Apologies to Hyatt

I was browsing in a bookshop the other day, and happened across the latest edition of Christopher Hyatt’s Undoing Yourself (2002). I flicked very briefly through it, but immediately came across a section that very pointedly overturned some of my recent inferences about Hyatt’s Reichian model for removing fucked-up human conditioning.

I implied that Hyatt resonated with a very American current of utopianism, and of course I was being a bit simplistic. I knew already that Hyatt was deeply steeped in Nietzsche, and you don’t take Nietzsche’s worldview on board without shedding most utopian delusions and Edenic yearnings. Still, it’s instructive to have found something in this new edition of Undoing Yourself that so directly addresses my criticisms:

What is the fallacy of the Garden of Eden (original sin)?
The idea of perfection.
The idea of a once upon a time story mumbled by a bearded mom—newscaster by day—
The idea of non-conflict.
The idea of only love.

Now, here it is you bearded, blond bitch.

You can’t return to something that never was.
This simple but horrid fact puts an end to all experts who are calculating formulas to create a perfect world… instead of sleeping.
All politicians, social “scientists” and whining blond bitches—are out of work.

What is the truth?
Perfection never existed.
Therefore, there is nothing to return to—nothing.
Nothing to fix.
Nothing to repair.
No socks to mend.

There’s Hyatt’s usual odd style, and you have to bear in mind this is taken out of a section that I didn’t read in full (I’m not sure what he’s got against blond bitches).

But, a great twist. Perfection never existed, therefore there’s no “repairs” to be made. Redemption is unnecessary because there’s a crack in everything. As it is, so be it.