Where has he gone, the distraught man? He used to be such a prevalent figure in French and Russian societies, and made his appearance in nearly every novel. Always smiling, always shrewd, the distraught man arrogantly scoffed at the customs and desires of the rich while toying with niceties and how-do-you-do’s, raised his hat in ironic acknowledgement of the official, and never professed affection or showed wildness; he was a true dandy: he did exactly the opposite of what was expected of him, but never in the unbridled way of the eccentric – no, he turned conventions on their head from within. In a game of cards, the distraught man would gladly cheat, but never throw the table.
And just as quickly as his enigmatic, cynical, and arrogant figure appeared in the courts of high society, the distraught man left us, and we now have to browse the pages of history to make sense of his short stay; what created him? What characterised him? And why is he no longer among us?
All societal questions can be traced back to the meaning of life. The laws of nature exist regardless of man’s plights or aspirations, and pay no heed to his troubles, but what man makes of life, with the exception of epistemological and metaphysical thought, is irrevocably tied to meaning. For what is the purpose of politics and ethics but to facilitate meaning for the individual within a collective body?
The importance of meaning to human beings and to their societies is so great that we can roughly categorize people into four groups according to their existential situation: the survivor, the religious, the consumer, and the Übermensch.
The survivor, as we have shown elsewhere, is the man devoid of a collective body, or whose circumstances are so dire that he cannot devote any thought or energy to a collective existence. The survivor has no meaning of life for the same reason he has no societal questions: he can afford neither; his existential needs require no satisfaction simply for the fact that they do not exist. Some social persons, in their desperation and lack of existential success, envy the dog or the hawk for their careless existence; ‘ignorance is bliss’ is their motto, and they bring the distraught man to our memory. Envy not, dear reader, the lot of the dog or the survivor, and choose your wishes carefully.
The religious man climbed his way out of the mire of survival, glimpsed the terror of the void, and hastily sealed it with plaster; ‘what matters the material?’ he reasoned, ‘or the limits of my chosen confinement? As long as I cannot see or feel the void, I am content in my small abode.’ And indeed, the warmth and security of the religious man has allowed him to flourish; what interesting creations has he shaped, and what noble virtues has he nurtured. Some of the most impressive people who lived in our societies, such as Diocletian, Lord Byron, Maimonides, and Zenobia, were spared the ordeal of finding meaning in their lives, and were mentally free to seize their great aspirations. Such powerful resolution does religion provide. Indeed, M. de Charlus would have made the perfect distraught man had he not been able to fall back on his devotion.
Marx overestimated the importance of economics when he argued that “religion is the sigh of the (economically) oppressed creature;” religion is too fundamental to be the expression of plight of the materially bereft – it is the answer to an existential crisis. The business model of organised religion is simple and powerful: ‘buy meaning from us, and lend us your hand in return.’ What is religion but plaster that can seal the void, which has been purchased with fidelity and toil?
Nor is religious fidelity reserved to those religions that worship supernatural beings; as Yuval Noah Harari proposes, secular ideals are equally religious. The acclaimed estimation of human rights, ideological beliefs, and political identities is not fundamentally different from the estimation of gods and saints; perhaps those ideals spark less zealous flames within the hearts of followers, but those followers harbour devotion that is religious in its nature. Any form of collectivist ideology relies solely on the existential plight of its individuals, who willingly bereft themselves of individuality for the sake of shelter – the result is no more than a trade.
The consumer is a curious being, for his existence relies on patches; he tried the taste of religion, and was surprised by the bitterness of its demands. ‘Must the life of the idealist be so severe?’ he wonders, and cowers away from religious effort; in his weakness, he abandons himself to Acedia, and neglects the existential effort to which he is called.
As a result, some of his plaster has worn off, and the cold of the void has crept in. ‘How chilly it has become,’ he thinks, ‘let me wrap a coat around myself, and warm my skin with its fur. Like a dog I shall be, and revel in corporal delights. Regardless of the state of my abode, I will always be sheltered from the cold, and what matters what creations I shall make? One cannot easily move in these furs, and besides, movement causes the cold to seep in. No, let me be warm above all else, so please do not ask me to get up and mend the hole – and whatever you do, don’t make me think! By God!’
If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
Indeed, the existence of the consumer is that of pursuit of comfort; the less religious he becomes, the thicker are the furs that he requires, and the more wealth he seeks to purchase them. Though his nose is numb and purple with cold, the consumer revels in his comfort; wealth is his idol, and with it he purchases escapism, which to him is like the fake warmth of alcohol.
And yet, the cold is steadily spreading from the nose to the body, for the consumer struggles to keep his footing on the Hedonic treadmill. But the consumer does not experience the cold as the distraught man did, for he does not seek to brave it; the cold catches him unawares and plunges him into despair, as the unexpected fist throws the boxer to the ground, and he is left to shiver in the very garments whose shiny tags promised him complete protection. No, do not mistake the depressed consumer, who fails to fathom the source of his distress, for our lost protagonist; the two are as different as a sailor without an oar and a drowning philistine.
Does the Übermensch require our description? Why, the capacity and nature of such a being is clear. The Übermensch observed the plaster on the wall, touched it, and was surprised to see how quickly and easily it crumbled; beyond that plaster, he observed the terror of the void, smiled, and stepped out. There does he yet stand, the Übermensch: naked against the cold, warmed only by the inner heat of his individuality; he seeks neither furs nor collective walls to protect himself, and he does not need a raison d’être – he is the only free being in existence.
What defines the distraught man? What condition does he endure? The distraught man is he who feels the cold most bitterly, for he has given up both plaster and furs, which did not appeal to his taste, and stepped out into the void with expectation; but, alas! his inner warmth has failed him, wherefore he can only lean against the wall, shivering, too proud to open the door that he has shut by his own vocation, and too cold to stand.
In this state we find the distraught man; his disillusionment has upset him, his inability to face the cold has weakened his nerves, and his disappointment in himself caused him to turn a bitter and sardonic tongue towards others. Like Andrei Gorchakov, the distraught man fails to guard the flame of meaning; beyond all else, he seeks affirmation, for perhaps it will lend him the hand that he requires to stand in the cold, but without it he is left in a perpetual state of disorientation.
Not all react similarly to this trying fate. Some, such as Claude Lantier and Guido Anselmi, are conquered by timidity; in the attempt to create powerful art, they exhausted their inner self and had to weakly abandon the attempt. Guido killed his ego and Claude killed himself; from an existential perspective, both outcomes are horrid. “If only we could have the courage to hang ourselves in front of our last masterpiece!” cries the timid soul, for indeed courage is what it lacks most.
Others would wreak vengeance upon the world, and watch it burn with delight; they are above all destroyers, and will pick up ideological weapons to fit their cause. As Hoederer tells Hugo: “You, I know you now, you are a destroyer. You detest men because you detest yourself. Your purity resembles death. The revolution you dream of is not ours. You don’t want to change the world, you want to blow it up.” But the destroyer is defined by his cruelty rather than by his ideology, as can be seen in the figure of Lord Henry Wotton. Although Laevsky was accused of being a destroyer by his challenger, he lacked the required malice; Laevsky was more feeble than malevolent, and poisoned his surroundings passively.
Perhaps the best example of a destroyer can be found in Raskolnikov, for his philosophy shows the clear connection between the aspirations of the distraught man and destruction. In an attempt to prove his existential superiority, Raskolnikov picked up the axe against the pawn-broker; he destroyed a human being to prove to himself that he could, but ultimately, like all distraught men, he failed. Other characters are less complex, and skip directly to acts of villainy; Solf J. Kimblee and Nolan’s Joker are perhaps less elegant than the dandies of society, but their motives do not differ. While staring into the void, the destroyer mistakes its indifference for darkness, and acts accordingly.
The final version of the distraught man is the feigned nihilist. We do not regard these persons as true nihilists, for a true nihilist would kill himself on the spot; no, they are above all lost: their life is an enigma, and their rejection of meaning is truly a plea for guidance and affirmation. The feigned nihilist wields the sharpest tongue, for he thinks that only by tearing through any solace that is offered him will he find an unbreakable truth, and that is truly his deepest desire. Such miserable figures include Hamlet, Ivan Karamazov, Chrollo Lucilfer, and Yevgény Vasílevich Bazárov.
But why has the distraught man disappeared? Perhaps his existence depended on high society, and he was just a relic of his times, or perhaps he has given in to some form of religion, such as scientism, and he no longer feels the cold? I doubt that the distraught man managed to stand up and become what he desired most, although I wish that were the case. But would we not have witnessed more, rather than fewer, distraught men had some reached a transcendent state? Would the few who succeeded not have produced many who failed?
Perhaps we can discern some of the mannerisms of the distraught man in the hipster. Indeed, the hipster is cynical, bitter, and contemptuous, but let him not confuse you, for he is above all a consumer. The hipster wears the style of the dandy as a brand and shows his disillusionment with pride, whereas the dandy hides his mental crisis and elegantly plays with theories. Rather than ponder the enigma of his state, the hipster grabs hold of the most novel idea he can conjure and presents it as a lofty goal; he commits the fallacy of argumentum ad novitatem, but to him the superiority of novel ideas stems not from their benefits but from their intrinsic unattainability, which allows him to assume the position of the eternal critic. Like Bosie, the hipster lacks the ‘Oxford temper,’ and rather than gracefully play with ideas arrives at violence of opinion merely. Indeed, the hipster would be the last to pursue social wellbeing, unless the pursuit would grant him vengeance and power, for when he does not act as a consumer he acts as a tarantula.
Regardless of the fate of the distraught man, and whether he succumbed to consumerism, religion, or the absence of his preferred environment, I am saddened by his disappearance. Yes, the distraught man failed to achieve his goal, but his attempt was laudable and his character unique; I hope to see him again with less violence in his eyes, smiling languidly and holding up a flower – his return shall mark a renewed attempt to brave the void.