Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts

Thursday, November 17, 2016

What's Hubris Again?

Here in post-election America, life goes on, as it usually does, and Starbucks is filled with just as many earnest conversations conducted at ear-splitting levels as it was before. I don't know what compels people to believe that what they have to say is So Vitally Important as to override the rules of common civility, but there it is: that's what ear plugs are for. I've made liberal use of mine lately.

Even with all the hubbub at the coffeehouse this afternoon, I finished the book I was reading, Thomas Moore's The Soul's Religion, which I've been reading off and on for a while now. One of the book's themes is the author's idea of the importance of bringing religion and secular life together--not in the sense of imbuing society with the trappings of any particular faith but by way of encouraging people to cultivate a sense of connection to "all of life" through ordinary, purposeful living. In other words, the way to the sacred lies in everyday life.

Mr. Moore describes his complex relationship to Catholicism and his sense that organized religion best serves as a backup to a profoundly individual exploration of soul and spirituality. He touches several times on the point that institutions dedicated to serving people's spiritual needs are no more immune to hubris and misuse than any other endeavor; in fact, they have their own particular problems with overreach and abuse of power. I think Mr. Moore has more faith than I do in the positive effects of shared, communal religion, but he clearly sees the connection between over-reliance on authority and loss of authenticity and self-determination. He points out the special hazards that passive submission to institutional agents, strictures, and systems of belief can bring--spiritual leaders have their own brand of bullying that relies on people's faith to take advantage of them.

This discussion of the need to question the motives, methods, and effects of religious authority is important. I think it extends to all institutions, whether they are political, educational, medical, governmental, financial, or otherwise. Believing that matters affecting you are too complex for you to understand and that therefore someone else must know better is giving someone else too much power. Our society is set up to require participation from citizens. The ability to even form an opinion in the first place requires you to stay informed at at least a minimal level.

It may seem ironic that having said all this (and actually believing it), I was unable to pick a presidential candidate in this year's election, but not making a choice is also a decision. I'm familiar with the idea that it's often necessary to hold your nose and push one button or the other, but I have more sympathy now with the notion of withholding support as also being a powerful choice. Being uncommitted at the polls in no way negates the other citizen obligations of staying informed and holding those in power accountable.

I tend to distrust institutions, despite knowing that they're necessary and can accomplish good things. Big institutions accrue power, and power corrupts, as Lord Acton has told us. I'm often sorry to see someone I admire throw their hat into presidential politics because I think it takes an exceptional person to resist the temptations of the office (the same thing is true of all positions of high authority, of course, from senators to Cabinet officials). I think our system of government is a pretty good one, but as our country has grown from a young upstart into the most powerful nation in the world, the power it wields has grown exponentially, and the need to find the best people we can to wield that power is more important than it ever was. Not that we always succeed, or should expect that we will.

To go back to Mr. Moore's discussion of the Church, it's instructive to consider how a movement that began so simply, with one man who influenced others profoundly with his teachings, has grown into a huge hierarchy of enormous wealth, tremendous spiritual authority, and great temporal power. People will argue that such a structure is necessary to administer the Church's activities around the world, and that may be, but I'm always struck by the profound difference between what it started out to be and what it is now. There's something in the enormity of the institution that seems to work against the simplicity of the original teachings. If it essentially boils down to "Do Unto Others," then what's all the pomp and circumstance for?

Likewise, our government: It's "We, the people," right? I understand that we give symbolic weight to the rituals, procedures, ceremonies, buildings, and other accoutrements of our governmental institutions because they represent our society's important ideals, and I'm OK with that. A great idea like democratic society deserves a good display. But the display is never more important than the thing itself, and institutions that don't serve their purpose shouldn't be respected just because they wear the face of respectability. Are they living up to their ideals, more or less? That's all I want to know.

Speaking for myself, it's a relief to be done with robocalls, yard signs, and opinion masquerading as news (actually, I guess we're never free of that). The outcome has resulted in protests and a renewed discussion of the Electoral College, which is all to the good. The election itself was only the beginning of something new, and it ushered in at least one significant change: the president-elect has never held political office, and although he has headed a powerful organization, he's coming from the world of business (and entertainment), not the world of government. Many people have been wanting a change like this for a long time, even if Mr. Trump wouldn't have been their first choice, and it will be interesting to see how a business leader takes on the office of president. One thing you can say about Mr. Trump: he knows how to take center stage.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Aristotle's Left the Building

This week, I've been watching a DVD course on philosophy and religion in the Middle Ages. It probably couldn't compete with the evening news on a drama quotient, but I found it entertaining. The course explored how various thinkers from Saint Augustine to William of Ockham incorporated or repudiated, as the case might be, ideas of Plato and Aristotle in their own writings on religion.

At this point you may be thinking, "That's what you do for entertainment?" It may not be to your taste, but think of it this way: there were no commercials, no preening actors, and no mentions of Super-Pacs, dark money, or dubious efforts to make America more secure during the entire twelve hours of viewing. You had to concentrate to keep up with the arguments involved, but it beat propaganda disguised as news or a dumb conversation you might overhear at Starbucks by a country mile.

Of course, the Middle Ages had its share of politics and foolishness, and the conversation on faith and reason took place against a backdrop of wars, power struggles, and other calamities. The views of various Church leaders played a part in some of those events, but this course focused on intellectual, not political, history. I personally am not a fan of institutions, the Church included, and generally distrust them, but the discussion of faith and reason on a purely intellectual level was very engrossing.

Some of the arguments left me scratching my head, though. Anselm, for example, apparently thought that saying there was something "than which something greater cannot be thought" was enough to prove the existence of God. I kept trying to figure out how that works and was never quite convinced. The argument seems to be missing something.

William of Ockham helped put the kibosh on the latter medieval tradition based on Aristotle, and I agree with the lecturer that in some ways that was too bad. Many medieval religious thinkers seemed to care very much about their arguments being rational and coherent and their religious ideas squaring with reason. We could use more of that respect for clear and systematic thinking today, in all realms of life.

Most entertaining to me was the discussion of the development of universities from the cathedral schools in the thirteenth century. Newly available translations of Aristotle in Latin seemed to set practically everyone on their ear, with Arts faculty members (who were basically teaching prep courses to younger students) going crazy for Aristotle, while the more senior Theology faculty tried to reign them in. The University of Paris was the epicenter of the conflict, which resembled the first coming of Elvis, or a food fight of beatniks versus squares.

Aristotle was the champion of definitions, categories, and arguments and of a theory of knowledge based on what our senses tell us about the world. The early Church fathers were heavily influenced by Plato, whose theory of the transcendent Forms dovetailed nicely with a mystical, spiritual realm inhabited by God and the angels. Aristotle taught that universal forms exist as concepts in our minds but that there is no "Form" of a horse, tree, turnip, or planet hanging out in the ether, existing as a blueprint. There are only particular horses, trees, turnips, or planets. He didn't say there was no Supreme Being, but he called his the Prime Mover.

Aristotle was down-to-earth on many things, and that appeals to me. I could picture those Arts masters looking around and rejoicing in the revealed beauty of a world of individual apples, turnips, stars, and horses, and their elders shaking their fists and yelling about Mysteries of the Faith. It all came to a head with the Condemnation of 1277, the Church's attempt to ban people from teaching aspects of Aristotle that it considered problematic. Good luck with that.

Although William of Ockham did, apparently on purely philosophical grounds, later pull the rug out from under the thinking of a lot of Aristotelians, he was no shrinking violet either. He declared the Pope heretical (on an unrelated matter) and got himself excommunicated. (The Pope apparently threatened to annihilate an entire town in Flanders if it didn't give Ockham up to church authorities.)

But that's straying into politics. For me, the beauty of this course was in the consideration of ideas for their own sake and in the image of generations of thinkers trying to hold their beliefs up to a standard of rational thought, undeterred by the fact that the great philosophers they struggled to emulate had never even heard of Christianity. The course was entitled Reason and Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages, and it was taught by Professor Thomas Williams. It is one of the Great Courses on Philosophy & Intellectual History of The Teaching Company.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Household Gods

The other day I read an essay by someone who was critical of people who identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious." His general point seemed to be that people who think of themselves this way are dabblers, holding only a shallow acquaintance with the beliefs and texts that inform the world's religions. He seemed to believe that these dilettantes are invariably fence-sitters, guilty of cherry-picking only the spiritual bits that appeal to them and blithely avoiding the hard truths that are always part and parcel of a religious worldview.

I wonder what he'd think if he ever visited me. I won't even get into my book collection. After three years in a myth studies program, I have books on Buddhism stacked on top of books about the Hebrew Bible, West African religions, and Celtic folklore. Texts on Hinduism share shelf space with volumes on Native American traditions, Christianity, Islam, and ancient Egyptian gods.

Like everybody in my program, I studied all of these belief systems and more, seriously and open-mindedly, though I wouldn't call myself an adept in any one of them. Our goal was not to choose among them but to try to understand their core beliefs, their origins and development, and above all the stories they tell us. I thought of myself as "spiritual but not religious" a long time before I started graduate school, and the program pretty well convinced me I was on the right track with that approach. I've always been cross-disciplinary in my thinking and have found that being eclectic is not only very enriching but also makes greater sense of things than trying to find all the answers in one place.

I was raised as a Christian and came to have doubts about some of the dogma of the Church, though I was not sorry about the structure and moral fiber I ingested with my upbringing. Myth studies not only introduced me to beliefs different from the ones I learned in Catholic school, it also gave me a new respect for the texts and traditions of my own past. I read parts of the Old Testament in graduate school that I only heard about in catechism class and had never actually read for myself.

One of the professors at school liked to say it's helpful in any given situation to stop, look around, and ask yourself: Who is present? I'm asking myself that now. Over to my right, on a shelf behind my writing desk, is a statue of Ganesha, Hindu remover of obstacles and friend to students. Every time I happen to see him, I get a sense of well-being; he just looks so calm and immovable. On the bookshelf across the room is a statue of Kwan Yin, Buddhist goddess of compassion, sitting serenely atop a crescent moon. In the hall outside the living room is Bastet, the watchful Egyptian cat goddess who sees everyone who crosses my door.

In the kitchen I have refrigerator magnets in the form of an angel with a quill and a manuscript, a pretty little Virgin of Guadalupe, and a tiny metallic goddess engraved with the words, "How do I set a laser printer to stun?" I used to have a Shaker Tree of Life on the wall in there. (It's still around here somewhere. I'll have to find a new place for it.)

In the bathroom, Aphrodite (with one eye on her own reflection) and Hecate, triple goddess of magic, preside together over the sink, lotions, and potions. In my bedroom, a dancing Shiva, another Virgin of Guadalupe, a golden Buddha, my Japanese lucky cat, another Kwan Yin, and an exultant spring goddess coexist on the bookcase. There are also two dreamcatchers, a small angel, and two rather chipped and bemused looking gargoyles (they've been knocked over a few times) who act as bookends on the dresser.

What the gentleman who wrote the essay might interpret as sampling I prefer to think of as "taking all the help I can get." I'm so used to living with the images of all these different entities that I admit I often forget they're even there. But that doesn't mean they've forgotten me, and who knows what good they've done for me without my knowing it, simply because I've made room for them.

By the way, I've yet to hear complaints from any of them about having to share quarters, though they probably wish I would dust more often.