Category: Philosophy

I. Pagliacci

In the movie Watchmen, the character Rorschach tells the following story:

Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, “Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.” Man bursts into tears. Says, “But doctor…I am Pagliacci.”

The uncertainty the poor clown feels closing in around himself is a major theme of the movie — an exploration of existential dread and how to live with it. Ozymandias, the main antagonist and smartest man on earth, banks on the world seeking the doctor’s prescribed treatment for his plan to succeed:

“In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.”

Ozymandias uses and reinforces people’s desire to escape by selling them a vast array of consumer products, for example a perfume called Nostalgia, which in turn fund his master plan — and boy, would Ozymandias have loved coronavirus. He’d have thought it to be ripe with opportunity.

What did you do when the crisis first hit? How did you react? Regardless if you buried yourself in work, parenting, hobbies, or distractions, chances are, you buried yourself in something, and thus, your head ended up in the sand. Depending on the crisis, this may — surprisingly — be a healthy thing to do. Six months into the pandemic, however, Tara Haelle explained why you might have suddenly felt tired — your “surge capacity” was depleted:

Surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as natural disasters. But natural disasters occur over a short period, even if recovery is long. Pandemics are different — the disaster itself stretches out indefinitely.

“How do you adjust to an ever-changing situation where the “new normal” is indefinite uncertainty?” Haelle asks. The answer is you don’t, at least not just once, and so irrespective of whether you initially rallied around safety measures, home workouts, getting a promotion, assembling IKEA furniture, or watching movies like Watchmen, your rallying never could have lasted.

A response meant for catastrophe won’t do for a new status quo, and so no matter how deep we may bury its tip beneath the surface, that massive iceberg of uncertainty is still there, still hiding underneath, and when it comes out — and it will — it might crush us like an elephant stepping on an ant.

Tell me you haven’t asked yourself any of the following: Will we get a third wave? A fourth one? What about oxygen? What about shortages? When will I get my vaccine? How much protection will it give me? How long will it last? Will it be required? Directly? Indirectly? What will I be able to do with it? How will “doing stuff” work? When will it reopen? The cinema? The swimming pool? The museum? The office? And what will it be like? This, my friend, is the tip of that iceberg, so if you’re anything like me, PCSD — post-corona stress syndrome — has already crept in. The elephant has long been in the room.

Questions, questions, questions without end. Where those about the virus stop, the existential ones merely begin. We are uncertain about our health, uncertain about our jobs, uncertain about our retirement. We have doubts about the school system, the financial system, definitely the political system, and, really, any system of any kind. We no longer trust in people, for those could be infectious. We never fully trusted the machines, for those are prone to our own errors. And do we trust ourselves? However much you used to, don’t tell me there’s not a crack in that armor.

All in all, that’s a lot to process, and you know what? It’s okay to be scared. I know I am. I’m crapping my pants over here. Not literally, but, metaphorically, on some days, I’m all poop emojis. And not the smiling kind.

Of course, what we should have done over the past year is learn to accept uncertainty. It really would have been a good time. To “live in the question,” as poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said, and “have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.” Instead, most of us have become paranoid, seeking reassurance at every turn. We double-stitch every scratch when a band-aid would do, and then we still go up in anger when the backup of our backup plan fails — and, like in Ozymandias’ great master plan, that’s exactly what uncertainty wants to achieve.

Uncertainty wants to make you tired before you’ve even begun. Its goal is to keep you in place, and, for the past year, uncertainty has had a field day with you. Stay! Good dog. Don’t move a muscle! Breathe shallowly, and wait. Wait for what, however? Until you die? Listening to uncertainty is a fool’s errand. If you don’t move, nothing will happen. Without action, no real errands will get done. And yet, that iceberg looms ever larger, its shadow becoming more paralyzing with every sunset.

There’s another character in the Watchmen movie. His name is Dr. Manhattan. Think Silver Surfer meets Superman, a sorta-naked, blue demigod who can teleport, read minds, see his own past and future, travel between dimensions, disintegrate people on thought, and lots of other fun stuff. Dr. Manhattan tells Ozymandias: “The world’s smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite.” The great irony is that, at that point in the movie, Ozymandias’ threat has long been fulfilled — and he tricked everyone, including Dr. Manhattan, into helping him accomplish his quest: sacrificing millions of lives in the hopes of preserving billions more.

In what can’t be a coincidence, Ozymandias calls his plan “the greatest practical joke in human history,” and the message it sends is clear: Even the best of the best can’t fully escape uncertainty. We’re all Pagliacci, and so from time to time, inevitably, we’ll all burst into tears.

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