Belonging Again: An Address

A Book Release, Part II.1

Apr 19, 2024

If we’re not going to seclude ourselves or engage in some exodus, we must find a way to achieve “rest” and “belonging” around others who are very different from us, and this is not “natural,” suggesting we will have to become “super-natural” or something — somehow. Belonging Again (Part I) explored possibilities like science, psychoanalysis, college, activism, religion, etc., and though I by no means want to claim that I exhausted all possibilities and angles, I hope to have at least shown that there are no easy roads left. Without a Transcendent, “God,” or X, it would seem our best hope for “belonging again” is isolationist, hence why we cannot readily claim some nations are “irrational” to have atomized so much. Furthermore, there is wisdom in a Buddhist meditation and practice through which we transcend the question of “belonging” entirely, as there is wisdom in a “benedict option” that seeks limited interaction with society (though what constitutes “too limited” or “overly-limited” might be difficult to determine). However, Part I suggested this could be to give up on Pluralistic, Modern Society, which ultimately might be what we must do, though this book explores ways we might continue pluralistically and forgo atomization. Basically, the question is if it might be possible for the majority to become “Nietzschean Children” and/or “Absolute Knowers” of Hegel through the creation of a socioeconomic system or “field” that increases the probability Children emerge. If Part II fails, we might concede to something more isolationist, and even if we succeed, our address might only last so long as we can prove Christlike, able to lay down our lives, and forgive.

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As we’ve learned from Rieff, Hunter, and Berger, society needs both (therapeutic) “releases” and “restraints” (“yes” and “no”), and generally speaking, Conservatives have defended “restraints” more than “releases” while Liberals have defended “releases” more than “restraints.” Since both are needed, society emerges in a dialectic between the two, which if we’re “intellectually consistent” and “epistemologically responsible,” we easily won’t like or want. For society to exist in the space between “yes” and “no” is for society to be paradoxical, contradictory, and/or unstable, and this indeed is where society must exist. Naturally, we will want to stabilize society and so will probably and rationally conclude if we’re Conservative that there needs to be more “restraint,” while if we’re Liberal we’ll conclude there needs to be more “release.” Driven by rationality and a desire for existential stability, those on the Right and the Left will exist in a tension, out of which society will form. This has always been the case, long before our Secular Age, but thanks to Pluralism, tension has grown. Society has always been unstable, but the instability and Gödel-esq “incompleteness” was more “hidden” by community, character, ethics, and “givens,” keeping that instability from overwhelming us. But times have changed…

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To allude to Wittgenstein, “Belonging Again” is about creation and dwelling between us as persons and us as communities, an operation as delicate as threading together a spiderweb with our bare hands. Tension is necessary for life, but tension also threatens it. Our aim is to consider a sense of freedom and beauty among Global Pluralism without retreating or proving naïve. Today, anything is possible, and that means we’re not protected. Where we can do anything, we are responsible for what we don’t do, and we can’t do everything. Can we live with this weight? Even if we can, what about the larger society? To frame this question, we will ask, “How does anyone leave Plato’s Cave on their own?” As Cadell Last discusses, the address involves our fundamental Lack: our challenge is to be River-Holes and Children…