Ping Pong 28: The Science and Art of Being Where You Are
Mary Wollstonecraft left thought with an important legacy. How she asked, does one do justice to failure? Does one simply attempt to prevent it? Or does one attempt to learn from it, and if so how or what would that learning look like? Does one simply learn not to do ‘That’ again, or does one attempt to change one’s nature in the face of a failure, and if so how? Is this change to be captured in a neat maxim or a couple of aphorisms; or is an odder or deeper changed required? And if so where could one start this rather personal axis of change? This call for a science or art of failure and how to learn lessons from it, became one of the dominant themes of post revolutionary thought. Hegel attempted to capture the movement into failure and beyond within an elaborate system of Dialectics. Failure was thereby transcended, and became so very grand and monumental (a topic which will be picked up in further Rants of this series). However just before Hegel attempted to fuse the science of failure into a monumental philosophy, in Britain, a totally different answer was attempted. Maybe this answer suggested that one needed to first understand failure not as a global concern, but rather in the everyday action of individuals. The case ran, that it is then only as we understand these actions, and how and why they failed, and what could be done about it, that we can truly appreciate both the idiocy, but also the potential of failure, why it happens, and what can come from it. The medium in which this theory was advanced was not in philosophy at all, but in the relatively new medium of a Novel. It was in stories that the consequences of failure were best revealed, and answers found. The early great theoretician of this medium was of course Jane Austen, and it is her very singular account of failure that the rest of the Rant will look at.
Across all of Jane Austen writings, seven deep theses about the nature of failure are clearly detectable: Failure is unlocatable; it requires meditation and careful thought; it cannot be very simply ‘solved’; it must not be generalized or socialized; it cannot be readily defined in a series of trite maxims; nor does it need one to absolutely invert one’s own nature; finally personalities are defined by their response to failure, and how they attempt to move beyond it. Each of these very separate theses deserves to be tackled in turn. Each is defined by Jane Austen in terms of the very personal exchanges between individuals. However it is in the very nature of such exchanges that they rest not on the specific individuals involved, but rather on the very structure of collectivity that flows beyond any one individuality. The theses that are developed within the sphere of individual actions, can therefore by applied, with some reservation and care, to wider social problems. A fact that will be illustrated as this Rant progresses.
The first and deepest problem with failure is that it is often rather unlocatable. One knows that there is a problem somewhere or with something, and yet cannot quite find where it is or what it is. This inability to locate the exact nature of the problem is not accidental. In Jane Austen’s works, misunderstandings happen, not because one side is daffy or misguided; on the contrary, mistakes happen because two people, coming together create an atmosphere between them, an atmosphere which neither owns, and in which all kinds of problems lurk. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy (of ‘Pride and Prejudice’) at all times remain correct; in themselves and according to their own lights, and yet between them, initially at least, a gulf of failure and inability to understand one another lurks. Their initial problem with one another is that they attribute this failure to comprehend one another to the personality of the other, and therefore fail to understand what lies between them both. Likewise the central tragedy of ‘Persuasion’ lies in the fact that between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, an event (some problematic advice) had passed, that nether were able to directly comprehend, and both in differing ways regretted.
The problem with this axis set between individuals, is that, if it is not realized for what it is, each element in the exchange must react in to it in their own manner. They will therefore seek to own it or attribute it to the other, and in that process, distort the nature of the problem which always lay between. This move of owning or attributing that which is ‘created between’ is the central move of failure. A problematic axis is thereby internalized in different ways, and all hell breaks loose. The current financial markets are the classic expression of this phenomenon. Quite literally in this case, failures (bad mortgage risks) were endlessly circulated between differing bodies. - A process that was stable as long as no one worried overmuch who exactly owned the debt. However, the moment that they did, the entire system collapsed. The challenge therefore of understanding failure is the challenge to understand how axes of miscommunication are formed between people, and therefore cannot be usefully understood (or owned) by any one individual. Failure demands one thinks collectively therefore, and understand what was never truly one’s own (Elizabeth Bennet comes to understand that her judgement of both Darcy and Wickham were social, not personal phenomena).
The second thesis follows on naturally enough from the first. If the challenge to understand why things go wrong, is caught up with the challenge not to understand things from one’s own perspective, it follows that every solution to a problem must involve very careful thought. At the hub of this mediation must lie the attempt to understand one’s own position from another perspective, while of course confessing that such an understanding is always problematic and complex. What one cannot do, is simple enough. One cannot (as Emma the eponymous heroine of ‘Emma’, thought she could) understand the world from another’s perspective in an easily and pat manner. On the contrary, to really understand another’s perspective is to also challenge the way that one oneself felt. One’s feeling are therefore subject to challenge as they comprehend that other. A challenge that will initially make them lose their the aura of self-righteousness (Elizabeth Bennet says ‘I who have always prided myself on my judgment’) but will then actually change the nature of those feelings themselves (both Elizabeth and Emma surprise themselves in how and whom they come to love).
This ability to slide across the range of perspectives is problematic in the extreme in that it takes time, and frequently cannot be directly accomplished. It rather takes the form of a sudden realization following a fairly slow and complex set of shifts and unresolved exchanges (for example the trials of Harriet’s love life, and the way in which Emma develops the nature of her own). This is of course the endless hope of all politicians. Gordon Brown thinks it makes sense to soldier on because he hopes against hope that one of these silent redemptions will transform his political career…
The problem with such a transformation is that it cannot be simply ‘solved’. There can exist neither in love or finance no series of off-the-shelf solutions to complex problems. At best any all too easy solution will merely reveal the exact nature and scope of the problem, rather than solving it; or perhaps change its exact nature, while at worst (and often at the same time) the same solution will make the entire problem so much worse. Hence the problem of whom the Bennet sisters should marry, and how in marriage they should ensure the fortune of themselves and their mother, was not a problem that could be solved by simply marrying the pompous heir to their father’s estate (Mr Collins). And the attempt to force Elizabeth into such a simple solution, merely exacerbated the problem (Collins ended up by marrying neighbour Catherine Lucas instead). This central problem is of course that deep tragedy of modern politics. Politicians are forced to find solutions, solutions that moreover everyone can comprehend to every problem, and to do so immediately and without any real care. The problem however in the case of politics is confounded by two extra dimensions. On the one hand, even if politicians do take time to consider the nature of the problem, the realities of how they must implement a policy are such that they cannot choose the best option, but must rather, in the end, resort to off-the-shelf solutions as the only politically viable option (‘A’ levels really ought to have been abolished a while ago). On the other hand, the ethic of careful and challenging transformation is easily resolved into a vapid claim about perpetual change. What was then vital becomes merely one more slogan…
This last fact is made all the more problematic because Austen is clear, that when a problem becomes a matter of social concern, its nature is transformed, and becomes unsolvable in the axis in which it was initially formulated. Elizabeth Bennet’s failure to marry Mr. Collins is transformed into an axis of gossip, and so ceases to be anything about her; alternatively she keeps secret Darcy’s love for her, in case the sharing of the knowledge changes it in someway. Or again, Emma’s attempt to find love for her friend Harriet, is based on the premise that Harriet’s love is other than it clearly is. Emma treats it as something that she can be a party of, and so transforms its nature (and what it can do). That is, as problems occur between people, then if others seek to join that axis or attempt to re-nuance it in some way, then the entire problem transforms. Or to put it another way, failures are extremely socially unstable. They have a habit of being transformed, and transformed again and again across a social axis. Sometimes such transformations can in fact be useful (Elizabeth finds pleasure in laughing at Darcy’s rudeness), but is always profound. A fact which of course in a world which includes 24 hour news (un)coverage, is all the more problematic. Stories are born in their public spheres, and therefore are never quite as they seemed to be.
It will follow therefore, that one cannot really ever summarise a problem within a maxim or trite saying (though younger sister Mary Bennet might try to do). At best what such sayings do is to transform the problem, making it resonate within a wider family ‘type’ and therefore changing its nature somewhat. Whether a maxim is useful or not ultimately rests on whether this change is useful or possible. Mary Bennet’s words of wisdom often fall on very deaf ears, as her sisters cannot easily follow their implications within their own lives. Maxims are to treated as personal affairs, allowing as they do, one to transform difficult and complex social situations into an acceptable locus of feelings and thereby allowing possibly unforeseen changes elsewhere. Fanny in ‘Mansfield Park’ is full of little maxims to lessen the agony of her own very difficult social position. And yet these maxims, while they stop her falling into the danger of going off with the wrong man (Henry Crawford), almost lead to her condemning herself to a life of poverty and neglect, and only do not because those same maxims trigger a complex series of social moves elsewhere, moves that will eventually ensure that Fanny can marry the man she actually loves. Maxims are therefore directly useful only on the personal level, while their value in the wider social context is always unstable and problematic. The worry about trite phrases such as ‘credit crunch’ or even ‘global ecological collapse’ is enough to create endless instabilities in the world economy, instabilities that are not directly linked back to the initial problem, and yet are all the more problematic for that fact.
Likewise Austen is very clear that the worst way to deal with any crisis is simply to reverse what one is now, or look for ready solutions, in the alternatives that were already present in one’s world. These alternatives (eg; the collapse of Communism doesn’t mean that Capitalism will triumph) were never simply separate from the initial problem, and its apparent solution. The alternatives will therefore alter their character (and what they can offer) as the problem intensifies and deepens. To merely jump from one answer to another, is therefore to take the problem with one, (and often enough make it worse). In ‘Mansfield Park’, Henry Crawford’s love for Fanny was tied up with his resisting the charms of the married Elizabeth (her older cousin). Once then Fanny rejects him, he goes for comfort to Elizabeth, and ruins an entire social circle in the process (and so disappears from the novel). Inversion is never a solution, any more than simply expecting that regulation will solve the problems of a deregulated banking system. The issue of regulation, where and when it is, was already a part of the problem, and to simply follow the ‘I told you so’s created within the axis of that problem, is never to solve it.
Finally the game with understanding failure is never simply the game of rejection or renunciation. To understand failure is to understand on rather a personal level why one got into the mess in the first place. Or better, to understand exactly what one felt was positive in the moves that one made – why they felt good to make. In asking this question, one is attempting to salvage from a ruin of a scheme, those elements worth still living with and through. Failures therefore need to be carefully sterilized, so that their positive elements might be salvaged (as Elizabeth salvages her wit from the apparent wreck of her relationship with Darcy). It is then only through this act of salvaging what was good, while admitting that there were problems with it (or better, where it lead) that true lessons can be learned from what was. These ‘lessons’ are never simply ‘do not do that again’ (and history never simply repeats itself) but rather revolves around how what felt so positive and useful became problematic and unstable at a certain juncture in the context of particular events. That is, it is to listen carefully to the voices that excessive positivity (or rather, bullishness) can so easily ignore.
In these seven theses, Austen perfects a careful philosophy of redemption, which can be both individual or collective. A redemption that no doubt revolves around the fact that failure is not something random, but rather is created within complex social exchanges, exchanges that need not to be ignored, and cannot be simply harried by strident words and vapid ideas, but rather must be very carefully examined and slowly transformed. Austen thereby poses society (or better that which falls between people) both as an axis of problems, but also a partial locus of solutions. To be just, ceases to become a personal attribute, but rather become utterly tied to that which no one person could ever own: the whirling disk of collectivity. A thesis which was in its very quiet modesty, utterly revolutionary. It was certainly too revolutionary for its time, which was rather hypnotized by ‘great’ stories and wide scale change and forced evolution, and it is to those stories that the next of these rants will turn.
