Sephora captain froze up in a storm, but when Leggatt took over and forced the ... The captain of the Sephora was a passive and self-proclaimed âplain manâ ( ...
Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory Well-Bred Lovers, Mariners' Druthers, and Firemen of the Future: Evolved SelfAwareness and Self-Deception in the Works of Ray Bradbury, Joseph Conrad, and D.H. Lawrence --Manuscript Draft-Manuscript Number: Full Title:
Well-Bred Lovers, Mariners' Druthers, and Firemen of the Future: Evolved SelfAwareness and Self-Deception in the Works of Ray Bradbury, Joseph Conrad, and D.H. Lawrence
Article Type:
Article
Abstract:
Literature provides insights into evolutionary and cognitive theory that scientific studies cannot. By integrating models derived from evolutionary, cognitive, and literary studies, this article makes the case that human consciousness is adaptive but at a cost. Among the primary aspects of consciousness are awareness of self and ability to attribute mental states to others. These capacities allow humans to imagine in the abstract and theorize about their own and others' social behavior and to weigh benefits and costs of various scenarios. However, the ground upon which social contingencies rest constantly shifts, simple rational choice analyses are not always clear or possible, and there are often trade-offs for short- versus long-term benefits. These constraints on awareness are stressful and can hamper decision-making and well-being. Another fundamental adaptation of psyche that defrays these costs is self-deception. Selfdeception comes in a variety of forms that also present problems and trade-offs but, by definition, cannot be examined without being revealed, except through minds depicted in literature. Canonical literature is particularly resonant with evolutionary themes, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad, and Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence provide illustrative examples of selfawareness and self-deception.
Keywords:
evolution; literary Darwinism; self-awareness; self-deception; theory of mind
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50.10: Fiction
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Christopher Dana Lynn, Ph.D. University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, AL UNITED STATES
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Well-Bred Lovers, Mariners’ Druthers, and Firemen of the Future: Evolved Self-Awareness and Self-Deception in the Works of Ray Bradbury, Joseph Conrad, and D.H. Lawrence
Abstract Literature provides insights into evolutionary and cognitive theory that scientific studies cannot. By integrating models derived from evolutionary, cognitive, and literary studies, this article makes the case that human consciousness is adaptive but at a cost. Among the primary aspects of consciousness are awareness of self and ability to attribute mental states to others. These capacities allow humans to imagine in the abstract and theorize about their own and others’ social behavior and to weigh benefits and costs of various scenarios. However, the ground upon which social contingencies rest constantly shifts, simple rational choice analyses are not always clear or possible, and there are often trade-offs for short- versus long-term benefits. These constraints on awareness are stressful and can hamper decision-making and well-being. Another fundamental adaptation of psyche that defrays these costs is self-deception. Self-deception comes in a variety of forms that also present problems and trade-offs but, by definition, cannot be examined without being revealed, except through minds depicted in literature. Canonical literature is particularly resonant with evolutionary themes, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad, and Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence provide illustrative examples of self-awareness and self-deception. Keywords: evolution, literary Darwinism, self-awareness, self-deception, theory of mind
Well-Bred Lovers, Mariners’ Druthers, and Firemen of the Future: Evolved Self-Awareness and Self-Deception in the Works of Ray Bradbury, Joseph Conrad, and D.H. Lawrence
“The scientific study of social interaction is yet far advanced. Much of the best published literature is in fact genuinely ‘literature’—Aesop and Dickens make, in their own way, as important contributions as Laing, Goffman, or Argyle.” -Nicholas Humphrey, “The Social Function of Intellect,” 1976
The Sufferable and Insufferable Implications of Self-Deception Literature affords cognitive and evolutionary views into human psyche that have until recently been underappreciated. Canonical literature is reflective of resonant tropes of human nature, and character depictions expose cognitive processes in uniquely illustrative ways. Theoretical insights from evolutionary and the cognitive sciences permit three related arguments. The first is that consciousness is costly, and humans have evolved capacities to mitigate those costs. The second argument follows from the first and it is that mechanisms such as selfdeception—or unconsciously acting in a way contrary to what one knows to be true—may be Darwinian adaptations to contend with the costs of consciousness (Alexander 1989; Trivers 2006 [1976]; 2009; 2011; von Hippel and Trivers 2011) but as often as not get us in trouble and cause secondary problems. The third argument is that, while self-deception is widely accepted as a basic aspect of human psyche (Sahdra and Thagard 2003), demonstrating the conflicted mind of another is next to impossible. Classic or canonical literature is resplendent with examples of self-
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deception that illustrate adaptive and maladaptive self-deception at multiple levels and enable us to better understand these conflicts and tensions. Consciousness is stressful by degrees that increase with population density and social sophistication, but mechanisms to contend with that stress exist and may have been elaborated through evolutionary processes. Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey invokes the literary turns of Daniel Defoe in pointing out that, on the desert island where Robinson Crusoe is stranded, “it was the arrival of Man Friday on the scene which really made things difficult for Crusoe” (1976:304), that is, the social piece. Humans and other primates are required by the nature of our evolved social systems to be calculating. It takes a lot of brain power to assess the outcomes of our own behaviors, likely responses of others, and balance of wins to losses, with the bases for these calculations constantly in flux. These complex systems involve tolerance of dependents, conflicts over resources, and “political strife” (Humphrey 1976). Without means to mitigate such tensions, social complexity would scarcely be worthwhile. Evolutionary biologists Robert Trivers (2000; 2006 [1976]; 2009; 2011) and Richard Alexander (1989) propose that self-deception is the means to defray these stresses and is a fundamental aspect of social intelligence. Trivers suggests that self-deception has been selected for in evolutionary history to facilitate other-deception without the concomitant cues betrayed by the cognitive load conscious deception causes. Furthermore, “self-deception explicitly plays a role in fostering and maintaining group unity” as a central factor in family and community loyalties, religious and patriotic fervors, racial and ethnic allegiances, and other unifying efforts (Alexander 1989:493). However, self-deception also causes numerous problems and has been viewed as a maladaptation impeding human consciousness (Frost, Arfken, and Brock 2001). There are
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several possible explanations for this seeming contrast. Self-deception may be more detrimental than beneficial, but the human population expansion over the past 10,000 years has allowed mildly deleterious traits to persist because the influences of drift and migration have been mitigated (Cochran and Harpending 2009). A complementary explanation could be that the detriments of self-deception accrue largely after reproductive age. Alternatively, while Trivers (2000) suggests that the benefits of self-deception must outweigh the costs or be selected against, it may be that self-deception is not costly enough to have an appreciable effect on fitness in an exploding population. One problem with this simplistic contrast this that there are tensions between the two poles that can’t be resolved because cost and benefit depend on vantage and level. For instance, in a dyadic relationship, net gain or loss can be synchronically evaluated simply as behavior that is more or less advantageous between two individuals, but we know that short-term advantages can be costly in the long-run. Trivers (2000; 2011) often invokes his compulsive lighter and pen kleptomania as an example. He knows other people’s pens and lighters don’t belong to him, yet they always wind up in his pockets. In the short-term, as a writer and a smoker, he’s acquired some useful tools, but in the long-term, he appears a bit selfish or scattered, neither of which are socially valued traits. At a higher level, self-deception can be beneficial to an organization or governmental body if, for example, its agenda is to keep planes transporting passengers to maintain financial viability or a mission to protect democratic values. Trivers, along with Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton (Trivers and Newton 1982, November), wrote of the tragic hypocrisy such selfdeception can engender with regard to airline tragedies and the Vietnam War (Trivers 2000). Acting in contrast to obvious problems can work well in the short-term, but there is a point of
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diminishing returns beyond which the probability is that luck will run out. How does a species survive such fundamentally gross contrasts in the same mind or organizations? Freud suggested that registering information entails a different system than sensing it and that some information remains in the unconscious but is prevented from coming into awareness (Goleman 1996). Sartre (1967) used the concept of “bad faith” to suggest that lying to oneself in the face of contrary evidence is not the same as lying to someone else, which differs in the lucidity of the action. Fingarette (1969) rectifies the differences in these models by suggesting that though people may act in ways contrary to evidence or incoming sensory information, they can fail to notice contradiction or forget (Frost, Arfken, and Brock 2001). In a recent criminal trial of basketball star Kobe Bryant for date rape, investigators indicated that Bryant was being self-deceptive when he claimed to have heard “Lilly Fuller” (pseudonym) assent to sexual intercourse (Taslitz 2005). They made this interpretation based on analysis of his verbal and nonverbal responses. Their assessment was that Bryant was not lying, because he believed what he was saying, but that he was also not being truthful. This suggests Bryant was rationalizing to justify himself, but we can’t literally get into Bryant’s head to prove it. Unless he later realizes he was wrong in his interpretation of Fuller’s behavior, the truth of the situation is unknowable (Taslitz 2005). A way around the problem of learning what people hide from themselves is through forms of creative expression, such as literary narrative. Narrative enables us to interpret the minds of others as detectives might investigate the facts of a case. We can uniquely “read the minds” of characters like we can no living human being, do so with a higher rate of accuracy than in real life (Zunshine 2012; 2014), and learn the layered benefits and costs of such behaviors. Sahdra and Thagard (2003) computationally analyzed the self-deception of the
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minister Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter to show the influences of affective disposition and locus of control on the relationship between subjective well-being and self-deception. Two concepts basic to human cognition are the self and others, and we use our concept of self to intuit the minds of others. It does not matter that we are often or even usually wrong. Being able to correctly interpret the minds of others can help us successfully navigate complex social situations. Even attempting to demonstrate thoughtfulness—such as trying to do something another might find nice or appealing—is seen as being “thoughtful” and a signal of one’s willingness to cooperate (Rucker, Freitas, and Huidor 1996). By the same token, these same abilities enable us to manipulate circumstances to our own ends, to play others off each other, or frame our own mistakes in ways that make us seem like we were trying to do the right thing even if we weren’t. Reading and writing fictional narratives are social acts that play on our imperfect abilities to self-reflect and attribution of mental states to others as part of our daily interactions (Zunshine 2014). It is also this capacity of literature to provide insights otherwise invisible that impels some of us to read fiction (Zunshine 2006). Literature becomes canonical because it persistently resonates with human nature. This evolutionary salience connects literature to a larger intellectual community (Carroll 1995). As such, there are four organizing concepts that link such literature to evolutionary biology and subsume other intellectual efforts—(1) the relationship of the organism to its environment, (2) that innate psychological structures have evolved for adaptive purposes that regulate behavioral life, (3) that proximate explanations have their bases in distal, ultimate, or evolved causes, and, (4) abstract representations, such as those in literature, are a form of “cognitive mapping” or extensions of core proprioceptive and relational functions that orient the self in the environment (Carroll 1995).
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Literature and art, conversely, reorganize these principles from the perspective of the personal and subjective and infuse them with the uniqueness of personal experience and emotion (Wilson 2012). Literary analysis can occupy a space between these poles by discerning the objective knowledge conveyed through literature and communicating the diversity and pluralism of experience with regard to natural facts (Carroll 1995). In representing these concepts, authors may seek to represent reality, propose possible contingent scenarios, or both. Utilizing this theoretical basis, the following sections discuss Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1951), which makes a direct case consistent with my arguments using a futuristic society; Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad (2000 [1899/1910]), which conveys the epistemic murk of the colonial encounter; and D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (2003/1920), which explores the primary units of natural selection—the self-deception of mating strategies. Fahrenheit 451 and the Social Dangers of Self-Deception Evolutionary tropes in literature are often implicit but some are more foregrounded. For instance, Ray Bradbury directly addresses the psychological conflict engendered by selfawareness in the classic science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. In a future that presciently anticipated many present-day realities, a burgeoning population was burdened with the tensions of conflicting small group interests. The society had eliminated house fires, and firefighters were reassigned as fire starters, tasked with monitoring against book hoarding. When such stashes were detected, firemen would appear with hoses that pumped kerosene and methodically incinerate all offending literature, except comic books and magazines. Fire chief Captain Beatty explains to Guy Montag, the protagonist and a fireman whose awakening self-awareness is creating cognitive dissonance, that every book seemed to offend some small interest somewhere, so they eliminated books.
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Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the catlovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, secondgeneration Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! [Bradbury 1951:54-55] This not-so future society tries to prevent self-awareness by encouraging people to stay busy with trivial pastimes and superficial media. People incorporated streaming television into their lives with wall-size screens throughout their homes and ear “bees” feeding soap opera storylines into their ears. Similar concerns with the narcotic effects of visual media have been raised since the time of Plato, resulting in requirements in The Republic for social control of art’s forms and contents (Dutton 2003). Contemporary comedian Louis CK refuses to allow his daughter to have a smartphone, the current analog to Bradbury’s ear bees, to ensure she could experience the process of sadness, introspection, and reconciliation that being barraged by stimuli can impede (http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone). A study of lowlevel cigarette use among college students confirms that people reach compulsively for such items as “pivots” to help negotiate “extrastructural” space (Stromberg, Nichter, and Nichter 2007). The problem is that people become addicted. Studies show physiological changes are associated with cyberdependence (Nicolier et al. 2013), and Stromberg suggests that thresholds for anxiety and arousal may be lowered by chronic media use (http://evostudies.org/2012/05/pivoting-around-smartphones-cigarettes-evolved-to-play-inextrastructural-interludes/).
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This lack of awareness is manifested personally in the relationship between Montag and his wife Mildred, who can’t remember how they met, though they have been married for a decade. Relationships are demanding on our resources for self-awareness and theory of mind. Couples often communicate imperfectly, have misunderstandings, argue, fight, and make amends. These experiences should be memorable. Neuroscience studies indicate that exciting and joyful things and frightening or painful experiences are more memorable than typical ones (Damasio 1994). Positive experiences are memorable because they trigger our evolved system for approaching experiences that are rewarding, like food or sex. Negative experiences are easy to recall because they remind us to avoid dangerous or damaging encounters. The withdrawal system associated with negative experiences tends to result in stronger and more vivid memories, which may have evolved because the ultimate cost of failing to heed such memories—death—is far greater than failure to pursue possible rewards (Damasio 1994). The Montags’ marriage appears to have been characterized by mundanity and, when Mildred perishes in the destruction of the city, Guy notes how unaffected he feels about it. As Guy becomes increasingly self-aware, he begins to wonder at the minds around him and takes note of his own explosions of emotion and confusion as to which courses of action to take among multiple conflicting options. As evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup, Jr. points out, self-awareness is likely the prerequisite of advanced theory of mind (2003), but it is expensive. Gallup (1968) developed a test for self-recognition, placing a painted dot on the forehead of unsuspecting primates out of sight except via a mirror and assessed their reactions when presented with their mirror images. Among primates, only great apes, with the exception of gorillas, pass the “mirror test” by reaching up to their own heads to touch the paint when they see it in the mirror. Gallup interprets this as indicative of the capacity for self-awareness, but it is
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difficult to interpret the conundrum of the gorillas, since they are phylogenetically intermediate between the Pan genus, including chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living genetic relative, and the Pongo genus (orangutans) (Anderson and Gallup 1999; Gallup, Anderson, and Shillito 2002; Gallup, Anderson, and Platek 2003). Povinelli and Cant (1995) suggest this is because self-recognition in great apes is a by-product of enhanced proprioception, or the awareness of one’s body and body parts in space, as would come in handy for large-bodied, arboreal species. However, gorillas are so large, they spend less time in trees than other great apes, and an expensive trait like self-awareness cannot be maintained if it not used. The suggestion that self-awareness is expensive is largely inferential, based on the relative rarity of it across species and a cost-benefit analysis of it in contemporary U.S. cultural context. At outlined in Table 1, the benefits of self-awareness seem to be, in no particular order, the ability to groom oneself (except for hygiene-related behaviors, basically a social function), scenario-building or imagining potentialities in the abstract, being able to take pride in one's accomplishments and strive to better oneself, positive misperception of self, self-control, and theory of mind. However, there seem to be about twice as many costs, including the capacity to self-isolate, paralysis of analysis, forecast inaccuracy, self-aggrandizement or low self-esteem, resentment, egotism, envy, and guilt or shame (Keenan et al. 2003). As populations grow and choices increase, so do the costs of self-awareness. In a study of the Shuar, a foraging and hunting people from Amazonian Ecuador, stress and anxiety increased as people transitioned into market economies and were given more choices among commodities (Liebert et al. 2013).1
Self-awareness and self-deception are obviously not all or nothing prospects at the psychological, societal, or any other level, and Bradbury’s characters vary in their degrees of
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personal insight and their interest in it. As former English professor Faber points out when Montag seeks him as an ally in his rebellion, books do not cause self-awareness or insight—they merely trigger or facilitate it for those willing to open their minds. Captain Beatty tells Montag that many firemen pick up a book here and there to see what they are missing. As well, there are three exceptional gorillas, raised in enriched zoo environments, that have passed the mirror test (Miles 1994; Parker 1994), suggesting that these capacities need to be developmentally nurtured. When all variation in a trait is eliminated from a conversation or a society, the consequences can be dire. As with genetic homogeneity, the slightest environmental change, via pathogen, climate, or an invasive species or population, lack of cultural diversity can render a population defenseless. The backdrop of Fahrenheit 451 is a war that the media assures will be over in mere hours with minimal to no casualties. Such is the population’s overconfidence in their superiority that they make no adjustments to mobilize defenses or prepare. As a result, the war is brief, but it is because the city where the story takes place is annihilated. A study of similar self-deception as overconfidence in the workplace finds that it is neither adaptive nor appreciated by others (Anderson, Ames, and Gosling 2008). Montag joins other refugees outside the city who are collecting the world’s books as a shared body of knowledge in their minds. They indicate that by storing a little information here and a little there, they maintain their diversity and the importance of every person. Where the world of Fahrenheit 451 may represent the culmination of totalitarian culture industry, Joseph Conrad addresses a period of culture clash, when imperial and native awareness stress each other. Psychosocial Self-Deception through Joseph Conrad
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“Heart of Darkness” (Conrad 2000/1899) is a short story that explores colonial attitudes vis-à-vis civilization and barbarism through focus on sailor Charles Marlow as he travels into the Congo to a trading station run by Mr. Kurtz. Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” (1910) explores the ambiguity of a new ship captain who hides a stowaway who, it turns out, has killed a crew member on another ship. One interpretation of the “Heart of Darkness,” is that the heart of darkness is, literally, self-awareness; and “the horror, the horror”—the final words of Kurtz, the chief of the Inner Station of a Belgian company trading in ivory who has come unhinged—represent the ultimate cost of that consciousness. The narrator, Charles Marlow, tasked by the Company with retrieving Kurtz because of the damage he was doing to the Company’s reputation, notes this cost of awareness: The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. [Conrad 2000/1899:83] Kurtz was a man who was highly educated and introspective but taken by his own charismatic brilliance and the influence it had on those around him. He deceived himself into thinking he could live by his own rules and lost his grasp on sanity. As his fiancé noted, “how that man could talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith—don’t you see?—he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything—anything. He would have been a splendid leader
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of an extreme party” (Conrad 2000/1899:86). Kurtz realized that the natives could see him as supernatural “other” because of their guns and other technology and that he was beyond the reach of his own culture, its codes, and sanctions at the Inner Station. He had become renowned as the best ivory agent of the company but had achieved that status through ruthlessly Machiavellian means. As noted by the Russian adventurer who feared but revered Kurtz, He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And it was true too. I gave him the ivory. What did I care! But I didn’t clear out. No, no. I couldn’t leave him. [Conrad2000/1899:67] Marlow achieved a rare degree of intimacy with Kurtz in a short time and saw that Kurtz became a lost soul because of his complete detachment. . . . Mr. Kurtz lacked restrain in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him—some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last—only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core . . . [Conrad 2000/1899:68-69] Conrad portrays Marlow as the right balance of self-awareness and self-deception. He has more seeming self-awareness than some of the lesser characters of the story but a code to which he held fast, by his telling:
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You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies,— which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. [Conrad 2000/1899:32] Nevertheless, he does lie, multiple times, self-deceptively and in ways consistently prosocial, as when he tells Kurtz’s fiancé that Kurtz’s last words were to speak her name. Marlow respects people he sees as being like himself—who show self-restraint, which was largely lacking at the outposts. He respected the people who displayed independence but clear methods, as noted when he came upon the book on how to be a seaman the Russian had lost. He was impressed by the accountant who stubbornly maintained himself in an immaculate white linen suit and polished shoes in the midst of the ramshackle post. Marlow reviled the manager in charge of the Inner and Outer Stations for his obliviousness to the deprivations around him and blind self-interest, though he later recognized the manager’s callous attitude armored him against the chaos. Similar codes conflict in Conrad's “The Secret Sharer"—those of the narrator captain, of Leggatt, the stowaway the narrator had rescued, and of the captain of another ship, the Sephora. The narrator was young, had just been assigned to the ship, and had yet to prove he was worthy of the responsibility he had been assigned, facts he recognized. Leggatt was the first mate from the Sephora but had killed another sailor and escaped captivity. As Leggatt told the narrator, the Sephora captain froze up in a storm, but when Leggatt took over and forced the crew to engage in a dangerous maneuver against their will, an impudent sailor defied him, resulting in the murder. The captain of the Sephora was a passive and self-proclaimed “plain man” (Conrad 2000/1910:38) who wished to maintain his spotless record of having no incidents.
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Several varieties of self-deception set up the story via distinctions in age and class. Leggatt was 25 and self-assured. “. . . It is only the young who are ever confronted by such clear issues,” says the narrator of Leggatt (Conrad 2000/1910:100). Leggatt justified his behavior as a sacrifice of one to save 24. “God only knows why they locked me in every night. To see some of their faces you’d have thought they were afraid I’d go about at night strangling people. Am I a murdering brute? Do I look it?” asked Leggatt indignantly (105). We have no verification of Leggatt’s story, but he twice told the narrator that his father is a parson in Norfolk, suggesting his honor was beyond reproach as a God-fearing man. Yet, Leggatt expressed no regret or blame for his behavior and insinuated he would not be given the freedom he deserved. “. . . You don’t see me coming back to explain such things to an old fellow in a wig and twelve respectable tradesmen, do you? What can they know whether I am guilty or not—or of what I am guilty, either? That’s my affair” (124). Research indicates such self-serving bias is a common form of self-deception associated with cheating (von Hippel and Trivers 2011). The narrator captain’s primary bias was in his interpretation. Because he and Leggatt were both young sailors, new to their ships, and trained on the British battleship Conway, the narrator saw them as being of the same mind. This conceit of the narrator is so strong, he continually refers to Leggatt as “the secret sharer” of his life and his twin captain. The narrator barely listened to the Sephora captain when told the story of the murder and Leggatt’s jumping overboard, made no effort to confirm Leggatt’s story, and took the captain’s dislike of Leggatt as a personal affront: I had become so connected in thoughts and impressions with the secret sharer of my cabin that I felt as if I, personally, were being given to understand that I, too, was not the sort that
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would have done for the chief mate of a ship like the Sephora. I had no doubt of it in my mind. [Conrad 2000/1910:115] In contrast to Leggatt, the Sephora captain was an older man, set in his ways, and in trying to preserve his legacy, failed to act in a moment of decision. Later, he attributed Leggatt’s initiative to himself. Though the Sephora sailors believed Leggatt was stowed away on the narrator’s ship, their captain only superficially searched for him and spoke only to the captain, as though he did not want to deal with the messiness of finding Leggatt. “People sometimes do not tell themselves the whole truth if a partial truth appears likely to be preferable” (von Hippel and Trivers 2011:8). When the narrator behaves with unusual detachment to avoid direct questioning, the captain colludes with him by suggesting Leggatt committed suicide. Where the self-deception that defines Conrad’s characters influence their immediate survival, Lawrence utilizes it in a manner that is arguably more central to the human species, in influencing reproductive success (Trivers 2000). Self-deception is likely a key factor in mating intelligence (O'Brien et al. 2010), and the characters in Women in Love deploy it in numerous ways and degrees of success. Psychological Ennui and Women in Love Women in Love (Lawrence 2003/1920) focuses, as advertised, on love and upheavals of a group of five young adults of the middle and upper-class in post-World War I England. Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen and Hermione Roddice are young women navigating the unclear space between the expectations that females marry and bear children and growing awareness of the suffrage movement and its concomitant sympathies for self-actualization. Gerald Crich and Rupert Birkin are friends of the girls with similar class and gender identity conflicts. Gerald inherits his father’s mine and the tensions between capitalist industrialism and worker
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exploitation, while Birkin exhibits conflicted sexuality, in his continual rebuffs of Hermione’s dominating affections and unspoken passion for Gerald’s company. The Brangwen sisters are sides of the same coin—consistently composed except in certain binary aspects, such as their acceptance of circumstances. They do not offer much introspection or intellectualization. Their qualities are suggested through conversation, tone, reaction. Gudrun’s attention is biased toward the more “cultured” circles of art school in London from which she has just returned, and she is rankled by the imposition of the mining town of her birth. She exhibits snobby resistance to common experiences, such as marriage and children, though no clear conception of what she would prefer and no apparent insight into the conflicts of her personality. "'Don't you find yourself getting bored?' she asked of her sister. 'Don't you find, that things fail to materialize? Nothing materializes! Everything withers in the bud"' (Lawrence 2003/1920:4). Ursula, on the other hand, takes her lot more humbly. Gudrun's "look of confidence and diffidence contrasted with Ursula's sensitive expectancy," says Lawrence (2003/1920:4). Ursula does not look for meaning but lives it. Rupert Birkin, the group’s philosopher, describes her best in one of his moments of pontification. "There’s the whole difference in the world,” he said, between the actual sensual being, and the vicious mental-deliberate profligacy our lot goes in for. In our night-time, there’s always the electricity switched on, we watch ourselves, we get it all in the head, really. You've got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unknowingness, and give up your volition. You’ve got to do it. You've got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being. [Lawrence 2003/1920:40] Birkin is really talking about himself in telling Ursula to live in the moment instead of her head, as he is more the guilty of intellectualizing every experience. He does not recognize the
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irony that, because Ursula does not calculate and analyze her own psyche to the same degree, she embodies what his awareness prevents him. Birkin sees humans as a scourge that has messed up an idyllic fantasy of a world, but simultaneously yearns for their admiration. Ursula chastises him, saying, “You’ve got me . . . Why should you need others? Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can’t you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try to bully Gerald—as you tried to bully Hermione. You must learn to be alone. And it’s so horrid of you. You’ve got me. And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you don’t want their love.” Like Birkin, Hermione was critical of others, especially people like Ursula, whose positivity she mocked but of which she was unconsciously envious. Hermione armored herself with cultural and intellectual superiority, as part of the advance guard of contemporary female liberation, while simultaneously feeling inadequate as a result of her unrequited love for Rupert. Birkin and Hermione’s liberalism and boredom were conceits of the British leisure to which they belonged and claimed to want to escape but seemed unable to see past. But while Birkin passively and sulkily pulled away from her, Hermione flaunted her familiarity with him to Ursula, fatalistically, as though it were another game she was bound to win. In the life of thought, of the spirit, she was one of the elect. And she wanted to be universal. But there was a devastating cynicism at the bottom of her. She did not believe in her own universals—they were sham. She did not believe in the inner life—it was a trick, not a reality. She did not believe in the spiritual world—it was an affectation. In the last resort, she believed in Mammon, the flesh, and the devil—these at least were not sham. [Lawrence 2003/1920:289]
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Ultimately, Birkin relaxes in his intellectual cynicism when Hermione leaves and he finds love with Ursula, but not before Ursula blasts them both for their hypocrisies and falseness. What does she work out to, in the end, with all her social passion, as you call it. Social passion—what social passion has she?—show it me!—where is it? She wants petty, immediate power, she wants the illusion that she is a great woman, that is all. In her soul she’s a devilish unbeliever, common as dirt. That’s what she is at the bottom. And all the rest is pretence—but you love it. You love the sham spirituality, it’s your food. And why? Because of the dirt underneath. Do you think I don’t know the foulness of your sex life—and her’s?—I do. And it’s that foulness you want, you liar. [Lawrence 2003/1920:304] Alternatively, Gerald, who accidentally caused his brother’s death when they were children, accepts as a sort of penance the responsibility by taking over the family mines and the industrialist’s ethos. In so doing, he compromised himself and believes he has sacrificed the ability to create new personal meaning. "The sufferings and feelings of individuals did not matter in the least," Gerald thinks. "They were mere conditions, like the weather. What mattered was the pure instrumentality of the individual. As a man as of a knife: does it cut well? Nothing else mattered" (Lawrence 2003/1920:219). Gerald felt himself utterly replaceable, a cog like his employees but at the top, with nothing to which to aspire. His rationalization of the outer world, coupled with an underactive introspection is a suicidal combination. “Without bothering to think to a conclusion, Gerald jumped to a conclusion. He abandoned the whole democratic-equality problem as a problem of silliness. What mattered was the great social productive machine” (Lawrence 2003/1920:223). Yet awareness of the self-deception crept through.
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It was so perfect that sometimes a strange fear came over him, and he did not know what to do. He went on for some years in a sort of trance of activity. What he was doing seemed supreme, he was almost like a divinity. He was a pure and exalted activity. But now he had succeeded—he had finally succeeded. And once or twice lately, when he was alone in the evening and had nothing to do, he had suddenly stood up in terror, not knowing what he was . . . He was afraid, in mortal dry fear, but he knew not what of . . . He was afraid that one day he would break down and be a purely meaningless babble lapping round a darkness . . . His mind was very active. But it was like a bubble floating in the darkness. At any moment it might burst and leave him in chaos. [Lawrence 2003/1920:228229] The final note of Women in Love concerns Birkin’s wishful thinking, after Gerald has given up on life and let himself freeze to death in the snow. Ursula wants to know why her love for Birkin is not enough to satisfy him, as his love is for her. “’You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!’” she says to him. “‘It seems as if I can’t,’ he said. ‘Yet I wanted it.’ ‘You can’t have it, because it’s false, impossible,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe that,’ he answered” (Lawrence 2003/1920:479). A common thread through Bradbury, Conrad, and Lawrence’s narratives is the development of awareness and subtle transmutation of self-deception. This is less the case in Fahrenheit 451, where self-awareness and self-deception are more clearly in opposition, than in Conrad’s stories, where characters are more and less self-deceptive, and in Women in Love, where it is definitive of the varying personalities. Discussion
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Consciousness is not a unitary thing. It is likely assembled ex post facto and variously from a number of psychic mechanisms evolved to cope with the natural environment and to contend with other humans (Mithen 1996). But this self-same variation causes friction between people and awareness of it causes people stress (Humphrey 1976). Bradbury (1951) portrays a bleak future where variability has been eliminated to minimize the aggravation, but the result is catastrophic. Conrad’s (2000 [1899/1910]) colonial present illustrates various types of selfdeception at personal and social level that were in conflict, adaptive for some, perilous for others. Lawrence (2003/1920) implies that consciousness and self-deception have little ultimate meaning as genetic processes; rather, they are our biological heritage that simply influences the patterns of life. Awareness and self-deception may be evolutionary adaptations, but their benefits and costs are environmentally and circumstantially relative. The idea that self-deception is bolstered through cultural codes of morality and ethics, as the stories reviewed suggest, is supported by psychological research. Whereas self-awareness does not seem to moderate adaptive self-deception to achieve mating success (Lynn, Pipitone, and Keenan 2014, unpublished), Lu and Chang (2011) found that self-deceptive enhancement positively predicts morality when self-consciousness is elevated. Types of self-deception, such as self-deceptive enhancement or diminution, are reinforced by the success or failure they engender (Lopez and Fuxjager 2012), as with Mr. Kurtz and Gerald, respectively.2 As these stories demonstrate, variation in experience and mentality complicates and facilitates reading the minds of others and helps us understand why it is important but why we are also not very good at it. There are likely genetic mechanisms underlying capacities like selfdeception that are heritable (Trivers 2000; 2011), which only matter for those who reproduce. In other words, maladaptive self-deception is evolutionarily irrelevant if it doesn’t prevent one from
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breeding. Thus, where it may be an artifact of youthful ignorance in some cases or overconfidence that is dispelled with age and experience, it could also be adaptive in propelling young people to migrate, force their values on others through intercultural adventuring, or spread their genes through sexual conquests and love. Contrary to the conception that human population size and cultural capacities to adapt have reduced selection pressures and resulted in the cessation of human evolutionary change, beneficial mutations have occurred more often and spread more quickly as human population sizes have increased (Cochran and Harpending 2009). Literature makes visible aspects of psyche we all have likely experienced or detected but find difficult to define. I suggest awareness of self-deception is only likely to rise to awareness when something goes wrong and therefore remains a largely submerged iceberg of consciousness. Self-deception likely aids and is abetted by well-being and is influenced by intensity of emotion and sense of control (Sahdra and Thagard 2003). This complements other examinations of self-deception that have used literature to highlight its many faces (Frost, Arfken, and Brock 2001) and utility in maintaining a moral “front” when one’s thoughts are being policed (Taslitz 2005). Conclusion Darwinian theory provides a vantage to situate narrative and literary theory in relation to all other disciplines, subsumed, ultimately, by the principles of evolutionary biology. Given this context, canonical literature should be relevant to basic biological precepts, including the organism and its environment, our adaptively evolved psychology, the relationship of proximate to ultimate causation, and creative exploration as a form of cognitive mapping. The costs and benefits of human cognitive mechanisms like awareness, the costs of consciousness, and the advantages and disadvantages of self-deception are apparent and subject
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to exploration in canonical literature in ways living humans and scientific studies are not. Future research can push the bounds of cognitive and evolutionary literary analyses of such themes by continuing to flesh out the “noise” of real human emotions and their conflicting diversities, as well as by assessing reader impressions of narrative saliency. The combined efforts of the sciences and humanities will continue to make advancements only hinted at through these novel explorations of classic works.
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Notes 1
I am grateful to Sid Greenfield for reminding me that cost/benefit analyses without reference to
a specific population is ethnocentric, as costs covary with awareness of options and for sharing his paper on this topic with me (Greenfield 2013, November). 2
One might argue that both were failures because of their self-deception, as the respective stories
culminated in their ultimate deaths. However, Kurtz died of illness, likely brought on via jungle pathogens—probably malaria—and the immunosuppression of exhaustion of his own megalomaniacal, successful excesses. Gerald was successful in business but miserable as a result of his self-deceptive inability to change and committed suicide.
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Table Click here to download Table: Table 1.docx
Table 1. Benefits and costs of self-awareness Benefits Costs Self-grooming Self-isolation Scenario-building Paralysis of analysis Pride Forecast inaccuracy Positive misperception of self Negative misperception of self Self-control Self-aggrandizement/low self-esteem Theory of mind Resentment Egotism Envy Guilt/shame
