Hemingway: A Golden Calf in a Mythic Golden Age

It has forever been the preoccupation of man to idealize the ways of the past, as history has a way of highlighting modern values in their "purest" forms. This is the mythology we tell ourselves in an age when Biblical stories are regarded as parables and those who cling to them are regarded as nutty. But then there's the truth: there was no Golden Age. There was no time when things were done perfectly. Cultural memory becomes selective and occludes those facts that might threaten our lionized account of history.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

We are raised to be discontent, as Duryodhana exclaims in the Mahabharata. We are reared to be self-deprecating. We are acculturated to compare ourselves to others -- to size others up -- even if they're no longer living. What do they have that we don't? Which of their characteristics do we admire and how can we cultivate them in ourselves? Why is it so much harder to attain those qualities today than it was back then? The stories we tell ourselves condemn us to misery.

In an article lamenting the lost manliness and braggadocio of Ernest Hemingway, author Marty Beckerman illustrates this false nostalgia well. He paints Hemingway as a man's man, both a knower and go-getter -- the perfect combination of sophistication and ruggedness. Every civilization has its gods; and the gods of the postmodern era are no more real or false than those of foregone civilizations. But their veracity or fictitiousness never mattered; what matters is what it tells us about their followers and consequently ourselves.

Despite the compelling nature of Hemingway's larger than life persona, psychologists and biographers have deconstructed him to who he was rather than who he portrayed himself to be. This isn't to say that who he portrayed himself to be wasn't who he was... it's just half the story. However, reconciling these two constructs is hardly my point. Rather, my point is to illustrate the suggestive nature of the stories we tell ourselves and our predisposition for gullibility and the lack of relevance of authenticity in them. The Golden Age. Gods. Idyllic romance... our map is not our territory.

The very idea of a golden age is embedded in and founded on principles of discontent. It supposes a fall from grace or a degeneration of how things once were. But Duryodhana's claim that "only discontent leads to happiness" is not founded on an idealized past, but an idealized future. He seeks to gain for himself an unrivaled kingdom and forge his own history, rather than seek to revivify a time past. The idea of a golden age is thus only helpful so far as it provides models for one to emulate one's actions after; but we would do well to note that even these models are simulated constructs manipulated by historians, the media and those who would seek to rediscover them. If we maintain that a golden age has passed, then what hope have we for which to reasonably look forward? It is therefore better, I think, to imagine a golden age only as it could exist, not how it may have existed. Otherwise, we condemn ourselves looking backwards to reliving history, at best, rather than developing the future.