"Pragmatism Refreshed" ends: so does Lane Pryce

Final entry for this blog. From this day forward, I'll be blogging at Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed, and the URL will be http://jamesian58.blogspot.com/ So for now, let's say something about Mad Men, which has also of late been about endings!


Episode 12 will be dominated in the mind of most viewers by the death of a character who has been a mainstay of the show since the beginning of the third season, Lane Pryce, as played with uniform greatness, by Jared Harris.

This death, a suicide, happens as most of the office continues to float on a sense of elation about landing a big automotive account: Jaguar.

The writers bring these two facts: Lane’s despair and his co-workers’ elation, into several layers of collision. We see for example that the Jaguar of the time was mechanically a rather shoddy piece of work, and this in fact dooms Lane’s first effort to kill himself, by asphyxiation. He can’t get the ignition to work when he needs it to!      


When Lane does manage to kill himself, it is with a noose, in his office, and after typing out what should have been a suicide note but was in fact just a “boilerplate” letter of resignation.

Why not pills, Lane? The thing about pills is: they leave some room for doubt. The coroner may call it an accidental overdose rather than a suicide, which may make a difference to grieving relations and their insurers.  A noose, though, doesn’t leave any doubt. So does that mean that a real suicide note would have been, in methodical Lane’s eyes, redundant?

Also, the events leading up to the suicide are designed to leave Don feeling as guilty as possible. Don demanded that resignation, after discovering Lane’s embezzlement. He thought that Lane would and could recover from this and make a new life for himself back in England. Indeed, he said as much. “I’d had to start over a couple of times in my life. This is the worst part,” he assured Lane.

Well, no. Don is not Lane and neither of his start-overs seems analogous. Don learns how badly he had misjudged the matter with that chipper assurance only when he sees the body.

Likewise episode 13, the season finale, will likely be dominated in many minds by one scene – that in which Don encounters Lane’s widow, Rebecca. Indeed, the title of this episode is “The Phantom,” indicting I think that the writers meant for Lane to hang over the whole of it. Except of course there is another “phantom” involved. The titles always have multiple meanings. Don thinks he sees his dead brother.   

But let’s get back to Don and Rebecca. He gives her a check meant in effect to buy out Lane’s share of the partnership. She accepts it, but wants Don to know that however this may alleviate his own sense of guilt, it does nothing to make matters square between them. She blames the agency for giving her husband “ambition.” She appears to see him as always having been a frail reed, always best shielded from ambition and other potentially sharp things.

Also, it is in the course of this confrontation that Rebecca discloses she found the photo of a mystery woman in Lane’s wallet.  The photo brings us back to the start of the season.

I’ve wondered through this season why the writers would introduce that photo (and the trouble to which Lane went to keep it, and the single phone call he made to the woman it represents) without doing more with it than they have. I still wonder.  Will Rebecca start looking for her? Is that one respect in which Lane’s phantom will continue to hover next season?

Strong season over-all. The series' best since but not inclusive of its first.  

William James' diary entry, April 29, 1870

Inserting only translations of German, French, Latin as needed.

"I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second "Essais" and see no reason why his definition of Free Will -- 'the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts' -- need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present -- until next year -- that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will. For the remainder of the year, I will abstain from the mere speculation and contemplative Grübelei [scratching around] in which my nature takes most delight, and voluntarily cultivate the feeling of moral freedom, by reading books favorable to it, as well as by acting. After the first of January, my callow skin being somewhat fledged, I may perhaps return to metaphysical study and skepticism without danger to my powers of action. For the present then remember: care little about speculation; much for the form of my action, recollect that only when habits of order are formed can we advance to really interesting fields of action -- and consequently accumulate grain on grain of willful choice like a very miser; never forgetting how one link dropped undoes an indefinite number. Pricipiis obsta [Resist from the beginning]-- To-day has furnished the exceptionally passionate initiative which Bain posits as needful for the acquisition of habits. I will see to the sequel, not in maxims. Not in Anschauungen [viewings], but in accumulated acts of thought lies salvation. Passer outre. [Bypass.] Hitherto, when I have felt like taking a free initiative, like daring to act originally, without carefully waiting for contemplation of the external world to determnine all for me, suicide seemed the most manly form to put my daring into; now, I will go a step further with my will, not only to act with it, but believe as well; believe in my individual reality and creative power. My belief, to be sure, can't be optimistic -- but I will posit life (the real, the good) in the self-governing resistance of the ego to the world. Life shall be doing and suffering and creating."

The Hale-Bopp suicides

Today is the 12th anniversary of the 1997 discovery by authorities in a suburb of San Diego, California, of thirty-nine dead bodies representing the collective suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult.

The 39 were dressed in identical outfits: black shirts, sweat pants, Nike shoes. Each decedent had a five dollar bill and three quarters in his pocket -- presumably that was the fare they'd be charged as the entered their new lifeon the UFO behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

The comet was crucial to the group's belief system. Indeed, if I were Alan Hale, or Thomas Bopp, either of the two astronomers who independently discovered the comet in July 1995, I'd be rather ticked off at having had my achievement associated with such goings-on.

By the way (just following the chain of associations from one link to the next): Alan Hale? Any relation to the actor who played The Skipper on Gilligan's Island? Probably not.

Actually, there were two actors named Alan Hale, father and son. The older Alan Hale was a frequent sidekick of Errol Flynn in swash-bucklers in the 1930s and 40s. His son became immortal by way of the Minnow and a three hour tour. The astronomer, who was actually born in Japan in 1958 though he grew up in New Mexico, had nothing to do with the acting family.

Spare a moment of thought today to the 39 deluded decedents who thought they'd pass through Heaven's Gate. They were tempted by one of the constant temptations of the human condition -- the desire to understand a complicated world simply -- and to demonstrate one's faith in one's simplicity dramatically. They were tempted and they fell.

And, to recycle a joke from that time: one of the bodies was found beneath the sink. Yes, right behind the "Comet."

Suicide

In the philosophy section of Yahoo! Answers yesterday I encountered the following question: "Why shouldan't I kill myself? why?why?why?why?why?why?why?wwhy?hy?why?"

It seemed odd that somebody distressed and contemplating suicide should come to Yahoo! Answers with this. Yet it also seems hard to believe that anyone looking at the issue of suicide, and wanting to engage a discussion in a calm philosophic way (which would make sense of the choice of forum) would do so quite so earnestly and typo-idiosyncratically as that.

Acting on the possibility that this was a genuine case of distress, I gave the best answer I could come up with. And I found to my surprise that it didn't sound like a Jamesian answer. More like a Schopenhauerian answer.

Maybe James' discussion of the point was a bit too meta-philosophical, and the note I struck here was more first-order.

Anyway, I'll see later today whether the fellow responds. I already clicked through the screen name and no e-mails or i-ms via the Y!A system are allowed. So I guess we can just hope for the best.