A Response to “This Christmas Day”

[Below you will find a very well-written and thoughtful response to my post "This Christmas Day" by a close friend of mine, Emily Rains. After reading it, I asked Emily if I could post it here, and she gladly agreed. Shortly after posting this, I will post my response above. What you see below is her response in its entirety, minus slight edits to her citation (since my blog does not support footnotes). Any errors in citation are mine. I have always desired this blog to be a dialogue, and I am incredibly grateful to Emily for sharing her thoughts.]

Christmas. Christ Mass. Saturnalia. The birthday of Mithra. Jolly old St. Nick? It certainly doesn’t seem we have added much to the rich traditions surrounding the 25th of December. But though it is, indeed, highly unlikely that Jesus was born on this day, history and more importantly, the church has established this day to honor his birth, whenever it occurred. And that cloud of uncertainty in no way diminishes the hope we receive on account of that event. But as you argued, Drew, this story of a beginning is not complete with out the end. For in the end, the significance of the beginning is understood. If there had been no Good Friday, and no Easter, there would be no Christmas Day, for there would be nothing to celebrate. But Christ did die and rise again and so we celebrate, the day of his birth. Anyone who sees God’s hand in this event is compelled to look beyond the consumerism and religious triteness to seek what God was communicating in Christ’s birth and life and death. And thus, not only is the Christmas story not complete without the Passion story, the real beginning to the whole story came much, much earlier.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” (Ge 1:1). And so begins the story. “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork,” (Ps. 19:1). And now the story is complete. We have the craftsman and his creation, the artist and his masterpiece, the man and his lover. The story might have ended there. But it didn’t. The Storyteller just kept telling and the heavens grew silent and listened. And God spoke man out of the earth, and in a flourish of creative extravagance the Storyteller gave this creature the opportunity to communicate with Him. The same voice that said, “Let there be light” spoke to the man and man understood. And man spoke to God and knew he was understood. God gave the man honor and distinction among his creation and a mandate to rule and subdue the creation (Ge. 1:27,28). So man stood in a relationship of beautiful communion with God, his maker, and the world, his fellow creation and God-given home. And it was good.

The history of man continued but it was no longer good. Man rebelled and destroyed the natural harmony of the creation and rent his perfect relationship with God. But God did not abandon man nor wipe out his creation. “For his steadfast love endures forever,” (Ps 136:1). God continued to interact with his creation, with mankind, and reveal himself to man. He spoke to Abram, who lived in Ur and called him out into the wilderness and promised him a son and descendents who would out number the stars (Ge 12:1, 2). Three strangers came upon Abram one day at his tents and Abram extended his hospitality to them. This unannounced guest was none other than God himself and over dinner he repeated this promise of a son (Ge 18:1-10). God? Visiting a man at a tent? Eating a meal? Promising a son? The Storyteller must have been really enjoying this moment, to be in his story, a fantastical embellishment to an already improbable storyline. But it just gets better. God is on his way to Sodom and Gomorrah to destroy them for their great sin. And a short time later, after removing Lot and his daughters from the doomed towns, God destroys the town with fire and sulpher leaving barren ground behind (Ge 19:23-26). This God of creation and amazing promises and cruel destruction brings life out of dead bodies and Isaac is born to Sarah and Abraham (Ge 21:1,2). But then comes the crisis and the point of decision. All creation holds its breath as the God of life and death demands the life of the promised son. In a testimony that speaks as powerfully today as it did when recited by the ancient Hebrews, Abraham obeyed and prepared to sacrifice his only, promised son of his old age to the God who had called him out of Ur and into the wilderness, walked and talked with him, blessed him and tested him. But in a dramatic twist echoing the eternal theme of redemption, God intervened before the fatal stroke and a ram was killed in Isaac’s stead (Ge. 22:1-19). What a story! What a Storyteller!

Abraham’s grandson must have known the stories of his grandfather’s eventful life and powerful God. But none of those stories prepared him for the night he slept under the stars, with only a stone for a pillow and estranged from family and home. For as he slept he dreamt he saw a ladder ascending up into heaven and God, the Lord stood at the top of it and he said, “I am the Lord, God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac,” (Ge. 28:13). God promised Jacob that he would bless him and be with him and bring him back again to his homeland (Ge 28:1-22). Once again the Storyteller reached in to his own story and spoke to his creature. And as always, it was a soul-shaking experience. Jacob, whether he had taken his father’s God seriously in the past, now stood in humble awe of him, recognizing the authority of his maker to do what he wills in the affairs of man. He saw that this God had the power to create and to destroy, and to him was due honor, fear and humble obedience.

As the story continued to be told, there were many men who honored God. They understood his authority over man and if perhaps they did not understand Him, they knew that theirs was to fear and to trust this great God of their fathers. David, the shepherd, warrior, king and poet, recognized the fearsomeness of the God who created him, and all the world, who brought the plans of the nations to naught, who saw all mankind and knew all their deeds. This God was the only true hope available to man. All other hope, in kings and horses and idols and even in one’s self, were vain. Only God could save (Ps 33: 1-19). And in light of all that David knew about his God, he concluded, “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you,” (Ps 33:20-22).

The story continued, Christ came and died and rose again. Men from around the known world acknowledged God and Christ his son and gave God the same awe-inspired fear and honor and obedience that had characterized the people of God from the beginning of the story. For God was no simpler, nor any safer, after the coming of the promised son. If possible, he was more enigmatic than ever. For now, the nation of Israel was set aside for a time while God called all men unto himself in the church. Paul felt the power of this mystery and the grandeur of the Storyteller behind it and burst forth in adoration and honor. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has know the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodes as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship,” (Ro 11:33-12:1). What other response can there be to a holy and all-powerful God, to whom we owe our lives, our world and without whose communication our world and existence would not hold together in a functional and cohesive whole?

This is the God who holds our lives in his hands today and who knows our hearts and our deeds. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is still the Holy One of Israel. He has not changed. And thus man is faced with a choice. He can respond in humble acknowledgement of the majesty of his maker, or he can ignore the burning bush and make his own god out of wood or stone, or money, or things, or people, or words. The challenge is being honest about what you are doing. In recognizing when you are being humble before God and when you are only being humble before man. I know you to be a very humble man, Drew. You are careful to avoid pushing your claims about the world on others, careful to avoid a worldview that tramples on the claims of others. You are self-effacing and open about the deficiencies of your beliefs and claims. In your post, you repeatedly deny any claim to literal truth in your retelling of the story of Jesus. But your attempt to be humble only serves to mask an intrinsic arrogance: the arrogance to make your own god and tell your own story. This arrogance lies hidden throughout much of your story as you cover the safe and unthreatening parts of God’s story. But it still springs to the surface when you arrive at the crux of the story: the crucifixion. You take God’s story into your own hands and rip out its guts. As you write, “there was no magical vindication in Christ’s death (or anyone else’s death) on the cross. No substitutionary atonement. Any God that needs to be appeased for the sin of the world by death (of any sort) is no God. No one (including God) did anything to vindicate Christ’s death. There was no magic in the moment, only tragedy. Christ’s death was like all the others, totally unremarkable and absolutely tragic.” And their stands your idol. You have taken the knife into your own hand and made yourself a graven image. You have been faced with the power of God and his story and you have defaced it. You have had the arrogance to tell God who he is and what he wrote.

What ever this self-made religion may be, it does not honor the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of David, and of Paul. They knew and worshipped a God who was bigger than any of their stories, who was bigger than any of their constructs, who wrote the terms and who demanded the consequences. They knew from experience that God never fit in any box you tried to make and that just when you thought you had him figured out, he surprised you. Theirs was a God who created worlds and created man, who thundered out of heavens and joined Abraham for a dinner, who demanded the life of a promised son and promised his own. A God who knows each sparrow and in whose hand the nations are but a tool. A God who chooses men and nations but who is impartial. A God who burns in almighty hatred of sin and yet His mercy endures forever. A God who created life and ordered death. A God who is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:21). The “I am who I am,” (Ex. 3:14). To a God like this, how do godly men respond? They respond like Abraham with humble trust and meek obedience. They respond like Jacob with reverential awe. They respond like David with a cup running over and a testimony before the congregation. Humility is undeniably a part of this response. Recognizing that God has written the rules, he has written the story and He has written us. There is nothing we can do to change the rules. The difficulty lies only in coming to know our God and to understand his rules and this most important pursuit has taken the human race several millennia, and we have not yet exhausted the task. But this pursuit must be governed by humility and honor toward God and cannot ever become the art of God construction. For only idols are constructed.

We simply must come to terms with who God is as we experience him ourselves and reflect on the experiences of others. It is futile to deny the testimony of this experience and say that such a God is not worthy to be a God. Such words are like the slap of an angry infant on his father’s face. It changes nothing about the nature of God and it only underlines the frailty of man in relation to God. Perhaps it would be more accurate to draw a picture of a mighty warrior holding a hollering infant in his firm grasp, his mother left without breath, eyes glued to her child. The infant, seemingly oblivious of the possible consequence, vents his fury on the face of his captor. It is futile; it would be laughable if it were not for the fate of the child trembling in the balance. In that moment, the infant’s protestations against the one who can kill or save him are more than futile; they are dangerously condemning. And although our God has a love for his creatures that is not captured in this picture, he is even more powerful in relation to us and holds our fate even more utterly in his hands.

If this God makes you uncomfortable, Drew, then you have truly seen him as he is. For he does not condescend to fit our guidelines, he soars above and beyond the mores and bounds of this created world and asserts his infinite transcendence in our lives. It is hardly surprising that when he acts, we are left shaking in our shoes and scratching our heads. God IS. We simply have to deal with that fact.

And if you don’t like the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, if you hold fast to your assertion that a God like this is not one you can respect, then go, meet God face to face. Challenge the Author of History with your objections. Demand that the Father of the stars defend his intentions. Tell the one who can kill both the body and the soul what the terms ought to be.
And although there may be no voice out of the whirlwind, you will find that the answer hasn’t changed much since Job demanded justice from God.

A Modal World

In my last post, we were presented with three rather clear problems. Since I feel all the three problems are interrelated, I will be story-telling over the next several posts about all three problems, shifting from problem to problem. This is because none of my individual posts will claim to definitively solve any of the problems by themselves. Instead, each post will attempt to give some more credibility to my stance.

In order to make such credibility more clear, however, let us consider our options in more clear detail. Most of the arguments I have deployed up to this point have attempted not just to give a positive argument for my potentialist approach, but it has constantly been in the context of what other possible stances are possible and not possible. Since the very beginning of my theological attempts on this blog, I have rested my case in part on a strong emotivism - all of our knowledge claims rest upon our values/ethics. I have also argued that once we accept this claim, our values and ethics are clearly without any foundation. One is free to disagree with either of these claims (obviously, I realize that the first claim is more controversial than the second). In our modern scientific world, many would agree with me that ethics/values are foundationless. However, that all of our "knowledge" including descriptive statements are driven at heart by our values and ethics seems counter-intuitive to our scientific sensibilities. After all, what does my statement "the cat is on the mat" have to do with my ethical values?

However, it is critical that I establish that we have good reasons for believing such is the case. Early on, I presented several arguments that ethical primacy was indeed true (such as the possible world where descriptive knowledge of the "world" led to an increased likelihood of ethically wrong actions). However, we will need to revisit my argument for ethical primacy again and again since it presents us with the problem my story has brought us to.

Our story telling has brought us to the point of rejecting any form of moral realism. Ultimately, we are left with a choice, an either/or choice (in the spirit of Kierkegaard). We can choose to tell an aesthetic-ethical story with our conscious awareness that any such story has no foundation. To put it more simply, we can make the gesture against the void. Or we can give into meaningless, into nihilism. I want to stand with the first possibility. What kind of story can we build upon the void, upon a ghost? Of course, my dilemma proves to be false if there truly are other possibilities. To those that feel that there are other possibilities, clearly my gesture is on the brink of nihilism, grasping toward a ghost. Now that the possibility of this dilemma has been presented, however, let us put aside for the moment whether the dilemma is true.

If the dilemma is true, ultimately, it is an unrealizable burden to give an unarguable case why someone should end up on one side of the void (or the other). After all, if our ethics are without foundation, even our choice of standing against the void (or within it) holds no grounds. As Canada Bill Jones said once "I know it's crooked. But it is the only game in town." However, ultimately, if we have to roll the dice, what should we bet on? What story would we tell?

After all, the guides we have discovered thus far have left us with a fairly stark ethical system. To some degree our ethical choices are limited by the dialogue between our locality and our envisioned potential. On the other hand, we do have freedom and we do have choice. We envision multiple possibilities, multiple potentials, in each moment. How can we choose in the face of the void?

Since several posts ago I rejected the realism/idealism distinction, we have made some space within our ethical system that typically does not exist. Traditionally, ethics does function in the modal sense, but only in the should/could/ought sense. What should I do? What could I do? What ought I to do? But because ethics is primary, whether it has a foundation or not, would it not make sense to ask one more modal question? What would I do? What would I say? Or ultimately, what would the ideal story be? In a sense, we have the question of u-topia on our hands, the perfect place - but not a perfect place, but instead a perfect story. What would I will my story to be (apart from constraints)? After all, in a foundationless world, the only constraints are our vision and our locality. Otherwise, the sky is the limit. So what would we tell?

Utopias are criticized a lot for being idealistic and having nothing to do with our world, the place and time we live in right now, the locality that surrounds us. However, what if utopia stories were grounded in the moment we live in? If utopia stories are stories of potential we see, and potential is born of the moment that surrounds us, utopia stories are deeply realistic. Utopias are born of and serve the moment. We should not limit ourselves by false "materialistic" limits. Instead, we are free to allow our ethics to pull us forward. What world would we act(ualize) apart from constraints? "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall."

So what does the recognition of modality give us? Perhaps it gives us some weight for standing against the void, for remaining on the brink of nihilism instead of within it. If we were to tell any story born from our moment, would it really be a story of purposelessness? meaninglessness? of the void and nothing else? If we are to be haunted, would we not still will ourselves to live? to love? to value? And while we walk within the moment, and we struggle within undecidability, with a potential overload, should we not ask what we would do?

The Birth of Potential

With much of the unstable foundation set, perhaps it is the right time to address the drive behind my project more directly. This post will attempt to pull several threads together and hopefully will present some new particulars as well. Welcome to a world of possibility (although perhaps not potential!).

So far the narrative threads we have followed have attempted to show that 1) our foundation is our values 2) our values have no foundation, and as such are incredibly unstable 3) our values are incarnated and informed by our locality (in the broad location/time sense of the word 4) our values are envisioned as the potential in each moment (contained within all the possibilities we also envision) 5) potential is on the future-side of each moment, as potential is what pulls us forward, what calls us to act(ualize).

This provides us with an fascinating image. While temporality (change from moment to moment) is a given, let us focus in on a particular locality, which we will call a moment. Recall that each locality is not simply location/time but also the unique perspective given from the particular sentience within that locality (which we might call the ghost of an individual). In other words, the moment is inseparable from the ghost (of the individual). There is always perspective within the moment.

Now, let us consider what the moment consists of. On one hand, we have the "past" end of the moment, i.e. the context/locality of the moment. A traditionalist would claim here that the "past" end of the moment is made up of "what is" leading into the moment, or in other words, the "being" of the moment. However, now that we have rejected the prominence of "being" it would be wiser to recognize that the "past" end of the moment is a flow of non-being and being, of what-is and what-is-not (since neither is reducible to other). This interchange between what-is and what-is-not in turn forms what I have referred to as our "locality-" the unique flux of non-being and being we all (as particular ghosts) live within.

In turn, as we continue to move from the "past" end of the moment to the "future" end of the moment, we discover that the locality in every moment (the "past") informs what possibilities and potential we see. If a kid is not about to be run over in the street, I cannot envision nor actualize saving a child from being run over in the street. It is also this forward-moving element of the moment which helps shape our ever-developing values. Consider that in each moment a "future" becomes a "past" for the next moment, and through this movement, we experience. Those experiences in turn shape our values, gradually changing what we value. Experiences certainly are not a foundation for what we value, but they certainly create/mold/form our values. Needless to say, because of this, as our constant pool of experience shifts, so too do our values shift.

This is not a particularly controversial view of the moment (past-to-future). However, we have also discovered that the "future" end informs how we see the past. That which we envision, grounded on our values, that remains to be actualized (potential) is the "future" end of the moment because it does not "exist" in the strictest sense of the word yet in each present moment - potential awaits act(ualization). The potential we envision may or may not be act(ualized) in the moment or not, and yet regardless it is the future we see at any given moment (and isn't that exactly what the future is... the subjective future?). Potential, as the "future" end of the moment isn't simply informed by the past end of the moment (our locality) for it also informs our locality. As was pointed out previously, our values shape how we see the world. Our potential informs our surroundings in each given moment. As such, there is also a counterintuitive part of each moment that moves from future-to-past. As an image, an easy way to imagine the flow of each moment, both future-to-past and past-to-future is a figure eight - the moment itself is the point where both circles of the eight intersect, and yet, there are two lines leaving the point in each direction - toward the future, away from the future, toward the past, and away from the past.

One of the reasons I really like the image of a figure-eight is that it presents us with a picture of the moment apart from many of the common images. Each moment is, in a sense, a self-contained entity, a past/future instant that flows within itself. There is no sense of progress (since the moment flows within itself in a circular fashion, not as a line off in some direction). Constant progress simply does not make sense here - as long as our values shift, our definition of progress will shift as well, and as such become nonsensical. We can (and should) act toward our envisioned potential, but any actualized potential will become a locality for the next moment, a past that will both help to shape the potential in the next moment and vanish as time passes as well. The thing about the past is that it disappears. Even ghosts cannot persist.

A number of new avenues now present themselves. Consider the possibility that the potential we envision in each moment might overlap a great deal with god-language. What might it mean to talk about God as potential?

Or, consider the possibility of ethics in a momentary world. What motivation do we have for acting toward our potential if there is no such thing as persistence? If everything eventually fades away, washes out, can we still find the drive to be Sisyphus and push uphill? Should we?

Or consider our plurality of values. Don't we envision multiple potentials in each moment? How should we decide which to move toward, which to act(ualize) if our values have no foundation? Is there room in a momentary theology for more than a rigid determinism, albeit a two-way determinism? If we cannot select between our envisioned potentials in each moment, isn't an ethics of choice impossible? And if we have freedom within the moment, how can we possibly choose between potentials with no foundation?

These are the three questions that I will hope to wrestle with over the next month or so. Eventually, I hope to present stories for each problem. Mixed stories of answers and questions. Ghostly stories - stories that have a call toward form. Ultimately, stories, potential, and we, ourselves, all have that ghostly vocation before us - a volition toward act(ualization). A ghost toward haunting.

Nothingness

Heidegger once made the astute observation that the history of western metaphysics could be defined by the search for being. What does it mean to be? Much could be said why such a question has defined western history. In part, the primacy of being within the west probably rests upon the popularity of Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle (instead of Heraclitus). With that triad, the western world chose being. Certainly, Parmenides' arguments against the existence of nothingness (or voids) drastically influenced how the concept of nothingness is viewed in the west. While some later Greek philosophers would be less radical, and would not deny the existence of nothingness, they would often argue that not-being was merely derived from being. Nothingness is merely the absence of being. Cold is absence of heat, etc.

Of course, this isn't the full story. After all, western metaphysics is not just Greek, for the influx of Judeo-Christianian worldviews from 50-500 CE significantly altered how the west considered metaphysical questions. While associations between ethics and being had already been made in Plato and Aristotle, Augustine would take a step further by creating an ethics of being, ontological ethics. Good was ontos, and evil was merely the absence of good. A new approach to theodicy was born - the derivative nature of evil would allow for God not to be guilty of it, since God was completely presence, completely being. The ontological God was good because He [sic] was pure being. Ontotheology would go far beyond Augustine. Tillich's God as the ground of being would be the crowning achievement of ontotheology.

Of course, told from a position of power, the God of being is comforting. Consider my claim that God-language and value-language are inseparable. When we talk about (our) God(s) we are also asserting our values as well. Since our values are incarnated in times and places, potential is born from within the moment we live in. We wish to act(ualize) that potential in our world. Those who have power typically want to preserve that power. The powerful wish to preserve what-is (ontos, being). It is not enough that the powerful have power in a particular moment - what-is must be preserved so that power is preserved. Being is valued because being and power are inseparable, and for the powerful that is a blessing. It, of course, follows that an empowered individual's (or community's) myths would assert the value of being over everything else. Being must be preserved, must live beyond the moment.

The opposite of being, what-is-not, nothingness, ta me onta, must be devalued in order to affirm the value of being. What better way to assert such a hierarchy than to associate being, God and goodness with each other, and to associate nothingness and evil with each other? To the powerful, the power structure must be preserved. It comes as no surprise that ontotheologians typically distrust change - for change is a destruction of the current ontos, of presence. Parmenides' view against the existence of change coexist with his view against the existence of nothingess. Holding on to ontotheology has effects that travel well beyond being, power, and change, however.

John Caputo does a masterful job at illustrating how nothingness language often is associated with the oppressed, the fringe, the "nuisances and nobodies" as Crossan so eloquently put it. If the powerful hold the power of being in their hands, hearts and minds, the powerless become nothing, those-who-are-not, the ta me onta - after all, what does it matter if the powerful need to oppress the nobodies in order to preserve being? Nothingness holds no value to ontotheologians, since it is merely devoid of value, of goodness. The problem with nothingness, according to the ontotheologian, is that it holds no being. What-is is clearly good for everyone. Those who suffer simply must be mistaken.

One of the interesting byproducts of the narrative threads we have followed thus far, is that ontotheology has no foundation. Of course, the dominant threads within western metaphysics that have effected us all make such a statement seem contradictory - how could being not be sturdy? How could being be unstable?

If, however, being-language is value-language, the veil has been removed. Being is unstable as nothingness is. Our values rest upon uncertain, unstable ground, regardless of what we value. We should resist the temptation to claim that being-language is more "real" while language that does not deal with being is "imaginary." Rather than attempt to deceive ourselves with illusions of "real" stories and "fake" stories, perhaps it would be better to evaluate whether we can be proud of our stories, regardless of whatever reality they rest upon.

If all of this has dis-stabilized the priority of being, perhaps we should reject the derivative notion of nothingness. Much of the world is not as it should be - and ontological language misses such nuance. Power often should not be perpetuated endlessly, nor should it often be legitimized.

So what, then is nothingness as concerns humans? What if reality was a matter of what-is and what-is-not, in play? Neither derivative from the other, with nothingness and being making up the mixture of the world we live in. Up to this point, I have been needlessly deceptive when I speak of localities as the being and time we live in. The localities we live in that shape our envisioned potential are not just a matter of being and time - equally the localities we live in are shaped by what-is-not, of the nothingness that surrounds us. This nothingness is not merely an absence of being - the void is a fundamental part of reality. We would do well to remember that what-is-not, who-is-not, ta me onta plays an equal (if not more important) role in creating the potential we see in the world. We would do well to remember that when we act(ualize) toward our envisioned potential, we affirm just as much about what-is-not, as what-is. We would do well to remember that we live in one world - a world of nothingness and being. Before we say "I am," perhaps we should say "I am not." Or perhaps we should say "I see."

Identity: "We are the potential we see in the world"

With the rather complex network of questions revealed that hint towards the nature of identity and the self, perhaps we can move within our questions to discover hints toward answers. After all, in the beginning, I promised positive theology, and as much as questions are a critical part of the search here, they are not the only critical part. Momentary theopoetics is not a pleasant sounding, broad skepticism. At least, I hope it is not.

After so many unstabilities had been revealed within the nature of the self, one might be tempted to give up on the search completely. It is tempting to simply claim that there must be no self, no individuality, and be done with the search completely. We grow tired of the haunting. We grow tired of questions with incomplete answers.

However, if these narrative threads held up so far have any tension in them at all, they will refuse to snap under such weight, under such unstabilities. After all, if ghostly values are all we have to build upon, if we give up on our narrative threads established thus far, it is hard to imagine what will be holding back the tides of nihilism, the darkness of the void.

So if we don't give up on the search for the individual, what has our hunt revealed to us thus far? Within the mutuality shared between the questions "who are you?" and "what do you want?" it has been revealed that, like what we eat, we are what we value. As such, it becomes quite clear that if we give up on the search for us as individuals, we give up our values (and nihilism awaits). There is an important distinction in Buddhism to note here: Zen Buddhists often claim the self is empty (but they rarely claim that it is nothing). Even as we have revealed the unstable, fluxing nature of the self, the "empty" nature of the self, so to speak (as there is nothing "essential" to the self) the self is not nothing. If we assert the self is nothing, our values our nothing. (Although it is important to note here that nothingness, the typically understood opposite of being, of actuality has a critical role to play here. Too often nothingness as a concept has taken a back seat to being. Think Plato. Or Augustine. Or Aquinas. Or Tillich. Or even Heidegger. Such a privileging of being has resulted in grave consequences. More on that later.).

The interesting tie between our values and who we are extends even further than merely just drawing a line between us and nihilism. As was mentioned before, our values are pluralistic (that is they expose us to multiple, contradictory desires). We never have a singular desire that is made up of all our values united toward one cause. An interesting product of this is we see multiple possibilities, we envision multiple (valued) futures in each moment. For example, if I hold two loved individuals by each hand on the edge of a cliff side, I can envision two future possibilities, one in which I pull up one, another in which I save the other. Emphasis must be stressed on the fact that our values open up certain possibilities to us - after all, if I didn't value either person on the cliff side, an action to save either of them would become meaningless. As such, it becomes clear that our meaning, our values are not (at least not completely) exterior to us. The statement "I envision such-and-such as possible" cannot be stated without the "I," or the locality expressed with the verb "envision." After all, we see from a particular focal point.

Of course, there is an exterior interaction with our values that creates our possibilities as well. For example, if I am not at a cliff side with two loved ones the statement "I envision the possibility of saving such-and-such loved one from falling off the cliff," doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Possibilities are born within our local moment, but find focus within our individuality. And each focus is naturally different, since, each local moment (time, location, past experiences, etc) is different for each individuality. One individual on a cliff side will see different possibilities than another individual.

(At this point, it is important to note a critical part of momentary possibility that has been left unsaid, and will probably remain mostly hidden for a while. The kind of possibility that is critical here is identity possibility, i.e. envisioned possibility. In other words, what is possible is only what I can see as "possible" because of my locality, my values, my experiences, etc. However, in order to preserve the undecidability, and the possibility of possibility there also must be possibility contained within the exterior world, i.e. chance must exist even in our world apart from humans. Here I stand with the majority of quantum physicists that at the heart of physical existence lies a certain amount of chance, of undecidability on the quantum level. As such, all the possibilities we envision are possibly actualized (even if such an event is incredibly unlikely), even as there are always possibilities that are possible in the world apart from our envisioning them. For example, perhaps there is a possibility in the "world" that if I drop my two loved ones both will magically appear behind me safe and sound. However, if I have not encountered experiences that will increase my likelihood of believing such an occurrence will happen, I will probably not envision it as a possibility even though in the "world" it is a possibility to happen. Hence why we can be surprised all the time. That said, I am fairly skeptical of a self/world distinction and will have some words about such a topic at a later point. For now, this footnote on chance and possibility at two levels will have to function).

Of course, on the subjective level, our values will pull us to prefer certain possibilities in a given moment. In a more clear cut case, if I merely like one individual on the cliff side and love the other, I'll probably value saving the second individual more. Here we have discovered the slippage between could and should, between possibility and potential. My values and my own subjectivity determine what I see as possible within my local moment, within my identity, and yet even within those possibilities, my values and my own subjectivity pull me even further into my preferred actualities, my potential. Ethics is revealed as not only our guide for what we believe we should do, but also what we could do. Of course as the sands that we stand upon shift, so too do we change, and the should/coulds we see, the potential/possibilities we envision shift as well. A possible answer to our identity question has (re)presented itself - "We are the potential we see in the world." That potential (and the possibilities behind it) are ghostly, not actually yet in existence, simply on the brink of our minds. And yet that brink is who we are, who we become. Before we give up on the search for the self and/or our values, we would do well to remember that. And as we evaluate ourselves, we must ask - are we proud of what we see?

Identity: Who are you? What do you want?

As my theophilosophy has progressed, it has not pretended to be comprehensive. While comprehensiveness is a goal of mine here, it will clearly remain an unreachable goal. However, one of the critical nexuses for the network I am constructing has yet to even be hinted at. Who are these creatures that hold values? What does it mean to say "I am"?

One of the disastrous problems for much of existentialism and postmodern philosophy/theology is that it centers the foundation upon the individual. As though reaching back toward Descartes, it is often assumed that the individual, at least, can be assumed and be taken as common and obvious truth. The individual is sacrosanct.

However, what is the individual? Do individuals have essences that are distinct and self-foundational? Is there such a thing as an independent individual? Process Philosophy (as well as a lot of New Age philosophy) has pressed the importance of our relationships for who we are as individuals. Ask yourself who you are, and you will find yourself describing yourself in relationships (a son, a friend, a philosopher, etc.) It is difficult to find a firm foundation for the "I" as individual. Individualism is primarily a product of the Enlightenment and the birth of capitalism - before the notion of the free market, the notion of just self-interest made little sense. There was no such thing as self-interest, no such thing as a foundational end for any particular individual apart from relationship. Those very relationships destabilize any self-foundation. After all, our relationships are always changing, always in flux. We are never the same.

Of course, prior to the Enlightenment, philosophers had attempted to give a derivative notion to the self based off of other foundational concepts. Perhaps the most famous is Aristotle's attempt to derive the nature of the individual from the nature of humankind as a whole. One of the severe problems with Aristotle's biology is that it assumed a given teleology, a given end, a given goal for humans as a species. To Aristotle, humans had a nature that was a distinct part of their biological essence which, if unimpeded, would lead them in the direction of the good. What it meant to be an individual was to be a part of the human species as it sought its biological end. That foundational teleology would be the source of the soul, the source of the individual.

Despite a recent disinterring of Aristotle's ethics, Aristotle's ethics and biology were rightly rejected. Most of the reasons for this have already been implicitly laid out in prior posts. While we may reach for a unitary whole, a unitary value, as humans we are a pluralistic jumble of contradictory values. Our values do not pull us toward one singular end. Our values change all the time. While tragedy and hope might be rightly described as being part of the human condition, they do not make a unitary whole. After all, our tragedies and hopes are nothing if they hold nothing - my hope matters because I hope about certain ends, that I hope about an actualization and my tragedy matters because my values remain unfulfilled (or broken). Just as we cannot find foundational meaning for the individual in individuality itself, we cannot derive meaning for the individual from a concept like humankind.

Which, of course, brings us back to the original question - who am I? Perhaps, after recognizing the insight of process philosophy, we should first rephrase the question - who do I become? We are nothing apart from the locality we exist in, after all, since we are (at least in part) relationships. The localities we exist in, that we are part of, are defined by change. We stand on shifting sands, looking out into blinding dust storms. Following such - who do I become - is also, in part - where am I (or where do I go?) - and - when am I (or when do I become?).

Proceeding from the insights about localities and potential from previous posts, it has become clear that our location is inseparable from the potential we envision. The teleology we have, the potential we see, the values we have, are all part of where and when we are/become. Because of this, it is impossible to ask our previous questions without asking - what do I want? For what we desire and value has been presented as our unstable foundation, and while it might be unstable, it has become clear that we simply cannot exist apart from our values. Contra Aristotle, our values, our teleology might have no foundation, might be completely unstable, but ultimately it is all we have. We live upon ethics.

Of course, asking all these questions brings us to an important precipice. If the questions "Who are you?" and "What do you want" are inseparable, the portrait we must paint of identity must be broader than any flat painting. I am reminded of a contrast in the science fiction show "Babylon 5." Through out the show, two powerful, godlike alien species ask their defining questions to different characters in the show. The Vorlons, the paragons of order ask "Who are you?" The Shadows, the agents of chaos ask "What do you want?" The questions are designed to reveal the essence of each character, to help the viewer discover what the identity, the role of each character is on the show. The show clearly favors the question "who are you?" as the defining question of identity and value, and echoes traditional sentiments from the Enlightenment, through Existentialism to Postmodernism (and beyond). Western history can be seen as the eternal return, the eternal acting/asking of the question "who are you?" If there is any truth in what has been presented up to this point, however, that question has been needlessly shallow. Living behind the Vorlon in each of us is a Shadow - "what do you want?" Living behind our identity is a ghost. Vorlons and Shadows reveals themselves to be two sides of the same coin. A coin with no substance.

Babylon 5 ends with a character (Lorien) asking Sheridan four questions. Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? Where are you going? If we are to find any value in individuality, we will find it here, in pluralistic/unitary/inseperable questions like these. The questions are not rhetorical, and yet they have no answer. We are ghosts living with ghostly values. Whatever we are, we are haunted. Let us live in that haunting.

This Christmas Day

One could say that much of what has occurred below has been an interesting thought experiment up to this point and nothing more. After all, a lot of it is incredibly speculative - what does it actually have to do with theology? Does it have anything to do with the "real" world? On one hand, hopefully my comments about realism/idealism have at least hinted about what I think about "realism" talk. However, on the other hand, Christmas is about Christ becoming human, according to traditional Christianity, right? An incarnation, a materialization of divinity, an image of God finding substance. On this day, amidst rabid consumerism and wide-spread depression, I'm not sure this is what a traditional Christian interpretation of the incarnation was supposed to be. Certainly, this is a form of materialism, of depressed values meeting flesh, but it is not an image of God finding substance. Or perhaps we are revealing who our real God(s) are.

On this day, as we celebrate the traditional day of Christ's birth, ironies abound. We celebrate a birth on a day it almost certainly did not happen. We pay homage to our religious symbols even while our symbolized values lie elsewhere (capitalism? nationalism? individualism?). Allow such ironies to stretch our literalism on this story just a bit. If Jesus was not born on December 25th, perhaps there is room for more threads to the story. Perhaps there is space to (re)tell the story. After all, haven't we retold the story several times already? For better or worse, Santa Claus was not part of the original story. Allow me to (re)tell a version of this story. I do not claim any more literal authority for this story than any other. This story has some familiar elements to it - a Messiah-prophet was born in the land of Israel, preached and worked miracles amongst the oppressed, took a stand against an Empire and was killed partly because of it. After the Messiah-prophet's death, resurrection. Movements (a plural here is key) spawned to follow this Messiah-prophet. And the world was never the same.

All of this began on one day, in one moment - the tragedy and hope of the world had called out. The world could suffer under an Empire no longer. The ontos prayed for hope. People starved, people died of thirst, people were murdered. An empire stands upon the marginalized. Values were broken. Tragedy abounded. But people could not give up.

I do not pretend to know anything about the Messiah-prophet's birth. Historically, any number of locations and days could have held the Messiah-prophet's birth. Perhaps shepherds were there. Perhaps foreign wise individuals were there. Perhaps it really was in a stable. Historically, I cannot say. But that birth is important - because that birth is a symbol. When we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate a day we do not know, and yet it gives us hope. Hope breaks in on us like an event, we cannot anticipate it (even from the past). The birth of hope is mysterious. This is no weak mystery, a veil to hide behind. This is the kind of mystery that gives hope its character, that gives hope the ability to reach in from the future and build from our tragedy.

All the symbols, however, are inextricably linked. The birth is inseparable from the life, the prophetic work, the miracles, the death and the resurrection. Most (all?) were not aware of the hope given them until after the end (beginning?) of story had been completed. We find meaning only in narrative form - individual symbols and events cannot function apart from a story.

With this network of symbols in mind, let us turn the story on its head. Instead of starting with the "beginning" on Christmas day, let us start with the "end" on Christmas day. My hope is that on Easter I will write about the "beginning" in full form. After all, if a story is tied together, we should find the beginning in the end, and the end in the beginning. But do not mistake - this does not mean that I think Christ was destined to die at his birth-bed. On the contrary - Christ's death only has meaning to me if it was a choice, an undecidable responsibility. As we look for the beginning in the ending, we should keep this radical choice(s) in mind.

The scene is an all too familiar one - Christ on a cross. In many ways, this familiarity has bred complacency. Has the cross become a whitewashed symbol? Perhaps, perhaps not.

The tragedy of the moment was insurmountable. With a life of radical choice(s), Christ had stood for the marginalized, the oppressed, those which-are-not, against structures of power and oppression. Empire stood in the way of the Kingdom of God. The Empire had no compassion, no mercy. With Christ's radical choice(s), the structures of power moved to remove the nuisance. And make no mistake, to a world of empires, Christ and his small band of disciples was a nuisance at best.

One of the problems with the familiar scene of Christ on a cross is that it is always singular. The Empire had no patience for criminals, revolutionaries and nuisances, however, and typically crucified them all, with thousands being crucified in a day being common-place. Christ was one among thousands, one tragedy among many. The tragedy of the moment only increases from this - one lost voice, bound to be forgotten like all the others. A lost voice...

The death would not have been pretty. Crucifixion was brutal enough by itself. However, carrion birds would typically swoop overhead waiting (sometimes) for the moment of death. Burial simply was not allowed. Dogs would wait at the base of the cross ready to feast on the corpse. The Empire was thorough - it would remove all traces of its enemies from this earth. Keep in mind that burial and death rites were incredibly important in ancient societies - to be denied either was seen as pure dishonor and tragedy (think Antigone).

Absent from this death was any magic of any sort. By magic, I do not mean parlor tricks - there was no magical vindication in Christ's death (or anyone else's death) on the cross. No substitutionary atonement. Any God that needs to be appeased for the sin of the world by death (of any sort) is no God. No one (including God) did anything to vindicate Christ's death. There was no magic in the moment, only tragedy. Christ's death was like all the others, totally unremarkable and absolutely tragic.

Can a storyteller stop the story there? Can the narrative end there? No. We must be open to God's in(ter)vention. The story cannot end there because we cannot let it end there. We hope because we must. Christ was resurrected in the gospels because tragedy is no ending. We cannot live in absolute tragedy. Zizek once wrote that if the crucifixion should have taught Christians anything, it is that God does not use magic to save us on the brink of disaster. We only have ourselves, our own act(ualizations). Zizek was only partially right, we have our own act(ualizations) and we cannot pray for magic, but in the end we do have our stories. Or perhaps, I should say that on this Christmas day, in the beginning, we do have our stories. And there our hope lies.

May hope find you all on this Christmas day,
Drew

Value Images: Hope

The last value image I presented was of tragedy. Tragedy has a twin sibling, however, which is always chasing after (and before) it. Where there is tragedy, there is hope. The tragedy of our world gives us a gift - live your life in the imperative. The world is not as it should be. No one's values match what occurs. This is partly the case because of what was discussed last time - our values are always contradictory, and as such we are always pulled in separate directions by our conflicting values. Such contradictory moments are particularly tragic when two (or more) of our most important values crash into each other. The cliff scene is a perfect example of this, although there are countless situations which are of a less artificial nature which happen all the time. Should an American Christian be loyal to his faith or his religion? What should an individual caught in-between family and a loved one do? We simply cannot escape these contradictions.

However, there is another element within our tragic horizons. The world (ontos) changes. Our values simply cannot keep up. This prevents our values matching up with how the world is consistently. An American Marxist's values clearly do not match up with what American politics results in. When our values are not incarnated in reality, we find tragedy. When I value everyone being provided with food, housing and healthcare and those values do not match up with what-is (ontos) I am confronted with tragedy. However, notice that even if someone were to match his values to the world as what-is (ontos), the moment the world changes from those values (which of course will happen in our mutable world) my values will not match up with what-is (ontos) and I will be confronted with tragedy. For those that value what-is, what-is does not persist and we are confronted with tragedy. For those do not value what-is, what-is often does persist and we are confronted with tragedy. What a complicated way of stating that we don't always get what we want! :)

It is important to note a particular byproduct of this view - our values are incarnated in our time, in our locality. The tragedy of our situation will always, to some degree, depend on how our values match up with what-is (ontos). Notice however, that this value-incarnation is driven by our tragedy. When we confront a world where our values do not match what-is (ontos) we are driven by our determination to act towards vindication - praxis. If we do not slip into terror, the tragedy of our present situation drives us to actualize our values. If I value everyone being provided with food, housing and healthcare and those values do not match up with what-is (ontos) I will act towards the act(ualization) of my values. I will hope because I need to hope. I will believe my values are possible because the tragedy of my situation demands that tragedy is not the only essence of reality. Tragedy does not let us give up. We hope because we must. Thus, our values pull us both towards tragedy and hope simultaneously.

Interestingly, this relationship between our values and our tragedy/hope is not monodimensional. Our values shape what our tragic/hopeful situations are, but our tragic/hopeful situations in turn shape our values. After all, our values are nonsensical apart from our moments. What would the statement "I feel it is right to feed the starving" even mean apart from what it means in its locality? However, our values are not simply determined by our context, they are created by our contexts. My past has played a significant role in what I value. It has not determined what I will decide (since, as mentioned in the last post, every decision is undecidable) but it has given birth to what I value. I value family, for example, because of my multitudinous tragic/hopeful experiences of family. It would be otherwise if I had a different locality.

Our particular locality does not simply shape our values, however. In turn with our values, it allows us to see what-is-preferable from what-is (ontos). An act of vision. Let us call such what-is-preferable, potential. Again and again, I will return to this notion of potential. However, for now it is simply important to note that what we see (potential) both informs and is informed by what-is (ontos). This image will become more vivid with time.

Let's notice that a number of traditional interpretations of certain concepts break down at this point. The distinction between realism/idealism breaks down. No matter what our potential is, our potential is both grounded in what-is (ontos) and is also reaching towards the future as an ideal. We all have realistic image-inations. The realism/idealism distinction is a polemical tool generally designed to privilege one's own image-inations over another's. Even when such a distinction is used without an intent to harm, the designation effectively just presents the distance between the two individuals. When someone who identifies themselves as a realist designates someone else as an idealist, what is primarily expressed is a significant gap between not only their envisioned potentials, but also between their localities of what-is (ontos). We have fallen into an individualistic trap if we assume that someone else is somehow detached from reality if their envisioned potential (or locality) is different from ours. We all live in world(s).

The powerful element within the interaction between potential and what-is (ontos) is that every moment is a blend of hope and tragedy. To some degree our potential always remains unfulfilled, and so we hope because we must hope. Tragedy gives us no other choice. The tragedy of a past moment(s) gives us the push to act out of hope in the present moment. We act because we see. We hope because we are presented with images of tragedy. As long as hope and tragedy are united, hope is an active verb. We act because we hope for a better world. We hope because we must.

Value Images: Tragedy

One of the byproducts of living in a pluralistic world of mutual contradictions is that we live in a world of tragedy. Tragedy, unfortunately, is an essential part of our values. If you find this hard to believe, consider this - without our values, tragedy would have little effect on us. One of the very valuable insights of Buddhism is that we suffer because we value things, people, the world and images. Death would not be a tragedy if we did not value life. However, contra traditional Buddhism, detachment is not the solution. What are we without our values?

Tragedy is an essential part of our values (no matter our values) because so many of our values have a powerful claim on being just. However, our values are never unitary and non-contradictory. Walking contradictions, all of us. This mutual contradictory authority of our values inevitably leads us to choosing, from action to action, one value over another. One of the archetypal tragic situations is where one is on a cliff side with two loved ones hanging on the edge by their fingers laced through each of your hands. You don't have the strength to pull both up so you have to choose which person to save. Perhaps the ultimate tragedy is when you don't choose - for all your values and valued suffer, then. Before one thinks that such is a very artificial situation, consider that our lives are filled with such choices, just on a lesser scale. Even a decision on what I will eat today contains a conflict of what foods I like. We usually don't consider such decisions tragic simply because our food values are usually fairly low on our value hierarchy (although I have seen people get upset for not getting chocolate before!).

Part of the tragedy of our values contains what Derrida called the "undecidability" of responsibility. When we have different values, both with effective authority, pulling us in multiple directions, rationality will not save us. There is no "rationally" better option. Our actions contain an element of undecidability. This is not absolutely miserable, though, since our very responsibility depends upon a certain undecidability. If our actions were resolvable in a simple fashion (say like a simple math problem) we would not be human, we would have no responsibility - we would be mechanical beings in a mechanical world. When one has two loved ones hanging on a cliff side, there is no responsible choice, but responsibility calls us to choose. Responsibility calls us to not let go, to not give up in the fact of tragedy. This is why we cannot detach from the world - the very tragedy in our own values demands action. We know tragedy will come from our actions, but the tragedy that precedes us drives us to act towards our values, to build a better world. We cannot give up because tragedy has a hold on us at the cliff side, even as we have a hold on our loved ones. We cannot give up because undecidability forces us to take responsibility for our actions. We are the ones responsible (for tragedy). And yet, our responsibility comes from our tragedy.

We cannot give up our values. We also cannot try to harmonize our values. This was made clear by the role pluralism plays within any value system. So, we must live with the tragedy of our values. We should also not attempt to formalize and hierarchize our values. The single-issue voter is a perfect example of someone who has hierarchized his values - they have sacrificed the considerations of all of their other values for the sake of one value. Consider the issue of abortion. One who identifies themselves as a pro-life voter (or pro-choice voter) all too often is exactly that - a pro-life-voter. The act of voting is inseperable from the value of pro-life (when it comes to abortion). Perhaps the most glaring inconsistancy here is that many pro-life voters are not pro-life (since they are often pro-war or pro-death penalty). However, the fear of such a singular-voting-position is this - the individual has become terrorized by a value, such that the individual is frozen in his stance for the position. Since all our values are without any foundation, the only possible way to shift in our allegiance to certain values is by appeal to other values. For example, one might be able to convince a patriotic christian that their christian values are in conflict with their patriotism (particularly over a certain issue, say, like being pro-war). This ability for the conflicts in our values to be teased out prevents us from living in terror from a singular value, from the gravity of a singularity. This tension prevents us from acting out of that terror, from terrorizing the world with our singularity. For, after all, when we live out of one value, we decieve ourselves. We value too much to pretend that only one thing matters.

Perhaps the greatest terror here, however, is the ability for humans to rationalize against the tragedy of the moment. It is so hard to live in the tragedy of the moment. When I was a child, and I looked upon the motionless body of my mother, I wanted to be any place else. I couldn't live within the tragedy. This was not how the world should be.

Instead of living in the terror of the moment, however, we must live in the tragedy. I remember quite clearly that I remained in the room for an hour or so where my mom died, but not out of my own strength. I had looked into my Dad's eyes, and the mutual tragedy we shared gave us strength to honor the tragedy. We would not give up on a tragic world, a world of tragic relationships. I would not have had the strength to stand against terror if not for my dad in that moment - our relationships are what hold us to stand for the tragedy of the moment instead of the terror of the moment. Our relationships are what reveal to us the multidimensional realities to our values as opposed to the terror of the monolithic value we so often wish to rationalize over the others. After all, sometimes the tragedy of the moment is beyond our control (such as with my mom's death) and sometimes it is of our own creation (when we live within the terror of a monolith). Perhaps, all too often, it is both.

The most frightening element of the way our monolithic terror defines us all too often is not only the ability to rationalize our own singularity, but the way we can place the gravity of that singularity over others as well. When I refuse to recognize the authority of others' values because of my own singularity, I remove their humanity. For we are human because of our ability to value. I deface the other. Terror becomes totalitarianism. This is why we must always be open in our relationships with others. We must allow others to transform our terror into tragedy.

However, as omnipresent as tragedy is in our lives, it is not the final reality. Tragedy won't allow itself to be the final statement. This is one of the differences between tragedy and terror. Terror is self-reflective - terror continues on (without being broken in relationship) in inertial reciprocity. Terror eggs itself on. Tragedy, however, does not allow us to leave it as the final piece in our story. When we are confronted by the tragedy of the moment, we are forced to confront that this is not how the world is supposed to be. We cannot live eternally in the tragedy of the moment. Instead, our will to justice and hope comes from the tragic moment. Confronted with the tragic moment, we cannot reject responsibility. Instead, driven by our values, we must move onwards, into the next moment. We must act into the next moment, driven by the tragedy of our last moment. We cannot give up. Tragedy will not leave us. We should not allow it to leave us. For if the tragedy of the moment leaves us, we will be dominated by our terror. For we must not forget that as we live in our tragedy, our cry for justice will not leave us. Our cries for hope will lead us into the next tragic moment.

Value Images: Pluralism

After my last post, it might seem as though the next step would be to lay out a definition for a "value" and then argue for that definition. Instead, I am going to move in a different direction. I'm going to illustrate a number of verbal images I believe are contained within our value system. Note, however, that unlike a definition, I am not pretending that these verbal images exhaust the meaning of value-language. My next few blog posts will attempt to give a number of these eidos/eikons. This post will begin with pluralism.

Image #1: Our values are pluralistic. I don't mean pluralistic in the weak-relativistic-everything-goes-sense which gets attacked so often. Weak-pluralism is such a tempting straw man for so many public figures and academics to attack. Total relativism certainly has its problems, but I think its critics often have other targets in mind when they attack it. While weak-pluralism is almost certainly a problem (particularly among college students, I have noticed), all too often the diagnosis and solution presented by its critics falters. It is as though an archer aims an arrow at two separate targets, intending to hit both (weak-pluralism and opponents of mono-absolutism) and ends up missing both targets. Later on, it will become clear why these are two separate targets. For the moment, however, this illustrates one of the elements of the kind of pluralism I have in mind.

Pluralism has many features. The first is obvious - many elements. On the world community scale, this multiplicity of values is obvious. However, upon further reflection, it becomes clear that we as individual localities also are made up of a multiplicity of values. Everything from something "abstract" like love to something a little less "abstract" like "Nationalism" to something even more "concrete" like valuing the "desire to eat." I hesitate to separate values along abstract/concrete lines for several reasons, but for now I merely wish to illustrate the point that we, as human beings, are made up of a near infinitude of values. Which brings me to the next aspect of pluralism I'd like to highlight.

All too often the philosophical enterprises have attempted to "reduce" our near-infinitude of values to a few. As valuable as the words "love" or "good" are for example, they often become whitewashed by out attempts to mash our irreducible values into a single whole. Our desire to be made whole may be understandable in the end (as we are clearly broken creatures at least in part) but that very desire ends up doing us a disservice. Obviously, for example, "Patriotism" cannot be reduced to "love" but neither can "altruism" be reduced to "compassion." As theopoets we must affirm that each word has a purpose, each word a surplus of meaning. Each word paints a slightly different picture.

Even without reductionism, we can compare/contrast values through synonymy. In fact, with our near-infinitude of values (imagine, for the moment, that I value typing the letter "l" for the word "letter" in this sentence at the very moment I type it, and one can easily see the absurd amount of values we as human localities contain even moment to moment) in order to function we often have umbrella terms which attempt to encompass many different irreducible values. Sometimes this works with more success, sometimes not. Usually these larger terms function best when we acknowledge their fluid nature and that they only reach partial success at encompassing multiple values.

Part of the fact that these umbrella terms fail at total success is that our values are often contradictory. It is easier to see this on the larger scale of "big" values. We see this in the terms one describes one's self - American Christian related to such and such family, etc. No matter how much some public figures wish us to believe that American patriotism and Christianity are mutually supporting (and non-contradictory) an American Christian is a walking contradiction. The history of "just war" is a perfect example of the tensions created when christian faith is placed within a national context. Whether "just war doctrine" is a wise idea or not it is hard to imagine how one can go from Jesus to war of any kind. Heck, even in our own moment, it is hard to imagine how one can go from praying in church on Sunday to a justified war of any kind. And yet, humans have such an amazing ability to rationalize. We have an amazing ability at ignoring tensions in our values. Part of the role I feel the theopoet/prophet is to play in today's society is teasing out the tensions that live within our values and letting them live in the open. American Nationalism has gathered a serious amount of power while rationalizing faith and other possible checks into its bubble. The best way to denounce an idol is to reveal it as an idol. Let us unveil our other values for what they are - contradictions. Lovely contradictions. Consistency is overrated.

This is not to say that contradictions in our values is a bad thing. For starters, our local horizons of experience are often so confusing that contradictions are unavoidable even if we are aware of them. Unchecked values of any kind are also generally quite destructive - it is amazing how genocide can often be rationalized as an act of love. That is not to say that we should scrap the wonderful power in our best symbols. However, our best values will be made more complete by other contradictory values. I dream of what American patriotism would actually will in the world if Christianity actually stood against some of the present values within American patriotism. What would our Christian faith look like if we let it be informed by (contradictory) dialogue from our other values (even things as simple as our experiences of other religions, etc.). Value conflicts not only prevent us from doing harmful acts, but they also help us to reform and act in beneficial ways as well. With all of this said, I am proud to acknowledge myself as a Buddhist Christian Derridean Theopoet Existentialist Postmodern... (the list could go on for a while) without attempting to reduce any one of these dialoging-values to the other. Each has a valuable part to play. Notice, however, even though this is a clear break from mono-absolutism, we have also taken a step away from relativism. Behind all of this conversation (behind the veil) is a ghost. For by acknowledging that dialogue and value-conflicts are "good" things I have run against the ethical problem all over again. The ghost of ethics haunts on. Ghosts generally haunt for a reason. However, perhaps our ethical ghost has a little more form now... as we live our lives of mutual-contradictions. One more contradiction... a ghost with form. An ethic and an idea.

Pascal's Wagered Values

While I really should not be making a blog post right now (busy, busy, busy) something in one of my philosophy classes today sparked a thought. For my own sanity (and success) it'll probably end up being a short post... we'll see, you never really know with me.

We were talking about Pascal's Wager in my Modern Philosophy class today. For those of you that haven't encountered it, the argument (in one of its many forms) goes like this - if you believe in God you have everything to gain (if you are right), i.e. eternal life, and if you are wrong you won't lose anything (or something finite). If you don't believe in God you have everything to lose and only something finite to gain if you are right. Therefore, a wise individual should believe in God. There are a number of problems with this argument that have already been pointed out by a number of astute individuals (many gods, etc.) but I actually want to use Pascal's Wager here to illustrate something about ethics. We'll call it Pascal's circle.

Pascal created the wager as an aid for believers since he did not believe that one could "prove" God existed by reason. Reason was not sufficient to reach God. Pascal's wager is built upon the deontic realm (i.e. the "ought") as opposed to the realm of fact. What ought we to do/believe? As such, Pascal's Wager is within the ethical domain as opposed to the metaphysical domain (the difference between asking "what is?" and "what ought we to do?"). However, Pascal could not leave his wager as an unsupported foundation - if he had, his wager would have been completely unpersuasive. Why should one be persuaded by Pascal's Wager if his ethical system has no justification?

To make this talk more concrete, consider the parts of the wager itself. If, within my ethical system, I do not view my own life as important to eternalize (or if I don't view the self as important to the ethical domain) then Pascal's Wager holds no merit. Why should I care that I could gain eternal life? Here, Pascal slips a bit on the foundation for his wager. Pascal could have claimed that enlightened self-interest should be self-evident enough for one to accept his ethical system that serves as a foundation for his Wager. Claiming self-interest is self-evident seems like a pretty absurd assertion to me. Even if one were to go in that direction though, my guess is that Pascal actually wouldn't want to. Instead, my bet is that Pascal would place God as the foundation for his ethical system. Why is it important to choose God? Because God is important. Of course, now Pascal's circularity has revealed itself, and while Pascal might be right, he is less than convincing.

So why does this thought experiment matter for Momentary Theology? Pascal's Wager reveals that at the base of our ethical worlds are our values. Pascal's Wager functions only if we either already value God or if we already value ourselves (as individuals). However, we can't justify those values with anything like Pascal's Wager (or any other means of gauging utility) since such an argument would, in the end be circular. Which, of course, doesn't mean such values would be "false." It would simply mean that arguments from "utility" ultimately are unconvincing. Pascal's argument would only be convincing to those that already value God as basic for their ethical universe. But why would one need to convince someone to believe in a God that is already basic to their ethical universe?

This thought experiment, though, has not only illustrated another way of looking at our (very) unstable ethical foundations. It also reveals the way our ethical values serve as the heart of our ethical world. Since it was also mentioned in my last post that our ethical system serves as primary for how we function as human beings, our values reveal themselves to be the core of how we function as humans. Our unstable values make us who we are. But what is that nature of these values? How do we choose what to value? What does the world "value" even mean? These are all some of the questions which I will hope to story-tell about next time. Blame the homework (or thank it!) ;)

An Ethical Universe

One's first attempt at theology is always one's best and one's worst. Best because every subsequent act of theology will function as an act of reflection on that moment. Worst because every subsequent act of theology will hopefully improve upon reflection. Well, or so we think. Hopefully, one of the things I will lay out as this blog experiment progresses is an argument against natural progress. But I get ahead of myself. :)

So where should I start this theological experiment but my foundation. Ethics. I can already sense some of my more "theistic" friends objecting that my foundation is not God. Hold on just a moment. What excludes ethics and God from being synthetic? Regardless, the foundation I will lay out will not be nearly as firm as any traditional view of God. I actually view that as a benefit. I can also sense some of my more "atheistic" friends objecting that such a foundation is going to be pretty shoddy. After all, isn't ethics just another subjective entity like God? If we are to build a foundation, why not build it on something sturdy and objective like science? Science will have a part in my system, but in the end, objectivity will reveal itself to be an illusion. Stories are always trying to reach at becoming extended (i.e. to move beyond our subjective perspective). However, objective claims are attempts to circumvent this "reaching" in an attempt to assert the universality of one's subjectivity. This can cause some serious problems... the self, oddly enough, is not universal.

So why ethics? Why something so subjective... something so relative... something so weak? Well, for starters, I think that upon reflection it becomes pretty obvious that "ethics" functions as a foundation for most people. I am presenting as an image for "ethics" that which we value, that which we believe to be "right" and "wrong," the "push" by the potential we visualize in the world. Perhaps this is a broad stroke, but it will serve here. As much as the Western world preaches subservience to a scientific objective world, even we are servants to our ethical values.

To make my point, imagine a possible world where "metaphysical" knowledge (knowledge about the world) would result in those "knowing" human beings being more likely to function in unethical ways (whatever those might be). Such a possible world might sound odd, but it wouldn't be too tough to envision a world where an evil god created such to be true. Perhaps as we learned more about the world around us, such knowledge would encourage us to care more for our self than our companions. Specifics are not necessary. Now imagine we live in such a world. How many people would seek objective, "metaphysical" knowledge if they were aware of such a curse to it? In fact, today we pursue "metaphysical" knowledge because we believe it to be ethical, we don't pursue ethics because we believe in to be "metaphysical." Hmm... perhaps metaphysics should be a part of ethics and not the other way around. But I digress.

For the record, I don't actually believe that we live in a world where a majority of "metaphysical" knowledge (if there is such a thing) actually causes us humans to be more likely to act unethically. However, my thought experiment is merely an attempt to show that human beings value ethics over other considerations. Of course, we instantly run into a problem...

The modern escape from subjective concerns was largely a reaction against nihilism and purposeless. After all, subjective questions appear to be unresolvable. Is it right for the government to pay for the food and health care of those who choose willingly not to work? For all the claims of Randianism, we cannot make something objective simply by declaring it so. If the history of ethics (and other subjective concerns) has shown us humans anything, it is that we will utterly fail if we attempt to establish an objective foundation for our ethics. Ultimately, following Camus, as we reflect, we'll realize that all our concerns, beliefs and values are ultimately absurd. We have confronted the infamous existential void. Can we survive it?

So ultimately, our foundation (ethics) is absurd? I hope Camus would forgive me for breaking from his favorite word, but perhaps "unstable" is a better word here. Our ultimate foundation (ethics) is unstable at its very heart. Can we live on uncertain, unstable ground? Is a ghost of ethics enough? Perhaps... perhaps not. But, ultimately, it is all we have. Whether we like it or not, unstable values make up the ground we stand on. As Canada Bill would say, it is the only game in town. Aware of our shaky foundations, let us make the gesture anyway. Let us affirm meaning and ethics in the moment, even as we are aware that we stand on sinking sands. After all, there is too much suffering in the world to simply let us all sink without a fight. Whether it is enough to save us or not, I do not know. But let us try to stand anyway. Let us stand on unstable ground.

The Poetic Moment

My brother predicted one day that I would have a blog, and unfortunately for the world, he was right. I have increasingly been having the urge to write my thoughts out in text, and a blog seemed the most appropriate for such an urge.

As the weeks, months and years go on, this blog will be a genealogy of my (slowly) developing thoughts, some more developed than others. Many know me for my Socratic method while functioning as the Devil's Advocate. It is my hope here that I will build a positive worldview for others to critique.

My hope in this blog is to generally focus on an interconnection of three nexuses that my thought circles around. A trinity, if you will. The first if the "theo" part. As Derrida once said of himself, I am probably "rightly described as an atheist." And yet, I am a self-affirmed (if there is such a thing) theist. My views of God will hopefully come clear as this blog progresses, but without a doubt God and theological/religious/philosophical questions will be a constant theme.

Second, and possibly the largest stretch for me is the "poetics" part of this blog. Some may be familiar with the term "theopoetics" popularized by Catherine Keller (although not coined by her) which affirms the creative spark within our (re)action to God. This is in contrast to traditional systematic theology which is typically logical, formal and often incredibly boring and unhelpful. If you are going to tell a myth, make it an interesting one, right? I actually have no problem with theo-logy (a theology of the word) but general modern theology as practiced has some serious problems (as I will try to lay out in later posts). I am actually no poet, but I aspire to the creative spark, and my theo-poetical worldview will draw upon literature as much as it draws upon traditional theological texts. Actually, anthropology, economics, psychology, philosophy, literature, literary criticism, religious studies, theology, physics, sociology, political science and history. I probably forgot some fields too... I feel like I'm writing a dedication page for a book now and the unmentioned discipline will feel ignored. Oops!

Third, the notion of the moment. Not only will my theopoetics be expressed as this blog progresses, but my own views will change as well (of that I have no doubt). I'll have no problem taking back what I previously said, admitting I am wrong, or altering a previous thought. Not for the nature of progress, but rather for the demands of the moment. Truly, every theopoetics (and theology) is momentary. We must remain open to the event (God?).

I hope to be fairly regular in my updates to this blog as I have a lot of initial catch-up to do. Please feel free to comment, express your thoughts and even give arguments against claims that are presented here. Dialogue is a crucial part of theopoetics. Please be a part of that dialogue. :)

Until the next moment,

Drew