The Lancelot Problem

 

“In summary, modernity replaces process with result and the relational with the transactional."

- Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

I have developed a metric, a canon of sorts, to judge another’s aesthetic (and thus ethical) roots. This metric takes the form of a riddle, a nasty question I call The Lancelot Problem. So far only one person I know has answered the question correctly, which is more than I expected. One other has answered with brutal honestly, and his failure is almost as good as success. Almost. It’s really close. I commend him here for being braver than the rest of us.  How many will even get that far is beyond me. Maybe a handful? Possibly ten? Who knows?

Cast your mind to the mythical land of Logres, King Arthur’s halcyon days of peace, wherein his knights could right the wrongs at home, while Arthur labored tirelessly abroad. Eventually it all comes crashing down, like all good things. Mordred, the offspring of Arthur’s lack of true control, brings the chickens to roost. Lancelot is long gone, exiled after sleeping with Guenevere and accidentally killing Gawain's brother. But times are desperate. The mightiest knight is needed. Mordred is here and must be repulsed. A mortally wounded Gawain sends his letter, begging Lancelot’s help and giving his forgiveness! 

And Lancelot comes! He drums up an army out of nowhere and runs to his old friends' aid! He flies like the wind! Can he come home? Can he blot out his sin?

Too late. 

Just. 

Arthur is dead. Everyone is dead. Excalibur is gone. Logres is falling around Lancelot. What does Lancelot, in the face of a problem literally only he had the martial strength to master, do?

He retires. To a monastery. And stays there as the dream his king and friends shed blood for dissolves in blood and screams. A new dark age descends, and Logres falls. 

And Lancelot does nothing.

Why? Why would Lancelot do this?

I won’t give you the answer. But I will tell you some of the wrong ones. 

It is not merely a question of an anachronism. In medieval stories retiring to a monastery is akin to the Questing Beast in terms of feelings that we cannot quite comprehend. I acknowledge that there’s a historical blindspot for us here. But it doesn’t invalidate the real answer. 

It is not because Lancelot decided that the world was futile, and that he could do nothing about it. Lancelot was many things, but a coward wasn’t one of them. Neither was he a defeatist. Nor a pessimist. 

It was not to be closer God. Lancelot had his crises of faith already. He’d had his trials. He had been shown who he was. Arthurian lore is filled with people deciding upon their courses of action despite being told the outcome, because they are who they are and damn the torpedoes! Lancelot didn’t have doubts. He did what he did.

It wasn’t because of his failure. Again, Lancelot was not a stranger to failure. He wasn’t afraid of it. He didn’t cave in because he thought he couldn’t do it. 

Why did Lancelot hang up his weapons and watch as the world went to pot around him?

The answer is so simple. But almost no one I have asked the question of has been able to answer it, on the first go. And why can’t we fathom this very simple reality?

Could it be that, since we expect life to imitate an idealization - which we immortalize in movies - we deny ourselves the ability to conceive of art that shows life? We expect the pre-moderns to make art not inherently connected to their experiences. We think they just made up stuff they thought sounded cool, like we do. But they didn't. They didn't have time for flighting fancies. They had to make things they truly believed in, something we know very little about.

Have we been rendered so brainless as to think that myths are merely an exaggeration of reality, as opposed to a direct psychological and spiritual mirror? Once again, pre-moderns didn't have the mindset for mere flights of fancy. If they did something, they truly believed in it. They didn't write about people as they wished they were, but how they actually behaved. Gilgamesh fails to resurrect his friend because he's an arrogant asshole. Achilles sulks. Arthur fathers multiple children, some with his own half-sisters. Gawain flinches as the axe comes down. Lancelot retires to a monastery.

In our race to idealize everything, as post-Enlightenment victims in need of something to strive for, do we accidentally cut out the most vital, the most important, the truest, parts of ourselves? Do we forget that the rationality is secondary to human behavior, a post-fact rationalizing of an action? We have certainly failed to notice that even the least peasant in the Medieval era was mightier than any of us. They could rise up and destroy their lords if they wanted, and they did. Don't pretend for two seconds that you have their courage, nor try to pretend you know where it comes from. It certainly doesn't come from betwixt your ears.

The man who failed this test so admirably he practically won, affirmed all the above and so much more, with one very simple, poignant, heartfelt and heartbreaking statement:

“I don’t want to feel.”