The Dreamer (A Manifesto)

"Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakens." ~ Jung

"Mark this well, you proud men of action!
You are, after all, nothing but the unconscious instruments
of the men of thought." ~ Heine

In this very brief essay I have attempted to defend a specific type of human being, alternately referable to as "the dreamer", "the visionary", "the philosopher", "the poet", and a multitude of other names directly or loosely associated with a common theme, typified by the internal compulsion to seek and explore the mysteries of man's inner psycho-spiritual realms. In the past, it has been wise to speak of these archetypes separately or, at least, with some eye toward discriminating between them, but, it is my conviction that, in the present age, these individual types are better served by an appreciation of their commonality in relation to another, drastically different type, which I will call, among other things, "the man of action", or "the man of the world".

Clearly, I am not the first to make this distinction, which many will recognize as belonging to the tradition of classical dialectic. My purpose in taking up this theme is not to "put new wine into old wineskins", but, just the opposite; to say again what has been said from the beginning, and must be repeated until all men are free. No doubt, it has been said before, and better, but I will believe my efforts here are not entirely without merit, provided only that they may contribute in some small part to maintaining an awareness of the profound importance of this dialectic in the minds of some modest number of my contemporaries. In a time when philosophy is almost universally devalued, even derided, it would appear that even a clumsy philosopher is better than none.

The first thing to consider is that a discussion of types ought not to be taken literally. Just as there is no such thing as a pure Leo, or a pure Capricorn, though astrologers may still speak of Leos and Capricorns, and may make more or less absolute statements concerning these signs, with the stipulation that they are always speaking in the abstract (i.e. speaking of signs, and not actual people). Jung's primary division of men into the two types, introvert/extrovert, is a parallel example of what I am attempting to do here. Yes, everyone is a combination of the two, but everyone is primarily one or the other, and some people are more polarized than others.

I am primarily concerned with the polarized ones, the marginalized ones, the unsung ones. Those who are not balanced, by any means, but who may be imbalanced in such a way as to off-set the imbalances of our culture. The Apostle Paul makes a simple yet powerful argument, using the metaphor of the body of Christ (in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12). "To some it is given to minister, to others the gifts of interpretation... and so on. We needn't make demands upon the dreamer, that he must be some perfectly well-rounded renaissance man. For he is, ultimately, just one member of a larger social body. An ear, not meant to be an eye, or foot, or hand. Is it really incumbent upon him to develop in himself those qualities which already exist in overabundance in our culture?

Nietzsche writes:
"I speak for the exception, so long as he does not wish to become the rule."

It is not possible to give one's full, concentrated attention to philosophy while going through the menial motions. What most people call deep thoughts are generally just the surfaces of deep themes. And of course, it is possible to skate over these surfaces while performing an unrelated job. But one cannot pursue philosophy in earnest while mopping a floor any more than one can mop a floor while mowing the lawn; or play the piano while dancing the waltz. Sure, you could try it, and even fool yourself into thinking you are doing a decent job of it, but, in reality, both the thought and the floor would suffer, and the delusion works only for people who cannot tell the difference between real philosophy and simply kicking big ideas around. The notion that a person can sincerely and seriously philosophize while doing the dishes and other things is insulting to me, as a vocational philosopher. To me, it suggests that anyone who could suppose such a thing must hold a very flippant attitude toward philosophy.

Schopenhauer wrote a lovely essay about Noise, and the need of a philosopher for absolute silence and an undisturbed atmosphere. As he understood it, there is perhaps nothing which demands one's full attention so much as the work of thinking deeply. Because the business of thought is so removed from the world, the thinker must withdraw him/herself from the sense impressions and preoccupations of the world, in order to enter fully into the mind; which is, properly regarded, a world unto itself.

Moreover, it is my experience that, when you go deep enough into philosophical questions, you strike a veil of golden oil, which erupts and effectively inundates your life, making it almost impossible to concern yourself with anything else. This is because, when you are working at the deepest levels, the shifting of your perspective (even just to take a peek into another possible way of seeing things) must trigger a chain reaction with consequences extending into nearly every, if not every, area of life; you can hardly confront even the most mundane situation without having to check the continual flood of habitual views; each of which is now called into scrutiny by the deeper question which has been glimpsed, and which effectively undermines them all. The one who deeply understands and deeply experiences this truth has been marked; claimed, as it were, by Philosophy. Does this mean that, if you are not the type to commit yourself utterly to philosophy (to the more or less unflagging pursuit, interpretation, and reinterpretation of visions and ideas), then, you must be prepared to confess to a relative superficiality in your thinking? Yes it does.

"In the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, a genius is someone in whom intellect predominates over "will" much more than within the average person. In Schopenhauer's aesthetics, this predominance of the intellect over the will allows the genius to create artistic or academic works that are objects of pure, disinterested contemplation, the chief criterion of the aesthetic experience for Schopenhauer. Their remoteness from mundane concerns means that Schopenhauer's geniuses often display maladaptive traits in more mundane concerns; in Schopenhauer's words, they fall into the mire while gazing at the stars."
~ Wikipedia, "Genius"

The deepest questions are cultivated in the underworld, and the loftiest answers are harvested in the spheres; therefore, the one who’s job it is to tend and deliver them must necessarily be estranged from worldly matters to the extent that he is successful in his work. That this principle is so universally misunderstood may help to explain society’s hostility toward the visionary type. He is stigmatized and maligned for being different, while his differentness is precisely that which qualifies him to take a detached perspective on the affairs of men, of nations, and of ages. Expected to abide by a conventional standard, he is constantly inhibited from pursuing his true calling, and the only thing capable of securing him a tolerable position in the world. Nor is it generally understood that the seemingly immaterial contributions he makes are of a subtle enough substance to reach and nourish the very roots of mankind. In the final analysis, he is the exception which exists in order to support their rule; the more oppressed for all that he upholds.

The dreamer is a fixed and distinct type of human being. In the most extreme examples, he is a species unto himself. While our modern society may not recognize the dreamer as a definite type, incapable of altering its fundamental disposition, nature does. And while it is true that nature is no less unforgiving, and makes even fewer allowances for the weaknesses of this type, yet, this is precisely why society ought to extend itself in support of these fey and (at least, from a worldly perspective) insubstantial creatures. Instead, the dreamer is stigmatized perhaps worse than any other classification of persons. Time and again, he is admonished, disciplined, and enjoined to perform according to the standards of majority rule -- to which he is nothing if not an exception.

The constant effort to "reform" the dreamer and subject him to the responsibilities of worldly life is not unlike the effort to force homosexuals to adapt to straight lifestyles. Always, the majority believes it is in the right, and that it has the right to impose its will upon the minority, despite the overwhelming evidence of history; for the record shows that individual types have never been extinguished, and it has been societies and entire civilizations which have been forced to change themselves, becoming more tolerant and inclusive. Moreover, it is frequently, if not always, the character and contributions of the stigmatized minority which serve to correct some excess, or imbalance, in the larger community.

As Jiddu Krishnamurti tells us,
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

More and more I see that psychology cannot be separated from history (and I don't mean the history of the individual). More and more I am drawn to consider the larger picture. The diseases of individuals are the mere symptoms of cultural and historical disease. We need healers who are willing to think big, with the courage to diagnose and prescribe treatments for the whole "civilized" world. Our wounds are deeper than we know, but so is our power to heal; not just one person at a time, -- rather, all of us at once. And while it is popular in our day to place attention upon the individual, and to see it as a definite weakness, a cop-out, to blame the larger framework of society, it seems clear to me that, until the imbalances of the collective are addressed, the dreamer will continue to be disenfranchised and scapegoated for his inability to conform with that larger whole. G.B. Shaw was voicing no minor witticism when he remarked that, while "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Is it perhaps true, as Nietzsche suggests, that everything great and good we know and hold dear was once derided as an evil. The sensitivity of the dreamer is one such buried virtue, which has yet to make its full and unabashed appearance upon the stage of human history. It is this sensitivity, near universally scorned as mere weakness, which will, perhaps, in the "last judgment", spiritualize and gentle the conditions of all men, putting an effective end to superficiality, greed, and the senseless, ignorant acts of animal brutality, common to those who have all but lost the power to dream; and surely lost the power to dream deeply. For, if the competitive and acquisitive instincts of so many "men of the world" were not quite so insistent on their own gain, and if a greater appreciation for dreams infused our culture, there would be more than enough to care for all of us; without making unrealistic demands on any of the types. The imbalance arises when the dominant type uses its influence to exploit the gentler and/or less numerous types in order to seek ever greater power and advancement for itself.

Marcel Proust gives us some interesting words on neurotics, and by neurotics I feel safe in assuming he means dreamers, for a dreamer in our Western Civilization is nothing if not a neurotic. Proust writes: "What keeps most people from suffering very much is lack of imagination.... Everything great that we know has come to us from neurotics. It is they and only they who have founded religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be aware of how much it owes to them, nor, above all, what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts upon it."

And William James perhaps puts the matter more brilliantly than anyone when he writes, "In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine qua non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one's interests beyond the surface of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that this temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to corners of the universe, which your robust Philistine type of nervous system, forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, and thanking Heaven that it hasn't a single morbid fibre in its composition, would be sure to hide forever from its self-satisfied possessors? If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity."

Evolution, on some levels, may promote the strongest class of men, but not always the best. That which is most worthy of preservation is sometimes small, fragile, and not yet sturdy enough to defend and assert itself against a hostile environment. Those of us who are strong must be careful and not stride too far ahead, or stride over the heads, of this finer and more tender brood of souls. For we who are strong will die out, -- or, if we do not die out, what is best in us will still die, -- if we cannot be bothered to honor and preserve what is gentlest and most tender in ourselves and in our neighbors.

Hard doctrines of self-reliance do not impress me with their disdain of what is still tender and small. What is claimed here is not an entitlement to some position of privilege or authority, but, rather, the right to exist; to exist in harmony with one's own nature (which, in the case of sensitives, is anything but hard and self-reliant); and not to be stigmatized at every turn for being that which one cannot help but be; namely, oneself (or one's type).

What is lacking in the worldly man is precisely that empathy and objectivity which belongs to the dreamer, and which allows him to see through the eyes of other men; or gods, or stones, for that matter. But the worldly man interprets everything through a narrow screen, and therefore thinks that, if he can be comfortable taking up his worldly duties and pursuing his worldly aims, then, so can everyone else. Of course, he acknowledges and makes the "necessary" allowances for obvious physical handicaps, because he must, because he cannot ignore or deny them, but he never goes so far outside of his own subjectivity in order to sympathize, let alone empathize, with the condition of his fellows; in particular, the more eccentric and socially awkward or unacceptable types among them. To do so, he fears, would severely limit his effectiveness in the world. To some extent this is true; uncertainty stimulates and opens the mind, while ultimately paralyzing the will. But it is my basic assertion that this will, because it inhibits the operation of reflection -- and, ultimately, the operations of sympathy, empathy, and compassion, which flow therefrom, -- ought not to be so heavily guarded anyway.

There is a gap between these two types wider than that between any two generations which have ever cohabited on the planet. In some cases, where the two types are particularly pronounced, or "pure", -- in other words, when we have, for example, an especially obvious representative of the dreamer contrasted with an equally obvious representative of the worldly man, -- we find two people who are more dissimilar than any two generations, or any two cultures, that have ever existed on the earth, at whatever times. Depending upon the purity of the two types, the discrepancy between them can be severe well beyond our power to imagine it. Nonetheless, it is a reality, and a very formidable one for anyone born with a markedly dreamy or markedly worldly disposition, since, any attempt to impose a one-size-fits-all morality on the whole of society (and such attempts are frequent; anything imposed is "one-size-fits-all") is bound to leave one or the other, or both, of these extreme types in the cold. In our time, it is the dreamer for whom society has no ears. Jung's interpretation of Merlin, from the Grail legend, is particularly applicable here:

"In the twelfth century, when the legend arose, there were as yet no premises by which his intrinsic meaning could be understood. Hence he ended in exile, and hence 'le cri de Merlin' ['the cry of Merlin'] which still sounded from the forest after his death. This cry that no one could understand implies that he lives on in unredeemed form. His story is not yet finished, and he still walks abroad. It might be said that the secret of Merlin was carried on by alchemy, primarily in the figure of Mercurius. Then Merlin was taken up again in my psychology of the unconscious and remains uncomprehended to this day. That is because most people find it quite beyond them to live on close terms with the unconscious. Again and again I have had to learn how hard this is for people."

One hears the objection that there must not be a double standard; that the dreamer must not be held to different responsibilities, or, god forbid, to a different level of responsibility, than the man of the world (and vice-versa, though this is seldom heard). But, is it so unthinkable to these objectors that certain people are fundamentally, in accordance with their deepest natures, different, and that the standards and purposes to which we hold them ought to reflect their differences; their own individual gifts, and the unique destinies to which God has evidently entrusted them, -- rather than reflect society's, or someone else's, narrow expectations for them? And, for God's sake, do not throw "free will" at me. Even the trite objection, "they have free will", does not translate into "they should do as we will them to do".