September 17, 2020 • 47 mins
Look on the bright side! In a country obsessed with positivity, Hari traces the path of exiled German intellectual Theodor Adorno to sunny California, where he gets stuck in traffic with the British writer Geoff Dyer. How this positivity relates to church and state? Turns out there’s a lot to complain about.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. It's early morning in Venice Beach, a few blocks
away from the Pacific Ocean. My producer Hunter and I
are ordering breakfast at a cafe. The menu is long
(00:37):
and many items have oddly positive names an uplifting, blissful,
super eternal, grace, stella or cool. We've just blown in
from New York and we're feeling some culture shock. I mean,
I like a fancy breakfast as much as the next man,
(00:58):
but this place seems to have its own agenda. I
think I like the vivid with cold Brook coffee. Let's
get a healthy I think the idea is that by
making our breakfast order will harness the power of these
uplifting words, will invite a little positivity into our lives.
(01:23):
In the end, we are focused, healthy and trusting. Oh
and Hunter has two refills of Courageous. When I go
to the bathroom, I read the flyers on the board.
They're mostly from alternative therapists. I can get something called
deep integrative shadow work. I can get full body cryotherapy,
(01:47):
which sounds suspiciously like paying to get into a bath
of ice. My phone buzzes and I take it out
and look at it. I am unique, says a message
on my screen. It's from a positive thinking app that
I felt I ought to download when I landed at LAX.
I'm supposed to repeat this phrase to myself like a mantra.
(02:09):
I am une, I am uni, I am unique. It's
all very well saying I am unique, but am I really?
In many ways I'm exactly like everyone else. Thinking of
myself as unique is just vanity. I realize that I'm
arguing with my affirmation app. I think that means I'm
(02:31):
doing it wrong. The phone buzzers again. I am open,
free and loving. This is Into the Zone, a podcast
(02:52):
about opposites and how borders are never as clear as
we think. I'm hurry, Kunzru. This episode is about positive
and negative. It's about optimism and pessimism, and it's about
a particular kind of opposition, the dialectic, the clash of
(03:14):
opposites that produces something new. Good place for Jeff to live?
What am I pressing? Seventy ninety six? I think I've
(03:37):
come to La to see a friend of mine named
Jeff Dyer. He's a writer who lives in Venice, just
around the corner from the cafe with the mantra menu.
Jeff and I both left the UK to come and
live in the US. He's someone I think of as
very English. He's witty and a little bit sarcastic. He
(03:59):
wrote a book called Yoga for People who can't be
bothered to do it, and another one called out of
sheer rage that one's about failing to write a book
about dh Lawrence. Hello there, Hello, great, what are we doing?
We need hugging. It always makes me chuckle to think
of Jeff here in the land of positive thinking. No,
(04:20):
I mean, time passes so quickly. We've been here about
six years. I think. You know, we were living in London.
You'd already gone to America. It seemed so many of
my friends were in America and I was stuck there
in London. I would say to Rebecca, you know it
was my destiny to live in California. We're not doing it.
My whole life is a complete and utter waste. Have
(04:41):
you changed? Have you become more more a Southern Californian.
So one of the things that we were first struck
by is that, you know, we had to become so
much more polite living here, And there's an irony there
because Americans always think of England as being this. I
don't know. Jane Austen, Henry James like society where everyone
is super polite, but as you know from London, it's
(05:03):
a it's a right old dogg eat dog world, there
isn't it, you know? So yeah, we became so much.
When I listen back to this tape, I hear something
strange and kind of comical, the Soviet resignation to things
not being Jeff and I start denouncing various aspects of
British culture, to the inefficiency, the rudeness, the cynicism. We're
(05:26):
both particularly down on the British habit of complaining. We
start complaining about the complaining, and we're enjoying ourselves. We
are enjoying complaining about complaining. It's a quintessentially British way
of bonding. Affirmation through negativity. I mean, more generally, would
(05:47):
you describe yourself as an optimist or a pessimist? Oh?
Do you know? I would reject terms really because you know,
what difference does it make whether you're an optimist or
a pessimist? And that doesn't make any difference to the
successful resolution of a situation, does it. Jeff tells me
that he doesn't spend any time at the Positive Thinking Cafe.
(06:07):
He prefers another place a few blocks away. But I
want to know if he believes in any of the
stuff about the Californian mental attitude. Does he think that
by thinking positively you can make positive things happen for yourself? Well, actually, yeah,
I mean I guess this thing of you know, which
is such an important part of life here, of that
(06:27):
positive attitude, and it's created a nice society in many ways.
Jeff starts ruminating about philosophy, trying to remember a passage
from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche where he suggests that small
acts of kindness have done more for the world than
lofty ideals of heroism and self sacrifice. Do you realize,
oh my god it Nietzsche, in his weird way, is
(06:49):
described why life here in California is in many ways
of success, because all of your interactions with people are
really a source of great affirmation, and they make daily
life much nicer. So that I thought I delicit some
classic Jeff grumbling. Instead when it comes to California, he's
filled with positive tivity, well, positivity couched in regret, but
(07:13):
still for Jeff that's new. He even thinks California is
changing his look for the better. I've got sixty years
worth of English disappointment in my face, and now I've
learned since being here to sort of smart, to smile more,
and I've got my you know, my teeth are whiter
than they were, but they're still crooked English team, you know,
(07:35):
and that kind of thing. Yes, of course, it generates
well being for everybody. And I love the way that
here you meet somebody on the street, you always say
hello and smile at them. And what we find is
we when we go back to England after we've been
here for six months or so, we go back for
the summer, we come back with our Californian ways and
we're smiling at people in Labrate Grove. And after a
(07:58):
week we stopped doing it because it's really inappropriate. I
haven't come all the way to California just to talk
about England. Jeff and I are huge fans of someone
who's been called the high prest of Negativity, the grumpy
German intellectual who arrived in Los Angeles in nineteen forty one.
(08:18):
His name was Theodore Adorna, the hinder futum to Jeff
and I have been joking about New world positivity and
old world gloom. But Adorno embodied these contradictions like no
one else. I want to tell you a little about
(08:38):
him because his story illuminates what we like to call
the American dream and how it's tangled up with positive thinking. Adorno,
known to his friends as Teddy, was a sociologist who
wound up in California after fleeing the Nazis. He'd been
one of the leading thinkers at the Institute for Social
(09:01):
Research in Frankfort, the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School pioneered
a rigorous style of thinking known as critical theory, which
tried to analyze society with the aim of transforming it.
In photos, Adornaut's piercing eyes drill into the viewer out
of a smooth, round face. It's like being stared at
(09:24):
by a hyperintelligent baby. There was indeed something of the
child prodigy about him. Adorna was an only son. His
father was a Jewish wine merchant in Frankfurt. This Jewish
dad had married a Catholic opera singer and wanted to
assimilate into German society. Their son, Theodore Wi Adorno was
(09:45):
baptized a Catholic, and though he bore both his parents' names,
the Jewish sounding Wiesengrend was quietly dropped. Teddy grew up
in affluence. Adored and encouraged by his artistic mother, Teddy
wanted to be a composer. When he was twenty one,
he moved to Vienna to study with the modernist master
(10:07):
Alban Berg. This is the kind of music Adorno wrote
in those days. After a few years of trying to
make it as a composer, he switched to philosophy almost
at once. He was asked to teach at the newly
(10:27):
founded Institute for Social Research back in Frankfurt. There he
was exposed to left wing ideas and turned from esthetics
to a more urgent political agenda gi k in the
(10:49):
enlighting de Phenomenology. Thus Blossitusian heist, Adorno became a Marxist
and as such an obvious target for the Nazis. As
soon as they came to power, his charmed life started
to fall apart. His license to teach was revoked, his
house was searched. When he applied to join the official
(11:12):
Writers Union, he was told that membership was limited to
quote persons who belonged to the German nation by profound
ties of character and blood. As a non arian, you
are unable to feel and appreciate such an obligation. End
of horrible quote. Soon afterwards, Adorno left Germany. He didn't
(11:35):
return for many years. Before Adornau arrived in LA he'd
spent some time in Oxford in New York writing about
the rise of fascism. His best friend and fellow critical theorist,
(11:56):
Max Horkheimer, was already in California, part of an extraordinary
community of German exiles. The group included some of the
greatest creative minds of the twentieth century, the novelists Mann,
the poet and playwright bertel Brecht, the composer Arnold Scherenberg,
film directors like Fritz Lange, and actors like Greta Garbo
(12:19):
and Peter Laurie. Teddy and his wife Gretel moved into
a house in Brentwood. For some years, Adorna had also
been writing fragments and short essays about everything from toys
to insomnia. While he was in LA he decided to
put them together into a book. He called it minimum Moralia,
(12:41):
a Latin phrase meaning little ethics. It was a humble
title for a rather humble book, which was originally intended
as a present for Max Hawcheimer's fiftieth birthday in nineteen
forty five. Adorna published it in nineteen fifty one. So
here's my copy of minimum Aralia, very nice verso edition
(13:02):
for the record. It's written here. Brought thirteenth of May
nineteen eighty six in London. Plosophy ethics is traditionally the
study of how to live a good life. With fascism, communism,
and consumerism battling for supremacy. A Dorno suspected that living
a good life might no longer be possible. He grappled
(13:24):
with this question in an accessible style. So perhaps it's
no surprise that Minimamoralia has been enduringly popular. Jeff Dyer
has been fascinated by it ever since he was a
young writer in the nineteen eighties. Yeah, and it was great. Yeah,
So this is a earl souvenir. And it's just that
it's a beautiful addition. There as a Doorno on the
back cup playing the playing the piano looking cross. He's
(13:46):
obviously playing something like I don't know, late Beethoven or
Albnberg or something we can he describe it a bit
more about what kind of things it talks about. Yeah,
as you rightly say, it's a collection of aphorisms, but
length lengthy aphorisms, you know, essays of about a page
and a half, something like that. The subtitle is Reflections
from a Damaged Life, but it's ironic. Dornau's voice in
(14:09):
this book is witty and worldly talent. He writes, there's
perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage talking about the
Nazis and art. They're as incompatible as an air aid
shelter and a stork's nest. On power, the most powerful
person is he who is able to do least himself
(14:30):
and burdens others most with the things for which he
lends his name and pockets the credit is the damaged
life a Doornaugh's life, or is it the life more
generally of the life we have to live world? But
both of them, I think, but his is particularly damaged.
Intellectual exiles from Nazi Germany faced a precarious life. The
(14:53):
networks they relied on for work had been wiped out.
Clever people who could turn pirouettes in their native language
suddenly couldn't order a meal in a restaurant. The pain
of being an exile is everywhere. A Doornaugh writes, every
intellectual in emigration is, without exception mutilated. He lives in
(15:15):
an environment that must remain incomprehensible to him. Adorna also
writes that the splinter in your eye is the best
magnifying glass. I take this to mean that your pain,
your damage, can be a way into understanding what's wrong
with the world. Adorna's critical theory makes negativity an important
(15:38):
tool for thought. He wanted his criticism to be ruthless,
sparing nothing and nobody, not even himself. Just this incredible
irony that Adorna the embodiment of European uncompromising seriousness, with
his hatred of all the kind of vulgarity and crassness
(15:59):
that capitalism leads to ends up here. Adorna had good
reason to be in favor of seriousness. He was living
in serious times, but like a lot of the German exiles,
he felt guilty that he was safe while the Nazis
were destroying Europe. He and his fellow exiles had chosen
(16:20):
between what he calls the infinite torment of dying and
the infinite abasement of living. Adornou thought that serious times
demanded serious art like this. This is Scherenberg's fourth string quartet,
(16:45):
written just after he arrived in California in nineteen thirty six.
The reason it doesn't sound like conventional music is because
he wrote it using the twelve tone system, a method
that forces the composer to use all the notes of
the scale equally in a particular order. While a Dorna
(17:10):
was in La, he worked for his friend Thomas Mann,
who was writing a novel about a composer and wanted
someone to teach him about these latest developments in music theory.
Every weekday morning, regular as clockwork, Man would write, and
every afternoon a Dorna would come over, sit down at
the piano and explain Scherenberg's musical theories. The result was
(17:34):
one of Man's masterpieces, Doctor Faustus. It's perhaps the most
German thing ever written outside of Germany. A tone about
a composer who intentionally infects himself with syphilis so he
can go mad and heighten his creative powers. When Scherenberg
heard about this story, he was furious, not just about
(17:55):
the syphilis and the whole selling his soul to the
devil plot. He also accused Man of taking credit for
his musical ideas. In truth, the musical ideas in Doctor
Faustus should mostly be credited to Adorno. But this was
obscure stuff even as it was happening in the nineteen forties.
(18:15):
Most people weren't listening to twelve tone music. They were
munching popcorn at MGM musicals. Big dance numbers did not
(18:36):
thrill Teddy Adorno. He was wary of Hollywood, which he
felt was distracting people and dumbing them down. That didn't
stop him from spending time on movie sets and making
friends with people from the film world, but Adorna also
wanted films to be high art and in music, he
particularly disliked jazz. In an unbelievably snooty essay, he pours
(19:02):
scorn on what he calls its mechanical, soullessness and its
licentious decadence. My friend Jeff Dat is a huge jazz
fan and a fan of Adornos. This strikes me as
a kind of cognitive dissonance. You're a big Adornao fan
and you love jazz. You're a huge jazz fan. Was
(19:23):
he just wrong or was there Is there anything rescuable
about what about Teddy's bad opinions about jazz? No, I
don't think there is anything rescuable about it. Jeff A.
Dawes jazz so much that he wrote a whole book
on it. It's called but Beautiful, and it uses fiction
to imagine the inner lives of several of the jazz greats.
(19:47):
Adorno had seen how entertainment of all kinds had been
corrupted by the Nazis to serve their agenda, and it's
doubtful he'd ever experienced the virtuosity of a good live
jazz band. A lot of people use Adornaugh's bad opinions
about jazz to dismiss him as a snob and an elitist.
(20:08):
But he saw what he termed entertainment music as a
tool of power, something that lulled the listener, urging them
to consume, instead of provoking a genuine emotional and intellectual response.
He seemed very formal in his habits, but I don't
know if he was always sitting in his study. It
would be nice to meet him vacationally, taking off his
(20:30):
shoes and going to the beach and Santa Monica and
having a think. I think somebody asking him about hobbies
and he says, hobbies. You know, I take all of
my interests very seriously, and I would never relegate them
to the idea of hobbies. It's very difficult to imagine
Adorno ever relaxing at anything except playing a difficult passage
(20:51):
of Beethoven on the piano. Jeff really likes what he
calls the tangible quality in Adorna's writing, the way that
his thoughts are always anchored in something concrete and particular,
and increasingly, as you learn more about the circumstances in
which it's written, a lot of what is tang all
turns out to be. Oh, it's Los Angeles. To give
(21:12):
you an idea of how La influenced to Dornau's thought,
here's a passage in Minimumorlia he calls tough Baby. He's
at the cinema watching the archetypal alpha male of thirties
Hollywood movies. The handsome dinner jacketed figure returning late to
his bachelor flat, switching on the indirect lighting and mixing
(21:35):
himself a whiskey and soda. The carefully recorded hissing of
the mineral Water says what the arrogant mouth keeps to itself,
that he despises anything that does not smell of smoke,
leather and shaving cream, particularly women, which is precisely why
they find him irresistible. You can see the guy in
(21:57):
front of you, the type of dude who slaps the
heroine's face to stop her being hysterical. Her Dornaut spools
out this description into a point about sadism, masochism, and
the homer erotic mass gualinity of fascism, the kind of
masculinity that hates anything it defines as feminine. It's typical
of the way he writes in Minimumoralia, and for me,
(22:19):
the excitement of it. It's the dialectical method is just
taken to such a pitch of intensity that an argument
will be advanced, and then it's flipped right back and
then back again, and there's this relentless back and forthing
which is exhausting and incredibly exciting to read, and you
never quite know where the argument is going to take him.
(22:43):
You've probably heard of the dialectic, you could call it
a style of thinking, but for some philosophers it's much
more than that. Hegel and marks in different ways. Thought
it was the very motor of human history. Here's how
it goes. You have a thought, or perhaps a situation,
a social or political state of affairs. That's the thesis.
(23:09):
Then there's an opposing idea or an opposing force that's
the antithesis, something that challenges or negates the thesis. Then
they fight it out. The tension between the two results
in something that in German is called the alphable. It's
usually translated as synthesis, but that makes it sound a
(23:29):
little too neat. What comes out of the clash of
opposites isn't a nice little package tied up with a bow.
It's not a resolution, an end to struggle. It's a
new state of affairs, something that's soon enough will provoke
a reaction, starting the whole process again. Adorna is so
(23:52):
steeped in this stuff that it comes out in the
very structure of his sentences. When he says the splinter
in his eye is the best magnifying glass. He's writing dialectically.
He's taking the conventional idea of knowledge as something to
do with vision the eye, and clashing it with its antithesis,
(24:14):
the splinter something that blinds the clash of the eye
and the glass splinter produces a surprising synthesis, the image
of a magnifying glass. Something that helps you see better
out of blindness comes in sight. You can open minimum
Moralia almost anywhere and see him Judo flipping concepts like this,
(24:35):
confronting things with their opposites, seeing what shakes out. Adorno
believes in the value of negativity. The dialectic makes him uneasy.
You can't say that what emerges from the clash is
always positive. What was the result of the great political
clashes of his own time, the Holocaust? So Adorna rejects
(24:58):
the idea of some magical dialectical synthesis that resolves all disagreements.
Adorna calls it the negation of negation. But this makes
me wonder who might be the antithesis of Adorno? If
he's the high priest of negativity, who's the pope of
(25:19):
the positive? Positive thinking works? Wonders? And it does too,
that is for sure, inevitably, indubitably. The man who wants
(25:40):
to overcome fats with confidence is Norman Vincent Peel, author
of a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. It
was published in nineteen fifty two. The year after Adornau's
minimum Ralia, The Power of Positive Thinking became one of
the best selling books in American history. Whatever your life
(26:03):
is this morning, unsatisfactory, unhappy, defeated. Perhaps you're in a
place We're presides the one who can change everything for
you by changing you. Peele was pastor of New York
(26:28):
City's Marble Collegiate Church all the way until his retirement
in nineteen eighty four. Peele preached to his congregation and
the millions who bought his books that whenever a negative
thought came to mind, they're supposed to voice a positive thought.
The goal was a state of permanent positivity, a sort
(26:50):
of self hypnosis. So when the app on my phone
tells me I am unique, I'm not supposed to question it.
That's negativity. It will prevent me from being successful. Stamp
indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding.
Norman Peele urges us hold this picture tenaciously, never permitted
(27:14):
to fade. But Peel didn't invent the idea of positive thinking.
It has a long history. Someone who knows all about
this is the journalist Barbara Aaron Reich. Arin Reich is
a heroine of mine. When she wanted to write about
low waged labor in America's she spent time working as
(27:36):
a waitress and a home help. A few years ago,
she wrote a book about positive thinking called Bright Sided.
How the relentless promotion of positive thinking is undermining America.
She told me that positive thinking grew dialectically enough out
of negativity. It all started because people in nineteenth century
(27:59):
America were depressed. Our culture here has a strong tinge
of Puritanism, that would be the English inheritance. The tendency
in the nineteenth century was to see that you had
(28:19):
you had no future that you could control, because God
had already decided, possibly before you were even born, about
whether you will get into heaven or not. Calvinism was
the version of Protestant Christianity followed by the Puritan colonists.
It taught that even before the creation of the world,
(28:40):
God had decided that only one hundred and forty four
thousand souls were predestined to get into heaven. Either you
were lucky and pre approved, or you were going to burn.
It's sort of hard to imagine living with that over
hanging over you all at all times when you're morbidly
convinced you're going to hell, You'll turn to anyone or
(29:02):
anything that can make you feel better. So people would
seek forms of healing. And there were also of quacks
around willing to provide some form of healing for people
in these states of existential depression. But the most interesting
to me was a man named Phineas Quimby. He lived
(29:26):
in Maine. He was a watchmaker by trade, but very
very interested in this issue of depression. And while we're Americans,
so tortured by their likely future, which was likely to
be hell, Phineas Quimby started a movement called new Thought.
(29:48):
He taught the illness was just a disturbance in the
mind and could be cured by thinking positively. One of
Quimby's associates was Mary Baker Eddie, the founder of Christian Science.
If you've ever been to a motivational seminar or seen
a life coach, you've been exposed to new Thought. Quimby
(30:13):
is the ancestor of everyone from Tony Robbins to books
like The Secret, the international best seller that promises that,
because of something called the law of attraction, you can
think good things into your life. Money, a good job,
The Secret is part of a very modern form of
American Christianity, the exact opposite of the religion practiced by
(30:35):
the dour, hell obsessed Puritans of Your Yes. The Prosperity
Gospel movement is positive thinking applied to religion. The pastor
will tell you, or or rate to that you can
have everything because God wants you to have everything. Barbara
Aaron Reich was first exposed to positive thinking at a
(30:58):
rough time in her life. One I was diagnosed with
breast cancer. Suddenly I became fascinated not by the biology
of cancer, which would have made more sense to me
as a somebody with PhD in biology, but more the
anthropology of cancer. You will recover from your illness if
(31:22):
you think positively about recovery. So the idea is if
you express that you're angry, or you know, you complain
about the bad luck even that made you have the disease,
that this actually reduces your chance of being cured. That's right.
And so if you find yourself just getting steadily worse, well,
(31:44):
who do you have to blame for that? Listening to Barbara,
it's obvious that not everything about positive thinking is well positive.
It's a way of blaming people for the problems in
their lives, of privatizing problems. But hey, let's look on
the bright side. And Norman Vincent Peel, the Great Norman
(32:06):
Vincent Peel was my pastor. The power of positive thing.
And everybody's heard of Norman Vincent Peale. He was so great.
He would give a sermon you never wanted to leave.
Sometimes we have sermons and every once in a while
we think about leaving a little early, right, even though
we're Christian. Doctor Norman Vincent Peale, Frank would give a sermon.
I'm telling you, I still remember his sermons. It was unbelievable.
(32:29):
And what he would do is he'd bring real life situations,
modern day situations into the sermon, and you could listen
to him all day long. He listened in. Donald Trump
grew up going to Norman Vincent Peale's church. Peel officiated
at his first marriage and buried his parents. The mind
can overcome any obstacle, Trump told The New York Times
(32:51):
in the early eighties. I never think of the negative.
You can see Trump using the power of positive thinking
every day. Everything is perfect. Great. Trump's current pastor is
the televangelist Paula White. The President even gave her a
job as a special advisor at the White House. The
(33:13):
mind is the battle field, So the quality of life
that I live is determined by the quality of mind
that I have. In essence, our life is what our
thoughts make us. In this Peel Trump White universe, there's
no dialectic, no clash of opposites. There's only the positive.
(33:34):
There are not twelve tones. There's only one extra credit
if you can name the title of this song. Paula
White's third and current husband is the keyboard player in
the band Journey for positive thinkers and prosperity gospel preachers.
(34:00):
We can't stop believing. If we do, whatever bad things
come our way are clearly our own fault. Let's say
(34:21):
your thesis is simple, don't stop believe it that some
were born to win and some to lose, and some
were born to sing the blues, that the movie never ends,
it goes on and on and on. What's the antithesis
of that. It's that when someone tells you to believe,
(34:46):
a red light should go on in your head, you
should push back. You should ask questions like is this
belief really so optimistic or is it just disgusting fatalism.
People aren't born to win or lose their situations of
the results of social conditions, and those social conditions can
(35:07):
be changed. That's certainly what Teddy Adorno believed. One difficulty
Adorno had in La was that he didn't drive. He
wrote that in the fantastical love of cars resonates the
feeling of physical homelessness, but that homelessness was actually something
(35:28):
he identified with. He was homeless, an emigrant, an exile,
and though he didn't drive, he rather enjoyed road trips.
He and his wife, Gretel went to Tahoe, to Palm
Springs and all the way down to the Mexican border.
Gretel drove, Teddy navigated. For her birthday one year, he
(35:49):
bore her a brand new dark blue Ford that they
called Aladdin Chien or Little Aladdin. During their La exile,
the Adornos lived in a house in Brentwood. I want
to make a pilgrimage there, and I assume my friend
Jeff will take me. But it turns out that his
(36:10):
Adorno worship has gone a little too far. Okay, hunter,
So keep your eyes on the road and your hands
upon the wheel. No crashing crunch like a Doorno before him.
Jeff doesn't drive, so my producer Hunter volunteers to drive.
(36:31):
Jeff navigates. We are on are we on Fourth Street
in Santa Monica coming up to Wilshire. It's fourth and
this is Wilshire is a willshare and Santa Monica Boulevard
in I mean, they're increasingly kind of close to my
heart because there's all these kind of places specializing and
(36:53):
orthopedic orthopedic mattresses and knee braces and all this kind
of stuff. There we go, there's a physic Yeah, there's
no endless places for physical therapy. Because the key thing
about life in Los Angeles, of course, is you've got
to be able to continue playing tennis, paddle tennis and
running until you're well into your hundreds. Do you spend
(37:15):
a lot of time at that paddle tennis court on
the beach? No, sir, I despise paddle tennis because I
still play proper tennis. I wondered whether you'd reduced your standards. No, No,
that will never happen. And also I still I mean,
I don't play doubles, and I feel so cut off
from things that are going on in Europe, and you
think of Adorno here without any Internet and anything like that.
(37:40):
There where the crucible of the Second World War in
Europe being removedment So there they are. There, They're here
there on the sort of the edge of the world.
There must have seemed to them. Still seems that way
to me. Now, you know, by the way, you can't Yeah,
you can't go. You know what's the next stop? Hawaii?
Our next stop is Brentwood, where Teddy lived in exile. Yeah,
(38:03):
there's cars, there's no people that If we do, there'll
probably be somebody jogging at some point. Brentwood is a
very neat place. It seems rich, but without the excitement
that some rich places have. It seems like the sort
of neighborhood where your neighbors will complain if you forget
to cut your front lawn. I think this is it.
(38:24):
This is the Adornau hoarse. It is a very ordinary
looking house on a busy street. Cars are rushing by.
So how strange, Harry, We're the only we're the only
pilgrims here today. Do you think there are often a
lot of critical theorists, kind of bad analyzing on the
(38:44):
sidewalk outside surprised that we're not seeing Freddie Jameson and
Harry Anderson here and Martin j I'm sure he's here
most days, isn't he, Sir? I don't know how you
feel the general. I don't know what are your feelings
(39:05):
generally about literary pilgrimage. Is it something you always up for?
I am always up for it, and I'm I'm always disappointed.
But the but the the disappointment is kind of baked
in because it just reminds you of the difference between
what's made in somewhere and the location, you know, I mean,
(39:25):
it's like we will learn virtually nothing about about the
mind that was at work there. But somehow it's still
satisfying to have come. I'm pleased, I've I've come to
Brentwood today with you. Jeff. Well, unfortunately this isn't going
to be a very dialectical exchange because Harry has said
exactly what I think. Jeff talks about his various disappointments,
(39:50):
some dialectical, some tennis related, and we stare at the
very ordinary White House with its double garage. You know,
we're here. I'm not getting the Adorno vibe, but you,
as your Geiger counter registering some some style. Yes, it's
an intensive a case of the dialectic. I'd love to
(40:11):
say yes, but I'm yeah. I mean here we are
failing to have profound things to say in the house
in front of us. The exiled Adorno wrote this, What
(40:32):
does it mean for the subject? That there are no
window shutters anymore which can be opened, but only frames
to be brusquely shoved. No gentle latches, but only handles
to be turned, No front lawn, no barrier against the street,
no wall around the garden. Magnolia on the other side
of this wall. Actually there is a wall around the garden,
(40:55):
but I'm not sure if a door had it put
in or what? Thank you? Here in this house, the
grumpy European Adorno was faced with his antithesis, sunny, positive
thinking California. What came out of the clash well, actually,
(41:17):
despite himself, he had some fun. He made some new friends,
including some of the Hollywood people whose work he officially despised.
One night in nineteen forty seven, Adornau showed up at
the after party for a private screening of Charlie Chaplain's
film Monsieur valdu Adornaugh and Chaplin got together around the
(41:38):
piano while Adornau played selections from Verdi and Wagner Chaplain
did hilarious mimes, the two of them being thoroughly silly,
to the delight of all their friends. But eventually Adornaugh
went back to Germany, where he became one of the
nation's most famous thinkers. Once again, he taught at the
(42:00):
Frankfurt School. In nineteen sixty nine, the school was occupied
by striking students. In a statement, they said that the
Frankfurt School was no longer critical enough. They accused Adornau
and his colleagues of training them to be domesticated revolutionaries,
what they termed the integrated allies of the authoritarian state. Adorno,
(42:24):
the self proclaimed revolutionary, called the police. It was a
moment of defeat. Outraged, the students distributed a flyer with
the slogan Adornaut as institution is dead. The final humiliation
was the so called bouzon axion or breast action. Radical
(42:45):
students disrupted his class and young women surrounded him, bearing
their breasts and showering him with flower petals. The old
man picked up his hat and coat and fled. Within
a year he was dead, suffering a heart attack on
a country hike. Norman Vincent Peale lived to a ripe
old age, finally dying of a stroke at the age
(43:08):
of ninety five, and much to everyone's surprise, his acolyte
became president, positively thinking his way through the hardest of problems,
from global destant to global pandemics, buoyed up by his
unwavering belief in his own stable genius. We will have
a very successful vaccine, therapeutic and cure would make in
(43:32):
tremendous progress. Ideal with these credible scientists, doctors, the best,
the smartest, the most brilliant anywhere, and they've come up
with the age vaccine. In Minimumoralia, there's a section titled simple.
Simon Adorno describes what he calls colorful personalities, people who
(43:56):
plunge passionately into the privilege of the self. Their eager,
uninhibited impulsiveness, their sudden fancies, their originality, even if it
be only a helia odiousness, even their garbles language turn
human qualities into a clown costume. Positivity isn't a bad thing.
(44:22):
It's good to believe in yourself, to say I can
rather than I can't. But the idea that you can't
even risk thinking negative thoughts for fear that they'll infect
your mind. Well, that's just nonsense. It's the thinking of
a child who's scared of the dark. I could be
communing now, hurry, but that moment of communion has mean
(44:43):
rather hunch and I could take a walk down and
we could walk a little bit with a little way
down the block and leave you, leave you communions. Sobbing
here at the altar of the dialectic. Yeah, Perhaps the alphabon,
the synthesis of Peel and Adorno is a kind of determination,
(45:06):
a willingness to forge your head without being lied to you.
Perhaps true positive thinking. He's about being able to face
reality without flinching. Our pilgrimage complete. We bid our feeders
(45:26):
in to Adorno and Scherenberg and the other Germans trapped
in sunny California. Oh but I'm not done with Germans yet,
not by a long shot. He was afraid from the beginning,
I mean even to the point of being paranoid. And
he used to like write the songs and immediately memorize them,
and then he would burn the paper. He literally burn
(45:50):
it so it would be gone next week on into
the zone. We'll eavesdrop on an East German cat and
mouse game between the Secret Police and a teenage punk
rocker listening Never Please. Into the Zone is produced by
(46:17):
Ryder Also and Hunter Braithwaite. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Mia La Belle is our executive producer. Martin Gonzalez is
our engineer. Music for this episode composed by Griffin Jennings.
Our theme song is composed by Sarah K. Petinatti, also
known as lipp Talk Special Thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Heather Faane,
(46:41):
John Schnarz, Mia Kanig, Karlie mcgliory, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostick,
and Maggie Taylor. Into the Zone is a production of
Pushkin Industries. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider letting
others know. The best way to do this is by
rating us on Apple Podcasts. We could even write a review.
(47:02):
See you next week. I'm the best, the smart at,
the most brilliant anywhere Harry Country two
Pushkin. It's early morning in Venice Beach, a few blocks
away from the Pacific Ocean. My producer Hunter and I
are ordering breakfast at a cafe. The menu is long
(00:37):
and many items have oddly positive names an uplifting, blissful,
super eternal, grace, stella or cool. We've just blown in
from New York and we're feeling some culture shock. I mean,
I like a fancy breakfast as much as the next man,
(00:58):
but this place seems to have its own agenda. I
think I like the vivid with cold Brook coffee. Let's
get a healthy I think the idea is that by
making our breakfast order will harness the power of these
uplifting words, will invite a little positivity into our lives.
(01:23):
In the end, we are focused, healthy and trusting. Oh
and Hunter has two refills of Courageous. When I go
to the bathroom, I read the flyers on the board.
They're mostly from alternative therapists. I can get something called
deep integrative shadow work. I can get full body cryotherapy,
(01:47):
which sounds suspiciously like paying to get into a bath
of ice. My phone buzzes and I take it out
and look at it. I am unique, says a message
on my screen. It's from a positive thinking app that
I felt I ought to download when I landed at LAX.
I'm supposed to repeat this phrase to myself like a mantra.
(02:09):
I am une, I am uni, I am unique. It's
all very well saying I am unique, but am I really?
In many ways I'm exactly like everyone else. Thinking of
myself as unique is just vanity. I realize that I'm
arguing with my affirmation app. I think that means I'm
(02:31):
doing it wrong. The phone buzzers again. I am open,
free and loving. This is Into the Zone, a podcast
(02:52):
about opposites and how borders are never as clear as
we think. I'm hurry, Kunzru. This episode is about positive
and negative. It's about optimism and pessimism, and it's about
a particular kind of opposition, the dialectic, the clash of
(03:14):
opposites that produces something new. Good place for Jeff to live?
What am I pressing? Seventy ninety six? I think I've
(03:37):
come to La to see a friend of mine named
Jeff Dyer. He's a writer who lives in Venice, just
around the corner from the cafe with the mantra menu.
Jeff and I both left the UK to come and
live in the US. He's someone I think of as
very English. He's witty and a little bit sarcastic. He
(03:59):
wrote a book called Yoga for People who can't be
bothered to do it, and another one called out of
sheer rage that one's about failing to write a book
about dh Lawrence. Hello there, Hello, great, what are we doing?
We need hugging. It always makes me chuckle to think
of Jeff here in the land of positive thinking. No,
(04:20):
I mean, time passes so quickly. We've been here about
six years. I think. You know, we were living in London.
You'd already gone to America. It seemed so many of
my friends were in America and I was stuck there
in London. I would say to Rebecca, you know it
was my destiny to live in California. We're not doing it.
My whole life is a complete and utter waste. Have
(04:41):
you changed? Have you become more more a Southern Californian.
So one of the things that we were first struck
by is that, you know, we had to become so
much more polite living here, And there's an irony there
because Americans always think of England as being this. I
don't know. Jane Austen, Henry James like society where everyone
is super polite, but as you know from London, it's
(05:03):
a it's a right old dogg eat dog world, there
isn't it, you know? So yeah, we became so much.
When I listen back to this tape, I hear something
strange and kind of comical, the Soviet resignation to things
not being Jeff and I start denouncing various aspects of
British culture, to the inefficiency, the rudeness, the cynicism. We're
(05:26):
both particularly down on the British habit of complaining. We
start complaining about the complaining, and we're enjoying ourselves. We
are enjoying complaining about complaining. It's a quintessentially British way
of bonding. Affirmation through negativity. I mean, more generally, would
(05:47):
you describe yourself as an optimist or a pessimist? Oh?
Do you know? I would reject terms really because you know,
what difference does it make whether you're an optimist or
a pessimist? And that doesn't make any difference to the
successful resolution of a situation, does it. Jeff tells me
that he doesn't spend any time at the Positive Thinking Cafe.
(06:07):
He prefers another place a few blocks away. But I
want to know if he believes in any of the
stuff about the Californian mental attitude. Does he think that
by thinking positively you can make positive things happen for yourself? Well, actually, yeah,
I mean I guess this thing of you know, which
is such an important part of life here, of that
(06:27):
positive attitude, and it's created a nice society in many ways.
Jeff starts ruminating about philosophy, trying to remember a passage
from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche where he suggests that small
acts of kindness have done more for the world than
lofty ideals of heroism and self sacrifice. Do you realize,
oh my god it Nietzsche, in his weird way, is
(06:49):
described why life here in California is in many ways
of success, because all of your interactions with people are
really a source of great affirmation, and they make daily
life much nicer. So that I thought I delicit some
classic Jeff grumbling. Instead when it comes to California, he's
filled with positive tivity, well, positivity couched in regret, but
(07:13):
still for Jeff that's new. He even thinks California is
changing his look for the better. I've got sixty years
worth of English disappointment in my face, and now I've
learned since being here to sort of smart, to smile more,
and I've got my you know, my teeth are whiter
than they were, but they're still crooked English team, you know,
(07:35):
and that kind of thing. Yes, of course, it generates
well being for everybody. And I love the way that
here you meet somebody on the street, you always say
hello and smile at them. And what we find is
we when we go back to England after we've been
here for six months or so, we go back for
the summer, we come back with our Californian ways and
we're smiling at people in Labrate Grove. And after a
(07:58):
week we stopped doing it because it's really inappropriate. I
haven't come all the way to California just to talk
about England. Jeff and I are huge fans of someone
who's been called the high prest of Negativity, the grumpy
German intellectual who arrived in Los Angeles in nineteen forty one.
(08:18):
His name was Theodore Adorna, the hinder futum to Jeff
and I have been joking about New world positivity and
old world gloom. But Adorno embodied these contradictions like no
one else. I want to tell you a little about
(08:38):
him because his story illuminates what we like to call
the American dream and how it's tangled up with positive thinking. Adorno,
known to his friends as Teddy, was a sociologist who
wound up in California after fleeing the Nazis. He'd been
one of the leading thinkers at the Institute for Social
(09:01):
Research in Frankfort, the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School pioneered
a rigorous style of thinking known as critical theory, which
tried to analyze society with the aim of transforming it.
In photos, Adornaut's piercing eyes drill into the viewer out
of a smooth, round face. It's like being stared at
(09:24):
by a hyperintelligent baby. There was indeed something of the
child prodigy about him. Adorna was an only son. His
father was a Jewish wine merchant in Frankfurt. This Jewish
dad had married a Catholic opera singer and wanted to
assimilate into German society. Their son, Theodore Wi Adorno was
(09:45):
baptized a Catholic, and though he bore both his parents' names,
the Jewish sounding Wiesengrend was quietly dropped. Teddy grew up
in affluence. Adored and encouraged by his artistic mother, Teddy
wanted to be a composer. When he was twenty one,
he moved to Vienna to study with the modernist master
(10:07):
Alban Berg. This is the kind of music Adorno wrote
in those days. After a few years of trying to
make it as a composer, he switched to philosophy almost
at once. He was asked to teach at the newly
(10:27):
founded Institute for Social Research back in Frankfurt. There he
was exposed to left wing ideas and turned from esthetics
to a more urgent political agenda gi k in the
(10:49):
enlighting de Phenomenology. Thus Blossitusian heist, Adorno became a Marxist
and as such an obvious target for the Nazis. As
soon as they came to power, his charmed life started
to fall apart. His license to teach was revoked, his
house was searched. When he applied to join the official
(11:12):
Writers Union, he was told that membership was limited to
quote persons who belonged to the German nation by profound
ties of character and blood. As a non arian, you
are unable to feel and appreciate such an obligation. End
of horrible quote. Soon afterwards, Adorno left Germany. He didn't
(11:35):
return for many years. Before Adornau arrived in LA he'd
spent some time in Oxford in New York writing about
the rise of fascism. His best friend and fellow critical theorist,
(11:56):
Max Horkheimer, was already in California, part of an extraordinary
community of German exiles. The group included some of the
greatest creative minds of the twentieth century, the novelists Mann,
the poet and playwright bertel Brecht, the composer Arnold Scherenberg,
film directors like Fritz Lange, and actors like Greta Garbo
(12:19):
and Peter Laurie. Teddy and his wife Gretel moved into
a house in Brentwood. For some years, Adorna had also
been writing fragments and short essays about everything from toys
to insomnia. While he was in LA he decided to
put them together into a book. He called it minimum Moralia,
(12:41):
a Latin phrase meaning little ethics. It was a humble
title for a rather humble book, which was originally intended
as a present for Max Hawcheimer's fiftieth birthday in nineteen
forty five. Adorna published it in nineteen fifty one. So
here's my copy of minimum Aralia, very nice verso edition
(13:02):
for the record. It's written here. Brought thirteenth of May
nineteen eighty six in London. Plosophy ethics is traditionally the
study of how to live a good life. With fascism, communism,
and consumerism battling for supremacy. A Dorno suspected that living
a good life might no longer be possible. He grappled
(13:24):
with this question in an accessible style. So perhaps it's
no surprise that Minimamoralia has been enduringly popular. Jeff Dyer
has been fascinated by it ever since he was a
young writer in the nineteen eighties. Yeah, and it was great. Yeah,
So this is a earl souvenir. And it's just that
it's a beautiful addition. There as a Doorno on the
back cup playing the playing the piano looking cross. He's
(13:46):
obviously playing something like I don't know, late Beethoven or
Albnberg or something we can he describe it a bit
more about what kind of things it talks about. Yeah,
as you rightly say, it's a collection of aphorisms, but
length lengthy aphorisms, you know, essays of about a page
and a half, something like that. The subtitle is Reflections
from a Damaged Life, but it's ironic. Dornau's voice in
(14:09):
this book is witty and worldly talent. He writes, there's
perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage talking about the
Nazis and art. They're as incompatible as an air aid
shelter and a stork's nest. On power, the most powerful
person is he who is able to do least himself
(14:30):
and burdens others most with the things for which he
lends his name and pockets the credit is the damaged
life a Doornaugh's life, or is it the life more
generally of the life we have to live world? But
both of them, I think, but his is particularly damaged.
Intellectual exiles from Nazi Germany faced a precarious life. The
(14:53):
networks they relied on for work had been wiped out.
Clever people who could turn pirouettes in their native language
suddenly couldn't order a meal in a restaurant. The pain
of being an exile is everywhere. A Doornaugh writes, every
intellectual in emigration is, without exception mutilated. He lives in
(15:15):
an environment that must remain incomprehensible to him. Adorna also
writes that the splinter in your eye is the best
magnifying glass. I take this to mean that your pain,
your damage, can be a way into understanding what's wrong
with the world. Adorna's critical theory makes negativity an important
(15:38):
tool for thought. He wanted his criticism to be ruthless,
sparing nothing and nobody, not even himself. Just this incredible
irony that Adorna the embodiment of European uncompromising seriousness, with
his hatred of all the kind of vulgarity and crassness
(15:59):
that capitalism leads to ends up here. Adorna had good
reason to be in favor of seriousness. He was living
in serious times, but like a lot of the German exiles,
he felt guilty that he was safe while the Nazis
were destroying Europe. He and his fellow exiles had chosen
(16:20):
between what he calls the infinite torment of dying and
the infinite abasement of living. Adornou thought that serious times
demanded serious art like this. This is Scherenberg's fourth string quartet,
(16:45):
written just after he arrived in California in nineteen thirty six.
The reason it doesn't sound like conventional music is because
he wrote it using the twelve tone system, a method
that forces the composer to use all the notes of
the scale equally in a particular order. While a Dorna
(17:10):
was in La, he worked for his friend Thomas Mann,
who was writing a novel about a composer and wanted
someone to teach him about these latest developments in music theory.
Every weekday morning, regular as clockwork, Man would write, and
every afternoon a Dorna would come over, sit down at
the piano and explain Scherenberg's musical theories. The result was
(17:34):
one of Man's masterpieces, Doctor Faustus. It's perhaps the most
German thing ever written outside of Germany. A tone about
a composer who intentionally infects himself with syphilis so he
can go mad and heighten his creative powers. When Scherenberg
heard about this story, he was furious, not just about
(17:55):
the syphilis and the whole selling his soul to the
devil plot. He also accused Man of taking credit for
his musical ideas. In truth, the musical ideas in Doctor
Faustus should mostly be credited to Adorno. But this was
obscure stuff even as it was happening in the nineteen forties.
(18:15):
Most people weren't listening to twelve tone music. They were
munching popcorn at MGM musicals. Big dance numbers did not
(18:36):
thrill Teddy Adorno. He was wary of Hollywood, which he
felt was distracting people and dumbing them down. That didn't
stop him from spending time on movie sets and making
friends with people from the film world, but Adorna also
wanted films to be high art and in music, he
particularly disliked jazz. In an unbelievably snooty essay, he pours
(19:02):
scorn on what he calls its mechanical, soullessness and its
licentious decadence. My friend Jeff Dat is a huge jazz
fan and a fan of Adornos. This strikes me as
a kind of cognitive dissonance. You're a big Adornao fan
and you love jazz. You're a huge jazz fan. Was
(19:23):
he just wrong or was there Is there anything rescuable
about what about Teddy's bad opinions about jazz? No, I
don't think there is anything rescuable about it. Jeff A.
Dawes jazz so much that he wrote a whole book
on it. It's called but Beautiful, and it uses fiction
to imagine the inner lives of several of the jazz greats.
(19:47):
Adorno had seen how entertainment of all kinds had been
corrupted by the Nazis to serve their agenda, and it's
doubtful he'd ever experienced the virtuosity of a good live
jazz band. A lot of people use Adornaugh's bad opinions
about jazz to dismiss him as a snob and an elitist.
(20:08):
But he saw what he termed entertainment music as a
tool of power, something that lulled the listener, urging them
to consume, instead of provoking a genuine emotional and intellectual response.
He seemed very formal in his habits, but I don't
know if he was always sitting in his study. It
would be nice to meet him vacationally, taking off his
(20:30):
shoes and going to the beach and Santa Monica and
having a think. I think somebody asking him about hobbies
and he says, hobbies. You know, I take all of
my interests very seriously, and I would never relegate them
to the idea of hobbies. It's very difficult to imagine
Adorno ever relaxing at anything except playing a difficult passage
(20:51):
of Beethoven on the piano. Jeff really likes what he
calls the tangible quality in Adorna's writing, the way that
his thoughts are always anchored in something concrete and particular,
and increasingly, as you learn more about the circumstances in
which it's written, a lot of what is tang all
turns out to be. Oh, it's Los Angeles. To give
(21:12):
you an idea of how La influenced to Dornau's thought,
here's a passage in Minimumorlia he calls tough Baby. He's
at the cinema watching the archetypal alpha male of thirties
Hollywood movies. The handsome dinner jacketed figure returning late to
his bachelor flat, switching on the indirect lighting and mixing
(21:35):
himself a whiskey and soda. The carefully recorded hissing of
the mineral Water says what the arrogant mouth keeps to itself,
that he despises anything that does not smell of smoke,
leather and shaving cream, particularly women, which is precisely why
they find him irresistible. You can see the guy in
(21:57):
front of you, the type of dude who slaps the
heroine's face to stop her being hysterical. Her Dornaut spools
out this description into a point about sadism, masochism, and
the homer erotic mass gualinity of fascism, the kind of
masculinity that hates anything it defines as feminine. It's typical
of the way he writes in Minimumoralia, and for me,
(22:19):
the excitement of it. It's the dialectical method is just
taken to such a pitch of intensity that an argument
will be advanced, and then it's flipped right back and
then back again, and there's this relentless back and forthing
which is exhausting and incredibly exciting to read, and you
never quite know where the argument is going to take him.
(22:43):
You've probably heard of the dialectic, you could call it
a style of thinking, but for some philosophers it's much
more than that. Hegel and marks in different ways. Thought
it was the very motor of human history. Here's how
it goes. You have a thought, or perhaps a situation,
a social or political state of affairs. That's the thesis.
(23:09):
Then there's an opposing idea or an opposing force that's
the antithesis, something that challenges or negates the thesis. Then
they fight it out. The tension between the two results
in something that in German is called the alphable. It's
usually translated as synthesis, but that makes it sound a
(23:29):
little too neat. What comes out of the clash of
opposites isn't a nice little package tied up with a bow.
It's not a resolution, an end to struggle. It's a
new state of affairs, something that's soon enough will provoke
a reaction, starting the whole process again. Adorna is so
(23:52):
steeped in this stuff that it comes out in the
very structure of his sentences. When he says the splinter
in his eye is the best magnifying glass. He's writing dialectically.
He's taking the conventional idea of knowledge as something to
do with vision the eye, and clashing it with its antithesis,
(24:14):
the splinter something that blinds the clash of the eye
and the glass splinter produces a surprising synthesis, the image
of a magnifying glass. Something that helps you see better
out of blindness comes in sight. You can open minimum
Moralia almost anywhere and see him Judo flipping concepts like this,
(24:35):
confronting things with their opposites, seeing what shakes out. Adorno
believes in the value of negativity. The dialectic makes him uneasy.
You can't say that what emerges from the clash is
always positive. What was the result of the great political
clashes of his own time, the Holocaust? So Adorna rejects
(24:58):
the idea of some magical dialectical synthesis that resolves all disagreements.
Adorna calls it the negation of negation. But this makes
me wonder who might be the antithesis of Adorno? If
he's the high priest of negativity, who's the pope of
(25:19):
the positive? Positive thinking works? Wonders? And it does too,
that is for sure, inevitably, indubitably. The man who wants
(25:40):
to overcome fats with confidence is Norman Vincent Peel, author
of a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. It
was published in nineteen fifty two. The year after Adornau's
minimum Ralia, The Power of Positive Thinking became one of
the best selling books in American history. Whatever your life
(26:03):
is this morning, unsatisfactory, unhappy, defeated. Perhaps you're in a
place We're presides the one who can change everything for
you by changing you. Peele was pastor of New York
(26:28):
City's Marble Collegiate Church all the way until his retirement
in nineteen eighty four. Peele preached to his congregation and
the millions who bought his books that whenever a negative
thought came to mind, they're supposed to voice a positive thought.
The goal was a state of permanent positivity, a sort
(26:50):
of self hypnosis. So when the app on my phone
tells me I am unique, I'm not supposed to question it.
That's negativity. It will prevent me from being successful. Stamp
indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding.
Norman Peele urges us hold this picture tenaciously, never permitted
(27:14):
to fade. But Peel didn't invent the idea of positive thinking.
It has a long history. Someone who knows all about
this is the journalist Barbara Aaron Reich. Arin Reich is
a heroine of mine. When she wanted to write about
low waged labor in America's she spent time working as
(27:36):
a waitress and a home help. A few years ago,
she wrote a book about positive thinking called Bright Sided.
How the relentless promotion of positive thinking is undermining America.
She told me that positive thinking grew dialectically enough out
of negativity. It all started because people in nineteenth century
(27:59):
America were depressed. Our culture here has a strong tinge
of Puritanism, that would be the English inheritance. The tendency
in the nineteenth century was to see that you had
(28:19):
you had no future that you could control, because God
had already decided, possibly before you were even born, about
whether you will get into heaven or not. Calvinism was
the version of Protestant Christianity followed by the Puritan colonists.
It taught that even before the creation of the world,
(28:40):
God had decided that only one hundred and forty four
thousand souls were predestined to get into heaven. Either you
were lucky and pre approved, or you were going to burn.
It's sort of hard to imagine living with that over
hanging over you all at all times when you're morbidly
convinced you're going to hell, You'll turn to anyone or
(29:02):
anything that can make you feel better. So people would
seek forms of healing. And there were also of quacks
around willing to provide some form of healing for people
in these states of existential depression. But the most interesting
to me was a man named Phineas Quimby. He lived
(29:26):
in Maine. He was a watchmaker by trade, but very
very interested in this issue of depression. And while we're Americans,
so tortured by their likely future, which was likely to
be hell, Phineas Quimby started a movement called new Thought.
(29:48):
He taught the illness was just a disturbance in the
mind and could be cured by thinking positively. One of
Quimby's associates was Mary Baker Eddie, the founder of Christian Science.
If you've ever been to a motivational seminar or seen
a life coach, you've been exposed to new Thought. Quimby
(30:13):
is the ancestor of everyone from Tony Robbins to books
like The Secret, the international best seller that promises that,
because of something called the law of attraction, you can
think good things into your life. Money, a good job,
The Secret is part of a very modern form of
American Christianity, the exact opposite of the religion practiced by
(30:35):
the dour, hell obsessed Puritans of Your Yes. The Prosperity
Gospel movement is positive thinking applied to religion. The pastor
will tell you, or or rate to that you can
have everything because God wants you to have everything. Barbara
Aaron Reich was first exposed to positive thinking at a
(30:58):
rough time in her life. One I was diagnosed with
breast cancer. Suddenly I became fascinated not by the biology
of cancer, which would have made more sense to me
as a somebody with PhD in biology, but more the
anthropology of cancer. You will recover from your illness if
(31:22):
you think positively about recovery. So the idea is if
you express that you're angry, or you know, you complain
about the bad luck even that made you have the disease,
that this actually reduces your chance of being cured. That's right.
And so if you find yourself just getting steadily worse, well,
(31:44):
who do you have to blame for that? Listening to Barbara,
it's obvious that not everything about positive thinking is well positive.
It's a way of blaming people for the problems in
their lives, of privatizing problems. But hey, let's look on
the bright side. And Norman Vincent Peel, the Great Norman
(32:06):
Vincent Peel was my pastor. The power of positive thing.
And everybody's heard of Norman Vincent Peale. He was so great.
He would give a sermon you never wanted to leave.
Sometimes we have sermons and every once in a while
we think about leaving a little early, right, even though
we're Christian. Doctor Norman Vincent Peale, Frank would give a sermon.
I'm telling you, I still remember his sermons. It was unbelievable.
(32:29):
And what he would do is he'd bring real life situations,
modern day situations into the sermon, and you could listen
to him all day long. He listened in. Donald Trump
grew up going to Norman Vincent Peale's church. Peel officiated
at his first marriage and buried his parents. The mind
can overcome any obstacle, Trump told The New York Times
(32:51):
in the early eighties. I never think of the negative.
You can see Trump using the power of positive thinking
every day. Everything is perfect. Great. Trump's current pastor is
the televangelist Paula White. The President even gave her a
job as a special advisor at the White House. The
(33:13):
mind is the battle field, So the quality of life
that I live is determined by the quality of mind
that I have. In essence, our life is what our
thoughts make us. In this Peel Trump White universe, there's
no dialectic, no clash of opposites. There's only the positive.
(33:34):
There are not twelve tones. There's only one extra credit
if you can name the title of this song. Paula
White's third and current husband is the keyboard player in
the band Journey for positive thinkers and prosperity gospel preachers.
(34:00):
We can't stop believing. If we do, whatever bad things
come our way are clearly our own fault. Let's say
(34:21):
your thesis is simple, don't stop believe it that some
were born to win and some to lose, and some
were born to sing the blues, that the movie never ends,
it goes on and on and on. What's the antithesis
of that. It's that when someone tells you to believe,
(34:46):
a red light should go on in your head, you
should push back. You should ask questions like is this
belief really so optimistic or is it just disgusting fatalism.
People aren't born to win or lose their situations of
the results of social conditions, and those social conditions can
(35:07):
be changed. That's certainly what Teddy Adorno believed. One difficulty
Adorno had in La was that he didn't drive. He
wrote that in the fantastical love of cars resonates the
feeling of physical homelessness, but that homelessness was actually something
(35:28):
he identified with. He was homeless, an emigrant, an exile,
and though he didn't drive, he rather enjoyed road trips.
He and his wife, Gretel went to Tahoe, to Palm
Springs and all the way down to the Mexican border.
Gretel drove, Teddy navigated. For her birthday one year, he
(35:49):
bore her a brand new dark blue Ford that they
called Aladdin Chien or Little Aladdin. During their La exile,
the Adornos lived in a house in Brentwood. I want
to make a pilgrimage there, and I assume my friend
Jeff will take me. But it turns out that his
(36:10):
Adorno worship has gone a little too far. Okay, hunter,
So keep your eyes on the road and your hands
upon the wheel. No crashing crunch like a Doorno before him.
Jeff doesn't drive, so my producer Hunter volunteers to drive.
(36:31):
Jeff navigates. We are on are we on Fourth Street
in Santa Monica coming up to Wilshire. It's fourth and
this is Wilshire is a willshare and Santa Monica Boulevard
in I mean, they're increasingly kind of close to my
heart because there's all these kind of places specializing and
(36:53):
orthopedic orthopedic mattresses and knee braces and all this kind
of stuff. There we go, there's a physic Yeah, there's
no endless places for physical therapy. Because the key thing
about life in Los Angeles, of course, is you've got
to be able to continue playing tennis, paddle tennis and
running until you're well into your hundreds. Do you spend
(37:15):
a lot of time at that paddle tennis court on
the beach? No, sir, I despise paddle tennis because I
still play proper tennis. I wondered whether you'd reduced your standards. No, No,
that will never happen. And also I still I mean,
I don't play doubles, and I feel so cut off
from things that are going on in Europe, and you
think of Adorno here without any Internet and anything like that.
(37:40):
There where the crucible of the Second World War in
Europe being removedment So there they are. There, They're here
there on the sort of the edge of the world.
There must have seemed to them. Still seems that way
to me. Now, you know, by the way, you can't Yeah,
you can't go. You know what's the next stop? Hawaii?
Our next stop is Brentwood, where Teddy lived in exile. Yeah,
(38:03):
there's cars, there's no people that If we do, there'll
probably be somebody jogging at some point. Brentwood is a
very neat place. It seems rich, but without the excitement
that some rich places have. It seems like the sort
of neighborhood where your neighbors will complain if you forget
to cut your front lawn. I think this is it.
(38:24):
This is the Adornau hoarse. It is a very ordinary
looking house on a busy street. Cars are rushing by.
So how strange, Harry, We're the only we're the only
pilgrims here today. Do you think there are often a
lot of critical theorists, kind of bad analyzing on the
(38:44):
sidewalk outside surprised that we're not seeing Freddie Jameson and
Harry Anderson here and Martin j I'm sure he's here
most days, isn't he, Sir? I don't know how you
feel the general. I don't know what are your feelings
(39:05):
generally about literary pilgrimage. Is it something you always up for?
I am always up for it, and I'm I'm always disappointed.
But the but the the disappointment is kind of baked
in because it just reminds you of the difference between
what's made in somewhere and the location, you know, I mean,
(39:25):
it's like we will learn virtually nothing about about the
mind that was at work there. But somehow it's still
satisfying to have come. I'm pleased, I've I've come to
Brentwood today with you. Jeff. Well, unfortunately this isn't going
to be a very dialectical exchange because Harry has said
exactly what I think. Jeff talks about his various disappointments,
(39:50):
some dialectical, some tennis related, and we stare at the
very ordinary White House with its double garage. You know,
we're here. I'm not getting the Adorno vibe, but you,
as your Geiger counter registering some some style. Yes, it's
an intensive a case of the dialectic. I'd love to
(40:11):
say yes, but I'm yeah. I mean here we are
failing to have profound things to say in the house
in front of us. The exiled Adorno wrote this, What
(40:32):
does it mean for the subject? That there are no
window shutters anymore which can be opened, but only frames
to be brusquely shoved. No gentle latches, but only handles
to be turned, No front lawn, no barrier against the street,
no wall around the garden. Magnolia on the other side
of this wall. Actually there is a wall around the garden,
(40:55):
but I'm not sure if a door had it put
in or what? Thank you? Here in this house, the
grumpy European Adorno was faced with his antithesis, sunny, positive
thinking California. What came out of the clash well, actually,
(41:17):
despite himself, he had some fun. He made some new friends,
including some of the Hollywood people whose work he officially despised.
One night in nineteen forty seven, Adornau showed up at
the after party for a private screening of Charlie Chaplain's
film Monsieur valdu Adornaugh and Chaplin got together around the
(41:38):
piano while Adornau played selections from Verdi and Wagner Chaplain
did hilarious mimes, the two of them being thoroughly silly,
to the delight of all their friends. But eventually Adornaugh
went back to Germany, where he became one of the
nation's most famous thinkers. Once again, he taught at the
(42:00):
Frankfurt School. In nineteen sixty nine, the school was occupied
by striking students. In a statement, they said that the
Frankfurt School was no longer critical enough. They accused Adornau
and his colleagues of training them to be domesticated revolutionaries,
what they termed the integrated allies of the authoritarian state. Adorno,
(42:24):
the self proclaimed revolutionary, called the police. It was a
moment of defeat. Outraged, the students distributed a flyer with
the slogan Adornaut as institution is dead. The final humiliation
was the so called bouzon axion or breast action. Radical
(42:45):
students disrupted his class and young women surrounded him, bearing
their breasts and showering him with flower petals. The old
man picked up his hat and coat and fled. Within
a year he was dead, suffering a heart attack on
a country hike. Norman Vincent Peale lived to a ripe
old age, finally dying of a stroke at the age
(43:08):
of ninety five, and much to everyone's surprise, his acolyte
became president, positively thinking his way through the hardest of problems,
from global destant to global pandemics, buoyed up by his
unwavering belief in his own stable genius. We will have
a very successful vaccine, therapeutic and cure would make in
(43:32):
tremendous progress. Ideal with these credible scientists, doctors, the best,
the smartest, the most brilliant anywhere, and they've come up
with the age vaccine. In Minimumoralia, there's a section titled simple.
Simon Adorno describes what he calls colorful personalities, people who
(43:56):
plunge passionately into the privilege of the self. Their eager,
uninhibited impulsiveness, their sudden fancies, their originality, even if it
be only a helia odiousness, even their garbles language turn
human qualities into a clown costume. Positivity isn't a bad thing.
(44:22):
It's good to believe in yourself, to say I can
rather than I can't. But the idea that you can't
even risk thinking negative thoughts for fear that they'll infect
your mind. Well, that's just nonsense. It's the thinking of
a child who's scared of the dark. I could be
communing now, hurry, but that moment of communion has mean
(44:43):
rather hunch and I could take a walk down and
we could walk a little bit with a little way
down the block and leave you, leave you communions. Sobbing
here at the altar of the dialectic. Yeah, Perhaps the alphabon,
the synthesis of Peel and Adorno is a kind of determination,
(45:06):
a willingness to forge your head without being lied to you.
Perhaps true positive thinking. He's about being able to face
reality without flinching. Our pilgrimage complete. We bid our feeders
(45:26):
in to Adorno and Scherenberg and the other Germans trapped
in sunny California. Oh but I'm not done with Germans yet,
not by a long shot. He was afraid from the beginning,
I mean even to the point of being paranoid. And
he used to like write the songs and immediately memorize them,
and then he would burn the paper. He literally burn
(45:50):
it so it would be gone next week on into
the zone. We'll eavesdrop on an East German cat and
mouse game between the Secret Police and a teenage punk
rocker listening Never Please. Into the Zone is produced by
(46:17):
Ryder Also and Hunter Braithwaite. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Mia La Belle is our executive producer. Martin Gonzalez is
our engineer. Music for this episode composed by Griffin Jennings.
Our theme song is composed by Sarah K. Petinatti, also
known as lipp Talk Special Thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Heather Faane,
(46:41):
John Schnarz, Mia Kanig, Karlie mcgliory, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostick,
and Maggie Taylor. Into the Zone is a production of
Pushkin Industries. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider letting
others know. The best way to do this is by
rating us on Apple Podcasts. We could even write a review.
(47:02):
See you next week. I'm the best, the smart at,
the most brilliant anywhere Harry Country two
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