[UA] The Masterless Man/The Wave Man/Japanese Mentality vs. American

[Tim Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: Cassady Toles <Con_Job at excite.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 11:29 AM
Subject: [UA] The Masterless Man/The Wave Man/Japanese Mentality vs.
American


> I recently had a discussion with my housemate Zoe about the 47 Ronin, and
I
> realized exactly what it was that made me pair up the Masterless man with
> the gunfighter and why I saw this conflict coming into view between the
two,
> it's also about that conversation we had with web designers trying to be
the
> Masterless man and something rubbed me the wrong way about it.
>
> I realized it this morning (in the bathroom).  If we assume that the
> ascendant of the masterless man was one of the 47 Ronin or some comparable
> individual.  The masterless man is a TRAGIC FIGURE.  The reason that idea
> sticks with us is because of the tragedy.  Feudal Japanese society was all
> about service.  A serf served the nobility the samuri served the diamyo
and
> the diamyo served the emperor.  The masterless man DOES NOT want to remain
> masterless.  He has no other option.  The masterless man's life proved
that
> he failed once.  And that failure cost his life's purpose.
>
> It is almost impossible for an American to truly understand this
mentality.
> America was raised on concepts like rugged individualism and revolutionary
> representation and the idea that all men were created equal.  America
hasn't
> ever lost territory in a war.  America has never been held hostage.  We
> don't know what it is to serve.  We don't know what it is for that to be a
> purpose.

Well, someone's said The War of 1812, where we arguably lost all future
claim to Canada, and we _have_ lost territories and protectorates when they
decided to go independent on us (the only way England and Japan have lost
land).  I'm not sure what you mean by "held hostage."  The late 1970s were
an EXCRUCIATING time to be an American, because of the hostages in Iran and
other failures on the world scene.  When the Ayotollah took the embassy, he
did indeed take America hostage, because it proved that we were no longer He
Who Must Be Obeyed.

Furthermore, we're enslaved by O Mighty Dollar.  Talk about $3.00 a gallon
gasoline, and you'll get comments on par with how miserable the weather's
been lately, but what ya gonna do about it?  We envy the rich and despise
the poor.  We laud the starving artist, and begrudge them when they 'sell
out.'  In America, we DO serve.  We DO have a purpose, but god help you if
you just go out and say it.

And how do you explain the explosion of gangs we see in urban centers.  The
upcoming Gangs of New York will finally put to film this amazing era in
American history (1880s - 1890s) where most of the Urban youth were involved
in gang activities, because there was nothing else to do.  Even today, where
we have the mantra of "gangs are bad / don't do gangs", gangs thrive because
they fulfill that need for the missing father figure, which nicely coincides
with America's fixation on its lack of history which brings about fear of a
lack of legitimacy / destiny.

>
> The reason the gunfighter resonates so well here is that in America we
once
> had a soldier who lived to serve a master who truly died.  The rebel
soldier
> after the collapse of the South and the loss of the civil war.  We had an
> individual who held nation above all else and that nation was defeated.

Well, the gunfighter was the transmogrification of the mountain man, who saw
what America was becoming, and got the crap out.  Your analogy of the
defeated Southerner holds true to this as well.  Part of my problem with
your view of 'American as Rugged Individual' is that it involves a bit of
historical revisionism.  Some people came to America to be left alone, sure,
but others came to build the sort of oppressive puritanical society that the
'libertines' back home wouldn't tolerate.  We live in the shadow of these
societies even today.  We like to think that all men are created equal,
pointing to the Greeks as the originators of Democracy, but they didn't
really believe that, and we really didn't practice it.  As Pirsig points out
in Lila, Rosseau, Locke, and Hobbes got their ideas from reports about the
aboriginal Americans and their peculiar societies.  Rather than holding them
up to some romantic ideal (which a few did, as the Noble Savage), the
founding fathers plowed them into the earth and sought to re-educate them to
serve the higher ideas of Democracy.  First the atrocities were done in the
name of God (Manifest Destiny), and then Democracy, and all throughout
American history people did things because they longed to be part of
something greater than themselves.

>
> All romance aside, that figure holds the tragic quality of the wave man,
and
> of the American Archtypes, it's the only one I can think of that really
> does.  I don't see the masterless man as being ascended and replaced by
> contract computer employees, or dot-com millionaires for a number of
> reasons, firstly, with the collapse of the dot-economy the computer
prodigal
> is becoming way less of an issue.  Secondly, because, that dot-com
> millionaire being downsized or leaving to start their own company isn't
> tragic.  In America a job is just a job.  There are a million and one ways
> to make a living and you have to find another one.

That goes against the concept of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, the
Company Man, and even the Union Man.  Jobs might have been jobs, but people
were fiercely loyal to corporations, until those corporations turned on
them.  Listen to the townspeople of Flint, MI in _Roger and Me,_ and you'll
get a sense that it was more than just a job.  The corporations were the
ones trying to promote this idea of the Rugged Individualist, who would go
where the jobs were, but stories like The Grapes of Wrath show communities
that are torn apart before they ever had a chance to take root.  It's only
recently that Americans have taken on this attitude of 'zero loyalty' and
'it's just a job,' spawned most recently by the abysmal job market for those
people exiting college in the early 90s (does anyone remember the multitude
of articles about the McJobs that awaited us all?)  And remember than in the
dot.com cycle, the MOP (Millionaires on Paper) would fund the next wave of
MOP, thus transforming the Masterless Man who Done Good into The Master.

>
> I'm not saying that the modern contractor/specialist/outsider doesn't have
> some place in ascention, but I think it more threatens the Rebel or the
> Outsider, because I think tragic archtypes remain tragic, just like heroic
> ones or villianous ones remain those as well.

Well, going back to the gunfighter one, we see that tragedy being played out
in their desire to find a home.  You have the final shot of The Searchers,
where Ethan finds himself framed by the doorway of his new home, the West
calling out to him, but he'll stick around for a while.  He did have the
whole "failed southerner" thing going, but it was displaced in The Search
for his family.  Then there's Shane, which is pretty obvious.  He wants a
family, and he's willing to die to preserve that way of life for someone
else.  In Unforgiven, Will Munny loses part of the idyllic family life he's
discovered, and has to return to his much despised old habits to preserve
it.  In each case, the gunfighter as Masterless Man works because of the
tension between settling down and wanderlust, something that echoes back to
The Odyssey.

>
> These are just thoughts, I'm more than curious what all you-all have to
say
> about them.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
> "I am the messiah in the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniel's.  Drink of me
> and
> no peace." -- Cobra Baghdad www.peoplehateme.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
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