Today’s techno-medicine is misplaced within the cosmos. Present occasions are replete with authorized and political battles over healthcare administration and medical apply, and information headlines repeatedly sensationalize main analysis in aspirations to remodel the human situation, no matter we could take that to imply, and make a greenback within the course of. We’ve got no clue who we’re or what drugs is for.
We’ve got spent the final a long time pouring religion and boundless funding into medical know-how, and all it appears to have given us is a fragmented, impersonal, algorithmic system for managing damaged our bodies and minds—and to not point out demoralized medical doctors who vacillate between technocrats and bureaucrats. Now over half of medical doctors are burnt out.[1]
The place the Fathers of the Church considered drugs sacramentally as a kind of analogy for the treatment of the soul, presently it lies enervated throughout the ruins of scientific materialism greedy for that means. Walker Percy recognized these themes a long time in the past in his dystopian novel Love within the Ruins. There isn’t any silver bullet or respectable deus ex machina to right at the moment’s techno-medicine; nonetheless, Percy provides a pilgrimage from know-how to sacrament within the individual of Dr. Thomas Extra, the novel’s protagonist. We’ll comply with him in his journey from one mode of utilizing drugs to a different as a information for ourselves. In different phrases, we are going to discover Walker Percy’s map for contemporary physicians to search out their method within the cosmos.
Walker Percy
Percy got here from a distinguished Louisiana household with melancholy and suicide, particularly the boys, his father included. In his younger maturity the likes of H.G. Wells impressed him with a scientific worldview the place putting religion within the empirical sciences ought to unravel the issues of mankind. He went on to medical faculty at Columbia College; nonetheless, throughout his pathology internship he caught tuberculosis from a corpse upon which he was performing an post-mortem. His pressured convalescence led him into books on a quest after the large questions of God and the that means of life.
He spent years wrestling with Hegel, Kierkegaard, Camus, and Sartre, in the end concluding that science may uncover each truth within the universe and but depart the scientist with out a clue how you can stay at 2PM on a Wednesday afternoon. Nonetheless, what issues most is how you can stay on Wednesday afternoon. Learn an essay? Take to alcohol? Doom scroll social media? In different phrases, he needed to look outdoors science to know his household’s suicidal tendencies and the issues afflicting fashionable man, prompting his conversion to Catholicism and vocation as a author.
Percy merged drugs and writing into what he calls being a “literary diagnostician” in Signposts in a Unusual Land, utilizing the novel to point out fault strains working by way of Western man’s soul. In the identical essay, he describes that “what the novelist notices just isn’t how terrible the happenings are, however how peculiar it’s that folks don’t appear to note how terrible the happenings are.” Within the phrases of his finest pal, Shelby Foote, his topic was “the human coronary heart in battle with itself.”[2] In distinction to the merely entertaining media we’re so accustomed to, Percy’s writing calls for energetic engagement. There isn’t any binge-reading Percy. Like Flannery O’Connor, he steadily presents the darkish facet of human expertise, whereas suspending judgment as a way to pressure readers to make ethical judgments. Some critics have described him as a gadfly. Walker Percy calls for readers to be discerning, which calls for us to have our personal consciences on the road when wrestling along with his novels.
Love within the Ruins
This brings us to Percy’s science fiction apocalypse, Love within the Ruins. Revealed in 1971, the novel was Percy’s response to the Nineteen Sixties, the place he aimed to find the reason for social upheaval in ethical and non secular forces, aiming to resume Dostoevsky’s remedy of the rocky Russian 1860s in Demons, as Jessica Hooten-Wilson reveals by way of overview of Percy’s journals. Percy himself says Love within the Ruins “is de facto in regards to the pursuit of happiness. The locale is a subdivision referred to as Paradise Estates. Everybody there has pursued happiness and usually succeeded in being completely happy. But one thing is fallacious.”[3] His analysis will comply with momentarily. Though the guide does inform a cautionary story of class errors between mind/thoughts, politics/theology, and medical/non secular issues, as Carl Elliot writes, it goes additional. Percy additionally provides techno-medicine “what we Catholics name the Sacramental Life,” difficult its ethical and metaphysical construction.[4]
The novel opens fairly memorably with Dr. Thomas Extra gripping a carbine on the within of a freeway cloverleaf trade struggling an allergic response to gin fizzes: “Now in these dread latter days of the previous violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I got here to myself in a grove of younger pines and the query got here to me: has it occurred finally?” (1)
We meet Dr. Thomas Extra on the fourth of July like Dante: halfway alongside the journey of life, in a darkish wooden. He’s a psychiatrist, a physician of the soul, who “believes in God and the entire enterprise,” however by his personal admission, “loves ladies finest, music and science subsequent, whiskey subsequent, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly in any respect.” Dr. Extra has fallen sufferer to melancholy and alcohol in a mid-life disaster after his pious eight-year-old daughter died of most cancers. His then-wife blamed him for not taking her to Lourdes, France to heal the neuroblastoma swelling her eyeball out of its socket. She divorced him and ran off with “a heathen Englishman” extra curious about her cash than a “non secular relationship.” As Dr. Extra says, he not eats Christ, and so not has life inside him. He tried suicide the prior Christmas Eve following a tryst doomed by an anaphylactic response to gin fizzes in a golf course bunker. All through the novel, actually, Dr. Extra formally stays a affected person on the native psych ward regardless of residing outdoors its partitions.
The blood flowing from his slit wrists clarified issues for him, nonetheless. Life is value residing, and Dr. Extra had a scientific thoughts to supply the world. Within the madhouse he additional realized how mad the world is. Regardless of his biking melancholy and mania, he’s “a genius however who sees into the hidden causes of issues,” seemingly the one one who notices Virginia creeper overtaking the streets and appears keen to acknowledge rampant murders within the bourgeois neighborhood (11).
All just isn’t nicely in Paradise Estates. For Percy, the West has suffered from anthropological schizophrenia since Descartes laid the phrases for the fashionable division between thoughts and physique. As he spells out in Misplaced within the Cosmos, we vacillate between angelism and bestialism. Some stay as angels with our heads within the clouds, suspended above the actual world like gnostics by way of artwork and science (and to not point out digital life in digital actuality). Floating in idealisms, we crave existential “re-entry” factors from our orbit in regards to the earth to expertise some non permanent re-embodiment in opposition to power uncaused terrors and anxieties. Conversely, some stay as beasts on the earth, crawling about on our bellies like a serpent subjected to animal wishes. Some concurrently inhabit each angelism and bestialism, residing as souls or our bodies however by no means ensouled our bodies.
For Percy, the true reason behind this malaise is non secular. Powers and principalities have been unleashed, represented as “noxious” non secular particles falling upon Paradise Estates. Certainly he calls this “Extra’s syndrome”: he has found it not solely as a result of he’s a cautious scholar of his sufferers’ tales, but additionally as a result of he suffers from it himself. “Doctor, heal thyself,” he rightly says. But this psychiatrist has grown uninterested in the previous Freudian speak strategies that dare to enterprise into the soul’s troubles and lay naked its internal darkness. He needs a fast repair.
Subsequent to Paradise Estates is Fedville, a recognizable technocratic complicated together with a hospital, medical faculty, geriatrics heart, and so-called love clinic. Eros and thanatos, love and demise, are main forces all through the guide. Percy’s first title for the guide was truly “Making Love within the Ruins.” In Fedville the scientists are all behaviorists who espouse a principally materialist, demoralized worldview whose anthropology imagines man as an organism responding to environments. As one in all my very own former professors mentioned so eloquently, all we people do is contract and secrete. Percy typically asks readers, nonetheless, why we so typically really feel dangerous in good environments and good in dangerous environments in opposition to what an animal would possibly expertise. In a hurricane folks change into extra current and extra beneficiant with each other than on a typical sunny day. With such observations, Dr. Extra finds himself debating the scientists over the existence of the soul and the fact of human freedom in a string of occasions comical to anybody who has gone to medical faculty.
On the love clinic, scientists research sexual relations by way of scientific commentary, mirroring the well-known research by Masters and Johnson supplying the inspiration to drugs’s method to sexuality. The scientists assume a shortsighted technique. They subsume intercourse inside their totalizing goal system whereas forgetting as observers they’re nonetheless human and thus very a lot a part of the system. The clinic’s “commentary space” studying out biometric knowledge from the lovers even has a destimulation closet for any observer who loses objectivity. Percy assessments us by making us blush, demonstrating by the blush that intercourse has a larger that means to it than organisms responding to environments. Dr. Extra is aware of the that means of intercourse, although in his mid-life disaster has fallen into holding up three women for himself in a Howard Johnson motel. One physician provides to situation away Extra’s guilt with a “Skinner Field,” however Extra responds, “then I’d actually be up the creek” (118).
The geriatric clinic does one thing comparable for demise. An aged man is put up for doable euthanasia after unbecoming habits in his Florida senior residing heart: defecating on a Flirtation Stroll, cursing Ohioans, and digging for the Fountain of Youth on a putt-putt course. If that was not sufficient, after this he grew to become mute and appeared unable to stroll. The person, nonetheless, had been appearing surprisingly merely to show his freedom like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man (or Percy’s personal darkish Lancelot). The Nirvana-like setting of the senior residing heart had eroded his human freedom, treating him like a passive organism to be manipulated by social engineers designing his setting. On stage in entrance of many medical college students, Dr. Extra demonstrates the person is mute to defy the behaviorists making an attempt to control him. There may be nothing fallacious with him in any respect. His socially unacceptable habits was philosophical in nature.
Getting old and demise, for the senior residing heart as a lot as for the scientists, are merely one other drawback to unravel. Euthanasia presents a technical resolution to an ethical query. Certainly, folks within the novel have no idea what to do with demise. They shun talking about euthanasia or the rampant murders in Paradise. Against this, St. Thomas Extra, Dr. Extra’s distant relation and namesake, was “most cheerful with Brother Demise within the neighborhood.”[5] It was solely after Dr. Extra’s tried suicide, his personal brush with demise, that he started to like life.
The Ontological Lapsometer
Dr. Extra invents a tool to heal the sundered soul of Western man referred to as the “Ontological Lapsometer”: a stethoscope of the soul (7). The system is ready to diagnose angelism-bestialism by measuring mind waves in sure areas akin to an EEG crossed with phrenology. With this, Percy seemingly predicted up to date neuroscience of morality in lowering the spirit/morality to the thoughts after which to the mind, represented abstractly by way of numerous medical assessments. The Ontological Lapsometer thus additionally anticipates fMRI, which is steadily used to correlate psychological states with metabolic exercise in numerous mind areas. The Lapsometer goals to reveal the deepest truths in regards to the affected person on which it’s utilized by rendering the key locations of the center seen to Dr. Extra, shortcutting the previous Freudian speak strategies.
It guarantees greater than analysis. It’ll treatment Extra’s syndrome by stimulating or inhibiting numerous layers of the pineal gland, the construction Descartes believed contained the soul. Setting particular person souls upright, Dr. Extra aspires to right the social maladies in his neighborhood. Failing that, he hopes it at the least doesn’t destroy the world; failing that, he hopes at the least his article could also be printed earlier than the world ends. He observes man is in contrast to another animal:
In the event you measure the pineal exercise of a monkey—or another subhuman animal—with my lapsometer, you’ll invariably document equivalent readings at Layers I and II. Its self, that’s to say, coincides with itself. Solely in man do you discover a discrepancy: Layer I, the outer social self, tick over, say, at a sprightly 5.4 mmv, whereas Layer II simply lies there, barely alive at 0.7 mmv, and even zero!—a nought, a niche, an aching wound. Solely in man does the self miss itself, fall from itself (therefore lapsometer!). Suppose—! Suppose I may hit on the best dosage and weld the damaged self entire! What if man may reenter [sic] paradise, so to talk, and stay there each as man and spirit, entire and intact man-spirit, as strong flesh as a speckled trout, a dappled factor, but conscious of itself as a self! (36)
Dr. Extra needs to carry salvation to damaged human nature by way of know-how. He’ll use the system to make folks completely happy just like the Grand Inquisitor with out the laborious (and significant) volitional work of advantage. He goals to treatment the best sickness however with the fallacious means. Ethical and non secular illnesses can solely actually be handled with ethical and non secular therapies, and people are tied on to his rich neighborhood’s non secular poverty. Dr. Thomas Extra falls prey to a scientific utopia inclined to St. Thomas Extra’s satirical Utopia. Within the phrases of John Desmond, “with overweening pleasure, he hopes to excellent the lapsometer, treatment man’s ontological flaw, and save civilization, and thereby obtain fame as mankind’s savior.”[6]
This, in fact, is the last word hubris for drugs: redeeming mankind by way of know-how, regenerating sufferers as a brand new creation match for an earthly paradise. It needs to be no shock that Dr. Extra will get hoodwinked by the devilish Artwork Immelman, accepting the false promise of a Nobel Prize as a drunken bribe in a replay of Dostoevsky’s Stavrogin in Demons. Immelman unleashes the Lapsometer within the medical faculty auditorium with disastrous penalties. As a substitute of equilibrating and therapeutic their angelism-bestialism, they’ve a paradoxical response. Sexual drives are disinhibited, and aggression turns folks in opposition to one another in violent outbursts. The social pathologies Extra had hoped to heal appear poised quite to carry the world to its precipice, rising solely stronger after encountering his Lapsometer.
The highly effective quasi-spiritual system was certain to fall into the fallacious arms to wreak chaos in Paradise. That is the state of affairs main Thomas Extra to the place we met him: gripping a carbine on the within of a freeway cloverleaf trade struggling an allergic response to gin fizzes. Immelman’s non secular cronies have impressed political agitators to make use of the Lapsometer’s ideas to breed the occasions of the medical faculty lecture corridor throughout the neighborhood writ giant by way of the discharge of heavy sodium, recognized by Dr. Extra to exacerbate Extra’s syndrome. The very techno-rationality that began with saving the world is as a substitute poised to destroy it.
Sacrament and Paradise
The utopian challenge failed predictably. From the pit of witnessing the harm wrought by his know-how, he calls upon St. Thomas Extra and renames the sickness “Lucifer syndrome” (236). After eleven years away from the Church, the epilogue reveals him re-entering paradise himself by way of the sacraments. It’s Christmas Eve, the night time on which Christ renewed human nature and the night time on which he tried suicide six years prior. All through the guide he had struggled with a scarcity of guilt connected to his technological pleasure. Fr. Smith within the confessional, although, pricks his conscience with “the little method,” after Extra lists his sins:
In the meantime, forgive me however there are different issues we should take into consideration: like doing our jobs, you being a greater physician, I being a greater priest, exhibiting a little bit of peculiar kindness to folks, notably our personal households—unkindness to these near us is such a pitiful factor—doing what we will for our poor sad nation—issues, which, please forgive me, generally appear extra vital than dwelling on just a few middle-aged daydreams (399).
He feels ashamed for his sins instantly, receives absolution, and wears sackcloth at midnight Mass. Dr. Extra could also be a genius, however Fr. Smith is an apostle, to make use of Kierkegaard’s distinction so vital to Percy. The guide closes with Extra settled into a brand new marriage, residing humbly in an previous slave’s quarters, merely tending his personal backyard, quite than technologically commanding the backyard of Eden. He’s formally an ex-suicide, even when his previous vices proceed to tempt him.
Percy reveals that the deepest that means of drugs is sacramental in two senses. First, drugs is like the clothes of pores and skin worn by Adam and Eve outdoors paradise: it’s a safety given by God to lighten the sufferings we expertise on this life, particularly when administered with love. Thomas Extra experiences this when his pal stitches up his wrists after his suicide try. Second, therapeutic of the physique is an analogy for therapeutic of the soul. Drugs is an icon of the tree of life by way of which we could re-enter paradise, however it isn’t the important thing for unlocking paradise.
There’s a deadly flaw, a lapse, an ontological wound, an sickness of the soul, in all mankind residing outdoors our heavenly paradise, and it touches each side of how we use drugs. But, an Ontological Lapsometer (or AI algorithm) making an attempt to right it may possibly solely achieve this by demoralizing its topics within the course of. I’d be capable to use an AI-driven “synthetic pancreas” to deal with diabetes successfully, however that may be a completely different matter than, for instance, striving to get rid of the generally unpredictable human part of drugs. In different phrases, the best way drugs participates in restoring mankind to paradise is sacramental love quite than technological energy. As a substitute of organisms responding to environments, for Percy, we’re pilgrims.
Dr. Extra, within the guide’s sequel, The Thanatos Syndrome, says drugs works “by venturing into the center of darkness, which is to say, by speaking and listening, principally listening, to a different troubled human for months.”[7] The Freudians have been onto one thing. Drugs is a sacrament the place the expertise of sickness, struggling, in search of assist, and providing compassion take part mysteriously in larger patterns. Sarcastically, Dr. Extra was on the cusp of this expertise within the early phases of growing his Lapsometer.
An abstracted graduate scholar affected by “large free-floating terror, identification disaster, and sexual impotence” presents to his psychiatric workplace. He’s extra goal than a behaviorist, describing emotions of heat and tenderness towards his spouse, although he won’t say love. As you possibly can guess, Dr. Extra’s Lapsometer demonstrates a traditional profile of angelism. He shudders “in orbit across the nice globe, in search of some solution to get again.” Dr. Extra agrees to provide the younger lad his requested rayon organ in order that if he couldn’t obtain “an ample response” at the least his spouse may. However there was one situation: the next day the affected person should not drive to work. As a substitute he should stroll six miles because the crow flies by way of the swamp. He acquiesced, finally arriving at house after five-hours battling mosquitoes, alligators, copperheads, and different younger males on the lookout for a struggle. The ordeal left him half-dead and malodorous. He embraced his spouse, and made like to her for the remainder of the night time. Intercourse was reconciled to marital love, and angelism cured by way of non-technical means.
For Percy, physician and affected person meet as co-exiles collectively making an attempt to mutually make their method again to paradise. But techno-medicine is commonly tempted to rid humanity of its sufferings and weaknesses whereas merely reconciling man to his sins, utilizing fast fixes to rid the human of human situation. In Dr. Extra’s pilgrimage from know-how to sacrament, he concludes “some day a person will stroll into my workplace as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and stroll out as a person, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, employee and waiter and watcher” (382-83).
EDITORIAL NOTE: An earlier model of this essay was given on the Fall Convention of the de Nicola Heart for Ethics and Tradition, “Ever Historical, Ever New: On Catholic Creativeness,” November 2024.
[1] David Rothenberger, “Doctor Burnout and Effectively-Being: A Systematic Evaluation and Framework for Motion.” Dis Colon Rectum. 60, no. 6. (2017):567-576.
[2] Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, The Correspondence of Shelby Foote & Walker Percy, edited by Jay Tolson (Heart for Documentary Research, 2017), 304. Quoted in: Hooten-Wilson, Jessica. Studying Walker Percy’s Novels (Louisiana State College Press, 2018), 17.
[3] Walker Percy, “Regarding Love within the Ruins.” In Signposts in a Unusual Land, edited by Patrick Samway (Picador, 1991), 248.
[4] The Correspondence of Shelby Foote & Walker Percy, p. 129
[5] Walker Percy, The Message within the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Different (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), 109.
[6] John F Desmond, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Walker Percy, and the Age of Suicide (The Catholic College of America Press, 2019), 252.
[7] See additionally: Lawson, Lewis A. “The Cross and the Delta: Walker Percy’s Anthropology.” In Walker Percy: Novelist and Thinker. Edited by Jan Nordby Gretlund and Karl-Heinz Westarp. College Press of Mississippi, 1991.
