When Richard Melville Hall was born in 1965, he had an impressive family legacy — his great-great-great-great-uncle was none other than Herman Melville, the famous author of Moby Dick, which eventually inspired Hall’s nickname, “Moby.”
But the connection between Moby and Herman Melville goes beyond being blood relatives. Melville and Moby share something else; namely, a distillation and expression of existentialism as a way of understanding the human experience.
Existential philosophers have taken on the ontological question of “What does it mean to exist” by positing that the essence of human existence is about recognizing that there is no universal truth. Each person has his or her own meaning by which they make decisions. The only thing that we can be sure of is that we are going to die and that, in many ways, we are ultimately alone in that journey towards death.
Existential anxiety is the fear of living in such an “absurd” world, where there is no single rationality. And existential loneliness exists when we accept that we are alone and disconnected from others in our journey.
According to French philosopher Albert Camus, when one copes with existential anxiety by ignoring larger questions of being, they are condemned to living what he called a “mechanical life” or mundane existence. On the other hand, searching for one’s own meaning, while recognizing that much of life is fundamentally unknowable, can create what German philosopher Martin Heidegger termed an “authentic” and healthy life.
There are different approaches to achieving authenticity. For example, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard felt that authenticity could be found through searching for a connection with God, and French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre felt that speaking out against social and political oppression was a way to fight against the pressures that hinder people from leading an authentic life.
Scholars have argued that in “Moby Dick,” Melville explored many existential themes. For example, the “absurdity” of a battle between a man and a giant whale may have been Melville’s statement rejecting the notion of “objective” reality and embracing a more existentialist concept of existence. Further, the image of sailors at sea could represent our general struggle with being alone — with the monstrous beast perhaps symbolizing inevitable death.
Following in the family tradition, Moby also takes on existential concepts in his new book, Porcelain: A Memoir. In the book, Moby describes his struggle against leading a mechanical life and his search for his authentic self during the late ’80s and ’90s as an aspiring musician in New York City. In doing so, Moby takes another step towards understanding his journey and reaches a conclusion: His authentic self is one that embraces the aloneness and disconnect that we all face and, paradoxically, it is this very state of being alone that unites us and is deserving of compassion.
For Moby, acceptance of the “absurdity” of life is what helps him to recognize that he may never fully understand certain ontological questions regarding the nature of our existence. He told me, “We — as the last few thousand years of philosophy and science have proven — as humans, we’re incapable of understanding the actual true nature of things. Whether it’s on a molecular level or a cellular level, we have no idea what’s really going on.”
Moby taps perhaps an unlikely philosophical source in his assessment — former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “Donald Rumsfeld was talking about the war in Iraq, and he had that famous phrase the ‘known unknowns,’” Moby explained. “So, we look at life and human life in general. And the known unknown is the big question of what happens after we die. Nobody knows. Anybody that claims that they know, they simply don’t.
“But the ‘known known’ — what we do know — is how we stumble through our life while it’s happening,” he said.
Moby then moves onto the next logical question, of how can we understand our existence. “It raises bigger questions of basic identity. We all think that we exist,” he said. “How do we prove that? What existence do we actually have? What meaning does our existence have?”
Moby is particularly interested in a semiotic approach — how we use signs and symbols to confer meaning. And he has observed how easy it can be to fall into a “mechanical life,” one in which we attach meaning to otherwise mundane signs, symbols or activities. Moby has experienced a feeling of disconnection from these signs and conventions, including hotels, parties and even religious activities.
“And one of the reasons why I’m fascinated with hotel rooms is they’re these utterly anodyne, synthetic environments,” Moby explained. “Hotel rooms have three utilities: Provide a space where people can sleep. Provide a space that’s easy to clean. And provide a space that just triggers lots of familiar semiotic reactions in people.”
Moby recounts a similar feeling of disconnection at many social events. “On one hand, it’s nice to be around people, but to be in a room full of people where it’s loud, and you go from just one banal conversation to the next banal conversation, I’ve done that enough … I almost feel that people should give up the ruse of talking and just stand in a room together and have a pheromonic experience,” he said. “Just smell each other and enjoy the fact that they’re around other people. Maybe do some grooming and go home.”
And while Moby has explored organized religion, particularly Christianity, as a mechanism to answer existential questions and achieve connection, he felt that it was difficult to embrace organized religion, in part because it could mean different things to different people.
“If you look at it almost from a linguistic perspective, a word becomes meaningless when it means myriad different things to a myriad of different people,” Moby explained. “And so to that end, I would say Christianity — and I’m not saying this in a judgmental way — has become a meaningless word. Because Christian to a Southern Baptist means something very different than does Christian to a Greek Orthodox. It means something different to someone reading Kierkegaard or Thomas Merton than it does to a snake handler.”
Moreover, Moby sees the tribal nature of organized religion as inadvertently limiting people from searching for and finding their authentic self. “I guess my issue with any belief system is to what extent is it exclusionary? To what extent is it tribal? And to what extent does it look like supporting a sports team? And I just don’t think that whoever God is — whoever, what God is — couldn’t make everything and then expect people to be tribal. Or want people to be tribal and exclusionary.
“Me talking about Christianity is kind of like me talking about hair. I used to have it.”
After much searching and failing to find connectedness, Moby asks, “How do we exist in this disconnected world?” This is not simply an interesting philosophical question. Loneliness predicts higher levels of stress and increased risk of premature mortality. Research suggests that existential loneliness may be high among older people, especially those receiving palliative care.
Then one day, Moby found inspiration from an unlikely source, the Cross Bronx Expressway. “I had this moment. I was driving on the 10, one of the most unattractive freeways in the world, the Cross Bronx. And I was pissed off that I was sitting in traffic. And I was looking at used-car lots and Home Depots, and everything just seemed wrong,” he explained. “Then I realized that everybody in every other car was having the exact same experience. In fact, probably their experience was worse than mine.”
Moby recognized that it was the very fact that disconnection is so common among us that made him feel more connected to himself and the world. “And it just filled me with this sense of expansive solidarity and compassion. All of us are struggling through this joyful, bewildering, dangerous, confusing life. And then, after hopefully spending a bunch of decades being confused, we all die,” he said.
With this epiphany, “the best two responses I find are: one, a degree of baffled joy at this disconnection. But also, there should be this beautiful, compassionate solidarity that arises with the understanding that we’re all in this together — compassion for ourselves, compassion for other people in that confusion.”
Eventually, Moby — who has discussed his struggle with addiction — was able to reconnect with God on his own terms through 12-step programs. His acceptance that we can’t understand all things as well as his compassion for the sense of disconnection that can vex us all allowed him to embrace a new relationship with God.
“If I had to sum up my spiritual beliefs in one neat, little package, it comes down to the third step of the 12 steps of AA. And the third step says, turn your life and will over to the care of God as you understood God,” Moby explained. “And the thing that totally confused me was the idea of turning over everything I have to a God that I don’t understand. So I spent a long time wrestling with that, and I finally accepted the God of my understanding is a God that I don’t understand. And there’s something so liberating about that.
“And I just hope as time passes, I get to learn more.”
One of the keys to managing existential anxiety is being able to accept that we cannot know or control certain things. As Moby has embraced this process, he feels that he has discovered his true “authentic” self. “And by that true self, I mean I guess it’s different for everyone. Speaking for myself, my true self seems to be very childlike and kind of vulnerable and gentle,” he explained. “And I hope, or I like to assume, that every human, if given a chance, their true self will be a vulnerable, open, lighthearted, gentle, true self.
“I can only speak for myself, but basically in the course of my life, the things that bring me closer to what we’ll call a true self are the things that I end up valuing the most,” Moby explained. “So humility to me is the honest appraisal of self. And realizing that, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not as tall as I want to be. Maybe I’m not as strong as I want to be. Maybe I’m not as tough as I want to be. But there is a true, vulnerable self under there that is the best of where the human experience resides.”
Thus, acceptance to Moby does not mean being OK with what one is doing no matter what; it means being honest with oneself. “I think it’s just being open to evidence. Most of us don’t want to be open to evidence. We want things to have magical properties that are not supported by evidence; meaning, people want to be able to drink and smoke and eat disgusting food and take drugs and pretend that these things won’t kill them, or make them sick and miserable,” he said.
“We’re doing things that are supposed to make us kind of happy. If I watch four episodes of “House of Cards” in a row, even if it’s a great TV show, I still feel like shit afterwards. So the question is, why do I keep doing it? At some point, the executive function in our brain has to kick in and say, ‘OK, maybe next time, go for a hike instead of watching four episodes of ‘House of Cards.’ Or reach out to someone you know who’s suffering. Or do something creative. That’s a benign example, but I feel like, in our lives, there’s so much stuff that just isn’t supported by evidence.”
Moby’s approach is consistent with empirical research showing that acceptance-based approaches are effective in managing a range of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety and substance-abuse disorders. Moreover, his approach is consistent with cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies that have demonstrated efficacy in managing a range of issues, including depression and anxiety.
Overall, this approach has lead Moby to discover what truly makes him connect with his authentic self. “For me, it tends to be the simplest things. It’s being outside in nature. That genuinely makes me happy. Listening to music genuinely makes me happy. Hanging out with my girlfriend makes me happy. Being in the mountains, walking in the state park makes me happy,” he said. “Sometimes petting a dog from a rescue shelter — that’s where happiness resides. Having a deep conversation with another person, seeing the divine made manifest through nature. These are things that I think do bring sustainable happiness and well-being.”
Still, Moby acknowledges the many barriers that may take him away from the path of exploring his authentic self, particularly a judgmental approach that suggests that there is one truth to which everyone must ascribe. “So many things that we experience, so many things that we choose — through ego and arrogance and cynicism and bitterness, judgmentalism, vitriol — all these things I feel are like corruptions. They’re things that take us away from that true, gentle self,” he said.
Moby recognizes that in many ways, our society has evolved to lead people toward a more mechanical life in which we do not embrace our authentic self. “It seems like it’s a simple but sad evolution. For most of the last few billion years, our ancestors — whether they’re proto-humans or squirrels or birds or whatever we’re descended from — lived in times of great danger and scarcity. So the people who learned how to be tough and cunning were the ones who survived to procreate.”
“So we’ve evolved this adult propensity towards toughness and fear, because it used to make sense. But the problem is, it doesn’t make sense anymore. And being tough and afraid and cunning — it’s a great way to be able to live to the age of 20, when there’s nothing to eat. It’s a great way to survive for a couple of decades. Throw some genetic material around, fight some dinosaurs or some bears, and then die. But it’s not a great way for 7 billion people to live to a ripe old age.”
Ultimately, Moby is optimistic as he continues to make changes to increase his connection with his authentic self and move away from a mechanical life. “I guess, especially as I age, I become increasingly aware of the precious rarity of life. And I’m much less willing to throw my day-to-day experience under the bus in the interest of having banal experiences. So if I get invited to a party, I’d say nine times out of 10, I simply don’t go. I spent years touring and thinking, ‘Well, I’m a musician. I’m supposed to go on tour.’ And then at some point, I finally admitted to myself that I hate going on tour. And I hadn’t been willing to admit that to myself for a long time,” he said.
“It’s just evidence to me — honest assessment of self — and really figuring out what works and what doesn’t.”
And Moby’s journey is far from over.
Towards that end, Moby is looking to continue his philosophical quest to understand existence. “If I were a therapist or a psychologist or a researcher, one of the books I would want to write would be called ‘Emotional Semiotics.’ Or you could get real ‘grad-studenty’ and call it ‘Ontological Semiotics,’” Moby told me.
Somewhere, Uncle Herman may be smiling.
But we’ll never know.
And that’s OK.
