Really long one, make sure you scroll all the way down.
(If you can see this text, it means that you haven’t scrolled down enough)

After a recent experience of watching the deconstructive-qua-ideologico-critical ethos applied in the realm of interpersonal relations, I stumbled upon this quote and found it quite fitting:

“We learn … that when one looks for too long at reality through critico-ideological glasses, one gets a strong headache: it is very painful to be deprived of the ideological surplus-jouissance.”(1)

Critique, in the end, may also lead one back into the (vicious) hermeneutic circle… For all it’s illuminating insights, I suppose its always also important to remember the deplorable clinical track record of psychoanalysis. All the more so before plunging headlong into dismantling one’s own predilections.

If happiness is neither the end nor the aim of psychoanalysis, what does this imply for the political and social ends of the critique of ideology?

Good time (also, incidentally, for all us, in face of political-economic crisis) to mull over and meditate on Kierkegaard’s old axiom (2):

“Despair is to be understood as the sickness, not the remedy”

—

(1) Zizek, Slavoj “Denial: The Liberal Utopia” @ lacan.com (http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=397)

(2) Kierkegaard, Soren. The Sickness Unto Death

„In der Sprache liegt die Reflexion, und darum kann die Sprache das Unmittelbare nicht aussagen. Die Sprache tötet das Unmittelbare… Das Unmittelbare ist nämlich das Unbestimm- bare, und darum kann die Sprache es nicht auffassen; dass es aber das Unbestimmbare ist, ist nicht seine Vollkom- menheit, sondern ein Mangel an ihm.“

Sören Kierkegaard, Entweder-Oder, München 1975, S. 85

_____________________________________________________________________

Und schon klingt es mir in den Ohren: “Die Grenzen meiner Sprache sind die Grenzen meiner Welt! Alles, was sich aussprechen lässt, lässt sich klar aussprechen! Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, davon soll man schweigen!”

Dem hat ein kluger Kopf ein für allemal entgegengehalten: Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich. Es ist das Mystische.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.522)

Das Unmittelbare oder, wenn man so will, das Bloße Sein ist allerdings das Mystische, weil es nicht aus Bestandteilen zusammengesetzt ist, in die es sich wieder zerlegen (und mit Wörtern bezeichnen) ließe.

Was ich damit anfangen will, das könnte – und sollte ich vernünftiger Weise – ‘entwerfen’ und in klare Gedanken fassen, die sich ‘klar aussprechen’ lassen. Das ist ein Mangel an dem Unmittelbaren, da hat Kierkegaard wohl Recht, dass es das mystisch Unbestimmbare ist, nämlich solange ich noch nichts damit angefangen habe. Wenn es denn ein Mangel am Grund ist, dass er früher ‘da’ war als die Folge – aber eben noch kein Grund.

I love to read, but it hasn’t always been like that.  Growing up, I preferred to spend my time outside with some kind of ball, throwing, kicking, hitting, or shooting it.  It has only been in the last five or so years that reading has become a near obsession.  Now, I won’t go so far as to say that books have changed my life (well, maybe some have) but they definitely have prompted me to think in new and interesting ways.  Believing, of course, that everyone should enjoy reading as much as I do, I wanted to share with you five books that have rocked my world or, as the title of this post says, at least rocked my boat (by the way, I completely ripped off the title of this post from an article my pastor once wrote — sorry, Aaron).  These aren’t necessarily my five favorite or even most influential books, but each has played a significant role in my life.  So, in no particular order…

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee — This book is exceedingly cool on so many levels.  It is the only book that Harper Lee ever published and she has routinely refused to talk about it in public.  It’s a great story about relationships — a girl with her father, a black man with his racist persecutors, law with society, a pariah with his community, right with wrong.  Set in the segregated South, To Kill A Mockingbird tells the story of young “Scout” and her father Atticus Finch, a well-respected lawyer (yes, lawyer and “well-respected” in the same sentence) and man of integrity who represents an African-American man wrongly accused of assaulting a young white woman.  The book is infuriating, inspiring, thought-provoking, fun, and convicting all at the same time.  Sometimes we need to feel convicted.  This book fits the bill.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll — This book opens with, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”  As a long time church-going, fried-chicken eating, committee-sitting, business meeting-attending, Bible-believing Southern Baptist Christian, I was told for most of my life that Bible was the gold-standard measure of how to live my life.  I believed it then and I believe it now.  Unfortunately, the baggage that often came with that advice was a rabid anti-intellectualism, a distrust of academia, a suspicion of any question.  This attitude, prevalent among many Christians (though, thankfully, not within my immediate family), has never sat particularly well with me.  In The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll discusses what he perceives to be the proper role of what he calls the “life of the mind” in the Christian life.  He outlines Christianity’s rich intellectual history which has, of late, been abandoned by the church at large in favor of what I call the poor man’s piety — a faith that doesn’t want to be explored.  Lamenting the anti-intellectualism that has often pervaded U.S. churches and pointing out the often dire consequences of these attitudes, Noll explores the rise of anti-intellectualism, its causes, and recent responses on the part of Christian scholars.  This book is, in large part, why I am in graduate school at the age of 38.  Christians need to reestablish themselves in the world of thought and ideas.  This book is a call to do just that.

Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco — This book changed nothing about my life.  I’m not a better person for having read it.  It didn’t inspire me to make the world a better place.  It didn’t kindle in me a fire to live a life of significance.  What this book did was to show me that it was possible to write a novel that was entertaining, engaging, complex and intelligent in a way that weaves together philosophy, theology, science, history, art, psychology, all in an impossible-to-put-down book.  Until I read Foucault’s Pendulum, I saw no value in reading fiction.  A lot of it was trite, unintelligent and formulaic.  Granted, some of the 19th century Russian authors wrote some pretty intricate stuff, but when I finished reading it I just wanted to jump off of a bridge.  And sure, there are some “classics” that engage me now but, honestly, what young adult whose main interests lie in college basketball and classic rock really enjoys reading Dickens’ cockney English or Mark Twain’s ramblings about a trip down river?  It’s only because of Foucault that I can now read some fiction without rolling my eyes.

Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard — Would you be willing to plunge a knife into your son’s heart as a sacrifice if you were certain God told you to do so?  Would you tell anyone what you were about to do?  Do we have a duty to God that transcends the ethical?  What is the nature of faith?  Is it the end or something to move beyond?  These are all questions that Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher, addressed in Fear and Trembling.  Starting with the narrative of the aged Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac, the son through whom God promised Abraham he would be the father of many nations, Kierkegaard makes us think about ourselves and the nature and strength of our own faith in God and, indeed, the nature of God, himself — is He just, is He ethical, is He capricious?  While I don’t agree with all of Kierkegaard’s theology nor do I recommend this book to any Christian without a strong grounding in the faith, I highly recommend it for the mature Christian who wants to think deeply and carefully about this word we hold so dear and that is so central to our theology – faith.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis — “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”  Imagine sitting by a fire, sipping hot chocolate, listening to your father tell you about the meaning of life.  Now, imagine your father is an Oxford professor who used to rub elbows with J.R.R. Tolkien.  Culled from a series of radio addresses, Mere Christianity is Lewis’ conversational defense of Christianity.  While sophisticated in its reasoning and eminently logical in its structure, its tone is that of an old-time Saturday night radio program or a winter’s fireside chat.  Beginning with an exploration of innate knowledge and ideas, such as how we know it is wrong to take someone else’s piece of fruit or why two things are equal, Lewis builds the case step-by-step for a creator, then God, and, eventually, Jesus the divine son of God.  Apologetics tends to be a field rife with subtle philosophical points and nuanced arguments that can easily escape those who aren’t geeky enough to become familiar with the terminology and structures of philosophical reasoning.  In Mere Christianity, Lewis unpacks the Christian apologetic for the lay audience, explaining very complex ideas in very simple terms while sacrificing very little in the way of precision.  Ultimately, Lewis, a one time atheist, concludes that Jesus was not a “madman or something worse,” but “was, and is, the Son of God.”  In addition to its generally edifying nature, this book has shown me the importance of combining razor-sharp reasoning with clear communication, because no matter how great our ideas, they are of no use if no one understands them.

I would love to hear from any of you about books that have influenced you in some way.  Leave comments, let me hear from you.  Until then, be well.

There was one who was great by virtue of his power, and one who was great by virtue of his hope, and one who was great by virtue of his love, but Abraham was the greatest of all, great by that power whose strength is powerlessness, great by that wisdom which is foolishness, great by that hope whose form is madness, great by the love that is hatred to oneself.

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ‘Eulogy on Abraham’

Hadirin dan Hadirat Yang Berbahagia,

Kemarin. Di Jakarta, di mana saja ada Muslim dan panitia Idul Qurban. Darah segar ditumpahkan. Sapi yang besar, sapi yang kecil, kambing yang hitam, kambing yang coklat. Semuanya disembelih sudah, diringi pekik takbir dan rasa sakit yang lengking. Mereka sudah jadi daging. Tinggal disate, disemur, atau direndang. Dan saya, seperti puluhan tahun lalu, kembali bertanya-tanya: maksud pembantaian ini apa toh?

Agama Purba

Ritus pengorbanan adalah wajah agama dalam bentuknya yang paling purba. Sudah ada jauh sebelum Yahudi, Kristen dan Islam merangsek dunia dengan kata-kata manis mereka tentang surga dan kasih sayang. Dulu, pengorbanan dimengerti sebagai upaya menyenangkan Tuhan yang pelit dan pemarah. Agar panen terus berlimpah. Agar tidak dirudung mala. Sederhana saja. Apabila Tuhan senang dan moodnya baik, semua akan baik-baik saja, bukan? Kalau Tuhan benar-benar ada, dan ternyata pelit dan pemarah, ritual ini masuk akal. Kalau Anda berfikir Tuhan tidak ada, ritual ini tentu saja absurd. Nah, katanya guru agama kita, Tuhan itu ada, tetapi Beliau tidak pelit dan pemarah. Meski demikian, lanjut mereka, Tuhan tidak menganggap ritual pengorbanan ide yang buruk juga.

Apa kata para khotib soal ini?

Qabil menyerang Habil. Kata Khatib kemarin, dalang kriminalisasi KPK dan pembunuh Nasrudin itu si Qobil!!

Selain digunakan sebagai tunggangan yang sama sekali tidak sangkil dan mangkus di akhirat nanti, Khatib solat Ied yang saya hadiri kemarin bilang hewan ternak dikorbankan untuk mendapatkan keridhoan Allah Yang Esa. Seperti Habil yang lebih dicintai Adam ketimbang Qabil — yang konon menurut salah satu legenda Yahudi adalah anak dari ular yang menggoda Adam dan Hawa di surga dulu (apakah Hawa selingkuh!?) — umat Islam berkurban untuk mencari ridha-Nya semata, dan karenanya sesembahan itu diterima olehNya. Jadi bukan merah darah atau legit daging kurban yang menjadikan Allah senang, tetapi rasa ikhlas dari ciptaanNya yang rela berkorban. Begitu.

Apa kata para romo?

Agnus Dei. Picture taken from About.com

Kambing yang tewas digorok kemarin adalah simbol dari kematian Yesus Kristus – the Lamb of God — di kayu salib. Manusia semuanya berdosa dan karenanya, seperti Ishaq, harus mati, kata romo BP di forum Sarapan Pagi. Kenapa? Karena Allah Maha Adil. Kalau Anda berdosa Anda harus dihukum. Titik. Tetapi, masalahnya, Allah juga Maha Kasih, tidak punya hati lah untuk menghukum manusia semuanya. Karena itu, Ishaq tidak jadi disembelih. Diganti sama kambing. Nah, kalau kematian Ishaq ditebus oleh darah kambing, bagaimana dengan nasib umat manusia yang berdosa? Kata Romo BP, Yesus Putra Allah, inkarnasi dari Firman, adalah kambing yang menebus dosa kemanusiaan. Wah, kalau begitu, umat Katolik mestinya ikut merayakan Idul Kurban juga! Atau umat Islam mestinya berhenti merayakan Idul Adha karena yang demikian itu adalah perlambang dari teologi Katolik yang mereka tentang!

Apa kata Gentole?

Kambing dan sapi tidak salah apa-apa. Kenapa mereka harus mati?  Kalau ini urusan antara Ibrahim dan Tuhan, antara Tuhan dan ciptaan favoritnya, manusia, mengapa kambing dan sapi yang dibunuh? Mari kita mengheningkan cipta sejenak untuk sapi dan kambing yang sudah kita santap tadi malam. Hening. Selesai. Begini, menurut saya kedua tafsir korban di atas – baik yang Katolik maupun yang Islam – tidak jauh berbeda dengan logika pengorbanan agama-agama tribal di pedalaman Amazon sana.

Yeah, why us, man!!

Dalam Islam, Habil, Ibrahim dan orang beriman yang kaya raya berkorban untuk mencari ridha Allah. Bukankah ini artinya mereka berusaha untuk ‘membuat senang’ Allah? Sama saja, bukan, dengan masyarakat primitif yang hendak ‘menjinakkan’ dewa-dewa? Dalam tradisi Katolik, kambing yang disembelih Ibrahim adalah penebus kematian Ishaq. Ini juga tak berbeda dengan keyakinan bangsa tribal bahwa seseorang harus mati agar orang lain tidak mati; agar masyakarat tidak dirudung mala dan petaka. Sama saja bukan dengan masyarakat primitif yang membunuh anak perempuan mereka agar mereka tidak dihukum dewa-dewa? Jadi saya membutuhkan tafsir baru (ya saya tahu, tafsir itu berbahaya).

Merefleksikan Ibrahim

Mari kita renungkan cerita besar tentang pengorbanan.

Stop! Old man, you just got punk'd!

Saya tidak hendak merasionalisasi atau menjustifikasi kekonyolan Nabi Ibrahim. Tidak bisa. Seperti kata Dawkins, kalau Ibrahim hidup di masa ini, sudah pasti dia bakal dibilang sesat, ditahan polisi, diadili, dipenjara, dibilang gila, dan kisahnya dijadikan HL koran Warta Kota. Nasibnya bakal sama persis dengan Lia Aminudin. Kalau begitu, apa yang bisa dipelajari dari kisah Ibrahim dan kegilaannya?

Menurut saya Ibrahim merefleksikan kondisi masyarakat modern dalam perburuan makna mereka yang hampir sia-sia. Seperti dituliskan secara apik oleh Johanness e Silentio alias Soren Kierkegaard dalam Fear and Trembling: Ibrahim besar bukan karena dia berhasil melewati ujian Tuhan semata. Ini bukan hal baru. Dalam tradisi Islam, konon Nabi Ibrahim dianggap salah menafsirkan mimpi saja. Dalam tradisi Katolik juga, seperti diuraikan di atas, ini bukan soal ujian dari Tuhan saja: bahwa “if you really love me, kill your son.” Tuhan tentu tidak seperti karakter film thriller produksi Hollywood, kawan. Lagian, praktik penyembelihan anak diduga tidak terlalu asing pada masa itu. Jadi pilihan etis Ibrahim tidak bisa direpro dalam foto kehidupan sekarang.

Menurut De Silentio, Nabi Ibrahim hebat karena beliau lemah, bodoh, gila dan membenci dirinya sendiri. Dan inilah kondisi manusia sebagaimana saya alami. Ketika beliau berfikir bahwa anaknya mesti disembelih, Nabi Ibrahim berada dalam sebuah krisis yang luar biasa hebat. Dalam fase ini, Nabi Ibrahim bergelut dengan Tuhan! Bergelut dengan iman! Dan itu yang saya alami. Tidak mudah untuk menjadi orang beriman di zaman ini. Sulit bagi saya untuk percaya kata khatib solat Jumat kemarin, bahwa hewan kurban itu bakal jadi tunggangan kita di akhirat, yang apabila ibadah kita tidak ikhlas, kakinya bakal sedikit pincang. Hah? Kenapa tidak korban Alphard saja sekalian ustaj!?? Nah, di sini, seperti Ibrahim, manusia dihadapkan pada sebuah ketidakmungkinan, pada absurditas, pada sesuatu yang tidak bisa dimengerti, yang tidak bisa diyakini betul tanpa lompatan iman – sebuah lompatan yang sangat tinggi dan curam!! Karena bagaimanapun, tidak Nabi Ibrahim tidak anaknya Ishaq/Ismail mafhum maksud penyembelihan itu. Akhirnya Ishaq/Ismail memang tidak disembelih, tetapi Nabi Ibrahim sudah kadung mengorbankan Nalar dan egonya. Lenyap dalam Allah yang memintanya berserah diri.

Lalu apakah itu artinya Ibrahim melakukan hal yang benar? Karena kisah itu dinarasikan secara lengkap dan tuntas, bahwa ternyata Tuhan tidak menghendakinya menyembelih Ishaq dan bahwa bapak orang beriman itu telah melakukan hal yang ‘benar’, keputusannya yang konyol itu bisa lebih diterima. Secara teologis, Ibrahim sudah divindikasikan. Atau dimaafkan bila ternyata beliau salah tafsir. Tetapi bagaimana dengan kita yang kisahnya belum tuntas: Ibrahim-ibrahim modern? Saya tidak tahu. Tadinya saya berfikir bahwa yang mesti kita sembelih adalah Nalar. Nalar adalah Ishaq  atau Ismail modern. Yesus modern. Karena setiap kali saya mendengar khotbah agama atau membaca artikel yang ditulis buat dakwah dan misi, saya ingin sekali menyembelih Nalar saya. Dan pada tiap Idul Adha saya tak bisa tidak mendakwa; ini masuk akal enggak sih? Ingin sekali rasanya saya percaya bila kambing yang dijadikan sate ini bakal jadi kendaraan orang akhirat nanti, atau benar-benar bisa menyenangkan Tuhan (bila Beliau sungguhan ada). Pada saat yang sama saya juga ingin mendemitologisasikan semua omong kosong ini. Memilih nalar! Melawan mitos! Bukankah Nalar adalah anak saya yang cintai?

Tetapi saya ragu. Apa benar begitu? Seperti Ibrahim. Saya juga tidak mengerti. Saya juga gelisah. Yang jelas. Saya dihadapkan pada sebuah ketidakmengertian. Dipaksa untuk mencari kekuatan dalam kelemahan, kebijaksanaan dalam kebodohan, kewarasan dalam kegilaan, dan kasih sayang pada rasa benci yang begitu akrab sama diri saya sendiri. Apa yang harus kita lakukan? Entahlah. Kadang saya berfikir definisi iman yang sesungguhnya adalah keraguan yang permanen, bukan percaya, bukan yakin. Wallahu A’lam.

Updated

El sacerdote Ismael Bárcenas de la orden de los Jesuitas nos aporta un libro donde podemos leer su interpretación obre las obras de este filósofo danés que tanto parece haber impresionado a Miguel e Unamuno

http://www.sjmex.org/procura/kierkegaard/index.htm

“What our age lacks, however, is not reflection, but passion.”

Life should be lived with passion.  Passion is a devotion, a decision to tie your finite life to something.  Rather than hedging bets, this devotion must take place in the awareness of the opportunity cost it presents – to devote yourself to one thing implies the inability to devote yourself to another.  To try to pretend otherwise encounters two deficiencies: a lack of fatality and a lack of depth.  Lacking fatality in your passion results in your discovering you were never really passionate at all.  To lack fatality means that that which has captured your attention remains a game, something playful where even the worst of outcomes can be tolerated.  Because the stakes are small, the results are also of little overall effect.  Watch a man who makes a twenty dollar bet with a friend on a sporting event.  Now imagine a man who has wagered his home, savings and the lives of his loved ones on the same game.  With everything at stake, nothing in the world is more important.

To have passion means to have devotion, the way one is devoted to one’s own child.  We regularly use expressions like “to live and die with” when referring to our interest in any number of diversions.  He lives and dies with that team.  She lives and dies with that show.  We equate that feeling with passion, but when compared with the idea of living and dying with the well-being of one’s family, the previous use of the same expression loses a degree of its sense of importance.  Hence, such passion lacks fatality – one’s life is not set in a determined direction upon the winds of fortune which blow from such pursuits.  Without the awareness of the cost being paid, which is one’s own finite life, as a wager in the devotion, there will always persist in one’s mind an assurance that all mistakes can be corrected, all offenses redressed simply by starting everything all over again, taking another chance to build up from scratch.  Any failure can be met with optimism that it will not be made again, and as a result failures are only considered by means of measuring the time given to their perpetuation.  Time, when the immediacy of fatality is not present, is infinite – and so any measurable portion of infinity can, in the end, be considered infinitely trivial.

Fatality’s partner is depth.  People object to the idea of devoting themselves single-mindedly to a purpose, saying that it is arbitrary to require them to give all of their attention to only one cause in life.  This is not what I mean by devoting oneself single-mindedly.  However, let’s assume that a man does disperse his passion through a handful of activities he enjoys or in which he finds meaning.  The result is a man who is quite wide in learning, his knowledge covering an impressive range of fields and disciplines.  He is capable of holding a conversation on almost any topic and where his knowledge is lacking he is able to wrangle the flow of the discussion towards an area in which he is more fluent.  His wit can cover for the lack of time we all suffer from in studying up on an inexhaustible stream of information that circulates through the popular media, trickling down to dinner table debates and friendly back-and-forths with strangers and acquaintances alike at apartment parties.  If he’s at a total loss, he can even muster up the resolve to ask you to tell him what your opinions are, since he is admittedly ignorant regarding the topic at hand, though in the back of his mind he knows if he really cared about whatever it is that is up for discussion, he’d have already formed an opinion on it, if he hasn’t already despite his ignorance - a certain go-to, gut instinct that never fails him – all of this taking place in a context where we know that no one really ever changes a dearly-held opinion anymore.  So we have a man thought of as intelligent and charismatic who lacks any kind of depth - while the moniker of “straw man” does not fit in this sense, our fathomless man could perhaps be called a paper man.  You can poke or prod the paper man to see what is behind him, but you can never get around his width.  He is always much too glib to be cornered, always too full of explanations, always too willing to befriend you.  But he has no true passion, for his frenetic nature is what leads him to run the length of the coast without ever plunging into the water, which is the most terrifying thing his mind can imagine.  No, choosing to enter the deep waters would leave him a dissolved mass of pulp, and the wider he has become, the thinner he is stretched, giving him less matter with which to reform himself if he has the misfortune of being dragged along unexpectedly to sea.  Even that crisis, though, would be manageable – the paper man has little riding on this unreflected accumulation of knowledge he regards as a self, and with a proper measure of amnesic fortitude he will be right back cutting himself out a flimsy new costume to wear.  He is seduced by beginnings, constantly going from port to port yet landlocked the entire time, never leaving his native continent.  He can give you plenty of quotations on love or beauty, and he could tell you what to do to live happily - you will probably even think he’s rather wise, but he will never live for himself, be happy himself.  What he fails to understand is that it is not the scope of metaphors one can call upon, but the depth of the metaphors that conveys a true sense of passion, a true sense of experience, not from simply being knowledgeable, but from having one’s eyes cracked and wrinkled in their corners from staring at the horizon under the sun, one’s forehead weathered from venturing into countless storms.  Depth of passion reflects a depth of character.  It reveals in a person the capacity to love.  Our paper man, he has many infatuations, but no true love.

Take any person who is sufficiently passionate about anything – baseball, for instance.  We can all picture the crusty old man, his better days long past, whose love of the game was so true and deep that he could understand baseball through his experiences in life and life through his experiences from baseball, both informing one another in harmony.  Ask him about music, and he might recall a tune or two he can still whistle, but press him to go further and he’ll unabashedly tell you he really didn’t have time for music in his more productive years.  He might have traveled extensively, and perhaps a few memories of places been or people come and gone will leave him feeling wistful for what has been lost, but in the end his love had been decided long ago, and it continues to inform him in his waning years.

We might consider such devotion as the old man has as quaint, if not outdated.  After all, in our times we have so many pressing matters to consider, and even if we have the luxury to think beyond our personal itineraries of endless tasks and errands we must see to every day, certainly we can imagine something more worthy of our passion than baseball – doesn’t its very nature of being a game betray an inherent lack of fatality?  How can a game compare to love, friends, family, the plight of the oppressed, wherever they may be?  Obviously there are many things in our lives worthy of our attention, our thorough attention – but only one can truly be an object of passion.  Give a wife the grim choice of deciding the fate of her husband, mother and two daughters – only one of them can live and it is up to this daughter/wife/mother to decide who that will be.  What a horrible fate - how can she possibly go about the decision?  Most people would immediately discount the idea of saving the husband, he’s too old, and a man to boot (as if men had less regard for their mortality than women), perhaps the mother as well – so without having to bring this macabre example to a conclusion, we can already agree that there is a hierarchy even amongst causes to which we would otherwise attribute supreme importance.  Now consider that in most of our lives all of these players will be at work – filial love, romantic love, love of our children, love of self, love of justice, love of aesthetic pleasure.  Consider also that we are without the impetus that our poor woman has in clearly setting her priorities for the world to know.  In the modern sense of being people searching for meaning in life, we are without such clear direction.  The point is not who the woman chooses, the point is that she must make a choice, just as we must make a choice in what our priorities are, and by the necessity of this choice it shows that what the object of our passion should be is not axiomatic, the answer contained in the definition of passion itself.  Though perhaps one could argue there are degrees of worthiness that characterize the possible objects of our passion, the point under consideration with which to begin is simply whether or not one has passion.  So leave our old man be, let him have his true love – if he found it important enough to love, who are we to begrudge him?

Picture from Linda Keagle

What exactly is the relationship between our spiritual health and our psychological health? Between despair and depression? I think most people would say that they are inter-related—what affects one affects the other.  But, even though they are inter-related, are the fundamental or core problems different? And thus, are the solutions not different?

Gordon Marino suggests in an article in the NY Times, Kierkegaard on the Couch, that today we have become “deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair.”  Are not many happy and yet full of despair.  Quoting Kierkegaard, Marino says, “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”

If despair is a spiritual problem, then perhaps the solution is also physical? Marino said that despair equaled intensified doubt for K? Quoting, from From K’s Sickness unto death, “A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.” For K, despair seems to occurs when there is an imbalance in this synthesis. Despair according to Kierkegaard is a lack of awareness of being a self or spirit, says Marino. Perhaps the dark feelings of depression and despair may look similar but come to be due to different causes.

So, if despair is related to a loss of hope or could we say a desperate longing for the transcendent, then a visit to a mental health professional alone will not bring the answer that is needed. A spiritual consultation may be what is needed, along with a visit to a mental health professional and to a medical doctor.  How do we provide care for depression and yet allow people to sense their despair at being disconnected from the Transcendent one?

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/kierkegaard-on-the-couch/

Gordon Marino at NY Times on Oct 28, 2009

They dined on mince, and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
-Edward Lear

I’m beginning to read an annotated version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The introduction is given by Martin Gardner, who at one point says the following in the introduction:
“Kierkegaard once imagined a philosopher sneezing while recording one of his profound sentences. How much such a man, Kierkegaard wondered, take his metaphysics seriously?”

The reason I’m quoting Lear and Kierkegaard (well, a paraphrase) is because I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction recently, and ‘pondering’ some philosophical ideas (be they political, metaphysical, moral, ontological, existential, meta, etc.) to the point that I’ve really become bummed, and require a nourishing oasis of absurdities and audio-visual aesthetics that do not ask for much in the ways of critical thought and solipsism. Opium in the form of words, images and music.

On a completely unrelated note, I had a conversation with a friend recently who said that, she had heard that, Christianity’s message is predominately about love, while Judaism is about (I forget what she said, perhaps the idea of being chosen, or special) and Islam is about submission. Has anyone ever heard this before? Besides being simplifying and generalizing, I doubted that Jewish believers or Islamic believers would agree that their religions were lower on the rung than Christianity when it came to the message of love. However, I have no idea one way or the other.

“There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death. — Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen on May 5, 1813, the youngest of seven children.  His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was in the hosiery business.  He was a powerful man who held to a particularly gloomy Christianity, obsessed with guilt over having once cursed God.  His mother was Ane Sørensdatter Lund, a servant of the Kierkegaard’s.

Two of Søren’s brothers and two of his sisters died.  By 1834, his mother had died as well, and Kierkegaard became nearly as depressed as his father.  He lost his faith and turned to a hedonistic life-style, but had a religious experience in 1838.  He received his theology degree in 1840, and proposed to Regine Olsen, daughter of a prominent Copenhagen government official.

No one knows precisely why, but in late 1841, he broke off the engagement, which lead to considerable negative social press.  It seems to have been the pivotal crisis in his life, and he abruptly left to Berlin to study.

When he returned, he finished a manuscript he had been working on, and in 1843 published Either/Or.  It takes the form of an argument about how to live life between an “aesthetic” man and an “ethical” man — very probably reflecting two aspects of Kierkegaard’s own soul.

The aesthetic man is basically a hedonist and an atheist.  Although he is portrayed as a refined gentleman, his sections of the book are rambling, suggesting that his life is likewise without focus.  The ethical man is a judge, and his arguments are far more orderly and eloquent:  He spends considerable time analyzing the ancient Roman emperor Nero and his mental states.

Also in 1843, he published his famous book Fear and Trembling, which retells the story of Abraham and his near-sacrifice of his son.  This time, Kierkegaard compares the ethical response — it is clearly wrong to kill one’s own son — with a religious response, which is reflected in Abraham’s faith in his God.

In his various books, Kierkegaard develops his three “stages” or competing life philosophies:  The aesthetic person, who lives in the moment and lacks commitment;  the ethical person, who is in fact committed to his ideals; and the religious person, who recognizes the transcendent nature of true ideals.  Notice the similarity to Schopenhauer, although for Schopenhauer “aesthetic” refers to a love of art and music, not hedonism.

Throughout his work, he was concerned with passions.  He defined anxiety, for example, as “the dizziness of freedom.”Despair is what the hedonist feels when he finally recognized the emptiness of his life.  Guilt is what the ethical man feels when he inevitably discovers his inability to forgive himself. These definitions would profoundly influence a number of later philosophers and writers.

In 1849, he published Sickness unto Death, which was his strongest call to the conventional Christians of Copenhagen to take what Kierkegaard called “a leap of faith” into a more personal kind of religion.  But his community is not quite ready for this passionate brand of Christianity, and he was severely criticized by the religious powers of Denmark.

Kierkegaard is often considered the first existentialist, mostly because of the way he used the word existence.  He said that God doesn’t exist because he is eternal.  Only people exist, because they are always an unfinished product.  And the nature of existence is, first, that it is the domain of the individual, and second, that individual must take responsibility for his or her own creation.

But Kierkegaard noted that his was not a “system” of philosophy.  Human existence is an  ongoing process of creation, and cannot be encompassed by any “system.”  This has been a central theme in existentialism ever since.

Kierkegaard died on October 2, 1855, of spinal paralysis.  He would not take communion, and he asked that no clergy participate in his funeral.  His epitaph reads “The Individual.”

The History Of Psychology, Part 3: The 1800’s

Dr. C. George Boeree

© Copyright 1999 C. George Boeree

Ali.♥

Tanto Raúl como Daniel piensan que mi interpretación de Kierkegaard es… mentira. La verdad, yo coincido en general con ellos. Por eso debo prologarme al hablar de Kierkegaard diciendo que no estoy intentando decir que él diga, en efecto, nada de lo que yo le atribuyo. Me parece, más bien, que uno puede coger las ideas de Kierkegaard y llevarlas por un camino alternativo que es, a mi juicio, sugerente e interesante. No se tome lo siguiente, entonces, como ningún tipo de explicación histórica ni propiamente textual de Kierkegaard, sino simplemente como la reconciliación personal que yo hago de sus ideas en un sentido, digamos, menos religioso, o menos excesivamente cristianizante.

Porque claro, no puedo decir que Kierkegaard no era cristiano, porque ni yo mismo lo creería. Pero, me parece que se puede radicalizar aún más la idea del salto al vacío del estadio religioso del que habla, si lo consideramos más allá del contenido específico que puede tener el cristianismo. Es lo que me gusta llamar la interpretación del Gran Tornillo, siguiendo un pasaje de Rayuela, de Julio Cortázar, que transcribo a continuación:

En uno de sus libros, Morelli habla del napolitano que se pasó años sentado a la puerta de su casa mirando un tornillo en el suelo. Por la noche lo juntaba y lo ponía debajo del colchón. El tornillo fue primero risa, tomada de pelo, irritación comunal, junta de vecinos, signo de violación de los deberes cívicos, finalmente encogimiento de hombros, la paz, el tornillo fue la paz, nadie podía pasar por la calle sin mirar de reojo el tornillo y sentir que era la paz. El tipo murió de un síncope, y el tornillo desapareció apenas acudieron los vecinos. Uno de ellos lo guarda, quizá lo saca en secreto y lo mira, vuelve a guardarlo y se va  la fábrica sintiendo alqo que no comprende, una oscura reprobación. Sólo se calma cuando saca el tornillo y lo mira, se queda mirándolo hasta que oye pasos y tiene que guardarlo presuroso. Morelli pensaba que el tornillo debía ser otra cosa, un dios o algo así. Solución demasiado fácil. Quizá el error estuviera en aceptar que ese objeto era un tornillo por el hecho de que tenía la forma de un tornillo. Picasso toma un auto de juguete y lo convierte en el mentón de un cinocéfalo. A lo mejor el napolitano era un idiota pero también pudo ser el inventor de un mundo.  (Rayuela, capítulo 71)

A lo que quiero llegar con la idea del Gran Tornillo, es que el salto al vacío, o el contenido del salto al vacío, no está preestablecido de ninguna manera. Justamente – es un salto al vacío. Lo que me parece interesante de la experiencia religiosa tal como la describe Kierkegaard, es que tiene una prima altísima, el costo que paga el individuo que escoge creer realmente en algo, saltar al vacío por algo, es altísimo. De allí, incluso, que en algún lugar Kierkegaard escriba que el verdadero cristianismo no ha existido aún sobre la tierra: en realidad, creer en el cristianismo desde dentro de los confines del cristianismo es fácil, porque hay todo un aparato social – sea la Iglesia, o una comunidad de creyentes – dentro del cual la creencia de uno está legitimado. Es bastante poco probable que uno sea censurado socialmente por recitar el Padre Nuestro. Desde ese punto de vista, la creencia entendida en esa simplicidad cae para Kierkegaard dentro del orden de lo ético, de comprometerse con normas socialmente establecidas, aceptarlas como propias y reconocer su validez. Pero lo irónico del asunto es que esta aceptación de normas sociales no calificaría, propiamente, como el salto hacia el estadio religioso.

Pero, en cambio, tenemos al Gran Tornillo. La creencia del napolitano en el Gran Tornillo no tiene sentido para nadie externamente, al menos en un principio. Es un loco que mira un tornillo, que lo contempla con una devoción tal que, de hecho, termina atentando contra la convivencia y las normas sociales. La creencia inescrutable del napolitano es, de hecho, un salto al vacío: es perfectamente posible que él mismo comprenda lo inescrutable de su propia creencia, comprenda que no puede ser comprendido, pero que no pueda actuar de otra manera. Que ningún otro curso de acción le parezca válido.

En otras palabras: el salto al vacío en ningún momento viene con una cláusula de seguridad que diga que uno sólo puede saltar hacia dioses, o incluso hacia dioses moralmente buenos. Uno salta nomás, y si llega a caer en alguna parte recién se entera de lo que se encuentra. De allí que el costo sea altísimo, y que el salto mismo pueda aparecer como un acto, incluso, inmoral, incorrecto, desde el punto de vista de lo ético. Más aún, el dilema mismo es completamente absurdo para el individuo, es angustiante: si no salto, seré miserable por no realizar aquello que se me hace evidente, aquello que me empuja. Si salto, seré miserable porque estoy atentando contra aquellas normas sociales en las que yo mismo creo.

El ejemplo del Gran Tornillo es un poco extremo, pero creo que por eso mismo ilustra el carácter fundamentalmente irracional y absurdo de este movimiento. Y, ojo, no lo digo como algo peyorativo, sino todo lo contrario: eso es justamente lo interesante. Porque estamos hablando aquí de actos fundacionales de nuestra existencia, actos que le dan significado al resto del tejido de nuestras acciones, actos por los cuales hacemos lo que hacemos. Es, de alguna manera, algo así como reconocer que el significado último de nuestras acciones está más allá de nuestra plena comprensión, de que algo de ese significado siempre se nos escapará, siempre se nos ocultará, para que nuestras acciones puedan seguir teniendo significado.

(No se preocupen, no estoy poniéndome metafisicón tampoco. No creo que haya sentidos del mundo fuera del mundo, ni nada por el estilo. De una manera mucho más cuántica, más bien, pienso en fluctuaciones aleatorias que coinciden lo suficiente como para que nuevos significados emerjan a partir de sus partes constituyentes. Pero esto es como para otra discusión, u otro post.)

Ya que hemos estado hablando últimamente también de Marx, propongo la siguiente posibilidad: la revolución comunista misma podría ser algo así como el Gran Tornillo. Es decir, la revolución, a pesar de todo, podría muy fácilmente evaluarse como moralmente incorrecta, desde el punto de vista de lo ético: es, por definición, atentar contra el orden establecido de las cosas, contra todas las normas sociales, para subvertirlas. Es el objetivo de la revolución trastocar y transformar el orden ético del mundo, con lo cual el orden ético no puede más que juzgarla como incorrecta. Pero para Marx, para los que creen en la revolución, la creencia en ella está más allá de lo ético, incluso, está más allá de lo evaluable moralmente (más allá del bien y del mal, si quieren): no sólo porque las categorías del orden ético ya no se le pueden aplicar, sino porque lo que pueda venir después, a partir de la revolución, es completamente impredecible. La revolución, el compromiso con la revolución, es una apuesta, es creer profundamente que el mundo será un lugar mejor, pero en verdad no se puede ofrecer ninguna garantía. Por eso es, justamente, creencia, y no certeza. Si fuera obvio, si fuera tan certero, que estamos cambiando a algo mejor, no sería polémico ni problemático, es más, estaría contemplado dentro del mismo orden ético de las cosas, quizás.

Pero apostar por lo desconocido viene sin ningún tipo de garantías. Es, justamente, una apuesta. El salto al vacío es la apuesta porque habrá un suelo no muy doloroso en el que aterrizaremos. Es la apuesta del napolitano por el Gran Tornillo, la apuesta de Marx por la revolución, o la apuesta por un dios, o por lo que fuera. En realidad, quizás ni siquiera importa tanto qué sea aquello por lo que se apueste, sino simplemente el hecho mismo de apostar por algo, de jugársela un poco ciegamente más allá de tener certeza sobre los resultados. Justamente lo que Descartes no quería. Eso es lo que, creo, Kierkegaard reivindica: el mundo es un caos indescifrable, sí, pero en lugar de intentar arreglarlo, hay que intentar encontrar el sentido en ese mismo caos indescifrable. No descifrándolo, simplemente poniendo sentido en el mundo. O haciendo el intento, aunque fracasemos.

¿Qué opinan?

While many of us are familiar with the Protestant Reformation that began with Martin Luther in the first half of the 16th century, there was another reformation of sorts that took place three hundred years earlier in Japan of which many of us have not heard.  Shinran (1173-1263), and perhaps to an equal extant his predecessor Honen (1133-1212), struggled to institute reforms into Buddhism which reflected his personal beliefs in the context of a wider movement in the Kamakura period that brought great change to Buddhism and its role among both common people and the nobility in Japan.  What is remarkable about the two different reformations in which Luther and Shinran participated is the number of parallels surrounding their efforts to change the religious landscape of their respective times and places.  While the depth to which these parallels reach is a matter for religious scholars to debate, a cursory look at these similarities raised an important question in my mind that I will get to shortly.  Before that question is posed, however, let’s look at what Luther and Shinran shared in common:

1. Both Shinran and Luther rejected the idea that good works proved effective towards reaching salvation.  While there are differences, obviously, between Shinran’s belief in the Pure Land and Luther’s belief in heaven, both men held that humans lack the capacity for pure spiritual practice.  Shinran believed that we reach the Pure Land completely by results of Amida Buddha’s Primal Vow and the accumulated merit of Amida’s religious practices while still the Bodhisattva Dharmakara.  Luther subscribed to the doctrine of Sola fide, or “faith alone,” which states that the granting of salvation is entirely dependent upon whether or not one has faith in God, not by one’s acting “good” in order to deserve such salvation.  Ironically enough, Shinran would often refer those who had questions regarding his beliefs to a work by a priest named Seikaku entitled, “Essentials of Faith Alone.”  Something important to keep in mind when discussing these parallels is that you can’t simply swap out God for Amida Buddha, or heaven with the Pure Land as if they are perfect analogs for one another.  Lutheranism is not simply a Christianized version of Pure Land Buddhism, nor is Pure Land Buddhism a version of Protestantism differing only in visuals and terminology.  Pure Land Buddhists are notoriously defensive when it comes to comparisons drawn between their beliefs and those of Protestant Christianity, at times going to absurd intellectual lengths trying to refute what similarities both traditions undeniably share.  On the other hand, in the defense of Pure Land believers, specifically those of Shinran’s Jodo Shinshu school, they do have a few hundred years’ worth of dibs on those similarities versus Protestants.

2. Both had anti-clerical beliefs.  Shinran and Luther both held that rigid religious hierarchies and institutions were corrupt and unnecessary.  Because the source of salvation in their respective systems originates from outside of the believer, there is no differentiation amongst followers according to their levels of spiritual attainment, and thus both traditions were created along more egalitarian lines in respect to members of their religious communities.

3. Both married, discarding the tradition of celibacy.  Luther married Katharina von Bora while Shinran married Eshinni.  According to both men, religious vows were of no value in attaining salvation.  During their times, this was considered a radical stance and at least Shinran is credited as the first Japanese priest to openly marry.

4. Both changed original readings of texts.  A charge leveled against Luther in his translation of the Bible into German was that he was not absolutely faithful to the text, adding words to passages to give them meanings more compatible with his beliefs.  The same accusations were made against Shinran (rightly so), his renderings of certain passages of Pure Land sutras leading critics to question whether or not he fully understood the classical Chinese in which Buddhist texts were written then.

5. Both began in and eventually broke from the major religious centers of their day.  Luther broke with the Catholic church while Shinran broke with Mt. Hiei and the Tendai school of Buddhism.

Now, after having briefly glimpsed at these similarities, especially number five, the question that arose in my mind was, “Why does anyone become a preacher or philosopher?”  Leading up to their break with their institutions, both Shinran and Luther went through a period of isolation, study and despair in response to the failure of their sincere efforts to find peace through the standard monastic course of religious devotion set before them.  They were sincere in their desires, not for fame or wealth, but for real spiritual fulfillment.  Their struggles were individual ones, concerned for their own spirits and removed from a context of political or economic circumstances - men set on their courses, answering only to themselves and their own sense of attainment of their goals.  These paths led them to break with the institutions which set out the beliefs and practices that shaped their conceptions of religious life – for Luther that institution was the Catholic church, while in Shinran’s case it was the Tendai school of Mt. Hiei.

At some point, though, this intense and personal struggle changed from an inward concern, that of personal salvation, to an outward one, preoccupied with teaching others.  What is it that brings about this turn?  How was it that these men began to view their personal problems and the solutions to them as universal?  My initial answer was that it could only be ego which could make a person think he or she was in a position to tell others how they should view the efficacy and validity of one religious path or practice versus another.   In the case of philosophy, as well – as Nietzsche pointed out – most philosophers’ philosophical output comes as a sort of confession to the issues that plague them personally.

To make the leap from the thought, “I have found something which has benefited me,” to “I have found something which will benefit a great number of others,” requires, in my mind, an impetus that supersedes a humble desire just to be of service to others.  It is in this context that I understand Johannes de silentio’s words in Fear and Trembling, “As for the knight of faith, he is assigned to himself alone, he has the pain of being unable to make himself intelligible to others but feels no vain desire to show others the way.  The pain is the assurance, vain desires are unknown to him, his mind is too serious for that.  The false knight readily betrays himself by this instantly acquired proficiency; he just doesn’t grasp the point that if another individual is to walk the same path he has to be just as much the individual and is therefor in no need of guidance, least of all from someone anxious to press his services upon others.  Here again, people unable to bear the martyrdom of unintelligibility jump off the path, and choose instead, conveniently enough, the world’s admiration of their proficiency.  The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and in this lies the deep humanity in him which is worth more than this foolish concern for others’ weal and woe which is honoured under the name of sympathy, but which is really nothing but vanity.  A person who wants only to be a witness confesses thereby that no one, not even the least, needs another person’s sympathy, or is to be put down so another can raise himself up.  But because what he himself won he did not win on the cheap, so neither does he sell it on the cheap; he is not so pitiable as to accept people’s admiration and pay for it with silent contempt; he knows that whatever truly is great is available equally for all.”

I don’t mean to say that I view Luther or Shinran as frauds – by no measure.  But I wonder what turns that individual concern outwards.  What makes anyone have confidence that what works for him or her will work for another – and even if it did work, what makes anyone think, as de silentio points out, that a person can be led down that same path to reach the same results?  After all, the solution at which you arrive in response to your own troubles was arrived at in the context of solitude and struggle.  Remove that solitude and struggle from the process, don’t you also remove the necessity, the key component which spurred you to your solution and which allowed the solution to actually work?  The individual component of struggle, the fiercely personal nature of it is what causes us the most despair – but it also gives us the opportunity to overcome – to achieve something truly difficult and transcend one’s limits.

What I believe up to this point is that one person’s revelation in response to whatever crisis he or she may face in life is personal to him or her alone – it can’t be of use to another because the process of searching for and discovering an answer is replaced by a devotion to routines which worked for another person.  I don’t mean that we shouldn’t study the thoughts of others, or that we shouldn’t belong to religious organizations, but that we shouldn’t view that study or that membership as taking the place of our own spiritual or intellectual work.  Everything must come down to the personal level where you struggle with your own hands to work out things for yourself – no mode of thought, no matter how relevant it is to you can take the place of your own effort and thought.

In terms of religious development, Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms Johannes de Silentio in Fear and Trembling and Anti-Climacus in The Sickness Unto Death perceive the average person to be greatly lacking, in fact, to have not even the slightest grasp of what it means to develop religiously.

It is clear that for Kierkegaard as Johannes de Silentio there are a large number of people who never move beyond living “absorbed in worldly sorrow and joy” (FT, 34) that as Anti-Clamicus states is deceptive and causes many to live a life wasted, since they never go beyond the “joys and sorrows” to “become conscious of being destined as spirit”(SD, 26), which he states causes many to confuse their despair for “so-called security, contentment with light, etc.” (SD, 26). De Silentio equates this contentment with the average persons’ being “wallflowers who do not join in the dance” (FT, 34).

Both of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, based on what I have stated, hold the view that most people never bring their lives beyond the “everything else” (SD, 27) of the world and to the “most blessed of thoughts” (SD, 27): “that there is a God and that ‘he’, he himself, his self, exists before this God” (SD, 27). This is, in Anti-Clamicus’ view, because the average person never acknowledges their despair enough to find the “infinite benefaction” (SD, 27) and in Johannes de Silentio’s view, because the average person never brings himself beyond the “brutish stupor that gawks at existence” (FT, 32).

Although Kierkegaard uses both pseudonyms to critique the religious development of the average person, there is a minor contrast between the two portraits he paints. As Johannes de Silentio, Kierkegaard states that people “abandon themselves”(FT, 32) for the world around them; however, as Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard agrees that people are “engrossed in everything else” (SD, 27) but shows average people as not abandoning themselves, rather misinterpreting their condition for a more desirable one: “contentment” (SD, 26). More simply, in one critique Kierkegaard says people tend to forget themselves and evaluate the world around them, wrongfully; and in the other critique Kierkegaard states that people confuse themselves on their condition. This difference could well be a minor detail, but it appears to be the largest difference between the two pseudonyms, and their views of the average man.

To put things in my own words, what Kierkegaard says with both voices is that in terms of religious development, the average man has not even begun to develop beyond what was given to him at birth. The average man is not willing, not able rather, to remove himself from the wall to attempt to do the dance. What man does instead is give different, simpler names to what he does not comprehend and allows those over-simplified answers, pleasing answers take care of themselves while he goes and lives in the emotional, less-respectable world that Kierkegaard regards as hardly even living.

Works Cited

Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Kierkegaard, Soren. Despair Is the Sickness unto Death.\

Michael

We are told God first loved us, and that is why we love Him. There is a disservice we enact on our heart when we think of this as a one time event. We speak about this as if it was only a single time that God loved us first.

But the realization that God IS love means there is an endless love coming from Him. There is a sense that God’s love never ceases. This means His love cannot be a moment. This means God’s love is always.

God did not love us first one time. God still loves me first. It means even while I sleep, He loves me. When I wake up, before any thought I have of Him, He already loves me. When I take the time out of my schedule to be with God, He is there first. He loves me before I love Him.

Not that he already DID..
But every time I try to love God, he already DOES!

—————–

LISTENING TO: “Church Music” by David Crowder Band
READING: “The Prayers of Kierkegaard” by Perry LeFevre

Emotions rule our lives . . . and it never hurts to know more about them.   Of course, perceptions and opinions are as varied as the persons offering them and are constantly changing, so believe what you will.  Interesting concepts nonetheless.

Curiosity can kill more than just the cat . . . it ay actually work to cure (kill?) anxiety as well.  Todd Kashdan (a George Mason University Psychologist), “who has conducted research on this topic for a decade, argues that curiosity and anxiety work together — one propelling us to explore, the other putting on the brakes so that we don’t take unwise risks. The problem, in his view, is that we have devalued curiosity, putting the bulk of our energy — as individuals, communities, nations — into anxiety avoidance.”  Read more here.

Depression versus despair (despite current belief/understanding, these two concepts are not the same) . . . “If Kierkegaard were on Facebook or could post a You Tube video, he would certainly complain that we, who have listened to Prozac, have become deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair.”  Read more here.

I sure you’ve all heard about the “seven stages of grief.”   Hmm, what if this is wrong?   “The idea that grief is work that we must do began with Freud. … [But grief] is not work, and it doesn’t occur in stages. It can be short-lived for some people and never-ending for others. Like breathing and consciousness and almost everything else about us, grief fluctuates.”  Read more here.

por Alberto

Viernes 13 y Kierkegaard, una bonita conjunción.

Interesados avisad rapidamente a Alberto.