All posts by Richard Flanagan

About Richard Flanagan

Richard works for the NHS as an Operating Department Practitioner. He lives in Shropshire, UK with his wife and two children. He recently completed a First Class Honours Bachelor of Arts in History with the Open University. He also writes fiction and non-fiction under the pseudonym R. P. Serin. In 2019, he was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Autism and The Divided Brain – My Middle Way Experience

Autism, Brain, Health and well-being, Middle Way Philosophy, Psychology, , ,

I have spent my entire life feeling as if I don’t fit in, like I don’t belong. Other people have always seemed like a mystery, especially in the effortless way they navigate the twisted path of social interaction. As a child I thought this would change as I became an adult, that I would suddenly learn to ‘be like everybody else’. But it didn’t. Nevertheless, I’ve always managed pretty well, compensating in a variety of ways: drifting off into my own world, sticking to subjects I know (avoiding those I don’t), or by finding the alternative music scene and embracing my place as an outsider (one of the more successful strategies, although I never felt I fit in there either).  Even now I prepare myself for potential conversations by preparing answers to the common kind of ‘small talk’: ‘what did you do over the weekend?’, ‘how are the kids?’ – that kind of thing. In the past, forgetting to do this could result in a long-lasting, sometimes debilitating, state of anxiety, as could a whole host of other seemingly innocuous situations. Then in 2019, after years of cognitive behaviour therapy, counselling, medication, and a pervasive sense of confusion, I was diagnosed as having Level 1 Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Suddenly I had a framework in which my experiences made sense. My preference to play alone as a child, the gullibility that I spent years trying to overcome or those social difficulties I have experienced as an adult.

People often ask what point there is in ‘having a label’. I can’t speak for anybody else, but my life has become immeasurably easier. I still need to prepare myself for small talk but knowing that this is because of my neurodevelopmental differences, rather than stubborn habits to be fixed, has significantly reduced my anxiety. This is true of many aspects of my life.

‘A Complex Range of Symptoms’

The National Autistic Society says that ‘Autism is a lifelong developmental disability which affects how people communicate and interact with the world’. Autism isn’t one, easily definable, condition, but rather a ‘spectrum of closely related disorders with a shared core of symptoms’. The definition of autism has changed over the decades and is likely to change some more (not all that long ago I would have been diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome, and while this remains in common usage, it has now been diagnostically incorporated into the umbrella term ASD). While most of these changes have been made to make diagnosing a complicated range of overlapping conditions easier, it has caused some confusion in the general public and exacerbated various misunderstandings, such as the often heard ‘everybody is on the spectrum’, which mistakenly frames the spectrum as a gradient on which everybody falls, ranging from ‘mild’ to ‘severe’. In fact, the spectrum is a complex range of symptoms, of which a certain amount, in specific combinations, must be present for a diagnosis to be made. Everybody has some traits that exist on the spectrum, but that does not make everybody ‘a little bit autistic’. A bicycle is a mode of transport that uses wheels to facilitate motion; a trait it shares with a motor car, but I’ve never heard anyone say that a bicycle is ‘a little bit car’.

The spectrum of autistic traits can be categorised into three broad categories:

Social and Communication Difficulties.

For me these include:

  • Taking things too literally.
  • Difficulty processing verbal information. For instance, I often experience a ‘lag’ between hearing words spoken to me and understanding them. Consequently, there is sometimes a noticeably extended pause before I respond. I can also become ‘overloaded’ if I am in a conversation with too many people.
  • Misunderstanding social cues. For example, colleagues have commented about my habit of walking away before a conversation has finished.
  • Not having many close friends (please don’t feel sorry for me, that’s how I like it).

Repetitive and Restrictive Behaviour.

For me these include:

  • Repeatedly tapping each finger against my thumb, in sequence (I also rock back and forth).
  • Unconsciously rubbing my belly when talking to people. I eventually learnt to stop after it became something of a running joke at work.
  • Difficulties when routines are disrupted – if someone turns up at my house unannounced then I am thrown into a kind of daze where I find it especially hard to concentrate on social interaction. Changes at work, such as being moved to a new team, can cause me long-running anxiety – even if I know the team members well.
  • A paradoxical aversion to developing routines, because of how they affect me. This makes me rather disorganised and resistant to being organised by others.

Over or Under Sensitivity to Light, Sound, Taste and Touch.

For me these include:

  • Over-sensitivity to labels in clothes. Some cause me to feel small ‘electric shocks’ that shoot down the length of my body.
  • Over sensitivity to certain seams in socks. Especially if they touch the tops of my toes, which can be painfully sensitive.
  • Experiencing Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) which is: ‘the sensation experienced by some people in response to specific sights and sounds, described as a warm, tingling and pleasant sensation starting at the crown of the head and spreading down the body’.
‘A Little Bit Car’

Recently, I’ve been reading, Iain McGilchrist’s (psychiatrist, writer, and Patron of the Middle Way Society) The Master and His Emissary; a book which ‘argues that the division of the brain into two hemispheres is essential to human existence, making possible incompatible versions of the world, with quite different priorities and values’ (for those unfamiliar with McGilchrist’s seminal work, Robert M. Ellis has produced a fine summary and review here). It became apparent to me, as I read that autism shares many traits with left-hemisphere activity, and therefore appears to be a ‘left-brain’ condition. People with a diagnosis of ASD tend to function better in familiar situations, they are often more inclined to divide the world (and the things in it) into categories or type, and can have, or appear to have, superficial emotions. They often struggle to view the ‘bigger picture’, understand implicit metaphorical language, or maintain complex social relationships. The list goes on.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that, while the similarities must be more than coincidence, the relationship between the two is much more complicated. McGilchrist hints at this potential complexity in The Master and His Emissary, even if he does not discuss ASD in great detail. He suggests that, in relation to ‘some forms of autism and Asperger’s Syndrome’ there may be ‘a partial inversion of the standard [left-right brain hemisphere operational] pattern, leading to brain functions being lateralised in unconventional combinations’.

I have always struggled with metaphorical language – and while I have learnt to understand and use it in prose, much of the symbolism found in poetry is lost on me. I am also inclined to rigid thinking, and the emotions I feel tend to be relatively simplistic and superficial.

So far, so left-hemisphere.

But then there’s the fact that listening to music is one of the most important things in my life, and the experience of it transcends cognitive thought. I’ve never been overly interested in understanding the structure of a piece of music, and I’m not usually fussed by listening to lyrics (quite often I don’t even hear them but experience the voice as another instrument). It’s the embodied experience of listening that I crave. And while many of my emotions tend to be quite simple, I experience empathy in such a deep way that I sometimes joke it is pathological. All of which seems decidedly right-hemisphere.

My ASD diagnosis suggests that I require ‘little support’ with my day-to-day living, which is largely true. Therefore, it might be assumed that these apparent right-hemisphere anomalies are specific to me. That they are only present because my autism is ‘mild’. This, however, doesn’t seem to be the case

There is a growing body of research which suggests that many children with autism, some of which have very limited communication skills, respond remarkably well to music, and through it are better able to express their emotions to others. It has also been shown to help facilitate the acquisition of language in those who did not previously demonstrate it (those who have read The Master and His Emissary will recall the significance of this to a part of his thesis).

And while there is a wide-spread assumption that people with ASD do not have the ability to feel empathy, this, as my experience suggests, is also not necessarily the case. In fact, the very opposite may sometimes be true. According to The National Autistic Society:

“Autistic people can and do feel empathy. They can be more empathetic or emotionally aware than non-autistic people”.

I often have the sense that I feel empathy more acutely than those around me, sometimes feeling deep empathy for people whom others judge to be undeserving of it. For example, if a news report comes on the TV about a child that has been killed by a drunk driver, I experience deep empathy, concern, and sadness for all involved – including the driver. On occasions when I’ve mentioned this, I’ve noticed that people can become quite angry, as if I should choose where my empathy is directed. Of course, my deepest feelings are felt for the child and the child’s family, but I am also intuitively aware that the driver’s life has also been ruined because he or she has made one bad decision. I see no conflict in being resolute in my belief that the driver should be held responsible for their actions while also extending my empathy towards them.  I don’t know why I respond this way because it is entirely involuntary. Perhaps it comes from a lifetime of learning to ‘read’ other people. Consciously trying to ‘put myself in their shoes’ so that I might understand them better. These are things that come naturally to most people at an early age but take significant and purposeful effort for someone with ASD. It could be a case of ‘practice makes perfect’ (not that I’m claiming perfection).

McGilchrist has yet to explore these issues in detail, although I believe he has hinted that he will explore them further in his next book. All I have been able to do here is reflect on the similarities I have noticed, relating them to my own experience, and to the recent thinking about aspects of ASD. Whether McGilchrist will reinforce my conclusions or not is unknown, but I eagerly await the chance to find out.

In terms of practising the Middle Way, autism comes with specific challenges: rigidity of thought, difficulties with metaphorical language, and other features common to left-hemisphere activity. There also seem to be traits that are obviously useful, such as a rich, embodied response to music, and a strong sense of empathy (be that instinctive or learnt).

Engagement with Middle Way Philosophy has enabled me to explore those aspects of my personality that seem like they could be barriers to it. In doing so, I’ve learnt to utilise those traits in increasingly helpful ways; by directing rigidity of thought towards avoiding dogmatic extremes, for example. On paper, it might seem that autism and the Middle Way are incompatible, as if the left-hemisphere has too firm a grip to allow meaningful progress, but this is not the case. If anything, they can complement each other. The things that make me autistic have created challenges, in life as in my pursuit of the Middle Way, yet they have also been beneficial and enriching. Being diagnosed with autism has helped me understand myself, the Middle Way has helped me understand my autism, and in turn autism has helped me embrace the Middle Way.

Image One by SplitShire. Image Two by giorgio9377. Image Three by GDJ. Image Four by ElisaRiva. All courtesy of Pixabay.

In Defence of, the Much Maligned, Twitter

Community, Culture, Current Affairs, Health and well-being, Middle Way Society, News, Politics, Social Media, , , , , , ,

“For any women who are compelled, against their wishes, to wear a Hijab, I would fully support such a notion [to arrange a #TakeOffYourHijab day in solidarity with the Iran protests]. Similarly, I would not like to see any woman compelled, against her wishes, to remove her Hijab either”.

I tweeted this on 31st December last year, in response to the suggestion by – counter-extremist, author, broadcaster and Founding Chairman of Quilliam – Maajid Nawaz that, what he calls the ‘regressive left’ would not support a Take Off Your Hijab Day, even though they have been vocal in their support of World Hijab Day. It’s an uncontroversial response in what I think was an interesting and important debate (one that had been inspired by the Iranian protests which were ongoing at the time).  However, it’s not the content of this debate that I want to discuss here but what happened next and how it caused me to reflect on my overall experience of Twitter (and online communication in general).

I’ve had loads of debates and disagreements on Twitter.  These have covered a whole range of subjects and have involved people from a wide range of political backgrounds.  I’ve debated with left-wing Jeremy Corbyn supporters about media bias and Donald Trump supporters about gun control, but the issue of Muslim women wearing head coverings, and the comments that I made about it, seemed to inspire a level of hostility that I hadn’t encountered on Twitter before.  Now, I should say right away that, although it felt abusive at times, what I experienced was still extremely mild compared to what others – notably women – can, and do, experience on a disturbingly regular basis.  Nevertheless, it was still quite shocking and, while I’m not one who takes offence very easily, it became pretty overwhelming.  This was partly because of the frequency with which the criticisms came, but it was more to do with the nature of the onslaught.  My points were largely being ignored in favour of increasingly personal attacks.  Eventually, feeling deflated and tired following twenty-four hours of Twitter exchanges, I muted the conversation (meaning I could only view my own previous posts, but would not see anything else) and reported some of the most abusive participants, thereby bringing my role in the discussion to an end.

This spiral into uncivilised discourse all seems rather predictable.  It’s a common trope to point out the negative and harmful effects of Twitter, and other forms of social media; it is often discussed by the public and widely reported upon by the media.  I don’t want to play down this aspect of social media; it is real, it can have extremely severe consequences and there has not yet, in my opinion, been anyway near enough done to address it – by either the companies involved, various governments, or society in general.  Online bullying, shaming, threats of rape, and the spread of destructive ideologies are just a few examples of a problem for which endless discussion has led to little in the way of meaningful action.  Nonetheless, my experience, as described above, affected me in a way that was as intense and vivid as it was surprising.  My initial weariness passed quite quickly, and what I was left with was the realisation that the overwhelming majority of my experiences on Twitter have been positive.  Sometimes deeply so.

Sure, as I said before, I’ve had lots of debates and arguments that have often felt intense and fractious, but even these have been positive in one way or another.  Even in some of the most impassioned debates, people have been civil and have tended to focus on the points being made, rather than resorting to personal insults.  Inevitably, such encounters have ended with an agreement to disagree and a mutual well-wishing from each party.  To my mind, the point of such arguments is not to change anyone’s mind – the chance of being successful on a platform like Twitter is miniscule – but to allow parties of differing political persuasions and opinions to understand why someone might think differently to them.

While I don’t doubt that there is a problem with some people swaddling themselves in the safety of their carefully constructed echo-chamber, this hasn’t been my experience.  Brexiters and Trump supporters regularly respond to, and challenge, things that I have written – and I’m always pleased when they do.  For my part, I try very hard to stick to a few simple rules that include: never passing comment on personal features and traits, and never ridiculing people for spelling and grammatical errors.  Although, my biggest weakness, I have to admit, is a tendency for sarcasm.  I am frequently sarcastic on Twitter – much more than I am in ‘real life’ – but I do think it serves a useful purpose.  I try not to be sarcastic about the things detailed above; instead, I usually use sarcasm to highlight, what I think, is a logical error in someone’s argument or just to try and be humorous about something frivolous.  What the former often achieves is the provocation of a response, in a way that blandly pointing out a perceived mistake rarely does, meaning that the issues can then be discussed in greater detail.

Of course a large part of Twitter activity doesn’t involve abuse, or politically infused arguments; most of it consists of superficial attempts to provide stimulation of the neurological pleasure receptors:

Post something that you hope is interesting or funny.

Receive a ‘like’.

Experience an instant, but short lived feeling of satisfaction (or not, if your post doesn’t get any response at all).

Despite this apparently shallow cycle, Twitter (and the wider world of internet communication) can be, and frequently is, the source of meaningful personal encounters and opportunities that might not otherwise be possible.  In the spring of last year, I was struggling to find the motivation I needed to finish an assignment.  I was reading the news, making repeated trips to the cupboard for snacks, listening to music, staring into space and, naturally, checking Twitter.  As part of this particularly long bout of procrastination I constructed and posted some frivolous tweets – hoping, of course, for another short-lived hit of dopamine.  One such Tweet was a comment on my current efforts of procrastination alongside a wish to obtain just a small portion of – Art Historian, Oxford University lecturer, author, TV presenter and enthusiastic Tweeter – Dr. Janina Ramirez’s – apparently (as anyone who follows her work will know) endless levels of energy.  These kinds of Tweets rarely get any response at all, so I was surprised when Janina replied.  Although it was a small gesture I was struck by the kindness of it.  I wasn’t commenting on something she was trying to sell, and she didn’t need to respond; I was quite happy throwing Tweets into the, usually unresponsive, abyss.  Instead, I received my sought-after hit and also enjoyed a fresh wave of motivation, with which I was able to complete the assignment (for which I received my highest mark of the previous few years).

Anyway, to take a sharpened cleaver to a rather long story, this simple sharing of Tweets led to my attending the wonderful Gloucester History Festival, where I was able to chat with Janina, who is the President of the festival, along with some of her supporters and friends – a few of whom I had briefly communicated with on Twitter before.  One of the main things that struck, and surprised, me about this experience was how easy it was to speak to those people I had met previously on Twitter.  Although I don’t avoid crowds (I quite enjoy them), I don’t usually feel very comfortable meeting a lot of new people and can be perfectly happy staying in the background, either on my own or with a small group of friends.  On this occasion, however, the joy of meeting people who I’d only known online, and getting on well with them, was quite emotional and even a little overwhelming.  Since then I regularly converse with the people I met there, and now consider them (Janina included) to be friends.  That such meaningful relationships are possible from relatively flippant tweets is a wonder, and stands firmly in opposition to the characterisation of social media as a vacuous and futile cesspit.

My very involvement with the Middle Way Society, and the friendships I’ve made within it, were also made possible through online communication.  If I hadn’t become involved in a debate about the definition of religion on an online forum several years ago then I wouldn’t be writing this, and nor would I have subsequently had so many wonderful opportunities.  My experience of meeting founding members Robert and Barry (at what I thought was a Secular Buddhist UK retreat, but was in fact a kind of committee meeting for a soon-to-be-no-more organisation), was similar to the one I later had in Gloucester.  We’d all been involved in several discussions on the aforementioned forum and, on eventually meeting in person, we seemed to know each other better than I had expected.  Robert, Barry and Peter (who I met at the same time online, but later in person) quickly became dear friends.  Following the ensuing foundation of the Middle Way Society, I was asked if I’d like to join, which – after some hesitation (I’ve always been wary of becoming part of a ‘group’) – I agreed to do, as well as agreeing to become a member of the committee.  This has meant I’ve been able to push myself and achieve things that I never thought I would – like writing blogs, for instance.

There are many problems with Twitter (and social media in general), but there are also many  positives. We are still learning how to use this relatively new form of interaction; we are still immature and naïve.  Even so, I feel confident that we’ll learn how to make use of social media with more maturity and care than we currently do.  Part of the problem is that this new frontier of communication gives the illusion that we are not dealing with embodied human beings, but lines of text generated from an abstract source.  This has the effect of reducing our sense of social responsibility and shielding users from the effects that they have on others.  Social conventions and restrictions can, when implemented wisely, serve as cohesive and stabilising forces.  These have yet to develop fully, or effectively, in cyberspace and it remains difficult to predict what form they will eventually take, but I nonetheless believe that things will get better.  By highlighting and encouraging that which is beneficial, as well as highlighting and challenging that which is harmful, we can begin to negotiate a Middle Way between the extremes of an imagined online utopia on the one hand and an online world that is categorised as a threat to society itself on the other.

You can hear our 2016 podcast about public shaming on social media with, journalist and author, Jon Ronson here.

If you are, or know someone who is, experiencing online abuse then these links provide advice of what you can do:

http://www.stoponlineabuse.org.uk/

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/more-quarter-uk-women-experiencing-online-abuse-and-harassment-receive-threats

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bjp8ma/expert-advice-on-how-to-deal-with-online-harassment

All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and licenced for reuse.

The Exorcist: A Middle Way Interpretation

Books, Christianity, Culture, Fiction, Film, Meaning, Popular Culture, Religion, Science, spirituality, The Arts, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spoiler Alert: This isn’t a synopsis or a review but I will reveal certain, important, plot points.  As such, if you haven’t yet seen it yet – and would like to – you may want to stop reading now. 

Cursed. Obscene. Scary. Nauseating.  Pea Soup.  These are just a selection of words associated with William Friedkin’s 1973 film, The Exorcist (adapted from William Peter Blatty’s novel of the same name).  The Exorcist tells the story of the Exorcism of 12-year-old girl, Regan MacNeil, who has been possessed by a malevolent force.  It is set in affluent 1970’s Georgetown USA, where Regan lives with her atheist mother, who also happens to be a famous actress.

Even in the early 1990’s, when I was at school, this film had a reputation as being the most disgusting and frightening film ever made – which of course meant everybody wanted to see it.  This desire was only intensified by the fact that The Exorcist had been banned in the UK since 1984; a few friends and I even attempted to watch a pirated copy of it on VHS, but our excited anticipation was soon extinguished once we realised that the video quality was so bad as to render further viewing impossible.  In 1998 the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) lifted the ban, and The Exorcist was released – with much fanfare – in cinemas across the country.  Many of my peers came back with reports of disappointment and boredom.  ‘It’s not scary at all.  I didn’t jump once’ they’d say, or ‘I don’t know what the fuss is about, nothing even happens for most of the film’.  I was worried.  I’d recently read the book and really enjoyed it, but wasn’t sure how it would be translated into the ‘Scariest Film Ever Made’.  Could this really be the same film that had caused people to faint and vomit while watching it?  I knew loads of people who’d seen it the first-time round and refused to even talk about it, let alone watch it again.  Perhaps it hadn’t aged well?

When I did eventually get to see it that I could understand why my peers were confused about the reputation it had achieved.  I’m not the kind of person that finds Horror films particularly scary anyway, but I had expected The Exorcist to be an exception.  It wasn’t.  In this respect, the length of time that had passed since its original release did seem to have had an impact.  Horror films throughout the 90’s had a tendency to reject the kind of subtle psychological techniques used in the 60’s and 70’s in favour of ‘jump scares’ and ‘gore effects’.  Therefore, that is what any teenager going to see a Horror movie at this time would be expecting.  That’s not what they got with The Exorcist.  There’s hardly any ‘gore’ and it is almost entirely void of ‘jump scares’.  In addition to this, much of imagery was much less shocking in the 90’s than I suspect it would have been to a 70’s audience.  With these considerations in mind I can understand many of my peer’s sense of disappointment – in this respect it had not lived up to the hype.  However, as much I wasn’t scared in the cinema, I loved it.  I found it absorbing in a way that few films had been and was surprised by the skilful way in which it created an atmosphere.  The deep layers of meaning hidden within the imagery and narrative demanded repeated viewing.  It is a deeply unsettling film and I found that it stayed with me (as the book had) long after I’d left the cinema; something that did not happen with contemporary horror films such as ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ (which is instantly forgettable).  While it wasn’t what the hype had lead me to believe it would be, The Exorcist, as a film, had aged very well indeed.

After a period of about 10 years, where I watched it quite a lot, I spent a further 10 years without seeing it at all.  That is, until a few months ago, when I heard Mark Kermode (film critic and Exorcist expert/ super-fanboy) discussing it on the radio.  With some trepidation – I feared that it really might have aged badly by now – I sought out a copy and sat down to watch it again.  I needn’t have worried, it stands up incredibly well & I enjoyed it just as much (if not more) than I had before.  More importantly for this blog however, I also realised that it related, both stylistically and narratively, to the Middle Way.

Watching The Exorcist is a physical experience.  I know that watching any film can be described as a physical experience, we are embodied beings after all, but The Exorcist goes further.  You can feel the cold of Regan’s bedroom.  You can smell her necrotic breath as she lies, unconscious on the bed.  I don’t understand what cinematic tricks are used to create this effect but I suspect that it has as much to do with the sound as it has with visuals.  The ambient sound is hypnotic and the groaning rasp that accompanies Regan’s breathing creates a powerful and absorbing effect.  There are other scenes where the combination of visuals and sound work together to create the experience of embodied physicality, such as when Regan is made to undergo a range of intimidating and painful medical tests.

On the surface, The Exorcist is a fairly standard tale of good versus evil; light overcoming darkness.  During the first scene – where an elderly Jesuit priest, Father Merrin, is seen attending the archaeological excavation of an ancient Assyrian site in northern Iraq – the contrast between quiet contemplation and loud commotion is jarring.  While the scene is set within the suffocating glare of the desert sun, it is also pierced with dark imagery.  It’s within this context that we finally see an increasingly disturbed Merrin wearily, but defiantly, facing a statue of the Assyrian demon Pazuzu.  It is no coincidence that this scene brings vividly to mind the Temptation on the Mount, where Jesus overcame Satan’s attempts to divert him from his holy path to righteousness.  I’m sure that this premonition of the battle to come, is constructed and representative of several Jungian archetypes, but I’m not familiar enough to identify them all.  However, I’m confident that there’s the Hero, the Shadow, God and the Devil; the latter two also being representations of two metaphysical extremes: absolute good and absolute evil.  The key point however is that Father Merrin is not God (or even Jesus) and the statue is not the Devil (or even Pazuzu), they are both the imperfect embodiments each.

Understandably perturbed by her daughters increasingly disturbing behaviour, Regan’s mother seeks the help of neurologists and then physiatrists.  Both fail to identify a cause and both fail to succeed in their interventions.  Eventually, the perplexed psychiatrists suggest that Regan’s exasperated mother enlist the services of a priest, to which she reluctantly agrees.

The priest that she finds is a man called Father Damian Karras.  Karras is unlike Merrin, whose background is not really explored, in that he is clearly a conflicted and complex character.  We see him caring for his elderly mother, when no one else seems willing to, and we also see him, dressed in his Jesuit regalia, turn away from a homeless man who asks for his help.  Karras, then, is not a bad person, but neither is he that good.  The viewer is left to wonder the nature of this priest’s faith.  When we add to this the fact that he is a scientist (psychiatrist) as well as a priest, we start to see the depiction of a complex, multifaceted individual who struggles, in all aspects of his life, through the messy middle in which we all exist.

Karras, who is not qualified to perform the Exorcism ritual, convinces the Church of Regan’s need and Father Merrin is subsequently called upon.  The moment when he arrives at the house and looks up at the room which contains the possessed girl is inspired by The Empire of Light, a series of pictures painted by René Magritte in 1953-4.  As with the opening sequence, we are shown our archetypes juxtaposed in preparation for battle; this striking image was also used as the now famous promotional poster (which I used to have on my bedroom wall).  The clichéd battle between good and evil begins.  Except it doesn’t… not really.  Like the statue of Pazuzu, Regan is not an absolute representation of evil; she has been embodied by evil but is not the embodiment of it – she’s a 12-year-old girl.  Father Merrin is not the embodiment of good, he is just a representative of Christ (and therefore God).  This is made explicitly clear (if it wasn’t already) in an extended scene where the two priests desperately shout, ‘the power of Christ compels you, the power of Christ compels you’ over and over while throwing Holy water on the levitating girl.  A lesser film would have Merrin eventually defeat the demon and save the girl, but this is not what happens.  The elderly Exorcist dies during the gruelling exchange and Karras is left facing the demon alone.  Again, a lesser film would have Karras take up the role of Exorcist and overcome the evil force against all odds.  This is not what happens.  Religion, like science before it has failed and Karras appears to be in a hopeless predicament.  In the heat of the moment he takes the only course of action that he feels is available to him; he grabs Regan and shouts at the demon, ‘take me, take me’.  The demon gladly obliges and, a now possessed, Karras – who already exists somewhere between good and evil – is able to throw himself out of Regan’s window, where upon hitting the ground he falls down a flight of steep stairs, where he dies, presumably taking the demon with him and leaving Regan to make a full recovery.

Science, religion and the explicitly archetypal forces of good have not triumphed over evil and, in this muddled mess, appeals to authority do not always provide the promised solutions.  Instead our Middle Way hero, who’s able to hold onto his beliefs lightly, is left to address challenging conditions as they arise.  The solution he finds, I would like to suggest, seems remarkably like an extreme example of the ‘two donkeys’ analogy that is a favourite of this society.  By integrating competing desires, he is able to overcome conflict, albeit at great cost to himself.

 

How to Solve a Problem Like John Lennon

Activism, Culture, Great Thinkers, Music, Politics, Popular Culture, The Arts, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
john-lennon-1099722_960_720
‘Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty’.

 

John Lennon was, with Paul McCartney, one half of the greatest song writing duo in history, and one quarter of the greatest bands in history: the Beatles (as very rare examples of absolute facts these, perhaps, represent the only time when Middle Way notions of provisionality, incrementality and agnosticism do not apply). Nevertheless, some would also have you believe that Lennon was a peace-loving, feminist icon who fought for the rights of the disenfranchised and the oppressed.  A man who declared that ‘all you need is love’ and dared to Imagine a world without war, nationalism or religion.  Others present him in an altogether different hue: as a violent, jealous and chauvinistic bully who abused his first wife, Cynthia and emotionally neglected his first son, Julian.  On one hand we have Lennon the hero and on the other we have Lennon the villain and in many cases he is presented as either/or, with commentators unable, or unwilling to negotiate this juxtaposition.  Sometimes, biographical accounts will even skim over, or ignore these conflicting characteristics entirely and instead focus solely on his musical career.  I remember watching a biographical documentary which, apart from briefly referencing his peace activism (and judging it to be an immature and naive embarrassment) did exactly that.

‘When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out… in’.

There’s a tendency to dehumanise those whom we cast as heroes or villains, creating one dimensional figures to be loved or reviled.  This tendency is apparent with the treatment of exceptional individuals throughout history, such as Saints, military heroes and political activists.  The recent rise of the celebrity (a term which often invites scorn, but is actually an umbrella term covering people with a wide range of skills and achievements, like Elvis Presley, Princess Diana or anyone who appears in any reality TV program) has provided john-lennon-487033_960_720another category.  There clearly seems to be a need for us to create simplified archetypes and doing so does appear to be useful, but to do this with historical people that have lived (or are still alive) can deny us a richer understanding of their, and consequently our own, humanity (and can also create real dangers, as chillingly demonstrated by the recent case of Jimmy Savile).

‘Well, you know that I’m a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind’.

Lennon’s lyrics often seem like raw, unguarded confessions that reek of insecurity and contradiction.  He seemed to be keenly aware of the conflicting aspects of his personality and didn’t shy away from exploring them in the material he released.  He acknowledged both the good and the bad; the hero and the villain.  While he declared that ‘all you need is love’, he also put to song the disturbing words ‘baby I’m determined and I’d rather see you dead’.  Filling the space between these two extremes was a Scared, Jealous Guy who felt in serious need of Help!  A perfect example of this uneasy juxtaposition can be found on the Imagine album.  As well as featuring the well-known title track, which has become something of a secular hymn, it also contains the track How Do You Sleep?, a venomous attack on his former writing partner and friend, Paul McCartney, which couldn’t be any further from the sentiments expressed in Imagine.

‘Hatred and jealousy, gonna be the death of me
I guess I knew it right from the start
Sing out about love and peace
Don’t want to see the red raw meat
The green eyed goddamn straight from your heart’.

He admitted that he had been physically abusive to women – not just Cynthia – and that he had not been a very good father to Julian.  He admitted that he was a bully.  He also described his own experiences of childhood abandonment and later feelings of fear and insecurity, which he concealed behind a mask of buffoonery and violence.  Not that this excuses the behaviour of a grown man, but it does provide us with some sense of a complex human being.  Add to that his later promotion of pacifism, feminism and social justice and the asymmetrical mosaic grows greater still.  In the later years of his life he became a devoted parent to his second son, Sean – with whom he seemed able to attain some sense of atonement.  Unfortunately, his relationship with Julian remained strained and distant.  Maybe the old wounds would have healed, had he not been shot and killed at the age of 40, but perhaps his earlier behaviour had been too damaging.

‘I really had a chip on my shoulder … and it still comes out every now and then’.

There are those that might cry ‘hypocrite’ at such apparent contradictions, but that would be over-simplistic and unfair.  It’s quite possible for Lennon to have been all of these things over time (or even simultaneously), with some characteristics perhaps being the consequence of another.  For instance, it’s likely that his feminism grew, in part, out of a need for redemption.  That’s not to say, then, that the villain of the piece was defeated; forever to be vanquished by the upstart hero and his eye shatteringly shiny armour.  No, far more likely was that the two existed side by side in an on-going (and probably uncomfortable) process of conflict and negotiation.  Acknowledging someone’s flaws does not necessitate that one question the sincerity of their strengths.

‘Although I laugh and I act like a clown
Beneath this mask I am wearing a frown
My tears are falling like rain from the sky
Is it for her or myself that I cry’?

JohnLennon1963A minor deviation here, but I would like to comment on the supposed naivety and immaturity of Lennon’s political views.  First of all, I feel that this is a misrepresentation of what he actually said.  If we look at the two main points that critics tend to pick up on: the invitation to imagine everybody living in peace and the request to give peace a chance.  Both of these notions seem far from naïve to me, in fact they seem like reasonable suggestions for incremental change.  There is clearly no unrealistic demand for overnight change; just a suggestion that we consider an alternative way of conducting ourselves, with the hope that things might start to get better.  In the UK similar accusations are levelled at Jeremy Corbyn, and they grate with me for the same reasons.  I’m not suggesting that anyone has to agree with either Lennon or Corbyn, but the condescending disregard of their, perfectly valid, views strikes me as being unnecessary and spiteful.  Secondly, the generalised criticisms of Lennon’s political views assume a fixed ideology that just doesn’t seem to have been present.  He changed, altered and evolved his ideas all through his life, and was often critical of things that he had previously said or done.

‘My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all’.

imagine-1913561_960_720While I probably wouldn’t go so far as to put Lennon forward as a Middle Way Thinker, I do think he provides a good example of how a Middle Way approach can be useful in the consideration of those whom we admire… and those we do not.  Gandhi (who has featured in Robert M Eillis’ Middle Way Thinker series) could, with some justification, be accused of misogyny and racism, but that doesn’t take away from his achievements or the legacy he left behind.  The medieval Saints of Europe become figures of greater interest and inspiration when their multi-dimensional and flawed humanity can be glimpsed beneath their holy veneers (a principle that, I have recently discovered, can be applied to Jesus too).  Of course, such figures need not be well known.  We also create heroes and villains in our day to day lives too; looking up to, or down upon family members or colleagues, for instance.  If we can recognise the messy middle from which others are composed and accept that people can be both good and bad, in different measures, at different times, then this might just enable us to become more open to those around us and more accepting of ourselves.  This sounds easy on paper, but can be difficult to achieve in practice.  I, for one, have a long way to go but the closer I look, the more complicated the picture becomes and the easier it gets.

‘We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once’?

Songs Quoted (In Order of Appearance)

All You Need Is Love (Lennon-McCartney, 1967)
Revolution (Lennon-McCartney, 1968).
Run For Your Life (Lennon-McCartney, 1965).
Scared (Lennon, 1974).
Loser (Lennon-McCartney, 1964).

Pictures (In Order of Appearance)

Lennon Memorial Plaque, courtesy of Pixabay.com.
John Lennon Beatles Peace Imagine, courtesy of Pixabay.com.
The Beatles & Lill-Babs 1963, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Imagine John Lennon New York City, courtesy of Pixabay.com.