Late relection on Ibsen and Wilson lecture

In class, we discussed how comedy deals with repetition of events until it reaches absurdity. Why is mankind programmed to laugh at the absurd? Why does man finds repetitive things absurd? I was reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin remarks on how odd it is that the human response to what we cannot understand is to laugh:

Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?
Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.
Calvin: (after a long pause) I can't tell if that's funny or really scary.

Maybe we have evolved to appreciate absurdity as a way of coping with our lack of understanding. In his lecture, E.O. Wilson discussed how all of man’s troubles arise from not understanding and the special importance biology holds in the borderline between humanities and science. Man uses science and humanities to better his understanding (and by extension to lessen his troubles?) with science employed as collective of the knowledge man can test and show to be true. As a system of transparent procedures, science is a method where conclusions are drawn from a body of evidence and the conclusions supported by evidence are accepted to be true. As scientific knowledge increases, religious belief to explain phenomena present in the real world shrinks.

However, that doesn’t necessarily imply that we have left behind fantasy or methods of pretend. As Sarah discussed in her blog, Wilson states that we are a nation of Tinkerbells and Peter Pans. Toeing the borderline between belief and knowledge, we choose to live in a fantasy world. Just as Ibsen maintains that we choose to believe that our attics are forests, so it seems that the essence of sane living is to live a life of perpetual pretend and endless layers of masks. The three main questions posed during Wilson’s lecture (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?) along with the sentiment that humanity is searching through creative arts to find the meaning of existence brings new light to Ibsen’s “new mythology” (Steiner’s “Death of Tragedy” essay 567) and method of exploring archetypes to derive truths that transcend merely his own generation and allow his work the status of myth.

How do we play “let’s pretend?” in order to alter (or perhaps mask) the real? How do you discard the illusions and deal with the real? But this is impossibility…Why are the illusions important to us? “I don’t know if it actually happened, but it ought to have happened”  Dr. Stockman’s obsession with the moral right…perhaps illusions are the dreams we inhabit, the unreachable “ideal” that nonetheless needs to exist in order for our existence to be happy and fulfilling.

Ibsen becomes the ideal scientific observer through his detachment, his lack of empathy, yet this very lack is only gained through supreme empathy and understanding the characters that populate his work. How is this possible? In George Steiner’s “The Death of Tragedy”, he states that the foremost achievement of Ibsen’s genius was that “he created a new mythology” (567).  Ibsen is not talking about stereotypes but archetypes; the wired in human instincts that do not operate according to social institutions but our own intrinsic make up (founded in dreams, myths, fantasies)

Is this is how we determine “great” art? The creative art that hits closest to our internal blueprint…does this provide us with the greatest sense of understanding? Because it is reminding us of what we already know, but needed to be reminded that we knew…because truth is the process of unforgetting.

Yet we demand our art not to merely stay in the realm of dreams, but to replicate reality. (but is this also true of our dreams?) Audience demands Ibsen’s (and any) play to work on a realistic level while simultaneously existing in the myth. Just as Hedda can communicate with her duller peers in straightforward language, the metaphoric presence in her speech is always waiting for recognition from characters more comfortable dealing with the literal. Fairytales bridge the gap between mythological and naturalistic…perhaps this harmony and bridge is the most fulfilling to us—scratches the human psyche in the right places—to unite both ideal and real world in a satisfying interplay of the dream and the material…to give the most fulfilling illusion that doesn’t feel baseless to the observer: a castle with a foundation.

In conjunction with humor, humanity seems to deal with the absurd by deriving comfort from the repetitive process of ordering the (random?) materials presented to us from the universe. In Hedda Gabler, Thea exclaims “Oh, God—It’s going to be so difficult to find the order in all of this” “But it must be done. There’s simply no other choice. And finding the order in other people’s papers—that’s precisely what I’m meant for” (353).  Perhaps on some level, this statement rings true for all of us. Is creative expression simply reordering the chaos presented? Are we enacting poesis? Or mimesis?

I am once again reminded of the suffering artist, and the stereotypical sacrifice and guilt of not attending to the duties his evolution requires. Wilson states that as a species, we have evolved to be extremely groupist. Man cannot exist unless he feels related to a group—Wilson states that religion developed as a result of this need. The stereotype of the suffering artist cannot attend to his groupist duties of people and relationships perhaps because creation (or the closest form of true creation) is poesis in essence—an individual act. What does this say about creation?

Wilson states that all forms of memory developed the capacity to link memory in temporal sequence: otherwise known as stories. Stories are conceptions of the future where the mind is free to rehearse stories in which the self is the player in the game, able to draw upon memory to become conscious.

Laugh at evil in order to disempower…perhaps all of these methods of coping with our lack of understanding (the evolutionary instinct to laugh at what we cannot understand, the need for order, the need for pretend) are just our way of disempowering the evil of the unknown.