http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/ Giving life some serious thought en jvanschaijik@thepersonalistproject.org Copyright 2012 2012-05-23T14:00:59+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/confusions_of_the_day_in_the_ssm_debate http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/confusions_of_the_day_in_the_ssm_debate NRO has an article by Kevin Williamson today that exhibits some basic confusions in the SSM debate. He begins with a bit of Eisenhower lore. One of my favorite political fables concerns Dwight D. Eisenhower and his tenure as president of Columbia University. The campus was undergoing an expansion, and Ike was presented with two very different plans for laying out new sidewalks. The architects were irreconcilable, each insisting that his plan was the only way to go and that the other guy had it all wrong. Ike, sensible fellow that he was, had grass planted instead, telling the architects to wait a year and see where the students trod paths in the turf, and then to put the sidewalks there. It is a story that, as they say, is true, and may even have happened. The suggestion is that we should make our laws according to the way people tend.  What he overlooks is that in the case of sidewalks, we are dealing with a question of practical efficiency, whereas in the case of marriage, we are dealing with a question of fundamental moral principle.   When it comes to fundamental moral questions, to "go with the flow" is to devolve toward chaos.  Good laws, grounded in basic moral truths are what safeguard our cherished freedoms.   Without laws to protect them, those freedoms are imperiled.  This is the vision of the American founding.  "Confirm thy soul in self-control thy liberty in law."  Because we are fallen, we need to be checked.  And just as in our personal lives, we need to check ourselves to flourish, we need checks in our common life.  Checks on the lust for power; checks on the lawless. One way to check power is to minimize the reach of government.  This involves maximizing the strength of non-governmental institutions, such as the Church and the family. Williamson makes another error. I am in agreement with the position, articulated by many conservatives, that marriage is not legitimately the property of the state and not subject to redefinition by the state according to political truths “arrived at yesterday at the voting booth,” as a wise man once put it, and that the redefiners here are the political aggressors. I accept also Archbishop Dolan’s argument that the state, properly understood, has neither the authority nor the competence to redefine such institutions. But if the state lacks the competence to redefine marriage, it also lacks the competence to define marriage, as we have demanded that it do for a long time, and as Archbishop Dolan and others continue to demand it to do. In fact, the claim of Cardinal Dolan and others who agree with him is that government lacks the authority to redefined marriage because marriage is something.  It's not something we make; it's not "a social construct"; it's a natural institution given in the design of the human person as male and female.  What we want is not to "define marriage", but to secure the truth about marriage against the aggressions of those who resent its reality.  2012-05-23T14:00:59+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/to_speak_or_not_to_speak_a_dilemma_in_the_debate_surrounding_ssm http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/to_speak_or_not_to_speak_a_dilemma_in_the_debate_surrounding_ssm President Obama's announced support of "same-sex marriage" (SSM) has put the issue in the center of public attention.  Articles and blogs on the subject are proliferating all over the internet.  It's become the stuff of casual conversation even among home-schooled teenagers.  It is practially impossible to keep young children from hearing about homosexuality and asking questions. This raises a serious dilemma for me, and all of us.  On the one hand,  the SSM lobby relies on and takes advantage of a natural reluctance on the part of most to think and talk about what homosexuality is.  They prefer to keep the discussion focussed on subjective feelings and individual rights: "I love my boyfriend just like you love your wife. Why shouldn't I be able to marry the person I love?"   This is an appealing line of argument, especially for teenagers.  They easily overlook all the underlying assumptions and assertions it entails. - That gender complementarity is inessential to marriage - That pro-creativity is inessential to marriage - That being the natural offspring of their parents' union is unimportant to the wellbeing of children - That there is no objective meaning and structure to bodily acts That last one is particularly important.  Consider a kiss and a slap in the face.  A kiss, in itself, is an act of tenderness and self-giving; a slap is an act of violence.  It's possible to lie with kisses--to kiss abusively.  Some people find slapping gratifying.  But this doesn't mean that those things have no objective meaning; it just means that people can be perverse.   As John Paul II unfolded so beautifully in his Theology of the Body, the intimate link between the body and soul in the human person means that our free bodily acts (and especially our sexual acts) are fraught with meaning and moral significance.  They both express and "determine" our personal subjectivity and the shape of our relations with others.  They have their objective "language" and "logic." Part of the way, then, of showing that there is no equivalence between marriage and a liaison between two men or two women is to point to the radical difference between "homosex" and the conjugal act, which, in itself, is a life-giving act that unites the two halves of the human whole.  It is, in its very nature and structure, a pro-creative, all-ecompassing, reciprocal and unifying act.  It's framed to express love and form a communion of love, a family. Homosexual acts are not.  They are not comprehensive, they are not unitive, they are not procreative.  Some of them are—objectively—violent and abusive. They harm the body. They alientate and dis-integrate persons.  Part of me thinks that it's good and helpful to point this out—to go into it—to challenge those who are sympathetic to the SSM cause to ponder this radical difference and its ethical implications.  But then another part of me remembers verses in St. Paul's letters.  "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."  And: "It is shameful even to mention what the ungodly do in secret." The other day, in an online debate at a political forum, someone criticized me for using the term "sodomy," because it's a Biblical term and therefore insinuated religion into a public policy discussion.  So I changed it to a more explicit term.  Afterwards, I felt unhappy—disturbed in spirit, and full of doubts about whether I did well to be typing and publishing the words.  I have those doubts now. It occured to me that another strategy of the SSM lobby is to get everyone thinking and talking about it.  Because to even to think and talk about it affects us—degrades us morally—opens us to what is wrong.  I ask honestly.  Have we reached the limits of democratic civil discourse?  Would we do more to advance our cause by refusing to engage the issue and instead giving silent witness to truth by the purity of our lives?  Is this even possible in the given circumstances? I've been thinking, by way of analogy, about the theory of "non-violent resistance," which I find convincing.  It's not pacifism.  It doesn't deny the justice of self-defense.  Rather, it proposes that non-violent resistance is a more potent weapon against injustice than violence in self-defense, which, however justified, still has its ugly and damaging effects. Might it not also be true that we do more to advance purity and chastity by  declining to participate in public discussions about things that have an invasive and degrading effect on the moral imagination?  Or, by declining to talk about it openly and rationally, do we abandon our kids and our culture to the shameless? Help me decide. 2012-05-21T20:12:03+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/misery_and_genuine_hope http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/misery_and_genuine_hope A fourth option for dealing with the miseries and pains of life is that of genuine hope.  How does this differ from mere optimism?  How does is compare to pessimism?  Well, it is an attempt to face the evils of life realistically while not succumbing to them as the last word (vs. pessimism); but, in order to do so, hope must break the bounds of just this world of space and time (vs. mere optimism) where “death comes as the end.”  Hope must find a genuine foundation on which to acknowledge misery without despair, but rather with a realistic possibility of breaking through to genuine happiness.  That true foundation is ultimately the power and goodness of God; therefore, hope is based on some form of faith—either a groping “rational faith” as we find in Socrates or a faith based primarily in revelation wherein God reveals to us the beginning, the end, and the way.  In this light, if our life in this world is part of a meaningful passage and purification, if our pains (and even death) have some purpose, then our time on this earth is not just a terrifying and precarious existence surrounded by inevitably triumphant evils  requiring that I “steel myself” against it all.  Rather, our life  on this earth can be seen as a pilgrimage, a meaningful period of trial which can end in happiness--if I am allowed to participate in what will be the ultimate triumph of good over evil, of happiness over misery, in the end without end (through the power of the God of goodness).  But how can pains and evils even have a place in a world created by an all-powerful and all-good God?  How could evil have ever been introduced into such a world?  Through (the misuse of) the gift of freedom which God gives to us as persons; we are not puppets, robots, or computers.  As G.K. Chesterton once remarked (Broadcast talk 6-11-35):  The free man own himself.  He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling.  If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog. So with the gift of real freedom comes the possibility of its misuse or as C.S. Lewis says in The Problem of Pain, Ch. 5, speaking of the first sin and its heinousness:  [An] act of self-will on the part of the creature, which constitutes an utter falseness to its true creaturely condition, is the only sin that can be conceived as the Fall.  For the difficulty with the first sin is that it must be very heinous, or its consequences would not be so terrible, and yet it must be something which a being free from the temptations of fallen man could conceivably have committed.  The turning from God to self fulfills both conditions.  It is a sin possible even to Paradisal man, because the mere existence of a self—the mere fact that we call it “me”—includes, from the first, the danger of self-idolatry.  Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to myself…. But the sin was very heinous, because the self which Paradisal man had to surrender contained no natural recalcitrancy to being surrendered.  [It] meant no struggle, but only the delicious overcoming of an infinitesimal self-adherence which delighted to be overcome—of which we see a dim analogy in the rapturous mutual self-surrenders of lovers even now.  Now, after that terrible misuse of freedom, that rebellion of creature against Creator, of beloved against Lover, then the consequences we labor under now have followed: continued choices of ongoing evil, and the suffering and death which come in their train as both a justice (in response to sin) and a mercy (to recall us from a wrong path).  Not mere justice, but also mercy in a mysterious unity.  As Lewis says in Ch. 6 of The Problem of Pain: We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities; and anyone who has watched gluttons shovelling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure.  But pain insists on being attended to.  God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.  A bad man, happy, is a man without the least inkling that his actions do not “answer,” that they are not in accord with the laws of the universe. And yet, in light of the fact that “if God is for us, who can be against,” in light of God’s absolute goodness, mercy, wisdom, and power, we can hope to participate in the final triumph of goodness over evil.  It is goodness (God’s goodness) which has the final word in being, not evil as the pessimists would have us believe.  And, of course, especially in Christianity (compared to other traditions which may accept a God of absolute goodness and power), wherein we see our God (Emmanuel) dying for us on the cross to reopen a path to Heaven on our behalf, we find the most comprehensive answer to the problem of evil and misery.  The death of Christ (the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity) on the cross as the only adequate pay-back for sin takes evil even more seriously than does pessimism, yet without despair—for Christ is truly risen and our debt repaid.  As Bishop Fulton J. Sheen says in his book Philosophy of Religion, Ch. 11, No other religion in the world gives to death the value of Christianity, because others isolated it from sin.  For all others, death is either unreal or a release of the spirit, or a dropping away of the body, considered as an obstacle to union with God.  But to Christianity death is at one and the same time a penalty for sin and a condition of eternal happiness, because through death, love accomplishes self-sacrifice which issues in self-perfection in eternal life.  Because it is love which saves, life must be lost before it can be won. World religions touch on one or the other aspect of the Christian philosophy, as do modern philosophies of religion.  Some concentrate on pain and deny the reality of evil; others concentrate on evil, but make it social and unrelated to personal freedom; not many of them attempt to solve the riddle of death.  Few, if any, treat the subject of sin except as a “fall in the evolutionary process.”  The only religion which makes a synthesis of all these problems, then shows how one has resulted from the other, and how each of them can be used instrumentally in victory, is Christianity.  It does not give us a picture of defeat followed by victory, of pain followed by joy, or death followed by live, but as the conversion of one into the other.  “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy.”  Defeat becomes victory, sin becomes a felix culpa; death becomes eternal life, and “the sufferings of this life are not worthy to be compared with the joy which is to come.” No religion except Christianity gives meaning, not only to the joys of life, but also to its sorrows. For much more on this topic, again see Bill Marra's Happiness and Christian Hope; also, see Dietrich von Hildebrand's chapter on "Hope" in The Art of LIving and Gabriel Marcel's chapter on "Hope" in Homo Viator. 2012-05-21T14:21:57+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/the_outsourced_self_intimate_life_in_market_times http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/the_outsourced_self_intimate_life_in_market_times This is not a book review.  I haven't yet read the new book by one Arlie Russell Hochschild.  But I want to address the same subject: the striking trend toward paying strangers to do things once thought too personal to entrust to another: what she calls "outsourcing the self." Just how personal are these things?  That depends.  On the more prosaic side, there's the unremarkable delegation of tasks that are too onerous or time-consuming to attend to oneself: you could call it "outsourcing" when an assemblage of villagers would arrange a division of labor to avoid duplication of everyone's efforts.  Nothing revolutionary here. At the other extreme is the futile attempt to pay someone to do on your behalf something so properly personal that it cannot truly be delegated at all--like the fictional merchant who wanted to save his soul but had no time to pray all the novenas he thought would get the job done.  So he hired a servant to say his prayers for him.  The details escape me, but, as you can imagine, it didn't end well for him. Between these two extremes--things that have always been outsourced, and things that can't be outsourced at all--are oodles of possibilities (and oodles of prospective profits for the enterprising young huckster).  Here are a few, in approximate order of outlandishness: Event planner Closet organizer Gravesite tender Holiday gift buyer Potty trainer "Nameologist" (to choose your baby's name) Life coach Love coach Mourner for hire "Wantologist" (to help you figure out what you want) Friend for rent Grandma for rent Womb for rent So, some things just can't be outsourced. Some things can be--but should they?  (Hint: NO!) And plenty fall somewhere in between. Paying a professional for help or advice is no novelty, but the trend to delegate every little thing to an enterprising "expert" is plainly running amok.  What are we to make of its moral status?  What does it mean about how we see the person? I would answer with a resounding "It depends." Of course, for most of us, it's a moot point.  Who has the luxury of agonizing over whether to pay the wantologist or the water bill?  But must we attend to every single aspect of our complicated lives personally, if it's feasible to do otherwise?  Of course not.  If something's unpleasant, are we forbidden to delegate it?  No, not necessarily.  It's good to be on the lookout, though, for luxuries masquerading as necessities.  Let's please be aware that the army of smarmy marketers paid to create "felt needs" in our hearts are not our friends. Some of the outsourcing craze just comes of our addiction to convenience, our lack of once-universal domestic skills, (planting a potato, replacing a zipper) and our extreme mobility: we may live too far away from Grandma to depend on her for babysitting or emotional support, but human beings don't need these "commodities" any less than they ever did. Some of the in-between cases are a matter of the prudent weighing of obligations and circumstances.  For example, you're not outsourcing childrearing itself if you hire a babysitter once a week.  But what about all day, every day?  When we lived in Barcelona, I knew of a woman who was worried about her daughter's "speech delay," only to discover that she was speaking fluent Tagalog with the Filipina maid who was always around when her mother wasn't--which was just about always.  She hadn't intended to delegate motherhood itself, but for all practical purposes--at least from her little girl's point of view--she had. Is there anything wrong with some of the other options the book details: relationship advisers, wedding planners, or hired "friends"?  Are these morally neutral, intrinsic evils, or just dumb ideas? It's a big subject, but here are some starting points: VOCATION, IDENTITY AND DUTY Which actions, exactly, are central to your very identity and purpose in life?  The question, "What if I outsourced that?" can be a useful thought experiment to clarify what we might already know intuitively.  What if I pay a local teenager to help me organize my kitchen?  What if I hire a tutor to teach my own teenager calculus?  What if I hire a stranger to visit my elderly parents?  What if I outsource the composition of my college application essay?  What if I pay an Indian woman with mixed feelings and no other job prospects to carry my unborn baby to term? The question often answers itself. DELEGATOR AND DELEGATEE Some transactions shouldn't exist at all, but the moral culpability of exploiter and exploited may vary.  I wouldn't tolerate my son buying that application essay, but I would object more vehemently to the one who marketed it to him. THE FINANCIAL ANGLE Some object to the outsourcing craze out of a distaste for capitalism in general.  But buying and selling aren't intrinsically evil.  In a better world, we'd all be surrounded by generous (and highly qualified) friends and family with whom we could freely exchange all manner of help and advice.  If that isn't the case, though, we can hire a babysitter or therapist without any qualms of conscience.   On a larger scale, the trouble is, the rich have the ability to treat everything as a commodity, including the lives of the poor.  They can delegate everything, even the starving and the praying.  (There, I knew I'd find a way to fit Credence Clearwater Revival into this post.)  But we shouldn't envy them for it.  They're rich in convenience and luxury, poor in human rapport and camaraderie. AVOIDING PERSONAL CONNECTION This brings up an interesting question, though.  Do we really want personal connection?  Aren’t we sometimes seeking an excuse to avoid it?  In The Sun Also Rises, protagonist Jake Barnes, recently returned from a harrowing sojourn in Spain, revels in the simplicity he finds in France:   “…I overtipped [the waiter].  This made him happy.  It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy.  You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you.  Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France….No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason.  If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money.  I spent a little money and the waiter liked me.  He appreciated my valuable qualities….It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis.  I was back in France.” If outsourcing fosters this kind of thing, we can safely label it unsavory.  So tell me: have you read The Outsourced Self?  Do you have some savory or unsavory experience with outsourcing to share?  What do you think?  2012-05-18T16:28:25+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/cardinal_george_sounds_a_strong_warning http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/cardinal_george_sounds_a_strong_warning An online friend pointed me to a  sobering article in Business Insider on Cardinal George's warnings about the HHS mandate. George wrote in his column that the "The State was making itself into a Church" and said he longed for "the separation of Church and State" that Americans enjoyed recently, "when the government couldn’t tell us which of our ministries are Catholic and which not." George compared the Obama's vision of "religious liberty" of the United States to that of the Soviet Union in a passage worth quoting at length:  Liberty of religion is more than freedom of worship. Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the Constitution of the former Soviet Union. You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship-no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and the works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. All of these were co-opted by the government. We fought a long cold war to defeat that vision of society. Essentially George is saying that the Obama administration and the progressive intelligentsia are replacing freedom of religion with a more cramped vision of "freedom of worship." You're allowed to believe whatever you want, but you'll do whatever the state tells you to do.  Between this and the Obama administration's support for "same sex marriage" we are witnessing grave assaults—not just on our nation's moral underpinnings—but the on the basic truths of personal existence.  Those in political power are trying to deny and destroy the limits placed on their power by reality--specifically, the reality of our nature as individuals with unalienable rights, as male and female, called to a fruitful union of love, and as creatures, made in God's Image and under His Authority. 2012-05-15T14:21:07+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/about_being_under_the_circumstances http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/about_being_under_the_circumstances One of the lines that stays with me from the high-flying years of the charismatic renewal in the '80s came from a homily or a talk by (I think) Fr. Michael Scanlon at FUS.  He recounted the day when a fellow-traveler in the renewal asked him, "How are you doing, Father?" He replied, "Pretty well, under the circumstances."  Then came the robust retort: "What are you doing under the circumstances?" It was a great laugh line for spiritual pep talk.  And it captures an important personalist truth.  We're meant to take charge of ourselves; to master our circumstances, not to be mastered by them.  We are self-determining moral agents, not just undergoers-of-experience. On the other hand, too much emphasis on that point can cause us to neglect another personalist truth, namely the mystery of individuality.   For instance, I've been noticing again over the course of the last couple of weeks that I am much more affected by things around me than others are.  Grey weather and bad political news can really get me down.  Everything looks bleak.  I feel sapped of moral energy.  Then come a few items of good news or a break in the clouds, and I'm like a different person.  When the temperature is just right and the sun is shining, I can sit in my garden and breathe in joy and out worship.  When it rains for several days together, weltschmerz begins to overwhelm me. I experience all this as inscrutably related not only to my weakness-of-will issues, but to my nature as woman, my melancholic temperament, and to  "individual essence," which is abnormally sensitive in certain respects. In other words, I am, objectively, more vulnerable than, say, my husband, to "circumstances."   Another priest in Steubenville used to admonish the students sternly, "No moods."  He meant well.  But I think it had the bad effect of making those who suffered from mood swings feel and look guilty.  It tended to imply that people with robust health and even-keel temperments were more virtuous than people who had to contend with bodily weakness and swinging hormones.  And it overlooked the fact that particular vulnerabilities are tied to vocation.  Alice von Hildebrand used to say such weaknesses are often the flip side of a real strength: responsiveness to beauty, or passion for truth and justice, say. The trick is to keep all truths in right balance.  Somehow we have to find a way to live in the concrete in a way that respects the truth of our being, both as persons and as individuals. 2012-05-14T18:43:51+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/misery_and_pessimism http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/misery_and_pessimism Pessimism is an attempt at an “honest” solution to the problem of the miseries of life.  It tries to face squarely the reality of evil, pain, death, change, catastrophe, etc., and then offers a way to shield oneself from these inevitable facts of life by steeling oneself against them, not letting oneself be touched by them, by showing an enduring toughness and self-sufficiency in accepting them.  It espouses only a negative definition of happiness, relief from misery, without any positive components.  The problem with all this “realism” and “honesty” is the underlying assumption that evil, pain, and misery ultimately win out in life and in being.  But is this true?  Is it honest?  Is it realistic?  People from Plato to Mother Teresa have said otherwise.  What if the seeming triumph of misery in this world is not the last word?  What if pessimism is ultimately wrong?  What if the assertion of it is a lie?  What if living the pessimistic “solution” makes one inhuman?  Three types of this pessimism might be mentioned.  First would be classical cynicism, exemplified by Diogenes the Dog—so called because to live like a dog was considered the height of wisdom.  The theory is that everyone is going to suffer no matter what, but  suffering is increased a 100 times over if you allow yourself to be dependent on any positive sources of happiness.  Therefore, joy in human relationships (including wife and family), joy in human projects or achievements, joy in any object or goal, simply demand too great a price to be worth it.  Dependency on any of these goods risks a more fearful fall into misery.  Therefore, live for the moment and the instincts and desires of the moment, make no commitments or promises, have no goals, prepare for nothing, just be ready to face whatever comes when it comes—like a dog.  Further, in this view, respect no moral or religious “calls” or obligations.  A dog doesn’t, why should you?  All such “laws” are regarded as mere social conventions and taboos limiting my animal nature and its natural unfolding.  (Come to think of it, in this respect not too far from Freud!)  Diogenes’ ideal is a naturalistic and materialistic reductionism with a goal of complete self-sufficiency and achieved indifference, i.e., neutral serenity or apathy.  A second type of pessimism, more high-minded, would be various types of stoicism, neither as radical nor as consistent as cynicism.  The stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius, would allow for the use of reason, the pursuit of truth, and a life of goodness and justice lived according to eternal norms under the strict control of the will.  However, there is the same suspicion of anything that moves me to deep joy as (a) setting me up for deeper misery and (b) tempting me to abandon my commitment to justice.  Therefore, we still find here these ideals of self-sufficiency and neutral serenity when it comes to the positive goods of this life.  So, you can retain your enjoyment of positive goods, comforts, pleasures, and joys only if, by a disciplined spirit, you remain detached from them and regard them all (again, even wife and children) as dispensable luxuries whose loss would not “move” you.  Thus, I would interpret, you can enjoy your children, but only in the way that you might enjoy a stick of chewing gum.  Marcus Aurelius, in the Meditations 11:34, quotes the following:  “While you are kissing your child,” Epictetus once said, “murmur under your breath, ‘Tomorrow it may be dead.’”  “Ominous words,” they told him.  “Not at all,” said he, “but only signifying an act of nature.  Would it be ominous to speak of the gathering of ripe corn?” We see here why St. Augustine in Book XIV, Chapter 9 of The City of God says that this stoic indifference is inhuman:  And as for those few who, with a vanity which is even more frightful than it is infrequent, pride themselves on being neither raised nor roused nor bent nor bowed by any emotion whatsoever—well, they rather have lost all humanity than won true peace.  It is one thing to be unyielding, another to be right; and what is insensible is not necessarily sound. (For more on the proper role of the emotions and the voice of the heart as a genuine dimension of our rational and personal nature, see Von Hildebrand’s The Heart.)  A third type of stoicism would be that of Buddhism in the east or Schopenhauer in the west—and the latter was influenced by the former.  The theory is that one’s existence as a living, striving, desiring human being is precisely the original problem and that the only “cure” is a curtailment of all desire.  This supposedly removes one’s consciousness from the torment of striving and suffering—but it means the end of all desiring, hoping, seeking, even loving.  One Buddhist saying has it (quoted at the beginning of Chapter 1, “Buddhist Charity,” in Henri de Lubac’s Aspects of Buddhism):  The person with a hundred different lovesHas a hundred different pains.The person with ninety different lovesHas ninety different pains.The person with eighty different loves… etc.The person with one loveHas one pain.The person without loveHas no pain. This reminds me, naturally, in popular culture of Simon and Garfunkel’s famous hit song “I am a Rock:” I’ve built walls,A fortress deep and mighty,That none may penetrate.I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain.Its laughter and its loving I disdain.I am a rock,I am an island. I am shielded in my armor,Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.I touch no one and no one touches me.I am a rock,I am an island. And a rock feels no pain;And an island never cries.  What popular culture reflects here is that we are not dealing merely with an esoteric theory out of the far east nor a misogynistic philosopher from the 19th century, but a classic possibility (or temptation) of the human spirit. Problems with these forms of pessimism?  Many, of course, all centered on the dilemma  that we must do terrible violence to who and what we are as persons in order to live this way—denying the level of reason (cynicism), denying all willing and loving (Buddhism), denying all rejoicing in positive goods (stoicism).  While claiming to be a solution to the problem of human misery, underneath it all these theories (with a partial exception to the higher forms of stoicism with an opening toward eternity) just seem to capitulate to the miseries, to involve a despair which is covered over by denouncing or renouncing all positive happiness.  Such pessimisms seem to lock the person into his own loneliness, to screw the dome of misery more tightly down over his head, and then to call on him to be proud of his independence and self-sufficiency.  Perhaps in Kierkegaardian categories, such a one would fit under the despair of defiance, which insists on being itself (though not the true self it was created to be, but a fantastic self-assertion) without God and without help from others.  It decides to create itself out of its own power into what it wants to be, regardless of consequences.  ...in spite of or in defiance of the whole of existence, he wills to be himself with it, to take it along, almost defying his torment.  For to hope in the possibility of help, …that for God all things are possible—no, that he will not do.  And as for seeking help from any other—no, that he will not do for all the world; rather than seek help he would prefer to be himself—with all the tortures of hell, if so it must be. [Sickness Unto Death, Chapter III, B, (b), (2).] What might make such a negative theory attractive?  Perhaps three main things.  First, some concern for the relief from misery in the world, a type of truncated pity for all, would be a positive motivation.  I say "truncated" for, as De Lubac says in his article "Buddhist Charity" in Aspects of Buddhism: Now Buddhist tenderness, even when manifested in action, even in its most sublime, never rises above pity.  And if it often appears as true human tenderness, this is in spite of its doctrine. [That is, it rises above its doctrine.]  For the individual counts as little in Buddhism--so little, that this pity is declared to be all the more perfect, the more it becomes abstract and generalized; in other words, the less human it becomes. It is more concerned with suffering in general than with each suffering being in particular. [My brackets.] Second, the appeal to total self-sufficiency is active in motivating these types of pessimism. But, this also includes an appeal to pride and self-assertion, to think of oneself as strong and independent, towering over others in one’s power and endurance, to need no one and to solve one's own problems. Third, there is the appeal to intellectual superiority in view of a false realism.  The person may feel that he sees what others don’t, or don’t have the courage to face.  “Others lose themselves in escapism or earthly optimism or vain hopes, but not I.  I see and have the courage to face what others miss or avoid—the real evils of life.”  As Alice von Hildebrand writes in her excellent article “On the Pseudo-Obvious,” from the volume Wahrheit, Wert, und Sein:  [This] claim to a superior wisdom has an enormous appeal for many persons; it both heals intellectual inferiority complexes, and feeds the illusion of omniscience.  This exhilarating feeling of intellectual power is mistakenly interpreted as being the joy that accompanies the discovery of truth…. The discovery of truth does indeed have an exhilarating effect on the human mind…. For the joy over the grasping of truth bears all the marks of transcendence, coupled with a gratitude that such a gift has been granted to us. It is not so in the case of the exhilaration proper to pseudo-obviousness.  Not only is it deprived of all the marks of transcendence, but it springs from the satisfaction of feeling clever.  Dr. Von Hildebrand goes on to point out that many “fall prey to pseudo-plausible statements whose content depresses them deeply.  Although accepting these assertions with resignation, they nevertheless endorse them, be it because of the fascination exercised by false realism, be it because of their fear to fall into illusions.”  This may well be the case with many pessimists.  I’m reminded here of someone who feels it necessary to put a bumper sticker on the back of his pick-up truck saying “S--t happens.”  As if I don’t know!  As if he had to tell me!  And yet, holy sorrow and deep mourning are more appropriate responses here than indignation.  Again, see Bill Marra’s Happiness and Christian Hope for further elaboration. 2012-05-13T22:58:53+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/is_kierkegaard_expecting_too_much_from_mere_mortals http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/is_kierkegaard_expecting_too_much_from_mere_mortals A couple of weeks ago, in a post on our member forum, Rhett Segal criticized Søren Kierkegaard for “his categorical rejection of any mixed motives relative to the pursuit of the good. To call for the elimination of any desire for reward or the elimination of any fear of punishment is to deny human nature.” I just found a great passage in Romano Guardini’s The Lord that confirms and amplifies Rhett’s point. Guardini notices that whereas Christ often emphasizes the rewards we gain and punishments we avoid by being good, modern ethicists commonly disapprove of such ulterior and mercenary motives. Genuine morality, they insist, does not need to be threatened or beguiled into goodness; it chooses the good freely and for its own sake. Guardini partly agrees and comments: There is something rich, magnanimous, kingly in freedom of this kind which considers itself degraded by the mere thought of ‘payment.’ The purely moral value has majesty… it needs no further justification. Indeed, any additional motive would only lessen its intrinsic worth. The purity of the act is threatened by thought of “reward.” I do not want to do a thing for reward; I prefer to do it for its own sake, which for me is sufficient. The last lines of this passage already begin to reveal the problem in this ethical view: namely, that it is dangerously flattering to our ego. In this context, Guardini thinks, Jesus’ sayings about reward and punishment must be understood as “a warning-call to humility”: What the New Testament says is this: At the root of your “pure ethics” lurks the possibility of a monstrous pride that is particularly difficult to unmask. To desire good for its own intrinsic dignity, and so purely that the pleasure of goodness is the sole and entirely satisfying motive behind our virtue — this is something of which God alone is capable… [Modern man] places the moral attitude and the divine attitude on a par. He has so determined the moral attitude that the ego behind it can only be God, tacitly taking it for granted that human ego, indeed all ego, actually is God. Here lies the moral pride of the age, at once terrible as it is tenacious. The last part of this passage clearly does not apply to Kierkegaard. He is free from the hubris that would place the human and the divine ego on the same level. But I am not so sure if he is entirely innocent of aspiring to a moral purity in human beings that is beyond their capacity as mere creatures. It wouldn’t be the first time in the history of Christianity that an overly exalted view of man arises out of an extra pious, ardent, and sincere religious devotion. 2012-05-11T01:07:11+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/judging_the_person_inside_and_out http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/judging_the_person_inside_and_out Judge not, that you be not judged.... Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? --Matt. 7:1,3 Don't compare your inside to someone else's outside. --All over the internet The first quote needs no introduction.  This passage, or at least the "Judge not" part, has got to be every bit as popular with non-Christians as John 3:16 is with Tim Tebow. The second quote is a piece of pop wisdom I ran into thanks to the always-entertaining Susie Lloyd and liked.  (I've gotten far less snobbish in my old age and no longer turn up my nose at wisdom that comes in pop clothing: it's all part of "Diligere veritatem omnem et in omnibus"--love all truth and love it in all things.) Together, the two quotes draw our attention to the gaping void where our Socratic ignorance is supposed to be.  We don't know that we don't know.  It somehow escapes our attention that we're walking around with logs in our eyes.  And let's not miss what He's implying here: He could have said a twig, or a pebble--but a whole log? There is just no flattering way to interpret that one. On the one hand, we're not even familiar with our own insides, but we assume we are; on the other, we may understand each other's outsides, but we mistake them for insides. We run into problems coming and going: judging others too harshly and ourselves too leniently, but also the other way around. It's fairly easy to see the sense in refraining from judging a stranger, or a passing acquaintance.  Maybe we've never walked in his moccasins.  But what if it's someone we know very, very well--someone we've grown up with, been married to for decades, or given birth to?  Is it really possible to be so ignorant of the inner reality of another human being in this case? Well, yes.  Definitely.  Caryll Houselander, straight-talking 20th-century mystic and poet, has this to say in her Reed of God It is just as easy to come to know someone less and less through living in the same room as it is to know him more and more.  This is because we usually judge people by our own reactions, fears and desires.  We do not see them as separate people who possess their own soul and live their own lives, but as part of ourselves and our lives [emphasis added: how's that for hitting the personalist nail on the head?]; we attribute to them motives which we would have in the same circumstances. When you share a room, it is yet more easy to judge, not only by your own motives, but by your own reactions.... You are tired; you discover that your room-mate is selfish, inconsiderate; she proves it by turning on the radio, banging the door, having a loud voice, and not being tired herself.   She is tired; and you are full of well-being; you are irritated to find how selfish she is: gloomy, depressing, a wet-blanket, painfully wanting in moral stamina. What might be even less clear is that we don't even grasp what's transpiring in our own insides.  God knows us better than we know ourselves, and sometimes that's not saying much.  In C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, the senior devil gives his apprentice this advice: You must bring him to a condition where he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of the facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office. So should we judge, or not?  Can't we call good good, and evil evil?  Can we affirm, say, that genocide is wrong?  Do we need to walk in a genocidal maniac's moccasins for a day, or be free of all imperfection ourselves, to make a pronouncement like that?  Long live the dictatorship of relativism? No. We can and must judge actions.  We do it all the time.  No one could ever grow up, raise a child, run a business, or sustain a political order for five minutes without judging actions.  It's the hearts of others we're supposed to leave to Someone Else. So, we can breathe a sigh of relief, right?  We need only concern ourselves with actions.   Let's see, then: we'll need to know the external state of affairs, the intrinsic nature of each act, the degree of freedom with which the subject performs it, the degree of knowledge of which he's capable, and any physiological conditions which might interfere with his perception or evaluative powers and exacerbate or mitigate his culpability.  We should also be cognizant of any prejudice on our part, any moral obstacle that could be clouding our own perception, any lack of knowledge that might hinder our judgment... Growing up, raising children, running businesses, and sustaining political orders ought to be a breeze, as long as we keep in mind this simple advice: Judge not.   Or if you do, be vewy, vewy careful. 2012-05-10T02:19:29+00:00 http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/bumping_up_against_a_bogus_notion_of_charity http://www.thepersonalistproject.org/comments/bumping_up_against_a_bogus_notion_of_charity The other day a friend sent me a message asking if I'd be interested in reviewing a book she's just published.  I told her I was scared I would hate it, which would put me in a dilemma.  I'm a critic by nature and vocation.  I can't dissemble.  And I'm afraid my honest impressions would discourage her in her work.   She laughed and assured me that she finds private criticism helpful.  Then she sent me the book.  It came in the mail just now.   As I held it, disliking the cover art, it occurred to me:  Wait a sec.  "Private criticism"?  Did she mean (perhaps unconsciously) to bind me not to say anything in public?  Maybe she didn't mean to do that at all, but it's a notion I come across frequently in Catholic circles, viz. that is that public criticism is a violation of Christian charity.  The idea is that If a fellow Catholic writes a book or an article that you disagree with or have objections to, you have an obligation, in charity, to approach that person personally and privately, before making your criticisms known.   I would like to say right here, right now, (as I have before and elsewhere), before I read the book, that this notion is false. Bogus and delibilitating. If a friend were to come to me in confidence and ask me, as a favor, to review and critique her work before it's published, then (assuming I agree to do it) I would have an obligation, in friendship and in professional courtesy, not to make my criticisms public until she's had a chance to address them.   Once a book or article is published, however, it is ipso facto part of the public domain.  And this point, a critic's concern is not primarily with the author, but with her readers, or, in other words, the public.  A critic owes the public her honest response. Now, that doesn't mean that there are never good reasons in a concrete case for choosing to keep criticisms private.  But as a matter of principle, it is not wrong, not a breach of charity, to make them in public.  On the other hand, it would be wrong--and a breach of charity--to accuse a critic of uncharity for doing her job as she understands it. If you don't want to be publicly criticised, keep your thoughts and your creative works to yourself.  Once they're out there, it's not about you, it's about them, and everyone else. Just this week I read a fun and perhaps apropos anecdote about the great critic Hilton Kramer, who died recently.  It was in a commemorative piece in the marvelous magazine he founded thirty years ago, The New Criterion. Hilton liked to quote Walter Bagehot in this context: "The business of the critic," said Bagehot, "is to criticize."  One of Hilton's favorite stories involved the movie director and actor Woody Allen.  Back when Hilton worked at The New York Times, he happened to be seated next to Allen one night at a dinner.  He asked whether Hilton ever felt embarrassed when he encountered socially artists he'd written disparagingly about.  Without missing a beat, Hilton replied, No, why should I be embarrassed? They made the crappy art.  I just described it. 2012-05-09T18:36:41+00:00