Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book Read Online Free PDF

over here, I’ll put my hand on your diaphragm, take a deep breath; or: Let me tell you something interesting that happened to me today—nothing; or: My head is killing me, would you mind massaging my neck? or: My name is Jon Johnson and I come from Wisconsin—that’s a fact—and I’m wondering whether I made a mistake in leaving, so I’m having two quick drinks, can I fix you two? or: You’re good-looking and since there is clearly nothing for us to talk about, would you care to step outside to my car and fool around?
    ( CHECK ONE )

(7) The Misplaced Self:
    How Two Selves Confronting Each Other can Miscalculate, Each Attributing a Putative and Spurious Reality to the Other and Trying to Match it, with the Consequence that Both Selves Become Non-selves

    A FILMMAKER REPORTED the following experience with his film company, especially the actors, while on location in a small Midwestern town.
    The townspeople showed a tremendous excitement about the presence of the film company in their midst. Not only did they make the town and even their homes available to the film crew, allowing their very lives to be disrupted, some town folk even expressed the strongest possible desire to be in the film, if only in the most insignificant roles. A quiet woman, the librarian, said that it would be the greatest event of her life.
    The actors also enjoyed their stay in the town and the attention they were getting. Even though they, the actors, were not held in the highest regard by the filmmakers—producers, directors, cinematographers, etc.—were in fact often referred to by the latter as “pieces of meat,” “talking faces,” “hollow heads” among other uncomplimentary expressions—they, the actors, found themselves playing enjoyable roles in the town. What roles? They were playing the roles of the superb human beings the town folk believed them to be. Everyone in town remarked what nice people they were. So they became nice. They became nicer than saints. One famous actress in particular, noted for her childish and difficult ways, became a very model of friendliness and graciousness, astounding even the film crew and the town folk by her small acts of kindness, such as inquiring after the health of a stagehand’s sick child, remembering the name of the A & P checkout lady.
    Question (I): Which of the two, the actors or the townspeople, are the more real, that is, perceive themselves as more nearly what they are?
    (a) The townspeople because they have no illusions about themselves, their humdrum lives and workaday selves, whereas the actors not only live in a tinsel world but are themselves forever playing roles, are always “on” even when they walk into the town drugstore.
    (b) The actors, particularly the actress who, by very reason of her finding herself in a real place among real people and removed from the fakery of Hollywood, is able for once in her life to become herself, her true best self.
    (c) Neither town folk nor actors, because both are equally displaced, equally deprived of themselves, though in different ways. The town folk are deprived because, though they live in a “real” town, through an optical illusion they perceive the actors to be more splendidly real than they themselves and perceive the actors’ lives to be both more glamorous and more of a piece (to judge from the films) than their own, which seem somewhat dim and tentative by comparison. Through a different sort of optical illusion, the actors are able for a while to take on the very reality imputed to them by the town folk, wear it like a costume and with the greatest of ease because they’ve been doing nothing else most of their lives. Thus, they cloak the nought and nakedness of their selves, which are perhaps no different in kind from anyone else’s but perhaps more acutely felt.
    Note that the felt “reality” of the actors in the town is as brief as any other performance. After six weeks on location, even the gracious actress said