Homo Hystericus

From Milan Kundera's Immortality -

"It is part of the definition of feeling that it is born in us without our will, often against our will. As soon as we want to feel (decide to feel, just as Don quixote decided to love Dulcinea), feeing is no longer feeling but an imitation of feeling, a show of feeling. This is commonly called hysteria. That's why homo sentimentalis (a person who has raised feeling to a value) is in reality identical to homo hystericus.

This is not to say that a person who imitates feeling does not feel. An actor playing the role of old King Lear stands on the stage and faces the audience full of the real sadness of betrayal, but that sadness evaporates the moment the performance is over. That is why homo sentimentalis shames us with his great feelings only to amaze us a moment later with his inexplicable indifference."

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My church back home is a mega church. Coloured lights, a 3D screen, a choir of backup singers and an arsenal of musical instruments accompany worship and praise. People speak in tongues, cry, raise their hands up to God and kneel in supplication. The air is charged with yearning, the prayers and the beats driving the energy up towards an undefined peak. At 7pm sharp, the pastor signals the musicians to stop playing, says a closing prayer and the lights come on. In the seconds it takes for our pupils to constrict and dilate, normalcy is restored.

I always feel a tinge of betrayal at 7pm on Saturday nights back home. The ability for hysteria, or religious fervor to be controlled with such precision makes me doubt the authenticity of it. It frustrates me to watch my neighbours put down their arms, wipe the tears off their face, and then offer suggestions about dinner. Borrowing Kundera's words, their great emotionality during worship shames my lack thereof, and the abrupt shift into indifference amazes me.

Kundera in the above passage has captured perfectly the ambiguity of feeling. Feeling, based on its etiology, when coloured by the force of will, changes in its composition. I do believe that for a large percentage of us, the religious fervor ignited in us during worship and praise is real. I believe that in our brains; dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and a whole host of other neurotransmitters are firing at rates different from baseline levels. The feelings that we experience in church are real. They exist.

We go into church every Saturday or Sunday wanting to feel God’s presence. We pray at night, begging him to respond to us. Our worship leaders, our pastors, and spiritual authority want us to be touched by the Holy Spirit. We want to feel Him. There is so much desire to feel, such yearning, that it changes the substance of feeling into hysteria; the act of conscious want modifies irrevocably, the original feeling. I would not go so far to call the emotion, which arises in our bodies at the appropriate times during church - a show. It is though, an imitation; a lackluster substitute for the substance that arises in us, untouched by our will – pure feeling.

I do believe in the existence of pure feeling in worship and praise. I know that it is almost unchristian to call the desire to feel God's presence a pollutant of true feeling. However, the human desire to feel spritual fervour has a different etiology from the desire to be in God's presence. Wanting to feel a sense of transcendence is different from surrendering to god and the emotions that follow. I admit that it is difficult to draw the distinction. The intense desire to feel God's presence can easily be misdirected into a desire to feel hysteria as a means of satisfaction or cognitive dissonance. I just want pure feeling. I want to be able to remove from my emotions - my will, and the will of others. I want to squash my desire to feel for the sake of feeling. Perhaps then pure feeling ignited by God, will burst forth from my heart. 

Ironically, in this elevation of pure feeling, I am raising feeling to a value, which would make me a member of the homo hystericus.

- On a side note, I wonder what this would mean for cognitive restructuring in psychology. Everything about cognitive psychology involves reaching into our thoughts (which lead to feelings) and manipulating them to become more positive, or reinforcing. I cannot deny its good treatment outcomes. However, as anecdotal evidence form someone that practices cognitive restructuring a lot, I do feel that my manipulated emotions are similar to hysteria. There is forced quality to it, that when pushed to become real, crosses that boundary into oversaturation. I would think that for someone suffering as a result of negative cognitions, even hysteria would be better for their functioning than the genuine authentic feelings dragging them down.