The Push & Pull of It All: Magnetism, Mercury, Charisma
Often, we imagine the world’s variety of bodies—human, animal, vegetal, geological—as discrete. Just look: we can see their limits clearly delineated. But all bodies extend beyond themselves, pushing and pulling other bodies—more fields than things per se (see Bernardo Kastrup and Rupert Sheldrake). From a certain angle, this whole universe hangs together by the ubiquitous sundry forces of attraction, repulsion, and indifference that take place between bodies: a physics of the imperceptible that quietly, and forcefully, shapes this world.
Magnets & Mercury: Things Pushing & Pulling Other Things
As I kid, I loved playing with magnets —feeling that push and pull as I’d flip them around. I’d say the feeling was erotic, even (though not sexual). I knew I was tapping into resonant forces which I couldn’t see and, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, were never discussed outside a rare science classroom.
All this was compounded when some kid brought a little jar of mercury to school (this was the early 70s). Watching the way one blob of mercury was drawn to other such blobs mystified me no end. I knew not to touch it as my mother had taught me that. But, come to think of it, why was she talking about mercury? Where’d this kid get mercury from? Why and how was he bringing it to school (it was not a school project)? Anyway, mercury deserves its name—a divine element, for sure.
My awe remained as untempered as my confusion. Why wasn’t this discussed more? Or is it that magnets and mercury are unique, outliers in the world of things? And yet I knew all bodies “have” gravity to some degree. Which means all bodies push and pull each other all the time, even if it’s quantitatively insignificant. Why weren’t we studying that — not just in science but in history, literature, in gym? I mean, these forces of attraction and repulsion seem like vital forces in this weird life of ours so doesn’t it behoove us to know how to operate with— and as—these forces?
Charisma, Attraction, Allure — as well as Grammar and Logic: People (and Ideas) Pushing & Pulling Each Other
Besides magnets, I loved Humphrey Bogart. As kids, we weren’t allowed to watch much TV but, as a family, we’d sometimes watch movies (pre-VHS so much thanks to New York’s PBS station, Channel 13). Casablanca and To Have and Have Not: O! I thought Bogie was just so freakin’ cool. I even got a big cardboard cut out of him I put in my room. He looked over me throughout my childhood. I was drawn to him much as magnets and mercury draw and are drawn.
Charisma is a kind of magnetism or gravity as people are drawn to a particular person just as suns pull planets towards themselves. We all know this experience: we are inexplicably drawn to some celebrities, to some movie stars (and of course repelled by others—the flip side of the same charisma magnet), to some folks in our social circles but not others. We may like all our friends; they may be nice, smart, interesting, even attractive. But we wouldn’t call all of them charismatic.
At every turn, we encounter forces that push and pull bodies but not all these forces are charisma. For instance, attractiveness is not charisma—even if charisma is, by definition, a force of attraction. To be attractive is to have a face that one enjoys looking at but which, despite the name, need not attract us. But, I have to say, the fact that we have a word in our everyday lexicon that speaks to the interpersonal physics of everyday life will never cease to delight me.
Or take one of my favorite terms: compelling. It’s an explicit admission that some things in this world act on us despite our will, that have a momentum of their own. an intrinsic movement. We are moved by things in this world other than cars and trains: we are moved by ideas, by art, by moods. Then there’s allure, a great word that overlaps the world of anglers: one body proffers a lure that others, perhaps even despite their best intentions, can’t resist.
These forces are not the sole domain of physical bodies (whether human, animal, or inorganic). Logic and grammar, for example, have built-in inevitabilities akin to the so-called “laws” of physics (I’m with Rupert Sheldrake on this—nature doesn’t have laws; it has habits). A body in motion will stay in motion, we’re told, unless something stops it. As anyone who has ever written knows, if you begin a sentence in a certain way, you are forced to use certain words, to construct sense itself in a certain way. (As a tip to young writers: if you find yourself in a pickle of a sentence, toss the whole thing and begin anew.)
Then there’s Logic—I, for one, believe there is more than one logic but, for our purposes here, I’ll stick to the Logic which forces a flow of argument, compelling conclusions. We could say that grammar and logic are forces like magnetism, gravity, and charisma only for the weightless bodies of language and thought.
There are of course other forces besides grammar and logic shaping what we say and think. Ideas and concepts can be charismatic: look how mobs of people espouse the same concept—a fact that never ceases to confuse me. Why don’t people have their own ideas? The answer, I suppose, comes from Nietzsche—and I’ll leave it at that. But my point: just as magnets, planets, and people push and pull other bodies, so do words, concepts, and ideas.
This is true of inanimate objects, as well. For years, I’ve enjoyed taking what I call “mood walks.” Like the Surrealist color walk in which you choose a color and then follow it wherever it takes you, a mood walk lets mood dictate. As I pass certain houses, trees, cars, other people, I note the mood of each as it passes over me— the way that house exudes a chill, that one a welcoming hello, this one is moody, ponderous, even. And so on.
The world is full—of itself—if you pay attention.
Charisma is Immanent
We tend to think of human interactions in biological, cultural, or ethical terms — what influences are at work, what’s right or wrong. Charisma, however, is none of those. I’d say it’s biological but which bodily function is at work? No, it seems to me it’s more a matter of physics, of how bodies nudge, repel, push and pull each other.
As the late, great Philip Rieff —a great and oddly compelling professor of mine from my undergrad days—reminds us, charisma was once considered a gift of god. “There is no charisma,” Rieff writes, “without creed.” Indeed, like mercury, charisma —as its etymology suggests—has long been considered a divine gift, a matter of grace rather than hormones. Now, for Rieff, this shift from the charismatics of Christianity to the stars of screen marks a major cultural crisis. Rather than being a divine force, something extraordinary, today’s charismatics are churned out by Hollywood studios and marketing machines—less a gift from god than a manicured everyday come-on. And yet.
While marketing machines may do their darndest to manufacture charisma, the fact remains charisma is a basic force of existence—a matter not of god or capitalism but of physics. Which is to say, charisma is immanent as much as magnets or a planet’s gravitational pull are — it’s just how a body goes in the world. I love noting the feel of that experience of being drawn towards certain people, certain celebrities, and repelled by others. I mean, c’mon, Humphrey Bogart can’t simply be constructed in a lab. There’s something there, something immanent, some way he goes in the world that draws bodies, eyes, attention: a magnet or small yet mighty planet.
Or take Peter Dinklage. While it can be argued that he’s attractive (I for one think so), his beauty is not what compels us. It’s his charisma. I could have chosen Carey Grant, Benicio Del Toro, or Natasha Lyonne—all charismatic—but I want to be clear that charisma has nothing to do with beauty. Hollywood is overrun with beautiful people who don’t have an ounce of charisma. They don’t hold our attention. Why? Because while charisma is rarely, if ever, universal, it is not something one learns to be: it is something one is — or, rather, it’s how one goes.
Of course, just as planets and stars age, gaining and losing gravity along the way, Hollywood stars’ charisma can come and go. At the risk of alienating people by using specific examples, look at Robert De Niro: his once mighty charisma—the way he commanded the screen—has all but evaporated. The reverse is possible, too, as over time one can become charismatic—and not by plastic surgery, mind you. Some actors gain magnetic power with age.
The Imperceptible yet Palpable Extension of Things
All things have greater or less fields that extend beyond their physical extension, what Rupert Sheldrake calls “morphic fields” (I highly recommend his book, Morphic Resonance.) In addition to magnets and planets, Sheldrake talks about cell phones which I think is a nifty, and compelling, example: a cell phone without a morphic field is just a weird fragile brick. Its utility lies not in its physical form but in its morphic field that extends far and wide.
For Sheldrake, the mind is just such a thing: it extends past the confines of the skull, reaching out and touching the world, perhaps even drawing bodies to it. Now, I’m not sure if charisma is a component of the extended mind or is a trait immanent to a body’s physicality—which would mean our bodies have morphic fields, not just our minds. (Of course this just begs the question: what is a mind? Perhaps I’m reifying a mind/body dualism. Or perhaps it’s not dualism but a distribution of forces immanent to different aspects of our bodies.)
All things extend past what we see, pushing and pulling. That includes you. Yep, you push and pull just as you are pushed and pulled—and not just by obvious things like work, taxes, traffic, words directed at and by you. You extend past your body — like magnets, planets, and cell phones. Like Humphrey Bogart. You attract bodies, no doubt repel others, probably leave most indifferent just as you, in turn, are attracted, repelled, and ignored by others—whether you realize it or not. You live within a vast world of interactions, a teem of morphic fields nudging you at every turn as your morphic field bumps into others.
Such is the universe: a constant negotiation of bodies that want to be near each other, don’t want to be near each other, are indifferent to each other, or some calculus of all of the above. Planets, like people, are complex: they have multiple feelings for any given thing. Life is rarely univocal, after all. We might call one version of this calculus of push and pull an orbit: you kinda like each other and also kinda don’t but you enjoy that ambivalence and have found peace, maybe even pleasure, in it. Friends of a sort. Or not.
Towards a Physics of the Imperceptible
My point, if I need have one or only one, is that bodies are not discrete objects—and we are not discrete agents—suspended in space. Rather, bodies—human and inhuman, visible and invisible—nudge each other beyond their physical extension. Between us, then, is not nothing. Between us, forces, fields, and bodies of sundry sort — charisma, grammar, logic, desire— act upon us just as our morphic fields, despite intention, act on others.
And yet our understanding of knowledge and behavior remains mired in the presumption of discrete, reasonable agency. Consider the way some ideas resonate with us, rile us, shape, inflect, inhabit, and define us. People fight, proclaim, assess, condemn others based on ideas that we’ve all been lead to believe stem from free will.
Perhaps, though, we don’t choose what to believe; we believe what chooses us. What ideas go with how we go, providing an entire discourse that suits our temperament.
As Nicholson Baker writes in his exquisite, hilarious, and brilliant essay, Changes of Mind, the very way we form opinions and change our minds happen predominantly behind our back and despite ourselves:
Occasionally a change of mind follows alternate routes. One belief, about which initially I would admit of no doubt, gradually came to seem more porous and intricate in its structure, but instead of moderating my opinion correspondingly, and conceding the justice of several objections, I simply lost interest in it, and now I nod absently if the topic comes up over lunch. Another time a cherished opinion weakened as I became too familiar with the three examples that advocates used over and over to support it. Under the glare of this repetition, the secondary details, the richer underthrumming of the opinion, faded; I seemed to have held it once too often; I tried but failed to find the rhetorical or figurative twist that would revive it for me. I crept insensibly toward the opposing view.
For Baker, belief and changes of mind come not from reasoned will but from the mechanics of thought, language, ideas, and how they interact with human being. What he gives us is a sequence of interactions between an idea, himself, and how he operates in the social realm. It’s a description of different kinds of bodies interacting: an idea became porous thereby pushing him away from it until he simply lost interest in it. Which is to say, something as profound as a belief stems not from righteousness or reason but from the way these bodies—the idea, Nicholson Baker, social settings—interact. A matter, perhaps, of physics.
I want to suggest that we can understand “beliefs” as interactions between bodies rather than as righteous do-or-die principle. That there’s a physics to how people and ideas interact, a field of knowledge that shifts how we stand towards the things we “believe” and say and, indeed, of how we stand towards each other and of ethics in general.
Perhaps, then, we should study these physics so we can learn how better to operate with a variety of bodies—from friends, families, and lovers to the words we utter and ideas we proclaim. A physics of the imperceptible quietly yet forcefully defining so much of what we call life.
