Showing posts with label unconscious. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unconscious. Show all posts
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Nietzsche on Unconscious Influences of Philosophy
After such self-questioning, self-temptation, one acquires a subtler eye for all philosophizing to date; one is better than before at guessing the involuntary detours, alleyways, resting places, and sunning places of thought to which suffering thinkers are led and misled on account of their suffering; one now knows where the sick body and its needs unconsciously urge, push, and lure the mind – towards sun, stillness, mildness, patience, medicine, balm in some sense. Every philosophy that ranks peace above war, every ethic with a negative definition of happiness, every metaphysics and physics that knows some finale, a final state of some sort, every predominantly aesthetic or religious craving for some Apart, Beyond, Outside, Above, permits the question whether it was not illness that inspired the philosopher. The unconscious disguise of physiological needs under the cloaks of the objective, ideal, purely spiritual goes frighteningly far – and I have asked myself often enough whether, on a grand scale, philosophy has been no more than an interpretation of the body and a misunderstanding of the body. Behind the highest value judgments that have hitherto guided the history of thought are concealed misunderstandings of the physical constitution – of individuals or classes or even whole races. All those bold lunacies of metaphysics, especially answers to the question about the value of existence, may always be considered first of all as symptoms of certain bodies [....] I am still waiting for a philosophical physician in the exceptional sense of the term – someone who has set himself the task of pursuing the problem of the total health of a people, time, race or of humanity – to summon the courage at last to push my suspicion to its limit and risk the proposition: what was at stake in all philosophizing hitherto was not at all 'truth' but rather something else – let us say health, future, growth, power, life... [...]
A philosopher who has passed through many kinds of health, and keeps passing through them again and again, has passed through an equal number of philosophies; he simply cannot but translate his state every time into the most spiritual form and distance – this art of transfiguration just is philosophy. We philosophers are not free to separate soul from body as the common people do; we are even less free to separate soul from spirit. We are not thinking frogs, no objectifying and registering devices with frozen innards – we must constantly give birth to our thoughts out of our pain and maternally endow them with all that we have of blood, heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, fate, and disaster. Life – to us, that means constantly transforming all that we are into light and flame, and also all that wounds us; we simply can do no other.
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Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. by Bernard Williams, trans. by Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 5–6.
A philosopher who has passed through many kinds of health, and keeps passing through them again and again, has passed through an equal number of philosophies; he simply cannot but translate his state every time into the most spiritual form and distance – this art of transfiguration just is philosophy. We philosophers are not free to separate soul from body as the common people do; we are even less free to separate soul from spirit. We are not thinking frogs, no objectifying and registering devices with frozen innards – we must constantly give birth to our thoughts out of our pain and maternally endow them with all that we have of blood, heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, fate, and disaster. Life – to us, that means constantly transforming all that we are into light and flame, and also all that wounds us; we simply can do no other.
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Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. by Bernard Williams, trans. by Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 5–6.
Friday, June 5, 2015
Repost: "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire"
But I also admit a creative appetite to destabilize what we identify
as erotic in contemporary society and to invite the reader to consider
that our erotic arousal may not be as natural or innate as we think it
is. That far from being the liberation we proclaim it to be, it is more
socially proscribed than we care to admit. Moreover, many the tropes we
identify erotically transgressive are often centered around nostalgic
themes of past prohibitions; thus making them socially ‘safe’. [...]
Indeed Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Barthe’s formulation of thedifference
between texts of pleasure and texts of bliss (or jouissance) seem like
an almost too obvious, too simplistic ‘fit’ for creative writing in the
erotica genre. And yet, the vast majority of erotic fiction available
accepts, employs and perpetuates normative erotic signification. There
is little recognition or interrogation of the fact that we, as subjects
in the Symbolic world, are unconsciously adopting the desire of the
Other as our own, including the explicitly erotic desire of the Other.
Our world is inundated in pornographic memes that act as
‘erotosignifiers’ – incredibly effective triggers for things we believe
we must, as normal erotic beings, desire. But these very erotosignifiers
are the ones that most efficiently serve to maintain conformity and
reinforce structures of hegemonic control over the erotic via, as Zizek
has described it, “the Law’s obscene supplement” (The Parallax View
366). For all our mainstream culture’s disavowal of mindless hedonism,
sexual objectification, decontextualization, etc., these disingenuously
disavowed, but implicitly employed erotosignifiers serve contemporary
power structures in myriad ways. They provide a libidinal valve for the
enormous pressure of the socially responsible humans we are enjoined to
be. They rationalize our concepts of eroticism, in terms of gender
designations and roles, heteronormativity, socially validated forms of
sexual expression. Finally, train us to a commoditized understanding of
our drives, our identities and our intersubjective relations.
According to Bruce Fink, one of the central jobs of the Lacanian analyst in clinical practice is to get the analysand to become curious about their desires and the structure of their fantasies, to begin to question and critically consider how much of their desire is, in reality, the desire of the Other. (52-53)
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Source: Madeleine Morris, "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire," Investigations into Reading and Writing Erotic Fiction blog, June 5, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://www.remittancegirl.org/2015/06/05/creative-incursions-into-the-mine-of-fictional-desire/.
Indeed Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Barthe’s formulation of the
According to Bruce Fink, one of the central jobs of the Lacanian analyst in clinical practice is to get the analysand to become curious about their desires and the structure of their fantasies, to begin to question and critically consider how much of their desire is, in reality, the desire of the Other. (52-53)
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Source: Madeleine Morris, "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire," Investigations into Reading and Writing Erotic Fiction blog, June 5, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://www.remittancegirl.org/2015/06/05/creative-incursions-into-the-mine-of-fictional-desire/.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Pope Benedict XV, Traditionalist Divisions, and Neo-Catholics
22. The success of every society of men, for whatever purpose it is formed, is bound up with the harmony of the members in the interests of the common cause. Hence We must devote Our earnest endeavors to appease dissension and strife, of whatever character, amongst Catholics, and to prevent new dissensions arising, so that there may be unity of ideas and of action amongst all. The enemies of God and of the Church are perfectly well aware that any internal quarrel amongst Catholics is a real victory for them. Hence it is their usual practice when they see Catholics strongly united, to endeavor by cleverly sowing the seeds of discord, to break up that union. And would that the result had not frequently justified their hopes, to the great detriment of the interests of religion! Hence, therefore, whenever legitimate authority has once given a clear command, let no one transgress that command, because it does not happen to commend itself to him; but let each one subject his own opinion to the authority of him who is his superior, and obey him as a matter of conscience. Again, let no private individual, whether in books or in the press, or in public speeches, take upon himself the position of an authoritative teacher in the Church. All know to whom the teaching authority of the Church has been given by God: he, then, possesses a perfect right to speak as he wishes and when he thinks it opportune. The duty of others is to hearken to him reverently when he speaks and to carry out what he says.
23. As regards matters in which without harm to faith or discipline—in the absence of any authoritative intervention of the Apostolic See—there is room for divergent opinions, it is clearly the right of everyone to express and defend his own opinion. But in such discussions no expressions should be used which might constitute serious breaches of charity; let each one freely defend his own opinion, but let it be done with due moderation, so that no one should consider himself entitled to affix on those who merely do not agree with his ideas the stigma of disloyalty to faith or to discipline.
24. It is, moreover, Our will that Catholics should abstain from certain appellations which have recently been brought into use to distinguish one group of Catholics from another. They are to be avoided not only as "profane novelties of words," out of harmony with both truth and justice, but also because they give rise to great trouble and confusion among Catholics. Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: "This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly; he cannot be saved" (Athanas. Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim "Christian is my name and Catholic my surname," only let him endeavor to be in reality what he calls himself.
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Source: Pope Benedict XV, "Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum ('Appealing for Peace')," Papal Encyclical, promulgated November 1, 1914, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Ben15/b15adbea.htm.
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If only Catholics realized the truth of this Holy Father's words and lived them, perhaps so much good would be done in the conversion of souls to the full embracing of the Faith and the recognition of the importance of Sacred Tradition. My own gradual embracing of Tradition in its greater totality and integrity was gradual precisely because of my perception that I wasn't so much being evangelized as so uncomfortably pinned, like the speaker in T.S. Eliot's poem The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock:
Why is this an issue for me? Because I've been hurt by their use, and I've been hurt by the division I see these identities cause, and I've seen others hurt by them as well. I've seen how they tend to foster a multitude of sins and environments of sin—occasions of calumny, mockery, indifference, group-thinking, close-mindedness, and pride. I am responding from a place of pain and a desire to make sense of my experiences, perceptions, and what this phenomenon itself reveals in its "observable" aspect, the tendencies and "taxonomic features."
As I said above, as far as sociological function goes, the term may be useful, but as is the tendency with all labels, their use can easily become obviously uncharitable and detrimental to the one promoting its use. Aside from a very brief perusal of online discussions that incorporate these labels, a glance at White's article makes the point clearly enough. Underneath her humorous pretense, the tone and overall effect transmitted by her description of the Neo-Catholic is strikingly condescending, showing no consideration for the wellbeing of the very people she describes, her own brothers and sisters in Christ. This lack of consideration is evinced through certain flippant phrases and hyperbolic descriptions that give the impression that one ought to look at a "Neo-Cat" like he were a clown or a zoo animal (I've bolded lines that particularly stand out in illustrating this tone):
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—In other words, I had no sense that self-identified traditionalists were interacting with me out of any actual consideration for my salvation and sanctification, but instead I became a competitor in a most bizarre ideological game. It is growing parlance among (Internet) traditionalists to label quasi-traditionalists as "Neo-Catholics" or "Neo-Conservatives" (cf. Peter Miller, "A Brief Defense of Traditionalism," Seattle Catholic, December 21, 2001, http://www.seattlecatholic.com/article_20011221_A_Brief_Defense_of_Traditionalism.html; Fr. Chad Ripperger, FSSP, "Conservative vs. Traditional Catholicism," Latin Mass (Spring 2001), http://www.latinmassmagazine.com/articles/articles_2001_SP_Ripperger.html; Hilary White, "Revenge of the Neo-Cats," The Remnant Newspaper, November 23, 2011, http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2011-115-white-hilary-neo-cats.htm). In fact, it actually turns out that Neo-Conservative Catholics (Neo-Catholics) are actually liberal Catholics who essentially go through a subconscious intellectual battle to reconcile their dual adherence to traditionalism and modernism (especially Hegelianism, according to Fr. Ripperger). I will note off the bat that some of these treatments, such as Fr. Ripperger's, are quite considerate and thoughtful; a problematic enters in because of the easy association with a general sociological trend that as a whole seems uncharitable.
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? (ln. 55–61)
Why is this an issue for me? Because I've been hurt by their use, and I've been hurt by the division I see these identities cause, and I've seen others hurt by them as well. I've seen how they tend to foster a multitude of sins and environments of sin—occasions of calumny, mockery, indifference, group-thinking, close-mindedness, and pride. I am responding from a place of pain and a desire to make sense of my experiences, perceptions, and what this phenomenon itself reveals in its "observable" aspect, the tendencies and "taxonomic features."
As I said above, as far as sociological function goes, the term may be useful, but as is the tendency with all labels, their use can easily become obviously uncharitable and detrimental to the one promoting its use. Aside from a very brief perusal of online discussions that incorporate these labels, a glance at White's article makes the point clearly enough. Underneath her humorous pretense, the tone and overall effect transmitted by her description of the Neo-Catholic is strikingly condescending, showing no consideration for the wellbeing of the very people she describes, her own brothers and sisters in Christ. This lack of consideration is evinced through certain flippant phrases and hyperbolic descriptions that give the impression that one ought to look at a "Neo-Cat" like he were a clown or a zoo animal (I've bolded lines that particularly stand out in illustrating this tone):
- Neo-Catholics themselves frequently become angry when it is pointed out that it is an observable fact that there are certain taxonomic features that create an identifiable classification to which a distinguishing term, "neo-Catholic" can usefully be applied. They become doubly angry when they realize that it can usefully be applied to them. (Hours of fun can be had at the after-Mass tea ticking these characteristics off one's fingers.) [...]
- Common characteristics of neo-Catholics (often also called neo-conservative Catholics) are a fanatical devotion to a small selection of popes, often incorrectly termed "ultramontanism." This is manifested mainly in their belief that John Paul II was the greatest pope of modern times (who probably walked on water but was too modest to do it in front of anyone) and should be canonized immediately. [...]
- They will then proceed to bore everyone in the room into a coma by reciting their lists of places where [a reverent celebration of the Novus Ordo Mass] is done. [...]
- (Get them started on the Catholic Confessional State as a political concept and watch their heads explode. In fact, start a conversation on the Social Reign of Christ the King at the tea and cookies after a Traditional Mass. It flushes them out; they start screeching like vampires splashed with holy water, to the amusement of all.) [...]
- They are very big on ecumenism, and love to screech at the Trads for our opposition to the Assisi fiascoes [....]
- They will sometimes be opposed to drinking, smoking and card-playing, one of the little ways in which their underlying protestantism peeks out. This can make it easy to quickly distinguish the Neos and the Trads at a party. The former will be standing around in a little clutch cradling a warm, three-hour-old beer, earnestly discussing the pope's latest encyclical or some political thing. The latter will be off in the corner with the recently assimilated Anglicans, balancing martini glasses on their noses while reciting Greek poetry. [...]
- Despite the objections of the Neo-Cats themselves, the phenomenon has become so recognizable that it has its very own whole Wikipedia page [since removed] which, as we know, is the sine qua non of objective affirmation. It ain't really real unless it's on Wiki.
Perhaps people get upset when they are identified with "certain taxonomic features" because the impression they receive from the ones labeling them that seems to possess no benevolent intent or constructive purpose. White never describes how the term is actually useful. We may admit it is sociologically useful under certain circumstances, but if mere factual features are being described, why should this lead to anger on the part of the one described? (Further, why should there be hyperbole and jeering even if under the pretense of humor?) Anger is a response to hurt. Hurt is a response to a perceived evil. Perhaps when another person misconstrues your views, you feel hurt by the caricature. Perhaps when another person forms a caricature of you or your beliefs and gives no sign of friendship, mutual concern, support, consideration, this action is then hurtful. I don't think this requires any stretch of empathy at all to realize how and why a person might become angry.
The hyperbole doesn't need to be addressed. It forms the caricature, and as hyperbole, it cannot claim any sort of accuracy, much less the apparently scientific-esque status of "observable fact" or "certain taxonomic features," which are just fancy ways to legitimize a value assignment on someone, based not on certain faith but matters of legitimately varying opinion, which based on my experience is usually an exercise of intellectual pride. Recall what Bl. John Henry Newman said in Sermon 10 of his Discourses to Mixed Congregations (1849), "Faith and Private Judgment":
Men were told to submit their reason to a living authority. Moreover, whatever an Apostle said, his converts were bound to believe; when they entered the Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them. No one doubts, no one can doubt this, of those primitive times. A Christian was bound to take without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be revealed; if the Apostles spoke, he had to yield an internal assent of his mind; it would not be enough to keep silence, it would not be enough not to oppose: it was not allowable to credit in a measure; it was not allowable to doubt. No; if a convert had his own private thoughts of what was said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some secret opposition to the teaching, if he waited for further proof before he believed it, this would be a proof that he did not think the Apostles were sent from God to reveal His will; it would be a proof that he did not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate, implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgment. No one could say: "I will choose my religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not believe that; I will pledge myself to nothing; I will believe just as long as I please, and no longer; what I believe today I will reject tomorrow, if I choose. I will believe what the Apostles have as yet said, but I will not believe what they shall say in time to come." No; either the Apostles were from God, or they were not; if they were, everything that they preached was to be believed by their hearers; if they were not, there was nothing for their hearers to believe. To believe a little, to believe more or less, was impossible; it contradicted the very notion of believing: if one part was to be believed, every part was to be believed; it was an absurdity to believe one thing and not another; for the word of the Apostles, which made the one true, made the other true too; they were nothing in themselves, they were all things, they were an infallible authority, as coming from God. The world had either to become Christian, or to let it alone; there was no room for private tastes and fancies, no room for private judgment. (Source: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse10.html)
Likening Neo-Catholics to "vampires" screeching "to the amusement of all" as well as spending "hours of fun [...] ticking these [taxonomic] characteristics off" further reveals the condescending tone as well as total indifference to their wellbeing. How are such exercises themselves spiritual or charitable in any way? How do they contribute to holiness, to the preparation of souls for the coming of Christ and His Reign? Do they not encourage and harden division? Isn't division one of Satan's most powerful weapons against followers of Christ? A house divided cannot stand...
St. John Chrysostom warns us about being careless with our words and comments on Christ's admonition not to call each other "fool" (Homily 16 on Matthew; http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/NPNF1-10/npnf1-10-22.htm):
Knowest thou not that most punishments and most sins have their beginning from words? Yea, for by words are blasphemies, and denials are by words, and revilings, and reproaches, and perjuries, and bearing false witness. Regard not then its being a mere word, but whether it have not much danger, this do thou inquire. Art thou ignorant that in the season of enmity, when wrath is inflamed, and the soul kindled, even the least thing appears great, and what is not very reproachful is counted intolerable? [...]
For there is nothing, nothing in the world more intolerable than insolence; it is what hath very great power to sting a man's soul. But when the word too which is spoken is in itself more wounding than the insolence, the blaze becomes twice as great. Think it not then a light thing to call another "fool." For when of that which separates us from the brutes, and by which especially we are human beings, namely, the mind and the understanding,-when of this thou hast robbed thy brother, thou hast deprived him of all his nobleness.
Let us not then regard the words merely, but realizing the things themselves, and his feeling, let us consider how great a wound is made by this word, and unto how much evil it proceeds. For this cause Paul likewise cast out of the kingdom not only "the adulterous" and "the effeminate," but "the revilers" also. And with great reason: for the insolent man mars all the beauty of charity, and casts upon his neighbor unnumbered ills, and works up lasting enmities, and tears asunder the members of Christ, and is daily driving away that peace which God so desires: giving much vantage ground unto the devil by his injurious ways, and making him the stronger. Therefore Christ Himself, cutting out the sinews of the devil's power, brought in this law.
For indeed He makes much account of love: this being above all things the mother of every good, and the badge of His disciples, and the bond which holds together our whole condition. With reason therefore doth He remove with great earnestness the roots and the sources of that hatred which utterly spoils it.
Think not therefore that these sayings are in any wise hyperbolical, but consider the good done by them, and admire the mildness of these laws. For there is nothing for which God takes so much pains, as this; that we should be united and knit together one with another. Therefore both in His own person, and by His disciples, as well those in the Old, as in the New Testament, He makes so much account of this commandment; and is a severe avenger and punisher of those who despise the duty. For in truth nothing so effectually gives entrance and root to all wickedness, as the taking away of love.
Finally, the description about the party is problematic precisely because of its hyperbole. The latter situation of the "real Trads" and converted Anglicans clearly describes people who are drunk or at least have gone beyond reasonable modesty and decorum. Drunkenness (nor modesty and decorum for that matter) isn't a post-Protestant, post-Victorian sin against political correctness or comfortable, liberal sentiments. Smoking, drinking, and card-playing should not be treated as though for the majority of participants there were no danger in these activities; no, for the majority of those who drink, smoke, or play cards and other forms of competition, I suggest that these activities provide numerous occasions of sin if not deep-rooted addiction and societal structures of sin enforced by capitalist economies. These activities are not intrinsically sinful—I think very few Catholics of any sense would actually argue this point, but on the other hand to present these activities without proper caution seems arrogant, blind, and a sure way to fall into Satan's traps to ensnare us in sin. In other words, the whole situation is another caricature that confuses the suggestion that these activities are probably dangerous for many, above all considering the average lack of self-reflection and discernment of spirits and motives, with the notion that they are intrinsically sinful.
As for what Pope Benedict XV said, I think here is the authoritative say on the (il-)legitimacy of calling oneself a "Traditionalist"; it is useful sociologically (and hence, perhaps, apologetically), useful as the distinction between a Coca-Cola drinker and a Pepsi drinker among soda drinkers (because, after all, there are traditionalists, and then there are traditionalists, not to mention traditionalists). But what good will that label do to keep one out of Hell and to attain holiness and enter Heaven? St. Paul replies:
If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1–2, DR trans.)We may here now understand one possible extension of "tongues of men," namely, our ability to construct our own identities and to project them. What good do I do myself or others if I call myself faithful and I am not faithful, charitable and am not charitable? Adherence to Tradition is adherence to Christ; adherence to Christ is not just intellectual belief but the Cross:
Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it. For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul? (Mt. 16:24–26; cf. Lk. 9:23–26)
Someone must be sent to preach. What do they preach? Christ Crucified, "Unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness" (1 Cor. 1:13). And the end of the Cross is our sanctification, and the end of our sanctification is the glory of God. The only thing we must ask ourselves is not, "Am I a Traditionalist or a Neo-Catholic?" but "Am I doing all I can to know the will of God and to do it?" Only the one who hears Christ's words and does them will have built his house on solid rock and be saved.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
St. Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Lacan on Desire and Sin
It seems that Lacan is saying in psychoanalytical language precisely what Aquinas showed was the source of sin: an apparent good that isn't truly in accord with reason. When we see things under right reason, we look at them, in Lacan's terms, straight on, directly, for what they really are. An object becomes desirable when seen "anamorphically," distorted by a subtle projection of our subjectivity into the object, a mistake in the intellect's judgment; this is the subtle relation between beings in nature (substances) and beings of reason, as Aquinas puts it, and their very close intermingling in concrete experience; the separation of the two requires a lot of reflexivity usually. It would be interesting to see a semiotic synthesis between these two thinkers because the experience is clearly rooted in the semiosic process.
Objection 1. It would seem that the will is not of good only. For the same power regards opposites; for instance, sight regards white and black. But good and evil are opposites. Therefore the will is not only of good, but also of evil.
Objection 2. Further, rational powers can be directed to opposite purposes, according to the Philosopher (Metaph. ix, 2). But the will is a rational power, since it is "in the reason," as is stated in De Anima iii, 9. Therefore the will can be directed to opposites; and consequently its volition is not confined to good, but extends to evil.
Objection 3. Further, good and being are convertible. But volition is directed not only to beings, but also to non-beings. For sometimes we wish "not to walk," or "not to speak"; and again at times we wish for future things, which are not actual beings. Therefore the will is not of good only.
On the contrary, Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv) that "evil is outside the scope of the will," and that "all things desire good."
I answer that, The will is a rational appetite. Now every appetite is only of something good. The reason of this is that the appetite is nothing else than an inclination of a person desirous of a thing towards that thing. Now every inclination is to something like and suitable to the thing inclined. Since, therefore, everything, inasmuch as it is being and substance, is a good, it must needs be that every inclination is to something good. And hence it is that the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 1) that "the good is that which all desire."
But it must be noted that, since every inclination results from a form, the natural appetite results from a form existing in the nature of things: while the sensitive appetite, as also the intellective or rational appetite, which we call the will, follows from an apprehended form. Therefore, just as the natural appetite tends to good existing in a thing; so the animal or voluntary appetite tends to a good which is apprehended. Consequently, in order that the will tend to anything, it is requisite, not that this be good in very truth, but that it be apprehended as good. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Phys. ii, 3) that "the end is a good, or an apparent good."
Reply to Objection 1. The same power regards opposites, but it is not referred to them in the same way. Accordingly, the will is referred both to good and evil: but to good by desiring it: to evil, by shunning it. Wherefore the actual desire of good is called "volition" [In Latin, 'voluntas'. To avoid confusion with "voluntas" (the will) St. Thomas adds a word of explanation, which in the translation may appear superfluous], meaning thereby the act of the will; for it is in this sense that we are now speaking of the will. On the other hand, the shunning of evil is better described as "nolition": wherefore, just as volition is of good, so nolition is of evil.
Reply to Objection 2. A rational power is not to be directed to all opposite purposes, but to those which are contained under its proper object; for no power seeks other than its proper object. Now, the object of the will is good. Wherefore the will can be directed to such opposite purposes as are contained under good, such as to be moved or to be at rest, to speak or to be silent, and such like: for the will can be directed to either under the aspect of good.
Reply to Objection 3. That which is not a being in nature, is considered as a being in the reason, wherefore negations and privations are said to be "beings of reason." In this way, too, future things, in so far as they are apprehended, are beings. Accordingly, in so far as such like are beings, they are apprehended under the aspect of good; and it is thus that the will is directed to them. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 1) that "to lack evil is considered as a good."
First, St. Thomas, then Lacan as interpreted by Zizek.
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Objection 1. It would seem that the will is not of good only. For the same power regards opposites; for instance, sight regards white and black. But good and evil are opposites. Therefore the will is not only of good, but also of evil.
Objection 2. Further, rational powers can be directed to opposite purposes, according to the Philosopher (Metaph. ix, 2). But the will is a rational power, since it is "in the reason," as is stated in De Anima iii, 9. Therefore the will can be directed to opposites; and consequently its volition is not confined to good, but extends to evil.
Objection 3. Further, good and being are convertible. But volition is directed not only to beings, but also to non-beings. For sometimes we wish "not to walk," or "not to speak"; and again at times we wish for future things, which are not actual beings. Therefore the will is not of good only.
On the contrary, Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv) that "evil is outside the scope of the will," and that "all things desire good."
I answer that, The will is a rational appetite. Now every appetite is only of something good. The reason of this is that the appetite is nothing else than an inclination of a person desirous of a thing towards that thing. Now every inclination is to something like and suitable to the thing inclined. Since, therefore, everything, inasmuch as it is being and substance, is a good, it must needs be that every inclination is to something good. And hence it is that the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 1) that "the good is that which all desire."
But it must be noted that, since every inclination results from a form, the natural appetite results from a form existing in the nature of things: while the sensitive appetite, as also the intellective or rational appetite, which we call the will, follows from an apprehended form. Therefore, just as the natural appetite tends to good existing in a thing; so the animal or voluntary appetite tends to a good which is apprehended. Consequently, in order that the will tend to anything, it is requisite, not that this be good in very truth, but that it be apprehended as good. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Phys. ii, 3) that "the end is a good, or an apparent good."
Reply to Objection 1. The same power regards opposites, but it is not referred to them in the same way. Accordingly, the will is referred both to good and evil: but to good by desiring it: to evil, by shunning it. Wherefore the actual desire of good is called "volition" [In Latin, 'voluntas'. To avoid confusion with "voluntas" (the will) St. Thomas adds a word of explanation, which in the translation may appear superfluous], meaning thereby the act of the will; for it is in this sense that we are now speaking of the will. On the other hand, the shunning of evil is better described as "nolition": wherefore, just as volition is of good, so nolition is of evil.
Reply to Objection 2. A rational power is not to be directed to all opposite purposes, but to those which are contained under its proper object; for no power seeks other than its proper object. Now, the object of the will is good. Wherefore the will can be directed to such opposite purposes as are contained under good, such as to be moved or to be at rest, to speak or to be silent, and such like: for the will can be directed to either under the aspect of good.
Reply to Objection 3. That which is not a being in nature, is considered as a being in the reason, wherefore negations and privations are said to be "beings of reason." In this way, too, future things, in so far as they are apprehended, are beings. Accordingly, in so far as such like are beings, they are apprehended under the aspect of good; and it is thus that the will is directed to them. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 1) that "to lack evil is considered as a good."
---
Source: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, 1a2æ.8.1, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2008.htm.
---
[392] [T]he Lacanian objet a whose status is that of an anamorphosis: a part of a picture which, when the picture is viewed in a direct frontal way, appears as a meaningless stain, but which acquires the contours of a known object when we change our position and look at the picture from the side. Lacan’s point is even more radical: the object-cause of desire is something that, when viewed frontally, is nothing at all, just a void— it acquires the contours of something only when viewed sideways. [...]
This is the objet a: an entity that has no substantial consistency, which is in itself “nothing but confusion,” and which acquires a definite shape only when looked upon from a standpoint distorted by the subject’s desires and fears— as such, as a mere “shadow of what it is not.” As such, the objet a is the strange object which is nothing but the inscription of the subject itself into the field of objects, in the guise of a stain which acquires form only when part of this field is anamorphically distorted by the subject’s desire.1 [...]
[403] The objet a is the point at which the subject encounters itself, its own impossible objectal counterpoint, among objects—“ impossible” means here that a is the obverse of the subject, they can never encounter each other in a direct opposition or mirroring, i.e., there is no relationship between $ and a, they are like the two sides of the same spot on a Möbius band. What this means is that the objet a stands for the “object as such,” the frame of a variable; it is in this sense (Lacan’s version of) the transcendental object, a mark of the “pure” faculty of desire: it has no substantial consistency of its own, it is just a spectral materialization of a certain cut or inadequacy— or, as Lacan put it concisely: “The object a is a cut” (“l’objet a est une coupure”).
[404] [...] the objet a is not the inaccessible ideal object to which no empirical object is adequate—“the object a is this inadequacy itself.” In this sense, the objet a is “the presupposed void in a demand,” the void that sustains the experience of “this is never that”: the universal (“object as such”) comes to exists as a pure gap.
---
Source: Slavoj Zizek, Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso Books, 2014), 392, 403–404.
This is the objet a: an entity that has no substantial consistency, which is in itself “nothing but confusion,” and which acquires a definite shape only when looked upon from a standpoint distorted by the subject’s desires and fears— as such, as a mere “shadow of what it is not.” As such, the objet a is the strange object which is nothing but the inscription of the subject itself into the field of objects, in the guise of a stain which acquires form only when part of this field is anamorphically distorted by the subject’s desire.1 [...]
[403] The objet a is the point at which the subject encounters itself, its own impossible objectal counterpoint, among objects—“ impossible” means here that a is the obverse of the subject, they can never encounter each other in a direct opposition or mirroring, i.e., there is no relationship between $ and a, they are like the two sides of the same spot on a Möbius band. What this means is that the objet a stands for the “object as such,” the frame of a variable; it is in this sense (Lacan’s version of) the transcendental object, a mark of the “pure” faculty of desire: it has no substantial consistency of its own, it is just a spectral materialization of a certain cut or inadequacy— or, as Lacan put it concisely: “The object a is a cut” (“l’objet a est une coupure”).
[404] [...] the objet a is not the inaccessible ideal object to which no empirical object is adequate—“the object a is this inadequacy itself.” In this sense, the objet a is “the presupposed void in a demand,” the void that sustains the experience of “this is never that”: the universal (“object as such”) comes to exists as a pure gap.
---
Source: Slavoj Zizek, Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso Books, 2014), 392, 403–404.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Memo: Grace and Nature, Unconscious Affect and Spiritual Emotion
If I could have the opportunity, I would like to study the intersection of unconscious affect and spiritual "emotions."
It would also be interesting to see the extent to which grace depends on nature. For example, if a person very advanced in holiness were to suffer such a brain injury that they lost all sense of morality or self control, what would be the implications for the relationship between grace and nature?
It would also be interesting to see the extent to which grace depends on nature. For example, if a person very advanced in holiness were to suffer such a brain injury that they lost all sense of morality or self control, what would be the implications for the relationship between grace and nature?
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
The Never-Ending Argument and Service Work
The desire to end the discourse, to have the final say, is the same dynamic that feeds a never-ending argument. A never-ending argument is neither constructive nor dialogical; open, rational discussion, while creating space for voicing disagreement, clarification, and proof, is not argumentative even if it may continue on forever. An argument, on the other hand, misses the point of what was being discussed; it is an act of battering each other with crystalized concepts cut off from their proper referent in reality.
Both of these phenomena are rooted in a form of solipsism, an overemphasis on esse in, the substance itself as an atom, disconnected from those around us.
Personal transformation is a positive manifestation of esse in; it acknowledges and respects the individual and seeks to improve it by admitting its poverty. The admittance of poverty, or in other words, humility, is also the necessary foundation for mutual transformation, the transformation of individuals in a network, a corporate body, a society. The collective transformation of esse in through esse ad, being towards or for another, enriching the other with each of our respective riches.
What, then, becomes of the status of service work when an individual who serves others at the same time treats other individuals with contempt, impatience, condescension, etc.? It's a contradiction. How might it be explained? The service, the movement to enrich another, whether it be an individual or collective, somehow loses its proper referent. Service properly speaking must always acknowledge and respect the other, in spite of disagreements and annoyances. But if service loses its proper referent, the impetus of service, which is esse ad, returns to esse in, or solipsism. Service then becomes an unconscious form of self serving.
In order to avoid the selfishness that creeps into service, it is therefore necessary to always return the referent of service to its proper object, the other in poverty, in need of enriching, and this referent must extend to all without discrimination with respect to the sharing of qualities of mutual support: patience, generosity, gentleness, kindness, consideration, affirmation. Of course, the extent of this support depends on context and circumstances, but the willingness to share and its equal distribution irrespective of persons is the condition by which esse ad refuses to remain esse in. It is the condition required to avoid the never-ending argument. It is the condition required to be willing to have an ongoing discussion, to resist the desire to have the last word.
Both of these phenomena are rooted in a form of solipsism, an overemphasis on esse in, the substance itself as an atom, disconnected from those around us.
Personal transformation is a positive manifestation of esse in; it acknowledges and respects the individual and seeks to improve it by admitting its poverty. The admittance of poverty, or in other words, humility, is also the necessary foundation for mutual transformation, the transformation of individuals in a network, a corporate body, a society. The collective transformation of esse in through esse ad, being towards or for another, enriching the other with each of our respective riches.
What, then, becomes of the status of service work when an individual who serves others at the same time treats other individuals with contempt, impatience, condescension, etc.? It's a contradiction. How might it be explained? The service, the movement to enrich another, whether it be an individual or collective, somehow loses its proper referent. Service properly speaking must always acknowledge and respect the other, in spite of disagreements and annoyances. But if service loses its proper referent, the impetus of service, which is esse ad, returns to esse in, or solipsism. Service then becomes an unconscious form of self serving.
In order to avoid the selfishness that creeps into service, it is therefore necessary to always return the referent of service to its proper object, the other in poverty, in need of enriching, and this referent must extend to all without discrimination with respect to the sharing of qualities of mutual support: patience, generosity, gentleness, kindness, consideration, affirmation. Of course, the extent of this support depends on context and circumstances, but the willingness to share and its equal distribution irrespective of persons is the condition by which esse ad refuses to remain esse in. It is the condition required to avoid the never-ending argument. It is the condition required to be willing to have an ongoing discussion, to resist the desire to have the last word.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
"When you interrupt a girl's school day to force her" Meme Analysis
Regarding http://viralwomen.com/post/make_this_go_viral_pass_it_on:
Sexism isn't the issue here. The real issue is the "Law": even in the hypothetical world of unlimited liberty, "Law" would still dominate because the hypothetical world is not real, hence symbolic, and hence dictated and circumscribed by the dynamics of language, of limit. Limit means the condition for desire, but it simultaneously is the barring of desire. I can't have it—so I desire it—but I can't have it, so I am not free.
But, after knowing this dynamic of the Law and liberty, one has only two choices remaining: to submit or to defy. To submit would mean accepting our condition and moving forward. To defy would mean deliberately remaining in a fantasy world in which unlimited liberty is attempted.
To bring this matter into concrete terms: in life, we must submit to rules, even if these rules are without reason, because if we don't, there will be consequences. Sometimes who happens to actually get punished is not as justice dictates—sometimes a woman gets punished more than a man or vice versa. But regardless, the rules exist, and to move forward in normal society, one must submit to the rules. There is nothing wrong with this, nor does it suggest that rules cannot be questioned or changed, but rules must exist in one form or another, and they ought to exist to preserve some sort of freedom.
Either school is about education or it is not. If it is about education, then the rules ought to protect this value, no matter how people feel or think about the specific content of the rules themselves; the specific content is immaterial, but the form or actual structure provided by the rules is essential. The true, passionate pursuit of education, then, means that one will go to any lengths to obtain education, and submission to the rules becomes a nothing rather than the over-exaggerated focus of an impossible fantasy function seeking unlimited freedom. It doesn't matter if boys can or cannot control themselves. If the boy really wants to be educated, put a naked woman in the class—it won't matter to him because he is not there for the woman but for the education. But if the boy doesn't really desire education, then you could put a nun in the class, and he will still indulge in sexual fantasies even regarding the nun. Likewise, if a woman is pursuing education, then what she wears is immaterial. She will submit to the Law, just as the boy submits. Both submit.
This meme is about freedom, not the freedom to chose, but the freedom to pursue education, and the freedom to pursue education limits pure individuality, or the ego, which seeks infinity. It desires infinity, but the pursuit of the object of desire necessarily is a finite and defining project.
---
But what about the meme's internal construction? For one thing, it actually is a very manifestation of the sexism that it attacks, for it seeks to place the onus on men for limiting the freedom to choose to dress as a woman pleases. It implicates men as weak, selfish creatures for being unable to control their impulses. Finally, it locates the strength that upholds rules in men. (Some might also argue that the meme is a manifestation of so-called "heterosexism" because its dichotomy is between women and men who desire women—and even if the men didn't desire women, the meme is still man vs. woman). Women are complete, helpless victims; men are always scot-free. These are all sexist assumptions and disrespectful to the data. Actually treating men and women as equal means an equal submission to the law and equal punishment for its violation. Equality here is therefore defined with respect to submission and commitment to the law (and by implication, consequences for following or violating the law).
If someone wants to create a meme about how men and women are in fact punished unequally, then by all means, but that is a significantly different content than what we have here.
---
Further thoughts:
The psychological analysis avoids discussing whether the rules are in any way useful or "fair" ("fair" being such a vague concept that its discussion is relatively useless). The reason being that whereas the actual value of this or that rule regarding dress code is always up for scrutiny, the fundamental psychological-social dynamics that create the rules are simply unavoidable. Hence discussion of the rules themselves (concrete manifestations of the underlying psychological-social dynamic) may lead to a never-ending debate on dress code while always missing the fundamental point that the pursuit of anything, that is, the focusing of freedom on the pursuit of any finite object, necessarily limits freedom.
Why do the two pursuits mutually exclude each other? In that hypothetical world, they do not—one could go to school naked if one wished and still get an education. But we do not live in a hypothetical world; we live in a world of Law and conflicting desire. In the world of Law and conflicting desire, one cannot do as one pleases and must submit to the Other. Therefore if one actually cares about one's education, one will accept the limit of a dress code in order to unburden oneself of the hindrance of punishment and the subsequent deprival of education. If one cares about dressing as one pleases, one does so at the expense of education.
Besides, this meme comes from the perspective of one who has never inhabited any seriously professional world (of which school is supposed to also be, but American students in high school and up like to think that school means childhood and not adulthood).
Sexism isn't the issue here. The real issue is the "Law": even in the hypothetical world of unlimited liberty, "Law" would still dominate because the hypothetical world is not real, hence symbolic, and hence dictated and circumscribed by the dynamics of language, of limit. Limit means the condition for desire, but it simultaneously is the barring of desire. I can't have it—so I desire it—but I can't have it, so I am not free.
But, after knowing this dynamic of the Law and liberty, one has only two choices remaining: to submit or to defy. To submit would mean accepting our condition and moving forward. To defy would mean deliberately remaining in a fantasy world in which unlimited liberty is attempted.
To bring this matter into concrete terms: in life, we must submit to rules, even if these rules are without reason, because if we don't, there will be consequences. Sometimes who happens to actually get punished is not as justice dictates—sometimes a woman gets punished more than a man or vice versa. But regardless, the rules exist, and to move forward in normal society, one must submit to the rules. There is nothing wrong with this, nor does it suggest that rules cannot be questioned or changed, but rules must exist in one form or another, and they ought to exist to preserve some sort of freedom.
Either school is about education or it is not. If it is about education, then the rules ought to protect this value, no matter how people feel or think about the specific content of the rules themselves; the specific content is immaterial, but the form or actual structure provided by the rules is essential. The true, passionate pursuit of education, then, means that one will go to any lengths to obtain education, and submission to the rules becomes a nothing rather than the over-exaggerated focus of an impossible fantasy function seeking unlimited freedom. It doesn't matter if boys can or cannot control themselves. If the boy really wants to be educated, put a naked woman in the class—it won't matter to him because he is not there for the woman but for the education. But if the boy doesn't really desire education, then you could put a nun in the class, and he will still indulge in sexual fantasies even regarding the nun. Likewise, if a woman is pursuing education, then what she wears is immaterial. She will submit to the Law, just as the boy submits. Both submit.
This meme is about freedom, not the freedom to chose, but the freedom to pursue education, and the freedom to pursue education limits pure individuality, or the ego, which seeks infinity. It desires infinity, but the pursuit of the object of desire necessarily is a finite and defining project.
---
But what about the meme's internal construction? For one thing, it actually is a very manifestation of the sexism that it attacks, for it seeks to place the onus on men for limiting the freedom to choose to dress as a woman pleases. It implicates men as weak, selfish creatures for being unable to control their impulses. Finally, it locates the strength that upholds rules in men. (Some might also argue that the meme is a manifestation of so-called "heterosexism" because its dichotomy is between women and men who desire women—and even if the men didn't desire women, the meme is still man vs. woman). Women are complete, helpless victims; men are always scot-free. These are all sexist assumptions and disrespectful to the data. Actually treating men and women as equal means an equal submission to the law and equal punishment for its violation. Equality here is therefore defined with respect to submission and commitment to the law (and by implication, consequences for following or violating the law).
If someone wants to create a meme about how men and women are in fact punished unequally, then by all means, but that is a significantly different content than what we have here.
---
Further thoughts:
The psychological analysis avoids discussing whether the rules are in any way useful or "fair" ("fair" being such a vague concept that its discussion is relatively useless). The reason being that whereas the actual value of this or that rule regarding dress code is always up for scrutiny, the fundamental psychological-social dynamics that create the rules are simply unavoidable. Hence discussion of the rules themselves (concrete manifestations of the underlying psychological-social dynamic) may lead to a never-ending debate on dress code while always missing the fundamental point that the pursuit of anything, that is, the focusing of freedom on the pursuit of any finite object, necessarily limits freedom.
Why do the two pursuits mutually exclude each other? In that hypothetical world, they do not—one could go to school naked if one wished and still get an education. But we do not live in a hypothetical world; we live in a world of Law and conflicting desire. In the world of Law and conflicting desire, one cannot do as one pleases and must submit to the Other. Therefore if one actually cares about one's education, one will accept the limit of a dress code in order to unburden oneself of the hindrance of punishment and the subsequent deprival of education. If one cares about dressing as one pleases, one does so at the expense of education.
Besides, this meme comes from the perspective of one who has never inhabited any seriously professional world (of which school is supposed to also be, but American students in high school and up like to think that school means childhood and not adulthood).
Monday, September 29, 2014
Faith Changes Our Relations
Faith changes our relations with each other and ought to make us aware of these changes.
By faith we come to realize that how we treat others is not only how we treat Christ but how we treat ourselves, for we are all connected mystically by grace into the Body of Christ. Hence the second great commandment is that we love our neighbors as ourselves. Why? Because as we love our neighbors, so do we love ourselves.
Actually, we can know this principle even without divine revelation. We see that the unconscious reflects the Other and projects ourselves into the Other. How we treat others, then, unconsciously reflects and projects how we treat ourselves and wish to be treated. Hence if we wish to receive qualities of patience, consideration, and generosity, we ought to give these out and practice them ourselves.
Amazingly, divine revelation has taken this psychological-social dynamic and elevated it through grace, showing us that our relations are more profound than we ever believed. This is why sin can never be isolated, and to believe that my personal actions and choices in private do not affect others betrays a lack of faith and a lack of understanding of the unconscious. Everything I do creates and changes my relations with others, both in the natural and supernatural realms.
In this phenomenon we can also find one reason for the spiritual and psychological stagnation of so many people: they do not put in the effort to treat others in such a way as to reveal to themselves their earnest desire for transformation through virtue. The very effort to act virtuously works as a signal that effectively mobilizes the unconscious forces to cooperate with grace such that even if the initial attempts of a beginner are filled with failure and imperfections the process of spiritual transformation is nevertheless truly begun. The effort to treat others in a saintly way stimulates one to become actually a saint and to encourage others to become likewise. It in a certain sense gives permission to oneself to become holy, to let go of old habits of behavior.
By faith we come to realize that how we treat others is not only how we treat Christ but how we treat ourselves, for we are all connected mystically by grace into the Body of Christ. Hence the second great commandment is that we love our neighbors as ourselves. Why? Because as we love our neighbors, so do we love ourselves.
Actually, we can know this principle even without divine revelation. We see that the unconscious reflects the Other and projects ourselves into the Other. How we treat others, then, unconsciously reflects and projects how we treat ourselves and wish to be treated. Hence if we wish to receive qualities of patience, consideration, and generosity, we ought to give these out and practice them ourselves.
Amazingly, divine revelation has taken this psychological-social dynamic and elevated it through grace, showing us that our relations are more profound than we ever believed. This is why sin can never be isolated, and to believe that my personal actions and choices in private do not affect others betrays a lack of faith and a lack of understanding of the unconscious. Everything I do creates and changes my relations with others, both in the natural and supernatural realms.
In this phenomenon we can also find one reason for the spiritual and psychological stagnation of so many people: they do not put in the effort to treat others in such a way as to reveal to themselves their earnest desire for transformation through virtue. The very effort to act virtuously works as a signal that effectively mobilizes the unconscious forces to cooperate with grace such that even if the initial attempts of a beginner are filled with failure and imperfections the process of spiritual transformation is nevertheless truly begun. The effort to treat others in a saintly way stimulates one to become actually a saint and to encourage others to become likewise. It in a certain sense gives permission to oneself to become holy, to let go of old habits of behavior.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Distinction: "Lifelong Catholic" vs. Living Catholic
There is really only one use for describing oneself as a "lifelong Catholic": a statement of chronological fact regarding one's self conception. In other words, it describes a fact of time—that the lifelong Catholic was baptized soon after birth, confirmed, received First Communion, etc., continued attending Mass throughout life, receiving sacraments, perhaps praying.
But what good is a label in itself? I can call attention to any other "chronological fact" regarding myself—I'm a lifelong brown-haired male. Or I can state a fact regarding how I view myself (self-conception), a view that may change with time; e.g. in high school I believed I was ugly because I had acne.
The label and the self-conception are morally neutral, psychological qualities. These qualities may be harmful or beneficial to our flourishing and striving for happiness. There is, however, no intrinsic point in any of these labels. The labels are spoken so as to be used, to set oneself in relation to something else. Hence labels, while neutral qualities in themselves, are always concretely employed in relation to something else; hence enters their political dimension.
However, I want to draw attention to how a person will call himself a "lifelong Catholic." Usually this label is spoken in order to give moral or political weight and authority to what is said; it serves as a sometimes-very-subtle power play, a badge of honor or pride, saying, "Look at me. I've lived this all my life. My opinion therefore is worth something."
But the problem is that being a "lifelong" anything doesn't guarantee mastery. One could be a lifelong entrepreneur, manager, woodworker, painter, etc. Length of experience certainly exposes one to more possibilities, but it in itself does not guarantee mastery. Mastery requires deliberation and intentionality, usually growing through a slow, heuristic process; sometimes, however, such deliberation draws out an intrinsic genius and leads to spontaneous leaps (punctuated growth rather than gradual).
Hence, the label "lifelong x" is an expression of unconscious pride. The label of the Saint is "I am a sinner; don't listen to me but to Christ, to the doctors, to the Church" (paradoxically in so doing, the Saints then become listened to themselves precisely because they submit their experience and knowledge to the greater tradition and judgment of the Church). The self-styled expert, or "lifelong Catholic," reveals himself to be a novice. If the "lifelong Catholic" would only realize that salvation and sanctification can be lost in a single moment, a single moral act, that salvation is not guaranteed, that the grace of perseverance must always be begged for, that the mystical life, just as with any art and virtue, must be advanced upon by calm and persevering deliberation that is oblivious to time and the growth of which is not set in proportion to the length of time that has passed, then perhaps that lifelong Catholic may actually become a living Catholic, which is the only kind of Catholic that is worth anything for glorifying God, working for the salvation of souls, and being saved.
But what good is a label in itself? I can call attention to any other "chronological fact" regarding myself—I'm a lifelong brown-haired male. Or I can state a fact regarding how I view myself (self-conception), a view that may change with time; e.g. in high school I believed I was ugly because I had acne.
The label and the self-conception are morally neutral, psychological qualities. These qualities may be harmful or beneficial to our flourishing and striving for happiness. There is, however, no intrinsic point in any of these labels. The labels are spoken so as to be used, to set oneself in relation to something else. Hence labels, while neutral qualities in themselves, are always concretely employed in relation to something else; hence enters their political dimension.
However, I want to draw attention to how a person will call himself a "lifelong Catholic." Usually this label is spoken in order to give moral or political weight and authority to what is said; it serves as a sometimes-very-subtle power play, a badge of honor or pride, saying, "Look at me. I've lived this all my life. My opinion therefore is worth something."
But the problem is that being a "lifelong" anything doesn't guarantee mastery. One could be a lifelong entrepreneur, manager, woodworker, painter, etc. Length of experience certainly exposes one to more possibilities, but it in itself does not guarantee mastery. Mastery requires deliberation and intentionality, usually growing through a slow, heuristic process; sometimes, however, such deliberation draws out an intrinsic genius and leads to spontaneous leaps (punctuated growth rather than gradual).
Hence, the label "lifelong x" is an expression of unconscious pride. The label of the Saint is "I am a sinner; don't listen to me but to Christ, to the doctors, to the Church" (paradoxically in so doing, the Saints then become listened to themselves precisely because they submit their experience and knowledge to the greater tradition and judgment of the Church). The self-styled expert, or "lifelong Catholic," reveals himself to be a novice. If the "lifelong Catholic" would only realize that salvation and sanctification can be lost in a single moment, a single moral act, that salvation is not guaranteed, that the grace of perseverance must always be begged for, that the mystical life, just as with any art and virtue, must be advanced upon by calm and persevering deliberation that is oblivious to time and the growth of which is not set in proportion to the length of time that has passed, then perhaps that lifelong Catholic may actually become a living Catholic, which is the only kind of Catholic that is worth anything for glorifying God, working for the salvation of souls, and being saved.
Monday, September 1, 2014
The (Individual) in the Post-Christian, Celebrity Culture
The Individual in
the Post-Christian, Celebrity Culture
Originally published under "Anonymous" in Charter:
Gonzaga University’s Journal of Scholarship and Opinion. No. 1 (Spring
2012): 19-24.
I have a close friend who lives in Canada, who was
studying to become a music professor. A year ago his father, who worked in
South Korea, disappeared without a trace. The mother hired private
investigators to search for the missing father but in vain. My friend had to
withdraw from his university to help his mother pay the bills. I don’t know how
this crisis will turn out, but it raises the interesting questions that
particularly press the modern, technological age, steeped in the celebrity
culture: how do visible people become suddenly invisible, and how do invisible people
become suddenly visible?
I want to look broadly at that
question of visibility, invisibility and relate it to what may be called an
authentic life of Christian spirituality. Perhaps one may smirk at that quaint
phrase, “authentic life of Christian spirituality,” for the concept seems
strangely alien. Even in a place like Marin county, Latinos waiting on
sidewalks for work is not so alien; it’s what I have grown up seeing, at least.
Rather, an authentic life of Christian spirituality strikes us as alien because
as Arthur W. Hunt III noted, “The Christian conscience is fast fading.”[1]
The Christian worldview is fast
receding, disappearing like the distant echo of a dark and overbearing past.
What is replacing it? When Saints today seem seriously doubtful,[2] what
gives color to an otherwise mundane life? Jim Carrey, on his regularly-updated
Twitter page, put it pithily: “If future historians look bck 2 the blogs of our
day 4 reference material it'll be a piss poor account of who we r. Or is that
who we r ?;^\”[3]
Or as Adorno and Horkheimer put it in the Dialectic
of Enlightenment:
Talented performers belong to the
industry long before it displays them; otherwise they would not be so eager to
fit in. The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favours [sic]
the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse
for it.[4]
That is, our culture would not exist without the “our.” We have produced this culture of
superficiality,[5]
sexism,[6] and
materialist consumerism,[7] this
culture that the intellectuals complain about (and the corresponding
politicians who promise to do something about it but in fact are just as caught
up in it as anyone else[8]), this
culture in which every daily event of our lives becomes necessary and useless
by oodles of social networking,[9] this
culture in which we communicate everything and nothing at once, this culture
that, for the sake of profit, abandons the so-called humanitarian values and
rights that it supposedly champions,[10] this
culture that we participate in to startling degrees, on the one hand
criticizing its obvious vanity, but on the other hand participating (zealously) in it without a second’s
thought. This situation is our
reality, and to that extent it must be understood in order (if one wishes) to
transcend it.
Francis Schaeffer, the Christian
philosopher, predicted, “When the memory of the Christian consensus which gave
us freedom within the biblical form is increasingly forgotten, a manipulating
authoritarianism will tend to fill the vacuum.”[11] Politically,
one may say that this authoritarianism has taken the form of the modern,
secular state. Acknowledging truth to that claim, I wish, however, to go
deeper, to the psycho-spiritual level. It’s easy to write about a feeling of mass existential aimlessness when one has had
little-to-no direct experience with the hopelessness that suffocates the
suicidal’s psyche. When one faces that very real question, “What is my purpose, if I have any at all?”—that
question that brings us face-to-face with death—then one suddenly sees the mass
illusion that constitutes our modern world, especially the celebrity
phenomenon.[12]
It is, as Carl Raschke observed, “a collective form of transference.”[13] It is a
symptom that expresses itself through a fantasy mechanism, where “[f]antasy
designates our ‘impossible’ relationship to the person or thing that we most
desire.”[14]
Hunt stated it this way: “We pour our own meaning into them [media/electronic
images] and receive that meaning back,” and “The image exalts itself not only against words but ultimately against
the transcendent Word (Logos)” (emphasis original).[15] Jacques
Lacan put this dichotomy between seeing and hearing in this way:
The root of the scopic drive is to
be found entirely in the subject, in the fact that the subject sees himself […]
in his sexual member [….] Whereas making oneself seen is indicated by an arrow
that really comes back towards the subject, making oneself heard goes towards
the other.[16]
It is the authoritarianism of the narcissistic fantasy, the
domination of ego in a world of
atomic meaninglessness, the desperate projection of a “unique” mind where only
matter is to be found, to be grasped fleetingly, like the latest intrigue or
hit song, a jumble of stuff (meaning?) reducible to…. With the displacement of
God, the fundamental fantasy of society becomes focused on the celebrity,
promising what cannot be fulfilled, brokenness deified, a repetition through
symptoms of that existential aimlessness, passed down in a way described so
disconcertingly by Philip Larkin in his 1971 poem “This Be The Verse.”
This is the radical question: how
can a human being with real, unique dignity disappear or appear so easily and
inconsequentially in a world that raises the self to divine heights, that
pursues the celebrity status with such desperate vigor? How can one so simply
flicker out like a small star disappearing forever in the vast cosmos? I’m not
so much asking how this phenomenon is
actually possible but rather drawing attention to the shocking fact that it is happening. Consider the photograph
collection of Belgian photographer Mishka Henner called No Man’s Land. Putting together a series of photographs through
Google Map’s “Street View,” Henner stumbled upon, all across Europe, images of
various lonely women by the roadsides… These women are prostitutes, victims of
the European sex trade, utterly exposed all day and stripped of their womanhood
and any decent dress, their stories unknown, untold, captured by the automatic
recording process of the ubiquitous Google street cars.[17] Their
faces, as with all faces in the Street View, have been eerily blurred out,
further emphasizing their total isolation and anonymity. This phenomenon is
possible with and because of our celebrity culture, which imprints its totalitarian
stamp on everything[18] and
leaves everything else—i.e. whatever is actually
valuable but deemed otherwise by the culture machine—“to be discarded after
a short while like empty food cans.”[19] The
culture that emphasizes the pursuit of fame on a global scale inevitably will
and has in fact created and
unconsciously (if not consciously) encouraged an entire underworld of hellish
slavery, a sub-culture symptomatic of
modernity’s gluttonous hedonism and so-called progress. This sub-culture
hides behind a very thin veil, and
anyone who has eyes to see will indeed see the horrors produced, as a “by-product”
(or in other words, as a “waste product”),
by this celebrity culture of ours.
Now, obviously the basic cynical response
is: “Dude, that’s the world. That’s life. It just happens.” I’m perfectly aware
of this type of answer, but obviously that sort of answer is itself a symptom
of the terse puerility of the culture machine and lazily encourages the vitality
and “virility” of this impotent social state of affairs.[20] It’s the
same sort of answer that regards a “facile” musical like Jesus Christ Superstar as “plain-and-simple entertainment,” but the
insightful critic, whether approaching the celebrity culture from a political,
economic, or psychological angle, never takes the output of the establishment
at face value. The self-referential—“joking”—hypocrisy of The Simpsons and the satire of South
Park are, similarly, mere cogs that keep the culture machine running while
maintaining the passing smug satisfaction of the cynical masses who never go
past the superficial.
Even though one must live in the world, there are several ways to be not of it. Perhaps the most repugnant solution to the modern person,
even among those who desire to transcend materialist culture, is the authentic
life of Christian spirituality mentioned above. Karl Löwith, summarizing Jacob
Burckhardt’s view on modern Christianity, wrote,
Primitive and genuine Christianity
stands in complete contrast to the standards of the world. […] “The humble
surrender of self and the parable of the right and the left cheek are no longer
popular.” People want to maintain their social sphere and respectability; they
have to work and to make money; hence they cannot but allow the world to
interfere in many ways with their traditional religion. “In short, for all
their religiosity, people are not disposed to renounce the advantages and
benefits of modern culture.[21]
Nietzsche famously had this to say:
You [Christians], however, if your
belief makes you blessed then appear to be blessed! Your faces have always been
more injurious to your belief than our [atheists] objections have! If these
glad tidings of your Bible were written on your faces, you would not need to
insist so obstinately on the authority of that book. (s.98)[22]
And Marx wrote this:
Does not every moment of your
practical life give the lie to your religious theory? Do you think it is unjust
to appeal to the courts if somebody cheats you? But the apostle says it is
wrong. Do you offer your right cheek if somebody slaps your left cheek, or
would you rather start a lawsuit? But the gospels forbid it. Do you not […]
grumble about the slightest increase of taxes and become excited at the
smallest violation of personal liberty? But it is said unto you that the
sufferings of this saeculum do not
matter in comparison with the future glory.[23]
Indeed, to any moderately perceptive person, the fact that many so-called “pious” Christians
seem to have no grasp of true love is as obvious as the sun that shines. The
lukewarm, inauthentic Christian, the “modern Christian” who has lost all
conception of the eschaton and the
existence of objective good and evil, will either experience true conversion or
disappear, according to the terrible prophesy of the Jesuit Karl Rahner: “The
Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.”[24] The
Christian conscience, or consciousness, is fast fading, but I propose that it
is the development of this consciousness in a person’s psyche that would allow
them to transcend the celebrity culture.
The Christian response to the
allurements of celebrity culture is quite simple:
Do not love the world or the
things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world;
for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes,
the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world
and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever
[sic].[25]
St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “But we urge you,
beloved, […] to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work
with your hands, […] so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and be
dependent on no one,”[26] The
authentic Christian life is a quiet one, a humble one. In the eyes of the
world, the Christian life is boring;
that’s why the Romans made a sport out of killing Christians—it turned
Christianity into something exciting.
The constant testimony of the
mystics was something like this: I
experienced a love in my heart so profound that I thought it would burst.
This experience was deemed more valuable than anything else even their very
lives. The mystics and martyrs bore witness to this same spiritual reality: it
towers above the physical.[27] It is
the tough work of mysticism that Christians, and all others, shy away from.
They sense its power, its reality, and they are afraid. They balk, gawk,
snicker, and cry out, “I can’t do that!
That’s stupid. I’ll die if I give up [frivolous
entertainments, such as certain TV shows, movies, sports, games, gambling,
radio, or secular music, sweets and junk foods, soda, sexual promiscuity,
coffee, Facebook and other useless forms
of social networking, tobacco, habitual alcohol use, drug use, immodest dress,
body piercings, useless reading, such as certain magazines, books, and newspapers
not necessary for professional
purposes, etc.]. Besides, that all sounds like Dark Age Puritanism!”—as if the accusation of Puritanism somehow reduced
real spirituality to something confront-able and hence dismissible.[28] And
that’s the point: genuine Christianity is uncomfortable; it dis-comforts. It
dis-lodges our common perceptions and assumptions.[29] Forget
about magick! Real Christianity is
dynamite! Nietzsche mentioned the human tendency to spiritual inertia when he
remarked,
At bottom, every human being knows
very well that he is in this world just once, as something unique, and that no
accident, however strange, will throw together a second time into a unity such
a curious and diffuse plurality: he knows it, but hides it like a bad
conscience why? From fear of his neighbour [sic] who insists on convention and
veils himself with it. […] The human being who does not wish to belong to the
mass must merely cease being comfortable with himself.[30]
C.S. Lewis also pointed out the awesome quality of authentic
Christianity in a stirring passage on the nature of God from his book Miracles:
It is always shocking to meet life
where we thought we were alone. ‘Look out!’ we cry, ‘it’s alive’. And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw
back—and I would have done so myself if I could—and proceed no further with
Christianity. An ‘impersonal God’—well and good. […] A formless life-force
surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all. But God Himself,
alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite
speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a
moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was
that a real footstep in the hall? […]
Supposing we really found [God]? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had
found us?[31]
The authentic Christian, who has found herself in
God, seeks to disappear while helping everyone around her to find themselves
amidst this mass of aimlessness. She no longer needs nor craves to be seen by
you or anyone, for she is seen and loved infinitely by God. The authentic
Christian’s presence is felt everywhere, yet she is oddly nowhere, just like
Christ. The joy radiating from her smile lingers in an empty room somehow, and
it affects those present even though she is gone. Her view of the world is
refreshing and piercing yet never cynical because it is full of love for those
caught up in that world. However, to achieve this sort of spiritual radiance, a
transformation so radical must occur that to describe it here would be
impossible. All I can say is a short prayer given to me by someone who I
believe is an authentic Christian: “Without the grace of your love, Lord, I
would have been swept away in the wickedness of this world.” Amen.
[1] Arthur W. Hunt III, “The Image,” Christian Research Journal 25, no. 3 (2003), http://www.equip.org/articles/the-image
(accessed Nov. 26, 2011).
[2] MsAntitheist, “Mother Fucking Teresa was definitely
NOT A SAINT!” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI8A0VsgeuY
(accessed Nov. 27, 2011).
[3] Jim Carrey, “Twitter entry for October 5, 2011,” Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/JIMCARREY
(accessed Nov. 25, 2011). Regarding the emoticon ?;^\, Carrey explains, “?;^}
The question mark represents my hair, my natural curiosity, and my desire to be
a curiosity ?B^•” (Twitter entry for October 26, 2011).
[4] Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture
Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (New York, NY:
Routledge, 1999), 33.
[5] Cf. Lucas Cruikshank, “Fred’s YouTube Channel,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/user/Fred
(accessed Nov. 28, 2011).
[6] Cf. Lisa Belkin, “After Class, Skimpy Equality,” The New York Times, Aug. 26, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/fashion/after-class-skimpy-equality-motherlode.html;
cf. also a response to Belkin’s article: Jillian, “Response to After Class:
Skimpy Equality. So…what is being taught?” Words
of Wisdom from Worldly Young Women, http://ctywlp.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/response-to-after-class-skimpy-equality-so-what-is-being-taught/.
[7] Cf. the endless Black Friday horror stories that the
media publishes; e.g. “Black Friday Shoppers Pepper-Sprayed in Calif.,” CBS News, Nov. 25, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57331160/black-friday-shoppers-pepper-sprayed-in-calif/
(accessed 28 Nov. 2011).
[8] The most notorious example in our time is perhaps
Silvio Berlusconi. Cf. John Hooper, “Silvio Berlusconi: A Story of Unfulfilled
Promises,” The Guardian, Nov. 13,
2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/13/silvio-berlusconi-story-unfulfilled-promises;
cf. also “Profile: Silvio Berlusconi, Ex-Italian Prime Minister,” BBC News Europe, Nov. 12, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11981754.
[9] I.e. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, blogs, vlogs, etc.
[10] E.g. Dove, which a few years ago promoted developing
awareness of the negative and oppressive effects of the beauty culture on
growing women, and Lynx/Axe, which is notorious for its commercials that
promote gender-typing and sexism, are both owned by Unilever. The Dove campaign
was, of course, launched in response to criticism towards the Axe commercials,
but to me it seems that the entire affair is profit driven regardless of what
Unilever says. Even the non-profit Foundation for a Better Life is suspect
since it received funding from Philip Anschutz (cf. the Forbes profile of
Anschutz: http://www.forbes.com/profile/philip-anschutz/),
whose other financial investments are not so philanthropic.
[11] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books,
1984), 23.
[12] Regarding the fact that up until the advent of
modernity every Westerner regularly thought about the reality of death—“memento mori”—and whether the
individual’s soul was ready to face God, I think a very applicable painting to
today’s situation would be Hans Holbein’s The
Ambassadors. Spend some time looking at the painting yourself without
reading an analysis of it. See if you can find the two peculiar oddities that
stand out among the wealth of the ambassadors depicted.
[13] Tom Ryan and Carl Raschke, “On Cultural Neuroses,
Primal Screams, and the Psychology of Celebrity: An Interview with Carl
Raschke,” The Other Journal, Jan. 25,
2011, http://theotherjournal.com/2011/01/25/1071/.
[14] Andrew Houston, “Views and Reviews: Celebrity as
Fantasy Screen,” Canadian Theatre Review
141 (Jan. 2010), http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/canadian_theatre_review/v141/141.141.houston.html
(accessed Nov. 28, 2011).
[15] Hunt, “The Image.”
[16] Jacques Lacan, “The Partial Drive and its Circuit”
and “From Love to the Libido” in The Four
Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981),
194–195.
[17] Mishka Henner, No
Man’s Land, Apr. 22, 2011, Mishka Henner / Works website, http://mishka.lockandhenner.com/blog/?p=644
(accessed Nov. 28, 2011). Cf. also Marco Bohr, “Google Street View and the
Politics of Exploitation,” Visual Culture
Blog, http://visualcultureblog.com/2011/10/google-street-view-and-the-politics-of-exploitation/;
and Jesus Diaz, “Murder Captured by Google Street View Car,” Gizmodo, http://gizmodo.com/5656497/murder-captured-by-google-street-view-car
(accessed Nov. 30, 2011).
[18] Consider all the young women, especially those who
are anorexic or bulimic, who struggle tragically against each other and society
because of the demands of the beauty industry.
[19] Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” 32.
[20] Fantastic examples of this attitude are related to
and encouraged by, for example, the Jackass
reality show with accompanying movies or Borat:
Cultural Learnings [etc.]; cf. Adorno and Horkheimer’s insightful comment
here: “The people at the top are no longer so interested in concealing
monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so its power grows. Movies and
radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business
is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately
produce. They call themselves industries; and when their directors’ incomes are
published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished products is removed”
(Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception,” 32).
[21] Karl Löwith, Meaning
in History (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1949), 29-30.
[22] Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, http://www.theperspectivesofnietzsche.com/nietzsche/nchrist.html
(accessed Nov. 28, 2011).
[23] Löwith, Meaning
in History, 46-47.
[24] Cf. Karl Rahner, “The Spirituality of the Church of
the Future,” Theological Investigations,
vol. XX, trans. Edward Quinn (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1981), 143-53.
[25] 1 John 2:15-17. Translation is the New Revised Standard Version.
[26] 1 Thessalonians 4:10b-12.
[27] St. John of the Cross wrote: “Gustato spiritu, desipit omnis caro” (Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2.17.5), which translates roughly to, “Once
I taste of the spirit, all carnal things become meaningless” (trans. Raymond L.
Richmond, “Entertainment,” ChastitySF,
http://www.chastitysf.com/q_entertain.htm
(accessed Nov. 28, 2011)).
[28] I suggest that the accusation of Puritanism often
comes from those who are themselves too comfortable. Cf. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 6: “The Paradoxes of
Christianity” (available online for free; e.g. here: http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/orthodoxy/ch6.html):
“Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled
to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to
his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some
too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that he might
be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape.
Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him
to be tall. […] Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the
ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre [sic]. Perhaps, after
all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad—in
various ways.”
[29] Cf. Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock
(South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008).
[30] Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Challenge of Every Great
Philosophy,” in Schopenhauer as Teacher
from Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to
Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/nietzsche/1874/challenge.htm
(accessed Nov. 28, 2011).
[31] C.S. Lewis, Miracles
(New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1996), 150.
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