The 're-entry problem' for artists and scientists - Walker Percy

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From Walker Percy: Lost in the Cosmos, 1983.

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"In the age of science, scientists are the princes of the age. Artists are not. So that even though both scientists and artists achieve transcendence over the ordinary world in their science and art, only the scientists is sustained in his transcendence by the exaltation of the triumphant spirit of science and by the community of scientists.

"It is perhaps no accident that at the high tide of physics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the great revolutionary physicists — Faraday, Maxwell, Bohr, Einstein – were also men of remarkable integrity and exultant wholeness of character, of generosity and benignity. Compare the lives and characters of the comparably great in literature at the same time: Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, Kafka, Joyce, Lawrence, Hemingway.

"With the disappearance of the old cosmological myths and the decline of Judeo-Christianity and the rise of the autonomous self, one the study of secondary causes, the other the ornamental handmaiden of rites and religion, were seized upon and elevated to royal highroads of transcendence in their own right. Such transcendence was available not only to the scientists and artists themselves but a community of fellow scientists and students, and to the readers and listeners and viewers to whom the ‘statements’ of art, music, and literature were addressed.

"But what is not generally recognized is that the successful launch of self into the orbit of transcendence is necessarily attended by the problems of reentry. What goes up must come down. The best film of the year ends at nine o’clock. What do you do at ten? What did Faulkner do after writing the last sentence of Light in August? Get drunk for a week. What did Dostoevsky do after finishing The Idiot? Spend three days and nights at the roulette table.

"The only exception to this psychic law of gravity seems to be not merely the great physicists at the high tide of modern physics but any scientists absorbed in his science when the exaltation of science sustains one in a more or less permanent orbit of transcendence – or perhaps the rare Schubert who even during meals wrote lieder on the tablecloth …

"But the most spectacular problems of reentry seem to be experienced by writers and artists. They, especially the later, seem subject more than most people to estrangement from the society around them, to neurosis, psychosis, alcoholism, drug addiction, epilepsy, florid sexual behavior, solitariness, depression, violence, and suicide."

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Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos is a very deft and thought-provoking piece of philosophy in the jokey guise of a self-help book. I bought it after reading a recommendation from the superb Roman Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft.

The above passage made a big impression on me, because throughout most of my adult life the 're-entry problem' was perhaps my greatest concern.

Like Einstein, 'I went into science to escape the intolerable dreariness of everyday life' - and the same applied to English literature.

And indeed I went into science and literature just early enough to catch the tail-end of their transcendence (at the same time as Walker Percy was writing this book) - an era now utterly gone.

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In science, what I craved was precisely that complete world of transcendence achieved by the physicists at the 'high tide' of their subject, or by biologists a little later - I hoped that I could live 'in' science pretty much all the time (at least as a seamless, continuous background to life).

I achieved this state only briefly, from late 1994 up to around 2000, when I pretty much lived and breathed evolutionary theory - but only by cutting myself off from the mainstream; and at the cost of developing a carapace of indestructible pride which would - I felt sure - be validated and rewarded (some time soon, and in unforeseen ways) by worldly status, success and security.

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I had earlier achieved a similar but briefer state when I was studying English literature (and philosophy, informally) full time 1987-8 - in other words I lived 'in' literature as scholar, critic, essayist and (sort-of) poet (cringe...).

For a while, sleeping and waking life seemed to be conducted within this transcendental bubble of literature.

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But such states can only be sustained against the ennui of habituation by increasing doses of pride and neophilia - both of which are ultimately destructive of transcendence.

The re-entry problem always gets you.  Percy lists (and explains) the attempted solutions:

(1) reentry uneventful and intact, [not to feel any contrast between the transcendent and the everyday]

(2) reentry accomplished through anesthesia, [chemical assault on the conscious brain - by drugs or alcohol]

(3) reentry accomplished by travel (geographical), [keep moving - keep exposing oneself to the shock of the new]

(4) reentry accomplished by travel (sexual), [drown oneself in sexual pursuit and gratification]

(5) reentry by return, [give up transcendence and return to roots]

(6) reentry by disguise, [keep up an act of worldly satisfaction until it becomes habitual]

(7) reentry by Eastern window, [dissolve the self in Zen indifference]

(8) reentry refused, exitus into deep space (suicide),

(9) reentry deferred, [solitude, utterly cut-off from the mundane]

(10) reentry by sponsorship, [sponsorship from God, transparency before God: the religious solution - a seamless integration of work and spirituality]

(11) reentry by assault. [political confrontation with the mundane - the life of an uncompromizing and persecuted dissident]

But of course none of them really work except (10) because the problem is insoluble in this world - and the sponsorship by God is extraordinarily difficult for the isolated, nihilistic modern intellectual.

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This-worldly transcendence of the kind I sought in science and literature (and which Einstein achieved, pretty much) was only available to an elite few, and as a temporary phase in the breakdown of Western society - a breakdown from transcendence as other worldly to the current situation where all forms of transcendence as seen as delusional - and the only 'solution' to the reentry problem is regard it as an artifact of an obsolete world view.

Modern scientists and literary scholars have no re-entry problem, because they are only and wholly engaged in the 'intolerable dreariness of everyday life' - from which they distract themselves whenever possible.

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Or, more accurately, modern scientists and literary scholars have nothing but a reentry problem, since they do know what it is to transcend the everyday and mundane.

(And if they do know from experience, then they regard that experience as a delusion to be explained-away; not as a really real state.) 

And the failed solutions of the re-entry problem are, merely, the standard strategies of modern life.

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What are the English best at? According to Walker Percy...

It is no accident that the post-Protestant English in the van of the scientific and industrial revolution for two centuries, were also the discoverers and masters of characteristic reentry modes, esepcially travel (geographical and sexual) and disguises. 

It is no coincidence that the English are not only the best actors in the world but the best spies. The modern Englishman can become anyone else...

Do you think it is an accident that all the best writers of spy novels are English?

From Lost in the Cosmos, by Walker Percy, 1983. 

Comment: 

Well, I am not one to judge how Englishmen appear to others or comparatively. But I agree that the native English (or, more accurately, British Isles - to include Ireland) seem to be the best stage and classical actors; although I would say that obviously Americans are better at TV and movie acting. 

As for spies? Well, espionage is an upper class (Norman) activity; and most of the spies I have come across in my reading are either incompetent, corrupt or both - mainly because they are anti-English and anti-Good in their motivation. 

The Cambridge Communist traitors (Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt etc) were the norm, not the exception - as George Orwell was aware (being upper class himself). 

But the upper class English are the ex-senior, now junior, dominant partners in the global conspiracy of Ahrimanic evil (long established although only recently mainstream with the Great Reset's coming-out) - and the lying-secretive-worldwide-apparatus of 'intelligence', mis/dis-information, subversion, murder and cover-ups is very much a British project. 

Spies and the intelligence agencies cause far more harm than they (pretend to) prevent; are thus very strongly net-hostile and net-harmful to Christian Albion. Christians and English patriots would be much better-off if spies did not exist at all. 

But the world as a whole is now in service to purposive evil and adhere to inverted values - therefore all social institutions, including the media, now regard spies, with all their lies and destructiveness, as A Good Thing - indeed jealously admired as able to get-away-with (and indeed be lionized and rewarded for) many of the kind of activities which most people apparently desire to do. 

In that sense Walker Percy was probably right about this too - some Englishmen (albeit 'Them' not 'us') are probably among 'the best' at this particular strand of Satanism. 

From Father Smith's sermon - The Thanatos Syndrome, by Walker Percy

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I observed some of you. But do you know what you are doing? I observe a benevolent feeling here. There is also a tenderness. At the bedside of some children this morning I observed you shed tears.

"Do you know where tenderness leads? Tenderness leads to the gas chambers.”

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“These are strange times. There are now two kinds of people. This has never happened before. One are decent, tenderhearted, unbelieving, philanthropic people. The other are some preachers who tell the truth about the Lord but are themselves often rascals if not thieves.

"What a generation! Believing thieves and decent unbelievers! The Great Depriver’s finest hour! Not a guilty face here! Everyone here is creaming in his drawers from tenderness! But beware, tender hearts!

"Don’t you know where tenderness leads? To the gas chambers.”

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"Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized tenderhearted souls as have lived in this century.

"Never in the history of the world have so many people been killed.

" More people have been killed in this [twentieth] century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together."


The Thanatos Syndrome, by Walker Percy, 1987

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Review of Lost in the Cosmos - by Walker Percy

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Walker Percy. Lost in the Cosmos: the last self-help book. 1983.

I read this book because Peter Kreeft said it was one of his absolute favourite modern books. Initially, I was bowled-over by it - because it is very clever, very skilful, contains a very large number of brilliant insights and predictions...

But...

But, it leaves a nasty taste - indeed, the more often I re-read it the less I like it; to the point that I have come to dislike it. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the book does the opposite of what it was (presumably) intended to do.

I take it that Lost in the Cosmos was supposed to be a work of Roman Catholic Apologetics - written from a very modern, ironic, hard-nosed kind of perspective - and therefore, presumably, the more impressive when it finally homes-in on Christianity. (That is certainly how Kreeft reads it.)

However, the book is extremely reductive in the way that it so neatly seems to encapsulate people and situations in memorable (indeed hard-to-forget) vignettes of a few deft words (in a manner reminiscent - and this is significant - of Kurt Vonnegut).

These vignettes and character sketches work by putting Christianity onto a level with a range of other 'options' - they are often extremely sordid, disgusting and use foul language - so, in sum, they induce feelings such as alienation, meaninglessness, despair and the rest of it; in exactly the same manner as mainstream modern novels tend to.

I came away with the sense (fortunately temporary) that all possible life alternatives had in this book been pre-described, judged and found wanting.

The problem may be that the book is not what it purports to be, I mean that the book was actually wickedly-motivated (whether overtly or covertly); or that the pose of having written this 'objectively' leads inevitably to the negativity of its effect - since the implicit stance which purports to regard as options and evaluate the whole of human history and future and all religions (including Christianity) is simply a fake and non-existent position; therefore anything (supposedly) written from this f.&n.-e. position will necessarily end-up being bad in some way.

Which this book is - at least, it is bad for me

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Zooey wins! - and, explaining Seymour's suicide

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I have just re-read (for the first time since I became a Christian) JD Salinger's three most religious stories: Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, Zooey, and Seymour: an introduction.

I enjoyed them all, but most appreciated Zooey.

RHTRC struck me as a perfect short story, but - in terms of Salinger's ouvre - transitional; Zooey is IT, a perfect short story that is uniquely and 100 percent Salinger; and Seymour crosses the line from short story into a kind of fictional essay.

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As well as its brilliant character delineation, dialogue, density and description; I was fascinated by the religious aspect of Zooey - and the light it shone on the big unifying question of the Glass chronicles: why did Seymour commit suicide?

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Zooey begins with Salinger's characteristic eclectic, syncretic 'perennial philosophy' New-Age-ish -type spirituality; and builds towards Salinger's most wholly-Christian epiphany - the famous Fat Lady parable at the end.

This trajectory is one which is - apparently - undergone by Franny, Zooey and Buddy; but not by Seymour.

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Seymour's suicide was - I believe - caused by what Walker Percy termed the 're-entry problem.

(see WP's Lost in the Cosmos and my earlier blog posting http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/03/re-entry-problem-for-artists-and.html )

This is intrinsic to any worldly spirituality - perhaps to any non-Christian religion - which does not include a heavenly afterlife with a process of theosis - or movement of the human towards becoming a Son of God.

Seymour seems to have had only a vague kind of transcendental belief (he does not quite seem to believe that Truth, Beauty and Virtue are objective, real - and to the extent he does he regards them as immanent - within nature - rather than supernatural).

Indeed, Seymour's spirituality is characterized by a belief in reincarnation rather than afterlife.

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Yet reincarnation (even if true) is no answer to anything - or rather it is merely a superficial answer to specific questions (such as explaining a person's character and behaviour) not ultimate questions.

Reincarnation merely pushes the problems of life backward or forward, without providing any understanding of the human relation to The Good, to reality, to meaning or purpose.

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Seymour argues (I think) that this worldly life here on earth is perfect - if only we looked at it correctly.

The fault is with people and their perspective.

But Seymour apparently couldn't get the right perspective and keep it. He could get himself into the correct frame of mind for periods, but would at some point have to re-enter the perspective which saw the world as mundane, painful, full of ugliness, lies, cruelty, short-termist selfishness.

And it was this re-entry which he found unbearable; and which (it seems to me) led to his suicide.

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Seymour simply could not live up to his own ideals, his own aspirations - could not maintain his own temporary achievements.

And, lacking a conception of Original Sin, and lacking a belief in the possibility of Christian salvation - he had nowhere to go, nothing to turn to but (as he imagined) extinction and (he hoped) an end to his own suffering.

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What to do about "the re-entry problem" in relation to Christianity

Names and describes the re-entry problem - but doesn't suggest a valid Christian solution

Back at the beginnings of this blog I wrote a rather heart-felt post derived from what author Walker Percy termed "the re-entry problem":

What is not generally recognized is that the successful launch of self into the orbit of transcendence is necessarily attended by the problems of reentry. What goes up must come down. The best film of the year ends at nine o’clock. What do you do at ten? What did Faulkner do after writing the last sentence of Light in August? Get drunk for a week. What did Dostoevsky do after finishing The Idiot? Spend three days and nights at the roulette table.

A brief escape, to rise above our normal level - but then comes re-entry...

This re-entry problem applies to Christianity. 

For instance, a new convert will typically experience a great sense of exaltation and possibility on considering the profundities of his new faith. 

But what then? A crash-down into the mundane realities of joining and attending a church, and being expected to conform to a lifestyle so very dull and niggling - when compared with the great cosmic ultimates by which the Christian may have come to faith. 

This is not just emotionally disappointing, but the everyday experiences of (what he is told) means "being a Christian" is typically experientially utterly un-related to the original conversion. 

This problem is not unique to conversion, of course; we get a deflationary come-down after any exceptionally positive experience. 

But it hits hardest in relation to religion - because of our expectation of a qualitatively "more spiritual" life post-conversion. 

Most churches will argue that this expectation is false, and that real-life is what it is, and our job as Christians is to understand and value it accordingly...

But I do not fully agree; because I think this is usually just an excuse for the fact that church religion is almost-wholly assimilated to the mundane world, its values and priorities - and indeed even explicitly aspires to this "relevance".

The worldly aspects of church are propagandized and strongly insisted upon; while in contrast the spiritual aspects are vague aspirations, "just words" - and there is no pressure or encouragement towards pursuing them, nor do they affect church conduct - especially not if spiritual considerations interfere in any significant way with everyday church functioning. 

Well... it's facile to be critical about this world, and the many ways it falls short of our aspirations - and as of 2025 it is misguided to look for higher spirituality from any social institution (except in its unofficial and minor counter-currents to the Zeitgeist). 

Furthermore; it has proved impossible for most people, most of the time, to become spiritually better overall - which was probably why Jesus in the IV Gospel emphasized aspirations and repentance - rather than reform of behaviour - as necessary and sufficient for salvation. 

Yet the re-entry problem will not go away, and is a major difficulty for many people - such that recommending negative stoicism is probably counter-productive: the fact is we must each be motivated in Life, and that means the pursuit of some positive enhancement in our everyday spiritual aspirations and sense of spiritual achievement. 

Instead of giving-up on a spiritual life (and assimilating to the mundane), or aiming for the spiritually impossible (and despairing at the lack of progress); I think we should address the re-entry re-examining what the spiritual quest ought to be in accordance with our Christian goals. 

This may lead to re-framing our personal spiritual quest into something where genuinely valuable progress is realistically attainable, on a frequent, everyday basis. 

For me this implies that, because spiritual progress is not evident in this world; spiritual progress therefore instead "must be" logged and accumulated with reference to our future resurrected eternal life in Heaven.  

So that - whatever brief specific things we achieve in the here and now - in terms of love, understanding reality including evil, thinking from our real selves, participation in divine creation, repentance, aspirations and commitments, good-motivated actions, the attainment of an eternal and "cosmic" perspective to frame this mortal life etc... 

I strive to recognize that every and all such brief, partial and specific spiritual attainments shall be retained and stored; and will be added to the resources of our post-mortal resurrected selves. 

The conclusion: There are always such things we might be doing at any time or place; and they are always worth doing. 

Rather than such palliatives as getting drunk (Faulkner) or immersing ourselves in trivia (Dostoevsky); that is how we might positively respond to the re-entry problem - whenever it rears its ugly head.