post-modernism and the abstracted self

I got into a Walker Percy kick again recently, for the first time in a while. At one point, I read him voraciously, reveling in the irony, the dissipation, the odd redemptions, at times bitter, at times flat, at times (such as Lancelot which I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone but is an incredible feat), breathtaking.
Feeling irritated with Love in the Ruins, which is the first Percy book I got my hands on and usually delights me, I picked up Lost in the Cosmos, which I love but which, at one point, hit too close to home in its discussion of transcendence and re-entry. At a slight distance, though, I am able to appreciate it greatly, and equally greatly regret that it slipped my mind when writing my master's thesis (so passé and, it may be argued superfluous, but I so badly wanted to write). It's a superb treatment of the post-modern man--or human, if you prefer--dilemma of the abstracted self. Put simply, the modern man has no point of reference by which to define himself, so he is left floating in a constant state of impermanence, unmoored to any solid referent outside of himself . Art and science, claims Percy, are the two ways by which a person transcends the problem of reality, but then s/he is left with the problem of re-entering the word "at Wednesday afternoon at 4 o'clock": How does one who has tasted transcendence deal with the most mundane and humdrum of this often tedious reality?
One thing that slowly dawned on me is that, while spot on with the idea of transcendence and reality and the difficulties of the artist (and, to a lesser extent, the art-lover/receiver), something about the 1983 view of science wasn't quite relevant any more. There is some truth to it, that the "laity" revere science: medicinal, environmental, technological, but there is an edge, a disillusionment, that we have that was still absent to the wondering world of the '70s and '80s. We question surgeries and vaccines; our scientifically-altered food is making us an increasingly ill society; we have seen the limits of and also the fear of advanced weapons technology; we have reached the second decade of the 21st century and still drive cars, by and large, that run on four wheels and gasoline. So I pondered: What has replaced science as our panacea, our new god, our layman-available escape?
Oh friends: it is entertainment. Instead of seeking the cure for the abstracted, "flying dutchman" self, we have sought to numb it continually through means of ever-increasing, ever-more-extreme pleasures.
We are zombies.
Abstracted zombies.
The problem hasn't changed. We, as a societal whole, still are floating around, unmoored, untethered . . . except now we don't care. We numb it: lots of prescription drugs, lots of other drugs, lots of media--oh, such an incredible amount of media! (like this blog: teehee!)--fake online "communities", yogis and gurus and meditation and marriages and non-marriages and "alternative marriages" and God knows what else.
but we don't care, as long as we can numb it, even for a moment.
One slightly spooky coincidence is how well Percy's description of the modern man jives (yes, I did, and no I won't take it back) with C. S. Lewis's depiction of hell in The Great Divorce: isolated individuals, petty squabbling, incessant bickering over nothings, and, above all, the tininess. We are a nation of pusillanimity: of small-souled beings. How much you love your dog or cat or save the whales or the ozone layer doesn't matter a'tall in the end. What matters is our relationship to other human beings. We are the human race. The problem is not saving the abused animals or the abused earth or the whatever. The problem is that we are doing it instead of caring for each other. Because "caring" for each other has come to mean "let me do whatever the hell I want or I will scream intolerance at you."
We will not save ourselves or each other or the dogs (after all, it is very, very wounded people who abuse animals and children) or the earth (ditto that: if I don't care about myself, why should I care two pins about the earth?) or the whatever. And we cannot fix ourselves or help anyone else until we find moorings. And, as Walker Percy, the first in a family of generational suicides not to kill himself (it was at least his father and grandfather, if not great-grandfather, as well, and I believe an uncle or two) well knew, the only way to survive this world, to find moorings, is to find God. After that, well, as Lewis says:
"A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never simply by going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power'--or else not. It is still 'either-or'. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."  (The Great Divorce, "Preface")

and He became sin

last friday, 14 September, the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. i lost track of the dates and couldn't have told you that, but the boys and i try to make it to Mass on fridays, regardless, so by the grace of God, we made it.
the first reading of this feast is the story of the israelites compaining in the desert, so they are punished with a course of serpents. as they lay dying, they begin to repent, so God tells Moses to raise up a serpent on a pole, and whomever gazes on it will be saved from death.

photo courtesy of artvalue

this is viewed as one of the first images of the Crucifixion, but it always has puzzled me. a serpent is a symbol of satan and sin, not of Christ, so why is this an image of the crucifixion?
the biggest sin that the israelites commit after leaving egypt, the one that kept them in the desert for forty years and brought the serpents to them, was grumbling against God--some translate it as "murmering" against God for not leading them directly to the promised land. this whole thing has so many layers of symbolism that it is hard to stay focused: for us, egypt is our own sin, and the desert is our own life, which gives us the opportunity to become pure, to enact our salvation and live out grace so that we can stand with God, with nothing between Him and us. because any speck of sin is incompatible with God's presence (hence the strongest argument for Mary being pure from sin: if Christ was to live in her, she could not have had original sin. Christ and sin cannot cohabitate). so it makes sense that sin must die, typified by the serpent on the pole, before we enter heaven.
but Christ was sinless.
then i remembered an image that an artist i knew many years ago had been given. i do not remember the whole scene, except that it depicted Christ in profile. in iconography, saints are always shown with their whole face, which is why if one is looking off to the side, the face looks out of proportion: so it can show the whole of it. and which is why, if you look at an icon of the last supper, you can tell which is judas, because he is the only one shown in profile. so this friend remarked that this image was blasphemous, unless taken in the context of that verse that Christ was made sin . . .
the verse is 2 Corinthians 5.21, and the KJ translation reads, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

giotto's crucifixion

this, then, is why the image of the serpent can typify Christ: the Christ who died on the Cross took on and became our sin. and this is the only way in which we can be saved, is if we nail our sin to the Cross with Christ. our sinfulness must die, because anywhere that sin holds, is not held by Christ. every sinful habit, every vice to which we cling, is not saved. this, then, is what purification means, and what it means to be crucified with Christ so that the new nature may live, so that we may be God's righteousness.

False Dichotomies

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom or philosophy." - Ludwig von Beethoven
Once in another life I acquired a t-shirt for the main purpose of vexing someone whom I wished to vex. Many, many years later, and much worn, it still reads quite clearly. Beethoven is one of my favourite composers, and I was delighted at its defiant proclamation of sense over reason. When my dad read it, his comment was simple: the quotation creates a false dichotomoy between knowing through reason (philosophy) and knowing through the sensed (art). I admitted, at the time begrudgingly, that he was right, and that at the very least philosophers need to accept that art teaches in many ways that reason cannot, and artists need to accept that their philosophies form their art. Well and good.
"The world of the fairy-story is that world which is opposed throughout to the world of rational truth." -Novalis.
I love George MacDonald, and was very excited to finally acquire and begin reading his Phantastes. In the beginning quotation, however, I stumbled upon this sentence and was troubled by it. Perhaps it is intended to mean that we cannot be bound by the rules of the natural world when entering "Faerie"(Tolkien), that we must leave behind our preconceptions and expectations of normal cause-effect, even. Well and good to this, as well. I would like to think that. But it doesn't say that, quite. It says rational truth. Perhaps it is using a dangerous word, or perhaps the translator mis-chose (although I question that: When those Germans go wrong, they get *really* nutty). This seems to me to be once again setting up a false dichotomy. Art is not its own truth; Faerie is not its own truth, and to leave behind the world of truth when entering the world of art is to enter the world of lies. A work of art can depart from the world of literal truth, but not from the world of moral truth: one could even say it must do the former and must not do the latter.
off the cuff, I would say that this continued and insistent dichotomy is the work of arrogance. Find the humble artist, the humble philosopher, the humble scientest, and you have found truth and goodness and beauty--or at least the way there.

Regarding Honesty

i have been editing my husband's dissertation, which examines St. Thomas's account of the virtues and applies them to just war theory (he is political philosophy). on reading his account of honesty, an annex of fortitude, i was a bit awed to read that honesty is the virtue that is in relation to beauty; that is, the honest man is he who is able to apprehend what truly is beautiful.
i do not have distinct or profound meditations on this, and i do not think i need to provide you with my own. i would like to leave you with this thought and let you come to your own conclusions and have your own contemplations on it. consider how a synonym for "honesty" is "integrity," for instance. consider the meaning of "integrity"--not just moral integrity, but for a thing or being to have integrity. consider how much that is supposed to be "beautiful"--"full of beauty"--how much painting sketching drawing, how much music song rhythm, how much supposed art, lacks fundamental, basic, objective integrity. consider how modern art, in fact, seeks to glory in the deliberate destruction of integrity--of honesty--and so, therefore, by default cannot be beautiful, and therefore cannot be art.
consider how we have, now, several generations formed by this perverted media (i shall not honor it with "art"), and so we have a whole nation that has a fundamentally distorted understanding of beauty, and how we are urged to contemplate what is abhorrent and abherrent, and revel in it lest we be thought unsophisticated or intolerant. sophistry indeed . . .
and that is as far as i go. consider your own contemplations as inspired by different genres of media, even art, and respond, if you dare.