As I write this,
O. J. Simpson has already been found guilty of 12 charges of
armed robbery and kidnapping. Sentencing is scheduled for December
5th.[1] Now 61 years old, he’ll probably
spend the rest of his life behind bars. Just desserts, chorus
his accusers from every corner of our wired world. But as it
concerns the all important accuser-satisfaction indices, the
numbers will in all likelihood disappoint especially if O.J.
finally secures the outcome he has always (if only subconsciously)
desired: just punishment for his horrific crimes. Let me explain.
In all of Dostoyevsky’s
remarkable novels -- The Idiot, The Possessed, Crime and
Punishment and Brothers Karamazov -- we repeatedly
encounter characters who suddenly, inexplicably do or say something
that goes totally against their self-interest. Whether during
courtship, a business affair, a wedding party or family reunion,
for no apparent reason, a character will reveal an outrageously
negative aspect of himself as it concerns pride, hatefulness,
envy, jealousy, avarice, gluttony; and in a single, uncalculated
stroke destroy an outcome he or she may have been patiently
nurturing over a considerable period of time. Since we can’t
account for the bizarre behaviour, we come to think of Dostoyevsky,
through his characters, as crazy or possessed of the irrational.
As readers, we excuse the behaviour (the madness) if it falls
within the law or wish it institutionalized if society is endangered
by it. But what about readers who suspect Dostoyevsky’s
characters aren’t at all mad but are in fact the
enlightened ones hiding among us, despite their self-precipitated
fall into apparent ignominy?
Dostoyevsky
profoundly believed that all of us, regardless of culture and
religious indoctrination, and prior to any imposition of morality
and ethics, are activated by the primordial urge to confess.
All the world’s major and minor religions have taken this
into account by weaving into their fabric and operations the
rites and redemptive properties of confession. If we’re
to set store by Dostoyevsky’s characters (Prince Myshkin,
Dimitri Karamazov), the need to confess is as insistent as a
biological imperative, which means confession need not be restricted
to a religious impulse.
Thus, in respect
to the many of us outside the sway of conventional religion,
who have embraced the secular option whose ethos conspires to
deny or inhibit (via reward and punishment) confession, we have
threaded into our way of life customs and institutions whose
first purpose is to supply environments designed to bring into
unconcealment our unedited selves.
How else do we
account for the mega-events and on-going activities married
to the consumption of alcohol and drugs if not for the fact
they provide the excuse to reacquaint ourselves with those pathways,
both inside and outside the mind, that lead us to confession?
In the age of secularism, the bar or tavern replaced the Church,
and now, in the age of the Internet, users operating under the
protective umbrella of anonymity are confessing en masse their
real selves, but without having to suffer the consequences.
Which is why virtual confession will always pale in its effects
and satisfactions compared to real confession.
Read the advice
columns in newspapers and popular magazines for a first hand
account of humanity refracted through the confessionals of jealousy,
avarice, vindictiveness, sloth, pride and envy and there can
be no doubt that confession, as catharsis, corresponds to a
20,000 league-deep need to reveal ourselves in the truth of
who we are, which is why we are constantly engineering the means
and excuses that allow for it.
Dostoyevsky (prior
to Heidegger and the existentialists) was among the first to
recognize the relationship between confession and the notion
of authenticity (becoming one's authentic self), where the former,
over the course of a lifetime, is the means to the latter --
consequences and approval ratings be damned.
Literature
provides marvelous prototypes of authenticity seekers. From
the first line in Camus’ The Stranger (L’Etranger),
spoken by its infamous anti-hero, Mersault, we have one of the
most remarkable confessions in all of literature: “Mother
died yesterday, or was it the day before.” He could have
just as easily said, “I think it’s going to rain
today, then again, maybe not.” In uttering these words
in a voice preternaturally devoid of emotion, Mersault reveals
himself to be unconscionably indifferent to the passing of his
mother. And yet despite the negative judgment his offhanded
remark will elicit, he speaks his mind because more than anything
he wants to be known as he is. Later on in the book,
after he has committed a senseless murder, instead of intelligently
defending himself, he argues the reflection of the sun in his
eyes caused him to mortally knife someone, a defense that is
tantamount to admitting his guilt. When his moment of execution
arrives, he desires that the crowd greet him with "howls
of execration," and not ready-made excuses for the honourable
life he hasn’t led. If during Happy Hour the world’s
great truths get spoken, the world’s great lies are told
in funeral parlours and cemeteries.
In the novel Disgrace
(1999) by Nobel recipient J. M. Coetzee, the protagonist, David
Lurie, a distinguished university professor, has a ridiculously
open sexual affair with one of his students. He begs to get
caught, and does, losing everything in the bargain -- his position,
his friends, his reputation -- and by novel’s end finds
himself working as a lowly caretaker in a dog pound. Yet despite
his dramatic fall, he discovers satisfaction in performing menial
work. By Dostoyevsky’s accounting, David Lurie not only
wanted to get caught (he’s been having affairs with students
throughout his entire academic career), but wanted to get punished
and wanted to publically fall in disgrace. The events that precipitate
this downfall constitute his confession.
Which brings us
to O.J.’s recent criminal undertaking and the mind-boggling
details of a bungled crime for which there is no apparent explanation,
unless it be provided by the unacknowledged artery of confession
that runs through the race.
If we’re
to believe O.J’s testimony, he wanted to retrieve memorabilia
which he claimed belonged to him. So why didn’t he simply
prevail on the authorities to retrieve it, which wouldn’t
have entailed any risk? Instead, he hastily assembles a rag-tag
platoon of unproven, petty criminals, thereby exponentially
multiplying the opportunities for incompetence and betrayal,
and quarterbacks a crime that could have been executed solo
-- and without guns. Furthermore, we’re asked to believe
that in this age of highly sophisticated affordable communication
technology, he wouldn’t have considered the possibility
of the heist being recorded. All of this from a man, who, for
all intents and purposes, committed the perfect murder(s) of
Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. In fact, so perfect everybody
on the planet knew he did it and he still got away with it.
I’m persuaded
that O. J., now older and wiser, had arrived at a point in his
life where he was no longer capable of living the lie that he
had perpetuated for 13 years, and like David Lurie, embarked
on a project that would assure his arrest and conviction so
he could finally and fabulously fall into disgrace. When a brilliant
murderer re-invents himself as a bungling thief, it’s
because he wants to be known to the world in the truth of his
being, and so much so, no price tag (cost of freedom) can equal
the peace of mind and serenity that falling into international
disgrace vouchsafes.
At this preliminary
stage of O. J.’s rehabilitation, the impulse to confess
himself to the world is in all likelihood subconscious, to which
Freud would say, 'so what,' and suggest that the path upon which
O. J. has set himself will become more explicit on December
5th, the day of his sentencing. O. J. skeptics should bear in
mind that there is no plausible alternative explanation to the
botched robbery other than the wish (need) to be caught and
punished -- and rewarded for extending a hand to his authentic
self. As such, O. J.’s confession is a story in progress.
Another related
story in progress -- and a disconcerting one at that -- concerns
the world’s journalists who, en masse, have failed to
recognize O. J’s confession, and by extension, the onset
of his rehabilitation. Vanity
Fair writer, Dominick Dunne, in a lachrymose moment, writes:
“There’s a loneliness, a sadness about O.J. that
I never saw before. I think he understands how wrecked his life
is.” In point of fact, nothing could be farther from the
truth. O. J., who has been an avatar of inauthenticity until
now, is finally on the cusp of getting his life back. It may
have taken 13 lost years to finally find himself on the path
to self-hood, but thanks to a crime that was guaranteed to fail,
he has, if only subconsciously, confessed to the world that
he is criminally responsible for the cold blooded murders of
Brown and Goldman, and is fully and fulfillingly deserving of
the punishment that awaits him.
If all of the above
is approximately true, how are we, the world’s jury, to
judge a man who is no longer the same person who butchered in
cold blood? Who among us will come to designate as a work in
progress our own deliberations and response to the thorny issues
O. J’s life raises?
