22 July 2008
The Mechanism
"In a nutshell: before the advent of Judaism and Christianity, in one way or the other, the scapegoat mechanism was accepted and justified, on the basis that it remained unknown. It brought peace back to the community at the height of the chaotic mimetic crisis. All archaic religions grounded their rituals precisely around the re-enactment of the founding murder. In other words, they considered the scapegoat to be guilty of the eruption of the mimetic crisis. By contrast, Christianity, in the figure of Jesus, denounced the scapegoat mechanism for what it actually is: the murder of an innocent victim, killed in order to pacify a riotous community. That's the moment in which the mimetic mechanism is fully revealed." -- René Girard, in Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture
Quoted by Chronicles of Atlantis, with accompanying photo at that website.
This may not be what was intended, but reading Girard and learning about mimetic theory these last few years has led me to become extremely wary of all sacrifice (making sacred) -- which actually I think is intended -- and also sceptical and even perhaps cynical of self-sacrifice, in myself and others.
Sacrifice seems so often to go hand-in-hand with feelings of righteousness and resentment, and the act of scapegoating, and it offers an enormous payoff both for acknowledging the sacrifice as such and for denying all else. I see self-sacrifice now as mostly an acceptable way to make oneself sacred, a kind of self-divination that can be deeply satisfying and comforting to the sacrificer. (A short time ago I would have agreed that 'we are all sacred,' and yet now I think that such language amounts to a sort of trick, a means of identifying and attacking 'the profane,' that which we think is unworthy.)
I think we are called to compassion -- i.e., suffering with, abiding with, experiencing what the other experiences without clutching onto the experience -- which sometimes entails sacrifice of one's ego, one's desires, and at times one's life; and yet I can't be unaware of the ego-needs and the desires that are met in the act of sacrificing oneself in both mundane and extraordinary ways, in the stories we tell ourselves and others about the sacrifice -- before (if premeditated or foreseen), during and particularly after the fact -- and in the refuge taken in false modesty that seeks to lift up our own altruism and to deny our own selfishness. And contrariwise, even boasting of our selfish motives can itself become a show of ego self-sacrifice, a twisted pretense of appropriate humility that serves only to enhance the perception of oneself as a hero, a god, someone who isn't even aware of the good they've done. We are a tricky, tricky lot, it seems to me, capable often of hiding the complexity of our own motives from our own minds and hearts.
I can imagine self-sacrifice as a consequence of feeling in the flow of all life, as a heartfelt response to feeling loved, as an act intertwined with living an abundant life, though I have a more difficult time imagining that the story about the act could leave it at that without justification, fabrication, meaning-making, and so on.... What I can't imagine is self-sacrifice as a measurement on a moral scale without also thinking about the Pharisees and their sacrifices, abstinences, denials of pleasures, etc., for the sake of God, and how good they felt about their worthiness under God because of those sacrifices.
Self-sacrifice that comes from a sense of duty and a need to 'do the right thing,' and that carries with it a sense of having done right, done well, been worthy and pleasing, feels to me likely to slip unobserved into a self-congratulatory act, and perhaps to leak into resentment, bitterness, anger and eventually accusation when the act is unappreciated, unrecompensed, unacknowledged, unnoticed, and even unaccepted, and/or has an outcome considered bad by the sacrificer. (Or, alternately, the sacrificer may view the lack of appreciation and the bad outcome as yet another burden added to the sacrifice s/he is making, which just enhances the satisfaction s/he feels in making such a sacrifice.)
If such an act derives from wanting to measure up, wanting to do what's right and to be right, then it seems mined with explosive devices that will likely damage the sacrificer, as it did the Pharisees, without their noticing it. If, on the other hand, such a sacrifice derives from a feeling of being loved completely for who one is (and isn't), from a knowledge at the core -- or perhaps simply from a quick glimpse that's never been quite edited out -- that we are the recipients of a gift that our word 'life' doesn't even begin to describe -- Well, that kind of sacrifice could, it seems, be experienced not as giving up anything, not as an unequal exchange, not as suffering at all except in the sense of 'suffer' as 'allow' or 'undergo.' We might then undergo sacrifice as a bit of ash undergoes a lava flow or as a drop of rain undergoes a thunderstorm. What would that be like?
(I ordered Evolution and Conversion yesterday, and a few days ago received a copy of Girard's other book published this year, Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953-2005, from which I may occasionally quote as I get into it. I'll probably skip around ... Writers whose works he explores include Stendhal, Voltaire, Valéry, Tocqueville, de Beauvoir, Proust, Racine, Sartre, Hugo, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare ... I haven't read most of the original texts, so it may be hard going. See TOC here.)
08:10 Posted in death , girardian anthropology , other people said it , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
19 July 2008
Choice and Happiness
Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) writes (almost a year ago):
"We know from workplace studies that the biggest factor in employee satisfaction is the degree of control workers have over their jobs, assuming other factors such as the pay and the hours are somewhere in the normal range. People like choice more than they like the thing they choose.
"When you make your own choices, you manipulate cognitive dissonance in your favor. No matter what you choose, it seems like a better option than it really is because you chose it."
I don't think any 'real' Buddhist would say this, but it seems to me that most of Buddhist practice, at the core, is meant to be a remedy for this seemingly universal human tendency to equate a sense of control with happiness.
Most of life is not controllable. We don't have a choice about many things. Being born and dying, for instance. :-) We often can't control our own thoughts and actions, much less those of other people, or circumstances. So this tendency to equate control with happiness leads to suffering, as we see again and again that we are not 'the deciders,' and even when we are the deciders, we decide wrong. Still, we try to be the deciders. It feels good to be in charge rather than to be told what to do or to have circumstances forced upon us.
Making choices and feeling in control is a key way of finding ground. Feeling we're in control gives us the illusion, first of all, that there's an "I," an identity that is constant and solid, and second, that we have power, that we can determine outcomes. And we do have power. We can affect some outcomes. There's also luck, timing, and other people's power, which thwart our sense of control, and even when we do exert control, there's our own ambivalence about alternatives (which diverts our power), our indecision, our poor judgment, our lack of wisdom, and the unravelling of unforeseen consequences, which remind us that even when we act with control and power we may not actually control outcomes.
I guess the question is, if I consciously and over-and-over choose to let go of needing to feel a sense of control in order to feel happy, am I still holding on to a sense of control in making that choice? And what then?
(photo: cat, staring up at bird's nest)
07:10 Posted in girardian anthropology , neuroscience, psychology, the mind , other people said it , politics, government and law | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this
16 July 2008
Justification by Theory
From Gil Bailie's mostly dormant website:
"Following another avenue of escape, which seeks its justification in a grandiose theory, there are those who wish to recognize only collective sin, 'objectivized' sin, 'social' sin, i.e. the sin committed by others. A universe is constructed where evil is everywhere denounced, but no where admitted; where it is always endured, never committed. By thus 'transferring the evil which is in man to the evil in the structures' -- called 'structures of sin' -- one is led, in addition, to the idea that man is essentially good, and that it is only society which corrupts him, and that he has no need of conversion of heart." -- Henri de Lubac
I think this is a danger for those of us who use a Girardian lens (seeking "justification in a grandiose theory"?), to see more and more clearly others' violent mimesis, scapegoating, the mechanism of sin for what it is in every interaction we observe, to see it woven into the fabric of society and institutions, while we remain blind to the way it flourishes in each of us.
11:35 Posted in community , girardian anthropology , other people said it , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
15 July 2008
Solutions: Bohemia (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the eleventh post on this topic; the first is here.
PART II: Solutions
CHAPTER 5 - BOHEMIA
Bohemians came to prominence in France after Napoleon, 1815. Bohemians are found in all social classes, age groups, professions, and in both genders. They include Romantics, surrealists, Beatniks, punks, situationalists, Kibbutzbiks, et. al.
Bohemians lived simply, read a lot, didn't care much for money, were melancholic, had an allegiance to art and emotion, led unconventional sex lives, and ... some of the women wore their hair short! Most importantly, they did not fit into the bourgeois conception of respectability.
Bohemians don't like the bourgeoisie, private schools, debutantes and 'eligible bachelors,' blood sports, missionaries, bores, and people who worry about their reputations.
Bohemians like men and women, Nietzsche, Picasso, Kokoschka, jazz, acrobats, Havelock Ellis, the Mediterranean, DH Lawrence, those who don't anticipate life after death.
Flaubert: "Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom."
The bourgeoisie are seen as prudes, materialistic, both cynical and sentimental, immersed in trivia and trivial pursuits.
'Real' bohemians were those who "set themselves up as sabatoeurs of the economic meritocracy." They valued 'sensitivity' over worldly ambition. Work and money, they felt, destroyed one's capacity for sensitivity. They thought themselves "deserving of the highest honour for their ethical good sense and their powers of receptivity and expression." [Isn't this just another form of meritocracy, status based on talent, skill, intelligence?]
Thoreau - lack of wealth didn't necessarily mean, as the bourgeois said, that one was a loser at the game of life; one might be impoverished financially because one focused energies on things other than making money, equally enriching in their own right.
Bohemians (and others) realised that maintaining confidence in their values, so at odds with the mainstream, required mixing socially mainly with others who shared the same values, and reading and listening to materials that supported their values. Hence, enclaves of Bohemians in Montparnasse, Bloomsbury, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Venice Beach, etc.
Bohemians redefined failure. For the bourgeoisie, failure in business or the arts was an indictment of character because it's assumed that society is fair in distributing its rewards. For bohemians, there's nothing punitive about failure. In fact, because those who succeed in society are those who can best "pander to the flawed values of their audiences," commercial success was viewed with some suspicion. (Myth of the misunderstood artist)
Bohemians emphasise the "dignity and superiority of the rejected ones," which is a secular counterpart to the Christian message and story of Jesus's marginalisation and crucifixion: "Torture at the hands of the uncomprehending masses" is "evidence of the righteousness of the neglected party."
Sometimes bohemians were "radicals devoted to anything so long as it was taboo in the Mid-West," shocked the middle class, outraged public opinion.
It's "only a short step from valuing originality and emphasising the non-material aspects of life to feeling that almost anything that could surprise a judge or pharmacist -- from crustacean-walking [Gérard de Nerval] to strawberry-breast-cooking [Filippo Marinetti] -- must be important."
Most generally, bohemia has legitimised the pursuit of an alternative way of life." They "articulated a case for a spiritual as opposed to a material method of evaluating both oneself and others."
08:10 Posted in books and reading , community , consumption , girardian anthropology , other people said it , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
14 July 2008
Solutions: Religion (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the tenth post on this topic; the first is here.
PART II: Solutions
CHAPTER 4 - RELIGION
Death
Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan llyich (1886) is a Christian memento mori. Ivan Ilyich is all about status. When he realises he's going to die, he recognises he's wasted his time on Earth by leading an outwardly respectable but inwardly barren life. He always wanted to appear important and to impress people whom, he sees now, don't care for him at all. Those around him love his status, not his true vulnerable self.
The prospect of death may cause us to do what matters most to us and to pay less attention to the verdicts of others. We see we cannot "afford to defer forever, for the sake of propriety, our underlying commitments to ourselves."
Ruins! They comfort us, reveal our "punishingly high-minded sense of the gravity of what we are doing," our own exaggerated self-importance. Our miseries are tied to the grandiosity of our ambitions.
Community
We all have the same vulnerabilities and the same two driving forces: fear, and a desire for love.
The Christian would say that there is no such thing as a stranger, "only an impression of strangeness born of failure to acknowledge that others share both our needs and our weaknesses."
Christianity attempts to enhance the value we place on community -- through ritual (a transcendent intermediary) and through music (great leveller and social alchemist -- we see that others respond as we do, which forges connection).
Twin Cities
Jesus is the model for Christians' understanding of status. He has two different sides, as ordinary carpenter and as the holiest of men. We can see the difference between earthly status (determined by occupation, income, others' opinions) and spiritual status (related to one's soul and merits in God's eyes).
The City of God, Augustine, 427 AD: All human action can be interpreted from either the Christian or the Roman (earthly) perspective, which are different. Christian status derives from humility, generosity, recognition of one's dependence on God, etc.
Divine Comedia, Dante, 1315: Dante's Hell is home to many who enjoyed high status while they lived.
Christian lore asserts the superiority of spiritual over material success and endows its virtues with "a seductive seriousness and beauty" through music, art, literature, architecture, etc. "Through its command of aesthetic resources, of buildings, paintings and Masses, Christianity created a bulwark against the authority of earthly values and kept its spiritual concerns in the public eye."
Heydey of cathedrals, 1130-1530.
Christianity never abolished the Earthly City or its values, but that we retain any distinction between wealth and virtue is largely due to the impression left on Western consciousness by Christianity.
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13 July 2008
Solutions: Politics (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). The book generally aligns with mimetic theory and Girardian ideas; I've added a G near comments that seem to do so particularly.
This is the ninth post on this topic; the first is here.
PART II: Solutions
CHAPTER 3 - POLITICS
"Every society holds certain groups of people in high esteem while condemning or ignoring others, whether on the basis of their skills, accent, temperament, gender, physical attributes, ancestry, religion or skin colour. Yet such arbitrary and subjective criteria for success and failure are far from permanent or universal." G It's the job of the status quo to make them seem absolutely universal and permanent.
Rather eccentric timeline: of who and what has been held in high status:
400 BC Sparta: Soldiers: Men, aggressive, vigorously bisexual, not family men, not business men.
Western Europe 476-1096: Saints: followers of Jesus Christ, shunning of material goods, suppression of sexual feelings, extreme modesty.
Western Europe 1096-1500 (after first Crusade): Knights: Wealthy, killed people and animals. Lovers, poets. Prized virgins. Loved money but not from trade, only from land.
England 1750-1890: Gentlemen: Dancing, dabblers, not merchants. Supposed to like families but OK to have mistresses. Cultivation of languid elegance. Hair. Women seen as taller children.
Brasil, 1600-1960 (Cubeo tribe): Men who spoke little, did not dance or play a part in raising children, and were good at killing jaguars. High status - hunters; low status - fishermen. Shameful to even be seen helping wife make a root-based meal.
London, Sydney, New York, LA, 2004: Anyone who can accumulate money, power and renown through their own accomplishments in some sector of the commercial world. Because culture is now seen to be meritocratic, financial achievements are understood to be deserved. The ability to accumulate wealth is proof of creativity, stamina, intelligence. Other virtues, like godliness and humility, don't matter much.
By what principles is status distributed?:
(1) by threatening and bullying
(2) by defending others (strength, patronage, control of resources, etc.). Where safety is in short supply, soldiers and knights are celebrated. Where the livelihood of the majority depends on trade and high-tech, entrepreneurs and scientists are celebrated.
(3) by impressing others with goodness, talent, skill or wisdom (saints, European footballers)
(4) by appealing to conscience or sense of decency of peers - by moral authority.
Ideals are not cast in stone; the process by which they alter is politics.
For us in the western world now, prosperity = worthiness. And poverty = moral deficiency. Money is ethical. This equation of prosperity and worthiness seems "natural" to us but it only came into being as "the way it is" in the mid-1800s.
Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (1899): "Wealth has become the conventional basis of esteem." Material goods confer honour (hence conspicuous consumption, to give evidence to one and all of one's 'true' worth).
Some have fought the idea of meritocracy, the idea that wealth = virtue, including most notable John Ruskin, and also George Bernard Shaw, Michel de Montaigne.
Modern life also posits a connection between making money and being happy. This connection rests on three assumptions:
(1) that we know what we need to be happy and so we know what careers and projects will help us flourish as humans. Rousseau refutes this (in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1754): We are actually, he says, "dangerously inept at deciphering our own needs. Our souls rarely articulate what they must have in order to be fulfilled, and when they manage to mumble something, their requests are likely to be misfounded or contradictory .... Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied...." G
(2) that all of the occupational possibilities and consumer goods available to us are actually a helpful array that's capable of satisfying our essential needs.
(3) that the more money we have, the more goods and services we can afford, which increases our odds of happiness.
(de Botton writes more about this here: "Americans Were the First People to Worship Work")
Current Events Tie-In: "Will economic growth make Americans happier?" (23 June 2008, Chicago Tribune)
Some posit, in contrast to the money-happiness connection, that those who live in a "natural state" understand themselves much better. (Part of the 'noble savage' idea) E.g., the native Americans, who lived with little yet were reputed to be content. But within only a few decades of the arrival of the first Europeans, what came to matter to the Indians was the amassing of weapons, jewellery and whiskey. This didn't happen spontaneously; the European traders deliberately sought to foster desires in Indians to motivate them to provide animal pelts for the European market.
In 1690, the English naturalist and minister John Banister noted that the Indians of Hudson Bay area had been successfully tempted by traders to want "many things which they had not wanted before." As the volume of trade increased, suicide rates and alcoholism also rose, fracturing communities. Indian leaders called on tribes to renounce their addiction to European luxuries.
Defenders of commercial society argue that no one forces anyone to buy anything. Rousseau emphasised how strongly predisposed humans are to listen to others' suggestions about how to think and what to value. G
Advertisers et al. actually insist that their trades are ineffective because the population is so independent-minded. This is not shown to be true, based on what people once said were luxuries that they quickly came to see as necessities:
Percentage of Americans who say these are necessities:
2nd car in 1970: 20% / 2nd car in 2000: 59%
dishwasher in 1970: 8% / dishwasher in 2000: 44%
A/C in car in 1970: 11% / A/C in car in 2000: 65%
A/C in home in 1970: 22% / A/C in home in 2000: 70%
more than one telephone in 1970: 2% / more than one telephone in 2000: 78%
(Salon article about marketing -- "commercial persuasion industry" -- and consumerism: We Are What We Buy: "'We can talk all we want about being brand-proof ... but our behavior tells a different story.'")
"Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another" and we're not aware of it. G We think achievements and acquisitions will satisfy us but they don't. Not only can we not stop envying, but we envy the wrong things!
John Ruskin excoriated 19th-century Britons for being wealth-obsessed. He said he was, too, but he was obsessed by being wealthy in kindness, curiosity, sensitivity, humility, godliness, and intelligence -- which in the aggregate he called "life."
In his conception, the wealthiest Britons would not be automatically merchants or landowners but rather those who felt the keenest wonder gazing at the stars or who were best able to alleviate the suffering of others. (in Unto This Last)
Ideology and Political Change
Lots of ideas have been seen as so immutable as to be 'natural', e.g.,:
- men's rule over women (Earl Percy, 1873)
- European people are better than Africans (Lord Cromer, 1911)
- women don't have sexual feeling (Sir William Acton, 1857)
- Africans are naturally subordinate to whites (Alexander Stephens, 1861)
Dominant beliefs are at great pains to suggest that they are no more alterable than the orbits of the sun. They are ideological -- "a statement that subtly promotes a bias while pretending to be perfectly neutral." The ruling ideas of every age are those of the ruling class; but they can't seem to rule too forcefully. The ideas have to seem natural and unforced, just "the way it is."
Ideology, like a colourless, odorless gas, is pervasive and yet unnoticed as what it is. It makes light of its perhaps unjust or illogical take on the world and meekly implies that it's only presenting age-old truths.
"When institutions and ideas are held to be 'natural,' responsibility for whatever suffering they cause must necessarily either belong to no specific agent or else to the injured parties themselves."
Virginia Woolf, when not allowed into a college library in England on the basis of being female, became sceptical of the feminine role model she grew up with, the image of a woman who was always charming and utterly unselfish. The model woman sacrificed herself daily. She took the worst piece of meat, the most uncomfortable seat, etc. "She was so constituted that she would never have a mind or wish of her own, but prefer to sympathise always with the minds and wishes of others."
"The enthusiasm for materialism, entrepreneurship and meritocracy that saturates the newspapers and television schedules of our own day reflects nothing more complex than the interests of those in charge of the system by which the majority earn their living."
06:45 Posted in books and reading , community , finance and business , girardian anthropology , media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
12 July 2008
Solutions: Art (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the eighth post on this topic; the first is here.
PART II: Solutions
CHAPTER 2 - ART
Literature
The history of art is filled with challenges to the status quo.
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen (1814): The rich and well-mannered are not ipso facto good, and the poor and unschooled are not necessarily bad.
"Almost every great novel of the 19th and 20th centuries stages an assault on, or at the very least harbours scepticism regarding, the accepted social hierarchy, and each offers some sort of redefinition of precedence according to moral worth rather than financial assets or bloodlines."
Examples: Balzac - Le Père Goriot (1834), Hardy - Jude the Obscure (1895), G. Eliot - Middlemarch (1872), Fielding - Joseph Andrews (1742), Thackeray - Vanity Fair (1848), Dickens - Bleak House (1853), Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White (1860), A. Trollope - The Way We Live Now (1875), Zadie Smith - White Teeth (2000).
Painting
(You have to see the book for this, as he reproduces "paintings of the commonplace" -- which elevate the status of the ordinary -- and discusses them)
Tragedy
"Fear of the material consequences of failure is thus compounded by fear of the unsympathetic attitude of the world towards those who have failed, exemplified by its haunting proclivity to refer to them as 'losers' - a word callously signifying both that they have lost and that they have, at the same time, forfeited any right to sympathy for losing."
Tragedy helps to re-inject empathy into the equation by showing how like everyone else the tragic figure is. G
Examples: Oedipus, Antigone, Lear, Othello, Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Hedda Gabler, Tess, et al.
Tragedy doesn't absolve its subjects of responsibility but does offer and elicit a level of sympathy.
At the center of tragedy is an ordinary human being with a tragic flaw who makes an error in judgment from which flows a terrible reversal of fortune. Tragic flaws are defects common to humans, such as excessive pride, anger, impulsiveness, etc. Errors in judgment occur not from evil motives but from lapses in judgment, slips.
Tragedy reflects:
(1) how apparently small missteps can result in grave consequences
(2) the blindness we suffer with regard to the effects of our actions
(3) a fatuous tendency to presume that we are in conscious command of our destiny
(4) the sped and finality with which all that we cherish can be lost
(5) the mysterious forces against which our powers are pitted
Tragedy apportions blame without denying sympathy. We're appalled yet compassionate as we see the universality of the situation. This form of art seeks to plumb the origins of failure.
Comedy
More specifically, satire.
"Jokes are an enormously effective means of anchoring a criticism. At base, they are another way of complaining: about arrogance, cruelty or pomposity, about departures from virtue or good sense."
"History reveals no shortage of jokes intended to amend the vices of high-status groups and shake the mighty out of their pretensions or dishonesty." [q.v. George Carlin]
Comedy also can be used to make sense of and mitigate status anxiety: "Comedy reassures us that there are others in the world no less envious or socially fragile than ourselves.
06:00 Posted in books and reading , girardian anthropology , other people said it , pop culture , silliness and humour | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
11 July 2008
Solutions: Philosophy (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the seventh post on this topic; the first is here.
PART II: Solutions
CHAPTER 1 - PHILOSOPHY
Dueling! For duelers, others' opinions were the only factor in forming their sense of self. If others judged a dueler effeminate, foolish, a coward, a failure, dishonorable, he could not remain acceptable in his own eyes. He would sooner die or kill than let an unfavourable assessment go unanswered.
We may not duel but we may have extreme vulnerability to the disdain of others.
Socrates, on the being insulted in the marketplace, was asked, "Don't you worry about being called names?" He replied, "Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?" <-- misanthropy as a response
Socrates and others refute the suggestion that what others think of us must determine what we think of ourselves.
[Socrates' response in this anecdote, though, seems like a reaction to feeling keenly the sting of the other's barb; he may not 'believe' the other's view of him, but he also has to create some kind of defense against it, indicating to me that it matters more than he wants it to, that it infiltrates his psyche at least a bit. Maybe not, though.]
06:25 Posted in books and reading , community , girardian anthropology , other people said it , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
10 July 2008
Who are the Victims?
Another idea I have for an occasional series: News stories in which some group is labelled 'the victim' of a group, abstraction, or individual. I think it's educational and interesting to explore who or what are identified as victims and perpetrators in the media.
Recently,
American people are the victims: "The whiners are the leaders. Hell, the American people are victims. ..." [Said by political advisor and former Congressman Phil Gramm, reported today]
Palestinians are the victims of Jewish persecutors: "Touring the somber [Holocaust] museum, it occurred to [Israeli-Arab lawyer] Mahameed that 'we Palestinians are the victims of the terrible things that were inflicted on the Jews by the Holocaust.' [8 July; the article is actually eye-opening, moving, IMO]
Bass and salmon are the victims of mismanagement: "Striped bass are the victims of gross state and federal mismanagement of Central Valley rivers and the Delta, as are collapsing Sacramento River chinook salmon populations." [8 July]
Tuna are the victims of their own success: "Chronically overfished, Mediterranean tuna are the victims of their success with fish lovers, especially with the passion for sushi." [3 July]
Sociopathic politicians, celebrities and sports figures are the victims: "For all the public examples of bad behavior set by politicians, celebrities and sports figures, many young people see these individuals for exactly what they are: spoiled, overrated sociopaths who are the victims of an overly indulgent, disengaged society in search of civilization." [7 July]
Pakistani college women are the victims of cell phone use: "Mostly intermediate students are the victims of mobile mania" [8 July]
San Diego stores are the victims of shopping cart theft and displacement: "The stores are the victims, Councilman Jack Feller said, and they aren't the ones who should be punished." [12 June]
and finally, the word "victim" isn't used but it's sure implied in this odd story [7 July]:
"A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon.
"County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.
"Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections 'has become a black hole' because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
"Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud 'Excuse me!' He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a 'white hole.'"That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy."
wtf?
20:15 Posted in animals , community , crime , earthcare and environment , girardian anthropology , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Causes: Dependence (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the sixth post on this topic; the first is here.
CHAPTER 5 - DEPENDENCE
Status, historically, was tied to what one was at birth, not what one achieved in one's lifetime. [Can you imagine that this is a new concept? It seems so wholly part of what one seems to know.] Modern societies try to reverse this, to make rank dependent only on achievement -- usually, financial achievement.
The most evident trait of the struggle to achieve status now is uncertainty.
de Button lists five unpredictable elements:
(1) talent - it could desert us or we could find we never really had it
(2) luck - no longer as acceptable to point to as a factor, no moody gods to blame these days. The world is "enamored of rational control."
(3) dependence on an employer (q.v., Machiavelli, Guicciardini, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, et al.)
(4) dependence on an employer's profitability
(5) dependence on the global economy
Workers' status is never guaranteed, is always dependent on their own performance and on factors that are outside of their control.
06:00 Posted in books and reading , finance and business , girardian anthropology , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
09 July 2008
Causes: Snobbery (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the fifth post on this topic; the first is here.
CHAPTER 4 - SNOBBERY
Snobs give highly conditional attention. They believe there is a flawless equation between social rank and human worth.
When with a snob, we sense how little of who we are, apart from our status, will be able to govern their behaviour towards us.
As babies (if we're lucky), we're loved and looked after for who we are, presumably [I would argue with this.]. As we mature, affection from others depends on achievement, on our being polite, successful, etc.
Snobs combine a weak capacity for independent judgment with a strong appetite for the views of influential people.
(I'm sure de Botton said much more than this, but this is all I wrote down!)
16:55 Posted in books and reading , community , girardian anthropology , neuroscience, psychology, the mind , other people said it , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Causes: Meritocracy (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the fourth post on this topic; the first is here.
CHAPTER 3 - MERITOCRACY
Explanations for why one might be poor and what one's value to society is have grown "notably more punitive and emotionally awkward in the modern era."
From AD 30 to the latter part of the 20th century, there have been three stories for the "lowest in Western societies" that were consoling:
(1) The poor are not responsible for their condition and are the most useful members of society. This is the medieval and pre-modern story. God and/or the natural order are responsible for societal position. In this story, there's a sense of mutual dependence among the classes, and the lowest classes are acknowledged for making life easier for the upper classes.
(2) Low status has no moral connotation. Per Scripture. Neither wealth nor poverty are an accurate index of moral worth. Jesus was poor and good. If anything, poverty was good because it led to the recognition of one's dependence on God.
(3) The rich are sinful and corrupt and owe their wealth to the robbery of the poor. 1754-1989. Rousseau, Marx (1887), Engels (1845)
These weren't the only stories, but they were widely credited.
Beginning around the middle of the 18th century, 3 more troubling stories (if you were poor) began to form:
(1) The rich are the useful ones. Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees (1723) is the written origin of this story, which says that the rich contribute more to society because their spending provides employment for everyone under them. The impact of the rich on others is the most beneficial even if their intentions and motivations are not beneficent. (To those of us in the 21st century, this 'fable' seems to have been always with us, but it's a relatively new take on things!) Hume repeats this idea in 1752, and Adam Smith seals the deal in 1759: "The whole of civilisation, and the welfare of all societies" depended on people's desire and ability to accumulate unneeded capital and show off their wealth. The greedier they are, the better for all.
(2) Status does have moral connotations. Seen in Thomas Paine (The Rights of Man), Napoleon, Carlyle -- all against hereditary aristocracy and for meritocracy, i.e., an aristocracy of talent. Inequality is OK so long as there is equality of opportunity (e.g., in education). This led to public schools, SAT tests (scientifically proven meritocratic standard - could rank people by their "real worth"), and the 1946 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which required compulsory education in the countries that signed on. Also led to equal opportunity in the workplace (1961, Kennedy) and competitive entrance exams (1870, Britain).
Now worldly position was obviously related to inner qualities: "Faith in an increasingly reliable connection between merit and worldly success in turn endowed money with a new moral quality." The rich were not only wealthier; they were plain better.
Christianity in the U.S. revised its thinking: now to possess riches in this world was evidence that one was deserving. The Rev. Thomas P. Hunt's The Book of Wealth: In Which it is Proved from the Bible that it is the Duty of Every Man to Become Rich (1836), was a bestseller. More on this connection between moral goodness and prosperity here at Talking Pentecostalism.
(3) The poor are sinful and corrupt and owe their poverty to their own stupidity. The poor were no longer seen as unfortunate. Now they were seen as undeserving failures. Poverty became a matter of shame.
Social Darwinism -- the weak are nature's mistakes and should be allowed to perish. Herbert Spencer in Social Statics: or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed (1851) argued that biology is opposed to charity. Andrew Carnegie, in his autobiography, said that "Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. The really valuable men of the race never do."
--- * --- * --- *
Current Events Tie-In: Extremely wealthy Americans evoke sense of awe in their wealthy psychiatrists: "Dr. [Byram] Karasu acknowledged that he was not immune from taking satisfaction in the success and fame of his patients. 'Wealthy people bring about a degree of awe, even in their therapists sometimes,' he said. 'This is the biggest problem I see in the doctors I supervise. And these are fully practicing doctors, doctors making $400, $500 an hour.'"
05:45 Posted in books and reading , community , consumption , education , finance and business , girardian anthropology , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
08 July 2008
Causes: Expectation (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). The book generally aligns with mimetic theory and Girardian ideas; I've added a G near comments that seem to do so particularly.
This is the third post on this topic; the first is here.
CHAPTER 2 - EXPECTATION
Material Progress
In 1800s England, services and goods that previously only the elite had access to were now available to the masses. "Luxuries became decencies, and decencies necessities." From the 1750s, one could identify specific fashion styles for each year, which had never been the case before. The change was mostly due to agricultural innovations from 1700-1820s, and in the 1800s to technological innovations like the can opener, sewing machine, typewriter, lighting, sanitation, etc.
Equality, Expectation and Envy
A decline in actual deprivation has led to an increase in the sense of deprivation and in the fear of deprivation: "Neither who we are nor what we have is quite enough."
How do we decide how much is enough? It's never determined independently but rather by comparison to a reference group, "a set of people who we believe resemble us." G
A feeling that we might, under other circumstances, be other than what we are can be brought on by "exposure to the superior achievements of those whom we take to be our equals" and can lead to anxiety and resentment. G
We envy only those whom we feel are like us, our reference group. G
Per David Hume, it's not the disproportion between ourselves and others that produces envy but the proximity (in A Treatise on Human Nature, 1739). The greater the disproportion, the less likely we will envy because the other is remote from us, diminishing the effects of the comparison. G
The more people we take to be our equals, the more there will be for us to envy. [This is where differentiation comes in.]
Historically, inequality and low expectations for achievement were the norm. In 18th and 19th centuries, there began a belief in the innate equality of all and the unlimited potential for anyone to achieve anything. Previously, it was believed by most as Aristotle said, "Some by nature are free and others by nature are slaves." The working class were seen as without reason, and without rights and aspirations.
All believed inequality was fair, or at least inescapable.
Christianity affirmed the belief in inequality in practice. "Humans might be equal before God, but this offered no reason to start seeking equality in practice!" A "good Christian society" was stratified, with absolute power at the top and each in their place underneath. God was seen as creating all beings in rank order, with some superior and some inferior.
By the mid-17th century, political thought began to be more egalitarian. Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651), Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1689, with its completely new idea that rulers were instruments of the people!), the American Revolution in 1776.
Society changed from a "hereditary, aristocratic hierarchy" to a "dynamic economy in which status was awarded in direct proportion to the (largely financial) achievements of each new generation."
Tocqueville, visiting in the USA in the 1850s, first pointed out a "particular problem that seemed to be endemic to the equal societies they created;" he observed that though Americans had much, this didn't prevent them from wanting more or from suffering envy. In a society where "everything is more or less level, the slightest variation is noticed .... G That is the reason for the strange melancholy often haunting inhabitants of democracies in the midst of abundance."
Previously, Tocqueville noted, "a serf considered his inferiority as an effect of the immutable order of nature. ... Democracy ... tore down every barrier to expectation."
Concerning expectation, William James said that "We are not always humiliated at failing things, ... only if we invest our pride and self-worth in ... an achievement and then are disappointed. ... Every rise in our level of expectation entails a rise in the danger of humiliation. What we understand to be normal is critical in determining our chances of happiness." [This may be the key sentence in the book for me.]
For instance, we could accept aging, fat, poverty, obscurity, but we generally don't.
Note the prevalence, since the 19th century and starting with Ben Franklin's Autobiography, of autobiographies of self-made heroes, advice for attainment and achievement, and "morality tales of wholesale personal transformation."
The mass media, beginning with magazines in the 1880s, gave people the opportunity for the first time to study the lives of people of higher status and to forge a connection with them. The magazines, and the advertising, created longings. Rousseau (1754) said that being truly wealthy isn't achieved by having lots of things, it's achieved by having the things one longs for. Wealth is not absolute but is relative to desire.
With expectation and a sense of unlimited possibility comes anxiety that we are far from being what we might be.
06:40 Posted in books and reading , community , consumption , girardian anthropology , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
07 July 2008
Handy Dandy Girard Synopsis
I find this a useful encapsulation of some of Rene Girard's primary ideas, as well as an interesting analysis and extrapolation of those ideas in the field of psychology.
He expresses well, I think, how desire works:
"The relationship of imitation (often mutual) between the desiring person and the mediator of their desire is deeply important. Objects of desire are largely interchangeable, but the bond between the individual and the mediator of his or her desire is far stronger than this. This relationship of imitation can be manifested in a deep attraction between the top mimetic partners, an attraction that can transform into antagonism with incredible ease. Both the attraction and the antagonism find a common source in the imitative relationship that exists between the two partners. In such a mimetic relationship the one who desires wants to be like the model of his or her desire in all things, to occupy their position." ...
"For instance, two friends desire the same woman and become each other’s rival. For Girard, the most important relationship in this classic love triangle is the relationship between the two friends. In such a relationship the woman may well be interchangeable with almost any other woman. What makes her significant is not what she is in herself, but what she is as surrounded by the aura of the other’s desire. She is desirable because she is desired by the other." ...
"Mimetic desire can explain why we often chose as models of desire people who are indifferent to us or despise us (unsmiling models create the aura of desirability that goes with top brand products). Their indifference is seen to be indicative of a self-sufficiency that we lack. We desire to be self-sufficient like them and so we desire the objects that they desire."
10:25 Posted in girardian anthropology , neuroscience, psychology, the mind , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
06 July 2008
Notes from Status Anxiety - The Basics
Just finished Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004), a book I have long wanted to read. Most of it was enlightening; the ending was disappointing. The book generally aligns with mimetic theory and Girardian ideas; I've added a G near comments that seem to do so particularly.
THE BASICS
Status is position in society, one's value or importance in the eyes of the world. In the west, it's increasingly tied to financial achievement.
Consequences of high status: resources, freedom, sense of being cared for, space, time, being thought valuable, comfort.
Status is conferred in flattery, laughter, invitations, deference, attention.
Status anxiety is the pernicious worry about the danger of failing to conform to ideals of success laid down by society. We're anxious because our self-concept is dependent on what others make of us. G
Chapter 1, Lovelessness, here.
Solutions: Politics, here.Solutions: Religion, to come.
Solutions: Bohemia, to come.
20:40 Posted in books and reading , consumption , finance and business , girardian anthropology , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Differentiation and Status
"1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night.'"
God continues to separate (land from seas, moon from sun, elements of time) and create various kinds of things (vegetation, animals), and in verse 25 looks it all over and declares it "good."
Someone recently cited the Genesis passage I've quoted above as part of an argument about language's creative capability as it differentiates among things. I couldn't assent to what was said and now I can't even recall the argument properly, because I couldn't feel the sense of it at the time -- I think it's related to George Lakoff's cognitive linguistics ideas. In any case, my misunderstanding of an argument that's fuzzy for me is my jumping off point :-)
I've been reading Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety, and his premise, in line, I think, with Rene Girard's, is that status derives from differentiation, and violence from status. Whether rivalry leads to status or derives from it, or both, is unclear to me as yet. (I'm using differentiation in the broad sense of "distinguishing a difference.")
God created dark and light and saw that it was good.
When I think about it, this seems rather alien to human experience most of the time; usually, when we create, discover, or theorise a polarity, like dark and light, one is "good" and the other is "bad," which is of course another polarity. (Are we all bipolar?) Or if we think it's bad to use words like "good" and "bad," we try to find other pairs to describe the poles, like effective and ineffective, creative and destructive, healing and damaging, desirable and undesirable -- all of which still carry the connotations of "good" and "bad," just slightly cloaked and more sharply described.
In this Genesis passage, God doesn't describe anything as bad or evil. Everything God creates and sees is good. It's not good in comparison to anything else. It's good. This totality reminds me of James Alison's writing (scroll down to Matthew passage) about how God partakes only of life, not of death. God is life, and not by comparison but fully. Humans, on the other hand, live in a death-focused world, where life is valuable mainly because there exists death. (Ask most of the artists.) Can we imagine what life would feel like without death to bound it? What life feels like when it's not not-death?
Status -- the way we humans often differentiate -- doesn't operate this way. (It's the opposite! :-)) My current reading about status helps me understand why I couldn't assent to my friend's assertion about differentiation as a good. For one thing, his comments came after a lengthy and mutedly rivalistic discussion among three of us about male and female traits and abilities, where, without it being spoken overtly, one gender was cited as being better than the other in various and important ways. In fact, it may be that most people of one gender have all the traits we attributed to it and the other has none; the brains of the two genders do seem to be qualitatively different on brain scans. It's the usually imperceptible and unconscious move from different to better that seems to govern and flourish among human relations. Even when we're not sure which thing we feel is better in a given comparison, there's a tendency ofttimes to want to come down on one side or another, at least slightly. (This doesn't prove our need for certainty but it's interesting commentary about it.)
We compensate by declaring that, e.g., there are good things and bad things about both the day and the night, both the oceans and the mountains, both men and women. Or, to take a few more examples, both the spider and the puppy, lima beans and an ear of corn, the car and public transportation, the activist and the oil company executive, the hero and the pedophile. All things, we say, have their strengths and weaknesses. Instead of being in the position of saying that one is better than the other, if that pronouncement makes us wary (and I think it makes almost all of us wary to some extent, for some comparisons, in some circumstances; that wariness seems a "good" sign to me, though substituting other words may be just an insidious surrogate for a fundamental change of heart and mind), we either register a preference for one or other other, which we maintain is just a preference, not a judgment of what's better, or we continue to break down each entity into its many features, assigning to those features unspoken values of "goodness" and "badness," and then we award status to the parts and the sum of the parts rather than to the whole by name.
Either way, through preference or through decomposition, we are engaged in favouritism. Almost all of us favour some things, and we dis-favour others. This is the essence of status: some (people, traits, settings, arts, ideals, etc.) are favoured while others are discredited. Differentiation is necessary for status (and for scapegoating, as Girard and others discuss at length), since if all things were (or more to the point, seemed) exactly the same, it would be impossible to label any one thing as better or worse, by definition; but status (and scapegoating) requires more than differentiation; it requires a system of preferential ordering, a hierarchy -- however nebulous and unfelt it is -- that derives, at some level, from our mimetic desires. [I can't help but think here of an exchange from the Will Farrell movie, Kicking and Screaming (2005), which I will transcribe below.]
When our desires originate from the desires of everyone around us, as Girard and others assert, then we are awarding status solidly from within a system of rivalry with each other: we notice the other is different, we feel a lack, we desire something of the other (something "good"), we become jealous and envious when we don't get it or when we get it but it doesn't satisfy us for long, we continue to feel a lack, we accuse the other, we label the other as "bad" even while we feel that the other holds some "good" that we desire. At the heart of this process is desire, and our belief that the different "other" has what we desire, and our inability to ever actually receive, completely and permanently, what we desire from the "other." In the beginning stages of the cycle, the other is favoured, held in high status; by the end, the other is held in low status, dis-favoured, and even then, the cycle inexorably begins again, as the other re-acquires status simply by thwarting us.
Similarly, we favour and disfavour aspects of creation and the rest of the world -- personally, I'm an ocean person, a dog person, a sun-worshipper; I don't do coffee, I don't think fungus is a food, and I wouldn't go scuba-diving if you paid me (probably) -- because of how they relate to us, how they inform, shape, and express our identity ot ourselves and others. It's the same thing.
If I tell you that the day is good and the night bad, or vice versa, I'm telling you (and me) about me, especially if I tell you why I think so. In fact, if I tell you that the day is good and that the night is also good, I'm still telling you (and me) about me. For me, and for lots of other humans, making a determination of favour is embedded in my assumptions about my status, my aspirations for my status, my judgments about what has status and what doesn't. What I award status to may not be what you award status to, although within a culture, and within subcultures, there are pretty strong status rules; but status also depends on where I fit, or think I fit, into that society or microcosm, and it depends on the measurements I use for status (also learned from within cultures, in various patterns): is "having status" synonymous with being cool? hip? good? morally right? authoritative? loving or lovable? ironic? post-modern? complex? deep? heroic? self-sacrificing? And then we could explore all those terms further -- what makes something heroic, or deep, or right? Status, obviously, is part and parcel of our identity in human culture.
Later, after some "good" outdoor time (I was inculcated early in life to believe that outdoors is inherently better than indoors -- thanks, Dad! ;-)), I'm going to post my notes from Status Anxiety.
---- exchange from Kicking and Screaming
Ann Hogan (lesbian mom): We're at all the games, unlike a lot of the other parents.
Phil Weston: No no, not like the other parents at all! You're better than the other parents.
Dad of another kid on the team: Oh, so they're better?
Phil Weston: No, they're different.
Donna Jones (other lesbian mom): What do you mean "different"?
Phil Weston: I mean, you're different because you're better.
Other Kid's Dad: How are they better?
Phil Weston: You're both better different... in a different but better way!
Ann Hogan: Uh, okay.
[she walks off with Donna]
Other Kid's Dad: It's a little early to start playing favorites, Phil.
13:35 Posted in books and reading , community , girardian anthropology , language , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
25 June 2008
Celebrity
I'm moving towards writing about status, from a Girardian perspective, some time soon. Meanwhile, this post of Canadian pastor/not-pastor Scott Williams, is on the same topic; specifically, it's about mega-churches and the underplayed celebrity of some evanglical Christian leaders labelled as 'ordinary radicals.' It's about jealousy, envy, hero-worship, desire, man's search for meaning and purpose, and most of all, status anxiety.
Here are the phrases and sentences that stand out for me:
** "I think I was also experiencing a low-burn jealousy that was to last for many years."
This is the kind of jealousy we don't admit to others except in jest, clouded in ambiguity and mixed signals, and we may not even be conscious of feeling it. It's the kind where we say, "It's great that he's doing so well" and then give reasons why we don't want that exact situation or position, explain why what we have is good enough, explore what it is -- about us, about those around us, our circumstances, the system, nature and God -- that keeps us from being and getting what we envy.
** "The emerging church movement wants to let you know that it is made up of little people, regular fallible leaders and friends. We want to be known as ordinary radicals -- regular people who do extraordinary things.
"Some time ago I happened upon the Ordinary Radicals website, a website featuring some of the most highly regarded thinkers in the North American church." Scott lists about 15 names of so-called ordinary radicals (I've heard of 3 of them), then says,
"When I read a list like that ... I am frustrated by the absolute 'un-ordinary-ness' of the people it is about. Several of the people on the list are international superstars in the religious world, have been on The Colbert Report and any number of high profile talk shows and television appearances. ... Though I genuinely laud the intentions for such projects it is simply symptomatic of the problem in North American faith and culture. We cannot seem to get beyond the love affair we have with celebrity culture. Even in a climate of anti-heroes we are easily infatuated with the cult of personality."
My thought is that this is the same motivation we have for watching reality TV shows -- they too are 'ordinary people' we can easily identify with, and yet they're doing something extraordinary (they're on national TV, for one), so we can also model ourselves after them, look to them as ideals and the embodiment of our manifold desires (i.e., one desire: to be valued for who we are).
11:15 Posted in girardian anthropology , other people said it , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
23 June 2008
How To Get What We Lack
Love this meditation, "Starbucks Log: To the pretty but stern lady in line," by Stephen Berg at Grow Mercy today. I've re-formatted it to poem form and added some commas for ease of reading and to open it to the slower, shuddering, reverberating voice of poetry.
The existential lack you wake up with is real enough.
The thing you fill it with is not.
The thing, whether object or being, has no substance.
You look and see and desire and look to another to know
what it is you should desire
and it is all helium.
Up it goes, no hanging on or retrieval.
But you tell yourself the romantic lie that, in fact, you did hang on,
and that it is now what is filling you and giving you your bit of buoyancy.
And without knowing what you're doing,
you add to the lie
by convincing yourself that if only you could acquire
a bit more of whatever that was,
you would finally satisfy that deficiency
and come into yourself discovering your trueness.
And without knowing you're doing it,
you cast about to see who it is that is leading the fulfilled life,
and you seize upon your neighbour three doors down.
Your neighbour two doors down you know well enough to conclude he has his own problems.
In fact, one time you caught him giving you the envy-eye,
so you know his environ is a dead end.
But she, of the next-door-to-the-two-doors-down, looks altogether put together.
She had seemed average enough but you caught something else,
something more the day you passed her on the sidewalk outside your office.
What was it, you wonder?
You catch yourself looking for an answer
but not really looking
and not conscious that you're looking,
yet one morning at 3:30 AM you wake up and wonder what kind of salad she eats.
What's her breakfast?
She might as well have her own line of clothes, fragrance, hair products,
so well is she pieced and plaited!
Where did she find her poise, you wonder?
What's her regime? Her program? Her magazines?
Yes, obviously, she lacks the lack you wake up with.
Can't be. Can it? It is!
Has her own line of clothes? Silly! Go back to sleep!
You press all this down far under the threshold of awareness from where it came
and you get on with your day.
Except without knowing it
you allow the play of the romantic lie
and you make little raids on the inarticulate something that tells you of her preeminence.
And now you move beyond her surface
to the substance of things
and consider her friends, her intimacies --
yes, of course hers are the right friends and intimacies and soulish powers
and here lies her secret.
But just how did she acquire them?
No, that's the wrong question…she has them…how do you get them?
Now we're getting someplace.
And then the conclusion comes naturally enough,
almost divine in its revelatory shimmer
with you self-possessed
and in control of your innocent desires,
not trying to evince a solution in any way,
and now you know that in order to be yourself
it's her being you must possess.
And so in every way you must kill her off.
Your existential completeness is just that close.
Three doors down.
This is your awakening that you remain unaware of.
11:11 Posted in girardian anthropology , other people said it , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
20 June 2008
Collective Violence - Examples - Part V
It's been another month since I last blogged about mob violence, which continues pretty well unabated. Below are some of the latest incidents reported, and some commentary on the phenomenon by others. (And here's why I'm doing it.)
I won't be making the Girardian connections for each of these as I have previously because the connections are the same as always -- scapegoat is often someone from the margins (disabled, poor, stranger, female, old, young, from another caste or class or country, seen as privileged, etc. ), mob often forms spontaneously or grows larger as the scapegoating occurs due to accusatory mimesis, perpetrators easily justify the scapegoating as necessary and right, scapegoating's intention is to bring about peace in the community.
INCIDENTS
** 15 May 2008, Baltimore MD: "Child Was a 'Demon'"
"One Mind Ministries of Baltimore, MD, allegedly starved an 18-month old child because he was viewed as a ‘demon' ... after the baby wouldn’t say 'amen' at mealtime." The baby's "body was found last month in a suitcase in Philadelphia two years after his death." Immediately after his death, "the baby was placed on a mattress, on which cult members said God would resurrect him from the dead." Examiner article here.
** 31 May 2008 Para, Brasil, in the Amazon: "Brazilian Tribes Say Dam Threatens Way of Life" reported at NPR
Indigenous people protesting a proposed hydroelectric dam on the "remote, pristine Xingu River," near the mouth of the Amazon River, attack Paulo Fernando Rezende, a representative from the state's electric power enterprise, with machetes as he speaks to them about the dam:
"Roquivan Alves Silva takes the microphone and declares: 'If necessary, I will make war to protect the Xingu and the people of the entire region.' Moments later, the Indians rise in unison. A mix of warriors and women moves menacingly across the room toward Rezende. Then suddenly they're on him. Machetes and sticks flailing, they push Rezende to the floor, poking him with their weapons. The warriors rip his shirt to shreds and carve a deep gash in his right arm. Blood pooling on the floor, Dom Erwin, the Catholic Bishop of Xingu, st