches Dr. Betty through hooded eyes.

  DR. BETTY: Give yourself permission! Speak to yourself, you’re an adult—not some other adult—speak to the child in you: Kid, I give you permission. None of us likes to be stroke-deficient. We live by strokes. That means taking care of the child in us. My child, your child, likes to play. And sex, of course, is our primary stroke-field. Sex is the best play of all. And the best sex is when two mature adults, who are both nurturing and caring of each other, are also nurturing and caring of their own child-selves, their own kid—and who regard each other as their primary stroke-field. There you have the ultimate recipe for happiness, growth, and creativity. It’s in my book, Dr. Betty’s Favorite Recipe.

  Laughter and nods all around—except from the street chicken, who waits until the others leave. He approaches Dr. Betty, motions her to a corner of the lobby. “Yes?” says Dr. Betty brightly.

  CHICKEN: Look, Doc. I’m a big fan of yours. I think you’re great. You know your business and you’re good. But I know my business just as well. I can size people up. I know what people want. And believe me, Doc, everybody wants something. I know what you want. You’re a nice person and you deserve it.

  DR. BETTY (bantering): And what do I want?

  CHICKEN: You want exactly what I’m offering. I know the clerk here. I got a key and the use of a room. Look. Four thirty-seven. It won’t cost either of us a dime. I’m going up now. You wait five minutes and come up the back elevator.

  DR. BETTY: This is something else. Talk about acting out! Talk about acting out aggressions to mask little-kid insecurity. Okay, then what happens?

  CHICKEN: What happens then, Doc, is that I am going to fuck you as you have never been fucked before. I don’t want to nurture you. I want to fuck you. I’m going to fuck you till your eyeteeth rattle. This is an invitation, Doc. All you got to do now before I leave is say okay, so I don’t waste my time.

  DR. BETTY (consulting her wristwatch): Okay.

  THE BANAL-LETHAL

  SCENE II: A Washington hotel room. It is wartime. Enter Dr. F__, a Nobel Laureate scientist. Taking off his jacket, he sits on the bed wearily, rubs his temples, lies down, and closes his eyes. After a while, he turns on television. The show is a closed-circuit screening of Behind the Green Door, a pornographic film. Presently he masturbates, almost casually, but not before taking the trouble to fetch a special container from his suitcase to catch the ejaculate.

  He switches off the television, lies down, closes his eyes.

  The telephone rings. With a frown and a curious groan—is it weariness? irritation? anger?—he picks up the receiver. After a moment he hooks up a device, a scrambler, to the phone. We hear only his side of the conversation.

  Yes.

  Yes, General.

  Yes, it was a very long meeting.

  I realize that a decision wasn’t reached.

  I know it’s important, General.

  True, there was no closure in the decision-making process.

  Yes, I realize it was a tie vote.

  That’s correct—I didn’t express an opinion to the Chiefs.

  Yes, that’s true. I have some standing in the scientific community.

  Well, thank you, General. It’s nice to know you people respect one scientist.

  That’s right, General. It’s no breach of security to call it by name. The eyes-only folder you have—and the only secret is its composition and mode of delivery. It’s a neurotoxin, airborne and water soluble. They’re working on it, too.

  For one weapon? Ten million more or less, depending on population density.

  Right. It violates no first-strike agreement or Salt III. It’s a weapon, but not an explosive device.

  I know that’s a high civilian casualty factor, but it will save lives in the end.

  A demonstration? A demonstration of what? How to kill a few hundred reindeer in Siberia? No way, General.

  You’re really putting me on the spot, General.

  Okay, I’m going to surprise you. I’m going to give you an opinion. I think we got to go with it. For the ultimate good of man. Indeed, in the interests of peace. In fact, why don’t we call it Project Peace?

  You like that? Yes, that’s right. Go. You can tell them.

  I say go.

  After hanging up, he picks up the cylindrical double-walled container, carefully pastes on a sticker containing the address of a California laboratory which collects the sperm of Nobel Laureates for the purpose of inseminating thousands of genetically screened women. Still holding the container, he opens the door, walks rapidly down the corridor to the ice machine.

  Question: Do you think the U.S. gene pool and the future quality of life will be improved by the contribution of Dr. F___'s ejaculate?

  ( ) Yes

  ( ) No

  (CHECK ONE)

  SCENE III: The following conversation occurs in a momentarily stalled elevator in the Rockefeller Foundation building.

  SCIENTIST A (a post-Darwinian evolutionist): All phenomena in the Cosmos can be explained by the scientific laws that govern matter in interaction. This principle applies to the simplest chemical reaction between atoms to the most complex, including the behavior of organisms, the origin of the species, and the ascent of man. Like any other organism, man evolved when mutant forms and functions such as the opposable thumb for tools and weapons, the cortex, and the larynx-pharynx conformation for the language gave him an advantage over other primates in adapting to the environment.

  SCIENTIST B (a post-Wallacian evolutionist): Then how do you account for the fact that with the appearance of man there also appeared for the first time in the Cosmos, a
s far as we know, language, mind, self, and consciousness, and almost immediately thereafter a train of disasters and triumphs which seem to have very little to do with adapting to an environment—such as organized warfare against himself, composing Don Giovanni, Charlie Manson, John Keats, suicide, joy, madness, murder, heroism, modern medicine, child abuse, loving care for the genetically malformed—and in recent years the appearance of the demoniac spirit of the erotic and the violent expressing itself in every conceivable variety of florid sexual behavior which has nothing to do with reproduction or survival of the species, and that with the very rise of science there has occurred the spectacular rise in technological violence, so that more men have been killed in this century than in all others put together—and that finally there should have come to pass the present state of affairs which surpass all belief, not merely that this very “matter” you speak of, which Democritus and Darwin and even Dalton and Boyle saw as peaceable little miniballs of atoms colliding and joining, is in fact possessed of an energy of such an order that one-quarter teaspoon will destroy Greater New York, but that this very secret and this very matter—and here the mind reels—should find itself in the hands of this selfsame demoniac autonomous self, itself a creature of science?

  Scientist A opens his mouth to reply, but the elevator doors open at last and there enters a somber-looking Hasidic rabbi, The two scientists exchange glances and fall silent.

  Question: How do you think Scientist A would have answered Scientist B?

  A Space Odyssey (I)

  (19) The Self Marooned in the Cosmos:

  What would you say if you met a man Friday out there? What do you think he would say to you? Could you understand him?

  A STARSHIP FROM EARTH is traveling in the galaxy, its mission to establish communication with extraterrestrial intelligences and civilizations.*

  For years SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has explored the 200 billion stars of the galaxy, huge dish antennae searching for something, anything other than the random noise of the Cosmos. At last, the computer of the spectrum analyzer which reads the tapes of all the received transmissions picked up a pattern, that is, a repeated signal, which, however, could not be interpreted. Was it a signal from an intelligence or was it like the Coke bottle in the movie On the Beach, which was leaning on a telegraph key in deserted California and which a fitful breeze blowing a curtain caused to send out a random letter or two?