Interlude VII. The God Delusion

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Interlude VI. Foucault - part 2

On The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

I don't recall reading anyone I've agreed with so much. Most of his positions on religion are things I've thought of myself, and his intolerance of mild forms of faith (that being a little bit religious is like being a little bit pregnant) is an interesting point of view I hadn't considered before.

That said, I started wondering when he was going to get into epistemology and metaphysics around page 125, so I was pretty excited when he finally did get around to it on the last four pages of the book. He made, in a very nice but different way, points similar to the ones Annie Dillard made about "the tree with the lights in it" and Muriel Barbery made with her passage about Husserl. He even, a few pages before that, went into Quantum physics. He laid out the basics of the relativity of our experience of reality -- that science, at best, can tell us about what we perceive but almost nothing definitive about the reality behind that perception. And yet he shows no inkling of comprehending that this is a problem for someone who wants to say that God doesn't exist. I am gobsmacked.

What I am left with is that some people are so focused on science that they are blind to the undermining of the foundation of that science in exactly the same way religious people are blind to how science undermines their positions.

Nietzsche. posits a synthesis of the artistic (Apollinian) with the mystical (Dionysian) to create Attic tragedy and the Greek peace with reality (with the human fate of individuation). Then he sees this synthesis destroyed by the Socratic preference for reason and science, which rests on the premise that there is an objective reality that can be known and reasoned about to unlock all its secrets. The new scientific view worked fine into the 19th century, but no longer.

Quantum theory was the death of a Socratic belief system based on reason and objective scientific observation of an independently existing universe. String theory posits that subatomic "particles" are just bundles of energy at varying pitches in a cosmic harmony. Which sounds pretty damn mystical.

That consciousness seems to play a key role in actualizing quantum states, also removes the foundation of "objective" reality. The universe seems to be fundamentally interactive. All this leaves the door open for a pantheistic interpretation of reality (my preference) but at the least it needs to be addressed by someone like Dr. Dawkins who is, in effect, as a scientist, standing on thin air.

This doesn't undermine most of what he wrote against the various popular cults of our time, but it concerns me that he either doesn't wish to address it or, even worse, doesn't see the problem.

Next: Interlude VIII. The Passion of Michel Foucault - part 3.

Interlude V. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Interlude IV. The Passion of Michel Foucault - part 1

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

I tend to confuse the stories of Sallie Tisdale (The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies -- links here) and Annie Dillard. When I recall a ghastly tale about insects it’s hard to remember which of the two infected me with it. Dillard’s parable of the Polyphemus moth is unforgettable (there’s a version in Pilgrim... and a slightly different version in An American Childhood which is perhaps more effective for standing more alone) and I can thank Dillard for the statistic that 10% of all insects are parasitic, but otherwise they tell a similar tale of natural abjection.

Some quotes from Pilgrim...

I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and it keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It’s a good place to live, there’s a lot to think about... Theirs [the creeks] is the mystery of the continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection...

After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusion on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes, but everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

And speaking of fire, we do love a good blaze. We can’t take our eyes off a wreck or disaster. I’ve joked we “choose” to dump the crazy and defective on the streets where we can see them struggle -- but what if that’s true? What if “Care In the Community” is like bear baiting and dog fights? The Saw movie franchise and the Human Centipede suggests that we crave this and BDSM suggests that just watching isn’t enough -- hello Foucault.

If we build a particularly big “Man” on the Playa it’s because we want to see it burn. Is it the same for cities? Did the Japanese build the magnificent Yamato battleship and then sail it on a pointless mission of doom at least in part for the spectacle?

An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment.

I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting.

When the leaves fall the striptease is over; things stand mute and revealed... All that summer conceals, winter reveals.

I’m getting used to this planet and to the curious human culture which is as cheerfully enthusiastic as it is cheerfully cruel.

The “worlds” created by art also take you away from the “actual” moment. To the extent you are captivated by music, a painting, a book, a film, you are oblivious to the world that is actually around you. The “moment” is like a cat trying to get your attention while you are busy doing something else.

I do it [study pond water] as a moral exercise... a constant reminder of the facts of creation that I would just as soon forget... These are real creatures with real organs, leading real lives, one by one. I can’t pretend they’re not there.

...it occurs to me more and more that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous.

...the universe was beginning to look more like a great thought than a great machine... But the question of who is thinking the thought is more fruitful than the question of who made the machine...

Just think: in all the clean beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death. I have to acknowledge that the sea is a cup of death and the land a stained altar stone.

Are we dealing in life, or in death?

Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me.

Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak... We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet... We are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world. The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die -- does not care if it grinds itself to a halt.

I’ve already used the quote above (in Autumn XIII. Stoics part 2) but I need to review it with Sartre and Foucault in mind. The task of being a moral creature in an amoral world was Sartre’s life work. While Sartre and Foucault often marched together at political rallies, I think Foucault was rather more comfortable with an amoral world. In fact I have the feeling he was at home there.

...if you want to live you have to die...

Creation itself was the fall, a burst into the thorny beauty of the real...

The creator is no puritan. A creature need not work for a living; creatures may simply steal and suck and be blessed for all that with a share -- an enormous share -- of the sunlight and air.

Another year has twined away, unrolled and dropped across nowhere like a flung banner painted in gibberish.

And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life... The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest... There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see.

Next: Interlude VI. Foucault - part 2 - S/M & liminal space.

Autumn XIII. Stoics - part 2

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Autumn XIII. Stoics - part 1

But we are fronted by that persistent questioner who will accept no a priori assumption, however noble in its character and beneficent in its tendency. How do we know that the reason of the Stoic is at harmony with the world’s law? I, perhaps, may see life from a very different point of view; to me reason may dictate, not self-subdual, but self-indulgence; I may find in free exercise of all my passions an existence far more consonant with what seems to me the dictate of nature. I am proud; nature has made me so; let my pride assert itself to justification. I am strong; let me put forth my strength, it is the destiny of the feeble to fall before me. On the other hand, I am weak and I suffer; what avails a mere assertion that fate is just, to bring about my calm and glad acceptance of this down-trodden doom? Nay, for there is that within my soul which bids me revolt, and cry against the iniquity of some power I know not. Granting that I am compelled to acknowledge a scheme of things which constrains me to this or that, whether I will or no, how can I be sure that wisdom or moral duty lies in acquiescence? Thus the unceasing questioner; to whom, indeed, there is no reply. For our philosophy sees no longer a supreme sanction, and no longer hears a harmony of the universe.

“He that is unjust is also impious. For the Nature of the Universe, having made all reasonable creatures one for another, to the end that they should do one another good; more or less, according to the several persons and occasions; but in no wise hurt one another; it is manifest that he that doth transgress against this her will, be guilty of impiety towards the most ancient and venerable of all the Deities.” How gladly would I believe this! That injustice is impiety, and indeed the supreme impiety, I will hold with my last breath; but it were the merest affectation of a noble sentiment if I supported my faith by such a reasoning. I see no single piece of strong testimony that justice is the law of the universe; I see suggestions incalculable tending to prove that it is not. Rather must I apprehend that man, in some inconceivable way, may at his best moments represent a Principle darkly at strife with that which prevails throughout the world as known to us. If the just man be in truth a worshipper of the most ancient of Deities, he must needs suppose, either that the object of his worship belongs to a fallen dynasty, or -- what from of old has been his refuge -- that the sacred fire which burns within him is an “evidence of things not seen.” What if I am incapable of either supposition? There remains the dignity of a hopeless cause -- “sed victa Catoni.” [from the Pharsalia by Lucan, “victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni” = The victorious cause [at the Battle of Pharsalus] pleased the gods, but the defeated cause pleased Cato] But how can there sound the hymn of praise?

“That is best for everyone, which the common Nature of all doth send unto everyone, and then is it best, when she doth send it.” The optimism of Necessity, and perhaps, the highest wisdom man can attain unto. “Remember that unto reasonable creatures only is it granted that they may willingly and freely submit.” No one could be more sensible than I of the persuasiveness of this high theme. The words sing to me, and life is illumined with soft glory, like that of the autumn sunset yonder. “Consider how man’s life is but for a very moment of time, and so depart meek and contented: even as if a ripe olive falling should praise the ground that bare her, and give thanks to the tree that begat her.” So would I fain think, when the moment comes. It is the mood of strenuous endeavour, but also the mood of rest. Better than the calm of achieved indifference (if that, indeed, is possible to man); better than the ecstasy which contemns the travail of earth in contemplation of bliss to come. But, by no effort attainable. An influence of the unknown powers; a peace that falleth upon the soul like dew at evening.  

Alpha.

It has always seemed to me that philosophers had a rather naive understanding of human nature when they said things like,

The happy life is a life that is in harmony with its own nature.

-Seneca

And, to refer once again to Sallie Tisdale's The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies (in The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death), the notion that,

He that is unjust is also impious. For the Nature of the Universe, having made all reasonable creatures one for another, to the end that they should do one another good...

demonstrates a remarkably poor understand of Nature, and Ryecroft admits as much. Annie Dillard may have put it best in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,

Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak... We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet... We are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world. The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die -- does not care if it grinds itself to a halt.

To borrow a phrase (and book title) from Nietzsche, Nature exists Beyond Good and Evil. And to repeat something I’m pretty sure I said before in reference to Prometheus and The Serpent (Spring XXV. The end of spring + Prometheus), our perception of Good and Evil is a symptom of our individuation... our isolation from nature (and arguably from God.) This is why I would say that the true Problem of Evil is our thinking there is a problem. But this isn’t something you would want an absolute ruler -- or half the population -- to believe.

And yet I don’t think this existential twist completely undermines the final bit of Stoic wisdom quoted above,

Consider how man’s life is but for a very moment of time, and so depart meek and contented: even as if a ripe olive falling should praise the ground that bare her, and give thanks to the tree that begat her.

This holds true even in a world Beyond Good and Evil. Actually, I think Epictitus said it best,

To trouble ones mind about the nature of the Universe is to play the fool. One sect has discovered that Being is one and indivisible. Another that it is infinite in number. If one proclaims that all things are in a continual flux, another replies that nothing can possibly be moved at any time. The theory of the universe as a process of birth and death is met by the counter theory that nothing ever could be born or ever will die. Socrates was interested in human topics.

But what does it all mean? I don’t know, of course, but I choose to see in Nature/the Universe/Devi, the Great Novelist. What does any compelling, page-turning, novel mean? Do we really care? At the end of Vikram Seth’s monumental A Suitable Boy I experienced a level of grief that was new to me from reading -- I couldn’t read fiction for months -- not because the ending was sad (it isn’t) but because the story, this entire universe of literary creation, was over... and the author made it clear on the final page that there would be no sequel. I didn’t crave meaning then, I wanted more story.

Next: Autumn XIV. Suffering + Acorns, trees, and Feng Shui.

Spring VI. Actuary & the seasons

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Poverty, bad back, and fate

How many more springs can I hope to see? A sanguine temper would say ten or twelve; let me dare to hope humbly for five or six. That is a great many. Five or six spring-times, welcomed joyously, lovingly watched from the first celandine to the budding of the rose; who shall dare to call it a stinted boon? Five or six times the miracle of earth reclad, the vision of splendour and loveliness which tongue has never yet described, set before my gazing. To think of it is to fear that I ask too much.

Alpha.

And so he did -- ask for too much -- as Gissing was dead within a year of finishing this book. But how rare it is to truly appreciate the turn of the seasons as Ryecroft does here. When I think of the people in literature who have been in a position to do this, I don’t come up with many examples. Austen’s heroines were doomed to study the seasons, as strolling about the countryside was one of their chief occupations, in their otherwise constricted lives. Annie Dillard, in Pilgrim At Tinker Creek is an excellent modern example, but her situation was very unusual. Wendell Berry is a farmer and poet so is all but required to note such things.

Mostly this makes me think of Hans Castorp in The Magic Mountain -- my obsession. There, as here, the careful observation of flowers and trees is used to emphasize the passage of seasons and of time. Hans, a young engineer-to-be from Hamburg, discovers the wonders of nature in the Swiss Alps as part of his "Taking Stock" as he lives the life of a well-off tuberculosis patient. Like Henry, he studies botany books and even collects samples to preserve and study. More, this study is a part of his scientific-humanistic life, which balances his mystical-spiritual life, and so is part of the dialectic he represents.

On rare occasions I will buy a few flowers from a corner stand. But I then keep the flowers for months as I find their dried out form (sometimes) as appealing as their original form. Not sure what either Mann or Gissing would make of this.

Next: Spring VII. Roots of philosophy?