The Genius of Tom Robbins

I've been briskly walking home from school each day like a soccer mom in jeopardy of being a few precious moments late for her daily dose of Oprah so that I can put slippers on, sprawl out on the couch, and read Tom Robbins' latest book, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards. As one would expect, his new book, a collection of short writings, is inspirational and, in typical Robbins fashion, brilliantly creative and witty. Here is a gem from the book in which Robbins explains the relationship between humor and illusions of grandiosity:

Norman N. Holland asked a similar question in Laughing: A Psychology of Humor, concluding that comedy is deemed inferior to tragedy primarily because of the social prevalence of narcissistic pathology. In other words, people who are too self-important to laugh at their own frequently ridiculous behavior have a vested interest in gravity because it supports their illusions of grandiosity. According to Professor Donald Kuspit, many people are unable to function without such illusions.

"Capitalism," wrote Kuspit, "encourages the pathologically grandiose self because it encourages the conspicuous consumption of possessions which symbolize one's grandiosity." I would add that rigid, unquestioning allegiance to a particular religious or political affiliation is in much the same way also symptomatic of disease.

Ironically, it's this same malignant narcissism, revealing itself through whining, arrogance, avarice, pique, anxiety, severity, defensive cynicism, and aggressive ambition, that is keeping the vainglorious out of their paradise. Among our egocentric sadsacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation. Taken out on others, depression becomes a weapon. But for those willing to reduce and permeate their ego, to laugh--or meow--it into submission, heaven on earth is a distinct psychological possibility.

In light of a recent discussion I had with a relative that is thankfully distant and not related to me by blood, I've decided to post an insightful passage from a Robbins' book I just read called Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. In it, a character named Larry Diamond describes "progress," its dangers, and what he calls "The Lie":

The Lie of progress. The Lie of unlimited expansion. The Lie of 'grow-or-perish.' Listen. We built ourselves a fine commercial bonfire, but then instead of basking in its warmth, toasting marshmallows over it, and reading the classics by its light, we became obsessed with making it bigger and hotter, bigger and hotter, until if the flames didn't leap higher from one quarter to the next, it was cause for great worry and dissatisfaction. Well, any Bozo on the riverbank could have told us that if you keep feeding and feeding and feeding a bonfire, sooner or later you burn up all the fuel and the fire goes cold; or else the fire gets too huge to manage and eventually engulfs the countryside and chars its inhabitants. Nature has always set limits on growth: limits on the physical size of individual species, limits on the size of populations. Did we really believe capitalism was exempt from the laws of nature? Did we really confuse endless consumption with endless progress?

Maybe I read the Unabomber's Manifesto too early in life during that stage of one's academic career and cognitive development in which the brain tries in vain to slip through cracks in the skull to desperately escape the body and absorb and apply new information with intensity and yet-untainted passion, but, for the past few years, I've been shaking hands with technological progress with my fingers behind my back and trepidation muscling caution into my glare and sweaty handshake. It seems as if most people in America and abroad unwaveringly support technological advancement and often quickly mistake it with "progress." Sure we can make two dogs from one like a cheap magician with a big hat, small rabbits, and a drunken circus audience, and we can separate twins who share both last names and jiggly cerebral real estate, but we often fail to look up and away from our screens, those appropriately named portals that lead us with arms outstretched, two perpendicular extremity erections, to our cozy, shag-carpeted, fireside, cell phone and television and computer safe havens.

When we can only focus on our bonfire, as Robbins describes, or our material possessions that are used like merit badges to help us prove our level of grandiosity to ourselves and others, we miss everything that happens in between adding logs to the flames or adding tennis bracelets to the already jangly wrists that never glow quite gold enough. This is the danger that seeps into the nightmares of the conscious few and slinks around unacknowledged in the actions and short bursts of choppy yet collectively powerful thought of the many. It's a threat more real than any elusive terrorist and more destructive than any bomb. Is it any wonder then that the thinkers and poets of the world cry out, no, shriek out in fear when the U.S. government attempts to spread a thick, buttery coat of this material preoccupation, this love for unnecessary pyrotechnics, on the seemingly inviting landscapes of other countries with a wide bladed butter knife of good ol' Western aggression? I couldn't agree with Robbins more--when you feed a fire until the flames touch the clouds, you stroll arm in arm with the risk of either running out of logs (which will subsequently leave you shivering with tiny, teeth-clanging, mouth earthquakes by the side of a pathetic pile of smoldering ashes) or scorching yourself to dry, ashy oblivion...or both.

more to come as life unfolds,

Andrew