Making Sense of Life (or: Three Decorating Ideas for the Mind)
Wallace Stevens once said, “How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.” At first glance, this perhaps sounds like a Disneyesque reflection on the uses of a hearty imaginal life. Or—since Stevens was a poet—a reflection on the power of metaphor to set solid things flying.
At second glance—since Stevens was both a poet and an atheist—perhaps it is a reflection on what he saw as the most fruitful power in the universe—the human mind’s power to construct meaning as we go along in an otherwise material and un-human universe.
Most likely, Stevens meant all these things and more. After all, his poems sport beautiful and improbable and impermanent “furniture” such as peacocks, round jars in Tennessee, and Emperors of Ice-Cream. Stevens also wrote of “the palm at the end of the mind.” Yes, the palm is a tropical tree. It is also the human hand, our hands. We ourselves are the end of meaning . . . because we are the only creatures in the world that reach for something called meaning, at least something called “human meaning.”
Moment to moment we are faced with a question: How do I make sense of my life? “It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room,” Stevens wrote, “with something more than furniture.” And it is only one’s thoughts that fill a universe full of furniture with meaning.
Religions (and the lack thereof) reflect the values of the cultures in which they develop. Religions (and their lack) serve as both a reflection of the aspirations of particular groups and also as guides for individuals within a group when we may be in doubt concerning what our culture and our religious belief or non-belief requires of us. They also fill the room with more than furniture. They help us make sense of our lives.
Pragmatist philosophers claim that labeling one “truth” as “false” and another as “true” doesn’t reveal much. It is more useful to see all views—religious and otherwise—as devices to get results. After all, if beliefs did not get results, they would not survive the test of time. The question—at least for those who are free enough of theocracy to have a choice—is which of the many ways of seeing produce the most desirable results,which make the most sense our of life.
Is it somehow useful for making sense of life, for instance, to believe that Fridays which fall on the 13th of the month have special properties?
Over time human beings have posited two very different views of how the world works. One view is that the order we see is the order that is: sure, we will keep discovering more and more about that order, but it’s all out there to observe, albeit some of it observable only with a large hadron collider.
The opposite view (the opposite “truth”) is that there is a higher order not discoverable by observation. This is usually accompanied by speculation concerning a god or gods, though it doesn’t have to. (For example, the Renaissance-era belief in alchemy did not require gods in order to function, even though that belief system existed in parallel to Christianity. )
These polar opposites are not always opposite in practice. Many otherwise “materialist” people leave room for “powers unseen,” as the Book of Common Prayer would have it. Be that as it may, there is a great gulf fixed between those who trust observation to reveal “truth” and those who depend up the revelation of sacred texts and seers of various sorts, be they prophets or gurus.
Wallace Stevens was on the side of observation. He found the most reliable way to get results was to posit a lack of meaning (at least human meaning) beyond the human mind.
Is there a difference between the words of Moses and the words of Wallace Stevens? Stevens thought not. Sure, some poets and some poems are better at filling rooms with more than furniture, and large hadron colliders can rewrite all we know about the room and the furniture. Yet, in essence, it’s all about the human imagination. It’s up to us to animate the room with sense and meaning.
We ourselves are the end of (human) meaning . . . because we are the only creatures in the world that reach for something called (human) meaning. Moment to moment we are faced with a question: How do I make sense of my life? For some of us “truth” is our way of animating the furniture, and we assume our sense is not the sense of another. It is an entertaining place to live.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palm_tree_symbol.svg
As Stevens put it,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
Love is the Boss of Me
Recently an organizer asked for a meeting and I went to pull out my phone to check my calendar. “My calendar is the boss of me,” I joked. She looked at me oddly, but said nothing. And in that nothing I heard the strangeness, the madness of what I had just said.
I am not sure what she was thinking, but here is what I have been thinking since that awkward moment. A calendar serves as the representation of and reminder about the commitments I have made for and with my life energy, with my love. Just as a glance at your checkbook or credit card statement can give you insight into where you commit your financial energy, a calendar can be a window of insight into life values.
What a calendar probably should not be, and should not be thought of as, is the boss. Just as my checkbook and my credit card – while requiring true mindfulness – should not be the boss of me. I do not serve as a minister in the name of a calendar or a bank account. Those are important tools for sustaining my ministry, no doubt. They cannot be the source of my call.
I serve in the name of love. Love for the world that is and the world that can be. Love for the wonder of creation and respect of destruction. Love for a faith community that meets us where we are and doesn’t leave us there. Love for you. Love for me.
It is easy in the days of overloaded calendars and underloaded bank accounts to forget. And it absolutely matters that we remember.
In 1951, Universalist mister Albert Ziegler wrote: “It may be that we have lost sight of our mission. Primarily, the church is not for social or political pronouncements, nor for the fashioning and dissemination of erudite philosophical doctrines. It is for the generation of love. The church is the only institution in society so purposed. We strike at the heart of our very purpose for existence when we neglect that major aim.”
Clearly, it is time for me to remember that love, not a calendar, is the boss of me.
Our Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations will be gathering in Providence, Rhode Island beginning June 25th for General Assembly, the annual meeting of UUs from around the world, with the theme “Love Reaches Out,” inviting congregations to reach out beyond their walls and to engage in new ways of sharing faith.
In the free church tradition of Unitarian Universalism, “we do not just go to church, we are the church.” Beloved, this faith is called to live in the name of love. Let us commit ourselves anew to this call. In the immortal words of poet Maya Angelou, “I know for sure that love saves me and that it is here to save us all.”
The Proof’s in the Pudding (or What’s Churchy about Church?)
Imagine
I’m sometimes asked how humanists can have “church” without invoking god. Here’s how I think about it:
Imagine this scenario: When Imhotep in ancient Egypt invoked the great god Ra, he was invoking the human consciousness, not Ra Almighty.
Imagine this: When Zadok, son of Ahitub, entered the holy of holies of Solomon’s brand new temple, perhaps he was talking to the greatest power on this earth—the human imagination.
Imagine this: When the evangelist Billy Graham made his vast alter calls in stadiums across North America, the Christ that thousands flocked to . . . was the human psyche. Whatever you think about powers beyond, imagine this for just a moment.
Entertain the thought for just a moment that every shaman, priest, and prophet who has ever lived . . . has created worship without god because . . . there never has been six or three or one to begin with.
Shared Subjective Reality
But wait! Isn’t there more to the question? Because, even granted the accuracy of my imaginings, didn’t Imhotep and Zadok and Billy Graham each have the advantage of speaking to people who shared a subjective reality?
Didn’t the Egyptians of Imhotep’s time have a mental image of Ra and the Hebrews of Zakok’s time have a notion of Yahweh and the Christians of Billy Graham’s time a common picture of Christ the Lord?
Good question. Did they really? Are people really like that? Or did the priests and preachers have, rather, the apparatus of worship embedded in a particular place and time—Ra’s temple, Yahweh’s temple, or the vast football stadiums of Jesus with great PA systems?
Could it be that what they all had is an apparatus for worship that individual psyches journeyed to . . . . Can we seriously argue that each ancient Egyptian had an identical psychological understanding of Ra? Not likely. But they did have a temple, didn’t they? Doesn’t the very fact of the rabbinic tradition argue that Hebrew worshipers exited Zadok’s services with very different views of ultimate reality? Still, they had that temple, didn’t they?
Weren’t there as many Christs as there were Christians in Billy Graham’s vast alter calls? Yet they came to that structure of power and fame called a stadium or an auditorium, didn’t they? They came to hear Billy.
All Churchy
What’s so churchy about church? The apparatuses of worship change with time, as do the words and the concepts. It is the human mind and human needs for purpose and meaning that remain that same and come to the temple, the stadium, or the storefront church. These are what remain the same. For humanists, that’s as holy as it gets. And that’s fine: the proof is in the pudding. Ra’s pudding doesn’t do much for many of us. But the pudding of gathering together into community is quite tasty.
Just imagine that the point of worship (humanists prefer “assembly”) is calling individuals into community. Imagine that a community created in this way agrees to agree—despite individual understandings—on particular values that sometimes—in the best-case scenario—lead to objective common actions that may be considered moral and ethical (actions better because they spring from a common purpose).
That’s what “worship”—uh, assembling—will or won’t do. Gathering to invoke Ra or any of the deities or no deity at all leads to the same thing. It’s the human mind imbued with meaning and purpose and communal action that matter.
Imagine . . .
Disappear or Die: Southern Black Trans-Experience
Today we bless Tela La’Raine Love as she prepares for her gender reassignment surgery. Every day, Tela blesses this world with her courage, her determination, and her clear vision of a world where transwomen of color live safe, fulfilling, and long lives. Only in her 30’s, Tela serves as an elder, a mother, and a mentor to many young transwomen of color, struggling to survive in a culture that tells them to disappear or die.
Although we hope that “it gets better,” 2012 saw the 4th highest murder rate of LGBTQ and HIV-affected people (LGBTQH) in recorded history, according to the Hate Violence Report released annually by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP-http://www.avp.org/about-avp/coalitions-a-collaborations/82-national-coalition-of-anti-violence-programs ).
People of color, transgender people, and gender non-conforming people continue to experience disproportionately higher rates of homicide. Black and African-American people “were particularly overrepresented in the homicide rates: over half of reported hate murders had Black or African-American victims, even though Black and African American people made up only 15% of total survivors and victims of hate crimes overall.” In 2012, LGBTQH people of color represented 53% of total reported survivors and victims of all hate crimes, but 73.1% of homicide victims. Living at the intersections of racial, gender, economic, and sexual oppression, trans-women of color are told to disappear or die.
In the midst of a dominant cultural narrative of oppression and repression, Tela Love is living into her journey towards wholeness with a spirit fully grounded in her inherent worth and dignity. She is the co-founder of New Legacy Ministries (http://www.newlegacystartstoday.com/), a grassroots organization striving to raise the voices of marginalized communities, especially transgender women of color, and create a spiritually welcoming and sustaining community.
Disappear or Die: A Southern Black Trans-Experience, will be a documentary of her experience as a openly HIV Positive trans-women of color in the south undergoing gender reassignment surgery June 18,2014. In sharing this personal window into her life, she understands that she is taking a risk. Traditionally trans-women have disappeared into the constructs of a patriarchal society after their surgery, rather than remain targets for hate and fear.
Tela realizes that she is allowing herself to be a target for greater judgment and persecution than that of which she already endures. However, inspired by the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail that “silence is betrayal,” she has determined that she can be silent no more. She cannot be silent when waking from her nightmares of another young transgender woman being murdered or dying because she’s too ashamed to follow through with her HIV treatment after being diagnosed out of fear of being further alienated. Tela cannot be silent while there are little or no job opportunities for trans-women, while there are little or no housing opportunities (unless HIV infected), while black trans-women walk the streets in order to survive.
And neither, beloveds, can we. Our silence, too, is betrayal. Let us speak into the space of fear and hatred, ignorance and oppression. Let us bless Tela and every one of her sisters with the welcoming arms of beloved community. (https://www.facebook.com/Blacktranswomenarepowerful)
Please support the creation, production, and distribution of the documentary Disappear or Die: A Southern Black Trans-Experience. Together, let’s re-write the narrative of oppression into thriving, joyful beloved community.
Donations to support the creation of this documentary can be made via PayPal or sent to the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal marked “Designated Donation: New Legacy Ministries” 2903 Jefferson Ave, 2nd FL, New Orleans, LA 70115.)
#Development—It’s Nothing Personal
Pragmatic philosopher John Dewey once said, “Growth itself is the only moral end.” To philosophers a word like “only” means a lot more than it does to most of us. And here, in the Twenty-First Century, looking back on the wreckage and horror of the Twentieth, it’s easy to dismiss such a sentiment with a “meh” and move on to the next soundbite. And “self-help”? Fahgettaboudit!
After all, we’ve had it up to our ears with “growth,” haven’t we? Now we know something Dewey did not: that when “personal” met “growth,” sparks flew and wedding bells rang, and out of that union many fortunes and many suckers have been born. It’s easy at this point to cynically dismiss the whole enchilada.
“Development” is an even more problematic word. “Personal development.” Ugh. That’s the personal. And in the communal sphere, some of us live in the “developed world” where we have “developers” producing something called . . . “developments.” These developments have produced a great deal of sterile, ugly space.
Somewhere, sometime, in the last century many came to believe that the “onward and upward” march of humanity wasn’t such a sound formula for growth. Somewhere back there “onward” and “upward” and “developed” too often began it mean trodding on the heads of the poor, over the bodies of animals and plants, across the last bits of pristine earth.
(The spell check tries to prevent me from typing “trodding,” offering instead “trod” and “trodden.” Is there a grammatical conspiracy against admitting that we have trodden and we are trodding still?)
Somewhere in there humanists such as Dewey, who thought that it was all up to humanity itself, not a supernatural being, to do the growing and developing began to be dismissed as naive. Somewhere in there the neo-orthodox, such as theologian Karl Barth, began to say—can’t you see that Satan, or at the least humanity’s flawed nature, is in charge and must be handled with a chain?
When Dewey said “growth itself is the only moral end,” he meant we, us—he meant growing, developing, cultivating the human psyche and human interactions, not the wetlands or the aquifers. He meant our individual and communal selves. Dewey meant development and growth in such things as ethics and art and democracy, not in the grossness of the national product. Or the boundaries of empire.
In this, Dewey was joining a long line of non-Christian Western philosophers who taught that eudaimonia, “human flourishing,” arises through an “examined life” lived in pursuit of virtue. It isn’t about human perfection, but rather about being a bit better than we were born, a bit better than other primates such as we.
The human right to this pursuit may have been what Thomas Jefferson was talking about when he wrote that human beings have three “unalienable rights,” one of which is the “pursuit of happiness.”
That this curious and intriguing phrase gets discussed far less in the United States than what the Second Amendment means, and what it allows, perhaps tells us more than we want to know about the development of the US since that document declared independence. I suspect that Jefferson would have agreed with Dewey that democracy itself “begins in conversation.” That’s the communal aspect of growth.
As another fan of the pursuit of virtue, Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, put it, “I believe the process of understanding the problems is itself a good.” This is not about talk; it is about conversation—and you can’t converse alone. Conversation is democracy. It is communal. And it is growth, when we actually converse rather than pontificate—an ability based in individual growth.
If the pursuit of happiness were defined as the ability to pursue questions of virtue, isn’t it interesting to consider what it would mean for each US citizen to have the right to pursue happiness?
The pursuit of happiness . . . Should I head for the self-help section of my local bookstore to begin my pursuit? Uh, no. The pursuit of happiness—the pursuit of virtue, the pursuit of truth and meaning and democracy—exists as conversation for a good reason—it’s communal as well as personal. Perhaps that’s the biggest reason Jefferson’s line gets ignored—we have defined happiness as an individual pursuit in the United States, land of individualists and of self-help. That solipsism has had its logical outcome in mass murder and misery. 
The personal growth Dewey advocated was a personal growth within the larger communal whole. The pursuit of virtue, after all, is about how we treat others far more than it is about how we treat ourselves. Dewey had in mind the ideal of the Socratic dialogue, which isn’t easy to live up to. It can’t be found on TV. Or among pundits.
Growth itself is the only moral end because it is about striving to be a better human being for the good of the whole, for human flourishing. The gods can’t be much help with that. It is a profoundly human-ist thing to do.
What He Deserves
I’m deliberately late to the discussion of Elliot Rodgers’s homicidal spree. If you haven’t read any of the variety of excellent pieces discussing his misogyny, and how this horrific event relates to the threat of violence that hangs over every woman’s head, you should do that before you read anything more here. (Feel free to post links to your favorite pieces in the comments.) It’s important, and it needs to be said, and heard: Elliot Rogers killed seven people and injured 13 more out of a rage based in the fact that women were not giving him the attention (read: sex) that he deserved. While it is uncommon for men to kill people out of this sense of frustrated entitlement, it’s absurdly common for men to make verbal and/or physical advances on women whose attention they feel entitled to.
Which is where I want to go next. Never setting aside the need to address rampant misogyny—nor, for that matter, setting aside the urgent need to address the fact that the US has a rate of gun violence that far exceeds that of, well, pretty much anywhere else that isn’t actually a war zone—leaving these important matters in place, I want to point to one more thing. The sense of entitlement itself.
Elliot Rodgers was not furious just because he couldn’t have what he wanted. After all, almost all of us go through life simply accepting that we’re simply not going to have everything we want. However much I might long for an original Monet, there will never be one hanging on my wall, and I really have never given any emotional weight to that sad fact. That’s just how it is. But when I feel I deserve something, that it is rightfully mine and it is being denied to me, then the anger starts to set in. Elliot Rodgers felt entitled to sexual attention from women, and his fury came not from the fact that beautiful women were beyond his reach, but rather from the fact that he wasn’t getting the women he felt he was supposed to get. Of course, a big part of this problem is seeing women as objects for someone to obtain, rather than individuals with their own needs and desires. But another part of the problem is the idea that wanting something is somehow equivalent to being entitled to having it.
Now, it seems in this country that when people complain about entitlement, they are generally complaining about folks who expect to have health care even if they’re not working, or expect to earn a living wage for unskilled labor, or think that their birth control should be available without cost under their health plan. But you know what? I happen to think that people are entitled to health care, to education, to a wage that doesn’t force them to choose between rent and food. I don’t have a problem with those entitlements, nor with Social Security or Medicare. I genuinely believe that a civil society does best guaranteeing people certain basic things.
But somehow, while a whole lot of folks are ready to blame others for their sense of entitlement to, say, not dying of a treatable illness, these same folks are perfectly ready to tell you that they deserve a mansion or a sports car or a tropical vacation, because they have worked hard for what they have. But you know what? There’s a big difference between enjoying something that you are privileged to have, and declaring that you deserve that privilege. No one deserves a shopping spree or week in an Alpine village. Which is not to say that people shouldn’t have those things, or enjoy them. But the moment that you move from a place of gratitude for the gifts of your life to a sense that the world owes you the pleasures that you crave, you have taken just a step down Elliot Rodgers’s terrible path. Because the more you feel that you deserve, the more you will resent it when those things don’t come to you.
And “Blessed are those who piss and moan because they can’t have everything they want” said no great religious leader ever. Buddhism teaches non-attachment, the understanding that we can’t truly hold to anything. Islam teaches the importance of charity, the notion that some percentage of what is yours doesn’t really belong to you, as does Judaism. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” or maybe “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” either of which works here. A person whose life is founded in gratitude for what is given, and in an ongoing quest to share gifts with others, does not to arm themselves and go on a shooting spree.
Of course, there are precious few of us who are aching to go out and shoot up a bunch of people because we aren’t getting what we want. (Thank goodness.) But there are a whole lot of us who waste a whole lot of time and energy fuming about what we don’t have, and trying to get more of what we think we deserve. What would happen if we just started with the assumption that whatever it is, we are probably not entitled to it? That hot woman at the bar? You don’t deserve her. The dumpy middle-aged lady at the table across from yours? You don’t deserve her either. You also don’t deserve a brownie , a flat-screen TV or a pedicure. Which is in no way to say that it wouldn’t be great for any of those to come into your life. But when you start to view the good things in your life as privileges, as gifts, as grace, then it’s harder to be sullen about what you don’t have, and easier to share what you do. Not only are you less inclined to shoot people, but it also turns out that life is a lot more pleasant.
Spiritual But Not . . . Keep Talking
Literary critic Terry Eagleton said, “The din of conversation is as much meaning as we shall ever have.” I like that. On first glance, it appears to be bleak—human conversation is all the meaning there is?
But imagine what human conversation has given us.
Imagine the din of conversation under the porches and under the trees in Athens during the time of Socrates.
Imagine the din of conversation in Baghdad in the late 700s when an institution called the House of Wisdom opened it’s doors—an attempt to gather all the wisdom in the world.
Think of the din of conversation in Florence that led to the Renaissance. The din of conversation in Shakespeare’s London. The din of conversation in cafes that created the Vienna Circle at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
The din of conversation in the Paris of the 1920s. Or Greenwich Village. Or North Beach in San Francisco in the 1950s that gave rise to the Beat Generation.
Think of the din of conversation in Liverpool, England that led to the Beatles. Or the din of conversation in a little recording studio called Sub Pop that led to the Seattle Sound, better known as Grunge.
Too often we think of lonely geniuses but genius is seldom lonely. Shakespeare and his Globe theatre were not the only show in town. Shakespeare’s London had twenty-seven public theatre venues. More than fifty British bands made up the so-called British Invasion. The Beatles weren’t alone.
Looked at from this perspective, from the view of what gets created in the crucible of human sharing, Eagleton’s phrase does not sound quite so bleak: “The din of conversation is as much meaning as we shall ever have.” Why ever would we want more than human conversation?
Would we really want a voice from on high coming to proclaim the once and final truth? Isn’t the mystery more beautiful, the stabs in the dark of the millions of human beings who have taken part in this great din of conversation, this lovely human project of creating meaning?
I believe in community. A place where people talk with each other. In coffee houses. In bars. In streets and market squares—public spaces and the din of conversation—this is the meaning of meaning. And it is why totalitarian regimes fear the public square and religions burn books.
The term “conversation” originally meant “intimacy with others.” It also meant “sexual intercourse.” Only later did the term take on its present meaning of talking.
Let’s just say there’s something intimate about conversation.
What if the increasing din of human conversation, and perhaps its increasing complexity, is the hope of humankind? Would it be so bad if the talking that led to the Renaissance and a band called Nirvana is all the heaven we humans shall ever know?
Let’s take one conversation as an example. Two human beings, Michael Murphy (not the pop singer) and Frederic Spiegelberg, started a conversation. They agreed that the human spiritual impulse need not necessarily follow any one religious tradition. They thought that people could be “spiritual but not religious.” That phrase is a cliche now, a whipping boy for various dogmas. But in its day the phrase was a radical new thought. Spiegelberg published a book titled The Religion of No Religion.
The two men founded an institution called the Esalen Institute. Now, whatever you may think of what the Esalen Institute became, look at how pervasive a conversation between two people back in the 1950s has become. “Spiritual but not religious” as a concept is destroying traditional religions in the United States. And Murphy and Spiegelberg would not be upset by that. The Esalen motto is “No one captures the flag.” No religion has all the truth. And science doesn’t either.
Aren’t gratitude and grace and compassion and love and astonishment part of human nature? Part of our evolution? How could any one religion steal the flag of wonder or awe? As a matter of fact, how do any of these things have anything at all to do with religion?
Isn’t gratitude and grace and compassion and love and astonishment just as available in art, in music, in poetry? Available to each of us somewhere in the din of conversation?
Isn’t science a conversation too?
Today, we are creating a new conversation. One that is perhaps even beyond (and free from) “spiritual but not religious.” Yes, the din of your conversation is as much meaning as we shall ever have—but it is enough.
Eduardo Matania Beim Die geschlossene Bank 1870s.jpg
Keep talking. Increase the din. Converse. Remake the human reality.
Tinfoil Hats and the Examined Life
Let’s say I tell you I’m wearing a tinfoil hat today . . . What does that say to you? Crazy? Paranoid? Safe from the mental meddling of governments and/or extraterrestrials?
It’s shorthand, isn’t it? A tinfoil hat says crazy or paranoid or safe, not because of anything inherent in the tinfoil hat, but because we equate wearing a tinfoil hat with a set of behaviors that could be well described as crazy or paranoid or staying safe—“tinfoil hat” is a symbol for a set of beliefs—that, for example, space aliens or perhaps one government or another is sending messages into my brain by electric means.
The first known appearance of a tinfoil hat is in a science fiction story published in 1927 by the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley. In that story, tinfoil hats prevent interference from mental telepathy.
Now, if you look for how tinfoil hats work on Yahoo Answers, you will discover this advice:
Tin foil does not work. I tried aluminum foil for my first thought screen helmet in 1998 and it was a failure. Thought screens made from velostat work. I’ve been making them since 1999 and sending them to abductees all over the world for free for 13 years.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121017081732AAn0A1T
Now, in case you’re like me and didn’t know, velostat is a packing material used to block electronic effects. So it goes.
I want to notice two things about this brief look at tinfoil hats. First, “tinfoil hat” has come to mean something way beyond merely a hat made of a particular material. And, second, how quickly we rocket from a discussion of tinfoil hats to a discussion of more efficient hats to evade thought surveillance.
Both of these things have to do with the human imagination. How the human imagination works. We make symbols. Then, often, we fall into the trap of treating a symbol as if it were a reality. We easily mistake symbols, and symbolic statements, for literal truths.
The simplest example is perhaps flags. We create a flag to symbolize a nation or some other grouping of people. Then we create rules and customs around how flags must be treated.
I’ve heard people debate whether a particular piece of cloth is a flag or only bunting—because you can burn bunting, but burning a flag might get you into trouble.
We create a symbol, then we treat the symbol as a reality. The flag becomes the nation. And so on.
Educator Hugh Mearns had something to say about this propensity back in 1899 when he wrote a poem in response to a brouhaha in the town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia concerning a ghost sighting. One of the poem’s verses goes like this:
Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn’t there,
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…
It appears that we can make symbols of things that aren’t there at all. And then the symbol becomes a thing we can imagine.
We enter into pretend realms very early in childhood—you be Batman; I’ll be Joker. I’m an elephant. I’m a unicorn. When we play these games, we agree to certain rules. We agree to be bound by the logic of the game. Just as do the folks who wear tinfoil hats or who set out to make a better tinfoil hat. Or who imagine little men on stairs that aren’t there.
We can go to a murder mystery dinner party set in the 1920s and act as if we have murdered someone. Or act as if we are a Belgian detective. We can go to a Renaissance festival where corporate lawyers become barmaids and carpenters become knights.
We choose a game, we agree to obey the rules of the game, and then we act . . . as if.
This is how fiction works. There are all sorts of fictions, each written according to the rules of the game that the author asks us to play. Perhaps the novel is naturalistic—in that case, everything that happens will happen according to the observable and describable rules of the universe.
We can have “magical realism,” in which the world operates more or less as it does in our own world, but occasionally odd things happen—such as people flying away.
We can also have fantasy—that is, a world in which the rules we know do not apply. But even there, notice, there ARE rules of the game. Devotees of Star Trek or of the World of Warcraft will be quick to point out when an action goes outside the rules of that particular fantasy world.
We agree to the rules of a particular form of government. Or of economics. Of of religion. In these cases, usually, we have very little in the way of choice about playing the game—we are born in places where a set of games with rules are already in place—this is called culture and tradition.
Those who choose to ignore the rules are ostracized or punished. The rules of the games called culture and tradition often insist that you WILL see the little man on the stair—or at least say you do—, even if you cannot see the little man.
However, the difference between knowing you are playing a game with rules and thinking you are seeing reality are very different things, aren’t they?
Some games we choose, and some we don’t. No one is born wearing a tinfoil hat. Or saluting a particular flag. Or worshiping a particular god. Mostly, such games with their particular rules are forced upon us by geography or social status or educational attainment or mental health.
Am I really equating tin foil hats and patriotism, you might be asking. Yes, I am. Because I think the examined life requires that sort of examination. Until we see the games we are enmeshed in with some clarity, we have seen neither truth nor reality. We have not examined life.
So, what’s your game? Do tinfoil hats come in handy?
What to Wear
OK, time for the teensiest bit of a rant, here. It starts with the fact that a girl named Jessica had her photo kept out of her high school yearbook because she was wearing a tuxedo. (Class pictures are required to be in either a tuxedo or a drape.) Or maybe it starts with the fact that a friend’s granddaughter was sanctioned at school because she was wearing a crop top and skirt that came half-way up her thighs.
And you know what I think? What the hell business of yours it is what someone else wears? Yeah, I get it that you’re going to browbeat your kid into wearing something proper for a wedding or a funeral, and I know in some places it’s a sin to wear white shoes past Labor Day, but really, and in general, what business is it of anyone’s what someone else chooses to put on their body?
I don’t know if Jessica, by her choice of clothing for the class photo, was trying to communicate that she identifies as trans, or that she’s lesbian, or bi, or countercultural, or just that she thought she would look cute in a tuxedo. (She does.) And you know what? Not only is it not any of my business, it isn’t her school’s business either. She is entitled to share or not share any of those identities, and no one is entitled to decide, based on what she’s wearing for a photo, which, if any, she might embrace.
I’m pretty sure that my friend’s daughter was just wearing what she thought was a cute, fun outfit on a warm day. (I saw the picture–it was.) And maybe some boys paid more attention to her than they would have if she were more covered up. And if so, maybe she enjoyed that attention, and maybe she didn’t. But if she liked the attention then she should be entirely free to flirt back, without having to worry that flirting would turn into assault. And if she didn’t like the attention she should be able to rebuff any advances without hard feelings or fear of repercussions.
Because she, like Jessica and like anyone else, should be able to wear what she wants because she’s the one wearing clothes on her very own body and she deserves to have say over what happens with that body.
Yes, I do think there are some limits on what teenagers should be allowed to wear to school. No clothes bearing racist, sexist, homophobic or other remarks that are designed to attack people as they walk by. Because no one deserves to be attacked.
And you know what? That rotund lady in the tight shirt and shorts doesn’t deserve to be attacked by disapproving glances or muttered comments either. Because it’s her body and her clothes, and who are you to say what she gets to wear? Maybe she feels cute and sexy and maybe it’s what she had clean at the moment, and what business is it of yours?
Look, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t set limits on teens, or that there is never a time when it might be reasonable to intervene in the behavior of a stranger on the street. If you see someone driving badly in a parking lot or kicking a dog, by all means, step in and I’ll applaud. But you know what? No one was ever run over by another person’s clothing. If you don’t like what someone else’s clothing says about you (like “I’m with stupid–>”) speak up. But if you don’t like what you imagine their clothing says about them, that is your problem and you should just get over it.
End of rant.
Bomb Throwers, Navel Gazers, and Goin’ All Thoreau: Doing Justice
Let’s consider an extreme example, a stark instance of the decision between doing something and talking about it. The abolitionist John Brown, fed up with the endless wrangling and political maneuvering over slavery in the early Nineteenth Century, decided to take matters in his own hands. He led a group that attacked a US military arsenal with the intention of seizing the weapons—Sharps rifles, which were a state-of-the-art weapon of the time, and arming slaves. Brown was captured, and, in the case of the State of Virginia Versus John Brown, Brown was charged with murder, incitement to riot, and treason. Brown was hanged for his actions.
But that’s not the action I want to consider.
One of the financial contributors to John Brown’s violent plan was Henry David Thoreau. Nowadays Thoreau’s reputation is mostly as an individualist and a naturalist. But in his own time, he was seen by many as a fiery abolitionist and as an anarchist.
There was never any doubt that John Brown would be convicted and hanged. The debated question—and it is still alive in American popular culture—is whether or not John Brown was crazy. (Look at the pictures and portraits of Brown sometime to see what I mean.)
Slavery sympathizers insisted that Brown had to be crazy: No white man in his right mind would arm slaves.
Abolitionists, on the other hand, insisted that the horror of slavery had driven Brown to this extremity, and that, the longer slavery existed, the more Browns there would be. Thoreau went on a lecture tour in support of this view, presenting everywhere he could a lecture that became an essay called “A Plea for Captain John Brown.” There Thoreau says,
I do not think it is quite sane for one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about this matter, unless he is continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A man may have other affairs to attend to. I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman’s billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharps rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharps rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.
Dangerous words in 1859. Thoreau the anarchist appears in these lines:
The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army—is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice. What shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it and those whom it oppresses? A government that pretends to be Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!
Clearly, Thoreau believed that working for justice includes direct action and taking to the street.
While the John Brown affair clearly energized Thoreau, it put his friend and supporter Ralph Waldo Emerson in a bind. Though Emerson was a leading progressive intellectual at the time, and friends or acquaintances with most of the leading abolitionists, Emerson had been very careful in his words about the abolition of slavery. Emerson did not put much faith in political solutions. Or politics, for that matter.
When news of the capture of John Brown reached him, Emerson wrote to his son, ”We are all very well, in spite of the sad Harper’s Ferry business, which interests us all who had Brown for our guest twice . . . He is a true hero, but lost his head there.”
No, neither Emerson nor Thoreau thought much of governments in general or of democracy. They were individualists and elitists. Emerson once said, “Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.” He might nowadays rephrase that as, “Democracy becomes a government of bullies manipulated by media.”
The question was what to do about it. Thoreau said take direct action; Emerson said sit back and think about it, what we might call the “the pen is mightier than the sword” approach. These two had a clear choice: contemplative or activist? Scholar or reformer? Bomb thrower or navel gazer?
This tension has long plagued religions and the religious. Here’s what Thoreau thought about that, speaking of John Brown:
Emerson and Thoreau are good examples of the antipodes, the opposites, of those who think and those who do. Consider: Emerson and Thoreau lived before psychoanalysis. The word “narcissism” wasn’t coined until 1899. Emerson and Thoreau never heard the term “mental health.” Or “introvert” or “extrovert.” But Thoreau knew he had to get outside his own stuff—that he had to stop navel gazing—and get to work saving the lives of those Americans who were suffering injustice.
It’s easy to think Thoreau was right all along, now that we know how it all worked out. Thoreau didn’t live to see how it all worked out. He died in 1862. He never had a chance to put his values to the test in the war. He never saw slavery abolished.
In that way, Thoreau was like the rest of us: we may never see the outcome of our struggles for justice. Thoreau is here to remind us that that is not an excuse.
