In 1959, nineteen years after the Nazis marched into Paris – the same amount of time, for example, that now separates us from 9/11 – the Avant-Garde French-Romanian author Eugène Ionesco (1909-1994) published the play Rhinocéros. Because of our current upheaval, this work has been much on my mind lately.
The protagonist Bérenger is a simple office worker, not much given to grand ideas and a bit too fond of drink. His friends, neighbors, and co-workers, on the other hand, are ready and willing to engage in debating the “big ideas,” “logically,” and “scientifically,” from both the right and the left, with clichés and specious reasoning, loudly proclaiming their independence of thought. Yet, one by one, each turns into a rhinoceros, Ionesco’s symbol of groupthink, the hive mind, which renders the individual a brutish, herd-following animal. At the end of Rhinocéros, Bérenger is absolutely alone, the only human not to have succumbed to the herd.
I have a small, personal connection to Ionesco and this play. I had the immense privilege, when I was quite young, of attending a lecture by the playwright. After his remarks, during the Q&A, I asked him why he had left his protagonist all alone at the end of the play. Though this question elicited some titters from the audience, M. Ionesco’s answer was profound and very moving. He said that it mirrored his own experience during the Nazi era, when he watched those around him progressively adopting evil ideologies, leaving him feeling isolated. (The scholar Anne Quinney explores this idea in detail in her article, “Excess and Identity: The Franco-Romanian Ionesco Combats Rhinoceritis.” South Central Review, vol. 24 no. 3, 2007, p. 36-52. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/scr.2007.0044.) https://muse.jhu.edu/article/224549
So many of today’s headlines remind me of Rhinocéros because of the irrationality and arrogance of group-think. For example, after Bérenger has argued with his supercilious friend Jean, who has just stormed off in a huff, he remarks, “He can’t take being contradicted. The smallest objection makes him froth at the mouth.” Or, as Jean says later in the play, as he is gradually transforming into a beast, “Truth be told, I don’t hate people; I’m indifferent to them, or they disgust me, but they had better not get in my way, or I will crush them.”
This attitude is everywhere in our nation, particularly in the policing of speech and expression. The short-hand term for it is “cancel culture.” For example, in 2014 the head of the Mozilla Corporation was forced to step down — i.e., “cancelled” — after eleven days on the job because it was discovered that six years earlier he had donated to California’s Proposition 8, which would have protected traditional marriage in the state. (It was approved at the ballot box but overturned by a Federal court.) Criticism came both from within the company and virulently from without, in the form of online petitions and pressure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich As for today’s atmosphere of don’t-contradict-me/us-or-you-will-be-crushed, some outlets are keeping a running tally of our “cancel culture” run amok. https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/12/welcome-to-your-new-world-order-a-rundown-of-woke-insanity-amid-the-newest-cultural-revolution/; and https://www.theamericanconservative.com/prufrock/dangerous-ideas-and-our-cancel-culture/ Today’s fever-dream-level fury can cost the jobs of unsuspecting people, apparently at random. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-over-alleged-racist-gesture-says-he-was-cracking-knuckles/2347414/
The American answer to objectionable speech should be more speech, i.e., a counterargument. The answer is not bullying and suppression. (Such as, for example: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nbc-news-attempt-to-demonetize-the-federalist-is-illiberal-insanity/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=home; and https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mob-like-law-students-call-christina-hoff-sommers-a-fascist-shout-her-down. This is just a taste. There are many, many more such examples.) Free speech is endangered by such tactics; but the mob of our time feels emboldened.
Furthermore, it is an understatement to say that to participate in “cancel culture” is incompatible with Christian discipleship. Jesus’ commands to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” and “love your neighbor as yourself,” not to mention “love your enemies,” cannot be squared with the Twitter mob, the petitions to have supposed “wrong-thinkers” fired, and the deplatforming of unpopular writers and speakers.
In his original introduction to the play, Ionesco wrote*:
Rhinocéros is without doubt an anti-Nazi play but it is also, above all, a play against collective hysterias and those epidemics that hide themselves under the cover of reason and ideas but for that reason aren’t any less severe collective maladies for which ideologies are but alibis: if one perceives that History loses all reason, that lies and propaganda serve to mask the contradictions between the facts and the ideologies that push them, if one actually casts a clear eye upon it, that suffices to keep us from succumbing to irrational “reasons,” to senseless reasons, and to escape from all dizziness.
*(Translation, and any translation errors, mine.)
Clear eyes are in terribly short supply.
Human beings are perennially tempted to “run with the herd.” The surest way to escape from the dizziness of the present folly – to escape the hive mind – is to put on the mind of Christ:
Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
Phil 2:5-8. It is very intoxicating to “play God” and attack others, to “froth at the mouth” at the “smallest objection,” when we’re convinced of our own righteousness. To serve others with the humility of Christ is the way out of the morass: “’Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.’” Mt 11:29. By the way, “meekness” is not weakness. It’s power, harnessed and properly-directed toward achieving the good. https://aleteia.org/2017/03/22/do-you-know-what-meek-of-meek-and-humble-of-heart-really-means/
Finally, lest we forget the following mob scene:
Pilate called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was perverting the people; and after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him; neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Behold, nothing deserving death has been done by him; I will therefore chastise him and release him.”
But they all cried out together, “Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas [a murderer].” Pilate addressed them once more, desiring to release Jesus; but they shouted out, “Crucify, crucify him!” A third time he said to them, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no crime deserving death; I will therefore chastise him and release him.” But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed.
Lk 23:13-23.
