It has been wonderful to cover a couple of Kierkegaard’s shorter volumes. Given my last post on my readings I was surprised at how social this volume was. This volume is actually an extended review of a contemporary piece of fiction entitled Two Ages. The two ages are the age of (the French) revolution and the present age. While the opening sections do deal directly with the content of the novel it is the longer third section that gets the most attention as it is Kierkegaard’s own appropriation of the novel for his context.
Author: david cl driedger
The super and sub human
So if you are interested in pondering the absurd then have a look at what a local 54 year old grandfather just accomplished. Just a few highlights;
1. Cycled 6,055 km in 13 days, nine hours and change. This stands as the fastest coast-to-coast cycling across Canada.
2. Breaking this record included an injury part way through (which required a 15 hr break!).
3. His pace demanded cycling a minimum of 20 hours a day.
These facts do not compute in my brain. Through the medium of long distance cycling Arvid has raised over 1.5 million dollars. His charity of choice is an organization that works with street kids in Kenya. So why I am about to transition to some critical comments related to this story? First a couple of qualifications. No criticism is intended towards Arvid. The fact that he found an expression that allows him to generate this type of support for what I will assume is a great cause can only be commended. I also assume that other perspectives than the following could be taken (such the need of extreme behaviour to draw attention to extreme situations), I want, however, to take a step back and ask one question and make one observation.
Why can herculean feats raise this type of money? Is there not something bizzare or even perverse about the need for someone to perform at super-human levels to draw funds for those living in sub-human conditions? I will go out on an unsubstantiated limb and venture a guess in saying that the vast majority of Arvid’s support comes from the corporate sector in which donors can only ‘win’ from their association with Arvid. Arvid becomes the super-hero logo on their chest which invigorates the public imagination. While Arvid remains out of the average person’s reach the corporation gives the public access to this imagination by acquiring their brand while also associating the average person with helping ‘the poor’ (this is the power of the corporation not Arvid) on the other side of the world. This leads to my observation;
The owners of Palliser Furniture in Winnipeg created some ‘incentive’ for Arvid saying that if he broke the record they would present him with a check for $50,000 at the finish line. Now I will also venture a guess in saying that Palliser would have donated the money regardless. However, the scenario again focuses on some implicit value in this herculean accomplishment. The money is not worth donating directly to street kids in Kenya, that is, bringing the conditions of a group of people’s life up to a minimally acceptable level. Or to put it another way, the money is not worth donating to someone who simply demonstrates the need and effectiveness of the situation and organization represented. Instead the money is worth wagering on the possibility of achieving the never before achieved. When given the choice between bringing others up to a minimum level on the one hand or extending our reach beyond the maximum the choice is clear (though we are supposed to believe that the two work together).
To again be clear. I have nothing but respect for Arvid’s accomplishments. To have inspiring figures in various fields and expressions is part of the beauty of human nature. What I am drawing attention to is the structure around extreme expressions like Arvid’s. The amount of global economic resources that could be available from the world’s most wealthy is staggering. And yet it is the folks without such resources that are required to enter the super-human before investors find enough ‘value’ to throw their tax-deductible donations at so they can still receive a return on investment.
The corsair affair and yet another rejection of politics
Volume 13, The Corsair Affair, is a collection of texts (many of which not written by Kierkegaard) that helps readers to understand what came to be known by this volume title. The Corsair was a satirical journal that took aim at any culturally relevant figure in Denmark. While the journal was notable and feared for its lampoons Kierkegaard (or Victor Emerita) was first mentioned in praise for work Either/Or. Kierkegaard (Emerita) responded publicly by asking how he could be so insulted as to be praised in The Corsair. While there are many layers involved in understanding why this exchange escalated the way it did one aspect was the growing awareness of Kierkegaard as the author of his pseudonymous works. Once Kierkegaard’s indirect method became engaged directly he was skewered mercilessly for his own personal appearance, affect and mannerisms. It is said that the phrases ‘Soren’ or ‘Either/Or’ became pejorative terms hurled at him in the streets. He was also consistently compared to a local known as ‘Crazy Nathanson’.
What interests me is the extent to which this escalation reflects Kierkegaard’s vehement guard against directness. To what extent was The Corsair taunting him to see if he would show his cards and lose composure. Kierkegaard it seems never lost his composure though he appears to have been hurt considerably in the process. I admit that my reading of this volume was a little more superficial as I found the historical understanding more interesting than the texts themselves. I did however pause over an extended comment by Kierkegaard rejecting any notion that he is interested in changing externals (politics). It seems as though from the very beginning people were interested in leveraging a political theory out of him. I thought it worth offering his comments almost in full.
In Ursin’s Arithmetic, which was used in my school days, a reward was offered to anyone who could find a miscalculation in the book. I also promise a reward to anyone who can point out in these numerous books a single proposal for external change, or the slightest suggestion of such a proposal, or even anything that in the remotest way even for the most nearsighted person at the greatest distance could resemble an intimation of such a proposal or of a belief that the problem is lodged in externalities, that external change is what is needed, that external change is what will help us.
. . .
There is nothing about which I have greater misgivings than about all that even slightly tastes of this disastrous confusion of politics and Christianity, a confusion that can very easily bring about a new kind and mode of Church reformation, a reverse reformation that in the name of reformation puts something new and worse in place of something old and better, although it is still supposed to be an honest-to-goodness reformation, which is then celebrated by illuminating the entire city.
Christianity is inwardness, inward deepening. If at a given time the forms under which one has to live are not the most perfect, if they can be improved, in God’s name do so. But essentially Christianity is inwardness. Just as man`s advantage over animals is to be able to live in any climate, so also Christianity’s perfection, simply because it is inwardness, is to be able to live, according to its vigor, under the most imperfect conditions and forms, if such be the case. Politics is the external system, this Tantalus-like busyness about external change.
It is apparent from his latest work that Dr R. believes that Christianity and the Church are to be saved by ‘the free institutions.’ If this faith in the saving power of politically achieved free institutions belongs to true Christianity, then I am no Christian, or, even worse, I am a regular child of Satan, because, frankly, I am indeed suspicious of these politically achieved free institutions, especially of their saving, renewing power. . . . [I] have had nothing to do with ‘Church’ and ‘state’ – this is much too immense for me. Altogether different prophets are needed for this, or, quite simply, this task ought to be entrusted to those who are regularly appointed and trained for such things. I have not fought for the emancipation of ‘the Church’ an more than I have fought for the emancipation of Greenland commerce, or women, of the Jews, or of anyone else. (53-54)
Kierkegaard continues on in this letter to drive home with all clarity that external institutions and systems cannot essentially hinder or encourage Christian faith. The question I have with respect to contemporary forms of ‘liberation theology and thought’ is whether this reading and presentation within Kierkegaard’s larger project can truly be said to move towards the liberation of the individual, that is, beyond political/economic (Greenland), gender (women), or religious (Jew) boundaries.
Whether or not Kierkegaard is being completely ironic he concedes space for those who can understand and interpret the larger social systems (different prophets). I also think it is important that he encourages any who can improve on their surroundings to do so. I say this is important not because it is a minor concession by Kierkegaard but because it is assumed. If someone would try to critique him on this level he would likely ask how ignorant that person is in thinking that someone should not improve conditions around them only that something must transcend the quantitative value (and it still is value) that externals can play in life.
Some hate for The Tree of Life; Or, my apparent obsession with AUFS
I wrote an initial comment over at AUFS on my first impression of The Tree of Life. And the more I think about it the more I can’t stand the film. This is a reflective position and not a commentary on aspects of the film. However, the movie lends itself to being processed in a larger cultural and political context and I think the context demands more of the movie than it offers. I think the movie can be viewed in part if not entirely as Jack processing his childhood. So Jack wakes up aloof from his beautiful wife (who I don’t think he says a word to). Lights a candle for his dead younger brother. Goes to work and sits atop a high tower. Calls the other alpha male (his father) to apologize for something about the dead brother. As I process the movie another conversation at AUFS comes to mind in which Brad states that the church has never been able to appropriate or face up to modernity. That may be true but why is there any need when you have a movie like this which causes modernity’s implosion in the psyche of the man who builds modernity (powerful ‘modern’ architect). This modern man traverses and encompasses all of evolution in order to find meaning for the death of his brother. Oh, and who was that middle child again?
I don’t think it is helpful to minimize the white middle-class male experience but how can this expression not invite scorn in our context? What if Jack was the First Nations man I encountered walking down the street a month ago. I suspect he might have a few more things to ‘process’ from his childhood experience but he has no high tower in which to brood. In this neighbourhood being young and native tends to invite things that do not allow for contemplation and so he is jumped and hit with an eight-ball over the head. He continues on down the street with blood flowing down over him. Oh wait, where was I again? Oh yes I was up to the dinosaurs. The AUFS view of this movie is all the more striking with its general tenor of liberation. There seemed to be nothing here that would change the modern capitalist man or system. He found his inner-peace. Isn’t this the kind of thing that gets disemboweled over at AUFS?
It’s funny I was actually planning to right a post on my ‘conversion’ experience that I attribute in part to the posts and related scholars and thought that floats around at AUFS. I am trying to shed vacuous and bankrupt theological language or at least press it for its implied meaning and implications. This is a good time as I am entering into the ordination process with my conference and need to comment on our confession . . . well, we’ll see how good it turns out.
In any event I am not trying to take some jab at the general thinking and expression at AUFS. I just find the engagement with this movie to be a little dissonant with the larger environment. I should also point out that many of the comments were not actually made by AUFS regulars. But as I mentioned in my comment over there I was really surprised it did not get a harsher review. I suppose it provided some good intellectual and aesthetic fodder . . . and maybe that is all that it amounts to though the movie and the conversation seemed to be pointing to more.
There were two audible responses to the movie in my theatre. First was a loud yawn. This was only a partially accurate review in my mind. I was sucked into the ‘evolution’ (but would have been just as happy to see it as an I-Max piece) as well as moved by many other visual landscapes. Some of the social and psychological commentary was suggestive and provocative (as Brad elaborates in his original post). The other audible review was probably more accurate. It was a sarcastic wow-wee. Of course this probably spouted by a white middle-class male.
A thorough, no, a systematic beating
Heading into Canada Day tomorrow I am about half finished Geoffery York’s The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada. I have known about this book for probably about 15 years and the cover alone has haunted me for almost that whole time. While I have known about most of the areas covered in Canada’s relationship with the First Nations people what I was not prepared for was to realize the layering and interrelatedness of injustice and abuse this people has faced at the hands of the nation of Canada. At nearly every intersection of contact First Nations were ploughed over.
Take the basic orientation of the relationship.
You are a damned people in need of our salvation.
You are in the way of us establishing ourselves and appropriating these rich and virgin resources.
What did these two motives result in? The attempted reform and actual fracturing of an entire generation in residential schools that wrought profound personal and social devastation. First Nations people are ‘granted’ reservations. I was not aware that many reservations leading up into the 1960s found significant economic models of sustainability (through traditional practices, crime rates were low and substance abuse at a minimum. But then in instances like Manitoba a hydro dam project unfolds in which a reservation receives peanuts for their land and false promises for their future and then their way of life is literally drowned. So in the future band leaders may want to take legal recourse but due to educational, financial, bureaucratic and prejudicial limitations they lack their own resources and cannot afford to hire someone so they are screwed. Some entire reservations were relocated three or four times in the course of a decade due to the government’s growing awareness and desire for particular resources. The shift is always with less opportunities and resources at the next site. And if a reservation is not relocated then mining and extraction companies would descend and kill off traditional sources of food and contaminate water supplies. If an individual or group wants to start a small business they would be unable to mortgage any property (reservation land is not their property) as an operating loan and they must jump through extensive bureaucratic hoops in order to receive funding that should rightly be theirs in the first place. And if they did get permission they often lived in a place with inadequate electricity to power an significant machines. I did not realize the web that this created or more accurately how thorough, how systematic, a beating this group of people has received. And the blows keep coming.
It is hard to imagine this sort of abuse and then we expect them to find their proverbial ‘boot-straps’. Really? Would I want to bend-over in the midst of a dominant culture that has expressed such consistent deception and hatred?
This book was published in 1990 and I do not know how many things have changed at the level of government support and bureaucracy but many of the same stories still surface in the daily newspaper. Insanitary conditions, displacement, land-claim stalling, death by housing fires, suicide, violence and the list goes on. To enter into this situation is at the very least to be overwhelmed as an entire culture has been continually overwhelmed at the hands of a political force that has never made a sustained expression of support and faithfulness to a people.
In as much as anyone wants to ask them to take responsibility for their lives those of us having received the privilege of this land must ask and express what our responsibility is.
Total guilt
I am drawing close to the mid-way point of Kierkegaard’s writings. Appropriately enough this coincides with Concluding Unscientific Postcript which represents a sort of culmination of his earlier writings (which he actually attempts to integrate in one section of CUP). As I understand it this work was potentially to be his last and subsequent works are called his ‘second authorship’ many of which reflect a more ‘concrete’ engagement with social issues.
I want to offer an extended quote here as it helped to clarify certain lingering thoughts that have surfaced in various areas of my life namely the interplay of guilt and action. How does one reconcile (if that is the appropriate method) the call of the Gospel, the limitedness of humanity, and the unwieldy variables of life? In many ways I find my own experience partially reflected in a heightened and intensified way through recent posts by Dan O (here and here . . . in many ways it is the comments [particularly on the second site] that capture what I am talking about).
What I find intriguing in the quote is how it forms part of Kierkegaard’s attempt to shift guilt-consciousness towards a category of ‘totality’ rather than remain in an ethical category. To remain under the ethical is to remain under the numerical (I think I am getting this right). To remain under the numerical is to forever have the more hanging over our head that while aimed at being life-giving tends towards death-dealing in the one desiring to be a practitioner of the Gospel. This death comes in the externalizing of guilt-consciousness which can never be integrated directly into another individual and so becomes a law unto itself. There is no amount of ‘good’ that will resolve this guilt.
Now perhaps Kierkegaard’s ethical and religious domains are infinitely caught up in ‘beginning’ and never become as political as people want them to be but I think he should be well heeded in also acknowledging that running furiously in the wrong direction is also not much better . . . likely worse.
The second half of this quote gets a little diluted but the first half reads well in terms of the line between much guilt and total guilt. Particularly poignant is the line about the one bound up with happiness, by the finest thread, as it were, by the help of a possibility that continually perishes. There is a possibility that holds us even if the possibility continually perishes. The emphasis added belong is mine.
In the eternal recollecting of guilt-consciousness, the existing person relates himself to an eternal happiness, but not in such a way that he now has come closer to it directly; on the contrary, he is now distanced from it as much as possible, but he still relates himself to it. The dialectical that is present here, still within immanence, creates resistance that intensifies the pathos. In the relation that is the basis of the misrelation, in the intimated immanence that is the basis of the dialectic’s separation, he is closely bound up with happiness, by the finest thread, as it were, by the help of a possibility that continually perishes – for this reason the pathos, if it is there, is so much the stronger.
The guilt-consciousness is what is decisive, and one guilt joined together with the relation to an eternal happiness is sufficient, and yet it is true of guilt, more than of anything else, that it sows itself. But the total guilt is what is decisive; compared with it, making oneself guilty fourteen times is child’s play – this is also why childishness always keeps to the numerical. When, however, the consciousness of the new guilt is in turn referred to the absolute consciousness of guilt, the eternal recollecting of guilt is thereby preserved, in case the existing person should be on the point of forgetting.
If someone says that no human being can endure such an eternal recollecting of guilt, that it is bound to lead to insanity or to death, then please not who it is who is speaking, because finite common sense frequently speaks that way in order to preach indulgence. And this way of speaking rarely fails, provided three or four people are gathered together. I doubt that anyone in solitude has been able to deceive himself with this talk, but when a number of people are together an one hears that the others are behaving in this way, on is less embarrassed – how inhuman, also, to want to be better than others! Once again a mask; the person who is alone with the ideal has not knowledge at all about whether he is better or worse than others. So it is possible that this eternal recollecting can lead to madness or death. Well, now, a human being cannot endure very long on water and bread, but then a physician can discern how to organize things for the single individual, not in such a way, please note, that he ends up living like the rich man but that the starvation diet is so carefully calculated for him that he can just stay alive. Just because the existential pathos is not the pathos of the moment but the pathos of continuance, the existing person himself, who in pathos is indeed inspired and is not, spoiled by habit, peeking around for subterfuges, will seek to find the minimum of forgetfulness needed for enduring, since he himself is aware, of course, that the momentary is a misunderstanding. But since it is impossible to find an absolute certainty in this dialecticizing, he will, despite all his exertion, have a guilt-consciousness, once again totally defined by his never having dared to say that, in his relation to an eternal happiness, he had done everything he was able to do in order to hold fast to the recollecting of guilt. Concluding Unscientific Postscript 535-537
When a religious person speaks: On the love of selfishness
When [a religious person] speaks it is only a monologue; occupied only with himself, he speaks aloud, and this is called preaching; if there is anyone listening, he knows nothing about his relation to them except that they owe him nothing, for what he must accomplish is to save himself. Such a right reverend monologue that witnesses Christianly, when in its animation it moves the speaker, the witnessing, because he is speaking about himself, is called a sermon. World-historical surveys, systematic conclusions, gesticulations, wiping of sweat from the brow, a stentorian voice, and pulpit pounding, along with the premeditated use of all this in order to accomplish something are easthetic reminiscences that do not even know how to accentuate fear and pity properly in the Aristotelian sense.
. . .
The religious speaker who purifies these passions through fear and compassion does not in the course of his address do the astounding thing of ripping the clouds asunder to show heaven open, the judgment day at hand, hell in the background, himself and the elect triumphantly celebrating; he does the simpler and less pretentious thing, the humble feat that is supposed to be so very easy: he lets heaven remains closed, in fear and trembling does not feel that he himself is finished, bows his head while the judgment of the discourse falls upon thought and mind. He does not do the astounding thing that could make his next appearance lay claim to being greeted with applause; he does not thunder so that the congregation might be kept awake and saved by his discourse. He does the simpler and less pretentious thing, the humble feat that is supposed to be so very easy: he lets God keep the thunder and the power and the honor and speaks in such a way that even if everything miscarried he nevertheless is certain that there was one listener who was moved in earnest, the speaker himself, that even if everything miscarried and everyone stayed away there was still one person who in life’s difficult complications longed for the upbuilding moment of the discourse, the speaker himself.
. . .
Therefore, says the religious person, if you were to see him in some lonely, out-of-the-way place, deserted by everyone and positive that he accomplished nothing by his speaking, if you saw him there you would see him just as inwardly moved as ever; if you heard his discourse, you would find it as powerful as always, guileless, uncalculating, unenterprising, you would comprehend that there was one person it was bound to upbuild – the speaker himself. He will not become weary of speaking, for attorneys and speakers who have secular aims or worldly importance with regard to eternal aims become weary when what they accomplish cannot be counted on their fingers, when crafty life does not delude them with the illusion of having accomplished something, but the religious speaker always has his primary aim: the speaker himself. (Stages on Life’s Way, 463-465)
However one might interpret this suggestion more broadly I am coming to see it as a fair characterization of Kierkegaard’s authorship. Through the various pseudonyms that he employs and often brings in conversation with each other (particularly in CUP) one is let in on what Kierkegaard was interested in no matter the audience. No doubt he was affected by his literary reception or lack of it but I still get the impression he would have done this work even if he did not have the means to publish them or to the extent he could carve out time to do it.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that there is an appropriate ‘selfishness’ that is the best way we can possibly hope to love our neighbour. This selfishness can keep us from objectifying our neighbour, keep us from vanity, and allow us a creative productivity freed from external ends. Life is never so uncomplicated but I see this route as far more inspiring, liberating and motivating than duty and law. It is the appropriate inverse of what we commonly perceive as Jesus’s call. Jesus called us to lose our lives that they might be found. But what is life lost? Might it not be the one constructed by local law, custom and structural power? To lose it then is to find it in the selfishness of particularity and in the process see your neighbour through those new eyes.
And finally
I think what bugs me most about the last two posts is that I was not really saying what I wanted to. I think I wanted say it but it ended up coming out in a sort of ‘flowery’ language that a few helpful and honest individuals in the recent past have brought to my attention. I think it is a sort of default expression when I don’t really know what I am talking about. I was more than a little horrified when I realized how deep this sort of language went in how I expressed things about life. Hopefully some helpful rooting going on here.
On not talking about the change
I can’t say that I am happy with my last post. For a while now I have been trying to figure how to express what has changed in the last couple of months. Every time I write about it or talk to someone about it comes off sounding quite lame. I am beginning to wonder if this is implicit to the change. Talking about is largely insufficient or least how I have been talking about it. The change is an orientation that affects how I talk and act with regards to other things. But when I try to explain the change itself it seems to be annulled in its apparent insignificance. And so, this post will also feel a little lame to me (and likely to you if you care to read it). After I finished the last post I felt some anxiety. Is there a change? Don’t I need an exteriority to witness to the change? Thinking again of Kierkegaard the question is not about whether truth will manifest externally but whether the external offers the essential materials for expressing truth. Kierkegaard rejects this because in trying to orient truth and subjectivity in this manner is to go beyond what is possible for humans. We are not capable of wielding the external variables in a manner that would make truth evident. I think this is an underrepresented element in his thought. In many ways it is safer to go beyond because in going beyond one sheds the engagement with actuality and so hides in piety or in ‘radical’ theory. Again, this is not about rejecting a social critique or structural engagement only about failing to form subjectively. Also, I think Kierkegaard would easily admit that positive social change can happen through ‘subjectively impoverished’ individuals, this also is not the question. How Kierkegaard informs me is in the necessary continuity and ongoing-ness of life that always draws on something. I suspect I should start pushing his thinking further but I have been patient particularly knowing that CUP is the culmination of his ‘first authorship’ and some of the volumes to come become much more ‘directly’ engaged. For now he continues to offer a valuable way of interpreting my own subjectivity.
Inwardness, actuality, dogmatic policing, and conversion
I would have to say that Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments was the most anticipated volume in my Kierkegaard reading tour. So far I have not been disappointed. While it is penned under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus I really feel Kierkegaard ‘pouring it on’ in this volume (and as far as I understand this was to be last and climactic work). There is no ‘imaginative construction’ to set the stage in so many of his other works. From the gate Kierkegaard pours forth his account of Christianity as the truth of subjectivity; or, truth as subjectivity. Throughout my reading of Kierkegaard I have tried to monitor just how he develops inwardness. I wondered the extent to which I could accept his account given the temptation of introspection as a pretext for a spiritualism that does not take social structures and actions seriously. I always held out on the side of Kierkegaard because of his insistence on actuality as opposed to abstraction. I felt that the extent to which Kierkegaard’s thought would veer towards an isolated spirituality then in fact it would betray his commitment to existence (which demands particularity be taken with utmost seriousness). This being said Kierkegaard’s notion of inwardness was always a little opaque. Then I encountered this line about halfway through CUP,
The actuality is not the external action but an interiority in which the individual annuls possibility and identifies himself with what is thought in order to exist in it. This is action. (339)
To risk putting this in a certain therapeutic language I would say this refers to being congruent. For instance there remains Christian language about loving the sinner and hating the sin. However, we all know this ends up looking a lot like hating the sinner even if it only sounds like hating the sin. There remains a fundamental incongruence here. Kiekergaard advocates famously in another place that purity of heart is to ‘will one thing’. All possibilities become annulled in passionate clarification of existing in the actuality of love. And so hating the possibility of hating the sin is annulled in the actuality of loving the sinner.
I frame this response to Kierkegaard due to my own recent conversion experience. For years I have tried to reflect on how the Gospel calls individuals to orientate themselves towards peace and justice. This led to significant life decisions in terms of where I lived, how I acted and what I studied. It was only recently however that I have come to realize that I carried along with this commitment a certain dogmatic policing that continually annulled the actuality of the sort of life I sought. This dogmatic policing continued to hold people in judgment while outwardly I tried to work for liberation (in what was of course limited and often naive ways). I still harboured ambiguity around how I could support those in same-sex relationships. I remained largely blind or at least unresponsive to the gender prejudice that swarmed around in many of my contexts. I did not integrate the significance that the basic lack of resources can have on people’s lives.
I was not functioning congruently. In what felt like a very short time something simply fell away. I felt somehow released to love (yes I will let that stand for all its possible cheesiness). I don’t have more answers and I don’t know how to act differently. I don’t actually think anyone would notice the difference. But I know I am living differently and I know this will effect my ethical posture. I just know something changed (as I also now it can change for the worse). Perhaps I am stretching Kierkegaard’s account of actuality but if I am, I don’t think it is by much. My notion of’ ‘peace and justice’ was largely situated in a field policed by a dogma contrary to peace and justice and so I was given free reign to explore it within those bounds. This is abstract and speculative thought according to Kierkegaard and the further that path is traveled the further away one is from existence.
David CL Driedger 