Pirandello’s Dilemma

Shakespeare prefaced one of his famous soliloquies “Each man in his time plays many parts.” The longer we play a certain role, the more the actor and the character he plays begin to merge. Over time, if we have played a role long enough we come to identify ourselves so much with the role that we cease to think of it as a role at all, but as representative of who we actually are. Despite this, our own personality continues to exist, however thoroughly sublimated. The greater the disparity between our personality and the role we assume, the harder it is to play the part continuously. In addition to this, at any one time we are playing not just one, but any number of roles – one for work, another with friends, another with our children, still another with our wife, yet another with our lover, etc. This conflux of personae multiplies the stress in our lives. For most of us, our lives end up resembling a pantomime, in which the persona is going through the motions, but not really present. As if in a kind of sleepwalk, the character is still on stage, but the actor has left the theatre long ago.

So much of our sense of self is invested in the characters we play that it is no wonder then that we will not willingly part company with them. It is fascinating to note that even when these pretences we hang onto become an insupportable burden, we would often sooner face death, than be separated from them.

How can the actor reclaim himself from the illusion when confronted with everything described thus far? If he was to one day wake up and declare himself to the world in his own true colors, he would almost certainly be ostracized by friends, family and colleagues alike. The reason for this is simple: by exposing the fraudulent reality they all inhabit he places these other actors in a dilemma. The other players in the troupe will wish to keep playing the same drama, n which case, the only way they can maintain their collective delusion, is to discredit the defector, declaring him to be either malevolent or deluded.

For each group, maintaining its own integrity is its primary imperative. Any inconsistency must be uprooted and cast out. Otherwise, like a virus, it could spread and infect the host. In seeing the light, the individual in question at once becomes a threat to the cohesiveness of the group. The actor need not even actively promote his views to his peers. His interaction with the others cannot help but be slightly altered, different in some barely perceptible way than it was. The others will experience this change as something strange and aberrant.

In our day-to-day existence, enlightenment is experienced as a far greater burden than delusion. The benefits of enlightenment are ephemeral – experienced as vague and remote. The costs, on the other hand, are concrete and immediate. The Players, themselves, are exempt from this dilemma: their delusions of grandeur have completely eclipsed their essence, causing them to eschew the entire notion of enlightenment, dismissing it as nothing more than the affliction of a diseased and disorganized mind that cannot cope with reality.

John Berling Hardy is an author who has designed a diagnostic for a condition described as The Hidden Game Algorithm. This tool has a number of applications, among which are identifying the conditions that support malfeasance, supply chain rigidity, poor management, and poor utilization of human resources (including Brain Drain) You may contact him at www.johnberlinghardy.com.

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