What is reality?

It's not every day that I read something that blows my mind, but today happens to be that day. A worthy read (and reread).

Being Critical of Being Critical (at least with yourself)

"The capacity to doubt herself, to abandon - albeit in the face of strong resistance - her self-assurance and self-satisfaction, lies at the heart of Europe's development as a spiritual force. She made the effort to break out of the closed confines of ethnocentricity, and her ability to do so gave definition to the unique value of her culture. Ultimately we may say that Europe's cultural identity is reinforced by her refusal to accept any kind of closed, finite definition, and thus only affirm her identity in uncertainity and anxiety."

-Leszek Kolakowski

"Looking for the Barbarians: The Illusion of Cultural Universalism" (1986)

What does it mean to be self-critical? In the Catholic tradition, we have what's called an "examination of conscience": a means of reflecting on our lives to see where we've gone wrong or to try and reconcile hard decisions with our values. It presupposes a couple things: that there is a God, that we possess a human nature, that there are ways to offend God and our own human nature, and that this rupture betrays that nature. The result of this is guilt, bad consequences, and redefinition of our own nature. To offend conscience is to recreate ourselves instead of allowing a Creator to continue to sustain His creation and to develop you in an ongoing act of creating.

This all presupposes the ability to think and reflect. Hannah Arendt defined "imagination" as the process in which we are able to dialogue with ourselves. Under that is some concept of a higher good or criteria that our actions are subservient to. To make ourselves and our own actions that highest criteria of right thinking or right action, in a sense, obliterates the dialogue because, at some level, one side of the interior dialogue is suppressed and the other is allowed to dominate. That suppressed side of the dialogue is most likely the one that doubts and criticizes actions that are (or allowed to be seen as) ambiguous.

But that act of dialogue with oneself also presupposes a few things too: a sense of self, the concept of an "other" (even if that "other" is a projection within oneself), the superiority of one view of another, and a final, binding judgment. Anxiety may come from a suspension of judgment or even the rejection of that judgment but, at some level, it presumes the validity of the idea of judgment. Even when someone is considered too critical of themselves, there is a "self" that is being judged and the resulting anxiety testifies to both the presence of an interior dialogue and an imbalance that seeks equilibrium.

When that interior dialogue is happening - so long as it actually is a dialogue - the acceptance and use of judgment, discernment, and even "otherness" presupposes something higher than the point of views, an ultimate "criterion", however elusive.

To avoid presuming a predictable conclusion for too long, this is one way to see how that the idea of an "ultimate" criterion that aids in discernment and judgment is a helpful way of understanding a tacit acceptance of the idea of "truth" that we all seem to have. Some people feel that this idea of "truth" is a useful way that our minds manage the things we think about, a sort-of silent party that allows for the possibility of a final judgment but for many others its a witness to the way God organizes our conscience and to conceptualize the reality of transcendence, that which exists beyond ourselves and our judgment.

Kolakowski's point in the quote above sees that the heritage of self-criticism is itself a sign of civilization and (to run the risk of a kind of triumphalism) is also a sign of a higher sort of civilization. As such, it's also a higher sort of humanity, a sign that something is going right and a principal for growth.

Though it's natural to avoid guilt and coming up short in examining our lives and failures, it's also "supernatural" to embrace self-examination. The tension and the anxiety is a sign that, at some level, something is going right. Better to go through it than walk past it.

Being Critical of Being Critical (at least with yourself)

"The capacity to doubt herself, to abandon - albeit in the face of strong resistance - her self-assurance and self-satisfaction, lies at the heart of Europe's development as a spiritual force. She made the effort to break out of the closed confines of ethnocentricity, and her ability to do so gave definition to the unique value of her culture. Ultimately we may say that Europe's cultural identity is reinforced by her refusal to accept any kind of closed, finite definition, and thus only affirm her identity in uncertainity and anxiety."

-Leszek Kolakowski

"Looking for the Barbarians: The Illusion of Cultural Universalism" (1986)

What does it mean to be self-critical? In the Catholic tradition, we have what's called an "examination of conscience": a means of reflecting on our lives to see where we've gone wrong or to try and reconcile hard decisions with our values. It presupposes a couple things: that there is a God, that we possess a human nature, that there are ways to offend God and our own human nature, and that this rupture betrays that nature. The result of this is guilt, bad consequences, and redefinition of our own nature. To offend conscience is to recreate ourselves instead of allowing a Creator to continue to sustain His creation and to develop you in an ongoing act of creating.

This all presupposes the ability to think and reflect. Hannah Arendt defined "thinking" as the process in which we are able to dialogue with ourselves. Under that is some concept of a higher good or criteria that our actions are subservient to. To make ourselves and our own actions that highest criteria of right thinking or right action, in a sense, obliterates the dialogue because, at some level, one side of the interior dialogue is suppressed and the other is allowed to dominate. That suppressed side of the dialogue is most likely the one that doubts and criticizes actions that are (or allowed to be seen as) ambiguous. 

But that act of dialogue with oneself also presupposes a few things too: a sense of self, the concept of an "other" (even if that "other" is a projection within oneself), the superiority of one view of another, and a final, binding judgment. Anxiety may come from a suspension of judgment or even the rejection of that judgment but, at some level, it presumes the validity of the idea of judgment.  Even when someone is considered too critical of themselves, there is a "self" that is being judged and the resulting anxiety testifies to an imbalance.

When that interior dialogue is happening - so long as it actually is a dialogue - the acceptance and use of judgment, discernment, and even "otherness" presupposes something higher than the point of views, an ultimate "criterion", however elusive. 

To avoid presuming a predictable conclusion for too long, this is one way to see how that the idea of an "ultimate" criterion that aids in discernment and judgment is a helpful way of understanding a tacit acceptance of the idea of "truth" that we all seem to have. Some people feel that this idea of "truth" is a useful way that our minds manage the things we think about, a sort-of silent party that allows for the possibility of a final judgment but for many others its a witness to the way God organizes our conscience and to conceptualize the reality of transcendence, that which exists beyond ourselves and our judgment.

Kolakowski's point in the quote above sees that the heritage of self-criticism is itself a sign of civilization and (to run the risk of a kind of triumphalism) is also a sign of a higher sort of civilization. As such, it's also a higher sort of humanity, a sign that something is going right and a principal for growth.

Though it's natural to avoid guilt and coming up short in examining our lives and failures, it's also "supernatural" to embrace self-examination. The tension and the anxiety is a sign that, at some level, something is going right. It's worth going through it than walking past it.

Jesus, the quirky teacher

Luke 14:25ff

The crowd wasn't quiet because the teacher told them to hate their family.

They weren't really mad either because this guy told them to hate their family!

No one remembers what that person asked that made the teacher say something so absurd but they didn't forget his response:

"Whoever comes to me and DOESN'T hate father and mother..."

Wait, what? You could practically hear the crowd's brows furrow in their confusion...

"...DOESN'T hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters..."

Elbows started to nudge and eyes started to wink. Quick glances communicated jokes about nosey mother-in-laws, boozy wives, and lazy husbands who probably deserved a mention too. The teacher's eyes bugged out a little when he said "doesn't". It's always interesting when a storyteller is the teacher instead of having a lawyer give cases and aphorisms.

Clearly he was being absurd with his extremes. The lawyers started to get antsy with their throats starting to stutter an obligatory interruption. Already this idiot told these sheep to break a Commandment, at least by implication. That was one of the many problems with this "teacher": you could never quite pin him in breaking the law. Patience, they thought. All in good time.

The crowd, however, seemed to be understanding the message just fine. In the span of about 15 seconds they were all grins, laughter, and interest in how the punchline would pan out. Even the kids seemed to get it.

"Whoever DOESN'T hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own LIFE, cannot be my disciple!"

So this was it? Who wanted to be this guy's disciple? To the side of the teacher we're his disciples, a strange collection of men who were either rugged, ragged, or both. One of them had what was clearly fine clothing before he decided to sleep outdoors while wearing them. Another had a large sword and another was a short, barrel-chested pug of a man.

And yet...

These men sat with purpose, listening to the same things the rest of them but with greater eagerness. You could see some of them were really torn up about what they were hearing. The crowd had no idea that some of them had left wives and children at home. One of them choked back tears while he slowly nodded.

It was was hard not to see that they had something that was, well, attractive. Peace, resolve, purpose, and an odd, resigning strength. You know it when you see it. It has a little something you want without ever realizing you wanted it.

The teacher continued.

"...and whoever does not CARRY THE CROSS AND FOLLOW ME CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE."

Silence. Then a few gasps followed by the shriek of a mother whose sons had died by crucifixion for staging an attack on Roman soldiers. Her loud, painful reminisces provided an overture to a confused, uncomfortable crowd that was starting to get mad. His disciples, who just a moment before followed the same uneasy rhythm of nodding heads as everyone else, now looked positively stoic in the tumult, quivering stones that gave the appearance of the rocks of a fortress.

As the crowd rows started to shake apart, a few people were clearly frozen in their spot and conflicted. This strange, quirky teacher had danced with them until he stopped, looked them square in the eye and laid it out...a marriage proposal paved in both pain and purpose, not a demand but a pledge.

This is it. It is what it is.

"I told myself I wouldn't say 'Anything...'"

I told myself that I wouldn't say anything about anything but here's the thing:

If you are anything or anything, you better hug anything and get ready to stand by anything because anything can and WILL happen now that anything is anything.

We are better than anything or we are no better than anything: we'll be WORSE than anything.

Remember: if you anything'd than YOU are to anything. You are on the wrong anything of anything.

But now isn't the time for that. Anything might happen but anything COULD happen. Accept anything. Or get over anything. Just get over anything.

Here's the anything: anything is the problem and anything is the solution. We've got to stand to anything: stand up for anything and stand against anything.

Years from anything we will look back on this anything and see it as the moment when we were anything.

Nothing is anything and everything is anything and that's everything.

Strange Gratitude

I'm reading Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age", a massive analysis on the massive shifts in how humanity in the west has made sense of existence throughout the millennia. In what is surely no surprise to anyone, society largely does not think religiously, at least not in the way it used to. It's rough out there if you are both religious and want to carve a place for yourself and your tradition in a pluralistic society after that same society has branded that worldview as refuse from a superstitious era.

I certainly think that the representatives of different world views are in a crisis of communication. It's why I really admire the Richard John Neuhauses of the world who tried (and others who continue to try) to establish some sort of commonality in the public square that allows all of us to speak honestly, to challenge each other, but also to be civil with one another. We all advocate for our worldviews within our understanding of the common good. We're not always successful at doing that peacefully.

In reading Taylor's book (a book that is certainly critical and, sometimes, both prone to inaccuracy and editorial and yet demonstrates a level of reasearch and originality that I can only aspire to), I'm filled with gratitude.

I'm grateful for my own formation and how I was educated. I'm also grateful for what books came my way and the things I thought were interesting enough to learn about. His book is a tour de force of sociology, culture, philosophy, psychology, theology (albeit imperfectly) and a history of western thought from the Middle Ages until now and his analysis is original. It's like Foucault in that the analysis is at the service of introducing bigger ideas rather than an accurate representation of things, but it's great to be along for the ride.

I'm grateful for a couple classes I had on Medieval philosophy and religion that I stumbled into during my final semester of college. I'm grateful for staying up on philosophy because Taylor is using stuff that I only read after graduate school. I'm grateful for the "lay of the land" that college and graduate school gave me. If I didn't go through all of that, this book wouldn't make any sense at all.

I'm very grateful for humanity and I'm grateful for the desire to understand who we are, how we got here, and where we're going. It leaves me a little scared because we don't bring up the "big questions" that got us through the last few thousand years often enough and I think that we'll regret it as our use of technology keeps disengaging from ethical questions. I'm worried that our pragmatism isn't really critiqued or reflected upon but simply assumed (a dangerous sort of dogmatism). But I'm also grateful that I think that I get that and hopefully it'll make for some good conversations and practical advocacy.

I'm grateful for everyone who has helped humanity understand God and how even the strangest byroads became opportunities to clarify and purify. The only way to the present is through the past and the groundwork of everything we're grateful for was laid down by others. Sometimes I look at all the mistakes of my life and I get sad. But when I realize that all the good things and bad things helped me meet my wife and allowed us to have our children when we did, I make a bit more peace with my mistakes in life. It's the same with history. We might abbhor what humanity has done over the years, but hopefully we've learned from it as a warning sign or used some of it as a stepping stone for something positive. One thing we certainly can't do is undo it because to do so would mean undoing the complex web of circumstances that allowed for our own existence and experiences.

I'm most grateful to God because as time goes on I experience Him as Providence, the guiding light that wove my desires, experiences, needs and graces into an interlocking whole, where what was needed is usually met and what was lacking is usually provided for. It's hope that things will ultimately be okay and, eventually, reconciled. If not here, than certainly in there hereafter.

Supertzar: Black Sabbath as Both Comfort Food and Friend

Black Sabbath's Supertzar is an instrumental on their Sabotage album. I was probably 14 when I first heard it and it sounded like something on Lawrence Welk's show. It was really dark and weirdly triumphant.

Sabotage was one of the first Black Sabbath albums I bought. The image on the album cover was completely washed out but I got it because it was like $8 on CD compared with its $15 cleaner looking alternative.

I later found out the reason for that. Black Sabbath had signed one of the worst record contracts imaginable and that allowed their management to issue cheaper versions with a mixed up track order that sounded really bad. I was used to the album ending with Am I Going Insane (Radio) but, truthfully, The Writ was the last track. I later realized that if a Black Sabbath album was released under the "Dorchester Holding" that it was bogus and probably didn't help Tony Iommi pay the Tony Martins of the world who got Rockstar'd into singing for the world's best band remembered for their worst singles.

My best friend and neighbor at the time was really into bodybuilding and competed while we were still freshmen in high school. He needed music and the music we listened to together was really weird (The Iron Eagle soundtrack, Life of Agony, and Garth Brooks were interchangeable). I suggested he use Supertzar and, even though he didn't use it and most likely doesn't remember it, I still think Supertzar was the perfect choice for expressing Wagnerian grandeur.

When I get bummed out, I listen to Black Sabbath. In the last few years its been back and forth between Volume 4 and Master of Reality but, truthfully, any of those first eight albums are a comfort.

Whatever they stumbled into from 1970 to 1978, I'm grateful. They apparently didn't realize that they made some of the world's most special music over the course of eight long playing records (Live at Last doesn't count among their album releases but should). Over the years they've consistently avoided the best songs for live shows and some of the best stuff that they do play are played wrong, as though they were a bad metal band.

Black Sabbath is not a metal band. They were a mediocre jazz and blues band who had to turn up loud so the audiences couldn't ignore them and translated meandering jams into something total and absolute.

There are plenty of books that are meant to teach you how to be rich and successful but they don't always get it. There's some kinds of genius that are just stumbled into. Black Sabbath stumbled better than anyone.