The Hollow Men

Thesis: suffering builds soul. Accordingly, a person who has it too easy in life—in particular a spoiled child—is spiritually hollow.

This is a growing phenomenon of modern life, necessarily, as we all have it better year by year in material terms. And it is reinforced by modern childrearing, which believes in indulging children and not disciplining them.

So we have the hollow men. And they are a recognizable type.

The extreme form of hollowness is what is called “psychopathy.” But this is just a matter of degree.

Note this is the opposite of the conventional wisdom: kids become psychopaths from being spoiled, from knowing no restraints, not from having tough childhoods and being “abused.”

Some reflections on the logical results of being spoiled:

General inability to transcend your most basic instincts; because you have never had the incentive nor had the experience imposed on you.

Hence a hallmark would be lack of self-control.

A hollow man is therefore rather transparent, his future actions predictable: because they are basic and instinctual.

This makes him more like an animal and less like a human than average: or makes him or her seem "childish." I think when we encounter someone who has been spoiled, we tend to think of them as less in stature as a result.

Hollow men therefore also tend to be rather comic figures; because they are the prisoners of their urges. It is being hollow that creates the "humours" of traditional comedy and satire: the compulsively avaricious, the compulsive woman-chaser, and so forth. The “two-dimensional” stock characters of satire. (This is very different from being humourous or witty: the humours are the butts of jokes, not the joke tellers).

The hollow would naturally be prejudiced, narrow-minded. A fair judgment requires a mind open to new ways of looking at something.

A hollow man would also tend to lack principles: consistency of principle requires doing what is right regardless of present temptations. A hollow man would not be as able to look beyond the present temptation.

Hence hollow men tend to be two-faced. They tend to make commitments lightly, and often not follow through on them.

They tend to be quitters; not to stick with something once it gets difficult.

Another interesting aspect of being spoiled is an incapacity for detachment. A spoiled person tends to see things only from his or her own point of view, and so lack real sympathy for others.

The inability to take a new point of view makes them narrow-minded to the point of actual stupidity. This, to my mind, explains how children from bright and accomplished families can be complete duds: spoiling can counteract inherited intelligence.

This in turn explains why ruling classes almost everywhere have their children sent away to be raised by others: because otherwise they would be spoiled, if only by other adults in deference to their parents.

The hollow are inclined to live a sort of fantasy life, ignoring their real situation, if it does not suit them. They are unusually capable of self-delusion. Walter Mitty was a hollow man, as of course was J. Alfred Prufrock. To create a fictional life for yourself is easier than the challenges and possible failures of real accomplishment.

The hollow are naturally self-centred and demanding of the attention of others.

They make good salespeople; because they need others' attention, because they make promises lightly, and because they can easily make themselves believe things.

That is a good measure of whether someone is hollow: can you picture them as a salesperson?

Another good measure is sense of humour. Humour requires detachment and the ability to suddenly see things from a new perspective. The worse someone is spoiled, the harder this kind of mental flexibility is; because in itself it is disorienting, painful. Hence the worse their sense of humour will be.

Also their ability to do philosophy, to be purely logical; to "be philosophical" or to be attracted to philosophical issues. This also requires detachment, seeing beyond one's own concerns of the moment to the general. To philosophize means getting outside your skin. Too strong an ego makes it much harder.

Also their ability to be truly moral. This too requires a detachment from one's own desires. Worse, the hollow man will often not realize they are being immoral, harming others, or being two-faced. Because they cannot grasp the difference between what is right and what they want. To the spoiled, these seem almost self-evidently to be the same thing.

The spoiled would tend to be hypocrites; because they measure all things in relation to themselves and their desires rather than abstract principle.

Indeed, the strict Greek term for a hollow man is probably “hypocrite”—literally, one who wears a mask, like an actor.

The scribes and Pharisees of the New Testament were hollow men. As surely was Pontius Pilate, with his famous throwaway question “what is truth?” Kurtz was a classic hollow man. As was Willie Loman in “Death of a Salesman.”

The spoiled will tend to complain more. There is much truth to the fairy tale of the princess and the pea. Because they cannot easily get beyond their own perspective of the moment, because they consider anything that happens to them very important, and because they expect attention from others, they will complain loud and long.

It does seem, on balance, when you add it all up, a pretty bad thing to do to spoil a child. A lousy thing to do to society, and, in the end, a lousy thing to do to the child.

But the world is filling up with more and more hollow men.

I wonder if becoming a hollow man is the same thing that is called “loss of soul”? This, according to Jung, was the greatest fear among hunter-gatherers he met in a trip to Africa.

Part of the danger of loss of soul, of course, is that ambient spirits can then come in and take over. What is it Jesus says about your soul as an empty room freshly swept and cleaned? Then the demonic possession can appear—in simplest terms, possession by a vice like the standard humours: avarice, greed, sloth, gluttony, lust, anger. Or, more dramatically, what we now call “schizophrenia.”

This is the opposite personality type to the depressive. Everything is usually wonderful in his life, or must be seen to be, and most especially he is always wonderful. The challenge is to keep constructing explanations and alibis to make this so.

While a depressive feels everything keenly, a hollow man seems only sentimental: vocal about feelings, but feeling nothing very deeply. Easy to anger, but not being really angry so much as thinking this is the right time to be angry, or enjoying the emotion of anger, or thinking it would be advantageous now to get angry. Easily expressing sorrow, but like a summer shower: not sad so much as thinking this is the right time to seem sad, or enjoying self-pity, or thinking that it would be advantageous now to seem sad.

This segues neatly, I think, into the characteristic lack of emotional responsiveness in schizophrenia, once contact is definitely lost with those the hollow man encounters. Without an audience, the hollow man is almost without emotion. But given another twist, this is also the cold-bloodedness of a psychopath.

Full-blown schizophrenia is supposed to be brought on by a crisis: a period of difficulty in one’s life. It makes sense. The alibi-making machinery must flip into overdrive to compensate for a reality that is less than pleasant. This takes up a great deal of consciousness, reducing what is available for dealing with the outside world. And the alibi becomes so divorced from the surrounding “reality” that others at last see it as delusion.

I note with interest the claim, in a book I read on Death Row in Florida, that most guys on death row go psychotic after they are there. It makes sense to me: this is the psychopathic personality finally faced with a situation they cannot make look good, even to themselves.