PARTISAN REVIEW
29
psychohistorical dislocation associated with the breakdown of viable
modes
of
symbolic immortality. What has broken down is the sense
of connection men have long felt with the vital and nourishing sym–
bols
of their cultural traditions, the sense of connection with their
own history. Our sense of historical continuity (or of symbolic im–
mortality) is now being profoundly threatened; by simple historical
velocity, which subverts the imagery - notably the theological ima–
gery - in which
it
has been traditionally maintained; and by nu–
clear and other ultimate weapons which, by their very existence, call
into question
all
modes of immortality. When we consider (more
often unconsciously or preconsciously than with clear awareness) the
possibility of nuclear or bacteriological warfare, we can hardly be
certain of living on in our children or grandchildren, in our works
or influences upon others, in some form of theological conquest of
death, or even in nature, which we now know to be itself vulnerable
to our weapons. The striking contemporary reliance upon the fifth
mode of symbolic immortality mentioned earlier, that of experi–
ential transcendence - whether through drugs or other forms of
"turned-on" psychic states - may well be a reflection of precisely
this
decline in our belief in the other four modes. We hunger for
both connection and transcendence, and we have need to experi–
ment with the historical and antihistorical boundaries of both.
In America we feel this kind of dislocation profoundly, so much
so that we may well be in the vanguard of two specific responses
to it. The first, which can have highly malignant consequences,
entails an embrace - even deification - of technology as a new
mode of immortality through which we seek to perpetuate our–
selves.
This
embrace of technology can be associated with great
adventure, and with other forms of imaginative transcendence, as
in
the case of the space program. But it takes on grotesque contours
when the technology involved is that of weaponry. We then witness
the development, not only in America but throughout the world, of
what I call the religion of nuclearism, an attitude of worship to–
ward weapons of destruction, and a dependence upon them to solve
otherwise baffling human problems - ultimately the investment in
them of the sense of immortality that has been lost.
A second response to historical dislocation is the emergence of
what I call Protean man - by which I mean a relatively new life style,
