Authentic Beauty

[elfs]

There is a line of thinking that goes something like this: Whatever happened at the World Trade Center, the terrorists must have had a good reason for throwing away their lives. Nobody without a good reason turns himself into a human targeting system for a cruise missle like that.

One of the classic problems with this line of thinking is that it conflates two meanings of the word "good" in the hopes of confusing the listener. The first meaning, sufficient for the individual, is apparent in the original statement: the terrorists had sufficient for each self reason to die that day. Obvious, or they wouldn't have done it. The problem is that many of the commentators addressing the issue turn around and claim that because the reason was sufficient, it must therefore be morally acceptable.

This assumption rests on another: the multiculturalist assumption that there is a foundation of being that we all share that is morally good, and that one's actions, whatever they may be, express that morally good foundation. For the terrorists to have done what they did, they must have been expressing some morally good impulse.

(Although multiculturalists, like multifaith theists, often hold this belief, it's surprising how it mirrors one of the more disturbing contradictions of fundamentalist belief, whether Christian or Islamic: if God permits gratuitous evil, then God is not omnibenevolent; on the other hand, if there is no gratuitous evil, then one has no reason to be opposed to horrors such as rape or murder because all actions, whatever our short-term assessment, ultimately contribute to some greater good.)

Usually this "morally good impulse" is explained as happening in opposition to either poverty or totalitarianism. In the case of the 9/11 hijackers, this argument is completely without merit. All 19 of the hijackers came from middle-class families, most of the sufficientely wealthy to send their sons to private schools. Of the 19 hijackers, all of them came from nations where totalitarianism comes primarily not in the form of a choice between Pepsi or Coke, but from home-grown Committees to Encourage Virtue and Suppress Vice, who beat women who don't wear shawls, forbid "chicken breasts" from being sold in supermarkets, and ban Barbie because "Mattel is owned by Jews."

We must reject the argument that the means justifies the end: that what happened on 9/11 is, in some sense, "understandable" or "morally meritable" because no one "without a [morally] good reason would do such a thing." No one doubts that the Hutu and Tsutsi, the Khmer Rouge, or the Wermacht fouht with everything they had; this does not make the Congolese massacres, the Cambodian killing fields, or Auschwitz an expression of anything "morally meritable."

Which leads me to the movie American Beauty.

I have only watched the first 20 minutes or so of American Beauty, so it might seem that what I'm saying is ill-informed, but bear with me. I do know how it ends, after all. It's impossible not to know given the amount of blathering people were doing about it when it came out.

I couldn't bear to watch American Beauty because I pretty much recognized it for what it was by the end of the first twenty minutes: a film in which the hero, Lester, is depicted as heroic because he decides, completely on his own, that he needs to break away from the life he's currently leading. He expresses his loathing for his wife and his family, for his job, and for his life, by completely fuguing away from his previous existence. Lester's actions are justified automatically by their immoderation: because he took such drastic action, his life must have been drastically horrible. In short, the filmakers tried to sell the audience on the idea that in Lester's search for "authenticity," his quest for the "authentic Lester," the means justified the end.

The audience bought it. American Beauty got Oscars™ for it. And it's crap. Lester is no more morally justified in his actions than the 9/11 hijackers were in theirs. The evil acted out by Lester and by the 9/11 hijackers is different only in degree, not in distinction.

Which leads me to the meme propagated by jenkitty and technoshaman, the one about "Being elfs means..."

Being Elf means learning from my mistakes. Knowing the difference between right and wrong. Knowing the difference between friendship and facade. Between love and infatuation. Between needing, wanting, and miswanting.

Omaha worried once, recently, that I might turn out like Lester. After all, she opines, I would be happier going the solitary geek route, like my two friends with all the toys I mentioned earlier, rather than being "forced" to be sociable and paternal and all that.

I rather doubt it. A certain incident six years ago has led me to understand why people have commitments, and have principles, and live up to them-- and why some people have neither. I've committed myself to Omaha, and Kouryou-chan, and even Yamaarashi-chan, and I've come to understand my own principles, first principles, about being a husband, a father, a man.

I suppose I'd like a couple of extra geek toys and whine a little when I can't have them. And I'd like a few extra hours a day to myself and then complain when they fly away. But those are cases of miswanting, of mistaking cheap pleasures for authentic happiness. There is profound satisfaction in making one's life actually work, in having a deep and loving relationship with my wife, and in loving, crafting, and moulding my children into (I hope) successful and happy adults.

I'd rather have that than Mena Suvari on a bed of roses any day.

Lester's quest was for his authentic self. Well, this is my authentic self: a bit conflicted and whiny at times, but fully aware that those conflicts and wants arise from an essential immaturity that all people H. sapiens males have, and that we overcome and tame in order to become men.