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“Human Sacrifice? Are you kidding? This is the weirdest thing I ever heard.”

October 10, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 13 Comments

Wicker manPart of the goal of The Partially Examined Life is to pull ivory-tower philosophical theories out into the light of day and see if they hold water. If an academically lauded idea seems totally absurd when discussed in ordinary language, well, then either those presenting the idea aren't doing a very good job explaining its context, or maybe it is in fact ridiculous.

With the fame episode, we have the added benefit of the discussion getting thrown out among Lucy's fans, many of whom (if they're anything like the general populace) aren't into philosophy. So I've found it interesting to read the ongoing discussion on her fan site about the episode, which has been a mix of approval over Lucy's broadness in engaging in this kind of discussion and disgruntlement by some about how the discussion focused too much on the negatives of fandom, like the fans are a bunch of ravenous beasts that have to be tamed. Now, this misses first of all the point made that we are all, including Lucy, fans ourselves with respect to many, and that it was a repeatedly raised criticism of Payne's thesis during the discussion that it doesn't seem to account for non-destructive admiration (Seth's Cal Ripken example, or my teen worship of my favorite bands, or Dylan and Lucy on Lyle Lovett).

Still, Payne's thesis was not limited to just the behavior of the mentally ill. He was making a general point about the social function of celebrity. I quote from ch. 1, pg. 23-24, where he's just been talking about a human sacrifice in an ancient Greek play by Euripides:

The crowd wants something, and an an individual is prepared to give it to them. ...It looks like a metaphor that could sum up our own relationship with famous people, from whom we demand so much. But the more we look at our acts of collective cruelty and puzzle at the generosity--ironically enough, at the selflessness--of these famous characters, this becomes something much more than a metaphor: It becomes the ritual that lies behind what we are doing.

...We beautify people with crowns; we celebrate them, and lt them feast; then, as Leonard Cohen suggests, we tie them down to the kitchen chair, we break their crowns, we cut their hair, and above it all we sound a shrill shriek. [Payne is quoting lyrics from "Hallelujah" here.] In the West these days... we don't go to stonings or gladitorial fights to the death or hangings; but we do try to learn as much as possible about those whose status in society makes them more likely to die before the rest of us.

This last sentence touches on a point of Payne's that we didn't discuss in the podcast: part of the iconography of fame is about burning out young, probably as a result of one's own fast-living behavior, as in the case with James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, John Belushi, Jim Morrison, etc. Even when like Michael Jackson they stick around into middle age, their deaths can seem a function of their weirdness. An element of the coolness of some celebrities is that it's like they're playing with fire. He uses the example of Michael Hutchence's death, and describes our speculations about this as modern variations of the kind of stories that were told about the great violinist Paganini: surely he must have made a deal with the devil for such talent and fortune!

Back to our modern reactions. One poster on Lucy's site made the comment that is the title of this post: "This is the weirdest thing I ever heard." And she's right, it is weird. It certainly doesn't describe my feelings, right now, when I contemplate my favorite stars. If we want to get at where Payne is coming from, we have to look at what kind of explanation he's trying to give. Freud broke a lot of ground here: pretty much all of the psychological explanations he gave sounded very weird to his contemporaries, and downright insulting to his patients. Oedipus complex? Preposterous! While his concept of the unconscious has now gotten around in our culture enough that these claims about our hidden motivations no longer seem obviously ridiculous, we're rightly skeptical if someone accuses us of having these motivations that it really doesn't seem to us that we have.

What complicates this is that Payne's (and Freud's, in Civilization and its Discontents) claims are not about our psychology as individuals, but about group psychology, about the "social function" of celebrities. Now, we recently did an episode on structuralism, and one of our readings was Claude Levi-Strauss's "The Structural Study of Myth," where the author posits a layer of meaning in myths that is only indirectly if at all related to the individual psychology of the people in the culture. We (including a guest who was more schooled in this area of philosophy than we are) couldn't really make a lot of sense of this: it's supposed to be related to the "structure of the human mind," but doesn't map onto the way we talk about psychology (either scientifically or in the culture at large), so we don't know how to talk about it.

This leaves me, for one, unable to really evaluate whether a thesis like Payne's is accurate or not. It's a conception of social science as being like literature: he's painted this picture of human social behavior, and if you can look at his historical examples and see the parallels between ancient practices and modern behavior, it can be illuminating, but it's not the kind of thing we can scientifically test. Moreover, if you're not willing to engage the with Payne in this kind of comparison, if you think all this pseudo-sociology is a lot of nonsense, then you're not going to get anything out of it.

OK, so let's say you are willing to give Payne the benefit of the doubt, acknowledging that he certainly didn't make up this kind of analysis, and so you read his stories about how the mania surrounding Britney Spears shaving her head is comparable ancient virgin sacrifices. What, then? Well, it seems, for one, you're supposed to look on your own behavior and see if or how you're contributing to the problem (assuming it is a problem) that Payne has identified. Most likely, the most egregious abuses of this sort are being perpetuated by other people: the bad fans, but maybe you recognize it's a cultural issue, not just a matter of some specific set of lunatics. Then you probably leave it at that, because we as individuals don't know what to do to fix cultural issues.

If this hypothesized moral quandary sounds silly (I mean, really, the poor treatment of celebrities is not on our top ten list of social problems), a least recognize that it has the same pattern as more serious ones, such as pervasive sexism/porn culture. (I stress this, just as I quipped that Wes's joke about wanting to be stalked on the podcast was sexist, in part because my wife is currently studying domestic violence, and talks to me about this stuff all the time.) Even if I don't feel like I disrespect women, I participate in practices and institutions that have resulted in women having a hard time, and so being aware of that is the least I can do.

In comparing Payne's thesis to literature, though, I've already given away my real take on how to react to his story. Literature, like most philosophy, and even like popular science (i.e. science read about by you and me and not actual scientists who are in a position to use their knowledge to make something real happen), is not supposed to have an immediate practical application. If you're asking "should I be offended or not by Lucy's comments?" you're still thinking in a basically practical mode, and missing the point of having this kind of discussion, which is pleasant speculation, i.e. having fun. Maybe there's something to Payne's thesis, or maybe it's total BS, but it's the fun in trying to understand it and arguing about it that is the point of this, for us at least. Gain insight; change your mind later; it's all good. Well, maybe not according to Freud, but unless you're a psychoanalyst, you needn't worry about what he'd say about our decadent, "street" intellectualism, except, again, insofar as it's fun to think about it.

-Mark Linsenmayer

[edit: since I drafted this post yesterday, substantive discussion of the human sacrifice issue has actually picked up over there, moreso on that particular point than on our own site!]

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Filed Under: Misc. Philosophical Musings, PEL's Notes Tagged With: Fame, philosophy as literature, philosophy blog, philosophy of psychology, scientific explanation, sociology, tom payne

Comments

  1. dmf says

    October 10, 2012 at 12:08 pm

    long running links between tragedies, mimesis, and philosophy, including thinking in terms of sacrifice:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard

    Reply
    • nosaj says

      October 11, 2012 at 12:40 am

      What do you make of Girard’s claim that unlike all other ritually sacrificed hero figures Jesus Christ was the only without sin? There’s an interview on YouTube I recall coming across (long ways back) in which he discusses this.. Each sacrificial victim is claimed to have done something or there’s some flaw or fault with them… Hmm, have to look it up because you can immediately think of sacrificial virgins, etc. I was under the impression he was speaking as social scientist and historian when he made the remark but perhaps it was just a statement of his Christian faith.

      Reply
      • dmf says

        October 11, 2012 at 7:32 am

        hard to respond without knowing what he said, do you have a source/link?

        http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/

        Reply
        • nosaj says

          October 11, 2012 at 11:56 pm

          In all of history the Christian myth is the first one in which the victim is innocent, is the claim. I believe this is the interview I saw:

          Reply
          • dmf says

            October 12, 2012 at 7:31 am

            I don’t have the background in history to know if the Christian story of sacrifice is the first to have an innocent victim, but surely he is wrong to say that Christianity is the end of mytho-logos, might be the ghost of Hegel at work…
            Wittgenstein’s critique of Frazer on ritual/myth is much more interesting/useful and he of course also signals an anthropological shift in philosophy.

      • Bear Mathun says

        October 11, 2012 at 7:45 pm

        No, it was picking out a thread that all the sacrificial victims needed to be pure and entire in some way. Reading through the requirements of the Tanakh, the yearling to be sacrificed had to be unblemished. This is amplified in the writings of St Paul – that Jesus was like us in all things except for sin. So he is unblemished, but entire.

        In other cultures, there is a similar theme – the virgin sacrifices. Even the story of Theseus reflects this – every year a youth (boy) and a virgin (girl) were given to the Minotaur. It is their purity that is important.

        Reply
        • dmf says

          October 12, 2012 at 7:40 am

          I should have been clear that Girard is just one of many figures who have used tragedies
          in their philosophizing, for a more recent example see:
          http://www.egs.edu/faculty/simon-critchley/videos/

          Reply
  2. Adam says

    October 11, 2012 at 12:22 pm

    Why do you only engage in partial examination? Your thought is testament to the shortcomings of academic philosophy.

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      October 11, 2012 at 2:00 pm

      The “partial” part is supposed to be a reaction against the wholly (i.e. academically/professionally) philosophical life: http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2010/02/19/marks-inspirational-speech/

      Reply
      • Adam says

        October 11, 2012 at 5:54 pm

        I’m aware of that, I was attempting to provoke a debate. I agree with and advocate this idea (and am a fan of the show). Thanks for the link, BTW.

        Reply
        • Mark Linsenmayer says

          October 11, 2012 at 6:23 pm

          Ah, sorry, I was reading “is testament to” as “exemplifies.” 🙂

          Reply
  3. Liam says

    October 17, 2012 at 6:54 am

    I thought you guys might like this article. It’s an English journalist and sort of comedic commentator talking about a terrible reality TV show in the UK, and how the entire thing is set up for people to love to hate the characters, and so society continues to be stable.

    It’s pretty funny, and quite sweet that he says the characters are fulfilling a very important public service. “If it wasn’t for the cast of Geordie Shore, you’d be killing your neighbours with your bare hands”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/01/geordie-shore-noblest-people-in-britain

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Assessing Irony | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 19, 2012 at 5:28 pm

    […] all such generalizations about the spirit of generations are basically bullshitting, or, at best, some weird kind of pseudo-psychological account that can “make ya think” but isn’t really putting forward a philosophical thesis. […]

    Reply

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