Our national elections are no longer about which person is most qualifed to lead or which candidate’s policies will work best in our pluralistic but unified nation.
Increasingly, our elections are referendums to determine whose worldview defines our national identity, and consequently which of us are real Americans and which of us are imposters who wish to degrade or pervert it.
Perception can miss a reality because of darkness, blindness, distraction, hiddenness, or remoteness.
Understanding can also miss a reality because of darkness, blindness, distraction, obscurity, or remoteness.
Liberal democratic institutions stand on a foundation of liberal democratic popular philosophies. The liberal democratic philosophical foundation is sheltered by the liberal democratic institution built upon it. This structure is the home of liberal democratic life, the place that sustains the life of its inhabitants, but also a place maintained by them.
Intimacy is made possible by shared experience.
Some tangible forms of shared experience are: shared language, shared history, shared spaces, shared relationships, shared institutions, shared customs, shared beliefs.
Less tangible, but perhaps even more crucial forms of shared experience are: shared understandings, shared interpretations, shared tastes, shared expectations.
One of the finest ways to achieve these latter shared understandings is the supremely inter-revelatory act of reading together.
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In Torah Study, the personalities gathered in the room sparkle against the ground of the text. Insight by insight, the flat black sky deepens into limitless space as it fills up with stars.
When I say that some fact is “definitely true” it means that I cannot conceive how it could be otherwise. Sometimes, however, unexpectedly and shockingly infinity will demonstrate that reality is otherwise than how I thought, despite the fact that this event was inconceivable.
The very ground upon which things are defined shifts, relationships between thing and thing, each and everything are instantaneously renegotiated. Everything and every thing is somehow different while remaining the same. All this belongs to the phenomenon of paradigm shift.
But let’s for a moment turn away from the things and from everything, and look into that blind void from which this shock emerges, ex nihilo. Let’s stare into this scotoma, where nothing exists, but also where nothing is missing — because it is from here that metaphysics pours out fresh reality. It becomes visible only through shock of revelation.
It is from here, from this — from Whom? — that I relearn the difference between “everything” and “infinity”.
But however many times I am shifted and shocked, I remain finite, despite all appearances and temptations. But each time, my “everything” enlarges, becomes more flexible, grows more permeable, that is, if I can continue to want and to welcome God, dread and all.
Today “transfinition” seems the right word for this kind of event, where definitional fields shift, changing the meaning of everything as a whole and every thing in part, and implying the permanent possibility of other shifts. This keeps us aware of the radical difference between truth and reality, and gives us our closest approximation of understanding the meaning of infinity. We know infinity through transfinitition. We also believe in the reality of pluralism by way of transfinition.
Or so things seem to me, at this point in my ongoing history of shifts.
In theory, Yogi Berra should have said “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.” In practice, however, he did not say it.
Nobody is the person you think they are; they are the person they actually are. Only the latter is a being who can be loved. Emotion toward the former, however intense, however positive, is not love.
The root cause of today’s conflicts is what has been the root cause of conflict since the dawn of human existence: we do not know how to relate ourselves intellectually, practically or morally to that whom we are not. We do not understand metaphysical relation.
Because we do not understand metaphysical relation we do not know how to think metaphysics, and we make the dire category mistake of thinking about metaphysics. Because… how else do you think anything besides thinking about it? And with mistaking failure to answer for receiving an answer we are trapped in transitivity, like a chicken trapped behind a chalkline. We do not know how to know otherwise, so we know the only way we know how, and that way is utterly inadequate. We cannot step over this chalkline, so we stand with our backs to it and look in the other direction.
That is, we turn our backs on God.
That is, we succumb to fundamentalism, that miscarriage of religion that cannot imagine it is not the epitome of religion.
I am paraphrasing Levinas again.
Joseph Campbell’s advice to “follow your bliss” is to humans what the advice “chase your tail” would be to dogs.
It’s an enjoyable way to get active, get dizzy and get nowhere. And it’s advice that both species are eager to take, because it’s what they were naturally inclined to do, anyway. And isn’t that our favorite advice?
Micro-omniscience is knowing everything there is to know within a worldview with a frisbee-sized horizon.
ex. “There is no arguing with the micro-omniscience of a 23-year old libertarian.”
We use whatever concepts we have available to us to understand our experiences. When facing an unfamiliar situation, we intuitively choose a conceptualization that seems to fit in an attempt to make sense of it. And if the first pick fails to give us a handle on the situation, we might “try on” another — if one is available to us.
Having a larger conceptual repertoire gives us more options for understanding. It also raises our expectations with regard to conceptual fit. Perhaps most importantly, the practice of trying out different ways of conceiving subjects us to first-hand experience of contasting experiences of understanding, which produces the insight we conceptualize as pluralism: multiple approaches to understanding always exist, even though it seems only one truth is possible.
Inducing the pluralistic insight, and equipping citizens with a large repertoire of concepts for reaching understandings satisfactory to the greatest possible number of people is the most important function of education in a liberal-democratic society.
Those who make use of a limited set of concepts for understanding the world will be accustomed to making do with semi-adequate understandings. They lack all experience of pluralism: the world they experience is a mysterious and arbitrary world where thinking is barely relevant because it rarely does much good.
One strong argument for public education is ensuring children are taught by teachers who have a reasonably large conceptual repertoire to teach. You cannot give what you do not have. Or to put it differently “if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” — usually the ditch of fundamentalism.
Being offended offends less than giving offense. This can be seen as a kind desire to not cause others pain, or it can be seen as a narcissistic desire to be viewed as blameless.
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Long version:
A morally undeveloped boor who gives nothing but expects nothing from others can certainly be offensive, but be is not nearly as offensive as someone who gives but also expects things from others who cannot or will not give it. While former gives others no thought, the latter gives others unwanted thought, and that is worse.
Thaumatolatry – Worship or undue admiration of wonderful or miraculous things.
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My religiosity is non-thaumatolatrous. God, being infinite, is present in all kinds of mundane miracles, like generosity, scientific research and conversation. I don’t rule out apparently magical miracles — I just don’t think they are the right direction to point our worship. The craving or fixation on that which seems to defy the laws of nature show that we’ve failed to recognize (or sustain recognition of) the significance of reality’s pervasive transcendence.
Two irreconcilable forms of offense:
At the root of quantification is qualities, and behind the qualities is reality that transcends those qualities. When you look reality in the eye, it looks right back into your eyes regardless of whether you respect this reality as something that counts.
When people used to ask me what my religious beliefs were I gave a complicated answer: I have a Taoist metaphysic and a Judeo-Christian ethic.
Now, after taking six months of Judaism classes at a Reform synagogue, participating in Torah study, reading from Kabbalah and attending Kabbalah lectures, my answer is much simpler: My beliefs are Jewish.
I have found that Kabbalah contains the entirety of Taoist metaphysics as I understand it, and that Jewish ethics contains all of what I embraced in Christian ethics, excluding precisely those parts of Christianity I was never able to accept.
Now I have to put my Jewish beliefs into action and become Jewish so I can be recognized as Jewish by my fellow Jews. It happens to be a core Jewish belief that Jewish beliefs are only one part of being Jewish.
I have been taking classes for Jewish conversion. Our latest assignment is to write a paragraph describing what we think God wants from us, and another paragraph describing how this impacts how I live my life.
Here is what I have written so far:
What does God want from us? My best answer is based on the words of Yeshua from Nazareth, understood in a rigorously Jewish, non-idolatrous way: 1) Lovingly respect God with the entirety of one’s being — that is, pursue God’s infinitude with all our thinking/judging/doing humanity; 2) lovingly respect one’s neighbor as oneself; and 3) regard the loving respect of God and the loving respect of neighbor as practically identical, which means recognizing that most of our relationship with God transpires through our associations with our fellow humans. If we work to find mutual understanding and loving respect with our neighbors, taking seriously not only their agreeable aspects, but also those aspects which confuse us, offend us and expose us to anxiety, this effort deepens our relationship with God.
How does this impact my life? 1) It means my faith always points me beyond what I currently understand, feel and believe and past how I already live. (While my faith produces beliefs, actions and moral responses, and these are the only perceptible evidence of my faith, faith is not itself a sum of these things and must not be reduced to them, or faith loses its transcendent thrust.) 2) It means I have to be careful with how I interpret and respond to conflict and discomfort, because conflict can often be an opportunity to deepen my understanding and my active relationship with God and God’s creation (including other people). 3) But it also means being careful to maintain myself as a person capable of loving and respecting and acting. Maximum altruism is not automatically the right thing to do in every case. 4) No ethical formulas guarantee moral action. Every particular moment requires attention, listening, thought, judgment, struggle and response.
Whenever I try to read Levinas I have two reactions: first, an immediate relief in reading someone who shares my understanding; but second, a lingering anxiety that pervades and darkens every moment and detail of my life.
I have had to abandon books that were beyond my intellectual limits, but Levinas is the one author who pushes me over my moral limits.
You defy [my current] understanding. I cannot continue both to understand my world and to understand you. You do not fit inside my soul.
I am faced with the most fundamental choice. Will I break open my soul? or will I bury you in mother-of-pearl?