postmodernquestions

The Pursuit of Knowing and Being Known

    When contemplating and discussing the intricately complex philosophical branch of epistemology, one can easily become overwhelmed. It is laden with myriads of apparent contradictions and insoluble paradoxes. Oftentimes, to borrow a cliché, it is far too easy to become lost in the trees losing sight of the forest. It is the contention of this paper that with the aide of Saint Augustine and Søren Kierkegaard, epistemological investigation can be reframed in such a way that avoids many of the errors inherent in the modern project. This paper will further evaluate the strengths and respective weaknesses of these two thinkers’ epistemology. Hopefully by the end of this paper the quest towards properly framing the enterprise of epistemology will be less obscure.

    Much of the business of philosophy is occupied with properly defining the question. Without this first step, an infinite production of useless answers will be generated in response to the question that was never asked in the first place. This is where Saint Augustine’s brilliance is to be located within the De magistro. Here the question is explicitly framed in terms of knowing as an inherently private affair consisting of inner episodes of awareness. This is contradistinguished from the Wittgenstein picture of knowing as a process of rule-governed behavior, accompanied by the understanding of those rules being intrinsically public. The danger of abstractions is that they tend to quickly lead to meaningless obscurity divorced from concrete examples. In that vein consider the following borrowed example:

“You rehearse to yourself the steps of a mathematical proof in an effort to understand it, but not yet grasping it: you’re merely parroting the proof. While thinking it through, however, you suddenly have a flash of insight and see how the proof works—you understand it and thereby recognize its truth.”

This example perfectly highlights the familiar phenomenological process that St. Augustine refers to as “illumination.” The denial of the significance of this moment is the Achilles heel to much of the modern epistemological approach. It seems to confirm what is instinctively known to be the case, which is that the act of knowing is an inescapably inner undertaking.

    Without overly rehashing and restating the arguments, a certain amount of review seems to be in order. Much of the De magistro is devoted to successfully refuting what is commonly referred to as the ‘information-transference account’ (hereafter referred to as ITA). In quickly summarizing, this is due to the fact that the language or sign exit transition is never truly accomplished. Instead it seems that signs are indomitably circular in a paradigmatic sense. It should be made clear what St. Augustine is not asking, namely, the nature of the relationship between knowledge and the physical world vis-à-vis sensory data. Rather, he is interested in the sort of platonic knowledge of the eternal forms. More specifically the human ability of teaching or knowledge transference is what is being properly put under the proverbial microscope. St. Augustine rightfully concludes that insofar as humans can teach, it seems to be a sort of Socratic prompting through the pointing out of signs. This however thus far leaves one at the same problem dealt with by Plato in The Meno. For various reasons St. Augustine rejects the solution of recollection. Instead he offers a uniquely Christian positive solution.

    Saint Augustine is at his strongest when properly delineating the problem at hand. However, when the mode is switched from the razor sharp deconstruction of inadequate answers to the positive construction of explanatory responses, clarity suffers. Essentially, the reader is asked to accept the idea that by virtue of mere antecedent belief in the ontological existence of a supremely benevolent divine being, humankind is endowed with access to the eternal Truth. Supposedly this god has instilled within all of mankind the internal light which renders St. Augustine’s theory of signs to be a valid epistemological approach. The obvious problem with this solution is that it is exclusively available to those who already hold that belief antecedent to reason in order to justify the reasonableness of any and all truth claims. It would seem that any epistemological approach purportedly defending the supremacy of reason should not use unsubstantiated belief as an integral, primal ingredient. Furthermore, the criticism could be fairly pointed out that this is a solution that works all too well. Whenever one encounters a difficult problem, one can simply invoke the existence of god as a way to effortlessly fill in the gaps. This response tends to have the effect of terminating further investigation due to the fact that nearly anything can be simply explained away via asserting the role of the divine.

    In turning to Søren Kierkegaard, it should be stated at the outset that, due to the intentional fragmentary nature of his writing, any explication and subsequent explanation of his work is consummately suspect. The consistent theme across his writing is a virulent reaction to the modern project perfectly personified in Hegel. Within this umbrella certain relationships are defined and explored as central to his attack on the so called “system.” The first is the fascinating hierarchical reversal of the relationship between the objective and subjective ways of knowledge. Seemingly implicit within for laymen and within philosophical discussions of knowledge the objective way is generally regarded as inherently superior. Kierkegaard however claims that this is ill-conceived. This interchange begins with an examination of what exactly objective knowledge consists of. Abstractions from the subjective experience are the raw material from which the objective is composed. The more one abstracts, the more objective one becomes. However, the more one abstracts, the further one becomes from the centrality of the phenomenological experience that is the locus and reality of the human experience. This process inevitably renders the subject as accidental. The objective way is, by very definition, coldly and irreconcilably indifferent to the subject. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, Kierkegaard is interested in a radically different epistemological relationship. Much of the present philosophical work being conducted around him was preoccupied with the relationship between knowledge and the object of that knowledge. Kierkegaard however seeks to examine the relationship between knowledge and the actual knower. This inquiry has the possibility of crumbling the perceived possibility of being able to cognitively separate oneself from the question of god’s existence. The following quote summarizes and elaborates on this point in the Great Dane’s own words:

“All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge. All knowledge which does not inwardly relate itself to existence in the reflection of inwardness, is, essentially viewed, accidental knowledge; its degree and scope is essentially indifferent. That essential knowledge is essentially related to existence does not mean the above-mentioned identity which abstract thought postulates between thought and being; nor does it signify, objectively, that knowledge corresponds to something existent as its object. But it means that knowledge has a relationship to the knower, who is essentially an existing individual, and that for this reason all essential knowledge is essentially related to existence.”

    This position has the advantage of entirely avoiding the seemingly insoluble problem of properly articulating the appropriate relationship between one’s sensory data and its correspondence to things as they independently are. Instead, unlike Descartes, it begins with existence and moves from there. This move allows Kierkegaard to escape a sort of tritely pedantic type of knowledge and enter another kind of ethical knowledge that necessarily entails and prompts action. For Kierkegaard, “the goal of movement for an existing individual is to arrive at a decision, and to renew it.” In fact, “such knowledge has a telos beyond knowledge; it is meant to direct our lives.” This knowledge is not to be understood as simply another puzzle to be solved, arranged and systematized, but rather is to always root the individual in the irrefutable existence of the ethical.

    One could level the charge that Kierkegaard unfairly presumes the existence of the divine. However, this is to display a naivete concerning Kierkegaard’s intended audience. He is not interested in fabricating any sort a priori proof for god’s positive ontological existence. That would be once again going down the objective road. Now Kierkegaard’s claim concerning the special status of Christianity is one that is shrouded in doubt. In any case, if that is granted, it does not seem to allow Kierkegaard the ability to enter into any sort of epistemological dialogue with those of another faith. Although it must be said that this could quite possibly be a gross misunderstanding of Kierkegaard’s thought.

    Both Søren Kierkegaard and Saint Augustine provide an invaluable counterpoint to the predominantly prevailing modern approach to epistemology. Augustine points out that knowing is inexplicably intertwined with internal modes of knowing that cannot be reduced to access to universal exterior rules of knowing. Kierkegaard beautifully inverts our hierarchical relationship between the objective and subjective ways. Together they may not solve all of philosophy’s epistemological problems. However they undoubtedly make invaluable contributions to the proper framing of the questions begging to be asked.

Works Cited

Peter King, Metaphilosophy 29 (1998), 179–195

Ibid., p. 64

Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes, 35 (1989), 120-127

“Ethics and Persuasion: Keirkegaard’s Existential Dialectic,” The Modern Schoolman, XXXIII (1956), 218-239

Postscript., p 182

McDonald, William, "Søren Kierkegaard", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/kierkegaard/>.

Mendelson, Michael, "Saint Augustine", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/augustine/>.

Kierkegaard, Søren, and W. H. Auden. The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard. New York: New York Review, 1999. Print.

Kierkegaard, Søren, Howard Vincent. Hong, and Edna Hatlestad. Hong. The Essential Kierkegaard. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.

The Inconsistent Hybrid of Aristotle and Newton Within Nature Ethics

   When the tectonic plates of science shifted from an Aristotelian to a primarily Newtonian paradigm, a powerful chain reaction was irreversibly set into motion. The subsequent ripples of implications are still being felt more than 280 years later, and worked out within philosophy, science and ethics. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, much of the current language employed in discussion of nature conservation ethics contains an inconsistent hybrid of the two respective Aristotelian and Newtonian systems. Next, even a strictly Aristotelian view of ecological ethics is internally inconsistent. Lastly, environmental ethics should be primarily shaped, understood, and articulated from an unabashedly anthropocentric position. 

   One of the most important innovations of Newton was to dispense with the fundamental cause of telos to explain phenomena in the material world. This move radically banished any presuppositions professing to claim the intended or predetermined state or function of natural physical elements. From this position explanatory mechanisms can be postulated, put forth, and tested against reliable recorded data. Thus, the pursuit of legitimate science was born. However still to this day there are some people within the scientific community that attempt to superimpose a teleological vision onto a mechanized understanding of ecology. Dr. James Lovelock put forth the Gaia hypothesis as a way to understand our ecological environment. He defines it as, “a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.” (Lovelock 10) The last part of this statement is crucial as it attributes agency to the entire ecological system as a whole. It further asserts that, as a self organizing system, the ecological system has a seemingly altruistic or benevolent propensity towards a preferred state of affairs. This has the unmistakable ring of what Aristotle called eudaimonia. In his book, The Extended Phenotype Dr. Richard Dawkins persuasively points out that this theory requires the implausible belief that, from the most basic of individual to elaborately complex, organisms can act in concert with prodigious foresight and planning (Dawkins). Also contained within the rhetoric of environmental ethics is a position of assumed monolithic integrity or equilibrium within nature as a whole. Dr. Holmes Rolston puts it this way: 

“When humans gain a description of how ecosystems work, Leopold believes that a prescription arises to respect the beauty, integrity, and stability of such systems. That is not all of ethics, only an extension of it. Duties to other humans remain all they have ever been, but ‘the land’ now counts too. Duties to humans (feeding the starving) that conflict with duties to ecosystems (preserving tropical forests) remain a quite unfinished agenda.” (Rolston 182) 

This position, however, is palpably problematic, and therefore dangerous, given that Dr. Slavoj Zizek convincingly points out that nature, far from being static or harmonious, is in reality a series of violent reactions or catastrophes from which homo sapiens are often the beneficiaries. Case in point would be the exploitation and benefit from fossil fuels (Zizek). 

   Even within a purely Aristotelian view, undoubtedly the most disturbing notion of all arising from this so-called deep ecology is that, as Dr. Arne Naess puts it, “All life has intrinsic value, irrespective of its value to humans.” (Harding 51) This statement as an ethic fails to meet any sort of applicability requirement for the several reasons. First, it fails to offer any non-arbitrary criteria to differentiate what state of affairs are preferable, but also any sort of life hierarchy informing those subsequent decisions. For example, if all of life is equally intrinsically valuable, then there is no framework giving a predator any more right to live than its respective prey. Another way to frame it is to draw the analogy between a smaller component of a larger living system, such as a kidney or eye is to a body. In this system no deference is even given to sentient over non-sentient life. Dr. Janna Thompson succinctly put it this way: “How we divide up the world depends upon context and convenience. But surely an environmental ethic which claims to discover intrinsic value in nature shouldn’t depend upon the way we happen to look at things.” (Thompson 147) In short, it dismally fails the litmus test principle of nonvacuous contrast. 

   In light of these blatant contradictions and inconsistencies, nature conservation ethics should be articulated from a clearly anthropocentric position in strong divergence from and opposition to biospheric egalitarianism. This is not a radically irresponsible position of après mois le déluge; but rather is profoundly consistent with an appropriately Darwinian survival of the fittest understanding. Ecologies are dynamic systems constantly in flux with no inherently preferred state containing intrinsic value. They should be undauntedly cultivated toward states with the greatest and most sustainable extrinsic benefits for homo sapiens. This position is more honest and consistent in providing an ethical framework for informing and motivating decisions aimed at ensuring and enriching the continued existence of our own race as homo sapiens. Under this framework, even aesthetic and emotional benefits would be admissible motivators for maintaining or changing the environment in view of their necessarily extrinsic advantages. This position, unlike deep ecology, does not claim to have access to any sort of objective position (void of prejudice) from which to evaluate the inherent value of all of life in its various forms. This position could predictably be derogatorily described as human chauvinism, to which the appropriate response is of course it is. Claiming to have any other set of motivations of an objectively altruistic nature, is not merely blatantly false but palpably dishonest. Furthermore, this position lacks the false dichotomy of viewing humans as somehow distinct from nature, but instead sees them as a deeply integral part fighting for continued survival like any other species or organism. Essentially, the deep ecology movement is best described not as a valid scientific theory, but as an ideology or dogmatic religion. This position brings with it an entire set of assumed and often times unarticulated metaphysical presuppositions. As such it should properly be criticized as beyond the scope of legitimate scientific discourse which concerns itself with empirically verifiable hypothesis. 

   In conclusion, as with any scientific revolution, previously viable positions are often incalcitrant and tend to linger past their relevancy. A teleological cause is no longer needed to explain natural phenomena, and has become a troubling impediment to the continued progress of understanding. The continued illegitimate mixing of the mutually antithetical Newtonian and Aristotelian systems falls short of being consistent or helpful in discussing and discovering a proper method with which to approach the increasingly important subject of nature conservation ethics. The solution is not to regress to a purely teleological ethical framework because it is deeply inconsistent and fails to pass the non-vacuity requirement. Instead, the way forward must be to fully embrace the new paradigm and allow it to structure and inform an unashamedly anthropocentrically motivated framework with which to guide ecological conservation efforts and decisions. 

Works Cited

Holmes, III. Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989.

Taylor, Paul. Respect for Nature. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.

Dawkins, Richard. The Extended Phenotype. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1999.

Taylor, Astra, et al. Examined Life: Philosophy Is In the Street. Educational ed. [New York, N.Y.]: Distributed by Zeitgeist Films, 2009.

Thompson, Janna. 1990. 'A Refutation of Environmental Ethics', Environmental Ethics 12: 147-160.

Lovelock, James. Gaia. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 2000.

Harding, Stephan and Lynn Margulis. Animate Earth. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 2006.

The Clash of Justice

 

    With all of the recent buzz lately over the shocking comments of Glenn Beck concerning his view of social justice, I began to think about the very concept of justice itself. It is one of those words where we all think we know what it means until we have to begin to explain it. Part of the problem for me here is simply the sheer scope that the word justice necessarily entails. People have used this word in countless ways to imply an infinite number of meanings. However, I would like to take it all the way back to the big three of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and see what, if anything, we can learn. In the Republic, Plato essentially equates the practice of justice as a craft to be practiced like any other. He points out that every craft is performed to the benefit of its subjects. So, when a doctor performs medicine, she is doing it not to her own benefit but rather to her patient's benefit. When a ruler rules, she is only a ruler insofar as she benefits her subjects. When a teacher teaches, he is doing it for the benefit of his students. So, when a judge practices justice, he is supposed to be increasing justice and thereby benefiting those who are brought before him. Therefore it is not the function of a judge to harm anyone but rather, by performing the function of x, increase the level of x. If in fact that means ordering the offender to pay punitive damages, this then is meant to accomplish two things simultaneously. In the case of the defendant, he is being prescribed a medicine of sorts for the state of his soul. The plaintiff, on the other hand, is being given back what was unrightfully taken, or some substitute in order to return to some semblance of previous order and balance. The point being that this is the opposite of vengeance whereby the goal is to harm by way of violence. 

    In the dialogue of Gorgias, the wily Socrates beautifully argues that it is indeed better to suffer injustice rather than to commit it. The beauty of the argument is that it indeed scales. Therfore this applies to the smallest of transgressions of injustice as well as to a brutal tyrant committing unspeakable heinous acts and everything else in between. This sentiment has indeed been echoed in all of our great religious sages such as Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and many others. 

    However, I want to take a step back and look at societal justice as a whole. Aristotle contended that the optimal political arrangement is where the conditions are provided so as to ensure the people are able to have fulfilling flourishing complete lives. This is a much more robust view of the way in which we as individuals participate in justice in our everyday lives. However, it, like every other, encounters problems in the sense that it has the tendency to create a meta layer of justice that is at least one degree removed from the local of people’s actual immediate experience. However, the screaming rhetoric from today’s conservative faction is entirely predicated on an anemic understanding of justice in the sense that it is reduced to only repressing that which they see as an unredeemable inherently savage human nature. This move purposefully restricts the scope of justice to that of overtly legally criminal acts, completely divorced from the larger socio-economic context in which they were committed. This then allows them to avoid the larger context in which societal injustices have been perpetrated by those in power. This is the classic separation between subjective and objective violence. This move, while highly expedient to their purposes, is indeed deeply disingenuous and protects the societal objective violence on which their privileged positions are entirely predicated.  

    Furthermore, on the micro level it is even more violently reductionistic. This move takes all of human complexity and reduces it to a particular negative moral phenomena. It defines humanity through the single dominant lens of the desire to have power over and against all others. This view of power is predicated on the platonic view of ontological power; whereby things are perfect insofar as they can affect others, and imperfect insofar as they can be affected by others. This is a deeply alienating move because it precludes the possibility of mutual relatedness. This lens does not allow the posture of being actively open to being affected by the world and people around us. This denies the fact that we indeed create our very identity out of what we have taken in. Most profoundly of all: it does not allow the possibility of influencing the world around us by first being deeply affected and formed by it. 

    Lastly, I will conclude by arguing that any conception of justice, therefore, must contain within it the idea of returning us to our full humanity as it were. It must view all of life as indelibly sacred, worthy of being protected and served in all of its overwhelming, beautiful, irreducible, infinite, and  complexity; full of faith, hope and love. It must recognize the alterity of the other as anything but an imperial project but, rather, one to be experienced and mutually engaged! As Richard Rohr would say, "life is not about you. You are to be about life!"

What are Ethics?

 

    I think it is interesting that so often when responding to the possibility of there being an ultimate absence of some sort of absolute moral system, whether that be religious or legal, the initial reaction tends so often to be one of despair in the face of vacuum. Whereas, I tend to have proportionately the inverse reply, which is one of hope of the possibility of actual ethical tension. The idea that I would like to explore is whether or not religious and legal systems actually act in such a way in which both society and the individual abdicate living ethically in consideration of the other. 

    One of the classical philosophical questions has been; how do you define justice. Or rather what makes something just or unjust? What defining quality unites all things just and inversely its opposite: injustice? Many philosophers over the centuries have debated this and have yet to come to a consensus. However, one thing indeed has been, I think, made clear; namely that something cannot be just merely by virtue of being legal. There exists a parallel relationship between the religious and the ethical. This is an incredibly important delineation due to the fact that the fallacious conflation of these two are so common. This distinction was beautifully explored by Soren Kierkegaard in his seminal work Fear and Trembling. Regardless however, these systems, legal and religious, in the minds of the masses are all that constitutes living ethically in so far as their mandates are strictly adhered to. 

    In the presence of such systems as absolutes, ethics are reduced to precisely following the letter of religious or legal code. This requires the banishment of living within the tension between what is legal and ethical or what is religiously pious and ethical. Inversely, in the absence of these systems, as absolutes, in the presence of the alterity of the other we are forced into the dialectical tension of how to relate ethically. There are undeniably sacrifices that accompany this symbolic move; namely the feeling of having a peaceful conscience void of existential turmoil. 

    This move in many ways signifies the grasping release of holding what is ethics and in turn opting for always pursuing what is ethical. This means that we no longer know but are on the path to knowing. Furthermore, the most unethical thing to be done is to get off of the path. 

Community as Event

    What is a community of faith? This seemingly simplistic question is actually fraught with complexity and nuance. Furthermore what is it that I am looking for in a community of faith? These are very real questions for me and I feel compelled to externalize them in the interest of analysis. This line of questioning obviously assumes first and foremost that I am genuinely interested in deconstructing not only what a faith community is but also my own experience and expectations. I must also confess that in even beginning to address these questions I will be unable to begin to engage with the totality of the thing. 

    For many I believe a community of faith conjures up ideas of what I will call a creedal based community. Loosely speaking this model can be described as a group of individuals who connect on the basis of intellectually assenting to the same sets of propositional truths or doctrines. Now I don’t necessarily think there is anything inherently wrong with this approach thus far. I suspect we all do this to some degree or another. However I do believe it has some nasty tendencies. Speaking strictly from personal experience this model has demonstrated the proclivity to emulate the country club. This then becomes indistinguishable from the ethos of the mafia as they love only those with whom they identify. These groups become entrenched in an us versus them mentality. The room for questioning becomes increasingly diminished as time goes on. Admission and continued membership becomes to be entirely predicated upon unwavering outward allegiance to the party line. Much more can be said of this model but suffice to say it is not one I am interested in joining. 

    The next model is one in which the proverbial tent is made as big as possible to incorporate as many perspectives as attainable. Here much energy is spent frantically keeping the peace and not committing to anything. The level of commitment here is arguably much lower. Furthermore the level and nature of expectations from the member of this group is substantially different. In other words the tendency for this group is that this affiliation lacks any significant performative discourse in their daily lives precisely because they do not expect it to. Again this another model that I want no part in. 

    However, what if a community of faith viewed itself not so much as centered around the paradigm of intellectually assenting to the same or different sets of propositional truths; but rather as the place in which to expect to experience an event that radically transforms ones own intersubjectivity.? This model does not attempt to relegate our differences to insignificance. Instead it attempts to create a space in which one can temporarily suspend those differences. Within this space one must enter expecting to encounter the divine and to focus on how to react to this unnameable benevolent presence. This I think requires a high level of commitment to creatively deconstructing our own man made gods. With this approach it is essential to be constantly reminded that we never discuss the nature of the divine but rather only our understandings of the divine. This however is daunting for many because it fails to become a consumable product. This paradigm demands the banishment of our utilitarian ideals. It refuses to capitulate to the demands of reductionism into guides of self help. It invites one to radically embrace the complexity and ambiguity inherently present in our every day lives. This is a community that I desperately want to be a part of. This I think is one of those topics that requires further reflection. However for now I will stop and ask you to please push back and engage with what I have written thus far.

Love and Hate

   

    How many people are walking around carrying hate in their heart? How many people cling to their bitterness? To what degree does this poison define the masses? Why do we have such an inability to let go? It seems to me that these are the questions that have been incessantly present since the dawn of humanity. They can be ignored only at our collective peril. We can no longer accept the myth that we are islands unto ourselves. We must accept the obvious and incontrovertible truth that we are inclusively deeply connected all the way down to the core of our collective ontological existence. We in the twenty first century must give up the last vestiges of the idols of the enlightenment. The enlightenment held that we were somehow distinct and separate from one another. For many of us it is easier to think of the world as a series of disconnected random occurrences from which no clear meaningful pattern will ever emerge. This then gives people the feeling of freedom to divorce themselves from the consequences of their actions. It is a sort of existentialists nightmare of sorts. I would speculate that many people bury themselves in meaningless pursuits in order to avoid these very questions. Therefore how could it not be the responsibility of us all to awake the masses from the darkness of mental slumber? Is it not the job of the poet to stir within us all an awakening of perception to the world around us and in us? Is it not the job of the prophet to scream at the top their lungs to force us to see that the shit around us is of our own making? Is it not the job of the philosopher to provoke deeper meaningful questions from the depths of our collective yearnings? Is it not the job of the teacher to teach more than regurgitation? Is it not the job of the friend to walk alongside to listen and to then faithfully hold up a mirror?

    It is strange that roughly 81% of the U.S. population lives in cities or suburbs and yet we are seemingly more disconnected than ever. Our collective feelings concerning this conundrum are even further complexing. People yearn for community and yet they spurn the very things necessary to find it. In many ways my generation is different than the ones that came before. However in this respect I fail to see any sizeable difference. We too find it incredibly difficult to engender deep community. It is genuinely exhausting and complicated to fulfill our obligations to both our friends and career responsibilities. Many find it near impossible to think of anything besides the endless stream of demands on their time. However at the end of the day we are unavoidably faced with what we want out of life. This question demands an answer and refuses deflection. To seemingly refuse and return to the slumber of incessant movement in the interest of avoidance is, in and of itself, an answer to the question.

    There is wisdom in the East and we in the West would be fools to ignore it. Much of eastern thought (Buddhism) has maintained that we are deeply mistaken if we fundamentally don’t understand our identity to be rooted first and foremost within the context of the sea of humanity. It is here ,within being connected to one another, that we can experience what it truly means to be authentically human. We must first understand that we are all ineluctably connected. Then we must learn to embrace this dauntingly beautiful reality and to shed our fear.

    As we enter into the insanity of the American capitalistic holiday of Christmas, where we worship at the altar of insatiable materialism, I would like to stop and consider this idea of humanity par example. Regardless of what flavor of religion you favor I would ask you to stop and consider the beauty within this Christian narrative. In order to understand the paradigm shifting nature of this story I think it is important to do some contextual work first. Plato argued that things that ontologically existed could primarily be defined as things which possessed the power to affect other things. Furthermore things were perfect insofar as they could affect others and imperfect insofar as they could be affected by others. This then is why Nietzsche describes life as the will to power. But what if we took that paradigm and flipped it on its head? What if we said that things increase in power insofar as they are able to both affect and be affected by others? In short, what if we gain power by the sheer ability to be in relationships? This I think is what the Jesus narrative so beautifully does. It says that the very nature of the divine is found within humanity itself in its very ability to relate to one another. This I think is exquisite to consider that beauty is found in physical messiness and not in some abstract etherial immutable realm. Again and again the greatest teachers across time and space have told us to love. We are taught to accept the absurdity of life and to live a life inspired by love. So in this season of advent I hope that I will remind myself to see the world in terms of redeemable love whatever that means. As my friends at Netzer would probably say: What that means God only knows, or perhaps thats just a bunch of bullshit spiritual prose. Maybe we are the ones God has been waiting for and perhaps he has been waiting at our door. He is waiting at our door. Now please go and live and love well!

Answers are Boring

    Answers, as final destinations, are boring and incredibly unhelpful. I would even go so far as to say that they are unequivocally dangerous. Oh I know the illusory security is seductive. It comes down to a choice really. The question we must all engage; is do I choose to cling to my very narrow understanding or do I courageously begin to free myself from the chains of my own severely limited understanding? Do I refuse to collapse all exterior meaning in the other in terms of myself? Do I choose to value wonderment, awe, amazement, humility and bewilderment? Do I view life as something to be mastered or as a journey to be experienced?
    Much of this, I would suggest, can be explained in terms of narrative theory. We in the west have become increasingly accustomed to clean tidy resolutions in our stories that Hollywood has so masterfully provided. There are significant exceptions such as the TV shows “The Wire” and “The Sopranos”. However these are unmistakably not the norm. Dr. Dan Allender said it well when he said:

“In fact, if a story or life can be summarized as a moral, then it has lost its intrigue.”
Dr. Dan Allender pg. 96 of “To Be Told” 

This requires an intense commitment to forsake the security blanket of certainty and valiantly embrace living within the tension of unresolved story. Great literature always refuses to be reduced to a set of bullet points. Extraordinary literature cannot be reduced for it is always more than words can capture. The next is one of my favorite quotes.

“"[Mystery] must be entered into… For we do not solve mysteries; we enter into them. The deeper we enter into them, the more illumination we get.... a problem is solved, it is over and done with. We go on to other problems… But a mystery, once recognized, is something we are never finished with. It is never exhausted. Instead, we return to it again and it unfolds new levels to us… We live in a universe permeated by a divine reality whose hem we touch when we encounter mysteries. (Diogenes Allen)"

    In short I am speaking what, I think, we all already know instinctively to be true. Answers to the deepest questions of life are only as useful as the questions they engender. If an answer beckons and pulls you further into mystery, then it contains within it the potential to experience a deeper level of reality. It is like a lover inviting you to, with wonder and awe, explore the infinite universe of the other.

Scary Silence

    Be still for twenty minutes and see just how uncentered and scattered you really are. This is one of the areas of my life that needs considerable attention. I have tried, in the past, to settle into a more contemplative rhythm. However for one reason or another I have never achieved consistency. However the intermittent meditative encounters have meant more than words could contain. The evidence is incontrovertible; industrialized society is inundated with noise. I personally own a T.V., iPod, iPhone, iMac, Macbook, AM/FM radio in the house and car as well as an XM radio. I live in an apartment downtown Austin and there is more visual noise than I could look at in a lifetime. It is entirely far too easy for me to avoid silence altogether. Many people have pointed this out in my life as an unhealthy practice to say the least. The thing is I am largely in the norm when compared to my surrounding culture. When is the last time you sat in silence with your eyes closed for longer than fifteen minutes without falling asleep?
    This weekend I was a part of the Netzer Co-op’s contemplative experiment. We set up various stations for people to go and try various contemplative meditative practices. At each a guide was stationed to help explain each respective practice. At Netzer I appreciate the fact that that we avoid the one-size-fits-all approach. It was great to see people consciously try to get out of their comfort zones.
    Regardless of the nature of your faith; meditation is a practice that is invaluable to living deeply and purposefully. It is in silence that you can begin to calm the incessant frenetic swirling that is within us all. This is a daunting task for most of us; myself included. But it is here in silence that I begin to become aware of the nature of ontological existence. It is a remarkable realization to begin to grasp how aimless and trivial the majority of my daily thought life is.
    I think part of the problem is that in our capitalistic consumer driven culture meditation simply doesn’t fit. Now this is simply me thinking out loud here. But maybe in meditation we find that all of those things we buy only provide us a temporary distraction until we can buy the next thing. At the end of the day maybe we realize that all the noise and things we buy allow us to stay at the periphery of our lives. Maybe people, myself included, are scared to see what we may find there in the middle of what defines our very presence. What if I don’t like what I see there? What if I find nothing. Maybe it is this very chain of causality that inevitably leads to these kinds of questions that scare so many people.
    This for me raises some interesting questions especially concerning my time management. I honestly don’t watch much T.V..However I cannot tell you the countless hours I spend aimlessly surfing the internet. I typically get up in the morning just in time to go to class. Then at night I don’t go to bed until usually one in the morning. So all of that to say I think it is time for me to re-examine how I spend my time.

East of Eden

    Ancient wisdom cries out that we are all profoundly east of Eden. This knowledge seems to be woven into the very marrow our senses. We all somehow know that, on some level,  things are not the way they should be. Not only is the world broken but so am I. There seems to be two extreme positions on this. On the one hand many people operate under the illusion that they are unique in their confusion, pains, hurts, losses and angst. These people are confused as to how everyone else seemingly has life all figured out. On the other side of the coin there are those that have come to the seductive conclusion that the problem is out there. That somehow if the world would just think and see things the way they do it would all be better. These individuals are convinced that the problem is in the other. In some cases these two paradigms are inconceivably simultaneously present in the same person. Both of these views are incredibly misguided and dangerous but all too common. They are both seductive paradigms for various reasons and their sway is difficult to break. These are lessons that are hard to learn and internalize. I have found that I need constant reminding. Otherwise it is all too easy to slip back into one or both of these paradigms.
    Many people claim to want community but I seriously doubt their understanding of what they are asking for. True community is messy, time consuming, frustratingly impractical and at at times painful. More to the point I need it like I need oxygen. We all need to feel deeply connected to each other. We have all been hurt in some way and carry scars. Some hide them better than others; but they still hide. We yearn to be accepted and loved by the other. But alas here is the snag; this requires being vulnerable to more pain, hurt and the possibility of rejection. It takes madness to step out of the known and into the amorphous unknown of the sacred other. Samir Selmanovic said it well in his new book when he said:

“If I cannot in some way surrender to the unknown, I cannot love, and there is no greater bondage than the inability to love.”

page 112 of It’s Really All About God Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian.

    We can, and many have, speculate endlessly as to how we have, as a culture, become increasingly isolated from each other. Presumably there are many factors that have contributed in varying degrees. Those are important questions worth exploring. However the fact remains; we all in some way sense that things are not the way they are supposed to be. Collectively we all feel the pain, hurt, scars, angst, confusion and deep sorrows that seem to permeate the whole of human experience. Once again I must confess that I lack adequate answers. I confess that I along with the rest of humanity am broken. However I am not afforded the luxury of waiting until all of the evidence and answers come rolling in to tell me how the story ends. Life will not wait and continues to march on. So I choose to step out into the uncertainty and learn how to embrace the other. I am slowly learning how to be connected to the other. I am learning to accept the radical nature of our collective interdependency. I am learning how to live and love well. I am trying to find the way back to Eden.

Choosing versus Oscillating

Sometimes I ask myself if being the constant cynic allows me to avoid taking action. I see before me a myriad of stories with which I could join. Some are more inviting than others. I am somehow compelled by an invisible force to wrestle and struggle with these burning persistent questions burgeoning and swirling from within my soul. I ask myself what scares me about choosing a path. Is it for fear of choosing a path that is less than the whole of existence. Am I somehow operating under the illusion that I can somehow walk a path that will allow me to experience some kind of uber reality. Is this derived from the knowledge that regardless of the path chosen, will ineluctably mean an incomplete fragmented existence. Is there still within me a latent yearning for Cartesian certainty? But how can this be? I long ago took to heart the words of Nietzsche and accepted that certainty and objectivity were but mere myths. I confess that I have concluded that the ambiguous nature of truth is unavoidably irreducibly pluralistic and multi-faceted thus giving it multiple dimensions and textures. Truth is like a woman that refuses to be mastered and laughs at the arrogance of the myriads of men who have attempted as much. The most anyone can aspire to is to experience an encounter with this ineffable force. I can continue to fashion these feeble metaphors to somehow point towards reality. However they will always be woefully incomplete. I confess that my reality is not all encompassing of the real. Life does not, never did, and never will revolve around me. My reality and perceptions amount to but a grain of sand on an endless beach of never ending mounds of sand. As I continue to toil and struggle within these entangled webs of ontological and epistemological puzzles, I continue to return to the same existential problems of how to live. I am most likely going to oscillate between the competing paradigms, theories, hypothesis, philosophies and theologies for the rest of my life. I will, I hope, carry out the Socratic imperative. I will fearlessly ask why! The question still remains how do I live today. I must make a choice of ethics. There is no abstaining from this question. To abstain is to choose. This then brings me full circle. For I cannot say what I am to do or orient myself to unless I know what story or stories I am a part of. At the same time it must be said that only the fool does not heed the lessons of history. There is no sense in arrogantly trying to completely re-invent the wheel. This then brings me to the problems of how to live by a moral code without becoming entangled in grand schemes devised to gain power. As both Nietzsche and Foucault both vigorously exposed; grand meta-narratives that purport to have an iron clad grip on the objectively definitive universal moral system are nothing more than empires.  These systems cannot recognize meaning outside of their own respective systems and so they are compelled to colonize all meaning and stories into their own normative grids. So I am left with all sorts of questions. Anyone who claims to have all the answers to these questions must either be so much smarter than I am or they are simply intellectually dishonest and lazy. So this is where I am and I hope that my friends and those whom I encounter will help me to not only ask these questions but ask better questions.