becoming more human by becoming more godlike 407the fi xed version of the self— may seem to be in tension with each other.
Rigidity inhibits adaptation. If the self were simply an agent of the so-
cial order, and the social order, like God in the theology of predestina-
tion, had a plan for each self, then any lack of fl exibility would amount
to a restraint on the per for mance of our ser vice. We should, by this
account, have only so much rigidity as would allow our actions to be
intelligible and predictable to others but as much fl exibility as would
enable us to change our habits of mind and behavior according to our
circumstance. Th e compromises of society and the compulsions of char-
acter seem impossible easily to reconcile.
Yet they are reconciled. Th eir reconciliation is what forms around
each of us the mummy that threatens to deny us the good of life and to
prevent us from dying only once. Th e form in which we act is designed
by the compulsions of character. Th e content of our desires is, however,
hardly our own. Our desires, like our beliefs, are largely drawn by imi-
tation from other people. We ordinarily desire what others desire. Our
desires, unlike those of the animals, are indeterminate, but their con-
tent, rather than being left empty for us to shape, is largely fi lled up by
society. Th us, everything happens as if the mimetic character of desire
suffi ced to mitigate any tension between the demands of society and
the compulsions of character. One man will be an introvert, another an
extrovert; one cautious, another impulsive; one easily cast down, an-
other resilient. Each will use and be used according to his circumstance
and to his luck, but all will sing a song that they have been taught to
sing. Th ey will sing it for society, even when they believe that they have
sung it, and even composed it, for themselves.
Th e emptiness and indeterminacy of our desires, which are, in prin-
ciple, an expression of our transcendence over all limited context, will
thus turn against us. Th ey will be the sieve through which society, or
history, seizes us and denies us what we might have hoped to be the
silver lining of our rigidity: our autonomy. As society invades the life
of desire, we lose any prospect of coming into fuller possession of
ourselves.
In this way, the two sides of the mummy— our adaptation to society
and our surrender to character— come to coexist and even to converge.
Th eir convergence diminishes us. It denies us the power fully to enter
into the possession of life in the present and condemns us to a drowsy