revenge of the private life

It's often illuminating to actually read the classic books that have become famous cultural references...even clichés. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an excellent example. Before, I would've parroted the common idea that Jekyll and Hyde are two sides of one person that are in constant conflict. Now, it's abundantly clear that the relationship between them is far more nuanced in the source. And this loss of understanding comes with a loss of the insights the book portrays about the tangled complexity that a person's private life can take on. 

To start with, Jekyll admits upfront that he's always had a hidden side of himself, and it's a side that's had antisocial (...to say the least...) tendencies. His potion for manifesting the soul in a more direct bodily form merely provides a channel for that hidden side. The shallow interpretation that Jekyll is good and Hyde is bad fails immediately. Rather, Jekyll is the complex ambivalent whole and Hyde is one part temporarily separated. Hyde is Jekyll's opportunity to live out a private life freed from the blows to reputation that would normally be the consequences. He's Jekyll worst sets of impulses driving full-speed with all the brake lines cut. This is a form of freedom, despicable as it is. 

The pair share memories and in that sense they cannot be separate people. Personal memory is part of the essential definition of what distinguishes one person from another. And, just like setting up the mundane details of a private life, Jekyll starts by being all too happy to accommodate for Hyde. Hyde is provided with his own entrance and own discreet servant. To his upstanding lawyer's alarm, Hyde has a right of inheritance to all of Jekyll's possessions if Jekyll is gone. Finally, there's the obvious point that Jekyll drinks the potion regularly to give Hyde time to enjoy himself. Two beings in all-out war wouldn't keep drinking the potion to let the other take over for a while. Jekyll wants to give himself over to his private life, personified by Hyde...at first. Similarly, Hyde is fine with escaping into Jekyll to preserve the neat arrangement. Private life or not, the pair need to continue to make a living and take part in the public life of society with its interactions with lawyers and bankers and so on. They each recognize the uses for the other. Hyde's psychopathic selfishness approves.

Yet again this is the source's greater nuance and allegorical insight. To me the text is explicit that Hyde isn't an unthinking beast, just as Jekyll is no perfect angel. In the time periods that someone is gratifying their immoral and/or socially-shamed private life, they remain capable of normal thought. As already mentioned, this capability to think about long-term ramifications is how they're able to justify giving up the private life's, er, liberties again. Hyde's lack of empathy or any concern for society, as well as the greater strength and speed of his passions, results in a truly despicable level of self-control in the moment. But he can form coherent plans, albeit fear-driven ones, and manage to speak with some minimal courtesy when he must.

Naturally, the conflict does develop further. The need for rising dramatic action demands it, of course. It wouldn't reach a climactic ending if it stayed in a harmonious compartmentalization of public and private lives. My guess is that more people manage this sort of split than we hear about—by definition these successes are quieter than the catastrophic failures. I'd say that the best moral is that people need to find a compromise between their desires and the rules they live by. Jekyll's hardly the first who's ever needed to find a productive or at least harmless outlet. Smacking strangers in the face is bad, but punching a punching bag isn't. An extremely strict society that has no place for meeting the needs of the whole person isn't great. Generally speaking people are better off when they live authentically instead of setting up a private life. I don't think that's much of a revelation these days, though.

The striking aspect of the developing conflict between Jekyll and Hyde is its similarity to the experience of the addict. As with an addiction, the actions of Hyde escalate. The urges that drive Jekyll and Hyde adapt by requiring more and more drastic acts to achieve the same satisfaction. With Hyde this is accelerated because he isn't repelled by the more drastic acts in the way that a whole person would be. Jekyll narrates that while releasing Hyde was difficult in the beginning, his growing adaptation to Hyde gives him greater hesitation—represented by requiring greater doses of potion—in going back to his complete self. At the same time, he feels obligated to spend more and more effort undoing or compensating for the shameful things he does as Hyde. He feels that he's begun to go too far, but like an addict he cannot give it up or slow it down. After all, Hyde's appeal to Jekyll is a lack of moderation: normal limits on the self are inactive in that persona.

As if all this weren't intriguing already, the story makes another fine point that rings true: the revenge of the private life is that the lines blur. His mounting horror and desperation about his private life is accompanied by increasingly spontaneous switches to Hyde. One subtle effect is that this can be simply embarrassing, given that Jekyll's clothes are too big for Hyde. Addicts too are subject to any embarrassments that their out-of-control addiction leads to. Furthermore, he's eventually unable to conceal Hyde from his staff at home, in the manner that addicts are rendered unable to conceal their addictions from close associates over time. 

Jekyll becomes so fearful of transforming that he puts off sleeping or relaxing his self-resolve. The side of him that's primary is arguably changing from Jekyll to Hyde, bit by bit. Hyde was akin to a mask worn by Jekyll, but is Jekyll becoming more akin to a mask worn by Hyde? The more that a particular identity is engraved into someone's brain, deepening neuronal paths, then the harder it is to disrupt its activation. Reactions that are appropriate for the second identity start to cross over. Jekyll stops playing with fire by embracing Hyde, but he continues to feel the desire to give in, as if Hyde is growing restless. This is like someone who discovers that a starved urge will "take on a life of its own" after it's been indulged many times. When he releases Hyde to get some relief, Hyde's passions are stronger than ever. 

Then Hyde does his worst, which as everyone knows is "hitting rock bottom". Hyde is in trouble with the law and escapes by switching to Jekyll, who's absolutely contrite now. After rock bottom, he's more than eager to cut off Hyde altogether. Only now is the shallow picture of "good and evil sides fight" relevant. Again like an addict who's recovering by remaking himself, Jekyll commits himself to doing all the good he can and resuming his normal life before the potions. And again again like an addict in recovery, he's protected from the temptation of Hyde by his feelings of repulsion at the kind of person he once was. 

For him there cannot be a happy ending. One day he's feeling particularly complacent about his present moral superiority, and in that moment Hyde returns. His fear of the law's punishment motivates him to try to mix up the potion, but an ingredient is unavailable. He locks himself in at home, only for others to assume that he's murdered Jekyll and break in. He resorts to suicide; in fact Jekyll has been murdered at last by Hyde.

While an eternal battle of good and evil is a superb theme in its own right, I must say that the day by day struggle to keep caring is one that resonates with reality better. If one's EEEEEEEVIL side grows into a formidable enemy, that's usually because we've made it into one ourselves. In the past I might've agreed that there's a terrible Hyde evilness lurking in every "human heart from conception"; now I'd rather say that we as humans just have the starting material, both biological and cultural, that we've inherited over many many generations. It's up to us to choose what to do with it.

out of order

Here's a quick way to express the change in perspective that helped dislodge me from my former faith-based beliefs (which were in the US white evangelical category). Back then, my commitment to those beliefs was the starting point of my thinking. Those beliefs literally were introduced to me first before I learned various other ideas. Then, because those other ideas happened to correspond very well to reality, I was obliged to try to harmonize those with the faith-based beliefs. I had to cram the pieces I'd been handed into the crooked frame that I'd been handed long ago.

The epiphany was to stop assuming these grandiose ideas were accurate to begin with. The reason behind this tactic is simple: ideas like talk are cheap. None should be necessarily trusted because an idea can be fabricated and spread so easily. The way to cope with the deceitfulness of ideas is to decide that each one, no matter where it came from, is only as accurate as the results of the the methods that are used to hold it up next to reality. The details of the results matter of course, but equally as important are the details of the methods. "Good" results obtained through unsound methods haven't gained much credibility for the tested ideas.

I'd gotten the order wrong. Another way to put it is that people shouldn't start with an end result in mind and then proceed to manipulate the facts so it remains feasible. The instructions to follow are: take the idea that you wish were accurate, consider what facts you'd reasonably expect to find due to the effects of the idea, then finally examine reality through appropriate methods and judge whether the expected facts have been found in practice. 

The change was like asking myself, "If I weren't someone who'd been raised to treat my beliefs as presumptions, who instead had to treat my beliefs as conclusions to be demonstrated, how well would that go?" The mental shift to giving the honest answer to this question was a lengthy process. After thinking out of order for so long, backtracking was the only way forward.

my response to the newest exvangelical book

The book I'm responding to is Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon, an author in my generation. Overall it's both thorough and heartfelt. The thoroughness resulted in more chapters than I would've expected. Each one is devoted to a different topic and does an admirable job at covering it. Rather than speak in generalities, the book contains direct quote after direct quote expressed in actual interviews. (This has the side effect of displaying the value of expert hard-working journalism.) It strikes from many angles, all of which are worthwhile.

At the same time, this book's heartfelt nature stands out. While this is more than a memoir, the author is impressively blunt about her personal background and long journey. Her story rises to the front time and again, and it's always relevant when it does. Yet she also brings in concrete stories from a wide range of people who have different experiences than hers. It's striking how emotional it all is.

After reading these accounts, I find myself surprisingly grateful for the middle-of-the-road evangelicalism I came through. (I'm going to use "evangelicalism" to mean "typical U.S. white evangelical Protestantism".) I wasn't part of theologically-liberal, metaphorical-Bible, Northeast-respectable Christianity. Nor was I part of an ultra-conservative, literal-bible, Southern-country-fried Christianity. My family was in the conservative but somewhat laid-back camp, as paradoxical as that might sound. Hell for the unsaved was there, the distrust of modern culture was there, the belief that real miracles took place in olden days was there. But I wasn't taught in a school with a dubious "Christian" curriculum, or forbidden from the local library, or kept completely isolated from mass media, or attacked by "physical discipline". 

I even was permitted to ask honest questions about what I had been taught—although years later I tore apart the standard evasive answers to these questions ("free will *mumble mumble* ", "God's mysterious ways *ahem ahem* "). Furthermore, I'm not part of a minority group that would've resulted in knee-jerk mistreatment by this culture. In a nutshell, my evangelical story was just far less traumatic. This is partially why it took me longer to exit the beliefs, of course. In that way I was privileged by comparison. I remember reading once that the unplugged people in the Matrix movie trilogy tended toward minority groups because they were the ones who were less likely to find the Matrix's reality acceptable... 

I had the luxury of not being shocked into moving on from evangelical faith-beliefs. I gradually discarded them based on my own growing awareness and internal realizations. Because of this important difference, I suppose I'm in a closely related but distinct category to most of the people McCammon is fixated on. Several other differences spring from that one. Perhaps the most obvious is that I feel that the word "deconversion" fits me (the reversal of conversion i.e. de-conversion), where the book consistently uses "deconstruction". Along the same lines, I wouldn't particularly mind the label "atheist" or "agnostic", where the book is abundantly clear that exvangelicals, such as the author, are frequently settling down in flavors of Christianity that suit their taste better: flavors with loose and/or progressive-compatible beliefs.

Let me emphasize that I'm not strongly opposed to these flavors. And I'm fine with exvangelicals drawing vaguely defined inspiration or comfort from these sources. They may claim that they derive a few beneficial moral teachings from these, too. I'll roll my eyes a bit but won't complain; I know there are many devotees of many religions throughout history who've preached wisely sometimes. The vital point is that exvangelicals have moved to the driving seat of their brains and lives, rather than following inaccurate ideas. They themselves are filtering out inaccuracies, rather than trusting in religious authorities and texts to do the filtering for them. In fact, my suspicion is that more than a few evangelical church attendees, especially in popular megachurches, quietly take this approach. They attend out of family pressure or a lingering appreciation for the rituals, for instance, but their own stances and behaviors don't align with the church's official standards (and they like it that way). 

I can't help thinking that a crucial philosophical difference is at work. "Exvangelicals" in my mold haven't reacted to the evangelical mindset by adopting softer (or "more flexible" if you prefer) definitions of religious "truth". Nor do we start worshipping questions and declare that real answers are impossible. Nor do we replace one set of premodern doctrines with a set of postmodern doctrines. We're much less determined to salvage or adapt the faulty belief system we were raised in. A zealous few pour effort into undermining it and pursuing deconversions—I don't do that myself but I certainly care about stopping its policy ideas from affecting the rest of society. Naturally, the people who actively "de-evangelize" are a small subset of us, similar to the small subset of evangelicals who actively evangelize.

Our discarding of the mindset was accomplished by adopting harder (or "more substantiated" if you prefer) definitions of the accuracy of ideas. We re-weighed the accuracy of the ideas we'd followed, and the ideas simply and honestly didn't measure up. "The love of Jesus is bigger than conventional religious concepts have said" isn't equivalent to "Whoa, every religion including mine has consisted of a massive self-perpetuating loop of disinformation". We're "exvangelicals" insofar as we share a past, because we were once part of that evangelical culture as well. 

Yet the distinction in where we ended up is illustrated by the statements of some exvangelicals in the book that atheism is nothing more than another "rigid perspective". I'd counter that I might or might not be atheistic; we should proceed as we would with any question, by laying out the practical boundary tests for what counts as atheism and comparing those stark specifics to the details of my beliefs. Words can be annoying, but my mold of exvangelical reacts to that by firming up a word to make it more useful instead of pretending that words don't serve purposes.

Fortunately, philosophical disagreement isn't a barrier to allying with each other on U.S. politics. This book is upfront about the major boost to exvangelicals' numbers by recent political shifts. As evangelicalism's totalitarian (or "Christian nationalist" if you prefer) impulses have risen to the surface, it has driven away the people who've never wanted their religion to be a force of oppression. I appreciated the focus on this phenomenon, which I hadn't noticed. I'd only noticed how blatantly satisfied most evangelicals appeared to be—from the famous leaders at the top all the way down to the high-turnout voters in the pews—with idolizing politicians who promised unmerciful control, and revenge against ideological enemies, and the rollback of cultural advancements. 

It makes sense that the sharpening of this knife-edge in the culture would prod people to finally make some hard decisions about what they're willing to be part of. My own exvangelical views had blossomed years before the present era, around the midpoint of Obama's first term. Disillusionment with W.'s terms had played some relatively minor role in the process. I was repulsed by two things. First, evangelicals proved themselves to be unconditionally supportive of multiple drawn-out wars. Second, they were enthusiastic to cast all Muslims, at home and across the world, as not merely the "tolerated believers in false religion" they were before but now as demonic tools. So the ugliness of the politics had already begun to show, but of course there was much more to come. All it took to push the ugliness further were politicians who have no capacity for shame.

Thus the exvangelicals have my earnest sympathies. It's awful what they've had to endure, but I'm glad  they've escaped. I'd consider them as being on my side...to the extent that's meaningful for either of us. The deconverted and the deconstructed shall get along just fine. And they'll have very familiar stories to exchange.