Entry Two: Belief

It is a truism that beliefs are conditioned by the time and place of their origin and all of the ensuing times and peregrinations through which they pass. But there always remains some myserious core, some incompreghensible and undefinable element. that endures unchanged despite these changes.

The French philosopher Michel de Certeau dealt at length with these problematics. Himself a Jesuit, de Certeau yet pursued an idiosyncratic, quixotic career, exploring notions of history and practice (how people behave) and belief. His work is very enlightening.

De Certeau noted that as societies and cultures evolve and devolve, rise and decline, elide one to the other, vast changes in understanding and perception take place. De Certeau studied one such change- seventeenth century France, as the medieval world slowly dissolved into modernity. He describes religious beliefs, popular affectations, all of the incidentals of life: and sees in them, especially the lives of everyday folk (de Cetrteau noted that “history” is not a factual account but an artifact built by specialized elites -scholars- using elements (written records, monuments, etc)  left by preceding elites- say, for instance, monks in the Middle Ages, elite because they were among the few able to read and write and thus create records- and thus in fact an imaginative creation having little to do with the actual, concrete life of the time investigated) and thus preferred the ignored, the forgotten, the marginal as his sources, the true accounting of these changes.

What de Certeau noted was that even as there are vast, tectonic changes in the “world” (“world here as the endlessly complicated perceptual and interpretative schema we humans inhabit and through which we understand the real, concrete world about us), there remains at the heart of each individual, and the “world” itself, that which can never be interpreted or comprehended, that which simply evades the “world”, always and everywhere. This de Certeau called the Other. The Other might be the past- the real past, not the construct called history-; or it might be God; or it might something else entirely. But all about this unencompassable other human beings build their “worlds”- indeed, the Other is the engine that drives the creation of these “worlds”.

Each individual, each society, each culture, builds uncountable such “worlds” but it is the Other, the true Other, God, utter mystety, wholly and ever impeneterablw, that is the cause of their creation. They are the clues to what God might be- and as clues they tantilize, entice, then disappear.

Belief changes- but that which summons and sustains belief, and the “worlds” which we humans inhabit, remains always beyond these sustainings and summonings, teasing, baiting, hiding.

Entry One: Life, Death, and the Death Penalty

This first entry addresses the question of life’s value, and how that is demonstrated through the death penalty.

In a statement I hope strikes home as seemingly contradictory I hold that life’s value is best demonstrated when it is defended to the death.

Here is what I mean. If life is valuable- one’s own life, the lives of one’s friends and family, the lives of innocent and unoffending individuals everywhere and at all times- that value is stated through acts that are both solemn and irrevocable. And if life’s value is utter- and I would argue it is- then those acts expressing its value mus be utterly solemn and irrevocable. In ancient (andnot so ancient) times acts defending life- the declaration of war, the execution of criminals- were acts a great public ceremony, irrevocably expressing the value of life as affirmed in those acts. Certainly in today’s degraded cultures such acts- if there is any statement of value made at all- are all but passing in their expression, betraying their nature of the act itself.

Let us examine the death penalty, and see that in the impositon of death a socioety makes a profioundly important statement regarding the value of life.

The traditional arguments for the death penalty are two: an individual is so dangerous to a society that that society can only defend itself through that individual’s death at society’s hands; and certain acts are so heinous that only death is the only suitable punishment. The first argument is- for the most part- abrogated by the creation of penal systems and technologies that virtually makec escape impossible (the caveat being that the individual must be incarcerated without chance of parole). The problem is had in what value is affirmed: an individual who has callously and most probably horrifically killed another human being- usually the most defenseless and helpless- is now allowed to live at vast expense. What, then, is affirmed? Life’s value? One person- innocent, unoffending, unsuspecting- is done to death by another by some terrible means, and that individual survives unharmed, cared for, tended to (albeit in isolation andc deprivation, but those are very relative experiences) for the rest of his or her life. Life’s value is not affirmed; it is mocked.

If when an innocent is done to death- think of any of the recent murders that have occurred: children sexually assaulted and buried alive to die, hostages mercilessly tortured then executed, random individuals snatched from public or private places and unspeakably killed; imagine the terrors and agonies those individuals endured until their deaths- and the killer does not die in return, there is no utterly solemn and irrevocable act that defines life’s utter value. There is only deafening anticlimax. But when the killer is duly convicted and executed, life’s value is decisively affirmed: to deliberately take the life of another with brutality and cruelty is itself punished by death.

The death penalty is not a deterrant; it is not meant to be. It is theater of the most absolute kind, affirming that the innocent cannot be so treated without like treatment meted out.

Two quick, unrelated observations.

It is very reasonable to support the death penalty and oppose abortion: both acts, the just punishment of one who cruelly kills the innocent and the preservation of the most defenseless of human beings ae but two sides of the same coin.

And pacifism is inherently contradictory: it declares life is so great a value that it cannot be defended, only offered up when confronted by violence. Its logic is thus that of annihilation, and the denial of life’s value: meet a savage enough foe, and all of the unresisting masses will die rather quickly. Its important to note than Gandhi prevailed because the British ruled India and despite isolated incidents of great violence could and would not mount any sustained campaign of the requisite violence to suppress his movement. Had Gandhi faced the Dutch or the Belgians, let alone the Germans or the Japanese, he would have been savagely eliminated (along with millions of his followers)

New Beginnings: Two Blog Entries

To get things underway once again, I’ll offer two new entries (and we’ll see which causes the most response: Emily, you will have a small buffet from which to choose your points of contention).

The first will discuss life and death ion terms of the death penalty (for Jeremy); the second willm discuss belief, how people believe what they believe, and why, even though those beliefs are very much part and parcel of whatever culture in which they arise and through which they are propagated, there is still some element within those beliefs that transcends their very limited, very localized, origin.

Let the games begin anew.

Apology for a Long Absence

Its been far too long an absence, and I owe an apology to those (few) loyal readers of this blog.

Friday I completed a bankruptcy: the last step in a painful process following loss of a job a year ago and my inability to find a job with even vaguely similiar compensation (I make exactly half what I made a year ago: imagine yourself now trying to maintain your life with half of your present income). So I have gone through the filings, the interviews, the hearings, the phone calls, and now the discharge has been made. I continue to struggle to make ends meet.

Now my next worry: will we keep our house? The attorney is negotiating lower payments with the bank holding the mortgage; all we can do is wait. And, as the old truism notes, waiting is the hardest part.

I have been very tired, finding it hard to think of topics or finding the energy to write. Thanks to Chris, I have resolved to try again.

So: what shall we discuss?

I’ll think of something, and be back tomorrow with a new post (if I don’t hear from any of you), and we’ll see if we can something restarted.

And (shades of New Year’s resolutions) I’ll try to do a better job of posting.

The Addendum Debate: Step by Step

All of the comments to the preceding blog raise very interesting, if widely diverse (and divergent) points.

My plan is to address these various points each in their turn, in order to do each proper justice of attention. It seems there are two very different themes emerging: the continuing debate about whether violence is intrinsic to human nature, and a new debate about how an environment (in this case, a local culture) influences and forms an individual’s perception of the world.

This post will address the question of violence and human nature.

Obviously Chris and Emily disagree; I think this is so because they both have a sense of the good that human beings can accomplish. Aaron sees that human nature is far more ambivalent that simply violent or simply good (which is rather close to my position); Janelle sees violence in her children (the image of innocence to most) at) and wonders if this isn’t some indication that human beings are intrinsically vilent. A good point.

Yesterday (Saturday) I again spent the day assisting the veternarian with whom I work. Again a good deal of the day was spent tending dairy cattle. Cows impress me more and more: large animals of seemingly endless patienve, gentle, curious, passive (allowing the veternarian to probe and manipulate and even incise at will, without any reaction or resistance). They seem incapable of violence. Other animals- even predators- are not violent unless forced by circumstance to defend themselves or kill for sustenance (and then they kill only what they require). There seems to be a remarkable lack of an inherent tendency to violence in most animals.

Then, among the higher animals (those possessed oof more reflective, more abstartive forms of awareness), the tendency to violence rises. There have been studies written of packs of young male dolphins that sexually assauly unwilling females; chimpanzees display various violent behaviors that preternaturally prefigure human acts of violence (and here is a theme for another blog: science fiction always seems to postulate than species possessed of greater intellgence will prove more pacific; the evidence seems otherwise: perhaps that is why there is no evidence of adavanced alien civilizations: reaching ever higher degrees of intelligence, they become more and more violent, eventually destroying themselves).

With human beings violence is, I believe, part and parcel of our nature. Human beings commit acts of violence without provocation, without reference to social circumstance. It is a truism, but if one looks at Germany in the mid 1930’s one notes a society that was the most highly educated in the world, possessed of the highest achievements in the arts and the sciences: and it is a society that descends into the most horrific violence with precipitous alacrity. One example: the Einsatzgruppen (“special action groups”, a euphemism for units of combined SS and police- yes, police, German police, who were controlled by the SS but not SS, police as in the local police) were commanded by lawyers. Reading their SS ranks, they are all listed as Standartenfurherer-SS Dr. So-and-so. Men educated in law, in the western legal system, men sworn to uphold the law, who then murder human beings on the Eastern Front by the millions. Many joined to Party and SS not because they were true believers, but to secure and advance their careers. It wa cold calculation, not the white heat of ideological fury.

This correlates with the observations about intelligenjce and violence: the most horrific planners of mass death were, and are, the most educated: lawyers, medical doctors, holders of doctorates in other fields. And it causes serious difficulties for those insisting violence is somehow provoked by ideology: ideology doesn’t provoke violence; ideology gives violence, especially the most rationally designed acts of violence, a simple occasion to obtain.

Human nature is an intractable, impeneterable conundrum: human beings, even, and especially, the most educated, the most privileged, are easily comfortable with and ever ready to employ violence. I think it eminently arguable that there is indeed an innate tendency to violence present in human nature that is not present in the natures of other kinds of animals.

That said, I also share with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (one of my favorite philosophers) the belief that human nature is a recapitulation of all other natures lesser than itself and the promise of that which is beyond itself, infinitely. Pico held that human beings are as God: capable of infinitely marvellous and wonderful things, and that in themselves they are the summation of all that is not God. In other words even though there is this inherent tendency to violence in our human nature, there is also the possibility of the utterly amazing, the astounding: the beautiful, the marvellous.

And it is the preceding example to which I nowe return to illustrate this point: German society was capable of appalling violence, yet amazing achievements: this was the society that produced Thomas Mann and Karl Jaspers and dozens of other artists and philosophers. It is a small iteration of the paradox of our nature: we possess the fearsome possibility of unspeakable violence and the amazing possibilioty of transfigurative achievement.

New Look, same blog

Hey, this is Chris Traeger, I updated Woodward’s blog to be a bit easier on the eyes.  Unfortunately, I cannot edit the CSS changing font sizes and colors, but this looks like it is easier to read.  On the right side of the screen you’ll see the latest posts and comments making it easier to navigate.  If you have any questions on how to work things just post em in the comments section of this post and I’ll leave comments accordingly.

Thanks

Chris

Addendum to the Addendum

Obviously I disagree with both Emily and Jesse. If it is ideology
that causes human violence, how, then, can one explain, say, domestic acts of violence, or soccer riots, or bull fighting? Each are instances of great violence which have nothing to do with any ideology at all. Now, this not to say that some ideologies- such as National Socialism- are not inherently violent; it’s to say that most are not.
Human beings have an innate tendency to do violence: human history, and everyday events, prove that. Ideologies may occassion outbursts of that innate violence, but do not cause it. The cause is our nature; the occassion may be seemingly religious, or political, or social- the Red Sox win the pennant, let’s trash downtown Baltimore- but in fact is accidental to the actual violence itself.
I would add that most religions have played a crucial role in abating or mitigating violence. Ritually, sacrifice- whether actual or sacramental- serves as a socioreligious control on violence; a group’s violent tendencies are regulated through ritually structured acts of violence (see Rene Girard and his account of scapgoating, or Eugen Drewermann’s psychosociological analysis of sacrifice). Morally, religions have sought to control violence- witness the medieval Church’s Peace of God (and yes, I am aware of the Crusades and the Inquisition; but the Crusades arguably form a ritual attempt to control and direct violence, in this case the violence of the noble, warrior class).
All in all, religion does not cause violence; religion may occassion violence, but accidentally, as do sporting events and overcooked meals (none of which, by the way, in any sense are justifications for that violence). Religion, indeed, plays a central role in its regulation.
Without religion and its ritual and moral mitigations of violence, civilzation would not be possible.

So, yes, humanity is inherently violent, and to blame religion, or poor housekeeping for the expression of that violence is indeed a red herring.

Addendum to the Ultimate Question, Part Three

Emily mentions the violence associated with religious belief as proof for atheism. This is, to me, a red herring.

I would argue that violence is inherent in human nature; that, religious or not, human beings are instrinsically violent. I would also argue that the most terrible wars in history- the world wars, the Napoleonic wars, etc.,- were not at all religious. Indeed, the most violent “religious” war, the Thirty Year’s War, was in many senses not purely religious at all.

There are religious elements in every war, just as there are cultural elements, racial elements, and so on. So, the wars in the Middle East are not, to me, religious at all; there are religious elements, but these wars are in essence elements of far greater geo-political and geo-strategtic architectures. To ascribe their origns as purely religious is simply wrong, and a discredited tactic in the attempt to discredit religion.

The Ultimate Question, Part Three

Emily’s reply calls to mind two philosophers: the German idealist J.G. Fichte and the French existentialist
Jean-Paul Sartre.

Fichte (in the first of his several systems of philosophy) held that the existence of an “objective” (i.e., God as an entity against which other entities ar arrayed) thwarts the development of authentic morality. Fichte taught that to be truly moral one must be truly free; true freedom cannot respond to some exterior norm or order, bu must, of its own unfettered possibilities, construct that which moral. Thus Fichte did not accept the existence of the God of Jewish, Christian and Muslm revelations, the God who establishes a moral order to which all human beings owe obedience. Indeed, it can be argued that Fichte held that humanity creates God, for in this first system he equates God with the moral order created by human beings. Sartre’s thought echoes Fichte’s: each human being is, for Sartre, a “project”, a possibility, a creation-in-potential, and each huan beng is therefore an act of creation, a creation of something from nothing, the realization of unlimited potentialities in and through that individual’s ongoing self-realization as self-creatin. For Sartre a God would thwart this creativity; indeed, for Sartre each huan being is god-like, for each human being creates him- or herself out of the sheer nothingness of their illimitable possibilities.

Emily, it seems to me, would feel quite at home with Fichte and Sartre.

And: it is also clear that the cipher “God” is of infinite complexity, a composition of psychological, pyschosociological, cultural, historical, philosophical structures that accrete and accumulate over centuries and millienia (and that this cipher is further complicated by centuries and millenia of devotional imagries, of popular perceptual complexes, and their seemingly endless evolutions and devolutions and mutations).

Yet: given that in many ways human beings do indeed create themselves; given that the cipher called “God” is very often structured by psychological, pyschosociological, cultural, historical elements and factors and given that the definition of what the cipher God seeks to encompass and communicate is the Beyond (or Beyonds), and that this Beyond or those Beyonds are thus by that same definition incomprehensible and therefore undefinable, it is still possible to prove that this beyond or those Beyonds exist.

And the question of their character or nature thus remains.

The philosopher Henry Dumery addressed Sartre directly: through what Dumery called reductions (a term he borrowed from Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology) it is possible to arrive at proof of the Beyond. In essence Dumery demonstrated that at each level of knowing there are yet more fundamental levels, until the irreducible is achieved: that irreducible is the Beyond.
What Dumery sought was the ultimate enablement, the ultimate allowance, of the human power of self-creation. Never denying that human beings are the authors of themselves, Dumery showed that the Beyond is that which evokes human self-creation.

When Emily spoke of how interaction with others is the means of moral realization, she basically notes that our self-creation is always evoked by that which is “outside” or beyond ourselves. In other words it is what is beyond the individual that makes possible self-realization and self-creation. But it is Beyond- Beyond any and all encompassment and comprehension- that indirectly evokes human self-creation, and it is this indirection that is the proof of the existence of the Beyond. The cipher God, cluttered by thousands of years of evolving, devolving, mutating,ceaselessly interacting complexes of psychological, psychosocial, cultural, historical, philosophcal, devotional elements and factors, is yet capable of disclosing something of the character of that Beyond (or those Beyonds).

But the question remains: through the investigation of this cipher, what can be discovered of the nature of the Beyond (or Beyonds)?

The Ultimate Question, Part Two

As always, interesting comments; another demanding rejoinder from Chris, and a welcome addition from Aaron (and yes, call me Guy).

Chris, I think you miss my point. As you noted, theologians, philosophers and now scientists (cosmologists in particular) have all addressed the conundrum of origins: from where did all that exists arise? It is no accident that if you read cosmology you begin to note distinct similiarities between cosmology and theology: biblical (Jewish/Christian/Islamic) speaks of creation of all from nothing; cosmologists speak of the universe (or multiverse, or whatever) arising from quantum flux spontaneously. Or other religious traditions speak of an infinity o creations, always existing, sometimes cyclical, sometimes successive (Hinduism, Buddhism); cosmologists speak of all possible universes existing necessarily, infinities upon infinities, some of which give rise to intelligent life (no need of an act of creation: simply the necessary existence of literally every possible universe or multiverse). Yet another cosmological theory holds that the universe is in fact either a computer or a computation (based on the fact of quantum computing); and this parallelled by other religious notions of the universe as a notion in the mind of some absolute. And there are uncountable other religious, philosophical, neo-religious, semi-philosophical, cosmological, demi-cosmological explanatory systems abounding, now and throughout history. The point, simply, is that the existenc of these systems speaks to the human need to explain origins: many posit this need as pyschological or socio-pyschological; I would argue that the existence of this need, even given a pyschological or sociopsychological structure, yet has its roots in a real given, a given which is by definition indescribable, incommensurable and incompehensible. All this goes back to the long-ago discussion of ciphers: human constructions, of near infinite complexity, coalesced as religions or philosophies and now as cosmologies, of psycho- and sociopsychological origin and structure, which yet are indicative of that which is quite simply Beyond.

So again: the question is not that there is such a Beyond (or even Beyonds); it is a question of the character of that Beyond or those Beyonds. And Chris here you raise the points I raise, in the previous post and others: there is such stupidity and suffering in the world, there are such absurdities and horrors, as well as marvels and wonders, that the question of the character of the Beyond or Beyonds) comes into play. And that’s the ultimate question.

And Aaron, I don’t seek either the God of the Old Testament or the God of the New (though I freely admit my preference for the latter). I seek the true character of this Beyond (or Beyonds) in a manner that proves consonant with human experience. And yes, Aaron, there is a great deal of rhetoric involved in this search: I argue that in essence it is but a rhetorical difference between theology an cosmology, and that it is therefore rather prententious of cosmologists to so airily dismiss theism in favor of cosmological atheism when their “quantum fluxes” and “all possible multiverses” are simply theological rhetorical devices redone in scientific (or pseudo-scientific) rhetorical flourishes. Which, to me, brings us again to the point I made above.

As for not caring (or indifference): that sounds very Zen Buddhist to me: the indifference to God’s existence or non-existence, the concentration on the purity of concrete action. Yet that whole notional complex arises in a distinctly religious context: Buddhism as it developed in China and then Japan. And very much concerned with ultimate questions. So even indifference is an attitude to the absolute, to the Beyond or Beyonds. One way or another, by active response (theistic or atheistic) or passive indifference, a response is made.

And we are back where we began: given our experiences of the world, of our life, of meaning or meaninglessness, of worthwhileness or worthlessness, given the questions of life’s sufferings and losses that challenge and demand, what is the character of this Beyond or Beyonds? Have the ciphers we’ve constructed proved adequate to that character?