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The human evasion
UNDERLINING ON SEVERAL PAGES THROUGHOUT BOOK. BINDING INTACT.
126 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1977
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September 19, 2015
A bizarre book. I don't agree with any of it, but I can imagine agreeing with it. I feel like it was good thing that it was written, like its existence fills a void I didn't realize was there.
Celia Green finds ordinary human behavior strange. This is, in part, because we live in a world full of remarkable facts -- the universe exists although it seems impossible in principle to explain "why" it is so, solipsism cannot be rejected beyond the shadow of a doubt, one will (presumably) eventually die, etc. -- and yet we spend very little time attending to these facts. When we do attend to them, we may be affected by a momentary sense that they are very important, perhaps more so than the things we do spend most of our time thinking about. But we never let this guide us into actual, persistent focus on these things.
Celia Green writes polemically. She refers to a set of things we tend to ignore -- including, but not limited to, the aforementioned -- as "reality," or sometimes "the Outside." Technically, it seems like she means that the ignored facts are "the Outside," and "reality" consists of the Outside plus "the Inside," i.e. the minute, unimportant things we do choose to focus on. But she doesn't adhere consistently to this distinction, and often simply refers to our tendency to "ignore reality," to be "uninterested in reality," etc. She seems to believe that it would be natural to spend most of our time attending to the Outside, and hence that we only avoid doing so by being indoctrinated, from early childhood on, with a pernicious set of values intended to make us reject every indication that reality might be interesting or important. (This is the titular "Human Evasion.")
So far, there is at least something to this. It really does seem strange, from a certain point of view, that we do not spend more time thinking about certain things which seem so fascinating or astonishing when we do think of them. But we immediately run into the problem that it is not clear what the alternative could possibly look like. The examples of "Outside" subject matter Green gives all have the feature that it is very hard to say anything definite about them, so that "thinking" about them tends to be a process of simple wonderment or confusion, without any definite progress whatsoever.
Green does not think that there can be no progress; she just doesn't think anyone has tried hard enough yet. This is where her opinions start to get truly weird. She seems to think that "paying attention to the Outside" is a sort of great untried experiment, and that if anyone were to really do it seriously, they might make astonishing discoveries.
In addition to the more ordinarily "philosophical" issues mentioned earlier, Green seems very concerned about the fact that people are not more frustrated with their own "finiteness." It is not usually clear quite what she means by this. Often it seems like she means the fact that people are not omnipotent. She seems to believe that humans naturally expect to be omnipotent, and find it frustrating that they are not; she thinks that we can glimpse this tendency in children, and that it is only through social indoctrination that people lose this set of attitudes. When she turns to concrete examples, we get stuff like this:
("Sane" is a negative term for Green -- "sanity" is another name she uses for the "Evasion" which she wants us to give up.)
I confess that I cannot remember, even in early childhood, ever having been frustrated by the simple fact that there are some things I cannot do. But Celia Green is frustrated. She is very worried that we might have incredible capabilities which we are not aware of simply because no one has ever cared enough. She imagines that, simply by avoiding the distractions of social life and putting some real effort into the problem, we might transcend any given limit -- unravel the mysteries of existence, jump over houses, whatever. It reminds me of this, from The Real Life of Sebastian Knight:
It is hard to tell when Green is being entirely serious. Some of the later chapters, in which she attempts through ludicrously contrived interpretive leaps to show that Jesus and Nietzsche might have been interested in "the Outside," are so far out that I was not sure how seriously to take them, given the evidence elsewhere indicating that Green is an intelligent, relatively skeptical human being. But it seems that she practices what she preaches. The book ends with a request that kindred spirits contact her and consider visiting her at Oxford, where she is involved in (it seems) trying to evade the Evasion. This was written in 1969, and even now, in 2015, she is on the web making a similar entreaty. As far as I know, none of her associates have yet managed to jump over a house, transcend the limits of finitude, unravel the mystery of existence itself, etc. But I guess it is comforting (and I mean this sincerely, despite my sarcastic tone earlier in this paragraph) that someone is trying.
I can imagine feeling the way that Celia Green does, although (thankfully?) I do not. I don't think that there is a vast program of social conditioning dedicated to making the rest of us not feel the way that Celia Green does. I think that human beings are a social species, and that we spend most of our time thinking about each other, and about other "little" details of our immediate surroundings, because this is in our nature, and also because whenever we try to attend seriously to Green's "Outside," we quickly realize that we are not "getting anywhere" (whatever that could even mean). I am thankful that I do not (often) find this frustrating. But I have a certain sympathy for the frustration nonetheless, and I'm glad that someone has articulated it. Keep on doing your thing, Celia Green.
Celia Green finds ordinary human behavior strange. This is, in part, because we live in a world full of remarkable facts -- the universe exists although it seems impossible in principle to explain "why" it is so, solipsism cannot be rejected beyond the shadow of a doubt, one will (presumably) eventually die, etc. -- and yet we spend very little time attending to these facts. When we do attend to them, we may be affected by a momentary sense that they are very important, perhaps more so than the things we do spend most of our time thinking about. But we never let this guide us into actual, persistent focus on these things.
Celia Green writes polemically. She refers to a set of things we tend to ignore -- including, but not limited to, the aforementioned -- as "reality," or sometimes "the Outside." Technically, it seems like she means that the ignored facts are "the Outside," and "reality" consists of the Outside plus "the Inside," i.e. the minute, unimportant things we do choose to focus on. But she doesn't adhere consistently to this distinction, and often simply refers to our tendency to "ignore reality," to be "uninterested in reality," etc. She seems to believe that it would be natural to spend most of our time attending to the Outside, and hence that we only avoid doing so by being indoctrinated, from early childhood on, with a pernicious set of values intended to make us reject every indication that reality might be interesting or important. (This is the titular "Human Evasion.")
So far, there is at least something to this. It really does seem strange, from a certain point of view, that we do not spend more time thinking about certain things which seem so fascinating or astonishing when we do think of them. But we immediately run into the problem that it is not clear what the alternative could possibly look like. The examples of "Outside" subject matter Green gives all have the feature that it is very hard to say anything definite about them, so that "thinking" about them tends to be a process of simple wonderment or confusion, without any definite progress whatsoever.
Green does not think that there can be no progress; she just doesn't think anyone has tried hard enough yet. This is where her opinions start to get truly weird. She seems to think that "paying attention to the Outside" is a sort of great untried experiment, and that if anyone were to really do it seriously, they might make astonishing discoveries.
In addition to the more ordinarily "philosophical" issues mentioned earlier, Green seems very concerned about the fact that people are not more frustrated with their own "finiteness." It is not usually clear quite what she means by this. Often it seems like she means the fact that people are not omnipotent. She seems to believe that humans naturally expect to be omnipotent, and find it frustrating that they are not; she thinks that we can glimpse this tendency in children, and that it is only through social indoctrination that people lose this set of attitudes. When she turns to concrete examples, we get stuff like this:
For example, as a mature adult, you cannot even try (with any emotional involvement in the act of trying) to jump over a house. By the same token, you cannot try to make a door open by willpower alone, or try to arrive home quickly without traversing the intervening space and navigating such obstacles as stairs, walls, gates, etc., in the approved fashion. Your immediate sensation if you attempted to try, would be an overwhelming sense of impossibility.
It is (philosophically or factually speaking) the case that no future event can be demonstrated to be impossible. If something has happened once, this may be said to show it is possible. If it has never happened this does not show that it can never do so. But as has pointed out, reflections of this kind although true, have no emotional impact to a sane person.
("Sane" is a negative term for Green -- "sanity" is another name she uses for the "Evasion" which she wants us to give up.)
I confess that I cannot remember, even in early childhood, ever having been frustrated by the simple fact that there are some things I cannot do. But Celia Green is frustrated. She is very worried that we might have incredible capabilities which we are not aware of simply because no one has ever cared enough. She imagines that, simply by avoiding the distractions of social life and putting some real effort into the problem, we might transcend any given limit -- unravel the mysteries of existence, jump over houses, whatever. It reminds me of this, from The Real Life of Sebastian Knight:
By an incredible feat of suggestive wording, the author makes us believe that he knows the truth about death and that he is going to tell it. In a moment or two, at the end of this sentence, in the middle of the next, or perhaps a little further still, we shall learn something that will change all our concepts, as if we discovered that by moving our arms in some simple, but never yet attempted manner, we could fly.
It is hard to tell when Green is being entirely serious. Some of the later chapters, in which she attempts through ludicrously contrived interpretive leaps to show that Jesus and Nietzsche might have been interested in "the Outside," are so far out that I was not sure how seriously to take them, given the evidence elsewhere indicating that Green is an intelligent, relatively skeptical human being. But it seems that she practices what she preaches. The book ends with a request that kindred spirits contact her and consider visiting her at Oxford, where she is involved in (it seems) trying to evade the Evasion. This was written in 1969, and even now, in 2015, she is on the web making a similar entreaty. As far as I know, none of her associates have yet managed to jump over a house, transcend the limits of finitude, unravel the mystery of existence itself, etc. But I guess it is comforting (and I mean this sincerely, despite my sarcastic tone earlier in this paragraph) that someone is trying.
I can imagine feeling the way that Celia Green does, although (thankfully?) I do not. I don't think that there is a vast program of social conditioning dedicated to making the rest of us not feel the way that Celia Green does. I think that human beings are a social species, and that we spend most of our time thinking about each other, and about other "little" details of our immediate surroundings, because this is in our nature, and also because whenever we try to attend seriously to Green's "Outside," we quickly realize that we are not "getting anywhere" (whatever that could even mean). I am thankful that I do not (often) find this frustrating. But I have a certain sympathy for the frustration nonetheless, and I'm glad that someone has articulated it. Keep on doing your thing, Celia Green.
April 11, 2012
In this book, Celia Green tries to deconstruct the term 'sanity'. She argues that sanity is only an evasion taken on by people to avoid looking at reality and the whole spectrum of problems it brings with it, e.g. how little of the world we know or can, as humans, ever know; or the knowledge that our presence in the world is finite and therefore could be deemed as pointless, etc. In other words, sane people get used to dealing with problems concerning their relationships with other humans so as not to have to deal with reality and their finiteness. "Dealing with reality" is avoiding reality. Curiously, sane people do not seem to be aware of the fact and may insist that they are taking reality head-on while telling fellow humans more concerned with otherworldly or trans-human issues (in the sense of transendence, not transhumanism) that they are not dealing with reality.
An interesting book and one I that I wish to read again, if only because I feel that reading it off a screen somehow reduced my retention, even if it is a short one. It is fully available on deoxy.org, which looks as if it has many other interesting articles, books and opinions that can go a long way in challenging the conceived sanity of most.
An interesting book and one I that I wish to read again, if only because I feel that reading it off a screen somehow reduced my retention, even if it is a short one. It is fully available on deoxy.org, which looks as if it has many other interesting articles, books and opinions that can go a long way in challenging the conceived sanity of most.
March 14, 2012
Mindbendingly brilliant. I've read this several times, and it always succeeds in tearing apart the fabric of illusion we call 'sanity'. For that reason this can be an unsettling, even frightening read, but once you've seen the world through the eyes of Celia Green, you won't want to pull the wool back over your eyes.
February 22, 2023
Iconoclastic book, that dismantles the "human evasion" and "sanity", the state(s) of being that the average human being is in.
It exposes how even some of the most respected philosophers and theologians are unable to observe or contemplate something without tying it to other people or society in general. Everything must be reduced to that level, even God.
Someone who gives great importance to the fact that we really don't know much about our very existance - why humans exist, what's the objective of life, how did the 1st particle form etc. - is viewed as a bit mad, or "eccentric" by most of society.
This book would be disturbing to most people, since it attacks the very core of their being - the ability to enjoy ignorance and illusion.
It exposes how even some of the most respected philosophers and theologians are unable to observe or contemplate something without tying it to other people or society in general. Everything must be reduced to that level, even God.
Someone who gives great importance to the fact that we really don't know much about our very existance - why humans exist, what's the objective of life, how did the 1st particle form etc. - is viewed as a bit mad, or "eccentric" by most of society.
This book would be disturbing to most people, since it attacks the very core of their being - the ability to enjoy ignorance and illusion.
August 12, 2025
Throughout my time with this i was reminded of 'the denial of death' by earnest becker, both try to address the undefined repression that ail us as becker finds his answer in the discrepancies between flesh and mind and how people react therein, starting with focus on the individual. Green seeks them in endless deconstruction of the tepid everyman, his personhood rarely being more than an extension of his security in good society and no mention made to any other societal or natural conditions apart from basic psychology, all topped with a good amount of naval gazing.
Although there is a point to be made in picking apart the underlying linguistics of certain phrases, (which seem quaint by modern standards) how they infer the necessity to be agreeable by society at large and know ones station in life, all of this, including the later discussion of religion and science of her era, are funnelled in service of the ultimate point which is that people are afraid of the infinite and this holds us back. Anyone who cannot contend with this prospect for one reason or another (which green herself can rarely articulate its faculties or utility other than with broad displays of gusto, a mighty endpoint far down the line) is put in the camp of 'sane' and as such, disregarded.
Conveniently enough the little attention towards the end dedicated to discussing the alternative way of life hand waves away the possibility of it resulting in violence or hedonism. Instead the sparingly mentioned Nietzsche (and Christ) are expounded upon. 'Overman', 'actualisation', etc, are recounted as if now in a new context. The salvation of heaven is demanded on earth based majorly on the quality of being disagreeable.
The tagline 'is there an alternative to sanity?' forgot the most important question which is 'why should i care?' as little effort is made to quantify or even include the reader on the goings on of its contents.
Although there is a point to be made in picking apart the underlying linguistics of certain phrases, (which seem quaint by modern standards) how they infer the necessity to be agreeable by society at large and know ones station in life, all of this, including the later discussion of religion and science of her era, are funnelled in service of the ultimate point which is that people are afraid of the infinite and this holds us back. Anyone who cannot contend with this prospect for one reason or another (which green herself can rarely articulate its faculties or utility other than with broad displays of gusto, a mighty endpoint far down the line) is put in the camp of 'sane' and as such, disregarded.
Conveniently enough the little attention towards the end dedicated to discussing the alternative way of life hand waves away the possibility of it resulting in violence or hedonism. Instead the sparingly mentioned Nietzsche (and Christ) are expounded upon. 'Overman', 'actualisation', etc, are recounted as if now in a new context. The salvation of heaven is demanded on earth based majorly on the quality of being disagreeable.
The tagline 'is there an alternative to sanity?' forgot the most important question which is 'why should i care?' as little effort is made to quantify or even include the reader on the goings on of its contents.
September 30, 2024
Short and enjoyable. Celia Green takes what we, as humans, know seriously - and wonders, over the space of 120 odd pages - why no one else, or almost no one else, does.
Early on, she points out, "... there is no reason known to us why everything should not stop existing at any moment. I realise to my sane readers I shall appear to be making an empty academic point. That is precisely what is so remarkable about sanity."
Sanity, understand, is the conformist, conventional anesthesia aka common sense that allows us to maintain our equilibrium. It is what is probed and outlined by Terror Management Theory. It is, as Green reminds us, the "ability to keep things 'in perspective' ..."
This is Green's evasion: a programme of human prevarication in the face of the unknown and unknowable, cooked up as we seek to sidestep the really big insight our primate intelligence affords us: that we are unable to position ourselves with respect to what is and what might be. Fearful, we create a human-sized nexus, populated also by God, to relate to each other within. Go, instead, with the impermissible insight and you're left Outside; which is where Green finds herself, extolling the virtues of urgency, singlemindedness, unconditionality, and self-sufficiency. It's a lonely gig, but you sense she revels in it.
Early on, she points out, "... there is no reason known to us why everything should not stop existing at any moment. I realise to my sane readers I shall appear to be making an empty academic point. That is precisely what is so remarkable about sanity."
Sanity, understand, is the conformist, conventional anesthesia aka common sense that allows us to maintain our equilibrium. It is what is probed and outlined by Terror Management Theory. It is, as Green reminds us, the "ability to keep things 'in perspective' ..."
This is Green's evasion: a programme of human prevarication in the face of the unknown and unknowable, cooked up as we seek to sidestep the really big insight our primate intelligence affords us: that we are unable to position ourselves with respect to what is and what might be. Fearful, we create a human-sized nexus, populated also by God, to relate to each other within. Go, instead, with the impermissible insight and you're left Outside; which is where Green finds herself, extolling the virtues of urgency, singlemindedness, unconditionality, and self-sufficiency. It's a lonely gig, but you sense she revels in it.
December 5, 2021
Nothing is spared by Celia Green, religion, science, psychoanalysis, the humanities, Christ, anti-realists, etc... The main point of the book is that humanity is plagued by sanity, the conscientious denial of reality. If we realized all that we don't know and that in fact cannot know, if we truly realized, then we would have a proper understanding of reality. The solution to this is insanity, which must not be confused with the mentally ill, who to Celia Green don't differ much from the sane. Although the insane has not existed, it seems to approximate the Übermensch of Nietzsche or it has a bit of Christ.
March 29, 2018
Interested in a philosophy that will ruin your life? They you may like Celia Green!
Dull, lackluster, but somewhat clever, the author recognizes none of life's joys. As insightful as an angry teenager.
Lazy philosophy, worse worldview. Useful for toilet paper if you happen to run out but that's about it.
Dull, lackluster, but somewhat clever, the author recognizes none of life's joys. As insightful as an angry teenager.
Lazy philosophy, worse worldview. Useful for toilet paper if you happen to run out but that's about it.
June 25, 2025
The hypotheses within contain little value beyond trite generalisations and a tedious fixation on our own inevitable annihilation.
April 12, 2014
Yeah, uh, I don't get it. I mean, it starts okay. There are a couple of good points about sanity as rhetoric.
But then it goes on to talk about how we really, really need to be paying more attention to metaphysics, and rapidly becomes less and less comprehensible. Reads like your standard mysticism.
The author, too, is a parapsychologist, which is an enormous red flag.
But then it goes on to talk about how we really, really need to be paying more attention to metaphysics, and rapidly becomes less and less comprehensible. Reads like your standard mysticism.
The author, too, is a parapsychologist, which is an enormous red flag.
August 9, 2014
A little over my head. I think I'll come back to it in a few years, because this book is heavy. I'm not even going to pretend that I know what its about.
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