Author: david cl driedger

Danger afoot

What with life and all I am starting to fall just a little behind in my Kierkegaard reading schedule.  I was hoping to keep the pace around two volumes a month.  While I am almost finished volume two of Either / Or I am not excited about pushing myself further behind the eight ball.  The second volume is picking up.  Part of the interest is the way my mind continues to move about with regards to Kierkegaard’s own authorship.  What does Kierkegaard himself mean by what he has Judge William say?  A terrible question I know but what is wonderful is that despite all the layers that have been revealed with respect to Kierkegaard’s intention and life (including his own reflections) there a remains a movement, a dialectic, inherent within his authorship that continues to aid his project.  I can only imagine the way these pseudonyms aided in his own process of understanding and development.  I am glad we are give access to the process.

About half way through this volume there is a great section on choice which in many ways frames the whole notion of ‘either/or’.  The aesthetic mode is about immediacy (no choice) or multiplicity (also no choice) but ethics becomes the beginning, the first choice; not the choice between ethics and aesthetics but the choice that there is a choice.  In any event here are a few excerpts I enjoyed.

Think of the captain on his ship at the instant when it has to come about.  He will perhaps be able to say, ‘I can either do this or that’; but in case he is not a pretty poor navigator, he will be aware at the same time that the ship is all the while making its usual headway, and that therefore it is only an instant when it is indifferent whether he does this or that.  So it is with a man.  If he forgets to take account of the headway, there comes at last an instant when there no longer is any question of an either/or, not because he has chosen but because he has neglected to choose, which is equivalent to saying, because others have chosen for him, [that] he has lost his self.

. . .

For me the instant of choice is very serious, not so much on account of the rigorous cogitation involved in weighing the alternatives, not on account of the multiplicity of thoughts which attach themselves to every link in the chain, but rather because there is danger afoot, danger that the next instant it may not be equally in my power to choose.

Fear-less . . . that’s just crazy talk

I have for some time, and mostly on the back-burner, tried to understand the 1960s-70s conversation about the social context of mental illness in light of contemporary experience.  The basic tension being whether the determinant role in mental illness can be fixed primarily on biological factors or social factors.  High school was my first encounter with mental illness when a good friend was diagnosed with depression.  I can still remember him talking about ‘chemical imbalances’ and as I recall this was also presented to us in a class.  The basic point of focusing on biology was so that individuals would not equate their experience with their identity or ability.  They could no more ‘create’ or ‘identify’ with their condition as could someone with a cold or flu.  This sort of conversation also placed hope in science as the messianic figure for those in bondage.

I find it unfortunate that the conversation continues to be reduced to the need for a bio-medical cure and that other forms of response are basically the bandage which keeps the individual from completely being bled out.  Now I want to be clear that I am not opposed to medications that respond to mental illness (though I remain supremely frustrated in how they get distributed and the ‘results’ they offer).  What I want to consider is simple.  Regardless of an illness’ origin and manifestation how would a person respond to their symptoms (apathy, melancholy, hallucinations, paranoia, etc.) if they lived in an environment that actively and rigorously rooted out expressions of fear or the factors which most commonly lead people to be afraid.

I don’t really care at the moment about whether or not this possible.  I just want to consider what it would be like for someone to experience symptoms of mental illness (assuming they are somehow of independent origin) without being afraid of them.  What if there was no fear of hearing voices only a need to process what they said.  What if there was no fear of apathy but a space to rest and act without the spectre of productivity.  These ‘services’ are already offered but they stand distinctly under the banner of ‘sick’ (dysfunctional, abnormal, absurd, etc.).  There is a lot of talk about dealing with the ‘stigma’ of mental illness but until we consider that the power to make it an ‘illness’ is held directly within the stigma I don’t see it being taken seriously.  The typical response of dismantling stigma is to handle a person with ‘kid-gloves’ that still perpetuates diminished status.  How then can we nourish lives that can withstand the fearful realities of life or must we ‘flee Babylon’ and created spaces (perhaps like L’Arche or La Borde) where another manner of life is possible?  And what of the church in all this?  I don’t see those addressing a mental illness flocking to my congregation.  And yet there are so many individuals and families struggling under this burden.

But its a dry cold . . .

I lived in southern Ontario for a short five years.  In that time I came to believe in something called a wet cold.  As you can suspect this is the inverse of the saying about heat, in that a wet temperature is always a worse experience than a dry one.  In any event, I came to believe it.  Yes the the temperature was not nearly so low as it was back home in Manitoba but the dampness got into your bones.  Well we are in the last weekend of February here in Winnipeg and the next two nights are slated for overnight lows of around -30 C (I will not get into windchill factor).  So to all you in Ontario with your poor wet snow . . . I call bullshit.

Oh yes and happy Festival du Voyageur!

2011

1976

Between slavery and control

Perhaps this imagery goes without saying but I think there is still significant contemporary theo-political content to be developed from the Pentateuch.  Here are some excerpts from last Sunday’s sermon on Leviticus 19,

I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of Leviticus as well as the first five books of the Old Testament in general is the notion that the commandments given represent some sort of static or fixed law.  The center of Old Testament faith is not the following of particular laws.  This may flow out from the center but the center of Old Testament faith is the presence of God.  Everything in Leviticus as well as Exodus and Numbers finds its orientation in relationship with the Holy of Holies, the center of the Tabernacle, which was the Tent of Meeting, around which the Israelites camped as they travelled in the wilderness and when they first settled in Canaan.  And what is at the center of the Holy of Holies?  Inside that space is the Ark of the Covenant.  The Ark is a box covered with a lid sometimes called the Mercy Seat that had two angels, called cherubim, mounted on either side on top.  I view the Ark as a sort of frame.

At the center of other religions at that time there would tend to be a physical idol that would represent who or what was being worshipped.  However, in the Tabernacle there was an empty space between the wings of the cherubim on top of the Ark.  In the book of Exodus God says to Moses, “There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the covenant, I will deliver to you all my commands for the Israelites.”  What is the significance of this image?  God comes to meet with Moses from the place that humanity cannot control and confine, in the space that is left open and empty.  God cannot be directly equated with our conceptions, with our tradition or with our expectations.  So while we have the framework, so to speak, of ethics and tradition that provide some continuity and stability we must always be open to the newness or aliveness that the love of God will speak into situations.

. . .

The Tabernacle by its nature is movable.  The Tabernacle as well as Mt. Sinai exist in a special place in the Old Testament story.  These sites exist between the experience of slavery in Egypt on one side and the experience of slowing taking power and control in Canaan on the other side. The Tabernacle exists in the freedom of reliance and dependence on God between and therefore beyond being enslaved or being in control.  And as the author of the Gospel of John put it so well of Jesus saying literally that “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”  We are to learn to be a tabernacling people. . . . We remain a people with history and tradition but can these things be dismantled, stakes pulled up, to set up the site again in a new place?

. . .

And so like the nomadic Hebrew people of the wilderness we must nourish the ability to migrate, gather and frame the possibility of God’s holiness over the spaces between slavery and control.  We gather and walk with one another and with our neighbours seeing how our objects, our actions and our minds relate to one another.  This is the body of Christ that walked the earth 2000 years ago.  He never grasped for political and social control and even when his body was ultimately grasped by these forms of control he never became enslaved to them.  He always held open that space for the love of God which enters the world as the love of our neighbour as our self.  This is to be the body of Christ today, that is the church, it is to spread and wander with eyes attentive to power and bondage and then to stand between them.

On being seduced

I am almost finished the first volume of Either / Or and as I have mentioned earlier it has been a more rewarding experience than the first go round in which I did not finish.  The book seems to read with two clear book-ends.  The first is Mozart’s Don Juan. Don Juan represents pure and immediate sensuality.  The highest form of this is music.  As soon as the focus shifts to lyrics then an element of reflection is immediately introduced.  The closing book-end is the Diary of a Seducer which is collection of reflections and letters in which a man seduces a young woman to engage him.  This still represents an aesthetic mode like Don Juan but is clearly now also a reflective mode.  What I find interesting about the Diary is the way in which it begins themes which will later be taken up by Kierkegaard.

Having done some earlier research on Kierkegaard’s influence on psychology and counselling much was made of his approach as ‘mid-wife’, that is, of clearing space for the individual to come to his or her own conclusions; to existentially engage the individual, to set them in motion (though without knowledge of this having been facilitated by someone).  Towards the end of his life Kierkegaard reflects on this practice as an author but already here in the Diary Kierkegaard uses similar language as a seducer.  Leading up to the proposal of engagement the seducer writes,

The whole episode must be kept as insignificant as possible, so that when she has accepted me, she will be able to throw the least light upon what may be concealed in this relationship.  The infinite possibility is precisely the interesting.  If she is able to predict anything, that I have failed badly, and the whole relationship loses its meaning.  That she might say yes because she loves me is inconceivable, for she does not love me at all.  The best thing is for me to transform the engagement from act to an event, from something she does to something that happens to her, concerning which she must say: “God only knows how it really happened.

Then later in the Diary are collections of short ‘notes’ that are to arouse the erotic (the immediate) in her.  These are notes of absolutes and totalities.

I am poor – you are my riches; dark – you are my light; I own nothing, want nothing.  And how can I own anything?  It is a contradiction to say that he can own something who does not own himself.  I am as happy as a child, who can and should own nothing.  I own nothing; for I belong only to you; I am not, I have ceased to be, in order to be yours.

It does not take much to see how these notes extend from the aesthetic to the religious.  But first it seems they must pass through the ethical.  And I am about to enter volume II.

Debating whether or not I care

I recently crossed paths with someone heavily involved in an atheists group at the local university.  This person was not of the ‘sort’ I expected.  In any event the encounter spurred me to do a little snooping around on the internet for local atheist blogs and see what was happening.  In the process I ran into The Winnipeg Skeptics.  One of the contributors has his own blog Startled Disbelief.  I started reading various posts and before long I chimed in with a few comments.  Now I have to say I appreciate Gem Newman’s tone at Startled Disbelief and so was quite open to hearing his positions.  After my initial comment Gem directed me to an earlier post which outlined in broader terms his position as a skeptic.  We had a decent little exchange going before I realized that the arc of the conversation was quickly moving into territory I simply had no interest in pursuing.

If you are interested in the full conversation see the last link (I did quite appreciate his overall presentation).  In any event there was one aspect to the conversation that continued to trouble me.  Gem constantly pushed the notion that skepticism was somehow non-political.  Skepticism is simply a method of critically examining claims (as he puts it).  I didn’t think anyone believed in a neutral mode of scientific inquiry anymore.  Gem went on to say that skepticism does not “provide a personal moral framework” and also that “atheism says nothing about politics, economics, or even belief in the supernatural.”  He claimed I was confusing the politics of particular atheists with the politics of atheism (I had earlier proposed that atheism was actually a much more robust approach than skepticism . . . for him atheism is a one-off subject).  Gem claims that he is “a skeptical, liberal, humanistic atheist.”  I suppose it is this combination that clarifies his politics.  However, he continues to maintain a broader skeptical orientation in saying, “I think that everything should be open to question. All conclusions are provisional.”  How is this not political?  How will that not continue to deny participation to decisive and potentially life-threatening postures that need to be taken in response to abusive powers?

Now so far as theology goes I would agree that a skeptical atheism comes much closer to biblical faith than many other contemporary theologies do in its rigor for idol-smashing.  However, biblical faith is a decidedly declared position.  That is, biblical faith will always ultimately undermine earthly authorities which abuse power.  This is Christology (as well as good Old Testament theology).  So I put it to Gem saying that I am much more interested in the proposition ‘love everything’ as opposed to his tagline ‘question everything’.  Love maintains a critical posture (because of its love for others) but always orientates the person towards a constructive and engaged posture.  This is where things started coming off the rails in my mind.  Here Gem began ‘applying’ his method.  His defense of and basis for skepticism was simply the apparently self-evident role of the Enlightenment as “proven to have held up.”  This is exactly my criticism he does not address.  The Enlightenment does not hold up because it offered nothing socially or politically substantive to engage the West.  I am then accused of a ‘false dichotomy’ in my opposition of love-or-question everything.  Though, I should add that love under Gem’s definition is some sort of fond cuddling.  When I advanced my view of love (as something restorative) I was accused of having a definition that “seems vague, misleading, needlessly complex, and in some cases probably guilty of equivocation.”  Oh man, I guess Gem has the definition down for love.

It is at this point at the end of the conversation that Gem offers the strange example of giving lectures to teachers on how to teach mathematics.  In this example it would not interest him to consider how to integrate the possibility that some children are unable to learn due to unstable life circumstances.  That sort of clinched it.  I suspect he would say that indeed would care about it but he also says that he has “neither the skills nor the inclination to be a counsellor, and the fact that some of them may need counselling does not make teaching mathematics any less important.”  Who the hell would argue from that example that mathematics are not important?  Yes, fine we are all able and limited in various capacities but to consider one aspect of education as ‘pedagogically pure’ regardless of circumstance seems unhelpful.

Why am I recounting this?  I guess I wanted to process it for myself.  Christian and skeptical/atheistic apologetics are pretty big these days.  I thought it might be a good exercise to understand why I don’t care.  What this has clarified for me is the reality that by and large these expressions (on both sides of the fences, as I have encountered them) have a drastically insufficient or at least dis-integrated view of politics as though they can go about their business because they are a-political.  Its not my responsibility for what others do with the sacred truth I discover.  In any event it seems more like bullshit than before.

Updates

Well I finally came to the conclusion that my (almost) daily translations are a bit cluttering for this space.  Given that consideration in addition to some ideas of other translations I decided to start a second blog writing in tongues which will house those projects.

In addition to the post on Kafka and Proust as well as some coming posts on Louis Riel I also hope to post some Hebrew recipes and eventually dabble in Arabic . . . eventually.  Google translate is a great aid to get some momentum.

In any event in case you missed it here are a few post that may have got buried.

Original boredom and solving our financial crisis

The mockery of careful planning

I am a feel good story; Or, What would Zizek do?

Du Côté de Chez Swann – Day 33

Sa mémoire, la mémoire de ses côtes, de ses genoux, de ses épaules, lui présentait successivement plusieurs des chambres où il avait dormi, tandis qu’autour de lui les murs invisibles, changeant de place selon la forme de la pièce imaginée, tourbillonnaient dans les ténèbres.

Its memory, the memory of its ribs, of its knees, of its shoulders, presented to it several successive rooms which it had slept, while it was surrounded by invisible walls, changing their place according to the form of the part imagined, whirling in the darkness.