Human Rites

Dr. Lügner has left us to meditate and prepare for the rite. We are always a bit rudderless when he leaves us. I mean, that sounds rather silly: we're able to carry on with things as we normally would, but most things seem a bit meaningless without him. It isn’t just a matter of guidance or instruction, either. He encourages and jokes and smiles warmly at those who are doing well, and moves quickly to console or assist anyone who is struggling. It really makes ordinary things seem—special, purposeful.

I’ve had all sorts of jobs and relationships and the usual routine, and none of them could ever touch the experience I have had since I started watching Dr. Lügner’s talks online. I commented now and then, always thinking to myself: “Who reads the comments?”

Then people replied, and a conversation became my community. Like many people, I was isolated during the pandemic. It wasn’t fear for my own health that kept me away from others, as much as the fear that I might inadvertently infect someone else. I just couldn’t live with that. Imagine making someone else terribly sick, or even killing them, just because of your own ignorance?! I mean that in the strict, epistemological sense (lots of people use “ignorant” as sort of vague slur that means “doubleplus ungood,” if you’ll forgive me a little homage to Orwell). I mean your own lack of knowledge: about whether or not you are a healthy host of something dangerous, or of the need to protect others, especially innocent, vulnerable others, from harm. I did the needful things, but I kept to myself.

Then I joined the community, and it was as if I had been numb, and began to feel again. I joined a chat and an email list and some rather ebullient, emoji saturated text chains, and then I got a message from Dr. Lügner himself.

He explained that his lectures and symposia and podcasts and first book, “What Are You Doing?”: 13 Ways of Looking at a Langoustine, had allowed him to achieve a level of material freedom sufficient to give up his university position (most of those woke idiots did not understand his genius anyway!) and go on a rather ambitious lecture tour of various important places.

He was currently in Greece, and having delivered some lectures in Athens, he was northwest, in the vicinity of Delphi, leading a study group through some of the ruins and offering symposia and reading groups to a select few. He made glowing remarks about my chat contributions (I actually felt myself grow lighter, somehow, when he wrote that my reading of Freud was “stimulating and challenging”) and invited me to join them.

Me? In Greece? With Dr. Lügner? Yeah, right.

I practically levitated.

I confessed that I couldn’t possibly afford the cost of such a trip, but thanked him in an obsequious, fawning way for the invitation. I couldn’t help myself. I’m just some fool with a drab, ordinary life. Why would an important thinker like Dr. Lügner want me around?!?

He wrote back almost instantly to reassure me that everything would be subsidized by his newly formed research foundation. Apparently, some prominent politicians have visions of a sort of think tank under Dr. Lügner’s eye. He had the funding necessary to grant generous bursaries to a handful of promising participants. He asked about my education, my work life, even my diet—not in an intrusive, prurient way; he asked like a mentor and friend, with sincere curiosity and compassion.

So, I got on a plane.

And here I am, caressed by the rosy fingers of the Greek dawn and waiting for him to come back to us. He has a wonderful idea. This happens to be the summer solstice, and Dr. Lügner has been doing some research about the Kronia, which was some kind of holy rite held in honor of the god, Kronos. I gather that the dates are a bit fuzzy, but Dr. Lügner has a plan to turn this into a sort of holistic, therapeutic ceremony. It’s going to be great.

“Friends,” he said, as he jogged into the center of our little group (there are only about twenty of us: some are his former grad students, but most are people like me, who joined the community and showed some special quality to Dr. Lügner), “I hope you will forgive my tardiness! Don’t you love the aroma of the olive trees and the pure, clean sparkle of the water and the caressing warmth of the sun? I look at your smiling faces, and I know where I belong.”

That was the sort of thing he said, all of the time, off the cuff. It was intoxicating. I felt like I had stepped out of the audience and into an important documentary about the future of our species.

“Today we are going to celebrate together, as the inhabitants of this place did before the deluge of ‘progress’ swept their wisdom away. Today there are neither teachers nor students, bosses nor employees, priests nor parishioners. Today the dawn boils all of that away and we become as the gods made us!”

A cheer sprang from all of our mouths at once. Then Dr. Lügner shouted, “Spiro! Diploûn horôsin hoi mathóntes grámmata!” I don’t speak any Greek, so I’m not sure if I got that exactly right, but as if by magic this group of dancers and acrobats and cooks and waiters and waitresses appeared in the glow of the new dawn, as if the shadows of the ruins had become living forms. They arranged a luxurious feast, and we all sat down and began to enjoy it with abandon, except for Dr. Lügner, of course. He’s on a strict, exclusively carnivorous diet. He had all sorts of health problems in his youth, and they all vanished when he made that courageous change. I don’t know how he does it. I would go mad. My kingdom for carbohydrates!

I happened to be sitting next to Hugh, who does some kind of pharmaceutical research in Buffalo, New York of all places, and Lilly, who is quite an up and comer in a series that I haven’t streamed yet but fully intend to devour when I get the chance. It's full of vampires and teen angst, I think. We talked about Greece and metaphysics and crustacean behavior. It was wonderful! I can’t remember being with people who I care about, and who care about me, this way in years.

Then Hugh offered us something that his team has been working on. I think he called it “Kyōryoku,” which doesn’t sound American to me at all. The atmosphere was so charged with positive energy that I simply could not say no. I mean, this is a sort of feast of fools, no? A bit of better living through chemistry seemed a good idea.

Things did get rather languid and bubbly after that. Good old Hugh! In fact, before I knew it, where Lilly ended and I began wasn’t all that clear, and Hugh was certainly an important factor, too. Pants were flying in all directions, and I could hear Dr. Lugner talking rather loudly from the head of the table: “We’ve all been had. Those with power want to limit our experience because experience gives one sophistication, taste, discernment! If you can only eat what you are served, how much of a gourmet can you become? Feast, friends! You are free!” Wild things followed. Dr. Lügner is so inspiring!

Spiro, whom I had naively mistaken for a mere caterer of some kind, was obviously an old hand at this sort of thing. Daphne told me, between gasps, that the people of his village have been celebrating this rite since time out of mind. He was dancing and singing and urging everybody on. In fact, it might have been thanks to the shiny strangeness Hugh had introduced, but I could have sworn that Spiro had begun to resemble a satyr below the belt. Daphne mentioned something about the “greatest of all time,” and we all laughed like lunatics, when our mouths weren’t otherwise engaged. I caught sight of Dr. Lügner at one point, taking part in what I can only describe as a writhing, acrobat sandwich.

Just as things were reaching a sort of delirious crescendo, an enormous shadow fell over the proceedings. A giant lumbered into our midst. Most of us were terrified, but Spiro and Dr. Lügner were positively mad with joy. They abandoned their revels and ran to the feet of the giant shouting, “Kronos! Kronos! I chrysí epochí epistréfei!” I assumed this was a good thing, but then the giant picked up Dr. Lügner, who seemed delighted, lifted him into the air, and methodically bit his head off. Lilly’s scream was so authentic. She’s going places.