The Real Choice and Absurd Courage of Standing, Defining, Naming, Violence, and Sight
Inspired by The Net (32)
“The Net (32)” started off exploring why risk is paramount for finding meaning, which then lead into a consideration on the difference between “language that communicate” and “language that expresses” (as brought up by Andrew Luber, inspired by Owen Barfield). This led into a consideration of how language that is too rigid favors totalitarianism and certainty, while language that is too poetic can express but not “bind,” leading to anarchy. We then noted how professional poetry, say in “The Snowman” by Wallace Stevens, somehow finds a radical balance between “communication” and “expression,” which is to say it is clear and straightforward while at the same time discussing all levels and dimensions of human life. Communicative language “gets to the point” at the risk of reductionism while expressive language tries to “get to the whole” at risk of whiffing and missing. Great poetry doesn’t make either of these mistakes, and our challenge today under Metamodernism (if you’ll grant me that language here to define our historic period) is learning how all of us may communicate on the social level like a masterful poet. This is no easy task.
This point lead us into a discussion how Metamodernity is about navigating a road and not falling into a ditch on either side of it, and I noted how the language of “navigation” seems more accurate than “oscillation” (not that “oscillation” doesn’t have a place, and not to say that Metamodernists who use that term don’t mean something like “navigation”). I then noted how we have to “navigate between” values like freedom and justice, because if we have all of one without the other, we end up in crisis and pathology (as I’ve discussed before with Ethan Nelson). This lead to a consideration, thanks to Jacob, on if it was possible to have “too much love” or “too much faith,” and I noted that we could “mis-order love,” meaning we could love our spouse like we love a stranger or a friend, and that would be a problem. We should always be “open” to loving people, but we also have to identify that there are different kinds of love which have to be applied differently to different situations. C.S. Lewis discusses “four types of love,” and it is basically a sin (which will cause us to lose all the loves) if we love strangers and friends like we love our spouse. As we expand love to all, we have to maintain distinctions, but if we maintain those distinctions then how we love our friends will improve how we love our spouse, as how we love our spouse will improve how we love our friends, and in this way our love will spread to all our relations, but thanks to distinctions. In this, to expand love requires limiting, and yet that limitation precisely generates distinctions which make it possible for all our loves to share an “essence”—which brings to mind “The Trinity,” where we have different persons and yet the same essence (a “harmony” instead of a blurring).
Chetan then noted how this point on “limitation making possible unity” could be overlaid with the distinction between quality and quantity, and basically if we try to quantify and calculate a quality, we can lose it—the very failure of the quantification of quality proves the quality (which suggests the necessity of failure, following Hegel). This point in mind, Chetan then noted the danger of trying to calculate love, meaning the danger of trying to explicitly define how our love with our wife is different from our love with our friends, because that is basically impossible. The distinction might be there, but it is mysterious, and to this we noted how the difference must be experienced and emergent—it cannot arise in thought and calculation. We experience a difference, or at least we think there is a difference, and thus there is (which suggests the topic of naming, as later arose). But if we are asked to state and explain that difference, it is gone. It is apophatic. It is there until we try to describe it. So was it?
On this point, I suggested that the difference between our loves is one we decide and choose to believe is there, even if we cannot prove it. In this way, it is “a real choice” which is somewhat absurd, and yet the very act of choosing to believe there is a distinction is an act that changes us. It is also a risk, because there might not be a difference (and we don’t experience one, do note), and yet we choose to believe there is a difference anyway. We thus commit ourselves to something which is apophatic and “lacking” (“a present absence”), and in this act we take a profound risk. And it is thanks to this “absurd and committed risk” that meaning might be possible.
It is not clear or vivid in quality or quantity how our loves differ, and yet we can still commit ourselves to that difference and live as if it is there (which can change how we “see”). Similarly, to allude to The True Isn’t the Rational by O.G. Rose, the choice to know “truth” and “rationality” are distinct categories is also not given by our experience, seeing as rationality “consumes” truth so quickly and instantly: we just have to “know” there is a difference, belief in which change how we live our lives and how reality “unfolds.” To delude us? Perhaps—there is always risk if the change means anything to us at all.
Chetan then brought up language and violence, which is to say that we can in this risk choose to name our love with our spouse “as different,” which in that act “violently divides it” from all other relationships. Division, distinction, and definition thus entail an act of violence in that the naming separates the relationship from all the other love relationships, which requires the risk of making a mistake, yet without this risk it is not possible to generate the distinction necessary for a Trinitarian “harmony,” which is “a unity of difference.” If it is the case that the only kind of harmony possible is Trinitarian, then that would mean a lack of distinction would be the loss of the possibility of harmony. Arguably, this would be a loss for the possibility of meaning.
From this, we discussed how naming a child in religions is often a big deal, as was violence and sacrificing animals, which lead us to considering if there were connections between naming and violence. We noted “arbitrary naming,” such as naming a child John and not thinking about, “demonic naming,” such as naming a child Hitler, and then “sacred naming,” such as naming a child River because the river is the source of life for the village. There is something profoundly arbitrary about naming a child, and yet once a child is named, it really can causally change the child’s life-course (it is arbitrary in its origin and yet ultimately not arbitrary, a “flip moment” perhaps). If we name a child John, this might not influence the child’s development much, but a child named Hitler will likely be rejected, mocked, and literally have his life course impacted in profound ways. A child named “River” might be seen as a future leader of the village, and thus treated in a manner that encourages the child to act and prepare himself for a position of authority. In this way, the kind of naming we engage in can impact a child’s development, and in this way function as a kind of violence in that the naming can “force” the child down a certain path. Perhaps this is an injustice, perhaps it is not, but if a child isn’t named the child cannot easily function in a society. A name is required, and yet a name entails violence.
As choosing “arbitrarily” to see a difference in “love” changes how we unfold in life, so we see the same logic (concretely) in “naming,” which suggests that both entail a violence. As there is arbitrary, demonic, and sacred naming, there also seems to be arbitrary, demonic, and sacred killing. There is hunting for fun, there is murdering innocent people, and there is the ritualistic killing of an animal to God. It is perhaps not by chance that religions took naming and violence so seriously, and it would seem that in these acts there is a strange mixture of something that is arbitrary yet also very consequential. If we think of decision and risk-taking as a kind of naming and violence, then we can also think of decisions in terms of arbitrariness, demonic, and sacred. Are we living a life that is boring? Are we living a life that is making the world a worse place? Are we living in a life that creates meaning and hope? How we answer these questions seems to have something to do with “how we define ourselves,” which seems to have something to do with how we (risk-fully) name and “commit violence” against ourselves.
The topic of violence was further discussed, and I noted how we have to avoid joining a Mob (Postmodern) or a Mass (Modernism) in society, which is to say we shouldn’t mix into a giant social Mass where “we just do what everyone else is doing,” as we shouldn’t join a Mob where we try to find meaning and purpose in tearing everything down. To be part of a Mass (either in never leaving “common life” or in “joining a Neoliberal trajectory”) is to fail to take a risk and “violently define ourselves” out from the Mass, but joining a Mob is also not risky, because we are just negatively opposing something imperfect with others, which doesn’t require us to “put our neck out there,” only to tear down something that has already been created. To not end up in a Mob or a Mass, we must take a risk, and we will not find our meaning if we are part of a Mob or a Mass. We must violently define ourselves from and out of either.
This consideration led to the question of nonviolence and Martin Luther King, and this lead to the connection of “violence, naming, and seeing.” To name a cat a “cat” changes how we see it, and likewise when an African American doesn’t resist the police officer attacking him in Alabama, the officer is forced to see himself as someone who would attack someone who doesn’t fight back, as America as a whole must look at the TV and see itself as being a place where people can be attacked by dogs who do not fight back. If the African Americans fought back, it would have been easier for America to rationalize what it was doing, but since the MLK movement was nonviolent, this forced upon America an “existential reflection” which dramatically changed how people saw themselves. Likewise, if we violently divide and define ourselves from the Mass, we have to be seen as someone “not doing what others are doing,” as we must see ourselves as “someone not doing what others are doing.” So it goes if we decide our love for our spouse is different: this will change how we see it, which will change our reality and how we act in it, which will change how people see us. Violence and sight are profoundly influenced, and we cannot find meaning if we don’t change how we see. Meaning requires a sacred violence.
Jacob Kishere rose the point that when a man gets in a fight with another man over a woman, he shows that he loves the women, and thus sight is influenced. To this point, a distinction between “expressed, linear violence” and “internal, dynamic violence” was considered, the later of which I believe can be associated with Nietzsche’s Will. Religions understood traditionally that violence was a problem, and it worked to contain violence to rituals and practices so that it didn’t spill over and destroy society (like containing the sublime in Burke to art). Here, we can say that if violence is not “kept inside” but is instead expressed over a person, then violence loses its dynamic character and cannot change us in the profound way that it can when we keep it inside and dynamic. When I punch someone, the only way violence can influence sight is relative to this instance (a point which brings to mind Alex Ebert’s language of “compression vs decompression”), which is to say I can now be seen as someone violent, which then can trigger a series of events where I become profoundly concerned about how others see me in a way that is pathological and dysfunctional. If though I keep my violence inside and dynamic, then I might use that violence toward forcing myself to take risks which define me from either the Mass or the Mob (that’s up to me).
A poem addresses many dimensions of life all at once, but that requires it to be “indirect” and not fully explicit; likewise, for violence to address many dimensions of our live all at once, it must be kept “indirect” and not fully explicit, which is to say we must keep violence “inside” as Will. There are countless ways this internalized violence might motivate me, and thus it is far more powerful and dynamic than the expressed violence which is linear and straightforward. MLK could “force” people to change how they saw themselves through nonviolence, which in turn helped African Americans see themselves as brave and as “standing for justice,” and this kind of power is far greater than a single punch which doesn’t force people to “existentially reflect.” Likewise, when we don’t express our violence over others, which is to say when we are “nonviolent,” then we submit ourselves to a power that can empower us. We can direct our violence toward defining us through risk and courage from the Mob and the Mass, and this is what is required for meaning. “Meaning-making practices” which help center us to take these risks are important, but these practices alone will not generate meaning if they don’t lead to courage. Life is risk.
On the topic of qualification and quantification, Chetan asked a great question: “How do we affirm difference if it is always beyond identification”? By choosing to believe in it. By doing something absurd. By deciding to name our love for our wife as “different” from our love for our friend, thus “violently” separating our loves apart and as distinct, even though there is nothing we can readily experience qualitatively or think quantitively to justify this move. It is a raw, “absurd,” real, and “Absolute” choice, like naming a child (which tends to be what the child will keep all his or her life, thus making it a “real choice”). From such an arbitrary choice that ultimately proves not to be possible, meaning becomes possible. Meaning requires violence. Given our A/B and paradoxical ontology, “meaning-making practices” must ultimate strengthen us to choose and act on something “absurd” that is qualitatively and quantitatively “apophatic,” which is to say we must risk actually doing “nothing.” The thought of changing how people “see” us and how we “see” ourselves for ultimately nothing—that is a hard possibility to face. But we must. Courage is required for life to entail living.
Jacob Kishere put it well when he suggested that life is best when we are living for something we cannot fully articulate and yet believe it is there—this I believe is the state in which we find meaning. But how does it make sense that we find meaning in something that we cannot identify? Well, that’s how meaning works for us paradoxical beings (A/B): it’s strange in the same way that we think to know something, but as soon as we know it we cease to take interest in it (a point stressed by Maurice Blondel). Likewise, when we can identify what gives us meaning, it’s as if meaning ceases to be meaningful. What matters is the act of courage to head toward something we cannot fully name, which is to say we name ourselves as a being who seeks what will not be named. We easily define ourselves as absurd to others. We take a risk. We change how people see us. If the eye is healthy, the whole body is filled with light.
In my view, “meaning-making practices” must be in service of bringing us to a place where we are willing to do something we don’t fully understand and cannot fully name (which could be associated with “committing to a lack” and “Absolute Knowing”), an act which will change how we see the world and change how we are seen. It’s strange to do something when we don’t know what we’re doing, but meaning seems to require it, as does “deep thinking,” for we must be willing to think that which we don’t know we think. We seem to require acts that, in the middle of, we cannot be entirely sure what we’re doing, for that very uncertainty itself is a prerequisite for meaning and “fuller life.” For Maurice Blondel, uncertainty is needed for interest, and yet everything in us seems “toward” gaining certainty. We are thus “toward” losing motivation (“effacement drive,” per se), and those stuck in an A/A-ontology seem stuck on a “course” in which this ends up their fate. To avoid boredom and nihilism like what we are “toward” (and that Heidegger seemingly saw “in” our very history), we require a way to look beyond our natural “course,” and that is for us to consider A/B and “Absolutely Choose” “otherness.”
Meaning and “quality” seem found in locating something in the world that cannot be located in the world, and that requires an Absolute and “absurd” choice, a decision to believe there is something “apophatic” to life even though we cannot readily or directly experience it. It is a choice to believe there is a difference between types of love and types of experience, even though we cannot readily say what constitutes this difference—and perhaps there is none. In this way, this “apophatic,” Absolute, and “real” choice/commitment entails real risk and could lead to real failure. Jacob Kishere noted that faith is given quality thanks to its failure, “lack,” and the like, all of which suggests that faith requires risk and uncertainty. More generally, it would seem as if there is a critical connection between “failure,” “risk,” and “quality,” where an absence of risk seems to necessitate a failure of quality. Sure, we can still quantify, but quality seems to require a risk of which might lead to a loss of the thing that’s quality we are trying to improve. But risk creates excitement, value, and possibility, so it would make sense that “quality” and “risk” are connected.
There is blessing in failure: if we never fail, we lack “reason to think” we are fully committed to what we are doing. If we fail though and “get back up,” there is then “reason to have confidence” in ourselves. A lack of failure leads to “a lack of a reason to have confidence,” and yet we seem trained by the society to conclude that a lack of failure is “reason to have confidence”—the exact opposite is closer to the case. A lack of failure creates fragility; failure is an opportunity for strength. And it seems hard to imagine that we could make “the absurd, Absolute, and apophatic choice” needed for meaning unless we have gained much strength and confidence through much failure. Thus, if we are to find meaning, we need “meaning-making practices” of failure, and such practices should lead to opportunities to fail. Success can be a loss.
Here again we might glimpse the connection between “violence” and “meaning,” for we seem to require failure, which entails “violence against our self-image.” Where we suffer no violence in our self-image, our self-image can “be certain,” per se, because we will have never suffered its vulnerability. Considering Blondel again, a “self-image” that never fails and that we never suffer uncertainty about is “a sense of self” we will easily lose interest in, and if “the self” is a potential infinite source of motivation, mystery, exploration, reinvention, etc., then this is a profound loss, one of which might make “gaining meaning” impossible. Failure creates “reason to think about,” and in this way having our self “break” and suffer “violence” can create reason for us to be interested in it. And once we experience this interest, we can overcome boredom and the nihilism which seems to cause our world today so much suffering.
Violence changes how we see, and for our self to suffer violence is to change how we see it. Yes, this could make us anxious and paranoid (for we realize that our self can suffer), but this “risk of anxiety” seems necessary for us to overcome nihilism and boredom. We must realize self-expectations can be wrong, that self-images can break—that we are not “given,” and though the loss of “givens” can ruin us, their presence can also make us “thoughtless.” Nihilism can grow then and “The Meaning Crisis” worsen, but this would suggest we must suffer the acute pain of having our “sense of self” prove vulnerable, of having people we know see us differently (as noted by Jacob), and experiencing the world as much more tentative and “fragile” than it originally seemed. But gaining meaning is not possible without new eyes.
In closing, “naming a child” or choosing to name our love for our spouse as distinct is a violence which changes how we “see” and how the child “sees”; likewise, risk changes sight for ourselves and others. The moment we take a risk though and define/name our lives, we will violently rip it out from the network of relations which constitutes the society and Mass, and this will make us “visible” (like Heidegger’s broken doorknob). Our family will see us differently. People will see us differently. And the pain this causes will be acute. We will be suffer. We will be committing violence on ourselves. And we must. We must commit violence on ourselves through nonviolence to bring about the existential reflection necessary for meaning. Pain leads to meaning, though not the empty toil which defines nihilism. Pain is more vivid and painful than toil; toil is less painful but more compounding—and that is the problem. Toil is less acute and so we don’t notice it, like a frog in boiling water, and that is its danger. Pain is worse, but only at the time. Crucifixion is more painful than dying in our sleep, but resurrection is reserved for those who die on a cross. Sleepers only dream.
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That last line of the essay was so fire and I must say It was a great conversation that has left me feeling distinctly changed.