Each day I am confronted with the choice of whether or not to have hope, or have something else, akin to an idol. This becomes harder yet in the afternoon with the running of the wild bulls--"It was 5 in the afternoon" --Lorca, probably my favorite poet still--"one lone tree/one lone bird/ on the point of a pin/ is my soul girando (turning)
Poetry is always so difficult to unravel, from Shakespeare's Sonnets to The Wasteland. Are poets trying to be deliberately obscure? Certainly that is often the case--and we also tend to leave out the connecting points (hyperpersonal too much so in my case) and leave them to the imaginations of the readers--otherwise one gets a mere literal explanation or even a sermon--the meaning of the word, "prosaic" often means a more tedious style in which the author tells you what to think with a precision meant for a universal interpretation if not a universal audience...
But what comes closer to our experiences of life? The seeming disjointedness of the poetic stream? Or the literal post hoc ad majoram "analyze this!" ? I often find rationalistic explanations unrepresentative of the confusion of this life, as referred to by Camus in the last posting. It is the constant struggle of the poet to get the balance right between particulars and universals, a struggle well represented by the life's work of Leonardo da Vinci and most artists, particularly since the Renaissance; but also seen in the earliest books such as Job. When can we ask, "Why me?" without suffering the greater view, to "wit", "Why not you?" hahaha (sorry- it sounded funny the first time)
But when people cease to admit that they are confused and become literal-minded and sure of themselves and of their opinion-makers, then we proceed from the relative and transient balance of freedom/confusion into the "Enlightenment."
Our country, like it or not, is based on a delicate balance between, or an oil/water mixture of, Enlightenment and Reformation thinking. On the one hand we can so easily translate superficial certainties into a Reign of Terror which has been repeated over and over again worldwide, often thanks to French and German philosophies which tend towards materialistic reductionism ending in mere power struggles with ourselves (we are never satisfied with the "jihad within", are we?) (I speak only here from a male point of view but have often observed the results of similar thinking in the other half of the race)
But as Enlightenment quickly unraveled into Napoleon, Reformation thinking can also quickly devolve into religious formulas, which are no adequate defense against Hitlers or Mussolinis. Becoming, God forbid, a "state religion" reduces God to a very small and easily manipulable entity who becomes then a mere abstraction, as we too often see in "mainline" Protestantism in America--but not so much in the ascending third world.
This is a far cry from the God of Isaiah 6!!! The "numinous" God as He appears through the ineluctalble Holy Spirit is, I am finding, totally unmanageable, which is perhaps why "few find it," because precious few are willing to let God be God. (mein kampf, yo!!) It becomes a control issue i.e. politics as usual--one finds these frustrations easily in Camus with his experiences of both politics (Sartre) and religion (joined at the hip for so many centuries and still so in Europe, only this time to the new protestantism, the cultural civic religion of atheism/agnosis/ anti-supernaturalism/Sadduceeism, which has become the fastest growing religion of white Europeans with Islam being a formidable and legalistic Pharisee-reaction to this vacuum.)
There is no question that French thinking has greatly affected Southeast Asia via colonialism; but it was not the "confused" and increasingly apolitical thinking of Camus that was the star influence but Sarte's arbitrary and anti-teleological activism, which literally reduced a man to a biological zero , in which a king was the same as the drunk in the gutter was the same as a bubonic rat; and this being so, all men are equal--equally disposable in front of the juggernaught of politics/religion and can be rolled over at will. From the Reign of Terror to Stalin (Were the Russians not just a little bit over-awed by the French, even after Napoleon? ) to Cambodia ad nauseam --see Sartre's book. "Hell is other people." (how would he know?- he didn't even experience the worldwide hell he helped to create but was content to be lionized by that which he hated, i.e."other people".)
The point of the blogging of Mumma's testimony is not to portray the strengths of religion or denomination but to highlight that the point of departure of Camus from Sartre, and the cause of their apparently permanent rift, was precisely over whether or not human nature was a "given" or if by artificial selection man could become anything that a powerful Ubermensch/plotter/planner/enlightened communitarianism could devise; if nothing else, the tyranny of the majority is our perpetual default setting, whether we be the bourgeois or proles, when the elites have had their chance. But the very word "given" starts a chain of inquiry as to a state of grace/pain and who or what may be the Giver--which Camus pursued and may have been more than a seeker by the time he wrapped his car around an American tree! (He was never formally baptized at least not in public)
But read Isaiah 6, esp. the last verse, which is almost never quoted, but talks of trees. I like that, because as the song goes, Wood Hath Hope. Trees can of course be made into Deadwood Idols--but one must first separate this wood from the ground, that is, its source. Idols, by definition, don't move, they have to be dead and dead certain, like abstract ideologies are. But with even a stump, which is still firmly attatched to the ground and exposed to light, there is the possibility of life, and starting over--which is what I am trying to do now.
(The Rod that is of The Root of Jesse being the most sublime example)
P.S. The "teil tree" is another word for a linden tree, which in this verse is coupled to an oak tree--while neither one produce edible fruit, in Jesus' day the fruitful tree had become unfruitful even after much care and many fertilization attempts/opportunities was cursed to its roots; and that fig became the one from which, "no one will ever eat fruit again." Is it so? Even now? "Conmigo?"
But many other trees, of then and now, have remained "rooted and grounded." (even though few of us care for acorn stew--although our Native Americans did have some recipes.) But for one small thing, it does explain the same "Linden Oaks'" which is the name of a psychiatric facility in Naperville IL. A friend of mine, a Christian and academic child psychiatrist Rockford IL, attempted to start one in Rockford, but it didn't fly there. The point of Linden Oaks is for individual healing with the fully human perspective included, not viewing man as something from which we merely earn a living but as fully but brokenly imago dei...
"But yet it shall be the tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof."
"Here am I" (said the poet) "send me!" (6:8)
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
MORE CAMUS TO HOWARD MUMMA
Albert, I congratulate you for this. I encourage you to keep searching for a meaning in something that will fill the void and transform your life. Then you will arrive in living waters where you will find meaning and purpose."
"Well, Howard, you have to agree that in a sense we are all products of the mundane world, a world without spirit. The world in which we live and the lives which we live decidedly empty."
"It does often seem that way," I conceded.
"Since I have been coming to church, I have been thinking a great deal about the idea of a transcendent, something that is other than this world. It is something that you do not hear much about today but I am finding it. I'm hearing about it here, in Paris, within the walls of the American church."
"After all, one of the basic teachings that I learned from Sartre is that man is alone. We are solitary centers of the universe. Perhaps we ourselves are the only ones who have ever asked the great questions of life. Perhaps, since Nazism we are also the ones who have loved and lost and who are therefore fearful of life. That is what led us to sense that there is something -- I don't know if it is personal or if it is a great idea or powerful influence -- but there is something that can bring meaning to my life. I certainly don't have it but it is there. On Sunday mornings, I hear that the answer is God."
"You have made it very clear to me, Howard, that we are not the only ones in this world. There is something that is invisible. We may not hear the voice, but there is some way in which we can become aware that we are not the only ones in the world and that there is help for all of us."
Camus leaned forward and until his elbows both rested on his knees and said, "In the Bible, I read about people who were not at all self-confident. Men who did not feel as if they had the world by its tail, or that they had all the answers. Fact is, one of the things that I noted in the Bible that many of its chief characters were confused -- just like the rest of us. We are on a pilgrimage. We are all seeking something, whether it is confidence or knowledge or something else entirely. I have read Old Testament at least three times and I have made many notes on it. In its pages I have found some people who were absolutely confused about life and what they should do and what God wanted them to do."
"There is Jonah, a guy who stood up and refused God. He didn't want to go to Nineveh! He didn't understand what it was all about. He felt that there was no chance for Ninevites to be redeemed and that God was mistaken. Then there was Moses. God wanted him to go to Egypt for his people but Moses complained that he stuttered. He couldn't speak well and therefore no one would believe him. And then there was Isaiah. I have read Isaiah a number of times. When God wanted him -- in the sixth chapter I think -- to go and work for him, Isaiah said,' You have the wrong man! I am not worthy, I am a man of unclean lips!' So even these great men were confused."
"Well, Howard, you have to agree that in a sense we are all products of the mundane world, a world without spirit. The world in which we live and the lives which we live decidedly empty."
"It does often seem that way," I conceded.
"Since I have been coming to church, I have been thinking a great deal about the idea of a transcendent, something that is other than this world. It is something that you do not hear much about today but I am finding it. I'm hearing about it here, in Paris, within the walls of the American church."
"After all, one of the basic teachings that I learned from Sartre is that man is alone. We are solitary centers of the universe. Perhaps we ourselves are the only ones who have ever asked the great questions of life. Perhaps, since Nazism we are also the ones who have loved and lost and who are therefore fearful of life. That is what led us to sense that there is something -- I don't know if it is personal or if it is a great idea or powerful influence -- but there is something that can bring meaning to my life. I certainly don't have it but it is there. On Sunday mornings, I hear that the answer is God."
"You have made it very clear to me, Howard, that we are not the only ones in this world. There is something that is invisible. We may not hear the voice, but there is some way in which we can become aware that we are not the only ones in the world and that there is help for all of us."
Camus leaned forward and until his elbows both rested on his knees and said, "In the Bible, I read about people who were not at all self-confident. Men who did not feel as if they had the world by its tail, or that they had all the answers. Fact is, one of the things that I noted in the Bible that many of its chief characters were confused -- just like the rest of us. We are on a pilgrimage. We are all seeking something, whether it is confidence or knowledge or something else entirely. I have read Old Testament at least three times and I have made many notes on it. In its pages I have found some people who were absolutely confused about life and what they should do and what God wanted them to do."
"There is Jonah, a guy who stood up and refused God. He didn't want to go to Nineveh! He didn't understand what it was all about. He felt that there was no chance for Ninevites to be redeemed and that God was mistaken. Then there was Moses. God wanted him to go to Egypt for his people but Moses complained that he stuttered. He couldn't speak well and therefore no one would believe him. And then there was Isaiah. I have read Isaiah a number of times. When God wanted him -- in the sixth chapter I think -- to go and work for him, Isaiah said,' You have the wrong man! I am not worthy, I am a man of unclean lips!' So even these great men were confused."
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Untitled
I would like to apologize for the scarcity of postings over the past few weeks. It would not be any exaggeration to say that I was passing a "dark night of the soul." It was honestly as if I had gone back 30 years in time. I had very little ambition, very little impetus to contact anyone, and was feeling quite sorry for myself.
After passing under this shadow my eyes were relatively opened to some extent, not unlike the privilege of the vision granted to the "patient" at the end of The Screwtape Letters, meaning the unveiling of Mr. Wormwood, the "junior tempter," who had been literally the source of much torment over the patient's entire lifetime. Being a proper Englishman of course, the patient would not allow himself to have "visions" while yet alive; and at no time did CS Lewis confess to any personal God given visions of hell or its inhabitants. Had either of them done so, of course, there would be instant rejection of a part of the English public as well as Christiandom in general. So it was necessary to create a "convenient fiction" in order to convey the message in a format acceptable to not all, but many, of both kingdoms.
The anti-supernatural biases of our present world, in particular the literary world, matches up with our virtual worship of pseudoscience which of course is becoming increasingly unreliable as one would expect when it deviates from the discovery of truth to mere pragmatism and opportunism. As I said previously, quoting Flannery O'Connor, that the divorce of nature and grace, which I take to mean grace from a supernatural source, makes "art" not only generic copying of the real thing but also exceedingly tedious.
But getting back to the matter of vision: I would like to cut through the detritus to the real deal. Whereas it took my wife to awaken me to an objective vision of what I was becoming-- very unbecoming to me and rather invisible to me in spite of being entirely unpleasant/unwelcome-- it took the Lord Himself to give me a positive verbal answer as to the question, "What are You doing, Lord? Where's the joy I have been experiencing over the past year? What's the purpose of this?" etc. etc.
I was also overwhelmed by the tasks I have had to do recently; so finally I tried to take a nap in the basement during our recent heat wave but was unable to sleep; it occurred to me that, while I had no ambition to do anything else, I might just as well do, "and now for something completely different."
One often hears in Christian Culture the admonition that we need to talk less to God and listen more to Him; except that usually our prayers consist of our opinions of what God should be doing; and true waiting and listening seems to be crowded out by our "You Do" list. Add worry and distrust and Ameri Can Do Sir and we get a picture of the state of the art of prayer. Mea culpa.
So I tried to listen--and really wait for the answer amongst my wandering worries and true exhaustion, and this was the answer:
"I'm trying to comfort you."
Imagine that! The same God who, in the words of His Son, called the Holy Spirit, "Comforter", tells me that He is trying to comfort me! The implication being of course that I am not allowing him to do so.
It took a while for this to sink in, so I am going to close now, in the hopes that this message is not just for me. More later.
After passing under this shadow my eyes were relatively opened to some extent, not unlike the privilege of the vision granted to the "patient" at the end of The Screwtape Letters, meaning the unveiling of Mr. Wormwood, the "junior tempter," who had been literally the source of much torment over the patient's entire lifetime. Being a proper Englishman of course, the patient would not allow himself to have "visions" while yet alive; and at no time did CS Lewis confess to any personal God given visions of hell or its inhabitants. Had either of them done so, of course, there would be instant rejection of a part of the English public as well as Christiandom in general. So it was necessary to create a "convenient fiction" in order to convey the message in a format acceptable to not all, but many, of both kingdoms.
The anti-supernatural biases of our present world, in particular the literary world, matches up with our virtual worship of pseudoscience which of course is becoming increasingly unreliable as one would expect when it deviates from the discovery of truth to mere pragmatism and opportunism. As I said previously, quoting Flannery O'Connor, that the divorce of nature and grace, which I take to mean grace from a supernatural source, makes "art" not only generic copying of the real thing but also exceedingly tedious.
But getting back to the matter of vision: I would like to cut through the detritus to the real deal. Whereas it took my wife to awaken me to an objective vision of what I was becoming-- very unbecoming to me and rather invisible to me in spite of being entirely unpleasant/unwelcome-- it took the Lord Himself to give me a positive verbal answer as to the question, "What are You doing, Lord? Where's the joy I have been experiencing over the past year? What's the purpose of this?" etc. etc.
I was also overwhelmed by the tasks I have had to do recently; so finally I tried to take a nap in the basement during our recent heat wave but was unable to sleep; it occurred to me that, while I had no ambition to do anything else, I might just as well do, "and now for something completely different."
One often hears in Christian Culture the admonition that we need to talk less to God and listen more to Him; except that usually our prayers consist of our opinions of what God should be doing; and true waiting and listening seems to be crowded out by our "You Do" list. Add worry and distrust and Ameri Can Do Sir and we get a picture of the state of the art of prayer. Mea culpa.
So I tried to listen--and really wait for the answer amongst my wandering worries and true exhaustion, and this was the answer:
"I'm trying to comfort you."
Imagine that! The same God who, in the words of His Son, called the Holy Spirit, "Comforter", tells me that He is trying to comfort me! The implication being of course that I am not allowing him to do so.
It took a while for this to sink in, so I am going to close now, in the hopes that this message is not just for me. More later.
MUMMA AND THE WORD
What I meant by "different" is that I would like to serialize an article previously published in The Christian Century which is an adaption from Albert Camus and The Minister.
"During several summers in the 1950's, Howard Mumma served as guest minister at the American Church in Paris. After Sunday service one day,he noticed a man in a dark suit surrounded by admirers. Albert Camus has been coming to church, first to hear Marcel Dupre' playing the organ, and later to hear Mumma's sermons.
Mumma became friends with the existentialist Camus who by then was famous for his novels, The Plague and The Stranger and for essays such as The Myth of Sisyphus.
The two men met to discuss questions of religious belief that Camus raised. Mumma, now 92, kept the conversations confidential for over 40 years before deciding to share them.
Soon after the following conversation on baptism, Mumma returned to the United States. In 1960 Camus was killed in a car accident."
"One day toward the end of my summer in Paris, the concierge's wife prepared supper for Camus and me. We had planned to take a ride that afternoon, but after we finished our meal, we could not bring ourselves to leave. We were both relaxed and enjoying the weather when Camus broke the silence: 'Howard, do you perform baptisms?'
"For a moment I thought I was going to fall off my chair.'Yes, Albert, I do,' I answered with some tension and suprise.
'what is the significance of this rite?'
"I had become accustomed to his questions and by now we had developed a kind of a routine. Still, there was something different about this question. He seemed more than merely curious, rather contemplative, as if this question was more personal to him."
'Baptism is not necessarily a supernatural experience,' I began, 'The important thing is not the heavens opening up or the dove or the Voice. Those are the externals, oriental imagery. Baptism is a symbolic commitment to God, and there is a longstanding tradition and history involved.'
"Yes, I remember some of it from my readings."
"First of all, let me say a word about why the average adult seeks baptism. I think, Albert, that you are a good example. You have said to me again and again that you are dissatisfied with the whole philosophy of existentialism and that you are privately seeking something that you do not have."
"Yes, you are exactly right, Howard. The reason I have been coming to church is because I am seeking. I'm almost on a pilgrimage -- seeking something to fill the void I am experiencing -- and no one else knows, certainly the public and the readers of my novels, while they see that void, are not finding the answers in what they are reading. But deep down you are right -- I am searching for something that the world is not giving me."
"During several summers in the 1950's, Howard Mumma served as guest minister at the American Church in Paris. After Sunday service one day,he noticed a man in a dark suit surrounded by admirers. Albert Camus has been coming to church, first to hear Marcel Dupre' playing the organ, and later to hear Mumma's sermons.
Mumma became friends with the existentialist Camus who by then was famous for his novels, The Plague and The Stranger and for essays such as The Myth of Sisyphus.
The two men met to discuss questions of religious belief that Camus raised. Mumma, now 92, kept the conversations confidential for over 40 years before deciding to share them.
Soon after the following conversation on baptism, Mumma returned to the United States. In 1960 Camus was killed in a car accident."
"One day toward the end of my summer in Paris, the concierge's wife prepared supper for Camus and me. We had planned to take a ride that afternoon, but after we finished our meal, we could not bring ourselves to leave. We were both relaxed and enjoying the weather when Camus broke the silence: 'Howard, do you perform baptisms?'
"For a moment I thought I was going to fall off my chair.'Yes, Albert, I do,' I answered with some tension and suprise.
'what is the significance of this rite?'
"I had become accustomed to his questions and by now we had developed a kind of a routine. Still, there was something different about this question. He seemed more than merely curious, rather contemplative, as if this question was more personal to him."
'Baptism is not necessarily a supernatural experience,' I began, 'The important thing is not the heavens opening up or the dove or the Voice. Those are the externals, oriental imagery. Baptism is a symbolic commitment to God, and there is a longstanding tradition and history involved.'
"Yes, I remember some of it from my readings."
"First of all, let me say a word about why the average adult seeks baptism. I think, Albert, that you are a good example. You have said to me again and again that you are dissatisfied with the whole philosophy of existentialism and that you are privately seeking something that you do not have."
"Yes, you are exactly right, Howard. The reason I have been coming to church is because I am seeking. I'm almost on a pilgrimage -- seeking something to fill the void I am experiencing -- and no one else knows, certainly the public and the readers of my novels, while they see that void, are not finding the answers in what they are reading. But deep down you are right -- I am searching for something that the world is not giving me."
Sunday, May 23, 2010
5-23-10
I just finished Brad Gooch's bio of Flannery O'Connor -- thanks Mom.
I decided to go to some plays of The Bard that I missed esp. after sitting through one of Stephen's classes. Last year it was "The Tempest." Now it's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and I have already found some quotes apropos to the line I have been pursuing:
"Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!" -Puck
"You do advance your cunning more and more.
When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!" -Helena
"Disparage not the faith thou dost not know." -Demetrius
I decided to go to some plays of The Bard that I missed esp. after sitting through one of Stephen's classes. Last year it was "The Tempest." Now it's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and I have already found some quotes apropos to the line I have been pursuing:
"Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!" -Puck
"You do advance your cunning more and more.
When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!" -Helena
"Disparage not the faith thou dost not know." -Demetrius
Sunday, May 16, 2010
THE BBC WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE FOR THE PREVIOUS 91 POSTS
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
Saturday, May 15, 2010
"as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers" Is 1:8
"I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib-- but Israel does know know, My people do not consider....why should ye be stricken any more?....the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint--from the sole of the foot unto the head there is no soundness in it--but bruises, and putrefying sores;they have not been closed, neither bound up." Is 1:3 etc.
"Relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" "Your hands are full of blood."
"Come now and let us reason together...though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow...though red like crimson they shall be as wool."
"For they shall be ashamed of the oaks they have planted," (I was just looking at them last night, even stroking their new leaves) "and confounded for the gardens they have chosen."
"For you shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water." ( We are currently experiencing flooding.)
"The strong shall be as tow and the maker of it as a spark and both shall burn together,and none shall quench them." Excelsior!
(And the tares, "wax worse and worse." Am I a grain of wheat? Or one of those praised as "wildly successful plants?)
"Relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" "Your hands are full of blood."
"Come now and let us reason together...though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow...though red like crimson they shall be as wool."
"For they shall be ashamed of the oaks they have planted," (I was just looking at them last night, even stroking their new leaves) "and confounded for the gardens they have chosen."
"For you shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water." ( We are currently experiencing flooding.)
"The strong shall be as tow and the maker of it as a spark and both shall burn together,and none shall quench them." Excelsior!
(And the tares, "wax worse and worse." Am I a grain of wheat? Or one of those praised as "wildly successful plants?)
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Ketchup
Catching up is hard to do.
First, to give a belated reply to Joyce, as written 5-5-10 on a subject which requires no little thought or care, I agree that God's unconditional love is most certainly the necessary precondition for our gift of faith; indeed it is the necessary prime mover to make all things that exist, even those things that go wild in the night. I was speaking only in relative terms about the smaller matter of men's attempts at unconditional love, which are truly ridiculous and without anything but poorly disguised self-love until we recognize and not abuse or misplace our "perfect gift from above." One of which- tho not the most important per Paul- is faith. All of these, at least for the regenerated soul, are, or do become, fruits of the Holy Spirit. They arrive in perfect condition but, as perfect tools for imperfect people, it is always possible to shoot holes in church people, largely to avoid the unavoidable Actual Person of Christ Jesus Himself.
No one needs to repeat the obvious which is that men see what they want to see in any given thing, and look the best gifts in the mouth or even further down (uh, at the end) in order to find the flaws they need in order that they need not take responsibility for the whole horse, which is frankly impossible and nothing but discouraging and much bigger than they are. To those who go to great lengths to avoid even carnal responsibility (e.g. the Gulf oil spill--probably Snowball's fault) how much more is there motive to look for that which gets rid of God? Of course only by the Spirit, after conviction, does one become aware of Grace, which really is incomprehensible on our level, by necessity of our small size and smaller vision. So McWorld and its victims mostly never become aware of grace because they have already signed out on sin..sin against God, that is, not against "The Man"--and so much competition to be "The Man" with the ability to arrest anybody on a whim, as in Kafka!
Having said that, and unaware of my even greater, and many lesser, limitations, I am reminded that there are dualisms galore in the Bible--but only because of our weaknesses and our inherent inclination to spiritual adulteries. See Galatians 5. So one cannot be too much in haste--or too little in haste--to eliminate these realities; Auden aside.
Unrelated, perhaps, would anyone care to comment on the following?
Linus cries out, blanket in hand, "There's no bigger burden that a great potential!!!"
Carole King sings out, "Everything I ever thought is confirmed as truth to me."
"When does the level of execution put the work into another level altogether, the equivalent of a new species?" Examples?
First, to give a belated reply to Joyce, as written 5-5-10 on a subject which requires no little thought or care, I agree that God's unconditional love is most certainly the necessary precondition for our gift of faith; indeed it is the necessary prime mover to make all things that exist, even those things that go wild in the night. I was speaking only in relative terms about the smaller matter of men's attempts at unconditional love, which are truly ridiculous and without anything but poorly disguised self-love until we recognize and not abuse or misplace our "perfect gift from above." One of which- tho not the most important per Paul- is faith. All of these, at least for the regenerated soul, are, or do become, fruits of the Holy Spirit. They arrive in perfect condition but, as perfect tools for imperfect people, it is always possible to shoot holes in church people, largely to avoid the unavoidable Actual Person of Christ Jesus Himself.
No one needs to repeat the obvious which is that men see what they want to see in any given thing, and look the best gifts in the mouth or even further down (uh, at the end) in order to find the flaws they need in order that they need not take responsibility for the whole horse, which is frankly impossible and nothing but discouraging and much bigger than they are. To those who go to great lengths to avoid even carnal responsibility (e.g. the Gulf oil spill--probably Snowball's fault) how much more is there motive to look for that which gets rid of God? Of course only by the Spirit, after conviction, does one become aware of Grace, which really is incomprehensible on our level, by necessity of our small size and smaller vision. So McWorld and its victims mostly never become aware of grace because they have already signed out on sin..sin against God, that is, not against "The Man"--and so much competition to be "The Man" with the ability to arrest anybody on a whim, as in Kafka!
Having said that, and unaware of my even greater, and many lesser, limitations, I am reminded that there are dualisms galore in the Bible--but only because of our weaknesses and our inherent inclination to spiritual adulteries. See Galatians 5. So one cannot be too much in haste--or too little in haste--to eliminate these realities; Auden aside.
Unrelated, perhaps, would anyone care to comment on the following?
Linus cries out, blanket in hand, "There's no bigger burden that a great potential!!!"
Carole King sings out, "Everything I ever thought is confirmed as truth to me."
"When does the level of execution put the work into another level altogether, the equivalent of a new species?" Examples?
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
HEIMLICH MANEUVER USEFUL FOR CHOKING PETS
rom an actual newspaper article when we lived in Warsaw Indiana.
Now that I have your attention........................ oh....and.......SEX!!!............... now that I really have your attention:
As I previously mentioned, morning people shouldn't write things at night; when my brain seems to be set on: Tirade/Poo-rade. Once I start attacking the keys physically then I know I had better quit soon. It's a good thing the fish was getting cold. Thank you,wife--smile.
I suppose that what set me off was the book I mentioned, "The Abstinence Teacher". From the reputation and reviews that I read this was supposed to be a very even handed book as regards sexual politics. And religion specifically American Evangelical Christianity.
This reminds me of a man named Greg who was part of our respiratory therapy team who actually came from a Southern Gospel background. He was very excited about the movie, "The Field of Dreams". He had actually seen it I think up to 7 times. It sounded very good and in fact was an excellent movie. However I asked Greg if it was appropriate for children and if it had any swearing in it and he assured me repeatedly that there was nothing like that in the text. So unless I am mistaken we took the children. However not only were there plenty of foul expressions there was even an apologetic given by a child in essence declaring that swearing in front of children was not only acceptable but desirable. It wasn't just, "It's okay Mr. Shoeless I've heard it all before," but something more substantial although I don't remember precisely what her reasoning was.
The point is not to be a Pharisee or go back to the time when we owed it to our children to avoid, as almost all parents do, saturating their minds at an early stage with the more crass insults of our culture and the routine assaults on our dignity that will continue until we die.
The point is that Greg didn't even notice. One could understand Flo not noticing since she grew up with that sort of thing as a kind of second language. Our primary language may be English but that says nothing about the vocabulary of the soul. And which is more important? I am pretty sure that Greg was not desensitized to "Jesus Christ" in its usual context while he was growing up. But he certainly picked it up rather quickly and by the time I met him it was apparently part of the air that he breathed.
Of course this is not to say that, "Field of Dreams" was merely an average or typical ,say "in flight" movie, not at all. It is quite sentimental and that is its major limitation but that is one of my major limitations also; so I am trying to avoid being too critical here in order to make a point. Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy made common use of words that are seldom used in church and some other words they used cannot be used in high culture at all, they are so offensive to our present sensibilities-which is not all bad of course.
But I do forget of course that the level/style of discourse has changed since they were writing. Of course most of us know that John Updike died recently. I do remember reading two of his stories. The first one was probably over 10 years ago and someone showed it to me because it involved the life and death of a recorder group, something I have been involved in on and off for decades. The last one was a recent story possibly his last for the New Yorker which involved a power outage in a suburb which suddenly shifts the protagonist into gear to visit his neighbor and to seduce her. The story about the recorder group was really about the same sort of thing. Low-level but routine adulteries which seems to be the driving force behind everything. Obviously Updike maintained quite a 50's Freudian matrix because he seems to be a chronicler of suburban infidelities but not in any sense of objectivity but in this sense of, "Yes, Virginia, this is all there is." His fiction is far more sophisticated than the book I mentioned above and his characters more complex but the substance, progression, and outcome are pretty much the same at least in these 2 stories. Thanatos and Eros, love and destruction, guns and roses, politics and religion, blah blah blah. We have not yet played out all the dualisms because that's the only way that we think; which is to say, I black-and-white, left and right, spirit and flesh. This we can grasp-so we think-, and very little else.
I must have joined the wrong recorder groups because nothing even remotely close to what Mr. Updike fantasizes has ever happened in the groups in which I have been involved. Musical infighting is of course universal; but Mr. Updike was not concerned with the music as such, obviously. Although I expect he probably enjoyed many real professional recorder groups!
The point is that for most people, including some very unsophisticated people, John Updike and his friends pretty much set the bar in this position, and lesser writers continue and are content to be derivative; but their contentment seems to be with stock or preestablished cartoon-like characters and do not usually take the time with characterization. It sounds all very fair and decent but only to an audience that is, like most juries, heavily preselected. The idea of a fair characterization of an Evangelical Christian to someone who doesn't have the slightest sympathy for such people in the abstract or personally certainly begs the question, uh, fair -----to whom?
"Life isn't fair, Calvin." "I know. But why can't get ever being unfair in my favor?"
No grace, no human nature, no connection, no fair.
Now that I have your attention........................ oh....and.......SEX!!!............... now that I really have your attention:
As I previously mentioned, morning people shouldn't write things at night; when my brain seems to be set on: Tirade/Poo-rade. Once I start attacking the keys physically then I know I had better quit soon. It's a good thing the fish was getting cold. Thank you,wife--smile.
I suppose that what set me off was the book I mentioned, "The Abstinence Teacher". From the reputation and reviews that I read this was supposed to be a very even handed book as regards sexual politics. And religion specifically American Evangelical Christianity.
This reminds me of a man named Greg who was part of our respiratory therapy team who actually came from a Southern Gospel background. He was very excited about the movie, "The Field of Dreams". He had actually seen it I think up to 7 times. It sounded very good and in fact was an excellent movie. However I asked Greg if it was appropriate for children and if it had any swearing in it and he assured me repeatedly that there was nothing like that in the text. So unless I am mistaken we took the children. However not only were there plenty of foul expressions there was even an apologetic given by a child in essence declaring that swearing in front of children was not only acceptable but desirable. It wasn't just, "It's okay Mr. Shoeless I've heard it all before," but something more substantial although I don't remember precisely what her reasoning was.
The point is not to be a Pharisee or go back to the time when we owed it to our children to avoid, as almost all parents do, saturating their minds at an early stage with the more crass insults of our culture and the routine assaults on our dignity that will continue until we die.
The point is that Greg didn't even notice. One could understand Flo not noticing since she grew up with that sort of thing as a kind of second language. Our primary language may be English but that says nothing about the vocabulary of the soul. And which is more important? I am pretty sure that Greg was not desensitized to "Jesus Christ" in its usual context while he was growing up. But he certainly picked it up rather quickly and by the time I met him it was apparently part of the air that he breathed.
Of course this is not to say that, "Field of Dreams" was merely an average or typical ,say "in flight" movie, not at all. It is quite sentimental and that is its major limitation but that is one of my major limitations also; so I am trying to avoid being too critical here in order to make a point. Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy made common use of words that are seldom used in church and some other words they used cannot be used in high culture at all, they are so offensive to our present sensibilities-which is not all bad of course.
But I do forget of course that the level/style of discourse has changed since they were writing. Of course most of us know that John Updike died recently. I do remember reading two of his stories. The first one was probably over 10 years ago and someone showed it to me because it involved the life and death of a recorder group, something I have been involved in on and off for decades. The last one was a recent story possibly his last for the New Yorker which involved a power outage in a suburb which suddenly shifts the protagonist into gear to visit his neighbor and to seduce her. The story about the recorder group was really about the same sort of thing. Low-level but routine adulteries which seems to be the driving force behind everything. Obviously Updike maintained quite a 50's Freudian matrix because he seems to be a chronicler of suburban infidelities but not in any sense of objectivity but in this sense of, "Yes, Virginia, this is all there is." His fiction is far more sophisticated than the book I mentioned above and his characters more complex but the substance, progression, and outcome are pretty much the same at least in these 2 stories. Thanatos and Eros, love and destruction, guns and roses, politics and religion, blah blah blah. We have not yet played out all the dualisms because that's the only way that we think; which is to say, I black-and-white, left and right, spirit and flesh. This we can grasp-so we think-, and very little else.
I must have joined the wrong recorder groups because nothing even remotely close to what Mr. Updike fantasizes has ever happened in the groups in which I have been involved. Musical infighting is of course universal; but Mr. Updike was not concerned with the music as such, obviously. Although I expect he probably enjoyed many real professional recorder groups!
The point is that for most people, including some very unsophisticated people, John Updike and his friends pretty much set the bar in this position, and lesser writers continue and are content to be derivative; but their contentment seems to be with stock or preestablished cartoon-like characters and do not usually take the time with characterization. It sounds all very fair and decent but only to an audience that is, like most juries, heavily preselected. The idea of a fair characterization of an Evangelical Christian to someone who doesn't have the slightest sympathy for such people in the abstract or personally certainly begs the question, uh, fair -----to whom?
"Life isn't fair, Calvin." "I know. But why can't get ever being unfair in my favor?"
No grace, no human nature, no connection, no fair.
Monday, May 10, 2010
A late lament
"Throughout her lectures, O'Connor discusses the shocking, the grotesque, and ultimately transfigurative literary method she has devised to tell her supernatural tales to a desacralized audience. She must write the stories, she explains, because neither untrammeled nature nor the built world of man can convey sacred meanings."
In the modern world that arose from the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment,'..... grace and nature have been separated, so imagination and reason have been separated, and this always means an end to art.'
' That meaning is open and accessible in the actual and the lived concrete does not mean it is to be won or possessed through any type of analytical or synthetic investigation and any type of reflection on the lived concrete' -- Martin Buber
'.... The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima affects life on the Oconee river.'
"The artist must craft a literature that delivers its hierophanies via techno-cultural shock."*
Neil Postman said essentially the same thing the about, "amusing ourselves to death," and the impossible task of trying to push the sacred into an entertainment medium -- which is really putting a multi-multi dimensional square peg in a small flat round hole. 5 senses and techno-extensions of same old same old? Who is calling who, "boring"? Much less "adolescent," and "irrelevant." Who is really "holding back progress" in any but the crud-est terms? (Maybe not Ned--could it be Crusty?)
The fact that those who live by materialist assumptions--(which is not quite the same set who claim to be materialists, who in fact cannot deeply make such a committment much less the assumption)--cannot even begin to understand any spiritual realities, much less the person Christ, is more obvious to me every day. It's not a matter of "can't," it's a matter of "won't." Actually it's a lot more petulant than that, but let it pass, let it pass.
It also makes it more obvious that narrative art has been replaced by propaganda hack work and ideological butchery which are said to be "novels". Not too far from the pop arts of the CCCP.
What pray tell is "novel" about works that cannot even rise above airport discount rack look-alikes?( yes I meant that, bad as it sounds) Even when someone seizes on a clever plot twist, what's the value of an amusing idea if your work is dominated by uni-dimensional clones and stock characters? Better to admit it's a farce from the get-go! Even TNY seems more and more like a Punch and Judy show, while Bach is played at the deserted cathedral next door. (I experienced something like this at The Cathedral of Guadalajara in 1971-72)
I might add that TNY never published any of O'Connor's stories and panned her novels.
She must increase, and TNY and all its malice-for glamor, must decrease.
I have to say that Dostoevsky and Gogol certainly spoil me for contemporary light entertainment. I find myself asking what I am doing when I haven't read all of the major works of just these two authors? Why waste the precious few years I have left with fraggings from Jerry's Jousting and Jest Joshin' Wild West Show? (I do not here excuse my taste for certain comics and comix)
More later, I mean, earlier, I mean when I am fully perked.
*from The Flannery O'Connor Review, 2009 vol. 17 Doug Davis, "Grace in the Machine"
In the modern world that arose from the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment,'..... grace and nature have been separated, so imagination and reason have been separated, and this always means an end to art.'
' That meaning is open and accessible in the actual and the lived concrete does not mean it is to be won or possessed through any type of analytical or synthetic investigation and any type of reflection on the lived concrete' -- Martin Buber
'.... The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima affects life on the Oconee river.'
"The artist must craft a literature that delivers its hierophanies via techno-cultural shock."*
Neil Postman said essentially the same thing the about, "amusing ourselves to death," and the impossible task of trying to push the sacred into an entertainment medium -- which is really putting a multi-multi dimensional square peg in a small flat round hole. 5 senses and techno-extensions of same old same old? Who is calling who, "boring"? Much less "adolescent," and "irrelevant." Who is really "holding back progress" in any but the crud-est terms? (Maybe not Ned--could it be Crusty?)
The fact that those who live by materialist assumptions--(which is not quite the same set who claim to be materialists, who in fact cannot deeply make such a committment much less the assumption)--cannot even begin to understand any spiritual realities, much less the person Christ, is more obvious to me every day. It's not a matter of "can't," it's a matter of "won't." Actually it's a lot more petulant than that, but let it pass, let it pass.
It also makes it more obvious that narrative art has been replaced by propaganda hack work and ideological butchery which are said to be "novels". Not too far from the pop arts of the CCCP.
What pray tell is "novel" about works that cannot even rise above airport discount rack look-alikes?( yes I meant that, bad as it sounds) Even when someone seizes on a clever plot twist, what's the value of an amusing idea if your work is dominated by uni-dimensional clones and stock characters? Better to admit it's a farce from the get-go! Even TNY seems more and more like a Punch and Judy show, while Bach is played at the deserted cathedral next door. (I experienced something like this at The Cathedral of Guadalajara in 1971-72)
I might add that TNY never published any of O'Connor's stories and panned her novels.
She must increase, and TNY and all its malice-for glamor, must decrease.
I have to say that Dostoevsky and Gogol certainly spoil me for contemporary light entertainment. I find myself asking what I am doing when I haven't read all of the major works of just these two authors? Why waste the precious few years I have left with fraggings from Jerry's Jousting and Jest Joshin' Wild West Show? (I do not here excuse my taste for certain comics and comix)
More later, I mean, earlier, I mean when I am fully perked.
*from The Flannery O'Connor Review, 2009 vol. 17 Doug Davis, "Grace in the Machine"
Sunday, May 9, 2010
"I WAS NEVER MORE HATED THAN WHEN I TRIED TO TO HONEST" --Ralph Ellison
So much for The Great American Novel--Newsweek 2/15/10 p. 50
"Unfortunately, most of the writers who emulated Melville's ambition produced books that were not great but do resemble white whales...we see authors struggling to create masterpieces that on almost every page threaten to collapse under their own weight."
My! My! Such cynicism! Does Newsweek not know that every book advertised on the pages of TNY is a must-read? There must be thousands of grate(d) american novels by now...how to choose, how to choooose.............hm? Could the state of our states somehow resemble or even provoke the low estate of 21st century fiction; which in turn degradeth the state of, say, Nashville? Which was the first to collapse? Maybe it's like the Bubonic Plague: Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies....
ALL FALLLL
DOWN
"Unfortunately, most of the writers who emulated Melville's ambition produced books that were not great but do resemble white whales...we see authors struggling to create masterpieces that on almost every page threaten to collapse under their own weight."
My! My! Such cynicism! Does Newsweek not know that every book advertised on the pages of TNY is a must-read? There must be thousands of grate(d) american novels by now...how to choose, how to choooose.............hm? Could the state of our states somehow resemble or even provoke the low estate of 21st century fiction; which in turn degradeth the state of, say, Nashville? Which was the first to collapse? Maybe it's like the Bubonic Plague: Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies....
ALL FALLLL
DOWN
"Circle Slide"
We had a bit of a scare yesterday. My closest colleague, Dr. Dave Scholl, called me while I was jogging in that wondrous canopy of green things at Snyder's Grove( do you realise that LIFE is in 3-D!!!???).to tell me that his Dad had passed away. It gave me cause to stop jogging and to walk and wonder as I wandered.
But I did keep to the beaten path. Just last week I treated a 10 year old for Rhus envenomation -poison ivy/oak/sumac--because she and her friends insisted on making their own way through the woods--I directed them to the library. I have found that beaten paths have new findings every time I walk on them, but on skis, that's a different matter!!!
"A path! Apath!" say the Knights who all too recently said "Nih!" (Nihil obstat of curse) One letter away from a-path-y? Yet there is a concern of the heart that makes one imagine the worst when our loved ones are threatened, Imagine my consternation when Bro Michael called last night and said he hadn't been able to get ahold of our mutual parent-pair since Weds! "All's well that ends well." They had merely strayed to the end of the town, 40 shillings reward! (A.A. Milne James James Morrison Morrison Wetherford George Dupree a perfect cautionary tale for sophisticated Moms everywhere--Happy Momma's Day t'all!!) No, seriously, they went to a High School play for which a friend had design'd the set and "enjoyed it very much," --even the policias in the driveway when they got back??? Yes, what better way to "care enuf to send the wera best"- Jacksonville's finest?
Still wandering off the set after all these years, eh?
"Eventuuallee--uh--at the end"--we give thanks for the continuing survival of our folks--and appreciate them even more today than yesterday, or last Mother's Day even. (By the way, I proposed to Flo exactly 31 years ago yesterday, "down on the farm." Go 'way, Paree!!)
More later, as events/idees warrant....
But I did keep to the beaten path. Just last week I treated a 10 year old for Rhus envenomation -poison ivy/oak/sumac--because she and her friends insisted on making their own way through the woods--I directed them to the library. I have found that beaten paths have new findings every time I walk on them, but on skis, that's a different matter!!!
"A path! Apath!" say the Knights who all too recently said "Nih!" (Nihil obstat of curse) One letter away from a-path-y? Yet there is a concern of the heart that makes one imagine the worst when our loved ones are threatened, Imagine my consternation when Bro Michael called last night and said he hadn't been able to get ahold of our mutual parent-pair since Weds! "All's well that ends well." They had merely strayed to the end of the town, 40 shillings reward! (A.A. Milne James James Morrison Morrison Wetherford George Dupree a perfect cautionary tale for sophisticated Moms everywhere--Happy Momma's Day t'all!!) No, seriously, they went to a High School play for which a friend had design'd the set and "enjoyed it very much," --even the policias in the driveway when they got back??? Yes, what better way to "care enuf to send the wera best"- Jacksonville's finest?
Still wandering off the set after all these years, eh?
"Eventuuallee--uh--at the end"--we give thanks for the continuing survival of our folks--and appreciate them even more today than yesterday, or last Mother's Day even. (By the way, I proposed to Flo exactly 31 years ago yesterday, "down on the farm." Go 'way, Paree!!)
More later, as events/idees warrant....
Saturday, May 8, 2010
GROANINGS/GROENINGS/GROWIN' THINGS
Regular Mom (Gary Larson type) to guru leading the class: "You say life is suffering, but isn't it also complaining?" (Sipress/TNY)
One very difficult week! Forgive me if I give in to some "c/o". The latter means, "complains of." Without this of course I would be out of job but with up to 10 inpatients at a time and three doctors out of five out-of-town I do get tired of dictating "chief complaints," as we say in the business. But of course it is not the doctor's job, while on the job, to express complaints! Except about excessive complaints! Unfortunately it is usually the nursing staff that has to hear this but I do try to minimize it. "I'm getting better!"
"You are not, you big baby." -- Monty Python and the holy Grail
Not that I am supposed to, but my mind has been wandering backwards, possibly because of the harshness of the present reality and partly thinking about literature in general. I was recently given the gift of a popular novel, "The Abstinence Teacher," and it brought to mind the general genre of "coming-of-age" literature. I have not read too many of these besides "The Sorrows of Young Werther" -so long ago- but I am referring to the more commonplace and usually adolescent quest to "find out who I am."
Actually, I do not recall trying to find out who I was; I was pretty sure who I was throughout childhood, adolescence, and beyond. And there was no shortage of people to rub it in, and to try to rub it out. Bless my Edifiers Lord!
I simply did not like who I was and spent a lot of time trying to compensate for it, remove myself from it, hide it from others etc.; but one thing I did not try to do was to spend a lot of personal time denying who I was. Except for those Calvin/SpacemanSpiff odds and ends. And guess what? I am still that same person! The difference being, I don't fight it anymore, and I do see the considerable advantages of being created thus; and they do seem to outweigh the disadvantages in the long run. I suppose it is like some people play the stock market; very often it is those who hang on and take the long view and refuse to merely respond to crisis after crisis, back and forth, who basically benefit. It is also kind of like the loneliness of the long distance runner, or the tortoise versus the hare. Success in the short run often turns to poison in the long run,.c.f. Donald Trump.
However, boasting is unseemly (Dragonspeak sez posting is unseemly, something I do not doubt!) So I will try to get back to "wholesome principles," as Calvin's father would say.
People -- not the magazine I suppose -- some people -- say that we live in a Culture of Complaint. Certainly it is hard to argue/complain against this given the accelerating progress of fragmentation of social and family relationships, largely as a result of our dissatisfaction with a materialistic paradise which is the envy (?) of most of the rest of the world. It has been long known that scarcity tends to promote cooperation within a culture but that prosperity tends to cause entropy, obesity, and the same infighting that we see today and at basically destroys most if not all previous civilizations. (Just watched, "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World: does it show?). It is not only lonely at the top, it is depressingly miserable. Fighting culture with culture seems to result in bloodshed, as per my previous post; but new cultures do feast on the flesh and bones and fertilizer of the old. Since this is normal, there isn't a lot of point to complaining about it, but, as Vladimir and Estragon would banter: "To have lived is not enough." "It is not enough." "They have to talk about it." "On! On!"
I was also reminded about how Flannery O'Connor, when questioned about the frequency of freaks in her stories and in the Southern literature of the time, explained that, loosely quoted: "Perhaps it is because we can still recognize one when we see one." In Western culture, unlike on your dryer, there is no "normal" setting; that was removed albeit slowly quite some time ago. Elsewhere Miss O'Connor opined that, "Nihilism is the air we breathe." I wonder if the editors of People magazine know about this --?
Please excuse the meandering of the above. I have not quite gotten my thoughts together and there have been many more thoughts going through my mind all week somewhat related to the above than what I can possibly express. I probably should remind people that I am not a theologian nor a professional philosopher of any kind and whatever I speak to is only in part, never with a view to being comprehensive. I would like to be fair however, insomuch as that is possible. When I speak, is obviously a man's -eye-view; one cannot presume to truly speak for the larger view and especially not for the God's eye view, if I may wax anthropomorphic for a moment. Only in the Sunday funnies, right? Salud!!!
One very difficult week! Forgive me if I give in to some "c/o". The latter means, "complains of." Without this of course I would be out of job but with up to 10 inpatients at a time and three doctors out of five out-of-town I do get tired of dictating "chief complaints," as we say in the business. But of course it is not the doctor's job, while on the job, to express complaints! Except about excessive complaints! Unfortunately it is usually the nursing staff that has to hear this but I do try to minimize it. "I'm getting better!"
"You are not, you big baby." -- Monty Python and the holy Grail
Not that I am supposed to, but my mind has been wandering backwards, possibly because of the harshness of the present reality and partly thinking about literature in general. I was recently given the gift of a popular novel, "The Abstinence Teacher," and it brought to mind the general genre of "coming-of-age" literature. I have not read too many of these besides "The Sorrows of Young Werther" -so long ago- but I am referring to the more commonplace and usually adolescent quest to "find out who I am."
Actually, I do not recall trying to find out who I was; I was pretty sure who I was throughout childhood, adolescence, and beyond. And there was no shortage of people to rub it in, and to try to rub it out. Bless my Edifiers Lord!
I simply did not like who I was and spent a lot of time trying to compensate for it, remove myself from it, hide it from others etc.; but one thing I did not try to do was to spend a lot of personal time denying who I was. Except for those Calvin/SpacemanSpiff odds and ends. And guess what? I am still that same person! The difference being, I don't fight it anymore, and I do see the considerable advantages of being created thus; and they do seem to outweigh the disadvantages in the long run. I suppose it is like some people play the stock market; very often it is those who hang on and take the long view and refuse to merely respond to crisis after crisis, back and forth, who basically benefit. It is also kind of like the loneliness of the long distance runner, or the tortoise versus the hare. Success in the short run often turns to poison in the long run,.c.f. Donald Trump.
However, boasting is unseemly (Dragonspeak sez posting is unseemly, something I do not doubt!) So I will try to get back to "wholesome principles," as Calvin's father would say.
People -- not the magazine I suppose -- some people -- say that we live in a Culture of Complaint. Certainly it is hard to argue/complain against this given the accelerating progress of fragmentation of social and family relationships, largely as a result of our dissatisfaction with a materialistic paradise which is the envy (?) of most of the rest of the world. It has been long known that scarcity tends to promote cooperation within a culture but that prosperity tends to cause entropy, obesity, and the same infighting that we see today and at basically destroys most if not all previous civilizations. (Just watched, "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World: does it show?). It is not only lonely at the top, it is depressingly miserable. Fighting culture with culture seems to result in bloodshed, as per my previous post; but new cultures do feast on the flesh and bones and fertilizer of the old. Since this is normal, there isn't a lot of point to complaining about it, but, as Vladimir and Estragon would banter: "To have lived is not enough." "It is not enough." "They have to talk about it." "On! On!"
I was also reminded about how Flannery O'Connor, when questioned about the frequency of freaks in her stories and in the Southern literature of the time, explained that, loosely quoted: "Perhaps it is because we can still recognize one when we see one." In Western culture, unlike on your dryer, there is no "normal" setting; that was removed albeit slowly quite some time ago. Elsewhere Miss O'Connor opined that, "Nihilism is the air we breathe." I wonder if the editors of People magazine know about this --?
Please excuse the meandering of the above. I have not quite gotten my thoughts together and there have been many more thoughts going through my mind all week somewhat related to the above than what I can possibly express. I probably should remind people that I am not a theologian nor a professional philosopher of any kind and whatever I speak to is only in part, never with a view to being comprehensive. I would like to be fair however, insomuch as that is possible. When I speak, is obviously a man's -eye-view; one cannot presume to truly speak for the larger view and especially not for the God's eye view, if I may wax anthropomorphic for a moment. Only in the Sunday funnies, right? Salud!!!
Monday, May 3, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Epistemology 101
The word, "epistemology" is defined by Webster as, "the study of the nature and grounds of knowledge, especially with reference to its limits and validity."
I did get to thinking about not so much the "how " of acquiring knowledge but the, "why". I suppose there is a myriad of reasons but some or many of them may be somewhat akin to, "looking for love in all the wrong places."
For instance, there is the basic instinct expressed in, "knowledge is power." This may in fact be the prime motive summed up in the first three of the four levels of happiness. We like knowledge because, first, it helps us to get food and shelter and to protect ourselves from the raw elements. Second, we especially like it for competitive reasons, so that our food and shelter is better than the food and shelter of others, so we can get ahead, and leave the others behind implication. Third, which is simply and usually an extension of competition, we like it because it builds our self-esteem, and on our self-esteem we can build altruism. But."Is that all there is??"
The fourth level, which would be defined as, "to know Him is to love Him," is a different species of knowledge altogether. There are those of course who find happiness in religion; however this sort of happiness can easily be accounted for by the second and third level; happiness in any event tends to be quite transient. The religious Sadducee usually will cloak his will to power in altruistic words while the religious Pharisee will exercise his will to power by turning to the requirements of the law and knowledge of the law then is power. Clearly, these are joyless alternatives; the happiness found in comparing oneself to others, whether appealing to revolution or a broad-based compassion, does not bring anything resembling contenment; and the closer one attains to the top dog position, the less genuine contentment/absolution is found.
As Schindler found out, it is never enough. That is, not only can we not satisfy ourselves at the first three levels, we can't satisfy anyone else either. Cooler than thou,holier than thou, greener than thou. lefter or righter than thou; you name it, there is whole host of categories, perhaps all of them, in which we continually fall short. This is the problem with religion per se; no matter how you play it, from left, right, or middle, one can never attain wholeness, unless one settles for complete denial; but in medicine I observed there always seems to be creeping doubt manifested by strong defensiveness when the self-satisfaction or its motives/dysfunction are brought into question. We are rife with," unmet expectations." ;and tend to project those upon others. And never satisfied with any level of knowledge or power unless we practice overwhelming self-deception. There are people who just don't want to go on with it but people do go on learning in spite of themselves and enlarging their defense systems for our ever-more-frail egos.
There is of course what is called pure knowledge or pure science; but these are entirely hypothetical constructs. As is the admonition to acquire knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself. This would have to assume that human beings are a lot less complex than we see empirically. People always have mixed motives; four of them I have already mentioned and those are the ones that can be relatively healthy. I could easily again suggest that science now is now simply an extension of politics and culture, I might add, without any type of ethical reference point. So the falsification of data and outcomes are ever more common and metaphysics have now come to dominate physics and all the rest; people of course are not too upset with this! If their, "bull," is not being, "gored". Puns intended although admittedly they are cheap and bad!
The fact that our level of discourse politically speaking is really no higher than level II suggests that it has as much to do with selling books and having a large audience as compared to "higher" motives; such that much of what seems like altruism is really more of a cue for sarcasm, and sarcasm actually sells better than sex! In many ways I think we are addicted to sharp words and judgments of others that are both harsh and all too clever. And this is referential more to entertaining the troops than sticking to the facts. Compare Ann Coulter and Sat Night Liver Al Franken to, say, Nat Hentoff or Neil Postman and what I am saying will be much more obvious. These are not "Christian Thinkers," to whom I refer but rather those who follow where the evidence leads as honestly as they can and hence are largely ignored while partisans are on the best seller lists continually. Really, we must read either Camus' "The Rebel" or Dostoevsky's, "The Possesed," or better yet, "The Idiot" Then we might attain to some real knowledge and not merely refer to our own opinions; which is largely what I am doing right now.
As the great philosopher Maxwell Smart would always say, "Sorry about that, chief."
I did get to thinking about not so much the "how " of acquiring knowledge but the, "why". I suppose there is a myriad of reasons but some or many of them may be somewhat akin to, "looking for love in all the wrong places."
For instance, there is the basic instinct expressed in, "knowledge is power." This may in fact be the prime motive summed up in the first three of the four levels of happiness. We like knowledge because, first, it helps us to get food and shelter and to protect ourselves from the raw elements. Second, we especially like it for competitive reasons, so that our food and shelter is better than the food and shelter of others, so we can get ahead, and leave the others behind implication. Third, which is simply and usually an extension of competition, we like it because it builds our self-esteem, and on our self-esteem we can build altruism. But."Is that all there is??"
The fourth level, which would be defined as, "to know Him is to love Him," is a different species of knowledge altogether. There are those of course who find happiness in religion; however this sort of happiness can easily be accounted for by the second and third level; happiness in any event tends to be quite transient. The religious Sadducee usually will cloak his will to power in altruistic words while the religious Pharisee will exercise his will to power by turning to the requirements of the law and knowledge of the law then is power. Clearly, these are joyless alternatives; the happiness found in comparing oneself to others, whether appealing to revolution or a broad-based compassion, does not bring anything resembling contenment; and the closer one attains to the top dog position, the less genuine contentment/absolution is found.
As Schindler found out, it is never enough. That is, not only can we not satisfy ourselves at the first three levels, we can't satisfy anyone else either. Cooler than thou,holier than thou, greener than thou. lefter or righter than thou; you name it, there is whole host of categories, perhaps all of them, in which we continually fall short. This is the problem with religion per se; no matter how you play it, from left, right, or middle, one can never attain wholeness, unless one settles for complete denial; but in medicine I observed there always seems to be creeping doubt manifested by strong defensiveness when the self-satisfaction or its motives/dysfunction are brought into question. We are rife with," unmet expectations." ;and tend to project those upon others. And never satisfied with any level of knowledge or power unless we practice overwhelming self-deception. There are people who just don't want to go on with it but people do go on learning in spite of themselves and enlarging their defense systems for our ever-more-frail egos.
There is of course what is called pure knowledge or pure science; but these are entirely hypothetical constructs. As is the admonition to acquire knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself. This would have to assume that human beings are a lot less complex than we see empirically. People always have mixed motives; four of them I have already mentioned and those are the ones that can be relatively healthy. I could easily again suggest that science now is now simply an extension of politics and culture, I might add, without any type of ethical reference point. So the falsification of data and outcomes are ever more common and metaphysics have now come to dominate physics and all the rest; people of course are not too upset with this! If their, "bull," is not being, "gored". Puns intended although admittedly they are cheap and bad!
The fact that our level of discourse politically speaking is really no higher than level II suggests that it has as much to do with selling books and having a large audience as compared to "higher" motives; such that much of what seems like altruism is really more of a cue for sarcasm, and sarcasm actually sells better than sex! In many ways I think we are addicted to sharp words and judgments of others that are both harsh and all too clever. And this is referential more to entertaining the troops than sticking to the facts. Compare Ann Coulter and Sat Night Liver Al Franken to, say, Nat Hentoff or Neil Postman and what I am saying will be much more obvious. These are not "Christian Thinkers," to whom I refer but rather those who follow where the evidence leads as honestly as they can and hence are largely ignored while partisans are on the best seller lists continually. Really, we must read either Camus' "The Rebel" or Dostoevsky's, "The Possesed," or better yet, "The Idiot" Then we might attain to some real knowledge and not merely refer to our own opinions; which is largely what I am doing right now.
As the great philosopher Maxwell Smart would always say, "Sorry about that, chief."
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