Irrational Man
An Essay by Christopher Bek
christopher.bek@gmail.com
Summary—This essay tells the story that begins with Kafka’s: The Castle, The Trial, and The Metamorphosis—followed by Heisenberg, Conscious Electrons, Metaphysics, a Proposal, and a Demand for Change to accommodate the Irrational Man.
Quotation—The price one pays for having a profession is déformation professionnelle, as the French put it—professional deformation. Doctors and engineers tend to see things from the viewpoint of their own specialty, and usually show a very marked blind spot to whatever falls outside this particular province. The more specialized a vision the sharper its focus; but also, the more nearly total the blind spot toward all thing that lie outside the periphery of this focus. —William Barrett
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was an Austrian novel and short story writer, whose disturbing fiction anticipated the oppression and despair of the late 20th century. His work emphasizes loneliness, frustration and guilt of individuals threatened by nameless forces beyond their control and comprehension. The story of The Castle follows a character named K, who arrives in a snow-covered town, believing he has been summoned to serve as a land surveyor for Count Westwest. However, upon his arrival, K encounters a series of obstacles that prevent him from accessing the castle and fulfilling his supposed duty. The Trial tells the story of a man occupying the position of chief financial officer of a bank. He is unpredictably arrested by two agents from an unspecified government agency for an unnamed crime. The nature of his crime is never revealed to him or the reader. His true crime is that he shifts from seeing himself through his own eyes to the eyes of the government. Because of this, he willingly accepts a knife to his heart. The Metamorphosis emphasizes style that blends reality with fantasy and irony. Kafka presents a nightmarish scene in which the protagonist is a hardworking insurance agent who awakens to find he is turning into a huge insect. He remembers nothing of his former self and adapts to new circumstances as they present themselves. He is abandoned by his family and left to die alone.
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) was a German physicist and philosopher who significantly impacted the field of quantum theory—best known for the uncertainty principle, stating that it is impossible to know both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle with perfect accuracy.
Electrons in Charge. In Quantum Theory, wave-particle duality is the concept that every particle or quantum entity may be described as either a particle or a probability wave. Schrödinger set forth his classic cat-in-a-box thought problem in 1935 with the intention of demonstrating the absurdity of the probabilistic interpretation once and for all. He argued that the cat must be both alive and dead until the observer opens the box. The thought problem unintendedly leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that the observer’s consciousness is what actually determines the fate of the cat. While Quantum Theory probabilistically describes the energy and matter within the atom, Relativity deterministically contends the universe is evolving according to laws that, given initial conditions, uniquely establish its future. Special Relativity is involves deterministically understanding the movement of elementary particles, especially at high speeds or where gravity is not significant. General Relativity deterministically describes the composition of energy and matter relative to Lightspeed. It characterizes how the curvature of spacetime, determined by the presence and distribution of energy and matter, influences the paths of objects, including light, in a deterministic way. While Relativity’s Einstein said: “God does not play dice”, Quantum Theory’s Bohr said: “Stop telling God what to do.” In fact, Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) was a great Physicist who said: “Electrons are active agents making conscious choices.” Thusly, indicating that all electrons are named Adam and are in charge of the Universe—in serving the lone Photon named Eve.
Metaphysics. Philosophy was defined as the love of wisdom by the Greeks 2500 years ago. Metaphysics was defined by Aristotle 250 years later as the branch of philosophy concerned with first principles of the whole universe—which I say may be divided into the three necessary branches of being, the-world, and being-in-the-world, as providing a complete and holistic metaphysical theory of everything. Being or existence is the highest of the three as indicated by the cogito, and is the starting point of Existentialism Now, as follows from Jean-Paul Sartre: “There can be no other truth to take off from this—I think, therefore I exist—the Cartesian cogito—cogito ergo sum. There we have the absolute truth of consciousness becoming aware of itself.” Existentialism was set forth by the likes of Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Pascal, Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and King Bek—emphasizing the individual subjective experiences of freewill and choice in taking personal freedom and responsibility, which can be both empowering and burdensome in sharing creation with God by taking total freedom and total responsibility for the Planet—in spite of its apparent absurdity. It calls upon all of us to act authentically when doing our duty in accordance with the inner focus of our true inner subjective self—always in relation to God. Kierkegaard defined The Moment as a pivotal, decisive point in time where one makes a profound, existential choice, often a leap of faith towards a higher truth or meaning. Behaviorism is arguably the currently employed psychology in Canada, as set forth by Skinner, Watson, and Pavlov, concerned with observable behavior, environmental stimuli, and basic conduct. The psychology contends behavior follows deterministically from past experiences and conditioning, rather than through acts of freewill—seeing human behavior as determined by genetics and environment. Skinner was the most influential psychologist of the 20th century, and behaviourism is still in-play today. Behaviourism hates The Moment’s guts, while Existentialism writes essays about, and serenades, The Moment.
Irrational Man. William Barrett’s 1958 Irrational Man explores the roots of existentialism and introduces thinkers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre to the English-speaking world. Barrett argues that existentialism addresses the human experience of a world without pre-ordained meaning, where individuals are confronted with the absurdity of existence and freedom and responsibility in creating meaning.
Health Care and the Rule of Law. The Canadian Constitution is prefaced as follows: Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law. I made that argument twice in the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta, and twice the Judge fled the scene, and twice I was escorted out of the Courthouse by the Sheriff. I have tremendous respect for the remarkable health care and rule of law we have here in Canada. My argument for them is Practical in that they have always been there for me and have kept me healthy and safe. My argument against them is both Mathematical and Allegorical as I believe we are all caught in a local optima that Plato described 2400 years ago with his Allegory of the Cave, which I am reintroducing here in wishing that everyone would exit the Cave of Behaviourism and enter into the Daylight of Existentialism Now.
Dr Izu Nwachukwu is a Professor of Medicine and Psychology with extensive international education and practice experience affiliated with The University of Calgary in Canada and Imo State University in Nigeria. Dr Izu was my Psychiatrist for a time. I gave him a draft of my 2018 FriesenPress book Existentialism Now. When I subsequently asked him if he had read it, he said he had given it to someone else and, to that, he had nothing to add.
Dr Nathan Finkbeiner is a Doctor of Medicine and Psychiatry from the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with over 14 years of experience—and is, importantly, fluent in both English and French. Dr Finkbeiner was one of the Doctors on Psych ward in 2023. I prefaced my well-crafted argument in making to him by saying that I had read thirty years ago that a McGill University Doctor said that the Health Care system in Canada had not changed in over a hundred years. My question to him was then: Has the Health Care system changed in the past thirty years? He said: If you mean that we are still chronically underfunded then, No, the Health Care system in Canada has not changed.
Crazy Enough? Crazy Enough! This essay is proposed to be Commissioned by a Philanthropist in the amount of 1600 Canadian dollars. In deciding to do so, a Philanthropist might be reminded of the story heard of the Quantum hero Werner Heisenberg, tasked with heading up a group of Physicists responsible for assessing different scientific theories. After evaluating one theory, Heisenberg then met with the author in advising him that: “We are all agreed your theory is crazy, the question that divides us is whether it is crazy Enough.” Certainly, all would agree that King Chris is crazy Enough. At the same time, we fully acknowledge Edgar Allan Poe’s 1848 argument: Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence—whether much that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from disease of thought—from moods of minds exalted at the expense of general intellect.
Closing Arguments. The British writer John Gribbin wrote: “The fate of specialists in anyone area of science is to focus more and more narrowly on their special topic, learning more and more about less and less, until eventually they end up knowing everything about nothing.” And one could argue that the same is essentially true of Doctors—who are largely Specialists restlessly on the run. We must thus move from Determinism to more Freewill, from Behaviourism to Existentialism, to the writing of Essays, and to globally evolve into Self-Awareness.