Below is the third graduation address I delivered at request of the seniors for Liberty Common's commencement. My gratitude to the class of 2022 for this honor.
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner,
Eating his Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, "What a good boy am I!"
Among the great sages of human history, Mother Goose is not without honor, and in this short tragedy of Little Jack Horner, we see why. This pathetic child proves that your lives do not have to be meaningful. You’ve got options. You can bypass the struggle for the so-called transcendent goods that bear us toward eternity through deserts of our own weakness. After all, that road is bleak, and some of you are already weary. So perhaps it is fitting, after all my tedious lessons about striving toward love and significance, that I instead provide a glimpse of the alternative.
So here is your final English lesson on How to Lead a Meaningless Life, using this brief poem that I now propose to retitle “Little Jack, the Hopeless Narcissist.”
[At the outset, let me clarify that my forthcoming criticisms of Little Jack are not intended to sully the name of our beloved graduate Jack W—, whose merits serve rather to contrast with this fictional boy and his selfish pursuits. Mr. Wilde’s parents assure me that their selection of his given name was in no way inspired by such a juvenile simpleton. That honor, I expect, belongs to Captain Jack Sparrow.]
Now, with that caveat in place, let us begin our examination
of “Little Jack, the Hopeless Narcissist.” I have classified this brief poem as
a tragedy because its protagonist is
a failure. So far is Little Jack from the
accomplishment of noble ends that, although his tale does not conclude with a
half-dozen corpses lying about a stage, the same degree of horror may arise
from his piddling existence—here described with all the gravity and adventure
of a hardboiled egg. For anyone looking to join Team Meaninglessness, this is
your exemplar. This is not the famous Jack who built a house, nor even the Jack
for whom a mere candlestick posed a challenge requiring his utmost athletic
prowess. So much the rather—for were the game of Limbo a test of one’s personal
or spiritual deficiencies, its attendant chant “How low can you go?” must
inevitably be answered: “Not so low as Little Jack.”
Perhaps some of you think I am being unfair to this sad specimen. But I am not the first to find in his story a message worthy of extrapolation. Indeed, several authors have treated it as a parable of 18th century socio-political trends. My own approach is not so shallow, deriving rather from its analogues to the human condition than from anything so variable as modern politics. Nevertheless, allow me to join such accounts and the great Matron of Waterfowl in making an example of him.
First, our protagonist is described as “[sitting] in a
corner.”
It takes no special literary insight to note that this is a position removed from the light and warmth of human fellowship. Shadows and cobwebs are a corner’s native decor, which naturally invite associations with alienation and irrelevance. Such features have made them also ideal places for the disciplinary removal of wayward children. You may be forgiven, therefore, for supposing that Little Jack’s story begins a minute or two after he was reprimanded for belching the Lord’s Prayer at the dinner table or dipping his sister’s braids in the figgy pudding. But not so, for all the subsequent evidence suggests that we are witnessing a moment of piggish delight, an occasion orchestrated for his own private indulgence. We are compelled, therefore, to infer that Little Jack has removed himself to the corner to enjoy, in the absence of interfering interests, the entirety of his Christmas pie. Thus we establish the first principle of prospective meaninglessness: isolate yourself; cut ties with those who love you. This will allow you to focus entirely on the gratification of your own appetites.
The second principle is a corollary of the first: forget that you owe anything to anyone. Consider the reason for Little Jack’s voluntary solitude; he wants space to consume “his Christmas pie.”
This little pronoun is enough to exclude any outside claim or
contribution. Moreover, why divide a pie into slices, when it is so wholly his that he might justly shovel it into
his slavering gob with his own sticky digits? And why is it wholly his? Well,
of course, because he’s Little Jack—who could question that he deserves such a gift?
Forget that pies are generally of a size
and sugar-content not fit for instantaneous, solitary consumption; forget that
it is Christmas, the season of sharing and selflessness. No, it is simply his by authority of his own desires. He
did not bake it, nor buy it, yet he takes as his own both an object and an experience
whose merits might have been compounded through sharing.
Now, before we come to the third and most important principle derived from the example of Little Jack, some of you may be wondering at the reference to putting in “his thumb.” What sort of imbecile defiles his baked goods or hopes to skewer a fruit with the bluntest of his fingers? Well, allow me to suggest that Mother Goose was not only a recorder of humanity’s foibles, but also a prophetess. Tentative though the comparison may be, what more salient parallel can be drawn than one between the probing of a thumb into a symbol of mindless indulgence and the probing of a thumb into the window of despair we now know as the “smartphone”? Is not the image of a secluded adolescent, scrolling through algorithmically generated content, and achieving by minimal exertion a dopamine boost sufficient to dissuade him from more difficult but perhaps more humanizing pursuits—is not this the perfect icon of an existence subverted by, and therefore enslaved to, a sequence of temporary diversions? We put in our thumbs, but we pull out less than we put in—the more we consume, the emptier we become.
But I must return to my original soap box and finish the lesson:
Finally, after having isolated oneself; having stricken from memory any sense that you are the beneficiary of an inexplicable matrix of blessings to which you have so far contributed nothing; having fixated solely on the shrinking nexus of your preferences, you reach the outer limits of authentic personhood: self-congratulation. Narcissism is a fun word to say, and perhaps I ascribe it too readily to those who are merely selfish, but here we can see in Little Jack a clear distinction between the average impulses of a juvenile ego and the demented need for affirmation, even if that affirmation comes only from oneself.
Little Jack actually calls himself a “good boy” because he has managed to abandon the communal festivities and eat pie by himself in a corner.
I know some of you, like Mr. K—, are thinking, “Wow, Little Jack is my hero.” After all, maybe Little Jack is living his best life—securing his own desires, seemingly untroubled and unchallenged in the expression of an individual’s right to stuff himself until he pukes and to return, if he wants, like a dog to his own vomit?
Does it matter that prior to the modern age, freedom never implied the ability to do what one wants, but rather the wisdom to pursue what one ought to want? Today, many live by the implicit assumption that the only criterion needed to validate a desire is whether it’s yours. The very conception of a desire may be taken as proof of its necessity to your well-being, and its immediate consummation can therefore be demanded as a basic human right. It is, sadly, a defensible (albeit destructive) thesis.
So there is the lesson: You can find contentment like little Jack; it is not so hard if you follow his principles (though the cost is difficult to calculate). Still, as I conclude, permit me to present some counterpoints to Little Jack’s superficially attractive Religion of the Self.
First, on the condition of isolation:
We don’t need an ancient Greek philosopher to tell us that social and physical connection is intrinsic to human flourishing. Without sufficient physical contact, babies can stop growing and sometimes even die. Our deep need for others changes form as we age, but it does not disappear. Even though I am a middle-aged introvert often trapped in a dim closet of my own thoughts, still I recognize that I am at my worst when I’m most tempted to avoid those who love me. Yet, to disengaged from the web of mutual love that characterizes a functional community is a kind of spiritual suicide. On some level, the desire to be forever alone is the desire for Hell. Some of you may be familiar with Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit. In it, three characters, apparently selected for their capacity to exasperate and enrage each other, are locked together in a room for eternity. Near the conclusion, one of them famously utters the line: “Hell is other people.” Certainly there are times and experiences that make such a declaration relatable, but it is wrong. Only one who is already in hell could make such a claim—the character bears within himself a heart incapable of seeing another person as anything but an impingement on his potential happiness. But the truth is that Hell is just himself grown hostile to participation in a shared life or any reciprocal investment in the welfare of others.
Whether or not a Hell exists beyond the grave is a matter of
some debate, but supposing such a state did exist, one could envision it less as
a punishment than as a perpetuation of the habits we most zealously practice.
If we’re not careful, we may come to feel at home in Hell, and when it is home, perhaps death is the only
difference between a long-term lease and a mortgage.
Next, on the condition of ingratitude:
Given my previous point, you can see that persons preoccupied with their own interests must darken the periphery of their focus lest a feeling of obligation arise. Obligations are burdens, irritants around which the oyster-hearted ingrate must build its pearl of delusion. The cure for such delusions is to widen your gaze, to embrace your indebtedness, to give thanks to the tributaries of your own existence and to the springs which poured into them long before you even trickled into life. Wiser men than I have suggested that the road to genuine meaning is the voluntary adoption of responsibility. This next stage of life for you, whether it takes you to college or not, is not just for you. Sure, there is some degree to which you are stepping into a new level of autonomy, which is both good and necessary, but there is no time in your life when your decisions affect you alone. Certainly it is you who must decide how to expend your energies, but if the answer becomes “However I like,” it is not because you are more free, but because you are less. No person is easier to enslave than one who thinks that fulfilling his own fantasies is his ultimate purpose. The term clickbait exists because it makes users into the used, and if you identify with your desires over your relationships, then you can be counted on to sell them to others—without pay. And if “practice makes permanent,” then the algorithms that govern your attention will quietly switch from predicting your behavior to prescribing it.
Lastly, on the descent into narcissism:
As Little Jack illustrates, mastery in the Religion of the Self is impossible without the elevation of one’s cravings to the level of worship. Only when the world and all things in it are compatible with his shallow, but no less sacred longings, does the Narcissist earn his black belt in emptiness. And if we conflate our own urges with our truest selves, we can become like him, working to conform reality to our wishes and praising ourselves for doing so. But the better option is expressed so simply by Galadriel in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. In a well-known scene, moments before Frodo offers her the ring of power—the ultimate means by which she might impose her will upon the world—he asks Galadriel, “what do you wish?” She responds, “That what should be shall be.” Take a moment to think about what that means:
“That what should be shall be.”
There is an order—a hope and a harmony—that both precedes and transcends our spheres of individual ambition, and we can either train our wills to want it, or we can shrink the world of our perception to a size and shape fit for the conceited toddlers we are becoming.
Meaninglessness may present to us some very comfortable ways to drift toward the grave, whereas the path toward deeper significance often entails some unpleasant frustrations for our tired and anxious hearts. But pleasure was never an aim capable of gratifying an animal so wondrous as the human being, which is why those who devote their lives to it must settle for being less than human.
That last option is not good enough for any of you; after all, you are all going to die, and that eventuality should remind us that a life squandered in pampered idleness is little better than no life at all.
Happy Graduation.
