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Blogging
July 1, 2006
I have temporarily redirected my energy to a "blog," at the following address -- http://versalvere.blogspot.com/ . The main reason is that I find I have little new to say here, and the world's political, social and moral situation is
so bad, why add to the depression? My attention has been gradually refocussing to the issue of "poetic inspiration" - for
if there is ever to be a better civilization, or a renewal of what is best in us, we will have to return - seriously, passionately
- to what is high, noble, beautiful, complex, difficult, thought-out, and felt. And yet we must somehow "leap" through all
of these things to discover a new ground of simplicity or a new grounding of the Good.
I was reading in Basil Willey's book, The English Moralists, (originally published 1964) and came across this
interesting quote from Julien Benda's famous book, La Trahison des Clercs (which, Willey notes, "thirty-five years
ago Mr. T.S. Eliot was telling us all to read): that "humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction
was an honor to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world." Basil Willey comments
that Benda's main thesis is that for about 50 years before the time of writing the book, the "Clerks" -- that is the political
and intellectual leaders of society -- were busy betraying their trust.
How much greater, deeper, vaster, is that betrayal today - for us, our "Clerks" no longer even betray us in the sense
that there is nothing left to betray, for we have lost the sense of the Good. And when I say that my new focus is the
poetic imagination, this is a way of saying that the new question is how to reanimate the love for the Good in human
consciousness. How does one inspire loyalty and love for the Good? How awaken the emotions? The imagination?
I wrote a series of poems some years ago - rather I began a series of poems which took twelve years to complete (1985-1997)
and it is the ostensible subject and matter of these poems that will form the basis for my new reflections. As one now "grounded"
in the Catholic faith, I can now look back on my anthroposophical years with a new perspective. Likewise, the question of
autobiography, subjectivism, the feminine, the nature of the imagination - all of these issues which I may have
put aside in my quest for metaphysical grounding - may be now taken up again in a new light. While I make no claim that the
poems comprising Pictures from the Speaking Stillness are great poems, I do say that they came about in a most unusual
way. My question being-- is there such a thing as inspired thinking? And how do we even explore such a topic today?
It is not accidental that Basil Willey begins his book on the English Moralists with Plato and Aristotle. Any discussion
about the poetic imagination will lead us back to Plato, sooner or later -- about whose recouse to myth Willey wrote as follows:
"... it is noteworthy that Plato never has recourse to myth until dialectic can go no further...Reasoning is always the ground
upon which he invites your assent; the myth, though it is intended to evoke an emotional response, is never meant to supersede,
but only to confirm, the reasoning. It is never presented as anything but probable fiction; fiction in harmony with rational
results."
"Fiction in harmony with rational results." This is the spirit in which I undertake the new blog, Versalvere - a place
whose meaning I explain - but whose sound and sense ought to evoke in the sensibility of the reader a feeling for
the Good and its resonance in language. And feeling this... is to take the first step to Going There.
Inhuman Energy
June 17, 2006
I received a note from a correspondent, who is returning to the U.S.--- not altogether willingly-- from his first
year of dental studies in Poland. He sent me the following from Christopher Dawson's Christianity in East and West, saying
"…that in this excerpt he accurately describes the United States and to a lesser extent other nations of the world.
What are your views on the matter?"
The passage:
"The new powers created by modern science have made the technological organization of life
more complicated and more all-embracing, while on the other hand the development of democracy has made publicity and the formation
and influence of mass opinion the dominant forces in social life.
These forces are not
in themselves evil, so long as they are subordinated to rational and moral ends, but as soon as they get out of control or
are exploited recklessly in the interests of power by parties or groups, they become engines of social destruction. Any society
that submits to their unrestricted action becomes a huge machine which crushes human nature under its pressure and uses the
disintegration of the mind and will of the individual human person as a source of inhuman energy. "
Yes, my friend, this is the sense of life when everything, absolutely everything, becomes subordinated to the "economy."
I am told that the largest industry in Pennsylvania is, or will soon be, casino gambling. It is impossible for me to understand
how the American people can be so deluded to have allowed this to happen. And what about the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, gay marriage
and Ann Coulter?
Along these lines the law professor Butler Shaffer wrote a very good piece, "The Price of Madness," for lewrockwell.com
this week – at this link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer139.html
A few quotes:
"How did an America of H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, James J. Hill, Henry David
Thoreau, and Anne Hutchinson, manage to become a nation of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Halliburton, and Condoleezza Rice? How did the spiritual voice of a Ralph Waldo Emerson get replaced by Pat Robertson? What
epidemic of pests has eaten away at the timbers of the White House since the days of Thomas Jefferson, producing an infestation
of such anti-social insects as the Clintons and the Bushes? How was Tom Paine toppled as the all-time best-selling author
by the likes of such scrawlers as Al Franken and Ann Coulter?
How did this erosion of character arise? The shallow-minded among us will be quick to accuse
television, Hollywood, rock music, drugs, the "liberal" establishment, a "right-wing conspiracy," or any of a number of equally
irrelevant culprits. The reality is that the decay arose from within, not within some amorphous collectivity called "America,"
but within the minds and souls of individuals who comprise society.
We live in a country ruled by dangerous and foolish people; by sociopaths who are prepared
to engage in the planned killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, for no other purpose than
to satisfy their insatiable appetites for power. But what is far worse than this is the fact that we live in a country whose
residents either value such traits or, at the very least, are unable – or unwilling – to recognize and condemn
them. The ruling class – and its coterie – offers the most specious rationalizations for their practices to a
public largely reduced to flag-waving."
Ann Coulter, the reader may recall, is the neocon harpy who
has accused the widows of 9/11 of being "witches." People like Ann Coulter – "anti-social insects" -- flourish when
society has ceased to be a community, and there is no accountability any longer for what a person does or says. Anything outrageous,
and the more outrageous the better, brings in the bucks, the publications, the TV time. It is a good example of "inhuman energy"
on which American society now feeds. We are living through the Great Fire Sale, when the Nietzschean "transvaluation of all
values" has metamorphosed to a lower level – the liquidation of all values. Shaffer thinks that people will not wake
up to what is happening until there the economic consequences are driven home: "We live in a dying
culture, the demise of which most of us shall not recognize until there is a total collapse of all that we value: our material
wealth."
I think there actually are people who are aware of what is happening. But those who are aware have insufficient power and
influence to turn the ship of state away from its rendezvous with the rocks. And those who aren't aware and have the power
are too busy partying to pay attention.
May 29, 2006
Random Thoughts
A few disjointed thoughts, of no particular relation to one another.
When I attended Mass yesterday, my footsteps took me up to the choir loft, where I had the notion of inquiring about
joining the choir. I thought that there would probably be some kind of audition, at least to determine whether I could carry
a tune, but without any fuss and with much warmth I was shown a seat, some music thrust into my hand, and there I was - St.
Colman's Choir's latest addition. It seems that if you join the choir, well you join the choir. I was thinking about this
later and how different from the layers of professionalism - with all its accompanying signs of self-importance - that
surround almost any activity today. You feel a charism, or have a mission to do something, and pretty much I find in Catholic
circles that if your intentions are sincere you will be accepted. And people accuse the Catholic Church of not being "open"!
Along these lines, I am reading Thomas Woods' excellent book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.
This book is a little deceiving in the sense that you think it is not going to tell you as much as it does tell you,
and it conveys the message in such a modest way, almost through an accretion of understatements, that you begin to realize
you must have left your mind and historical understanding buried back somewhere under some "Enlightenment" propaganda
monument. In fact, the more you read, the more you realize that almost everything that modern people pride themselves on was
invented or started back in the Middle Ages under Catholic sponsorship - with the exception of an inordinate pride in being
modern, which is the particular accomplishment of the moderns. Modern people like to advertise being Modern, whereas our forebears
seemed to take a genuine interest in the world, and learned an enormous amount about it, or at least they laid down the lines
along which such inquiries about the world would have to follow in order to be fruitful. Considering the relation between
rationality and faith that obtained in earlier centuries, the current obsession of science with pure naturalism seems off-key,
and bodes ill for us. Science seems to be driving toward a new form of aggressive paganism, and this is both a betrayal of
its heritage and a dangerous dismantling of any concept of moral limits.
Limitlessness does slide into my next theme, though it is radically different from the two just mentioned. I cannot help
but say that I am noticing many more grossly obese people than in former days. Today, while doing the laundry in
Ardmore before attending the Memorial Day Mass, one of these unfortunates came in with her husband and son. She was white,
the husband black, the boy seemed nice enough. In fact they seemed like nice enough people, except that this obese woman was
wearing tight-fitting shorts and sat on the bench, her bulging legs splayed, drinking a sugar soda. I am noticing a lot more
of these types lately - the result, no doubt, of our hydrocarbon-propelled lifestyle and the abundance of sugared foods and
drinks. But I sometimes just wonder how they can live under all that additional corporeality and even accentuate it with tight-fitting
clothes.
Abridged and revised: review of E. Michael Jones's book, Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political
Control. See link at left, "To Rule by Vice." May 14, 2006.
New today, May 6, 2006: Thoughts on "Metaphysical Womanhood," posted at link to the left. Naked ladies
and a bemused philosopher!!
May 28, 2006: I plan to submit the following piece to the Philadelphia Inquirer. We'll see if it gets
a hearing. Comments welcome.
Why Gnosticism Now?
From The Da Vinci Code to the hullabaloo about the newly-discovered "Gospel of Judas" to Elaine
Pagels’ recent editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer ("What the ‘Code’ got right: A need to control,"
May 28, 2006) modern gnostics have assembled a formidable team on the playing field for another round of the sport of Catholic-bashing.
The basic premise of modern gnosticism is this: (a) All authority is bad; (b) The Catholic Church claims
authority concerning the truth of the life of Jesus; (c) therefore, the Catholic Church is bad. Elaine Pagels thus states
that "Early church leaders suppressed other views of Christ," as if to say that these other views of Christ, through the mere
fact of their being "other views," entitles them to be considered of equal merit with Church teaching. Are all efforts toward
‘Quality Control’ to be thus dismissed without further ado? Try making that argument to the bridge-builders and
highway engineers of the present. Why is ‘Quality Control’ despised when it comes to the builders of the one religious
institution that has defined Western culture? (Hint: for an answer, see (a) above).
Pagels is very selective in her deployment of historical facts. There were three primary characteristics
of the old Gnosticism which the Church felt should not be encouraged. First, the elitist tendency (i.e., that advanced spiritual
knowledge is reserved for the elite few). Second, the hatred of certain Gnostics for the Old Testament. (Marcion, one of these
early Gnostics, thought that the God of the Old Testament was evil and that the Old Testament should not be included in the
Christian canon). Third, Gnostics denied the reality of the Incarnation and the historical validity of the life of Jesus.
(Some of the Gnostics were docetists, believing that the material world is just an "appearance." Thus, they denied
that Christ truly suffered in the body.)
These are just three of the most obvious reasons the early Christian Church felt it had to oppose Gnosticism.
There was also quite a bit of misogyny in the ancient Gnostic circles, a fact which modern gnostics are anxious to conceal.
Nor do modern gnostics wish to examine the differences in Catholic and Protestant Christianity regarding the significance
of the feminine element, lest they get enmeshed in actual historical facts that might inconvenience their sweeping anti-Catholic
conspiracy theories. Thus, by carefully selecting the facts, and comparing the flawed actuality of a living Christianity to
an unreal ideal, modern gnostics argue that their delusional version of Christianity is the "true" one. Such an approach sweeps
away the historic achievements of the actual Church, which created a vital growing point at the intersection of three cultures
– Greek, Roman, and Hebrew. This witness became open to all in faith, despite class, ethnicity, or gender. But the modern
gnostic, forever attuned to the way things ought to be rather than the way things are, uses the mentality of
the present to slander the Church -- as if that very modern mentality owed nothing to the twenty intervening centuries of
development originally set in motion by that same Christian Church.
Modern gnosticism is thus a variation on that peculiarly modern theme, ingratitude. Nevertheless, it is possible
to argue in good faith that perhaps the early Church went too far in suppressing Gnosticism, which did have, in some sectors,
sublime teachings about the spiritual hierarchies. Some of these sublime teachings did find their way into the opening lines
of the John Gospel, the most "metaphysical" of the Gospels and the one considered to be the most historically accurate of
the four gospels.
But nuanced thinking at this level is not to be expected from the purveyors of the new wave of anti-Catholicism
in the form of "entertainment" and "scholarship." These new Gnostics bask in the enjoyment of their superior enlightenment
while overlooking the painful and often humanly flawed efforts needed to build and sustain a civilized community. Thus the
New Gnosticism fits in very well with the complacent mood of our time. The early Church was right nearly two thousand years
ago to condemn such a doctrine as unworthy of human dignity, effort and achievement, just as grown-ups, who may be
Christian or not, but who rightly resist the infantilization of our culture, should condemn it today.
_________________________________________________________
Acknowledgements to Various Gentlemen
May 20, 2006 I want to thank Leo Wong for his occasional notice of this website
in his blog, The Diary of a City Parishioner. Leo is particularly a student of Jacques Barzun and is familiar with the work
of John Lukacs, and is a faithful Catholic. His site can be accessed here: http://diaryofacityparishioner.blogspot.com/
I wish to thank John Harris of Texas for his excellent web magazine, Praesidium,
and blog, "A diving bell view of post-literate society." http://www.literatevalues.org/virtue.htm. John writes most poignantly of immigration issues, which he perceives from his corner of Tyler, Texas,
to have gotten out of hand. But his larger subject is that of literacy – or rather, education and thinking. I don’t
always agree with John – such as his latest comment on James Bowman’s confused book about honor: "Honor always
turns dishonorable, in an absolute sense, when attached to merely human entities: to clans, to cliques, to gangs, to cabals."
But a redoubled confusion is not a truth; it is just more confusion. What else can honor be attached to, except persons, tribes,
or clans? The point is not that these things are wrong. They only become suffocating when they no longer glow with incarnational
religion – with the eternal glory that lights them up and gives them dignity in their moment of time. And it is not
the persons, tribes, and clans that can be considered as the ultimates, but against the standards of the eternal that they
are measured, and for their small measure, esteemed. I think John Harris would benefit from a close reading of my brother
Paul C. Johnston's essay, "Urbino: An Essay on the Vital Manners of the West," -- http://mysite.verizon.net/vze495qq/urbino/ -- it would help clear up some of his confusions about tribes and clans. "Human undertakings do not deserve blind
obedience." True. But also true: human undertakings do not deserve confused disobedience.
The other point to remember about honor is that it is not achieved, only bestowed – as cf. In the Spanish
poet’s remark that honor is that which can only be bestowed by one man to another. "To be bestowed" bespeaks an attitude
of humility, of patience, a kind of receptivity of the soul cultivated by true religion. Dare I suggest that this attitude
is not "Protestant"? Putting it tactfully, honor has heavy sailing in a Protestant environment. How much of America’s
cultural divisions since the McCarthy era are ultimately traceable to distortions and misunderstandings of the concept of
honor? An interesting question, I think.
These quibbles notwithstanding, that the benighted Tylertonians should pay more attention to John Harris’s
literate voice goes without saying. Caught between a Mexican invasion and a Protestant feel-good fundamentalism – the
proverbial rock and a hard place – John Harris maintains the effort to think, to speak, to write, and be a good father.
It is no small achievement.
Another gentleman well worth listening to, or rather reading, is Henry C.K. Liu, a Harvard-educated
native of Hong Kong who manages a New York investment firm and writes for Asia Times Online. The international and
cosmopolitan flavor of his background speaks for itself, and Mr. Liu ranges over all of world history in his series, "The
Abduction of Modernity." His main thesis in this series of essays is that the West has appropriated the concept of modernity
– abducted it –"as a war cry to perpetuate the domination by the capitalist West of the rest of the world. Previously,
the Renaissance claimed modernity as a justification against secular power of the Church, the bourgeoisie claimed modernity
as a justification against absolute monarchism, and the socialist revolutions claimed modernity as a justification against
capitalism. But the current abduction of modernity by the capitalistic West represents the first time in history when reaction
is claimed as modernity and barbarism as progress. The law of the jungle is celebrated as a competitive market fundamentalism,
and the doctrine of ‘might is right’ permeates modern diplomacy, replacing morality and legitimacy."
That Mr. Liu brings in a wealth of historical detail from all cultures of the world seems to me a significant
achievement. I think that awareness of history in large, with more detailed understandings in part, may be the chief spiritual
necessity of our time. Again, Mr. Liu’s own education was liberal in the best sense: though evidently some sort of financier,
his training at Harvard was in architecture and urban design, and another one of his series of essays deals with modern art.
Indeed, is there any topic Mr. Liu has not considered? Such largeness of vision used to characterize "the West at its best."
Mr. Liu’s topics and personality suggest that the torch has passed to Asia. We would already know this had we been paying
attention to finance in the right way – that is, morally and metaphysically. That Mr. Liu pays attention both practically
and by m & m – morally and metaphysically – shows what midgets we have made of ourselves.
Mr. Liu’s entire series can be accessed here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/abduction-modernity.html
The essays comprise the following segments:
Part 1: The race toward barbarism
Western thinkers, many of whom cannot speak or read any non-Western language, are held back in their analysis of modern
civilization by the assumption that modernity is an exclusive characteristic of the West. At a time when the sole superpower
is resurrecting the practice of imposing national will by military might, Henry C K Liu examines this assumption in a series
of articles. (Jul 8, '03)
Part 2: That old time religion Those who argue that modernity is a product of the West forget that its
predominant religion, Christianity, endured centuries of ignorance and intolerance, and that enlightenment and innovation
were long the domain of the world's two other major faiths, Islam and Buddhism. (Jul 10, '03)
Part 3: Rule of law vs Confucianism
The rule of law has been touted by Western scholars as a central aspect of modernity. According to that measure,
since the rule of law was the basis of the first unification of China in the 2nd century BC, modernity occurred 23 centuries
ago in China. (Jul 23, '03)
Part 4: Taoism and modernity
To Taoists, modernity is a meaningless concept because truth is timeless and life goes in circles. In post-modern
thinking in the West, much of the awareness that Taoists have entertained for centuries is just now surfacing. (Jul 31, '03)
Part 5: The Enlightenment and modernity
The world has experienced many "periods" and "eras", the importance of which have depended on the observer's
position in space and time. While the so-called Enlightenment was a European phenomenon whose brilliance is questionable,
its consequences were far-flung, influencing even the spectacular successes and failures of "modern" Japan.(Aug 11, '03)
Part 6a: Imperialism as modernity
Imperialism is the extension of rule or dominance by one people over another, and it reached its climax under
the Roman Empire. Neo-imperialism coincided with the rise of commercial capitalism in the 17th century, but the cataclysmic
events of this "modern" period were marked at least as much by barbarism as by progress.(Oct 9, '03)
Part 6b: Imperialism and fragmentation
While Western Europe marched steadily toward integration, the non-Western world was, and continues to be,
fragmented for easy exploitation in the name of national self-determination. (Oct 10, '03)
Part 6c: Imperialism resisted
Indigenous attempts at modernization have throughout the past century been hijacked or derailed by outside
interests, whether political, economic or religious. In the conclusion to this epic series, it is observed that history serves
as a harsh lesson for non-Western cultures that wish to be modern as well as independent. (Oct 14, '03
One of the many arresting thoughts in these essays -- from Essay 5, Enlightenment and Modernity -- was
Liu's comment about Machiavelli, who authored Europe's "first secular treatise on politics, devoid of concern for morality,
legitimacy or justice." Ironically, Liu says, Machiavelli's description of universal barbaric chaos as political reality "deprived
Italy of the development of institutions... in which men can act in concert for a larger purpose." Need we note that Machiavelli
is one of the great inspirers of our current neoconservative regime?
Additions and Comments on "Metaphysical Womanhood"
May 13, 2006
From a note from the friend who inspired the original post: "I enjoyed your post last week, but still wonder if the anti-Marian
current in Protestantism isn't as guilty as the anti-metaphysical. You may be interested in a few remarks by Pope Benedict
(when he was still Joseph Ratzinger) on the topic. Speaking of the Protestant neglect of the feminine line in the Bible,
he says: "An exaggerated solus Christus compelled its adherents to reject any cooperation
of the creature, any independent significance of its response, as a betrayal of the greatness of grace. Consequently,
there could be nothing meaningful in the feminine line of the Bible stretching from Eve to Mary. Patristic and medieval
reflections on that line were, with implacable logic, branded as a recrudescence of paganism, as treason against the uniqueness
of the Redeemer. Today's radical feminisms have to be understood as the long-repressed explosion of indignation against
this sort of one-sided reading of Scripture..."( Mary--the Church at the Source. Ignatius
2005. p. 43).
And: from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, by C.G. Jung: referring to Munificentissimus Deus (1950) of
Pope Pius XII, on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The dogma affirms that Mary as the Bride is united with the Son
in the heavenly realm and as Wisdom (Sophia) she is united with the Godhead. 'Thus,' according to the editor, 'the feminine
principle is brought into immediate proximity with the masculine Trinity.' Jung comments on the fact that the feminine principle
finds no place in Freud's patriarchal world, contrasting this with the recent Papal Bull on the Marian Assumption.[But]
"...in the Protestant and Jewish spheres the father continues to dominate as much as ever."
It is very difficult to speak of spiritual influences and impulses -- e.g. 'the feminist impulse,' the Protestant impulse,' 'the
Judaic impulse,' 'the scientific impulse,' 'the historical impulse,' etc. essentially, that is, in their 'essential nature.'
Yet our modern world is full of these 'impulses' -- as full as the ancient cosmos was full of deities, good and bad. In a
manner of speaking our intellectual and ideological worlds have become as 'deified' with the works of our own mind as the
ancient world was full of beneficient and malign influences from the stars. And like the ancient cosmos, our modern world
is becoming ringed around with taboos - the unspeakable and the unsayable.
The tragedy in all of this - if one may speak of the 'tragic' - is that the very dynamism of Western history was
the fruit of a certain type of clarity regarding fundamental issues of life -- such as Nature, God, marriage, morals,
truth. That is, it was believed that the effort to arrive at some clarity was worthwhile in itself and that in this
way life depended upon truth. Science is the ultimate distillation of this viewpoint -- liberating as long
as it was held in tension by the other forces in society keeping in in check.
I have long wondered, with a sense of growing anxiety, whether the impulse to make history -- that is, the ability to
think and to act and make a stand within the historical limits of a given time -- is in some sense at odds with the impulse
to do science and technology. In other words, might technological productivity, as an end in itself, present a basic threat
to historical creativity? I raised this question in my book on Genesis, Consecrated Venom: The Serpent and the Tree of
Knowledge, as well as my novel about the end of oil, After the Crash: An Essay-Novel of the Post-Hydrocarbon Age.
I can't say that I have answered it, and in fact it is a very difficult question to answer. For all over the world now
countries and peoples like China and India are entering the technological race. It's the game of mastery, and Western man
no longer can boast that he is the sole possessor of the scientific mentality or of technological proficiency.
But science was not the West's sole claim to distinction. As John Lukacs has explored so fully in his magisterial volume,
Historical Consciousness, history is the Western 'form of thought' par excellence. Historical dynamism,
historical consciousness - this is what Western history was, as long as it was linked to a spiritual religion. Now that this
linkage has been broken, we are seeing the toxic results, which the late Catholic social theological Ivan Illich called 'the
corruption of the best is the worst.' He believed that the toxic symptoms of modern society were the result of the corruptions
of Christianity.
Technological fulfillment has become the fashion of the desperate - who want to plug up the hole of the eternal in man
and so bring history to a stop. Chesterton, in one of his illuminating leaps, remarks that "... there must be something eternal
if there is to be anything sudden." (from Orthodoxy, p. 109) That is to say, our ability to act, and therefore to
act in history and create new history, is predicated on the conviction that life depends upon truth,
and that obviously the full truth cannot be found in 'this life.' The conviction of the value of truth depends upon the conviction
of the eternal. This is what gives time its reality. These convictions -- all of these 'hinges' of
life, one could say -- and being 'hinges,' or links, they therefore have to do with 'religion' -- are fundamentally
opposed to the technological impulse. Plug up the holes! Speak of 'hinges' no more! Now is all in all!
All of this roundabout way of saying I sense in Western man a profound historical stagnation. We are caught
up in new confusions about old essences, and fight with old 'Nature' in the guise of spectral Wars.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
A Bit of Shade - or Sunscreen
People need a bit of protection in order to be able to venture into reality. "Human kind cannot bear too much reality,"
said Eliot - an apt observation for an age in which supernatural vision has contracted into a circumscribed this-worldiness.
The Catholic Church provides an umbrella of shade against the insistent shining din of the world. And yet it is more than
this, more than merely a refuge, in the sense that, as Chesterton puts it in The Everlasting Man, "Christianity ...[appeals]
to a solid truth outside itself; to something which is in that sense external as well as eternal. It does declare that things
are really there; or in other words that things are really things. In this Christianity is at one with common sense; but all
religious history shows that this common sense perishes except where there is Christianity to preserve it."
We live in a time when this perishing of common sense is happening all around us. There is the expectation of barbarism,
which I would describe as the perpetual fear of offending somebody. For there is little commonality or common ground or common
sense. The things are vanishing, and people are vanishing with them. There are notable and wonderful exceptions --
people of whom it may be said "bonum est diffusium sui et communicativum" -- goodness is diffusive and communicative
of itself --but such rare souls seem to live in the expectation of loneliness rather than of hope.
I have been reading in Etienne Gilson and Father Stanley Jaki lately - both thinkers who, in their differing ways, have
underlined the significance of Christianity to the rise of modern science. Gilson remarks somewhere - I don't have the exact
quote - that it is one of the glories of the human mind to state not how things seem, but how they are.
There is a whole non-Cartesian world in that remark - one that surely will sound strange and presumptuous to those raised
on the artificial milk of postmodernism, which is what happened after all the Cartesian idealist philosophy was boiled
away, leaving only the residue of encrusted secular subjective opinion. I had a recent set-to with one of these postmodernists
-- one of the professors alluded to in yesterday's post. I remarked on his op-ed in today's Inquirer but expressed
my disappointment that he did not acknowledge receiving my article on "Body Worlds." In my e-mail I said that
"...I was....surprised that you point to your religious heritage and use it to defend the sanctity of life. How, then, do you justify being on the Board
of Planned Parenthood?"
The professor wrote back, charging me with errors of fact and interpretation in my article on "Body Worlds," and
ending with this:
".....It is typical of people like you, and exactly what I was arguing against in my article,
that instead of assuming that those millions of pious people actually have thought through the issue and have religiously
valid reasons to do what they do, that you simply consider them dishonest....It sure beats actually thinking.
Black and white feels good, but that, Ms. Johnson, is what "just won't do."
This, by the way, was from a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. All that one can
say is that colleges and universities must evidently consider it beneath their dignity to teach the elementary principles
of argumentation and thinking, judging by the performance of their illustrious teachers. I wrote to the Professor inviting
him to correct my errors of fact and interpretation, so that I might submit this for publication in a future issue of "Culture
Wars," and said I welcomed "further clarification." I rather doubt I will hear from him again.
I heard recently from another correspondent, scolding me for the layout of my website and my evident indifference to
marketing. He said he has a newsletter of 130,000 subscribers.
I wrote him back:
I believe I may have heard of you, or seen your picture,
Thank you for caring about my wasted efforts. True,
I am not into marketing! I tried to get my Peak Oil
novel published, to no avail. I have submitted numerous
poetry manuscripts, to no avail. I sing and no one
listens, I think and no one responds. Am I a vox
clamato in deserto, a lonely disciple of amor
intellectualis, a lover of things for their own sake?
I have no evidence that more than five people ever
turn to read what I have written. And lately, sadly,
perhaps even fewer than that, I write so little.
Perhaps I wrote for the love of God.
For the love of man waxeth cold. For the mind is dead!
Perhaps I am a little crazy. But the world, insofar as it touches at my doorstep, seems crazier still. Have people utterly
lost the capacity to respond -- to ideas?
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Hunkering Down
Lately I have not felt that I have anything much to say. Instead of words, I seem to be living in a sense of the personal,
of presence, and I find that people in immediate situations do seem to respond appreciatively to this call of being.
The attempt to garner human responses through words, arguments, writings, etc., seems not to resonate much. For example, I
sent copies of my article on "Plastinating Philadelphia" to the principal persons involved in the College of Physicians colloquy
that I reported on in that article, and not a single person responded. Mind you, these are university professors and heads
of institutions. Did they think that I, being a mere M.A., was not worth the dignity of a response? Or is it that intellectual
exchange has become such a rarity in our time that they were baffled by the sheer novelty of it? Or should I say, the sheer
impudence of it?
I know there are people in this country who feel the absence of real conversation. My friend Ms. C.Y. flew all the way
from North Carolina to attend my Catholic First Communion, and one of the things that drew her here was the hope of some conversation.
There was. We had a good party afterwards, with real laughter and philosophy. The laughter was mainly wherever Ms. C.Y. was
(the dining room), and the talk in philosophy was some graduate students discussing Aristotle in the living room.
I fear that we Americans have become in many ways a society of wraiths. There can be no community without an amor
intellectualis - without the desire to be in pursuit of the goods of the mind. But it takes a long while for the intellect
to be liberated from itself, and without the help of women - dare I say it, women? - there is little hope of establishing
one's efforts in a community. But I think that one of the surprising things is that in becoming a Catholic, I have become
more of a woman. Mind you, dear reader, I am no feminist and never will be. I think that feminism only completed what Protestantism
began-- that is, the destruction of womanhood as a metaphysical reality.
This topic will open much food for thought, and perhaps in the coming weeks I will be up for it.
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