Walker Percy - The Message in the Bottle - How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other

If a congress of scientists, philosophers, and artists is convening in an Aspen auditorium in order to take account of the recent “sentences” of their colleagues (hypotheses, theories, formulae, logics, geometries, poems, symphonies, etc.), and if during the meeting a fire should break out, and if then a man should mount the podium and utter the sentence “Come! I know the way out!”—the conferees will be able to distinguish at once the difference between this sentence and all the other sentences which have been uttered from the podium. Different as a bar of music is from a differential equation, it will be seen at once that the two share a generic likeness when compared with a piece of news. A radical shift of posture by both teller and hearer has taken place. The conferees will attach a high importance to the sentence even though it conveys no universal truth and even though it may not be verified on hearing. A different criterion of acceptance becomes appropriate. It is not an inferior or makeshift criterion — as when a castaway makes do with a raft but would rather have a steamship. It is the criterion appropriate to news as a category of communication. If a criterion of verification could be used, then the communication would cease to be news relevant to my predicament; it would become instead a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. †

The conferees at Aspen apply an appropriate criterion. They are not gullible — for bad advice at this juncture could get them killed. If the newsbearer had announced, not that he knew the way out, but that world peace had been achieved, they would hardly heed him. If he commanded them to flap their arms and fly out through the skylight, they would hardly heed him. If he spoke like a fool with all manner of ranting and raving, they would hardly heed him. If they knew him to be a liar, they would hardly heed him. But if he spoke with authority, in perfect sobriety, and with every outward sign of good faith and regard for them, saying that he knew the way out and they had only to follow him, they would heed him. They would heed him with all dispatch. They would, unless there were an Archimedes present, give his news priority over the most momentous and exciting advance in science. They would heed him at any cost, even though as scientists they must preserve a low regard for sentences bearing news of a contingent event.

The Mistaking of a Piece of Knowledge for a Piece of News from across the Seas

What if it should happen that a scientist should assign a high order of significance to a piece of knowledge and a low order of significance to a piece of news? He could make a serious mistake. Having assigned all news sentences to a low order of significance, he could make the mistake of attending only to scientific sentences in the belief that since they are so important in the sphere of knowledge, they might also do duty as pieces of news. Thus, if it should happen that he experiences a predicament of homelessness or of anxiety without cause, he may seek for its cause and cure within the sphere of scientific and artistic knowledge or from the satisfaction of his island needs. He may resort to analysis or drugs or group therapy or creative writing or reading creative writing, all of which may assuage this or that symptom of his loneliness or anxiety. Or he may seek a wife or new friends or more meaningful relationships. But what if it should be the case that his symptoms of homelessness or anxiety do not have their roots in this or that lack of knowledge or this or that malfunction which he may suffer as an islander but rather in the very fact that he is a castaway and that as such he stands not in the way of one who requires a piece of island knowledge or a technique of island treatment or this or that island need satisfaction but stands rather in the way of one who is waiting for a piece of news from across the seas? Then he has deceived himself and, even if his symptoms are better, is worse off then he was.

The Difference between Island News and News from across the Seas

My purpose here is not apologetic. We are not here concerned with the truth of the Christian gospel or with the career in time of that unique Thing, the Jewish-People-Jesus-Christ-Catholic-Church. An apologetic would deal with the evidences of God’s entry into history through His covenant with the Jews, through His own incarnation, and through His institution of the Catholic Church as the means of man’s salvation. It would also deal with philosophical approaches to God’s existence and nature. My purpose is rather the investigation of news as a category of communication.

In the light of the distinction we have made, however, it is possible to shed light on some perennial confusions which arise whenever Christianity is misunderstood as a teaching sub specie aeternitatis. As Kierkegaard put it, the object of the student is not the teacher but the teaching, while the object of the Christian is not the teaching but the teacher.* I say perennial because the misunderstanding by the Athenians of Saint Paul and the offense they took is not essentially different from the misunderstanding of modern eclectics like Whitehead, Huxley, and Toynbee, and the offense they take. Not being an apostle and, as Kierkegaard again would say, having no authority to preach, I should hope not to give further offense and to propose only a small clarifying distinction — not a piece of news in the bottle but only a minor “scientific” sentence — which should offend neither believer nor unbeliever. Whitehead, for one, should not take offense. He pronounced that generality is the salt of religion just as it is the salt of science. And if one should propose therefore that Christianity is not a teaching but a teacher, not a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis but a piece of news, not a member in good standing of the World’s Great Religions but a unique Person-Event-Thing in time — then the eclectic should not mind, because to say this is hardly to advance the case of Christianity in his eyes; it is rather to admit the worst that he has suspected all along. I do not mean that a mistaking of the Judeo-Christian Thing for a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis leads always to hostility and rejection. Indeed it is more common nowadays to accept Christianity on such grounds — as being confirmed by Buddhism in this respect or by psychiatry in some other respect — or as in the case of the Look magazine article which announced that one might now believe in miracles because the Law of Probability allowed that once in a great while a body might fly straight up instead of falling down.

We might then be content here to agree to disagree about what salt is and whether or not in becoming general it loses its savor. Nevertheless the peculiar character of the Christian claim, its staking everything on a people, a person, an event, a thing existing here and now in time — and on the news of this Thing — and its relative indifference to esoteric philosophical truths such as might be arrived at by Vedantists, Buddhists, idealists, existentialists, or by any islanders anywhere or at any time — might serve here to quicken our interest in news as a category of communication.

But to return to the castaway and the message in the bottle. The castaway has, we have seen, classified the messages differently from the scientist and logician. Their classifications would divide the sentences accordingly as they were analytic or synthetic, necessary or contingent, repeatable or historic, etc. But the castaway’s classification divides them accordingly as some express a knowledge which can be arrived at anywhere and at any time, given the talent, time, and inclination of the student — and as others tell pieces of news which cannot be so arrived at by any effort of observation or reflection however strenuous and yet which are of immense importance to the hearer. Has the castaway’s classification exhausted the significant communications which the bottles contain? If this is the case, then we seem to be saying that the news which the islander finds significant is nothing more than signs of various need-satisfactions which the organism must take account of to flourish. These needs and their satisfactions are readily acknowledged by the objective-minded man. Indeed, the main concern of the biological, medical, and psychological sciences is the discovery of these various needs and the satisfying of them. If a man is thirsty, then he had better pay attention to news of water. If a culture is to survive, it had better heed the news of the approach of the British or a war party from a neighboring island. Also, if a man is to live a rich, full, “rewarding” life, he should have his quota of myths and archetypes.