ECSTASY AND THE TRAPS OF BEAUTY

A Friend Falls Prey To Ecstasy And May Not Escape Its Seductive Embrace

A friend recently told me that he'd tried Ecstasy--and, of course,
whatever other unadvertised chemicals the pill was cut with. Having
never previously used anything harder than pot, he wasn't prepared
for the splendour he was so suddenly exposed to. He spoke reverently
of the glory he witnessed, and bemoaned the personal inadequacies the
drug revealed.

Immersed in radiance, the emotional wounds inflicted by a life of
hardship were no longer invisible to his inner eye, and he despaired
of ever healing them. He said he longed to free himself from the
past, from the identity he'd come to despise over the last thirty-odd years.

His unspoken meaning was plain: "Before such Beauty, I beheld my own ugliness."

Though I've tried to dissuade him, he plans to regularly visit
Ecstasy's domain. He believes this Beauty will liberate his mind,
having forgotten that Beauty often conceals bondage beneath the guise
of freedom.

As with many working class people, my friend's employment is
precarious and his family, stricken by alcoholism and rage, certainly
won't rescue him should he find himself imprisoned by his illicit saviour.

Whereas such an addiction might wound a younger, wealthier, and
well-loved man, it would almost certainly cripple this man. I'm
worried that these considerations weigh too lightly upon his thoughts.

Like all true romantics, he appears willing to let his Camelot
collapse while he goes questing for his grail.

My friend's predicament demonstrates Beauty's peril.

Beauty tempts us with the promise of wholeness.

It offers a glimpse of what life would be like if we were complete,
if we were to receive those things we yearn for so desperately,
things like love and belonging, security and strength, dignity and grace.

Beauty is often overwhelming for people whose lives have been bereft
of its blessings, for whom emotional fragmentation has been a constant torment.

For them, Beauty can be as maddening as a morsel of food upon a
starving man's tongue.

Having little knowledge of Beauty's complexities, it can quickly
bewilder them. If they fail to develop a sufficiently sophisticated
understanding of the experience, they can find themselves in one of
three traps.

The first trap befalls those who are so enamoured of Beauty in all
its many forms that they allow it to supplant every other value.

There are among us hedonists whose pursuit of Beauty must never be
delayed by moral considerations, and who disdain any discussion of
ethics as repressive and life-denying. In like fashion, there are
many modern occultists who avoid all talk of injustice because of its
"negativity," and who prefer to spend their time in more "positive"
pursuits--such as learning meditative practices that soothe the ego
and stimulate the visual imagination. This trap turns Beauty into an
anaesthetic, and reduces people to ethical imbecility.

The second trap captures those who've encountered and lost Beauty,
who resent its enduring power over them, and who feel frightened and
angry in its presence.

These captives try to control and punish Beauty, to render it
helpless so they can consume its pleasures in peace.

Their very animosity towards Beauty demonstrates their obsessive
attachment to it. Compulsive users of pornography often fall into
this category, as do rapists and domestic tyrants.

I wonder sometimes if the violation of the natural world is driven at
least in part by the same dynamic.

The third trap claims people who turn their encounter with Beauty
into a fetish--those who, having seen the sunlight shine through
their bedroom window, mistake the window for the sun itself, and
forever afterwards frantically polish the glass.

I'm afraid this trap may claim my friend, just as it claims whoever
finds their attention fixated upon any one expression of Beauty to
the exclusion of all others.

In my friend's case, the expression is drug-induced; in others, it
may be produced through such things as a romantic relationship, an
aesthetic pursuit, or, perhaps most dangerously, an ideology.

I'm reminded here of Peter Cohen's documentary, The Architecture of
Doom (1989). Cohen argues that the Nazi movement was fuelled by an
"ideology of beauty" that used mytho-poetic romanticism and ideals of
physical and social perfection to entrance the German people.

Accompanying this ideological fetishism was a denunciation of
everything "non-Aryan" as degenerate and diseased.

It seems that when we're enraptured by our own panes of glass, we all
too easily take to shattering other people's windows.

There are other examples of this principle.

The Christian Right seems less concerned with ethics than with
fantasies of authority and order, of a world unblemished by dissent,
chaos, and ambiguity.

Anything that defies their aesthetic program becomes "Satanic" in
their eyes, and is persecuted accordingly. This aesthetic is so
pervasive that it even codes the physical appearance of their
televangelists, prescribing well-pressed suits, unmoving hair, and
calcified smiles.

Similarly, the argument's been made that Neoconservatives are blinded
by their own vision of Beauty, in this case a socio-political Beauty.
As Seymour Hersch said in a speech to the American Civil Liberties
Union in 2004, "A bunch of guys, eight or nine neoconservatives,
cultists--not Charles Manson cultists, but cultists--get in and it's
not, with all due respect to Michael Moore . . . it's not about oil,
it's not even about protecting Israel, it's about a Utopia they have,
it's about an idea they have." When Neoconservatives talk about "the
clash of civilizations," perhaps they're referring merely to the
refusal of other societies to buy into their Utopian program, and the
war that must therefore be waged so ferociously against them.

If we avoid these three traps, then what's left for us? Perhaps we'd
do best to love Beauty, but not too much, and to remember that unless
it's enriched by wisdom, Beauty can fast become our jailer.

As for me, I'm left sitting outside the penitentiary doors, hoping
desperately that my friend's incarceration will be a brief one.