Radio Beloved

I’ve been reading Don Quijote (en castellano; hyperlinked books are the versions I’ve read) for about two years now. Pretty good, considering that it’s the first book outside the Book of Mormon that I’ve read in Spanish (since I’ve started it I’ve read some others).

A dominant theme of Cervantes’ masterpiece is the disconnect between idealism and realism. Don Quijote believes completely in his fantasy, to the point of facilitating others’ willfull deception of him. The hidalgo is not loyal to reality, he’s only loyal to his notion of it, whether or not they are consistent with his sensuous, phenomenal experience. Because of this, he ends up disillusioned and even somewhat embittered–but whose fault is it? It raises an interesting question, phrased by Roger Waters as the choice between “a walk-on part in the war [and] a lead role in a cage.”

Don Quijote is sincere in his efforts, but he is fundamentally incorrect, both in his approach to the world and his interpretation of it. His will to believe in knight-errantry leads him into situations quite as ridiculous as the metaphysical acrobatics in which those who believe in doubt engage.

The trick is to be both sincere and correct. The basis of approaching Truth is to approach it without preconceptions (impossible) and with complete willingness to accept the ramifications (unlikely).

Do you begin from what you know (risking starting from the conclusion) or do you reduce completely in the Cartesian sense (risking abandonment on the lone rocky outcropping of skepticism)? How do you ensure that your mental framework(s) of belief is (are) both logically self-consistent and externally consistent? Is that possible in a pluralistic world?

Personally, I’m something of a fideist when it comes down to it. I’m not antirational–reason can validate your experience and guide your path, but it is not the basis of it. There are always certain facets of your existence which you know, deep down inside, to be true; experiences you’ve had which have come to define your essence. It is possible to radically reinterpret those experiences, but not to discard them without be inauthentic to yourself.

All this brings me to my next point: David Hume and skepticism. Hume masterfully asserted (among other things) the complete unreliability of eyewitness accounts which narrate fantastic stories and religious miracles. The fatal flaw in his assumptions (and he would have been a good engineer; he always states them) is that he always assumes that you yourself, the rational being to whom Hume appeals, have had the same or substantially similar phenomenal existence that he has had. I’m not talking here about the validity of Biblical or other ancient miracles, I’m not talking about their consistency with holy writ or each other or what we perceive the nature and will of God to be; I’m talking about personal, subjective, experiential perception, yours and mine. Differences in subjective perception aside, have you ever experienced something which you consider quite unlikely to be explained by rational, reductivist means? I know that I certainly have, and although I believe that God works within physical processes and laws (regardless to our empirical understanding thereof), I know that he often effects circumstances we would recognize as frankly preternatural if we weren’t continually trying to apply post-Enlightenment reason to break them down into mechanistic terms (with mixed results). Oftentimes we can succeed in identifying the physical devices God uses, but fail to examine motivations; similarly, we attribute too much to chance and too little to Providential benevolence.

Doubt is a temporary state, not a perpetual one. It is inherently negative, because it creates nothing but only takes. (Read Kierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus for more details). It is a useful tool, but not an end. The will to believe is more powerful, and speaks to our innermost desires. For instance, our brains are pattern-detecting machines. The brain thrives on symbols and patterns, because it is looking for information and truth. In large part, how effective it is at constructing the framework is due to what we put into it. The mind wants to believe, and it will believe in doubt as firmly as it will in faith. In any case, any event, whether dubbed miraculous or not, is subject to continuing reinterpretation over the lifetime ensuing.

I am not convinced that reason can ever constitute the firm foundation of experience and interpretation, but only the exposition and development thereof. Most of our day-to-day lives are constructed on faith, and I’m not talking about the specious example of the sun rising every day or electromagnetics continuing to be true. We have faith in human goodness (or badness), faith in God or fortune or the absolute lack of both, faith that there is something called me which thinks these thoughts, and faith that there are no Cartesian demons invalidating all external sensuous perception.

I’m reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, in which he outlines the modes and nature of human thought and perception and judgment. What we generally mean when we refer to reason is the a priori (first principles) analysis he puts forth in that volume. But although the interior worldview we synthesize is a conglomerate constructed by reason (his unity of apperception), it does not mean that every element thereof is strictly rational. It just means that the pencil we used to connect the dots was reason–but the same is true of imagination. (The irony of using reason to understand reason does not escape me.)

So on what can we ultimately build? That’s not a question I’m prepared to fully answer (and may never be, in this mortal sphere), but we can build on the experiential truths we’ve acquired over the years. Many things need to be questioned, but a few do not. For instance, I have absolute faith in the physical and metaphysical reality of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, though I am far from understanding it or even its absolute necessity or mechanism. I have absolute faith in the capacity of the Holy Ghost to communicate itself directly to the heart and mind, without intervening sensuous phenomena. Those are starting points for exploring the universe, and certainly more stable than the fragile point I call ego.

The question is: What can reason do that faith cannot?

I just ran across a site that crystallized some thoughts which have been floating around in my head for a while. It’s an article on time usage, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, discussing the disgusting amount of collective useful time we burn in this world every single day. Go read it, and see if it doesn’t change your perspective just a little bit.

I’ve been considering the utility of my time lately; you can see some evidence of that in my last post, the thoughts on self-improvement and the application of the Atonement in our lives. What books we could read, what books we could write, what languages we could learn, what dreams we could realize, if we were just willing to reach forward and turn off the television. I’ve started turning off the power strip for the TV (even before I read this article), so it takes enough effort to watch television that I don’t do it unless I’m determined. In other terms, if it takes less effort to pick up Wuthering Heights than it does to walk over to the TV, turn it on, and find the remote, I’ll be reading a lot more Brontë.

While I don’t agree with Clay Shirky’s conclusion that we need to spend more time in social networking media, I do believe that how we utilize our own cognitive surplus will be something we’ll be held accountable for, before our family, our society, and our God.

Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;

For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.

–D&C 58:27-28

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (KJV)

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (NIV)

I came, that they have life, and have more plenteously. (Wycliffe)

Ego veni ut vitam habeant et abundantius habeant. (Vulgate)

–John 10:10

Christ delivered this teaching to the disciples and Pharisees in the last months of his life, recorded in the Gospel of John directed to the disciples familiar with the introductory teachings of the Church already. As Jesus built his ministry to the crescendo of Gethsemane and Golgotha, he continually reaffirmed the cosmic significance of the doctrines he taught–and doctrine is too weak a word. This is the symbolic end of every lamb on every Levitical altar and the real end of the real Lamb on the Golgothan altar.

What is it to have life and to have it more abundantly?

Death is separation, whether from God, from others, or from ultimately one’s own potential. Freedom from death is through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, freedom to have no elements of death in your life–but freedom is burdened by choice.

I wonder what it was like in that moment in our early childhood when we first understood death. At some point, we all experience the icy realization that I, too, will die. Yet we have been taught continually to not fear death, but accept it as part of our natural mortality, a return to a spiritual plane. Finitude, the Heideggerian certainty of impending end, should not be a challenge to the believing Christian with more than a casual faith–there is no impending end, except to progress and glory, should we allow sin in. The universal gift is, of course, the Resurrection, but that only covers part of the question of death.

The first spiritual death, separation from God, is possibly the most fundamental neurosis we can have, and I believe that recognition of this death, whether overtly religious or atheistic, is what led to the modern notions of alienation and existentialism. God is separate from us by an infinite qualitative distinction (Kierkegaard’s phrase), a complete difference of kind and degree, and the separation is an unbridgeable gap by finite means. Thus, an infinite Atonement (Alma 34:10) was necessary and sufficient to reconcile that divide–that this corruption might put on incorruption (2 Nephi 9:7).

Alienation from each other is another great divide of human existence, and our common lot. Condemned, as Kierkegaard said, to know others only in potential, we struggle through miscommunication and mistrust, largely products of our own selfishness, to construct our fragile relationships. But the Atonement, literally (Tyndale’s word) at-one-ment, is to bring us all of one heart and one mind, Zion, to seal us together in love and charity. The division and argument common to us are elements of spiritual death, and preclude us from living life more abundantly. Christ taught a higher way, and through continual application of the Atonement we can approximate it better and better over the years of personal striving.

We all look in the mirror and see someone who is less than what we would have them be. Life more abundantly certainly precludes any sense of failure or inadequacy (beyond humility–but that’s another topic). And yet we so often insist on maintaining the elements of death, physical and spiritual, in our lives. Why? What hammer drives the relentless march of our own self-destruction, whether from cigarettes, pornography, or just momentum in inactivity? In some ways, I feel that this is the most difficult part of death to approach, not because it is somehow deeper than the others, but because it is the one we face every moment of every day. Our own inadequacy confronts us at every turn; we can throw up walls of pride to hold it apart, but it is still there, leering at us through windows and mirrors.

In Sartrean existentialism, bad faith, or inauthenticity to one’s own self, reveals an answer to this problem. Although I won’t here discuss one’s own self (which I take to mean that self God desires us to be and sees in us), I will examine inauthenticity. The individual insists that external circumstances (poverty, athleticism, social standing, education) dictate the terms of his or her existence, thus denying the personal freedom to change. We pretend that the possibilities of existence, good and bad, are closed to us, with one or two overriding exceptions (normally continuing in the same vein in which we already are). Alternatively, we use internal or social definitions of self (labels such as Christian, stubborn, sloppy, or liberal) to dictate our response, choosing to act according to the archetype of the label rather than to act authentically to one’s own desires. In the case of Christian, Muslim, or Latter-day Saint, this choice may be considered virtuous; in many, many other cases, the choice is self-limiting and enclosing, perpetuating the elements of death rather than purging them.

Yet recognition of this problem is not solution: it takes more than “hard work”, concentration, or even redemption to become more than what we were. It takes the rest of the Atonement, quickening and exaltation, beyond “re”-anything.

Jesus Christ came to free us from death, to life more abundant. The truest, deepest fear of the believer, the one with a more-than-casual faith, is not death but damnation–the complete, unequivocal, eternal cessation of progress. A more complicated aspect of death and life-more-abundant is Paul’s reminder that we must pass through death to approach life, crucifying the old man of sin (Romans 6:6); but that is a discussion for another time.

God’s life, eternal life, the infinitely qualitatively distinct life, is a life free from death, a life in which all gifts are life to the degree we will let Him bestow it. He took it upon Himself in order to free us from it, and invites us continually to leave it behind–to become, rather than merely be, a son or daughter of God.