Trifles, Our World, and Black Moods So now we have a rough genealogy and definition of boredom; let"s explore the phenomenon a bit more. At first glance, it seems that boredom is all the same, but on closer inspection (a MUST for Holmes) it appears that there are actually several distinct types of boredom, at least according to Heidegger. Each type is defined by the distinct way that it forces us to experience the world and the things in it.
The first type of boredom is the one we encounter most in the Holmes stories, and in our own lives. It"s when we are bored by something. It may be a task or an object that bores us. But there"s nothing inherently boring about the things that bore us, even though they cause our boredom. Being boring is not a property a thing might have, like being red or round. You can see this by thinking about the distinct reactions we often see coming from Holmes and Watson in relation to a single problem. For instance, when Holmes "reads" Watson"s mind, demonstrating the ease with which one might ape the parlor trick of Poe"s Dupin, the two characters plainly display how one and the same thing can be boring and not boring ("The Adventure of the Cardboard Box"). The demonstration, like many demonstrations, bores Holmes-it"s a trifle, a gas, a thing hardly worth thinking about. But it astounds Watson (many things astound Watson).
Nevertheless, it won"t do to say that it"s entirely subjective whether one is bored by something. In this type of boredom, there is a very definite, though not easily definable, level of partic.i.p.ation on the part of the object. The object is somehow attuning us to boredom. Some other object in its place would not be boring. Once again, think of Holmes. A case that initially bores him can have a peculiar twist in it that will suddenly change the face of matters in such a way that he is now quite interested. As in the case of the Red Circle, a single turn makes Holmes remark that "the case certainly grows in interest." Nothing about Holmes has changed-he remains as he ever was. But something in the nature of the case has gone from being the cause of boredom to the cause of excitement. Boredom, then, is neither subjective nor objective, but has to do with how those two spheres interact. When we"re bored by something, there is a failure to engage the two spheres in an interesting way.
Sometimes, though, we are not bored by any particular thing-we are simply bored. Nothing engages us. This is what Heidegger calls being bored with . . .
Being bored with . . . is a strange mood, but a common enough one. Heidegger gives the example of being at a dinner party, engaging in usual small talk, having a nice meal, and only later realizing that we were bored out of our minds. Holmes, ever the astute observer, knows beforehand that he will experience this type of boredom. Upon receiving a note from his wouldbe client in "The Adventure of the n.o.ble Bachelor," Holmes comments that it appears to be "one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie." There was nothing particularly boring about the party or the company. It is something about ourselves-we carry our boredom with us.
According to Heidegger, this second type of boredom is a deeper level of boredom, one that tells us more about our way of being-in-the-world. Because it"s not simply about how we relate to individual objects, but about how we relate to our world as a whole (note: our world is not the same thing as the world). This deeper level of boredom tells us more about the kinds of beings we are, largely because of its connection to time. In truth, all forms of boredom have intimate connections to time. When we"re bored by . . ., time moves slowly, sometimes incredibly so. We glance at our watches or clocks constantly, and despair of the end ever arriving. When we are bored with . . ., on the other hand, time does not seem to move at all. It is only in retrospect that we realize how fast time has gone by-not because we were enjoying ourselves, but because nothing really pinned us down. Time may fly when we"re having fun, but we still have the sensation of time pa.s.sing. When we are bored with . . . time simply does not pa.s.s. It has pa.s.sed, and we wonder where it went.
To give a more modern example of this type of boredom, think about checking your e-mail. You sit down to accomplish a task that should take five minutes at the outside. And yet, often when we go to perform this simple task, entire hours pa.s.s while we complete it. One minute, I am just trying to send off a brief message or see if so-and-so has gotten back to me. The next minute, several hours have pa.s.sed in which I"ve been watching Youtube videos of no real interest and getting angry at inaccurate articles on Wikipedia.
A further sort of boredom is well exemplified in the early Holmes stories. We can see it in Holmes"s "black moods". This is the mood that Heidegger calls "profound boredom." Heidegger held that our moods reveal fundamental truths to us, truths about ourselves and our world. In this respect, profound boredom is second only to Angst (roughly, the fear of death)-some scholars, in fact, have argued that in Heidegger"s writings after Being and Time, boredom overtakes Angst as the fundamental attunement of Dasein (or for Heidegger, human ent.i.ty).
"Profound boredom," he says in his essay "What is Metaphysics?", "removes all things and human beings and oneself along with them into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals beings as a whole." In our normal lives, our predominant moods, everything is dictated by our temporal nature. We are creatures grounded in the past and rushing headlong into the future. This fact colors our experience of the world.
As I type this chapter, I experience the computer as a useful part of my world-I don"t experience the computer itself. In a certain sense, I don"t even notice it. I could notice it, if it suddenly froze. But then I experience it only as a hindrance-it would be getting in the way of my rush to the future. In profound boredom, however, that rush is suspended. I remain a temporal being but my connections to the past and the future are cut off. I am suspended in the present, forced to confront things as they are, as separated from my projects. Indeed, it is one of the few times when I am forced to confront myself and the world, with nothing in between. Given Holmes"s energetic nature, and his laser-like focus on his projects, it"s small wonder that he should find the mood of profound boredom intolerable.
Three Times the Solution, or . . .
We now have three problems, not one: 1. boredom by . . .
2. boredom with . . .
3. profound boredom It"s not simply a matter of overcoming or avoiding boredom-we have to figure out how to deal with each type of boredom. What works for one might not work for another. Our guide so far is of no help. Heidegger"s a.n.a.lysis of boredom includes no clues as to how to avoid or escape it. Some have even gone so far as to claim that boredom is inescapable. Arthur Schopenhauer argued that life was a constant oscillation between pain and boredom. Later, in "The Antichrist," Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Against boredom even G.o.ds struggle in vain." In the short philosophical tradition dealing with boredom, only three solutions have been offered for this problem: amus.e.m.e.nt, work, and religion.
When we"re bored by something, the answer is relatively simple: find something else. We can see this in the way Holmes pa.s.ses on cases. The ones that will bore him he pa.s.ses by in favor of the ones that interest him. In the same way we can cure ourselves from being bored by things-it is a matter of diversion. Immanuel Kant recommended work as the cure for boredom (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, pp. 13336). In this case, he was talking about the boredom caused by amus.e.m.e.nts of various sorts. One can see his point-a sustained burst of focused effort is often a welcome antidote to the monotony of repet.i.tious amus.e.m.e.nts. But Kant never tells us how to overcome the boredom of work. Still, either work or various forms of amus.e.m.e.nt will be effective in helping us overcome being bored by . . .
The second case is a bit more complex. First, it is difficult to tell when we are being bored with . . . in the way Heidegger describes. Once we realize that we have been bored in this way, we are no longer bored. None of Holmes"s typical escapes from boredom seem to apply to this type. Escape requires an act of will which itself requires some sort of desire. If you don"t know you"re bored when you"re bored then the unpleasantness of boredom is not disturbing. At least, not until afterwards. That"s when you have that terrible revelation that you have just wasted several hours of precious time.
Perhaps, on second thought, we can relate this type of boredom to some of Holmes"s activities-particularly to his non-work and non-narcotic amus.e.m.e.nts. Holmes is a Victorian gentleman in almost every way, including his status as an amateur scientist. He has published a variety of monographs, including the fruition of his retirement years, a manual on beekeeping. Some of these are directly related to his work as a detective, but others, like the "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture," reflect Holmes"s straightforward pa.s.sion for learning. These monographs, along with the hobbies they often reflect, represent a way of warding off this second type of boredom. Unlike being bored by . . ., being bored with . . . cannot be fought against or escaped from; it must be evaded.
Profound boredom is the most difficult kind to shake. This may be why Heidegger recommends that we simply embrace it. It may also be why Holmes turns to narcotics to avoid it.
But why worry about it at all? Sure, boredom isn"t pleasant, but there are worse things in the world, right? But boredom, while not especially distressing in itself, may be the source of many problems. At least two modern philosophers have argued that most of our self-inflicted problems are caused by boredom. Blaise Pascal says that "All human evil comes from a single cause, man"s inability to sit still in a room" (Pensees, p. 47). More recently, Sren Kierkegaard goes even further and states on that "Boredom is the root of all evil" (Either/Or, Volume 1, p. 289).
Jeremy Paul"s non-canonical play "The Secret of Sherlock Holmes" clearly displays the link between boredom and evil. In the course of the play Holmes hints that he may in fact have created his nemesis, the infamous Professor Moriarty. Why? Put yourself in Holmes"s shoes. He"s an unequaled intellect. On occasion he meets a puzzle that challenges him, but these occasions are infrequent and fleeting. How to relieve the boredom? What does he need? Drugs aren"t helping anymore-Watson"s a total square. Friends aren"t working-their astonishment is briefly amusing, but not engaging. You need an opponent, an equal and opposite number. If one can"t be found, make one.
Pascal and Kierkegaard have the same recommendation for avoiding this sort of profound boredom and its consequences, but I don"t think it would really work for Holmes. Pascal and Kierkegaard argue that the way to escape from the sort of profound boredom is through a religious life. This touches on something we mentioned earlier: boredom"s often caused by our lack of interest in the world, which can be traced to a lack of a sense of purpose. Religion, at least in theory, provides that purpose. Still, the purpose provided by religion depends on the ability to believe in religion. Holmes, being the modern character he is, has a murky relationship to religion at best. Aside from one rather uncharacteristic monologue about the beauty and uselessness of roses in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty," he never seems to broach the subject, except when his quarry has some vague connection to a foreign and mysterious religion.
The Seven Percent Conclusion There are several ways to combat the various types of boredom. Few of them are effective for very long. Much as I disagree with Pascal"s and Kierkegaard"s recommendation, it has the virtue of getting to the heart of the problem. The issue is that their solution depends on a complete change of worldview. It is not enough to simply "get" religion to combat boredom-one would have to shift one"s entire way of living in the world to a medieval perspective. Modern religious people face boredom too, sometimes while engaged in the act of worship. Regardless of how appealing you may find the idea of combating boredom with religion-and some do-it"s simply not possible. The modern world can be, among many other things, intrusive.
So how do we deal with boredom without the use of a time machine? Holmes offers a few possibilities: work, amus.e.m.e.nt, drugs, and evil. Clearly, we"re going to want to avoid the latter two for a variety of reasons-the cure would be worse than the disease. As for work and amus.e.m.e.nt, they"re quite effective when dealing with being bored by something, provided they are not the source of our boredom. They can help us avoid being bored with . . . as well. But they do nothing for profound boredom.
The problem with all of Holmes"s solutions, indeed all of the common solutions to boredom, is that they confront a symptom rather than the disease. Boredom may be epidemic, but it is not the epidemic. There"s something underlying it, something intrinsic in modern life that makes us bored. So, we have to learn to live with it, because modernity is not going anywhere.
Chapter 26.
Willful Self-Destruction?
Greg Littmann.
"But consider!" I said earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle."
-Dr. Watson in The Sign of the Four The greatest mystery in the Sherlock Holmes canon is this: How is it possible for a fellow as clever as Sherlock Holmes to be a habitual user of cocaine?
Holmes"s cocaine use is more mysterious than the fate of Dr. Watson"s bull-pup, the number of times Watson was married, or the issue of exactly which of the good doctor"s limbs received a Jezail bullet at the battle of Maiwand.
Holmes is intelligent enough to know that he shouldn"t inject cocaine and yet, for many years, he does so regularly when bored. Indeed, on at least one occasion he injects himself with a seven percent solution three times a day for several months, leaving his forearm "all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncturemarks" (The Sign of the Four). Had not Watson eventually "weaned him from that drug mania" ("The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter"), he may never have given it up, eventually retiring to the Suss.e.x Downs to disastrously (if hilariously) combine heavy cocaine use and beekeeping.
It might be tempting to excuse Holmes"s behavior on the grounds that the dangers of the drug were not well known at the time. After all, cocaine was legal in England until 1917 and many believed that it was harmless, or even medically beneficial. Some doctors prescribed cocaine for their patients, and cocainebased medicines were openly and enthusiastically advertised-"A useful present for friends at the Front" promised one 1915 ad in The Times, unwittingly doing its bit to make World War I just a little more dangerous for the British soldier.
However, as Watson eloquently argues in The Sign of the Four, the drug may well be harmful for all that is known about it, and it makes no sense for Holmes for take any risks with the thing that matters most to him in life-his extraordinary brain. How could someone so intelligent do something so foolish? Baffling!
The Mysterious Nature of Weakness of Will I was horrified by my first glimpse of Holmes next morning, for he sat by the fire holding his tiny hypodermic syringe. I a.s.sociated that instrument with the single weakness of his nature, and I feared the worst when I saw it glittering in his hand.
-"The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter"
When people give in to the temptation to do something that they know isn"t in their best interests, we say that their will fails them. What makes weakness of will of the sort Holmes displays so mysterious is that he is not choosing between two different goals, but between two different degrees of achieving the same goal-happiness. Yet with happiness as his goal, he chooses the path of less happiness over the path of more happiness.
Holmes shoots up because the cocaine is pleasurable-it helps to relieve his boredom when his mind is not absorbed by a case. However, his habit is liable to bring him less pleasure in the long run. If Holmes were ever to learn that he had damaged his faculties of reason, he would surely be plunged into despair for life. So Holmes takes cocaine for the sake of pleasure, but at the same time understands that he will likely receive less pleasure by doing so. How can it be?
To make the problem clearer, consider the absurdity of someone taking pleasure as their goal, and then choosing a course of action that brings them suffering instead. Imagine Watson returning to 221B Baker Street one evening to find Holmes sitting by the fire, repeatedly striking himself in the face with his violin. Shocked, Watson demands to know the meaning of this. Holmes explains, through swollen lips, that he had picked up the instrument because he thought it would be enjoyable to play it, but having reflected upon the fact that it would be most unpleasant to be repeatedly struck in the face with it, he had chosen that course of action instead. "Whatever is your object, Holmes?" cries Watson in amazement. "Pleasure Watson, though this activity gives me none and never shall," replies the great man and smashes his fifty-five shilling Stradivarius into his thin, hawk-like nose with a strength for which Watson should hardly have given him credit.
Such a scene would make no sense. If Holmes"s object is pleasure, it is absurd for him to knowingly choose suffering instead. However, if it"s absurd for one seeking pleasure to choose suffering instead, it is presumably no less absurd for one seeking pleasure to choose the lesser pleasure over the greater. It"s akin to desiring money but, upon tunneling from your cellar into the bank vault next door, stealing only half of what is there. So how can it be that Holmes continues to take cocaine in the interests of his own happiness, knowing full well that his happiness would be better served by refraining?
A Mystery You Cannot Ignore "Should you care to add the case to your annals, my dear Watson," said Holmes that evening, "it can only be as an example of that temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be exposed. Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest is he who can recognize and repair them."
-"The Disappearance of Lady Francis Carfax"
There"s nothing unusual about a human being giving in to pleasure by doing something that they know will not serve their happiness in the long run. You yourself do this. Perhaps you eat too much, or drive too fast, or smoke tobacco ("poison" as Watson reminds us). You might even gamble more than you can afford, like Sir George Burnwell ("The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet") or trifle with the affections of young ladies, like that king of bohemians, the king of Bohemia ("A Scandal in Bohemia").
Whatever exactly your vices may be, you know very well that you have them (shame on you!). However, as Holmes so often reminds us, the fact that an event is not exotic does not indicate that it lacks deep mystery. Indeed, it is the fact that such baffling behavior is so common that makes it so philosophically important. We"ll be using Holmes as our touchstone because he provides such a clear example (perhaps literature"s clearest example) of the problem at hand. However, this mystery directly concerns us all. How is it that, in the interests of happiness, we do things we know are likely to make us less happy? The answer to this question may provide us with clues about how to stop.
As Sherlock Holmes recognizes, a reliance on one"s own powers of observation and reasoning is most useful to one who considers the conclusions of other people. Holmes makes up his own mind, but this does not dissuade him from attending university, consulting the Times, or lounging for days in his armchair with his blackletter editions. Similarly, while you will have to make up your own mind about how human beings can knowingly act against their own interests, philosophers have been wrestling with this issue for about two and a half thousand years. The lines of battle were drawn early, in Ancient Greece.
Socrates Takes the Case "No crime, but a very great error has been committed," said Holmes.
-"The Man with the Twisted Lip"
It was the philosopher Socrates (469399 B.C.) who got the debate rolling by famously claiming that such weakness of will, akrasia in the Greek, is a myth. He thus took an approach to solving the problem of akrasia similar to that taken by Holmes to solving the problems of the Hound of the Baskervilles and the Suss.e.x Vampire.
Denying the existence of akrasia does not resolve the mystery in itself, any more than Holmes had solved the Baskerville case when he first doubted that the supernatural hound persecuting the Baskerville line was real. For Holmes, it still remained to explain what was going on-who was really behind the strange events at Baskerville Hall, and who really killed Sir Charles. Similarly, it would not be enough for Socrates to simply deny that weakness of the will is real-he must provide an explanation of what is actually going on in cases of apparent akrasia. If Sherlock Holmes is not being "akratic" when sinking the needle into his vein, how the devil can he come to do such a thing?
Searching for clues to explain apparently akratic behavior, Socrates makes an interesting observation: whenever we choose a less pleasant course of action over a more pleasant course, the lesser pleasure is always nearer to us in time than the greater pleasure.
It makes sense to us that Sir George Burnwell might have ruined himself gambling by choosing the immediate thrill of the game over his long-term financial interests, but if he had ruined himself by exchanging a fortune now for some thrilling games many years in the future, his motivation would be a mystery. Similarly, it makes sense to us that Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, King of Bohemia, might choose the immediate pleasure of Irene Addler"s company even when he knows it is in his best interests in the long term to protect the house of Ormstein from scandal, whereas it would have made no sense if he had immediately thrown away his reputation in the interests of dallying with a woman he intended to abandon.
Again, we can understand that even someone as brilliant as Holmes might opt for the rush of cocaine right now rather than taking the best care of his brain, and thus, as Watson puts it, "for a mere pa.s.sing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed" (The Sign of the Four). On the other hand, it would be unimaginable for Holmes to subject himself to a chemical that he knew would destroy his great mental powers immediately, though it would give him a series of pa.s.sing thrills at some time in the distant future. Similarly, in our modern world, smokers would not smoke if the onset of lung cancer was immediate, nor drunk drivers take to the road if they had to crash the car first.
Socrates likens this phenomena to the optical illusion by which an object appears to be larger when it is closer (and like the auditory illusion by which a sound seems louder when it is closer). Apparent cases of akrasia, then, are really cases of misjudgment in which we mistake the relative magnitude of pleasures due to their relative distances from us; nearer pleasures seem larger and more distant pleasures smaller. Thus, it simply isn"t true that people knowingly choose the less pleasant alternative over the more pleasant alternative. Rather, beguiled by illusion, they choose the less pleasant alternative because they think it is the more pleasant alternative.
As Sir George Burnwell sat at cards, the pleasurable prospect of a big win on the next hand seemed more significant to him than the fact that he was slowly ruining himself; as the King of Bohemia gazed into the eyes of Irene Adler, the pleasure of her company seemed greater to him than the pleasure of his high position; and as for Holmes, the relief of his boredom loomed so large as he prepared his seven-percent cocaine solution, that it seemed more important to his happiness than any costs he might later incur. What they, and we, all need is not a strengthening of the will, but a greater mastery of the science of measuring the relative magnitudes of pleasures and pains. When we have mastered this ability, we will have the information needed to understand which pleasures are greater, and will no longer choose lesser pleasures over greater pleasures. What you and I must do, then, is develop this skill so that we can see things clearly. Exactly how we are to do this may remain to be determined, but at least we can know that what we are seeking is a refinement of our powers of reasoning.
Aristotle Examines the Evidence "There, that"s enough," said Lestrade. "I am a practical man, Mr. Holmes, and when I have got my evidence I come to my conclusions. If you have anything to say, you will find me writing my report in the sitting-room."
-"The Adventure of the Norwood Builder"
Mystery solved? Perhaps, but many philosophers think Socrates is accusing the wrong suspect. Playing Lestrade to Socrates"s Gregson, Aristotle (384322 B.C.) protested that the intellectualized Socratic account fails to match up with the way that akrasia manifestly appears to operate (Nicomachean Ethics). On Socrates"s account, we never know that one course of action is best for us but take another course of action instead. Yet you and I and Aristotle are only too familiar with the feeling that we know what is best for us, yet choose to do something else instead. As you raise the lethal cigarette to your lips (or otherwise indulge your vices), it seems to you that you are perfectly aware of the consequences-consequences you would never choose directly.
Perhaps most powerfully, it seems absurd to suppose that Holmes is unaware of the danger he is placing himself in by indulging in heavy cocaine use. Holmes is a fellow who misses nothing, "the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen" ("A Scandal in Bohemia"). Yet his cocaine use seems entirely plausible to us, a trait that is not incomprehensible, but compellingly human. We understand that the great Holmes could do something he knows he shouldn"t because we do that too. Not only does akrasia seem horribly real, it feels not like an intellectual exercise, but a struggle of some sort, as if we wrestle with the Moriarty of our bad desires above the Reichenbach Falls of self-sabotage.
Aristotle, like Holmes, is aware that appearances need not reflect the way that things really are. What looks from the street like a chap in his dressing gown reading the Times might really be a wax dummy, while what clearly appears to be a case of murder may turn out to be misadventure by racehorse. However, like Holmes, Aristotle believed that our theories should not contradict what appear to be the facts without very good reason.
Aristotle held that akrasia is real, and results not from an error in measurement, but from a clash between reason and emotion. When we fail to do what we know is in our best interests, we give in to our pa.s.sions rather than following our reason. Sir George ruins himself at the card table because he follows his greed and excitement rather than calculating probabilities and cutting his losses, the king of Bohemia exposes himself to blackmail because he follows his attraction to Irene Adler rather than coolly considering his future and rejecting her, while Holmes injects cocaine simply because he"s doing what feels good rather than heeding his extraordinary powers of reason.
Aristotle"s disagreement with the Socratic account is not complete, though, for he thinks that while in one sense the akratic person knows what they"re doing, in another sense they don"t. He compares their condition to the state of one who is asleep, or mad, or drunk. There"s a sense in which one is no less knowledgeable when half awake, or suffering from depression, or drunk. "Black Peter" Carey, the feared ship"s captain who became "a perfect fiend" when drunk ("The Adventure of Black Peter") does not suddenly become ignorant of the fact that murderous violence is illegal when he"s full of rum. Yet we may say that his reason is clouded in his drunken state. His case is not unusual. I can think of at least four cases that Holmes solved due to the foolish errors of drunken men who should have known better-"The Adventure of the Copper Beeches," "The Adventure of Abbey Grange," "The Adventure of the Ill.u.s.trious Client," and "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger"-while the number of villains who committed criminal acts when intoxicated, though they should have known better, is greater yet, including, at the least, "The Five Orange Pips," "The Gloria Scott," "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist," and The Valley of Fear.
Similarly, perhaps the rest of us become "drunk" with our very desire for drink, or cigarettes, or food, or whatever our vices may be. We would not expect even the great Holmes to be able to prevent his reason being clouded by enough alcohol, and so perhaps can understand through a.n.a.logy how he, too, might become "drunk" with the desire for cocaine.
I shall leave aside the curious matter of Holmes"s apparent resistance to opium smoke in "The Man with the Twisted Lip." Watson enters an underground opium den in the wharf district, a "low room, thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke" to the point that he can barely see through it. He soon learns that Holmes has been sitting in the thick of the cloud for many hours in disguise. Either Holmes has a unique immunity or he"s high off his noggin and makes up the Isa Whitney case on the spot to avoid yet another lecture from Watson about drug abuse.
If Aristotle is right, then we will need more than an intellectual understanding of the relative magnitude of pleasures if we are to overcome our tendency to akratic behavior. We will have to master our emotions in order to resist temptation, a process that Aristotle thinks lies in consistent practice. Thus, it is through consistently practicing not giving in to his desire for cocaine, a desire that Watson a.s.sures us Holmes never loses, that Holmes manages to wean himself from the drug. Similarly, what you and I need to do is to practice resisting our own vices, until our new behavior becomes natural to us.
The Game"s Afoot "Here you are, doggy! Good old Toby! Smell it, Toby, smell it!" [Holmes] pushed the creasote handkerchief under the dog"s nose, while the creature stood with its fluffy legs separated, and with a most comical c.o.c.k to its head . . ."
-The Sign of the Four Mystery solved now? Not yet, though the game"s afoot and well worth the candle. At best, we have been given some telling clues. While Aristotle"s theory accounts relatively well for our experiences of akrasia (and while he has far more to say on the subject than I"ve had s.p.a.ce to convey), much remains to be explained. Most strikingly, it isn"t clear that he ever resolves the problem that led Socrates to deny that akrasia is possible. If our goal is pleasure, and we are free to act, why would we choose to follow an emotion that we know will lead us to less pleasure? It seems to make as much sense of our hypothetical case above in which Holmes, having only music as his goal, chooses to strike himself in the face with his violin rather than play it.
How can someone as brilliant as Holmes use cocaine? Socrates and Aristotle would have been unable to agree, and philosophers still can"t agree, two and a half thousand years later. Yet weakness of will is a mystery that we can"t ignore, since we care about our own wellbeing and don"t want to sabotage ourselves by opting for a lesser good over a greater one. The mystery of weakness of the will is the only case that Sherlock Holmes needed to solve for his own sake. It is also the only case that Sherlock Holmes failed to solve. Holmes could never break his cocaine habit on his own. It was good old Watson who "weaned him from that drug mania," not the power of his own reason and will. Let us hope that we do better on this case than Sherlock Holmes.
Chapter 27.
Like Some Strange Buddha.
Cari Callis.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
-The Buddha.
My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don"t know.
-"The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"
Sherlock Holmes has become my spiritual teacher, though it took me forty years to figure that out. Arthur-dare I be so familiar with Holmes"s literary agent?-Arthur and I had something in common; we both loved Harry Houdini. And we both had a love-hate relationship with Sherlock Holmes.
For weeks, I carried around The Original Ill.u.s.trated Sherlock Holmes Complete Volume from Wilson Junior High Library. The weight of it felt important. Back then I equated wisdom with the size and heft of the text. The Bible. The Arms of Krupp. The Tolkien Trilogy. Shakespeare. And this equation has for the most part remained true, at least until recently when nearly all of my books suddenly became digital and weightless, and yes, there might be a metaphor here.
You see, Houdini was a trained magician dedicated to conditioning his body to create illusions, and I wanted to be like him. His underwater feat of holding his breath for three minutes while extricating himself from handcuffs and various constrictions inspired me to practice everyday in the bathtub and the swimming pool.
It was his complex friendship with Arthur-I mean Doyle-that led me down the path of reading all of Sherlock Holmes"s cases the summer I spent as a lifeguard. All that holding of my breath had paid off. If Houdini loved Sherlock Holmes then I would too.
What I discovered was that while Houdini used controlled breathing to free himself from handcuffs and locked chains, Holmes extricated the truth from criminal cases and unsolvable mysteries-both those that appeared to be foul play and those that appeared supernatural-through his awareness. His ability to find answers and solve mysteries depended upon what he saw that other people did not. In other words, Holmes was struggling to extract himself from illusion.
Watson and I were both amused by how simple his methods were once we knew them, and in "The Scandal in Bohemia," Holmes-sounding like a Buddhist teacher-instructs us, "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear."
The Art of Masterful Control Almost from the beginning of our introduction to Holmes, he"s equated with Buddhism. In The Sign of the Four, he is described by Watson as speaking brilliantly "on miracle plays, on mediaeval pottery, on Stradivarius violins, on the Buddhism of Ceylon, and on the warships of the future." Watson adds that he spoke "as though he had made a special study of it."
Stephen Kendrick, a Parish Minister of the Universalist Church, draws on the teaching of Buddhists, Christians, and Judaism to explore the stories of Sherlock Holmes and compares the focus that Holmes uses to see things without theories or preconceived ideas to the Zen practice of Bare Attention. Kendrick notes in his essay, "Zen in the Art of Sherlock Holmes": That Holmes would study Hinayana Buddhism seems surprising, until one actually looks at the ancient sources of this rigorous minority branch of Buddhism. Then the attraction becomes quite clear. Hinayana Buddhism, which claims to be the oldest, most accurate account of Buddha"s teachings, presents the Buddha as cool, rational, and emotionally distant, a strict and intellectually rigorous instructor.
Now that sounds like someone we know: cool, rational, and emotionally distant. In his first short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia," Watson describes Holmes by saying, "All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen . . ."
We learn that Holmes has masterful control of his emotions. This is one of the fundamental techniques of Vipa.s.sana meditation in the Hinayana-or more commonly as it is called, the Theraveda-tradition. The main idea of Theraveda, which literally means "The Teaching of the Elders," is to promote the "Teaching of a.n.a.lysis" which is not faith based, but originates with the idea that truth of any kind must be founded on critical a.n.a.lysis, personal experience, and reasoning as a means of coming to wisdom. To see things as they are is the ultimate aim of Vipa.s.sana or Insight Meditation.
In the Theraveda tradition there are many methods of meditation for developing mindfulness and concentration, and there are thousands of visualization techniques in the Tibetan tradition. The technique used is less important than the end result, which allows one to gain wisdom by eliminating the thoughts which obscure it. When we"re prejudiced and subjective, it"s impossible to be objective. The whole aim of Buddhism is to see dukkha (suffering) as dukkha, for what it is, not how we feel about it.
In Insight Meditation, when observing emotion, whether it is pain, pleasure, anger, or frustration, the practice is not to eliminate feeling, but to observe each emotion as it arises, recognize it"s impermanence, and not react to it. If we"re reacting and continuously justifying our reactions, those details that Holmes uses to solve his cases will elude us or worse, delude us.
"It is of the first importance," he cried, "not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning." (The Sign of the Four) Throughout the stories Holmes is frequently instructing Watson on how to differentiate between that which is true and that which is not by demonstrating his use of his reason and observation. When we see something and make something out of it, we can"t help but impose judgments upon it.
What "bare attention" in the Buddhist tradition means is a practice of Insight Meditation that uncovers or lays bare things as they really are. Holmes is telling Watson that he must practice not reacting to his expectations and that this will lead him to insight knowledge. He also reminds him, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." In this first short story, Doyle has already laid out for us the philosophy of Sherlock Holmes.
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
-Sherlock Holmes in "The Bos...o...b.. Valley Mystery"
Consider Holmes as a roommate with his nocturnal violin playing, "self-poisoner" by morphine, cocaine and tobacco, "who keeps his cigars in the coalscuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece." This doesn"t conjure up the image of a Zen Buddhist. But perhaps there is more to the violin playing, which Watson admits he does well, but as eccentrically as all of his other accomplishments.
That he could play pieces, and difficult pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me Lieder, and other favourites. When left to himself, however, he would seldom produce any music or attempt any recognized air. Leaning back in his armchair of an evening, he would close his eyes and sc.r.a.pe carelessly at the fiddle which was thrown across his knee. Sometimes the chords were sonorous and melancholy. Occasionally they were fantastic and cheerful. Clearly they reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether was simply the result of a whim or fancy, was more than I could determine. (A Study in Scarlet) Perhaps Holmes uses his focus on the violin as an Insight Meditation to uncover or reveal things as they really are. By keeping his body occupied with playing, he can observe his thoughts without cla.s.sifying or clarifying, but by being a witness without commentary. This is much like what Buddhists do when they are performing Walking Meditation. As Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist teacher and monk describes it, Walking meditation is not a means to an end; it is an end. Each step is life; each step is peace and joy. That is why we don"t have to hurry. That is why we slow down. We seem to move forward, but we don"t go anywhere; we are not drawn by a goal.
Holmes isn"t focusing on what he is playing as Watson observes, he simply plays when he needs to pa.s.sively register his ideas, thoughts, and concepts.
The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
-Pema Chodron, The Places that Scare You After being "resurrected" by Doyle from his tumble over Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty in "The Adventure of the Empty House," Holmes appears to Watson in the street disguised as a bookseller carrying a strange book called, "The Origin of Tree Worship." Buddhists today still worship the Bodhi tree in Sri Lanka which protected Buddha while he was meditating to gain enlightenment. Early Buddhists struggled to figure out whether or not trees could be cut down lawfully, and though it was ultimately decided that they could be, it was doc.u.mented that some trees contain sacred spirits, something people in India still believe today.