The Snake Oil of Greatness
There’s that sequence in American Beauty where Annette Bening’s realtor character strips down to her bra and furiously scrubs down every surface of a property she’s trying to unload, all the while vehemently, rhythmically reciting the acidic mantra “I will sell this house today, I will sell this house today.” It’s a great scene. Not just because it conveys the character’s scathing disappointment in her own life and marriage, though it certainly does that — it’s great because it portrays with cloying precision a deadly American trait: the Forced March of Positivism.
The Forced March of Positivism holds that if we can just bear down and give it enough elbow grease, and marshal our will to focus on the silver goddamn lining, however meager it might be, then we will by god triumph — whether over the land beneath our boots, or the people we displace to lay hold of it. We have a national myth that holds it was stick-to-itiveness and moxie that put American goddamn footprints on the moon, and that permitted a buck private to take a goddamn dump in Saddam’s goddamn palace crapper. Like a boss. Taking a selfie.
In moderation, a positive outlook is obviously an asset — it can enable us to find unknown reserves of perseverance and steadfastness we might not otherwise know to draw upon. But this is goddamn America, goddammit. We don’t know shit about moderation. We figured out how to fit a half gallon of Mountain Dew into the fucking cup holder. We fry Snickers. We invented the keg stand. Moderation can sit the fuck down, sip its fucking tea, and get to bed at a reasonable goddamn hour.
Positivism taken to extremes, though, becomes disastrous and self-defeating. Because it passes from a training regimen of thought to become an article of faith — written in fire, impervious to information. As with any leap of faith, it requires us to refuse the possibility of other contingencies and to internalize any deviations from the predestined path as our own, not as any deficiency in the system.
This leads us to all manner of reckless bullshit. Because it is not merely that it is in the nature of an agitated snake to bite, so much as that the snake handler’s faith has lacked the purity to place him under the bell jar of god’s shielding grace, away from striking fangs. The failing is of the faithful, not the object of that faith.
So it is with our Abject Positivism. We are given to understand that each of us is a Horatio Alger pumped full of helium and that we will each rise and rise and rise. From billboards and boardrooms, podiums and pulpits, classrooms and courtrooms, the drumbeat sounds — if you are a person of good character who remains upbeat no matter what, and you work hard, you can move mountains. Prosperity and plenty are ours for the wishing, and we need only believe with enough ardor, and it will be so. But it is not so. Most of us will not rise and rise and rise.
It’s a good story. But like most good stories, it’s shot through with omissions and outright lies. Most of us will not rise, we are earthbound. And once staked to a patch of earth, mostly, there will be no soaring — not for you, or your children, or your children’s children. And the story is not medicinal. But we glug it down anyway, because we are sick, and want badly for the story to make us well.
But the story is so seductive. And like most stories that are seductive, it relies on some audience participation. So we believe. And our belief is cheered — the more fervid we are, the more loudly we profess it, the more likely we are to be celebrated.
Which would be fine. Believing in stuff that renders you a little more buoyant and hopeful is good. But. Like any corpus of faith, it has a dank underbelly of fanaticism and fear, persecution and extremity. And the zealot, knowing the story to be perfect, blames herself for any failure to live the story. The story is unassailable. The story is a marvel and a mercy.
So the prosperity and plenty betrothed to each of us by the story, though, rolls on past us, as it will, in its gilded hearse. And it doesn’t even wave. And we catch a wavering glimpse of ourselves in a puddle. And we conclude that the prosperity and plenty are correct to spurn us. For they could see our faith was wanting.
So we double down.
As we stare after the receding gilded hearse, its gold pennants furrowing in the breeze, we come to regard the prosperity and plenty in their splendid coach as more worthy and real than we ourselves are, though we can feel the ragged breath in our throats, the blood quickening through our limbs. As the shimmering gate draws closed behind the gilded hearse, we resolve to strive harder, because the promise that dwells within those glorious walls is so luminous and wise and magnificent.
And we are grubby and weak and busted. But our allegiance is with the promise within those walls. And if we must sell off our neighbors and our woodlands and our prospects to demonstrate that we are deserving, we will do it. And if the details of the story dissolve, and the story gets warped and corroded, still we will listen, and still we will be seduced by the story.
Because perhaps we faltered in our memory. We got the story wrong. The new version of the story — THIS is the one, true story. If this good and worthy story feels different to us, if it does not gibe with the story we wrongly recall. We will heed the new story, and will become ensnared in it. The story remains true. The story remains flawless. It is we who must continue to bend. It is we who must remake ourselves, again and again if we must, to fit into the story.
We will chase it. And we will flail. And we will want.
And if we are very, very lucky, we will catch a glimpse of the gilded hearse as it whispers past. And we will lace up our boots. And we will march. And we will stay — above all things — positive.
You can find longer essays, satire, fiction, and info on the workshops I teach in Chicago on my site: ianbelknap.com — also, check out the WRITE CLUB podcast
