Terror and Technology: The Evolution of Burke's Sublime - Essay

In his 1757 treatise, "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful", Edmund Burke presents his views on the concept of the sublime. He theorizes that the sublime is a powerful feeling evoked by the apprehension of danger or death. As such, it is an element central to many narratives that explore human experience. The element of the sublime is inherent in stories spanning different genres and eras, from historically realistic portrayals of war to cyberpunk visions of technologically-dominated futures.

The sublime according to Burke is "the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling". This strongest emotion is not pleasant, but painful. Burke postulates that pain, danger and the prospect of death "are much more powerful than … pleasure". Death, he says, is more powerful than pain. Fear, "being an apprehension of pain or death", is an evoker of the sublime as well. The common thread to all these according to Burke is terror, and it is terror that is "the ruling principle of the sublime". Whenever an individual perceives the safety of his person or mind to be at stake the sublime is experienced, and the individual is greatly affected. Under unique circumstances, when the danger perceived is not so dire as to be lethal, fear may be accompanied by pleasure and wonder.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", written in 1890 by Ambrose Bierce, tells the story of Peyton Farquhar, a civilian who supported the Confederate cause during the American Civil War. He is condemned to be executed by hanging. In the seconds between the removal of the apparatus platform from beneath his feet to the breaking of his neck, Farquhar has an elaborate fantasy in which the rope breaks and he escapes death. "Johnny Mnemonic", written by William Gibson in 1981, is the story of Johnny, an idiot savant who stores data for paying clients, and has no access to these memories himself. He is escaping an assassin sent by the Yakuza, a multinational gang that seeks to destroy Johnny after a client stores stolen Yakuza data in Johnny's brain. Both of these stories, though written decades apart and set centuries apart, contain elements of death, danger, pain and terror. Some aspects of the sublime seem to be universal, timeless constituents of human experience, and these technology leaves unaffected. However, in "Johnny Mnemonic" technology spawns new horrors of which contemporaries of historically faithful Farquhar could scarcely have conceived.

The sublime, as the most profound of human emotions, has the power to change the perception of the subject experiencing it. Farquhar and Johnny are both faced with the prospect of their own death, and this idea alters their thinking processes. As the moment of his hanging approaches, Farquhar becomes increasingly anxious. His perception slows so that the ticking of his watch resembles "a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil… He awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension." Fear alters his perception so that a normally harmless sound becomes magnified and daunting, distorting his cognition. When the platform is removed from under his feet, allowing his body to drop to its death, his perception of time slows so extensively that it allows him to enter into the fantasy of his escape.

In "Johnny Mnemonic", Johnny's senses too are altered by the apprehension of death. Throughout the story, Johnny never reflects on his own past. All of his thoughts pertain to his present experiences, or else they belong to other people, as when he recites "dead Ralfi's stolen program for three hours". When Johnny refers to himself, it is almost invariably to his idiot-savant status– "I had hundreds of megabytes stashed in my head"– or to his external appearance – "I checked myself out in the chrome siding of a coffee kiosk, your basic sharp-faced Caucasoid with a ruff of stiff, dark hair". His appearance is the product of aesthetic surgery and, just like his idiot-savant thoughts, does not belong to his organic original self. The following scene describes Johnny's second encounter with the Yakuza assassin on the Killing Floor, and the subsequent shift in Johnny's thoughts:

And then I noticed just how quiet the Lo Teks had become.

He was there, at the edge of the light, taking in the Killing Floor and the gallery of silent Lo Teks with a tourist's calm. And as our eyes met for the first time with mutual recognition, a memory clicked into place for me, of Paris, and the long Mercedes electrics gliding through the rain to Notre Dame; mobile greenhouses, Japanese faces behind the glass, and a hundred Nikons rising in blind phototropism, flowers of steel and crystal. Behind his eyes, as they found me, those same shutters whirring (Gibson).

Johnny's recollection of this memory is an exception to his thinking patterns throughout the narrative. His life is in serious danger and this prompts him to recall a personal experience, one that actually belongs to his own inner self, as opposed to the superficial immediacy that dominated his previous thoughts.

Another source of terror for Farquhar and Johnny is the terrain of their respective worlds. Burke recognizes that "the ocean is an object of no small terror", overwhelming the mind as "a thing of great dimensions". In "Owl Creek Bridge", a body of water poses a lethal threat to Farquhar as he nearly founders in the river. However, the fear that Nighttown evokes in "Johnny Mnemonic" derives not only from its dimensions ("The mall runs forty kilometers from end [to end]"), but also from the unpredictability of its piecemeal construction: "Dog [was] leading us along swaying catwalks and up rope ladders. The Lo Teks leech their webs and huddling places to the city's fabric with thick gobs of epoxy and sleep above the abyss in mesh hammocks. Their country is so attenuated that in places it consists of little more than holds and feet… I knew that I'd lose my grip and fall soon".

Although death and pain are both evokers of the sublime, Burke speculates that death is the more powerful of the two. "Death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there are very few pains, however exquisite, which are not preferred to death" (Burke). The structure of "Owl Creek Bridge" can be viewed in terms of the relative power of pain and death. Farquhar, faced with death by hanging literally seconds away, engages his mind in a vision of escape. His fantasy is filled with pain: he almost suffocates from the noose around his neck, then nearly drowns, and finally receives (and survives the damage of) a rifle shot to the neck. Farquhar's mind prefers this fantasy with its variety of injuries as a less excruciating alternative to the thoughts of his impending death, a testament to the crushing power of the prospect of his demise.

The idea that death is a more powerful force than pain is evident in "Johnny Mnemonic" as well. In the aftermath of Ralfi's murder, Johnny had been injured. Johnny relates, "My wrist hurt. I wanted to stop, to lie down, to sleep… But he [the assassin] rose in my mind like a cheap religious hologram… So I followed Dog and Molly through Lo Tek heaven". Johnny has two contradicting impulses, one inspired by pain and the other by the prospect of death – and the impulse inspired by death prevails.

In some cases, pain can be a source of pleasure. Even though pain and death are instigators of the most horrible emotions man can feel, "at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they [pain and danger] may be, and they are, delightful" (Burke).  Furthermore, Burke observes that very often, there is a close association between astonishment or admiration and terror. In "Owl Creek Bridge", when in his fantasy Farquhar resurfaces and draws a breath of air, and before he realizes he is about to become the target of open fire, he is able to revel in and wonder at the minutiae of nature:

 He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream…all these made audible music… he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble.

Similarly, even though he is "fatigued, footsore, famishing" and wounded, Farquhar is able to appreciate the beauty of his wife. In all these cases, the pain that he feels is remote enough from posing a danger of death. The immediate threat to his person is removed, and this relief enables him to derive pleasure from his (albeit imaginary) surroundings.

           

For Johnny Mnemonic, the sight of Jones is hard to behold. Just like Johnny, Jones is part-animal, part-artificial augmentation; just like Johnny, the purpose of this augmentation is to serve others. It is perhaps this resemblance that causes Johnny discomfort: "Jones reared again and fixed me with a sad and ancient eye… Suddenly I was anxious to go." Even though Johnny is pained at Jones's situation, he shows him generosity and visits him daily. The pain that Johnny feels is in the form of sympathy for another being, and as such is dissociated enough from Johnny's own experience that he willingly seeks the company of that same being who causes him discomfort.

While some manifestations of the sublime are similar in Johnny and in Farquhar, the fundamental, existential reasons behind these manifestations are different for the two protagonists. Farquhar is a wholehearted supporter of the Confederacy. His identity is clearly defined, and he experiences no hesitation regarding his ideology. In death, thus, he has no misgivings about the meaning and purpose of his life. Instead, his entire being is focused on the physical perception of death: "Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains… beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature" (Bierce). Farquhar is at peace with the choices he has made, and so he experiences pain in his body, and not in his mind.

 Johnny too fears for the safety of his physical person. However, this is not the most profound type of terror that he experiences in "Mnemonic". The threats to his body bring about fears of a more existential nature, regarding the state of his mind and the purpose of his life. Unlike Farquhar, his existence is not defined by a noble cause; he is not entirely satisfied that he made the right choices in life. Johnny has had augmentative brain surgery so that he may rent out his mind. Not only does the information in his mind not belong to him, it belongs to someone twice removed from him – Johnny's client is Ralfi, who got the information from a thief, who stole this information from the Yakuza. In addition, Johnny has had his face reconstructed at least twice, not from a desire to improve his appearance, but to prevent recognition by the assassins pursuing him. His identity is fragmented inside and out.

This fragmentation of Johnny's being stirs in him an increasing sense of fear. At first, Johnny is proud of the direction his life has taken: "I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness" (Gibson). Later, however, during his escape from the assassin, the inorganic aspect of his being turns from a source of pride to a source of regret. "And it came to me that I had no idea at all of what was really happening, or of what was supposed to happen. And that was the nature of my game, because I'd spent most of my life as a blind receptacle to be filled with other people's knowledge and then drained, spouting synthetic languages I'd never understand. A very technical boy. Sure." Johnny realizes that he does not know who he is. He realizes that instead of filling himself with his own thoughts, he has appropriated his body for the use of others. He is struck with the fear of one who does not know his place in the world, the reason for his own existence, a fear more subtle than the physical pain which dominates "Owl Creek Bridge", and perhaps more profound, a fear saturated with sadness.

            "I decided to stay up here. When I looked out across the Killing Floor, before he came, I saw how hollow I was. And I knew I was sick of being a bucket" (Gibson). This fear prompts Johnny to consider altering his lifestyle. He aspires to "have a surgeon dig all the silicon out of my amygdalate, and I'll live with my own memories and nobody else's, the way other people do". But the fear seems, rather than motivate him to change, to paralyze him. Even though Johnny is disturbed now by the artificial nature of mind, he doesn't rush to reverse the brain alteration, "not for a while". He seems to withdraw into acceptance of the state of his mind- "With Jones to help me figure things out, I'm getting to be the most technical boy in town." He does not know how to reject the technology which has for so long defined him. Such a consideration is not remotely available to Farquhar, and would not have chanced to occur to a member of his society.

            Death, pain, fear and danger are never ending sources of inspiration. They repel and compel, motivate and paralyze, create and destroy. This "strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling" can assume the form of physical pain, apprehension of death or of existential suffering; its relief can offer pleasure and admiration. The sublime is an integral component of human experience, and as such pervades stories of all kinds, traversing boundaries of era, genre, technology and ideological difference. At the same time, the onset of new technologies, with their promise of efficacy, brings into existence new terrors, threatening irreversible corruption of the very spirit.

Image by Robert Anderson

Works Cited

1. Bierce, Ambrose. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." 1890. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. The EServer's Fiction Collection. Web. 06 Feb. 2011.

2. Burke, Edmund. "Of the Sublime." A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. 1756. The Sublime and Beautiful. eBooks@Adelaide. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

3. Burke, Edmund. "Terror." A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. 1756. The Sublime and Beautiful. eBooks@Adelaide. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

4. Gibson, William. "Johnny Mnemonic." 1981. Johnny Mnemonic. The Cyberpunk Project. Web. 06 Feb. 2011.