My father, a potter, ceramics artist, and teacher, recently raised the issue of whether it is possible to have art without an artist. Though his question was motivated by a conversation he'd had with another artist about what we might call social action art—in which an “artist” acts essentially as a facilitator for a group of people to devise an activity that in some way reflects or attempts to fulfill their aspirations and concerns. The activity may be typically familiar as art, such as painting a mural, but it may equally be something that serves a direct social need, such as distributing blankets to homeless people. (The corollary question, of course, is what defines an activity as art.)

My response was basically to displace the question of a doer—the idea I was getting at was not specific to art, but more fundamentally about definitions of self and intentional action. One of the essential teachings of Buddhism is anatta: “no self”—which my teacher Ajahn Buddhadasa would describe obliquely with phrases such as “no walker, only walking; no maker, only making.” That is, there is activity, but no “person” initiating the action: all perceptions of self are based on (inter)dependent conditions that ultimately rest on other conditions, with no starting or ending point.¹ One of the keys to practice according to this set of insights is developing attention (through meditation and other means) that at some point spontaneously gives rise to this recognition of anatta. It's not really saying “existence is an illusion” so much as concluding (based on direct observation) that the fact of impermanence negates the possibility of a continuing self. Within this framework, it's demonstrably true; beyond the framework, it's not fully convincing (also based on direct observation).

The application to artistic creation (also authorship) that I was bringing up relates to the common experience of ego dissolution in the creative moment—the sense that the sculpture simply needed to be freed from the stone, or that the story writes itself to the degree that the “creator” can successfully get out of the way. This is especially true of improvisational music. It always depends (at least when artistically successful) on a sufficient degree of technical proficiency as well as on adherence to, or at least response to (or intentional reaction against), some sort of structure—without any structure, it's simply noise, not art.

Nature can be defined as spontaneously arising, interdependent patterns and forms that occur without an identifiable creator; it is highly structured, and the epitome of technical proficiency. It's also the definition of dhamma—“nature” and “practice according to nature”—so the successful art that I'm describing, in which the creator becomes a conduit for the arising of forms, is simply nature performing through the artist. Traditional art in Buddhist cultures approaches this is various ways—the thankgas and mandalas of Tibet emphasize following precisely defined grids, while Zen art (especially zenga calligraphy/brush painting) epitomizes spontaneity arising from developed awareness.² Both approaches are expressions of nature, though the former works as a tool for developing awareness (that is, it is a meditative process) while the latter is the result (a product).

There is an important distinction between the active attention that defines meditative awareness and the possibility of egolessness in artistic creation—they can certainly coincide (and I would argue that the most successful art occurs when this happens) but the latter can also easily be a trance state, which is actually the antithesis of meditative awareness. The sort of absorption into a greater (transcendent) awareness that is the goal or basis of devotional religious practices (Hindu bhakti for example), and also of spirit-possession rituals (such as Vodun), may be more similar to these trance states than to the active awareness of Buddhist meditation. Even so, these states may also be conducive to creation that occurs with no creator.

¹ In Kabbalah this is called ein sof—literally “nothingness” but functionally “infinite.”

² Also notable is the Fuke Zen practice of suizen, “blowing meditation” (shakuhachi flute), which combines intensive technical demands with the objective of “becoming the wind.”

A suggestive notion that comes up from time to time in Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa’s writing and talks, which may seem contradictory, or at least unfamiliar, is “non-mastery.” Mostly we’re conditioned to consider mastery desirable, particularly in craft, and in most work-related endeavors, as we’re accustomed to hearing about (and respecting) master builders, masterful musicians, martial arts masters, yoga masters, spiritual masters. The last, especially, Trungpa would consider particularly susceptible to spiritual materialism—the use of spiritualist techniques to strengthen and solidify ego, to feel better about oneself, to gain a sense of importance through spiritual attainment, to develop special powers that enable you to seduce or manipulate others—and ultimately delude yourself even beyond what a mundane, non-spiritual materialist would be capable of.

So, non-mastery: being fully at ease with things as they are; not irritably chasing after resolution of contradictions (or after “closure”); basic comfort with oneself in spite of imperfections (though not neglectful of efforts to meet challenges skillfully).

The subtlety here is that skillful response to challenges is still important, the ability to solve problems with wisdom, insight, compassion, is a crucial capacity (and here I’m elaborating on Trungpa’s direct statements, but it’s all true). But don’t get stuck on how great you are because of what you can do. Non-mastery.

Toward repairing the world: it’s up to us to maintain it, continually correcting our course—not for the sake of personal gain (although through the making of things there’s an exchange that’s sustaining[1]) but because of loving the world fiercely and wanting to make something that is a gift for its benefit, an offering, which operates by awakening delight in beings who encounter it and inhabit it.

Mastery is not finality but refinement. Acknowledgment and recognition for doing something well are helpful but too easily mistaken for an end-state or goal (useful but not sufficient). 

Restraint provides a necessary resistance to being overwhelmed by the vastness of the task. Allowing the action to arise without becoming an actor may be tricky, but ultimately there's no other way to do something as a full offering. By getting out of your own way you can become receptive to something that helps move toward fuller awareness. Is this completion? So far no, only further development.

Mastery is only relevant if it develops with this attitude of moving forward, not getting stuck. Getting stuck is inevitable at certain points and getting unstuck is part of the process of developing mastery, but isn’t itself mastery. Mastery does imply a certain facility with disentangling.

The term mastery also implies a power relationship—think of slavery. Domination is essentially a non-ecological attitude.[2] But considering the origin of this term, we can see some ambiguity: the word “dome” (which, as well as referring to a hemispherical roof, is also the French and German term for cathedral), comes from Latin domus and Greek dōma, meaning house, and shares the same root as dominion, domain, dominate and domestic (and also danger and despot). So somewhere along the way, we might find a positive (or at least neutral) connotation—something like “householding.” Of course, in the cultures that produced this idea, a householder was thought of as the authority—the master of his domain—and the most developed moral codes of the day required ethical treatment of one's slaves but did not question the existence of slavery. [3]

The phrase from Genesis that’s often been cited as a philosophical basis for exploiting the earth, “You shall have dominion over all the living beings” seems to be a mistaken translation. The Hebrew prefix a (b’) attached to a word means “with”—not “over.” So that statement more reasonably reads, “You shall rule in relation with all the living beings”—a much more ecological statement.

Craft is, basically, common sense. Ingenuity is certainly a factor (anyway, it’s a close relative of common sense, fully complementary). Following a simple procedure, perhaps repeatedly, requires a basic degree of attention combined with a clear understanding of the process, perhaps with reference to the first face of tradition—an accepted process, the way it’s been done (successfully) before.[1] Many of the tasks involved in building a house occur at this level, requiring basic attention and this simplest form of common sense.

Even the simplest procedures, though, demand a bit more ingenuity: knowing when to stop adding water to the concrete mix, for example, or determining how much of that mix will be needed to fill the forms. These are also matters of common sense, with a bit of calculation and a notion, from experience, of what’s workable. Ahead of mixing the concrete, though, determining the dimensions the formwork needs to have, building and bracing the forms, installing rebar and presetting foundation bolts, all require careful calculation in addition to an understanding of the loadbearing requirements—again, based on experience and knowledge, both of yours and of others (structural engineers and building inspectors, for example), thorough familiarity with building codes and safety considerations.

These are all, in fact, further refinements of common sense.

Ecology is common sense. It is self-evident that one thing influences another, that no being exists separately from another in any definite sense, that interrelated systems are interwoven with other interrelated systems. Plants draw energy from the sun and carbon dioxide from the air to produce sugar and oxygen that animals eat and breathe. Bacteria and fungus feed on decaying plants and animals to replenish the soil. Life is intricately bound in other life. It is self-evident, to anyone paying attention, that disruptions of ecological balance are only self-correcting to a point, before leading to further disruptions. An aesthetic that values common sense will recognize the importance of reducing our disruptive impact, of implementing our craft to the best of our understanding.  

The Environmental Justice Foundation estimates that by 2050, 150 million people will have lost their homes as a direct result of climate change, from drought, flooding, desertification, rising sea levels and extreme weather events. How many millions more will become political or economic refugees because of indirect effects—social instability and unsustainable agriculture, military incursions, ethnic and tribal conflicts that arise in conditions of stress and scarcity, among other factors—is difficult to assess. (Not to mention any of the other mundane, ongoing causes of forced migration.[1]) How will the rest of the planet absorb these people?

Since the beginning of industrial development, rural villagers have crowded into cities—sometimes voluntarily, but often as a result of combined environmental, economic and political pressures (in some cases abetted by dubious advertising, sleazy promoters suggesting wonderful opportunities). Not that rural poverty is the best possible life, but concentrating 70 percent of the world’s population in increasingly uninhabitable cities is clearly not the best alternative.

At Tule Lake

“The Modocs’ grief was for a whole relationship to the natural world and to a specific place, for their culture and community, while the grief of those who produced and profited from their loss was purely personal.”[2] In this statement, Rebecca Solnit describes both parties to an indigenous displacement in terms of grief—the military conquerors who forced the Modocs from their ancestral homeland (in 1873) suffered both private losses and their own ancient inheritance of exile, a separation from place and connection to land that in some ways enabled—or at least coincided with—European technological advances and colonizing impulses. The trauma of their early, mostly forgotten, displacements survived as the willing suspension of empathy that fueled the engine of conquest.

The Modocs were driven from the land of their birth, the center of the world where they had always lived, the place that had nourished and supported them from the beginnings of time. The place was the heart of their culture and the basis of meaning in their universe. To be pushed even a few miles away was irreconcilable. A complete rupture. Recovering that land someday could, perhaps, repair some of the damage, but so much specific knowledge is lost when this sort of intimacy with a place is destroyed that it seems unlikely ever to be fully restored.

The deepest loss is of that intimacy, which is the core of indigenous experience in a place, of a place. Even if old stories are remembered, even if the language survives (or is revived), without the deep everyday experience of the specific subject of the stories, there’s a degree of understanding that is simply unavailable. Who knows how many dozens or hundreds of generations it takes to develop?

And yet, change is inevitable, and developing strategies of engagement, of honestly learning to meet a place, seems preferable to simply lamenting its demise.

When the so-called swine flu threatened Egypt (land of the Pharaohs), the government decreed that all pigs would be destroyed. Of course there was no epidemiological basis for this. It was really just a convenient ploy for further marginalizing an already degraded group of tribal Coptic Christians living in the mountains above Cairo.

It turns out these pig-herders, known as zabaleen (“garbage collectors”), are the recyclers of Cairo—perhaps the noisiest city on earth, now also one of the most putrid. Many of the zabaleen are descendents of poor farmers, displaced from their land for a combination of environmental and political factors, who came to Cairo in the 1950s. They turned to garbage collection because Muslims consider it unclean. By hand-sorting, the zabaleen have successfully recycled up to 85 percent of the garbage they collect.[1] Until recently, the organic waste was fed to their pigs.

But without their pigs to feed, the zabaleen don’t have much incentive to remove food waste from the ubiquitous street-corner piles of it. Without a functioning alternative strategy, the food waste rots in the streets.[2] There seems to be a lot of it.

Everybody loses: the pigs are dead, the zabaleen deprived of a crucial part of their livelihood, the streets of Cairo stink. Of course there’s no impact on the spread of H1N1 or any other infectious disease, except perhaps to worsen conditions that increase their impact and spread them further—so perhaps there is a winner after all, if you consider the pathogens. With respect to the delicate and severely stressed ecology of a human settlement such as Cairo, it seems all of this demands a more rational sort of attention.

Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complex kind of order.[1]

Ecology begins as an inkling—an acknowledgment—of the sacredness of life. It is an assertion of value: that life does not begin or end with humans, or even with plants and animals—but is a force, a flow, a pattern (a system of patterns, the source of patterns, the origin of order) that animates the whole of the universe.

It is important and useful to return, repeatedly, to the simple recognition inherent in this statement—the source is recognizable through feeling, impression. It may not be audible over the hectic clamor that propels and entertains us. It may (often) be a whisper, a fleeting glimpse of some original face peeking through the branches.

It may be a subjective impression. It may be deniable. But it is not deniable.

The opposite of aesthetic is anesthetic. If we can’t appreciate beauty, we won’t be bothered to care at which point anything (everything) is left to degrade.

“The connection between order and feeling is fundamental. In some fashion, profound order makes us feel our own existence,” says Christopher Alexander.[2] The reverse makes it clearer still: disorder and disorganization displace us from the possibility of attentive awareness. If we lack attention, we are nowhere. The self, the personal, only coalesces in awareness that is sustained from moment to moment.

Consider this: if you are unable to comprehend the order of the alphabet, there is no possibility of deriving meaning from the symbols.

Even more so when the symbols are patterns of nature—dynamic patterns, a system in process. We clearly become more alive as we are more able to witness the order inherent in nature.[3]

We’re neurologically, physiologically predisposed to engage our senses, experience a fullness, in natural settings—overwhelmed by the vastness of the ocean but also startled, cleansed, awakened by so many minute details—a nook in the woods, a perch by the river, the enclosure of a cave, the prominence of a mountain peak. Getting there is part of making room for the shift in awareness, part of the preparation—the exertion, the effort, quickening the pulse, breaking a sweat in the climb—clearing away heaviness, stagnation, the goop that otherwise mires us in confusion or resentment. Immersion in a stream or the ocean is often part of this clearing process. Simply exercising may accomplish some of this physiologically, but jogging on a treadmill (especially with headphones piping in the morning stock market report) isn’t really reaching it.

Human-made religious structures, the most basic, intuitive varieties at least, begin with making altars and offerings. These gestures of relatedness and gratitude (or possibly of appeasement—feeding a hungry beast so it doesn’t make your life yet more difficult) can be a way of thanking the place for being welcoming—a gracious host—and attempting to give something back. This in turn becomes a mandate in many cultures to become gracious hosts to our own guests, this being the most direct means of returning the favor that is simply the fact of our existence—the original act of generosity.

Original Forest

I lived for the first half of 1989 in a tiny cabin in the heavily wooded mountains of Southern Oregon, a mile or so by well-rutted dirt road and footpath above a ghost town called Golden and a cold stream known as Coyote Creek. The nearest town with a post office was another three or four miles away.[1]

I needed a place to go where I could be still for a while. I’d lost two friends the previous year and was at a bit of a loss for what to do, where to go. After finishing college I’d taken a ride from Portland to Alaska to work in the fisheries of Valdez, Prince William Sound (which were more or less intact when I was there, until an incompetent swindler let 12 million barrels of oil drain out of the tanker he nominally controlled that following spring, as I stewed in my canyon), and come back without any plan to speak of.

Ecstatic moments and grieving moments clenched into a tangled knot, though not necessarily a tight knot. In fact there was a good deal of looseness in the uncertain antics of those days.

For lack of a better plan, and because I was distrustful of plans at that point, I let myself follow the pull toward the anti-industrial protests of the so-called timber wars of the Northwest. We came from everywhere, true, but this is where we belonged: in the woods, willing to sacrifice comfort and safety, at least temporarily, to hinder the twisted intentions of junk-bond liquidators and petty tyrants as best we could, by legal means or otherwise.[2] One friend whom I met at a small gathering, and then at the logging road blockade that followed, invited me to stay at his place above Coyote Creek. By the middle of January I was ready for a place where I could unravel.

-----

The dirt road snuck in through shady mixed conifer and second-growth Douglas fir trees (this south slope had been logged in the 1950s), and crossed a small wooden bridge at a level spot along a year-round stream fed by clear springs higher up. From here a narrow path wound its way up the small bowl-shaped canyon. My cabin was about halfway up the slope, a half-hour walk from the bottom, in a small clearing with a plywood platform to one side and the steep drop into the canyon at the back. The view from cabin and deck was immense, multidimensional, deeper than anything else I’ve encountered. The entire west and north slopes of the canyon were alive with a quiet stand of the original forest, the ancient trees that once blanketed the entire region, of which only scattered islands remain.

There was snow on the ground when I arrived. I had never set foot in this place before but it all felt familiar and right. I had no trouble finding my way up the winding path. When I stepped between two trees near the top, I sensed that I had passed through some sort of barrier, into a set-aside zone, a sanctuary, where everything was somehow more present than in the outside world. In one sense I’d come here to hide, but from the first moments it was clear that in this place, in my grief and uncertainty, I would also be greeting someone or something that had a fullness I might have barely glimpsed before.

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No electricity, no phone. No running water to my cabin, though a two-minute walk brought me to an old bath house, where a spigot piped water down from the steady spring.

Removing myself so completely from the world of social interaction and technology[3] gave me an opportunity to tune in to the rhythms and beings of the place, to sharpen my senses. To live deliberately (as a long-departed surveyor from the Northeast once said), though not really free of the ebb and flow of intense yearning—which would, however, subside more or less of its own accord, tiresome to the point of irrelevance, after a few hours or days. I learned to meditate, forced by necessity (though I would have benefited from the sort of training I later received in Thailand), learned to discern the varieties of breezes and degrees of agitation or calmness they inspired.

I stayed at Golden for six months, broken up by some trips to visit friends but mostly alone in my canyon. During those months I would walk or catch a ride into town (really little more than a stagecoach stop) for supplies every few days—sometimes not for a week or two or three. I spent my hours walking, reading, carving faces in small scraps of wood, just watching the trees or the hawks, making a fire, foraging for edible plants, cooking rice, dismantling fences, writing, playing guitar, gardening. I left after the place was destroyed by logging, after I determined I had learned as much as I was able to from solitude and desolation.

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The presence of that forest was indescribable.

I would go for days, sometimes weeks at a time with no human contact. The dimensions of loneliness were unfathomable. Yet somehow, within a couple of weeks after returning from any excursions into more inhabited zones, I would awaken to a presence in the place. A Presence. Really. A pervasive experience of communion with a vast ancient being contained in that physical canyon, a moody jealous majestic empress,[4] a non-human non-animal life whose intense demand for attention sharpened all senses. Comfort and discomfort intermingled. No spite, no judgment, but deep sorrow and yearning.

Yes, the human mind concocts fantastic visions when stressed by extreme solitude. Yes, she was real. Yes, she was there. And then mercenaries of absent industrialists killed her.

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It’s not as if the place had been untouched by humans, even by possibly inconsiderate, self-serving humans, in the past. For a few thousand years at least the area had been within the wider hunting and fishing grounds of peoples who were displaced and largely destroyed between 1803 and the 1950s, including through an official, recent policy of “termination” which stripped tribal status from most groups in the region, essentially to impoverish and demoralize the people whose ancestors had been there, and who were the legitimate inhabitants of the place.[5]

Coyote Creek had been mined by Euro-Americans since the 1850s, and the town of Golden was incorporated in 1890. At some point this spot on the creek had a population of two hundred or so, and was known for having two churches (one of which still stands) and no saloons.[6] Gold mining continued to be the mainstay of the small settlements here well into the 20th century.[7] By the 1950s logging had surpassed gold mining economically. But it was not until the late 1980s (and particularly the first week of May 1989) that some of the steeper slopes of the original forest were cut.

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In the two decades since I left that place, I've meandered and bounced down a few different roads. But I always come back to that moment, that sense of presence and sanctuary, even though the literal place was destroyed. Perhaps it's more accurate to say I left part of myself there, and at the same time some piece of it got stuck in me.

Azazel

The so-called scapegoat was originally never actually blamed for causing any problem. In fact the source ritual brings forward a pair of equally unblemished goats and selects, at random (by lottery), one of them to be sacrificed on the temple altar. The other goat is the "scape" goat, given a transmission by the high priest, who lays his hands on the goat's head in a sort of magical act of transferring the sins of the nation, to carry the pollution away ... to Azazel, the desert, wilderness, wasteland. 

The goat is simply a messenger--again, he's never considered responsible for committing the transgressions of the nation (or of anyone, really--he's just a goat, after all, capable of capricious mischief but nothing comparable to what humans can do). He carries his burden away from the community, out to the harsh, uninhabitable zone, where he's set loose to wander and survive as well as he can (or, according to some accounts, pushed off a cliff--but even then, goats are excellent climbers...). 

The desert, for this culture, was a demonic realm--people forced out into it go crazy, wandering lost and alone, have nightmarish visions, uncertain if they are alive or dead. As such it's entirely receptive to the gift the goat conveys, especially considering that the "sins" of the people probably originated in the demonic realms in the first place. And considering that the proportion of wilderness to habitable land is heavily weighted to the wild, there's little danger of the sins returning within the first day or so (though of course demons travel quickly, not necessarily confined to the rocky path).

The removal of the collective sins (if effective at all) is temporary--just because you washed the floor, in no way is it protected from the crap you track in the following day, though you may be inspired to be a bit more careful for a brief moment. It's an annual attempt to clear a ritual space for a specific purpose, to enter a direct unification with divine reality without being dangerously distracted. 

It's also worth remembering that the displacement of the collective pollution does not absolve individuals of their responsibility for wrongdoing. It's still necessary to correct one's own misdeeds in the usual tiresome ways, such as paying fines and seeking forgiveness from the person you were rude to. Whether it's successful in clearing the collective is another question entirely. It may constitute a sacrifice, but the goat gets the worst end of the deal.

Gateway

The holy of holies was considered a portal, a conduit unifying heaven and earth, a very potent spot where matter and energy are actively interchangeable. Attempting to enter the without attending to every preparatory detail would not only defile the space, but would make the the people susceptible to immolation, insanity, plague. That's the sort of danger they were worried about. Not simply whether they had been disproportionately grumpy that morning, but whether they would be competent to withstand the enormity of their lapses.

Without veering too far into superstitions about the dangers of psychic pollution, I'll just mention that, though metaphorical, there's also reasonable evidence suggesting that people are susceptible to physical (as well as emotional, social, psychological) ailments as a result of psychic toxins. And certainly, to be effective in one's endeavors, it's important to have clarity of purpose, but also to not be bogged down by too much unresolved trauma, grief guilt and other distracting, soul-clogging flotsam. So even from a purely practical standpoint, finding ways to clear up the debris--at least once a year--would seem important. A goat's life might depend on it.

Among the better known stories of our species is one that begins in a garden. Not wilderness--which in the particular tradition of this origin story is a harsh desert that may inspire visions but is not really habitable. The garden is a more or less domestic setting. It is full of life, all the animals and plants, fruit-bearing trees (the Hebrew word pardes, orchard, is the origin of the English word "paradise"), the source of abundant living water. It has a place and purpose for people. They tend it, study and categorize animals, talk to a serpent. It is contained. The dangers are ambiguous.

Never mind the reasons. The punishment is exile. Struggle and toil, hard labor and uncertainty. The worst part is being cut off. Longing to return, never being able to return to the source of life, the place of undifferentiated bliss (and easy pickings), no longer assured that the universe is a friendly place. The original suffering. 

Of course there are still gardens, there are places we can go, ways we can train ourselves to experience that sense of connectedness, return from exile. In North America, the original inhabitants have always known that the land is alive. Actually, indigenous peoples everywhere have always known this, only (too often) to be dissuaded by swindlers and brutalizers. But the land is alive.

As it happens, most of us spend at least half our time in buildings. In the industrialized worlds, the amount is likely to be much higher--perhaps 90 percent. When you factor in the time we spend in vehicles of some sort, the number is higher still. And if you look at the time we spend in the built environment in general, it's approaching 100 percent.

So it stands to reason that our built environment should be something more satisfactory than the boxes and cubicles that so often try to pass for homes and workplaces. If most of our lives are spent in dead and deadening physical environments, there's little surprise that people would seek out the seductions of television and other stupeficants, or of hysterical religious practices and mass spectator sports. In the first case, it's tuning in to oblivion (which is to say, tuning out). In the second, the attraction is the fervor--the excitement of being part of something beyond the limits of the self. In both cases it's a setting aside of the ego, temporary though that may be. There's an unspoken recognition that the ego arises with exile, is the source or product of it, or at least the recipient of it (a standard Buddhist definition of self is "experiences suffering"--which explains the preference for ending the cycle of rebirth).

The Hebrew word kadosh--typically translated as "holy"--really means set aside, separated. Apart. Not mundane. The idea is that we innately seek ways to move beyond our mundane material struggles and strivings (exile), and make a place for receptivity--for receiving the fullness of life that flows through and around us (the garden). But if deadness surrounds us, there's not much chance of a genuine receptivity. 

Deadness = exile. Aliveness = connection. Connection to fellow beings, to ground, spirit, soul. 

In this aliveness, this sense of connectedness, is the beginning of a working definition of "sacred." Without it we are vacant automatons capable only of craving excitement or oblivion.