Communication and Manipulation
Like old friends, authors come in and out of our lives and it is like not a day has passed. Prompted by a discussion with a colleague, I have been getting reacquainted with Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer, who was the subject of the inaugural post of this blog, was a student of Martin Heidegger’s and was a leading light of philosophical hermeneutics. While we will circle back around to Gadamer, his importance to us at the moment is that he emphasized the necessity to converse with a text, opposed to the more common manipulation of a text.
Good and Evil
Talking with a good friend over dinner the other night about good and evil in literature and film, I began to think about how good characters are communicative while evil characters are manipulative. By communicative, I mean that good guys almost always lay aside their own desires in service of something greater, and in so doing they take on a corporate will. When Frodo volunteered to take the Ring into Mordor, for example, he did not do so because he wanted to (why would a little and fragile creature wish to go to a place of great evil and danger?), but because he placed a greater good above himself and, when the Fellowship was formed, his will became synonymous with the Fellowship’s will. We can say the same things about saints, those holy men and women who put aside their individual desires and come to desire what God desire; God’s will becomes their will. Villains, in contrast, are consumed with their desires, and will not only shut out everyone else’s desires, but will actively force their desires on others. Saruman’s Faustian manipulation of nature, where he twisted elves into orcs, taking beings that had wills of their own and molested them until they served his purpose, is emblematic. Evil as asserting one’s will over all else and resorting to manipulation can be traced back to Satan, whose sin was pride, preferring his will to all else, even to God’s will. We all know that famous line from Milton, “it is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Satan furthers his will, not through communication, but through manipulation, as is seen in the opening chapters of Genesis where he tricks Adam and Eve. God, who will defeat Satan, does not share the Adversary’s tactics, but is communicative. The Lord did not force Abraham, Isaac or Jacob to serve Him, and the Incarnation happened because of Mary’s free assent to the Archangel’s glad tidings. God comes to Man and offers him salvation, but Man is left with the ability to say “no.” If there is ever a time when manipulation might be justified for the sake of a greater good, it would be in a war against Satan, but even then, God, who is Goodness Itself, chose communication. A basic ethical principle shows itself: we ought to choose communication and eschew manipulation, lest we become like Sauruman and Satan.
Relationships
Outside of fiction and Scripture, relationships are judged according to how communicative they are. A healthy relationship is one where both partners are able to, and do, freely express their needs and wants, while an unhealthy relationship is one where neither partner is either capable of, or willing to, express their needs and wants. To confuse this with a sort of voluntary principle, where consent is the central ethical concern, is to miss the mark. When we are talking about a relationship being either healthy or unhealthy, we already assume the relationship. Despite the voluntarist’s ideal, very few relationships are intentionally entered into. Outside of employment, most relationships are ones we find ourselves in. The phrase “falling in love”, typifies this, referring to two people who, although they did not plan to, and might even wish they did not, find out that they love each other. Perhaps they are colleagues and, despite knowing that their work life would become complicated, despite each person looking for a romantic partner elsewhere and never thought of desiring each other, find themselves romantically attracted to each other. Here is “the fall” in “falling in love”, here is the relationship that neither intended, a relationship that is not clearly defined. Non-romantic relationships are stumbled into as well. You move into a new neighborhood and, without ever choosing it, you find yourself with a neighbor. Now, the neighbor is not necessarily a friend, and neighbors might rarely even speak to each other, but the relationship still exists. In the case of two neighbors who are not friends and rarely, if ever, speak to each other, there are still things they have to work out from time to time, be it leaves being blown over the fence, someone playing music too loud at night, or the occasional letter that gets sent to the wrong house. Although less significant than the concerns of two colleagues who fell in love, the neighbors still have shared concerns and this relationship of shared concerns was, to repeat, never intentionally chosen, but happened into.
What makes for a healthy relationship, again, be it two lovers or two neighbors, is communication. Lovers and neighbors have to be able, and willing, to communicate their needs and wants. Evil, typified by Satan’s pride, is a more severe form of an unhealthy relationship, as the forcing of one’s will, resorting to manipulation to do so in some cases, excludes the possibility of communication.
Truth in Conversation
Truth, to circle back to Gadamer, is also communicative. Taking Socrates as his model, Gadamer asserts that truth arises out of dialogue. Since truth is not a physical substance, it cannot be extracted like quicksilver through some alchemical process; there are no universally valid methods for arriving at truth in the same sense that there are universally valid ways for making bleach or other compounds. I already sense a fear of relativism, a fear that came up when we discussed Modernity and Post-Modernity, for how can truth be truth if it is not universally accessible? Let’s start with something uncontroversial, and then gradually come to a more radical position. I have a brother, and if I want to know how my brother’s day was, I have to ask him. Why ask? In part it is because we live in different cities, and I do not see him in person on a regular basis. What if I was? If I did not ask him, would I still know? Let’s table that for a second, and ask would you know? Chances are you do not know my brother, but you might think you could judge how his day was if you shadowed him for the day. Yet, this is not a fool-proof method, you cannot extract quicksilver here, because my brother might be keeping up appearances. Imagine he has a rough day, maybe he gets an upsetting phone call during his lunch break, but either because he does not want to draw attention to it, wishing to just get on with the day, or maybe because his coworkers are having rough days as well and he feels the need to be there for them, he acts like the phone call never happened and it is unnoticeable to anyone. These sorts of things happen all the time, and many people are good at masking their emotions. You could only know how my brother’s day is going if you ask, if there is a relationship such that open communication about emotions is possible, if my brother was willing to talk, and if you were willing to listen. A lot of requirements! Communication, at the very least, can uncover the truth about persons, and even then, it is not a method for arriving at truth because communication is dependent on a number of variables that change with each passing minute.
Truth in Texts
Let’s make the claim a bit stronger. Like knowing about my brother’s day, reading a text properly also requires conversation. Who are the partners in conversation? The reader and the text. Not the author? No, he or she has likely reposed or is unavailable for a line-by-line explanation. More than this, while the text is, in some way, an expression of the author, the text is not the author, but the author’s creation. I can learn about God by interacting with His creation, creation is epiphany, but God’s creation is different than Him and when I am interacting with it, I am interacting with it. Eliot is not The Wasteland, which means when I read The Wasteland, although Eliot might shine through, I am interacting with something other than Eliot. The reader is trying to properly understand the text, trying to find the truth of the text. Yet, is this not a one-sided endeavor? A text does not verbally speak, it does not have vocal cords, but this is to reduce speech to a purely biological phenomenon. Surely a text can tell us something, and if it cannot then it is not a text worth reading. Using the word “tell” is more than just metaphor (as if metaphor can ever be “just metaphor”), for it signifies a two-way dialogue; there is no “telling”, no “speaking”, unless someone is listening. Readers must be open to a text instructing, challenging, and even surprising him. Those who are not open, who would prefer to manipulate a text to suit their needs, are closed off from the truth of a text. I cannot know what The Wasteland is saying if I try and manipulate it, if I am closed off to it instructing me.
Openness is not the only requirement for learning the truth of a text, but, as Gadamer teaches us, a merging of horizons is in order. By horizon, Gadamer means the limits of cultural and intellectual vision. As an American, my culture allows me to understand phenomena that other cultural backgrounds would not find intelligible, and vice versa. For example, as an American my sense of justice is drenched in Common Law, and this means that whenever I read a text dealing with justice, I will, even if I am unaware that I am doing it, will read Common Law into the text. As an Orthodox Christian, all phenomena are interpreted in light of the Incarnation. Yet, not all texts share our horizon. Plato’s Republic, for example, does not share my Common Law tradition or my belief in the Incarnation. To force my own horizon onto The Republic would distort its meaning, blocking my access to its truth, and, ultimately, turn into manipulation. To leave my horizon aside and adopt The Republic’s horizon, while noble in intention, is impossible. I cannot stop being myself. On a more technical level, horizons are lived; they are not a set of propositions. Being an American or an Orthodox Christian is not simply adopting a set of propositions, it is, on the contrary, living a particular kind of life. Attempting to dwell in another’s horizon, without living in that horizon is bad acting and even insulting…it is saying to the other, “by comprehending a set of propositions I can understand your very life, without having lived a day in your shoes.” To live another’s horizon, without making it your own, is bad faith and impractical for textual interpretation.
What can be done then? Gadamer thinks the way out of this dilemma is to “merge horizons”, and this means finding some common ground between yourself and the text you are reading, then using this common ground as a basis reading the text. In the case of The Republic, there is The Good, the source of all things and in the light of which all things are seen, and this sounds a lot like the Christian God. To say The Good is the Christian God, without making some qualifications, is false, because The Good (if we are strictly speaking of The Republic) is impersonal, whereas the Christian God is Three Persons, but there are enough similarities that it can be used as a bridge between the two horizons. Justice, in The Republic, is defined as “giving each his due”, and later this is expanded upon by giving each part of the soul its due, and this basic definition of justice fits in very nice with a Common Law tradition, despite The Republic proposing system of justice very different from Common Law. Differences exist, and their existence is a good thing, it makes the world interesting—how boring it would be if every text was the same!—but there are also commonalities, commonalities that allow two different people to talk to each other. Merging horizons, finding a bridge between reader and text, allows a conversation to take place between reader and text, and makes place for the openness in which truth can be heard.
Truth in Art and Politics
Moving away from Gadamer for a second, though we will come back to him again, let’s look at his teacher, Martin Heidegger. In Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger explains how an artwork opens up a world and uses the example of a Greek temple,
“Standing there, the building rests on the rocky ground. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the obscurity of that rock’s bulky yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence. The luster and gleam of the stone, though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun, first brings to radiance the light of the day, the breath of the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm towering makes visible the invisible space of the air. The steadfastness of the work contrasts with the surge of the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging of the sea. Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are. The Greeks early called this emerging and rising in itself and in all things physis. It illumines also that on which and in which man bases his dwelling. We call this ground the earth. What this word says is not to be associated with the idea of a mass of matter deposited somewhere, or with the merely astronomical idea of a planet. Earth is that whence the arising brings back and shelters everything that arises as such. In the things that arise, earth occurs essentially as the sheltering agent…The temple-work, standing there, opens up a world, and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground. (Basic Writings, 169)”
The temple, standing there, shows the environment for as it is, but how it would be missed if the temple was not there. It is the temple that makes present the crashing waves, for it is against the stable ground of the temple that the raging storm is contrasted. Above the temple is the sky, which is contrasted, by the presence of the temple, with the rocky earth. By housing an immortal, the temple gives mortals context. A world, by which Heidegger means a vision of Being that includes earth and sky, immortals and mortals, is revealed by the temple-work. By building the temple, the mason did not erect an externalized form of himself but made something that, by its presence, reveals to its admirers a world. Good art does this, regardless of the art is masonry or poetry, painting or singing. Yet, the world revealed is not a world we wish was, or a world other than our world, it is a true reflection of reality (Heidegger would say of Being). This does not exclude fantasy or science-fiction, as the works of Tolkien and Herbert, while set in imaginary lands, tell us something about our own reality.
Moving to politics, and then coming back to Gadamer and bringing in our themes of communication and manipulation, certain political events can function the same way as an artwork. Founding a political state, as was done in 1776, opens up a world by revealing the four-fold of earth and sky, immortals and mortals. In the context of 1776, a conception of Man (mortal), his relationship to society (earth), to God (immortals) and the higher domain of rights and duties (sky) was opened, and since 1776 Americans have been living in that open. Aside from the founding of states, certain Great Men also open up a world. Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Huey Long, and Franklin Delanor Roosevelt are four American statesmen who, during their administration, inaugurated new ways of being; they opened up new worlds.
Yet, it is not enough for a temple to be built or for a political state to be inaugurated, there is still the need to understand the work of art and the political work. The truth of art and politics often does not come like a revelation, although it can do that. Like texts, art works and political works have their own horizon, and while in some cases we may share the same horizon (especially in the case of a political state being founded), the four-fold does not press in on us, we have to look up to the sky to see the sky, and listen to mortals to hear mortals. We must be open to what art and politics tells us, and try, hard though it may be, not to manipulate either to fit our own desires. So often we want, or even need, art and politics to mean something. There are countless podcasts analyzing films from countless and contrary perspectives, and legion current event commentators that will tell you what will happen tomorrow, why so-and-so is doing such-and-such, and why “they” are reacting “like this” to “that event”, and how they are fools for doing so. I know, for I am guilty like the rest. However, if we are to properly understand art and politics, we would do well to head Gadamer’s call for communication, rather than manipulation.
Implications
What are we to do with this? If communication gives us access to the moral life, relationships, and truth, and manipulation does the opposite, then it behooves us to live a life of communication. Internet discourse breaks down into drama, clout chasing, fandoms, and radicalization so often because the anonymous nature of the internet prevents the other from being seen as an other, but, on the contrary, makes the other into a thing. Too often the person is identified with their prolife picture, and when it changes it is almost like a change of identity. Ironically, though the internet opens up communication in theory, in practice it enables manipulation more than it promotes communication. It takes sustained effort to foster communication, it takes vulnerability even.
There are no programs, no policies, that can be drawn from these reflections. Programs and policies are all well and good, I have written a fair number of them, but they deal with things, not people. When dealing with people, we only have communication. “Just communication”, is never “just communication” because how I communicate with my friend, brother, and you will be different. How I communicate with my friend and brother changes all the time at that, depending on context, day, and mood. To navigate communication is like playing hockey, there is no rule for when you shoot the puck, you have to learn through practice, and eventually you will get a feel for it. “What do we do with this?” Give communication a shot, and develop the feel needed to make it work.