Monday, September 9, 2019

Our essential existential crisis



Perhaps Harold Pinter is the lodestar of post-literate social communication.  In Pinter, everything that matters is contained in the unuttered and/or unutterable.  Our lives, especially now in this tenuous, anxious era, are repressed, or, like the contents of a propane tank, are highly energized, volatile thoughts and dreams compressed within us, moving us along, bumping us into things, dodging uncertainties.  We spend our energies avoiding what our fears propel us toward.  Utterance, after all, is attempted contact and response.  And, for the most part, we demur, until for matters of personal worth, we press the release valve, and the troubles manifest.

Yielding to the perceived necessity of not uttering leads to an existential crisis.  If we don’t respond to or don’t initiate utterance, we risk increasing the pent up energy already in the tank, so to speak.  If we do respond or initiate, we run the risk of judgmental and/or hostile reaction from the other(s).  In either case, we will then have become exposed, the release valve will have been triggered, and the slightest unintended spark could ignite the volatility leaked into the communal space.

In Pinter, as in other smart writing, we can experience this by “watching” as apparently innocuous utterance devolves into treacherous, demeaning conflict.  Or we can be mindful of what’s going on in our gatherings.  Perhaps our current sufferance within the spew of social media represents our resolution of this existential crisis.  Perhaps all current utterance is essentially an overwhelming released gas, a numbing pollution of our dissociative, solitary, disconsolate space bereft of any triggering and ignition.

Is it really any wonder that we have a gnawing sense of distrust among us?

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