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.
Okay, but ultimately, isn’t it all a moot point? That’s what I never understood through all of my philosophy classes. Isn’t the search for god counterproductive? Ultimately it comes down to faith, and faith seems to be a have it or don’t have it type of feature. You can’t just go out hunting one day and stumble upon faith can you? fuck it, all I know right now is I am sick and tired of asking questions to which there is no evident and obvious answer, the problem, for even semi-cognizant people is making your brain stop thinking, if there is a better excuse for drug use I would like to see someone present it. I would take a pretty shitty existance if it meant I could shut my brain off for ten damn minutes. Anyway, back to the point, or lack there of the whole thing seems arbitrary and inconsequential, all I know is that if the Christian God is the real God and if it exists, at least I’ll have some company in hell
I agree completely – I feel like this is precisely how we should describe the phenomenon that is belief. That said, nothing here translates necessarily to belief in God, or any intelligent creator at all. I’m sure you recognize that, so for once, I have very little to argue with you about
Heidegger speaks about something like this in his writing “On the Origin of the Work of Art”. He speaks about “earth” and “world” as being distinct – the earth is that which we rest upon, those things on which we rely in building our “worlds”. It’s one of my favorite topics in his work, especially as it confronts human relationships with modern technology, but that’s a discussion for another day.