Belonging Again (Part 45)
Is a "created X/x" possible, which is to say an x which "practically functions" as an X?
Belief in X versus x dramatically impacts how a person lives, but perhaps our belief in X is a result of evolution, and perhaps ethics is an emergent phenomenon; perhaps our belief in God today is thanks to forces that God didn’t create. Perhaps religion and morality emergently arose alongside one another precisely to reinforce one another, seeing as ethics backed by X versus x is more robust for the majority, has more authority over people, and is more likely to unify and hold people together. If this is the case — if X is ultimately an x that seems like an X to us due to social evolution — then our awareness of how evolution gave rise to ethics and religion might be precisely what has ruined the ability of ethics and religion to have power and authority over us. Awareness about the nature of X may have taken away from us the possibility of ascribing to an X, and if we require X for CCE, freedom, and the like, then with awareness of the origins of civilizations may come the inability of civilizations to stay together (this act of “self-awareness” could be as profound on the development of the subject as the gaining of “measurement” according to Hegel in Science of Logic). And once we know the truth, it might be too late to un-know it — once we know X has actually and always been an x, X might be forever lost — like one of those pictures hidden in a picture ‘that the finder cannot unsee once it has been seen.’¹ ² But we couldn’t have known this until we become so aware — is consciousness a joke?
If Atheists are correct and there is no God, if every X is actually ultimately just an x, then there is actually no real difference between “created CCE/x” and “discovered CCE/X”: the difference is ultimately illusionary and merely a matter of awareness of what was “always already,” and it would follow that, if CCE benefited us, humans may benefit from illusions.³ Believing wrongly that X isn’t x could result in practical benefits (lost when we know the truth), and it seems possibly the case that without the illusion, it isn’t probable that CCE will be sustained or avoid devolving into “values” for the majority.⁴ ⁵ However, there might be reason to hope: if X/x was ultimately created by us, there’s reason to believe it’s possible for us to create another X that we genuinely believe is an X versus an x — though those who do the creating might have to “practically forget” what they have done for it to work on them and never tell anyone else the truth. The very fact that character has existed in the past when X has always actually been x is evidence that character is possible even without (an actual) X: the question though is whether or not character is possible when we are aware that X is actually an x. Furthermore, the notion of X may have “emerged” evolutionarily, which is to say no one ever really consciously “created X” — such an act seems new.
Character might be possible without X if institutions today had authority — if people believed in the authority of the American government, for example, and believed in its projects even if they required self-denial from the American people — but as Habermas has written on, institutions are suffering a “legitimation crisis,” evident by the rise in populism embodied by Trump and others. And the very fact a “legitimization crisis” has occurred is perhaps evidence that x cannot ultimately sustain CCE: an X is needed, even if one that is actually an x without us realizing it. Without authorities over us, rather God or institutions, there are only self-imposed restrictions and acts of self-denial, which are hence expressions of the will and so proof of “the triumph of the therapeutic,” threatening the power of and meaningfulness of CCE. (Are we stuck?)
Paradoxically, without CCE ascribing to and supporting an X or authority, it is very difficult for a person to believe that a CCE isn’t arbitrary and ultimately self-imposed: when CCE is lost, it is remarkably difficult and perhaps impossible to restore (like restoring a “given”), taking with it its source of plausibility and “sense of permanency,” now needing to be recreated by individuals who themselves are in need of being part of something that feels greater than what people can create. CCE makes CCE feel transcendent and “over” individuals (like X), but as it collapses or is being built for the first time, CCE feels more like x than X (and what has been argued is that it seems to be the case that every CCE ultimately declines without an X to “be like”). CCE seems to work best when people just find themselves “in the middle of it” (“thrown,” as Heidegger would put it), “as if” the CCE had always been there and always would be, noncontingently. Its power is weaker both when it ascends and declines, for in both states the contingency and temporarily of the CCE is more difficult to overlook.
The more “like X” the CCE feels, the more it provides a sense of robustness and legitimacy to the individual choices of those within it, and when those individuals deny themselves, the act feels (more) definable from self-expression and self-will. When one is baptized (for example), the CCE provides robustness and legitimacy to the choice that makes those being baptized feel more confident that what they’re doing isn’t merely a personal preference but conforming and self-denial (in)to a “Transcendent Order.” Participants (more so) feel they are “laying down their lives” for something bigger than themselves, a CCE which may “incarnate” an X into the world and “point to” that X,” its life source. Could all this be mass brainwashing? Of course — if there is X in a society, there will be this tragic possibility (and so we must weigh the costs and benefits, the act of which is evidence X is no longer “given”) — and the very fact we could wonder this is evidence itself that the power of CCEs to plausibly define in our mind “self-expression” from “self-denial” has greatly diminished. Today, if that definability isn’t entirely gone, CCE and X are so marred by a sense of the therapeutic, by the possibility that it is all ultimately self-imposed and arbitrary, that neither is likely to compel people like they did when more so “given.” Perhaps this is why with the rise of Pluralism, Christianity becomes more like Christendom, as Kierkegaard feared.
A role of CCE and culture is to help individuals feel as if their self-imposed ideas about the nature of reality (and the communities that formulate around those ideas) aren’t illusions or deceptive (even if they are), palatable, and worth lifelong dedication. Theoretically, if a CCE without X could achieve this state, CCE would be possible and sustainable, though admittedly this seems as difficult to me as restoring “givens.” What is sought seems to be a kind of “self-forgetfulness” as opposed to “selfishness” or “selflessness” (or “CCE-self-forgetfulness”), and as Timothy Keller argued, “self-forgetfulness” is an important dimension of character. Though the ides could apply to anyone, while discussing Christian character, Keller wrote in The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness:
I think this notion applies just as well to community, character, and ethics: they work best when we don’t think about them working but use them all the same. But as has already been discussed, once a given CCE feels “contested” and/or the possibility is realized that the CCE’s X could ultimately be an x, it might be impossible to forget what is known (like a hidden picture we cannot ‘unsee once it has been seen’).⁷ Under these pressures, “self-forgetfulness” seems much more difficult to achieve, and furthermore without a community to support the act or an X for the self to be “lost in,” acts of self-forgetfulness will easily be indistinguishable from acts of self-expression, and difficult for the one engaging in self-forgetfulness to not know that what he or she is doing is an act of individual will (versus say an act of humility before and “toward” God or a community). If there is no X or authoritative community to forget ourselves in, then we can only forget ourselves in ourselves, which is an act of self-acknowledgment. In this context, “self-forgetfulness” seems impossible to meaningfully define from methods of building “self-esteem,” from another practice of “self-help” that will help individuals be who they want to be and do what they want to do.
Personally, I am very attracted to the idea of “self-forgetfulness,” but it also seems as if “self-forgetfulness” is no guarantee of addressing our overarching concerns, for I can be “self-forgetful” in a “Mass of Nazism,” and arguably “self-forgetfulness” is precisely a step toward the “thoughtlessness” which makes possible “the banality of evil.” Furthermore, if I am “self-forgetful” in the actions “toward” an x, isn’t this just “brainwashing?” “Self-forgetfulness” might also not be possible without an X (just temporarily moments of “flow,” for there is no “God” to be daily lost in and “toward”), but what if it was possible for us to “create an X” that we “practically believed” was a “discovered X,” thus making “self-forgetfulness” possible again while at the same time avoiding atomization? Such a creation would require a Nietzschean Child, but in that situation only the Child would gain a “created/discovered X,” not the majority. Well, could the Child use influence or “charisma” to bind together the majority “toward” the “created/discovered X?” If a Nietzschean Child were to create an X and then “charismatically” motivate the majority to live according to that X, would we address the concerns of Belonging Again? Perhaps.
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Notes
¹Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. New York: First Vintage International Edition, 1989: 310.
²For Hegel, the “Absolute Knower” is precisely somehow who is aware of “radical contingency” and yet still gives that contingency authority — a Nietzschean Child.
³This point suggests the need to incorporate Lacan into our thinking, but then there also seems to be a difference between a civilization which is “aware of Lacan” and one which is “unaware of Lacan.”
⁴This might also point to a modern problem with identity (self-esteem and honor too): without X, we cannot sustain an identity; identities founded on x are doomed to collapse. “Created identity” is one we may struggle to define in our minds from “fabricated identity”: it would seem we need a “discovered identity,” grounded in X.
⁵It is possible an illusion is needed to avoid the collapses of community discussed in Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam.
⁶Keller, Timothy. The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. 10Publishing, 2016: 33.
⁷Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. New York: First Vintage International Edition, 1989: 310.
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