Tuesday
As my faculty discussion group continues to work its way through Paradise Lost, we came across an episode that captures why certain men and women fall for whacky conspiracy theories. Since such people represents a significant threat to good governance and democratic rule, the topic is worth a post.
Satan, seeking to corrupt God’s new creation, sneaks into the Garden of Eden, where some of the good angels discover him whispering into the ear of a sleeping Eve. For our purposes today, think of him as QAnon or some other originator of harmful “phantasms and dreams”:
Him there they found
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
Assaying by his devilish art to reach
The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams…
Milton goes on to say that Satan is not only seeking to corrupt human fantasizing but also our emotions. While these emotions are initially pure, arising “like gentle breaths from rivers pure,” they can become contaminated with Satanic venom, at which point they will give rise to “distempered, discontented thoughts”:
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint
The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise
Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise
At least distempered, discontented thoughts,
Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires,
Blown up with high conceits engendering pride.
I think of how, say, commentators on Fox News play on their viewers’ emotions by indulging their egos, speaking to their longings, and stoking their resentments. They assure their public that Covid, climate change, and Biden’s election victory are hoaxes, which is their version of “vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires.” Conspiracy believers, not doctors, scientists, and other experts, are the ones who actually know what’s going on (they are “blown up with high conceits engendering pride”).
In Book V, we learn the contents of Satan’s whispering because Eve recounts her dream to Adam. It turns out that the devil is offering her the fantasy of special knowledge, available through eating from the tree of knowledge. She will be able to see what others miss, he tells her, as the whole world will be laid out before her and made clear. This desire for special knowledge may be QAnon followers’ fondest wish. In the following passage, Eve is reporting on what Satan tells her in her dream:
“Taste this, and be henceforth among the Gods
Thyself a Goddess, not to earth confined,
But sometimes in the air, as we, sometimes
Ascend to Heaven, by merit thine, and see
What life the Gods live there, and such live thou!”
So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held,
Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part
Which he had plucked; the pleasant savory smell
So quickened appetite, that I, methought,
Could not but taste. Forthwith up to the clouds
With him I flew, and underneath beheld
The earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide
And various…
After Adam hears Eve’s dream, he explains how Fancy works. When the faculty works in conjunction with Reason, he says, then all is well. Reason surveys and builds upon Fancy’s productions (“imaginations, aery shapes”) and arrives at (or “frames”) “all what we affirm or what deny, and call our knowledge or opinion.”
But know that in the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fancy next
Her office holds; of all external things
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes,
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion…
In Milton’s formulation, we are never purely rational; imagination always plays an important role in our thinking. But we must be reasonable in our mental processes. When we are, we arrive at reliable knowledge and well-grounded opinion.
Reason, however, leaves the scene at night when we’re sleeping. (As Milton puts it, she “retires into her private cell, when nature rests.”) At that point, Fancy operates unchecked. And while Fancy may appear reasonable—our dreams have a certain logic—she misjoins shapes, “ill matching words and deeds,” some old and some recent. The final result is “wild work”:
Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakes
To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams;
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late
QAnon fantasizing mimics Reason insofar as it strings together a set of disparate claims into a coherent narrative. Or rather, it misjoins these shapes, although “misjoining” dramatically understates what conspiracy theorists do. It’s more a case (to borrow Samuel Johnson’s description of metaphysical poetry) of “the most heterogeneous ideas…yoked by violence together.” According to Wikipedia, QAnon followers believe that “a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children operating a global child sex trafficking ring conspired against former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office.”
One issue that has come up in our group’s discussion of Milton is whether people whose dreams have been invaded by Satan are responsible for their actions. Milton answers in the affirmative, making clear that Eve has free will –she has what she needs to resist temptation. (As God puts it earlier in the poem, she and Adam are “sufficient to have stood though free to fall.”) In fact, free will is an enduring theme for the poet, and we should keep in mind that conspiracy theorists are also responsible for their actions, including storming the Capitol. They don’t get a pass just because QAnon, Fox News, and others have squatted like a toad whispering into their ears. Without accountability, Fancy will rampage unchecked.
One other thing: In the poem, Satan is exposed the moment that angel Ithuriel’s spear touches him. Milton says his transformation back into his real self is like a gunpowder explosion:
Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear
Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure
Touch of celestial temper, but returns
Of force to its own likeness: Up he starts
Discovered and surprised. As when a spark
Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid
Fit for the tun some magazine to store
Against a rumored war, the smutty grain,
With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air;
So started up in his own shape the Fiend.
Imagine if, with a touch of angelic truth, we could expose to the world all those grifters cynically feeding their followers and viewers with phantasms and dreams. Now there’s a fantasy devoutly to be wished!