Are We Complicit in Madness?

My weekly routine involves watching Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi on their Friday podcast, America This Week. Appended to their commentary and observations about the events that make up the most current news cycle are short stories of timeless application to the human condition. This week the story was It’s Christmas Not Just Once a Year by Heinrich Böll:

Among our relatives, symptoms of disintegration are beginning to show up that for a while we tried silently to ignore but the threat of which we are now determined to face squarely. I do not yet dare use the word “collapse,” but the alarming facts are accumulating to the point where they represent a threat and compel me to speak of things that may sound strange to the ears of my contemporaries but whose reality no one can dispute. The mildew of decay has obtained a foothold under the thick, hard veneer of respectability, colonies of deadly parasites heralding the end of the integrity of an entire clan. Today we must regret having ignored the voice of our cousin Franz, who long ago began to draw attention to the terrible consequences of what was on the face of it a harmless event.

The "harmless event" is the family celebration of Christmas. Böll describes in detail the seasonal accouterments that attend it. "Aunt Milla" takes her Christmas very seriously and when, after the war (the tale is set in post-WWII Germany), she can resume the practice, it seems she is struck with a malady that can only be "cured" by celebrating Christmas in the precise manner the family has done so over the years. Whenever the celebration is not conducted, she is constantly wailing and behaving in an intolerable manner. Her husband, Uncle Franz, successfully enlists the family in repeating the celebration -- daily -- to placate Aunt Milla. Uncle Franz is in the fortunate position, notwithstanding the rubble and destitution of many in post-war Germany, of being wealthy, and more and more of his wealth (albeit taking proper steps as a prudent businessman to gain economies wherever possible) is applied to these daily celebrations.

As time goes on, while Aunt Milla's malady is abated, all of the other family members begin to suffer personality changes and other forms of mental disintegration. Various means are explored and employed to relieve the family members of this burden; eventually all the family members are replaced by actors (and finally manikins standing in for the grandchildren) who are happy to perform nightly in exchange for a small remittance and a good meal (plus the opportunity to pillage the wine cellar and cigars). And the charade continues.

The only non-conforming family member was Uncle Franz's namesake, Cousin Franz. And from the beginning he cautioned the family not to indulge Aunt Milla's fantasy. But his advice went unheeded, and even Cousin Franz's life, although lived outside of the nightly performance, is affected:

My cousin Franz’s career has taken a strange turn. He has been accepted as a lay brother in a nearby monastery. The first time I saw him in his monk’s habit I got a shock: that tall figure with the broken nose and swollen lips [Franz is a former boxer], those brooding eyes—he reminded me more of a convict than of a monk. It almost seemed as if he had divined my thoughts. “Our life is our punishment,” he said in a low voice. I followed him into the visitors’ room. Our conversation was stiff and halting, and he was obviously relieved when the bell summoned him for prayers in the chapel. I stood there pensively as he left: he was hurrying, and his haste seemed to be genuine.

The description of the story I have given is competent but it is neither as rich as Walter Kirn's retelling, nor as glorious as Böll's own writing. I encourage you to read it for yourself. But, of course, the potential meaning of this allegory is the reason for the post. Here is some of Walter and Matt's discussion:

Walter Kirn: ...[T]hey go into not just denial, but a kind of hyper-denial in which they are living a pantomime all for the benefit of this relative who screams if they won’t do it. And why are they doing it? That’s the question. And what does all this represent, and why is it so damn funny and painful? I mean, that’s the topic here.

Matt Taibbi: [S]ome people want to make this one-to-one only to be a criticism of the Holocaust. And clearly, that’s what it’s about. I mean, there’s no question that that’s the major subtext to the whole thing, but it’s also just about the human capacity for denial and how far people will go to indulge madness, basically. They will throw everything they have, all their ingenuity, all their effort, all their emotional attention into maintaining an absolutely mad delusion.

<snip>

It’s astounding, and [Böll] never goes all the way over into making an overt comparison, which is what gives the story the amazing energy that it has. But extremely funny, but really messed up too, because I think it speaks to something really disturbing in all of us.

Walter Kirn: It is a hilarious but also terrifying story, because when you realize that the big family secret is that the aunt just wants to celebrate Christmas every day and demands that people go along with her or else she screams, it reminds you of something that happened in your family. Come on. Every one of our families, if we know a few relatives, has some incident in which you are indulging somebody who’s kind of lost it in order to maintain, big word, dignity and normalcy. And what’s so funny about madness and the appeasement of madness is that it’s usually done in the name of making things appear normal.

And the philosopher Hannah Arendt had that saying, the banality of evil, which was meant to show that the Holocaust and even the most outrageous crimes could be conducted in this rather passionless dull way in which people just take care of the details and go along. And then at the end of it, six million people are dead. And this is a story kind of about the banality of evil, because as you say, the details of this mad woman’s Christmas celebration that has to happen every day and has to happen in a certain way with the same songs and the same cookies and the same decorations, and in which they count up the-

Matt Taibbi: The game plan.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. It goes out of control to the point where it’s destroying everybody, but at no point along the way was it that crazy, you know? At no point along the way was it anything but banal, really. And so, I mean, if this is also a criticism of the German spirit or sensibility at the time, I think it is, they are constantly in this story worried about appearances. ... Even though their world has turned upside down, they’re constantly attempting to project normalcy.

<snip>

Walter Kirn: But let’s talk about nowadays. What does it apply to around us? COVID was a lot like this, frankly. It got off the ground with just wear a mask, just distance six feet. It’s only going to be two weeks. And two years later, kids have not failed to learn to read because their schools have been closed, and et cetera.

This is how everything works. He’s actually created a blueprint for mass hysteria that’s very detailed and shows the stages, but the essential sin is that early on, you tolerate what used to be madness in order to just kind of get through the day, in order to look normal, in order to bargain with the forces of order. Let’s keep everything else orderly and just do this one crazy thing, and then we’ll have to do these two crazy things to support. It’s sort of a lie. The first lie is easy, but then it breeds 10,000 more. The first indulgence of Aunt Milla, “Let’s have Christmas again,” “Okay,” really spells doom ever-after, because it just goes out of control. It’s a fission reaction. And that’s the thing about denial and self-deception. They take greater and greater energy resources in order to be sustained, yet no one realizes they can get off at any time.

<snip>

Matt Taibbi: ...[I]t’s very relevant to the current day, as you say, because we are in this sort of state of perpetual mass psychogenic events. So the problem is that we switch them every six months to a year, whether it’s putting our Ukraine flag emojis on our accounts, and that’s the most important thing ever. Whether it’s wearing five masks. Or you could say it in the other direction, too. There’s all kinds of preoccupations on the right that you could point to, but as Gogol would say, everyone has his own craze. And now, our way of looking at the world is that we just sort of routinely ignore things that are morally abhorrent and pretend that they’re not really happening.

As you scroll through your own news feed today, what madness do you see that we are coddling? That the Congress can put us further into unlimited debt? That the Federal Reserve can print money endlessly? That we are funding an invasion of our country? That our children's mutilation is the best of health care? That our colleges are promoting genocide? That our court proceedings are extensions of politics? That censorship of free speech is good? That individual agency is wrong and collective control is right? That gender is fluid and "lived experience" is the ultimate truth? That "climate change" can be controlled through the sacrifice of human lives?

That this list is not all-inclusive of the maladies we are accommodating is beyond comprehension. I have started my own push back. Join me: