I am going to be pretty generous to hypocrisy and hypocrites in this post, so the rhythm that I hear as I begin comes from Tom Lehrer's song, "Smut." He introduces the song by saying something like, "The next topic I want to treat this evening is smut. I'm for it." So..."hypocrisy: I'm for it"
As a general matter, hypocrisy is pretending that you are better than you are. That doesn't seem so bad. I have probably had more recent experience with dating than any other old man you know, so let me tell you that dating involves all the effort necessary to appear better than you are. You need to look interested when you are not, for instance, and exchange the normal social compliments because ignoring those social requirements would be rude. I know that isn't really what people mean when they use hypocrisy, but really, how is it different?
Most rationalization involves putting a more positive construction on your actions than impartial analysis would grant. A generally mediocre effort at something is modified by "I did what I could" and "it wasn't really my responsibility" and even "you know, sometimes these things just happen." None of those highlight the careless job you did. All of them make you look better than you really are. Are these really hypocrisy?
Most of the charges of hypocrisy I hear have to do with religion and politics. Religious people try to make themselves seem more religious than they are. Of course, what "religious" means will vary by the religion. Even within Christianity, you want to seem more outraged by an event than your really are in a social action church, more profoundly spiritual in a pietist church, and engaging in more daring forms of "outreach," in an evangelistic church.
Politicians are supposed to have the public good in mind and if they seem not to have the public good in mind, they will lose their next election. But if they actually have the public good too much in mind, they will be disciplined by party leaders in Congress who like the public good, but demand party loyalty; or by the lobbyists who will finance their campaigns, but only if the public good leans significantly toward their own private good; or by the voters of the district, who love the public good, but really need increased defense spending in the district for the jobs it will bring. So...in presenting himself or herself as one who is interested in "the public good," is this representative engaging in hypocrisy? I don't see why not.
The hypocrites we like best are those whose hypocrisy is so flagrant it doesn't raise these more subtle questions. We like a moralistic governor who pushes laws against human trafficking and then gets caught in them. We like senators who are prominently anti-gay, but are gay themselves and get caught at it by their constituents. We like conservative praisers of "the family" whose own families are catastrophically bad.
But treating hypocrisy the way we do is really cherry picking. We say we oppose hypocrisy, when we oppose only the forms of it we can afford to oppose. It hardly seems worth our time. It might be easier just to say that by and large, hypocrisy helps people seem better than they are and most of the time, we are better off because of it.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Obama's Waterloo
Waterloo. Munich. Katrina. 9/11.
There's no chance, I suppose, that this Obama moment has actually never happened before and that the analogies we use are so crude that they are of little use or so ideologically loaded that they blow up in your hands.
Maybe it's all about power. Or maybe about comfort. Or maybe about competence. We just don't like the feeling that we don't know what is going on or what will happen as a result. To call an action President Obama takes his "Munich" is not to explore the meaning of the action, but to damn it by historical analogy. If the use of analogies is supposed to give us the sense that we understand what is going on, I suppose there is no getting away from them. The sense that we understand what is going on is much prized.
That means that my first proposal for defusing the use of historical analogies won't help us much. I was going to say that choosing an obscure battle in an obscure war as the crucial analogy might work. The long version would be "The meaning of this event is like the meaning of the Battle of Gloenkloof for the Boers." The everyday form would be, "This is Obama's Gloenkloof."
I admit there are a lot of battles to choose from, battles that only historians specializing in that period would have heard of, but I like this one because I like saying Gloenkloof. Try it yourself. Don't hold back.
My second proposal is to choose a historical analogy that goes in the direction you want it to go (criterion 1) and that has enough historical similarity to keep it from being dismissed out of hand (criterion 2).
It is the Gulf oil crisis that is generating the most demand for historical analogies at the moment. The least imaginative one I have heard is that "BP-gate" is "Obama's Katrina." OK. The President needs to be careful not to say "Hell of a job, Brownie" or to have his picture taken in a flyover at 10,000 feet. But what else does it offer?
Thomas Friedman, who thinks the administration should never let a crisis go to waste and who follows that advice as a columnist, wants to call it Obama's 9/11. Certainly there is some point in that. Friedman wants Obama to base on this event a huge and broadly supported reform agenda against oil dependency. Not a "war on oil" but a "crusade for independence." Nice idea, but President Bush didn't have to face down a huge pro-terrorist corps of lobbyists to get the PATRIOT Act passed.
It will not surprise you that I have an analogy in mind myself. I choose the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. President Carter's commitment to getting the hostages back safely meant that he could not plan a "rescue" that would get them all killed. (He did get them all back, by the way, and is still proud of that.) That means he was limited to the public display of the powerlessness of his office--to his own powerlessness.
It turns out that is unacceptable. For all that our schoolchildren learn about "co-equal branches" and "checks and balances" and all that, when we get into really distressing circumstances, we want HIM to "do something about it." We don't care all that much what. What we know is that we have a right not to be afraid and that it is the President's job to keep us from being afraid. Or discouraged.
From the standpoint of political psychology, this is the principal function of the presidency. It is the service most prized by the people. It is the failure they find least forgivable. The voters shrugged, more or less, at President Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky and they kept on shrugging as more and more titillating versions were marketed. Clinton's bad judgment adjacent to the Oval Office didn't make them feel fearful.
But Obama holds the most powerful office in the world. An oil disaster of unprecedented scale is upon us. And the President is doing....what? He's visiting the Gulf coast for photo ops. He's making speeches. He even lapsed into an uncharacteristic vulgarity, hoping to show how upset he is about all this. Nothing works. BP has or has access to the best petro-disaster experts in the world. They are doing everything they can, now that we have a disaster to work with. These are the people Obama would hire if he took control of the crisis away from BP and ran the capping and diversion operations from Washington D. C.
There's really nothing he can do. It's his hostage crisis and he's the hostage. He is failing in the most basic popular demand that he do whatever is necessary to "fix things" or pay the consequences at the polls. His helplessness can't be spun. It can't be replaced by any story over which the President has personal control. It's like being put in the stocks, for the derision of passers-by.
So that's my choice analogy. It doesn't offer any advice, but it gives some direction to hand-wringers.
There's no chance, I suppose, that this Obama moment has actually never happened before and that the analogies we use are so crude that they are of little use or so ideologically loaded that they blow up in your hands.
Maybe it's all about power. Or maybe about comfort. Or maybe about competence. We just don't like the feeling that we don't know what is going on or what will happen as a result. To call an action President Obama takes his "Munich" is not to explore the meaning of the action, but to damn it by historical analogy. If the use of analogies is supposed to give us the sense that we understand what is going on, I suppose there is no getting away from them. The sense that we understand what is going on is much prized.
That means that my first proposal for defusing the use of historical analogies won't help us much. I was going to say that choosing an obscure battle in an obscure war as the crucial analogy might work. The long version would be "The meaning of this event is like the meaning of the Battle of Gloenkloof for the Boers." The everyday form would be, "This is Obama's Gloenkloof."
I admit there are a lot of battles to choose from, battles that only historians specializing in that period would have heard of, but I like this one because I like saying Gloenkloof. Try it yourself. Don't hold back.
My second proposal is to choose a historical analogy that goes in the direction you want it to go (criterion 1) and that has enough historical similarity to keep it from being dismissed out of hand (criterion 2).
It is the Gulf oil crisis that is generating the most demand for historical analogies at the moment. The least imaginative one I have heard is that "BP-gate" is "Obama's Katrina." OK. The President needs to be careful not to say "Hell of a job, Brownie" or to have his picture taken in a flyover at 10,000 feet. But what else does it offer?
Thomas Friedman, who thinks the administration should never let a crisis go to waste and who follows that advice as a columnist, wants to call it Obama's 9/11. Certainly there is some point in that. Friedman wants Obama to base on this event a huge and broadly supported reform agenda against oil dependency. Not a "war on oil" but a "crusade for independence." Nice idea, but President Bush didn't have to face down a huge pro-terrorist corps of lobbyists to get the PATRIOT Act passed.
It will not surprise you that I have an analogy in mind myself. I choose the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. President Carter's commitment to getting the hostages back safely meant that he could not plan a "rescue" that would get them all killed. (He did get them all back, by the way, and is still proud of that.) That means he was limited to the public display of the powerlessness of his office--to his own powerlessness.
It turns out that is unacceptable. For all that our schoolchildren learn about "co-equal branches" and "checks and balances" and all that, when we get into really distressing circumstances, we want HIM to "do something about it." We don't care all that much what. What we know is that we have a right not to be afraid and that it is the President's job to keep us from being afraid. Or discouraged.
From the standpoint of political psychology, this is the principal function of the presidency. It is the service most prized by the people. It is the failure they find least forgivable. The voters shrugged, more or less, at President Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky and they kept on shrugging as more and more titillating versions were marketed. Clinton's bad judgment adjacent to the Oval Office didn't make them feel fearful.
But Obama holds the most powerful office in the world. An oil disaster of unprecedented scale is upon us. And the President is doing....what? He's visiting the Gulf coast for photo ops. He's making speeches. He even lapsed into an uncharacteristic vulgarity, hoping to show how upset he is about all this. Nothing works. BP has or has access to the best petro-disaster experts in the world. They are doing everything they can, now that we have a disaster to work with. These are the people Obama would hire if he took control of the crisis away from BP and ran the capping and diversion operations from Washington D. C.
There's really nothing he can do. It's his hostage crisis and he's the hostage. He is failing in the most basic popular demand that he do whatever is necessary to "fix things" or pay the consequences at the polls. His helplessness can't be spun. It can't be replaced by any story over which the President has personal control. It's like being put in the stocks, for the derision of passers-by.
So that's my choice analogy. It doesn't offer any advice, but it gives some direction to hand-wringers.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Going to sleep
I'm not thinking of this as a metaphor for anything. Getting to sleep is a really interesting theoretical problem for me and a very practical problem as well. Anyone who can clarify the theory or share things that worked for you is encouraged to jump in.
The theoretical problem is that I so associate effort with success. You formulate a goal and you collect the resources and build whatever networks are necessary and you act so as to achieve the goal and monitor progress and take whatever modified paths are indicated. And all that. It's just a style, really. But just describing it shows how poorly adapted it is to getting to sleep.
All of you, probably, have had trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. You know how unhelpful "trying really hard to get to sleep" is. For one thing, since you are trying so hard, you are also monitoring. "Am I sleepier now? Am I closer to the goal?" And if there is some reason why you really really need a good night's sleep on a particular night, then the cost of not getting the sleep would be high. So to the monitoring, you add the anticipatory anxiety. "Oh, no! I'll doze off during the job interview! I'll go to sleep on that long stretch of driving!"
So here's what I'm trying now and have been for the last few years. I minimize the consequences; I experience the breathing; I count. It works as well as it works. I'm still thinking about it.
The first one is a little bit of sleight of hand. I try to focus on "resting" rather than "sleeping." I think there really is something to it. I have (rarely) had the experience of resting peacefully for most of a night and actually sleeping very little and feeling rested the next day. So, experientially, it isn't really nonsense. On the other hand, composing myself to rest is something I can do if I am clear about it and don't make it stressful. Going to sleep because I really want to is beyond me.
Counting makes it all seem doable to me. I breathe to the count of sixteen, for reasons that are deeply idiosyncratic and probably beside the point. Part of that is just having a number. I know I can count to sixteen, giving the number on the exhalation. If I lose track within one of the fours, I have to go back to the beginning that that four. One night it took me nearly an hour to breath with conscious awareness from five to eight. But many more times, I get up somewhere between eight and twelve and drift off.
Another part of the counting gimmick is I can say something like, "I'll do this twice, and if I'm not making any progress, I'll get up and read. Then' I'll come back and try it again." That's a little bit of sleight of hand too, I think. When I'm trying to count and breathe and relax, the question comes, "What if it doesn't work?" The approach I described says, essentially, "It's not that big a deal. If it doesn't work, you go read a little and come back and try again." Making it "not a big deal," of course, makes me less anxious and sleep more likely.
I've made the breathing the most intricate part of the whole process. How I wish there were words for the feelings in inhaling and exhaling! I feel very constricted, sometimes, when I begin. It is as if the expansion of the lungs was pushing against a wall, like trying to blow up a balloon inside a box. Even in that case, there are different feelings that go with the different stages of inhaling. But when I am more relaxed and my lungs expand freely and then settle back gratefully to rest, there are many more stages.
I've never tried to describe this before. It's starting to sound a little weird to me On the best nights, though, I treat those feelings more as if they are what I want to experience. I like the feelings themselves. They are not just as markers on a journey that matters only when you get to the destination. They are not purely instrumental, in other words.
And finally, the numbers. Breaking the sixteen into fours has helped me associate different feelings with each number. The fact that the end of the long exhalation at two is halfway to four, when I declare a mini-victory, means that the end of two feels like something in particular. And it feels that way night to night because it is an artifact of the counting, not of the breathing. Thirteen is the first breath on the very last phase. In any case, each number is coming to have a "feel" associated with it and the more that is true in my experience, the more something else matters to me apart from just "getting to sleep"...and...the more likely I am to get to sleep.
Or to rest well.
Does any of this sound familiar?
The theoretical problem is that I so associate effort with success. You formulate a goal and you collect the resources and build whatever networks are necessary and you act so as to achieve the goal and monitor progress and take whatever modified paths are indicated. And all that. It's just a style, really. But just describing it shows how poorly adapted it is to getting to sleep.
All of you, probably, have had trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. You know how unhelpful "trying really hard to get to sleep" is. For one thing, since you are trying so hard, you are also monitoring. "Am I sleepier now? Am I closer to the goal?" And if there is some reason why you really really need a good night's sleep on a particular night, then the cost of not getting the sleep would be high. So to the monitoring, you add the anticipatory anxiety. "Oh, no! I'll doze off during the job interview! I'll go to sleep on that long stretch of driving!"
So here's what I'm trying now and have been for the last few years. I minimize the consequences; I experience the breathing; I count. It works as well as it works. I'm still thinking about it.
The first one is a little bit of sleight of hand. I try to focus on "resting" rather than "sleeping." I think there really is something to it. I have (rarely) had the experience of resting peacefully for most of a night and actually sleeping very little and feeling rested the next day. So, experientially, it isn't really nonsense. On the other hand, composing myself to rest is something I can do if I am clear about it and don't make it stressful. Going to sleep because I really want to is beyond me.
Counting makes it all seem doable to me. I breathe to the count of sixteen, for reasons that are deeply idiosyncratic and probably beside the point. Part of that is just having a number. I know I can count to sixteen, giving the number on the exhalation. If I lose track within one of the fours, I have to go back to the beginning that that four. One night it took me nearly an hour to breath with conscious awareness from five to eight. But many more times, I get up somewhere between eight and twelve and drift off.
Another part of the counting gimmick is I can say something like, "I'll do this twice, and if I'm not making any progress, I'll get up and read. Then' I'll come back and try it again." That's a little bit of sleight of hand too, I think. When I'm trying to count and breathe and relax, the question comes, "What if it doesn't work?" The approach I described says, essentially, "It's not that big a deal. If it doesn't work, you go read a little and come back and try again." Making it "not a big deal," of course, makes me less anxious and sleep more likely.
I've made the breathing the most intricate part of the whole process. How I wish there were words for the feelings in inhaling and exhaling! I feel very constricted, sometimes, when I begin. It is as if the expansion of the lungs was pushing against a wall, like trying to blow up a balloon inside a box. Even in that case, there are different feelings that go with the different stages of inhaling. But when I am more relaxed and my lungs expand freely and then settle back gratefully to rest, there are many more stages.
I've never tried to describe this before. It's starting to sound a little weird to me On the best nights, though, I treat those feelings more as if they are what I want to experience. I like the feelings themselves. They are not just as markers on a journey that matters only when you get to the destination. They are not purely instrumental, in other words.
And finally, the numbers. Breaking the sixteen into fours has helped me associate different feelings with each number. The fact that the end of the long exhalation at two is halfway to four, when I declare a mini-victory, means that the end of two feels like something in particular. And it feels that way night to night because it is an artifact of the counting, not of the breathing. Thirteen is the first breath on the very last phase. In any case, each number is coming to have a "feel" associated with it and the more that is true in my experience, the more something else matters to me apart from just "getting to sleep"...and...the more likely I am to get to sleep.
Or to rest well.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Friday, June 25, 2010
Reading Deep: It's not always the right thing to do
I began this blog with a reflection on reading deep as a way I have learned to approach a text (sometimes). But having spent a fair amount of time in grad schools as well, I know how to look at a book or article, decide what its structure is and then blow through it efficiently. The reminder that comes with this story is that “efficiently” isn’t always the right value and it doesn’t always relate just to the text.
Very soon after I met Bette, she showed me a book she was interest in. It was Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. It didn’t look like too tough a book to me, so I asked to see it. I looked at the structure and saw that his one idea was contained in the first chapter (there are “five languages of love” and that he dealt with those languages at a rate of one per chapter. So I spent a few minutes, my new lady friend of only a few weeks was looking over my shoulder, and got the ideas in Chapter 1. Then I turned the pages over as fast as I comfortably could. just verifying that they said what I was pretty sure they were going to say. They did.
So I sat back and expounded to Bette what was in this book. She was impressed, but she wasn’t pleased. It took me a day or so to figure out why. I had treated lightly a book that was about something that mattered to her. I didn’t even notice. I was busy showing off.
Then I did something I am still proud of. I asked to borrow the book for a few days and I gave it a really thorough reading. We still use that book, although I think it means more to me than it does to Bette. The way Chapman defines “languages” is a little soft; almost arbitrary. But
the point he has in mind is that if you are trying to communicate to your wife, it is probably a good idea to use the language she understands best.
This is Bette in front of her favorite bookstore in The Dalles, Oregon, by the way.
To tell you the truth, I’d be more likely to choose the language I was most fluent in. Wouldn’t you? The five are: 1) words of affirmation, 2) quality time, 3) receiving gifts, 4) acts of service, and 5) physical touch. “Words of affirmation’ comes easiest to me and it is my own favorite—it is the language I always hear best. “Acts of service” is Bette’s favorite. I was very very surprised. But the fact is, when I want to tell her how important to me she is and how very much I cherish her, “doing things for her” is the way I can say that so that she will hear it best.
In Chapman’s five chapters of explication, there is not a single surprising episode. but if you read them all, carefully, you will have acquired a lot of little clues about how best to say the things that matter most.
I still like efficient reading. But if I had to choose between that and emphasizing a valuable and affirming common interest between my wife and me…I think efficiency can find its own way home.
Very soon after I met Bette, she showed me a book she was interest in. It was Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. It didn’t look like too tough a book to me, so I asked to see it. I looked at the structure and saw that his one idea was contained in the first chapter (there are “five languages of love” and that he dealt with those languages at a rate of one per chapter. So I spent a few minutes, my new lady friend of only a few weeks was looking over my shoulder, and got the ideas in Chapter 1. Then I turned the pages over as fast as I comfortably could. just verifying that they said what I was pretty sure they were going to say. They did.
So I sat back and expounded to Bette what was in this book. She was impressed, but she wasn’t pleased. It took me a day or so to figure out why. I had treated lightly a book that was about something that mattered to her. I didn’t even notice. I was busy showing off.
Then I did something I am still proud of. I asked to borrow the book for a few days and I gave it a really thorough reading. We still use that book, although I think it means more to me than it does to Bette. The way Chapman defines “languages” is a little soft; almost arbitrary. But
the point he has in mind is that if you are trying to communicate to your wife, it is probably a good idea to use the language she understands best.This is Bette in front of her favorite bookstore in The Dalles, Oregon, by the way.
To tell you the truth, I’d be more likely to choose the language I was most fluent in. Wouldn’t you? The five are: 1) words of affirmation, 2) quality time, 3) receiving gifts, 4) acts of service, and 5) physical touch. “Words of affirmation’ comes easiest to me and it is my own favorite—it is the language I always hear best. “Acts of service” is Bette’s favorite. I was very very surprised. But the fact is, when I want to tell her how important to me she is and how very much I cherish her, “doing things for her” is the way I can say that so that she will hear it best.
In Chapman’s five chapters of explication, there is not a single surprising episode. but if you read them all, carefully, you will have acquired a lot of little clues about how best to say the things that matter most.
I still like efficient reading. But if I had to choose between that and emphasizing a valuable and affirming common interest between my wife and me…I think efficiency can find its own way home.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A Nice Dilemma We Have Here
I began to be attracted to dilemma when I was an undergraduate at Wheaton and got to sing as part of the jury in a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial By Jury. "A nice dilemma we have here," sing the principals, "which calls for all our wit." It was mostly a nostalgic memory for me. Then, in 1974, Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was published. It contained some very practical advice for people facing dilemmas.
"What Phaedrus had been presented with by the faculty of the English Department of Montana State College was an ancient logical construct known as a dilemma. A dilemma, which is Greek for "two premises," has been likened to the front end of an angry and charging bull.
If he accepted the premise that Quality was objective, he was impaled on one horn of the dilemma. If he accepted the other premise, that Quality was subjective, he was impaled on the other horn. Either Quality is objective or subjective, therefore he was impaled no matter how he answered.
Phaedrus, however, because of his training in logic, was aware that every dilemma affords not two but three classic refutations, and he also knew of a few that weren't so classic, so he smiled back. He could take the left horn and refute the idea that objectivity implied scientific detectability. Or, he could take the right horn, and refute the idea that subjectivity implies "anything you like." Or he could go between the horns and deny that subjectivity and objectivity are the only choices. You may be sure he tested out all three. In addition to these three classical logical refutations there are some illogical, "rhetorical" ones. Phaedrus, being a rhetorician, had these available too.
One may throw sand in the bull’s eyes. He had already done this with his statement that lack of knowledge of what Quality is constitutes incompetence.
One may attempt to sing the bull to sleep. Phaedrus could have told his questioners that the answer to this dilemma was beyond his humble powers of solution, but the fact that he couldn't find an answer was no logical proof that an answer couldn't be found.
A third rhetorical alternative to the dilemma, and the best one in my opinion, was to refuse to enter the arena. Phaedrus could simply have said, "The attempt to classify Quality as subjective or objective is an attempt to define it. I have already said it is undefinable," and left it at that."
I had just finished writing my dissertation at the time and was still very much attracted to the idea that you didn't always have to choose the horn on the left or the horn on the right. It also struck me for the first time when I read this passage that lemma meant something. Whoodathunkit?
So what kind of dilemma does a dilettante have? Since dilettante is defined, etymologically, as I do it, by what the person delights in, it doesn't sound too bad. Still, just as there are events you attend to on the basis of skills you attend from--more about both terms in a moment--there is the dilemma of what to pay attention to. If these are not the "horns" of a dilemma, they are...oh...the cushions.
I am hoping only to introduce in this post how it is that a dilettante would necessarily have dilemmas, so I will touch these two ideas, illustrate each, and send the post on its way. I think of "attending from" and "attending to" as a physical matter and as a cognitive matter. For those who are interested in the ideas themselves, the best short account is probably Michael Polanyi's marvellous little book, The Tacit Dimension.
Physically, I take all the infrastructure of hitting a baseball for granted so that I can attend to the ball itself. I attend FROM my stance in the box and my grip on the bat and the weight of the bat, et cetera, TO the ball. The dilemma is that you can't attend to both. Nothing works then. You have to attend TO the one FROM the other. And all is well if the infrastructure is stable and effective. It it isn't, you have to pay attention to it. Is my stance too wide? But then you are attending TO something you really need to be attending FROM if you are actually going to hit the ball. Batting slumps and other disasters ensue.
Cognitively, I assume certain things so I can attend to others. I assume that the behavior of public actors of all sorts, politicians for instance, is self-interested. To be fair, "self-interest" is a good thing and it may be minimal, as in staving off electoral disaster, or maximal, as in milking every situation for its maximum benefit to ME. Attending FROM this assumption, this lemma, I can observe acutely and accurately, the behavior of whatever public actors interest me. Should I be forced to doubt my assumption, to attend TO it--maybe there are kinds of instances or kinds of persons where this lemma does not hold-- rather than FROM it, the whole regime of observations goes awry and I fall into an "inference slump," which is like the batting slump, but harder to find and fix.
Even people like me who are spontaneously attracted to the delights of his own life face this dilemma. If you take real satisfaction in understanding what you are doing--that has been a prominent part of my life since the age of four--you have a source of satisfaction that is rich and extensive. But if you take pleasure in the events themselves, in the experience of them as opposed to the understanding of them, you find yourself facing the attending TO v. attending FROM dilemma.
I really suspect that my life would be richest and most satisfying if I attended sometimes TO and sometimes FROM, but that mealy-mouthed bit of advice is useful only if you know which is which, or rather when is when, and I confess that I do not. At least, I don't all the time.
A nice dilemma I have here.
"What Phaedrus had been presented with by the faculty of the English Department of Montana State College was an ancient logical construct known as a dilemma. A dilemma, which is Greek for "two premises," has been likened to the front end of an angry and charging bull.
If he accepted the premise that Quality was objective, he was impaled on one horn of the dilemma. If he accepted the other premise, that Quality was subjective, he was impaled on the other horn. Either Quality is objective or subjective, therefore he was impaled no matter how he answered.
Phaedrus, however, because of his training in logic, was aware that every dilemma affords not two but three classic refutations, and he also knew of a few that weren't so classic, so he smiled back. He could take the left horn and refute the idea that objectivity implied scientific detectability. Or, he could take the right horn, and refute the idea that subjectivity implies "anything you like." Or he could go between the horns and deny that subjectivity and objectivity are the only choices. You may be sure he tested out all three. In addition to these three classical logical refutations there are some illogical, "rhetorical" ones. Phaedrus, being a rhetorician, had these available too.
One may throw sand in the bull’s eyes. He had already done this with his statement that lack of knowledge of what Quality is constitutes incompetence.
One may attempt to sing the bull to sleep. Phaedrus could have told his questioners that the answer to this dilemma was beyond his humble powers of solution, but the fact that he couldn't find an answer was no logical proof that an answer couldn't be found.
A third rhetorical alternative to the dilemma, and the best one in my opinion, was to refuse to enter the arena. Phaedrus could simply have said, "The attempt to classify Quality as subjective or objective is an attempt to define it. I have already said it is undefinable," and left it at that."
I had just finished writing my dissertation at the time and was still very much attracted to the idea that you didn't always have to choose the horn on the left or the horn on the right. It also struck me for the first time when I read this passage that lemma meant something. Whoodathunkit?
So what kind of dilemma does a dilettante have? Since dilettante is defined, etymologically, as I do it, by what the person delights in, it doesn't sound too bad. Still, just as there are events you attend to on the basis of skills you attend from--more about both terms in a moment--there is the dilemma of what to pay attention to. If these are not the "horns" of a dilemma, they are...oh...the cushions.
I am hoping only to introduce in this post how it is that a dilettante would necessarily have dilemmas, so I will touch these two ideas, illustrate each, and send the post on its way. I think of "attending from" and "attending to" as a physical matter and as a cognitive matter. For those who are interested in the ideas themselves, the best short account is probably Michael Polanyi's marvellous little book, The Tacit Dimension.
Physically, I take all the infrastructure of hitting a baseball for granted so that I can attend to the ball itself. I attend FROM my stance in the box and my grip on the bat and the weight of the bat, et cetera, TO the ball. The dilemma is that you can't attend to both. Nothing works then. You have to attend TO the one FROM the other. And all is well if the infrastructure is stable and effective. It it isn't, you have to pay attention to it. Is my stance too wide? But then you are attending TO something you really need to be attending FROM if you are actually going to hit the ball. Batting slumps and other disasters ensue.
Cognitively, I assume certain things so I can attend to others. I assume that the behavior of public actors of all sorts, politicians for instance, is self-interested. To be fair, "self-interest" is a good thing and it may be minimal, as in staving off electoral disaster, or maximal, as in milking every situation for its maximum benefit to ME. Attending FROM this assumption, this lemma, I can observe acutely and accurately, the behavior of whatever public actors interest me. Should I be forced to doubt my assumption, to attend TO it--maybe there are kinds of instances or kinds of persons where this lemma does not hold-- rather than FROM it, the whole regime of observations goes awry and I fall into an "inference slump," which is like the batting slump, but harder to find and fix.
Even people like me who are spontaneously attracted to the delights of his own life face this dilemma. If you take real satisfaction in understanding what you are doing--that has been a prominent part of my life since the age of four--you have a source of satisfaction that is rich and extensive. But if you take pleasure in the events themselves, in the experience of them as opposed to the understanding of them, you find yourself facing the attending TO v. attending FROM dilemma.
I really suspect that my life would be richest and most satisfying if I attended sometimes TO and sometimes FROM, but that mealy-mouthed bit of advice is useful only if you know which is which, or rather when is when, and I confess that I do not. At least, I don't all the time.
A nice dilemma I have here.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The Framers gave us a West Coast offense
I’ve spent some time today looking over the CBS/New York Times poll and things aren’t looking all that good. I really like reading the detailed poll results. For those who don’t like it so much, here’s a summary. "Things are going the wrong direction and no one has both the ability and the willingness to do anything about it. We’ll do anything to help provided it doesn’t cost anything." There. I just saved you a bunch of time
If you don’t oppose public opinion surveys on principle, here are the results that interest me the most and might interest you. The New York Times provides a hyperlink to the full survey.
Q. Can Congress handle the challenge A. Are you kidding?
Do you approve of the way Congress is handling its job?
Approve 19%, Disapprove 70%
Do you think “most members of Congress” have done a good enough job to deserve re-election or do you think it’s time to give new people a chance?
Deserve 14%. New People 73%
Note: “most members of Congress” will be returned to office as usual.
Q. How about Barack Obama? Nice guy but isn’t up to the challenge.
Plan for creating Jobs, No 55% to Yes 35%
Plan for new energy No 39% to Yes 48%
Plan for oil spill No 64% to Yes 30%
Good job as Pres. Yes 47% to No 43%
Note: Approval rating were in the 60s until June ‘09, in the 50s until January ’10 and in the 40s, with two bumps up into the 50s, since February ’10.
Is Barack Obama a good guy
Qualities of Leadership Yes 62% to No 35%
Cares about people like me Yes 68% to No 31%
Note: I got those by combining cares a lot with cares some and combining not much with not at all. You might say 68% to 31% isn’t bad, but in February of last year it was 83% to 8%.
Q. Maybe the oil companies can to the job. A. They can’t be trusted. Even the feds are better and they aren’t doing what they could be doing.
How much to you trust the oil companies to act in the best interest of the public?
A lot + some =26%, Not much and None at all 74%
Who do you trust to manage this oil spill?
Do you approve of the way BP is handling the oil spill? Yes 13%, No 79%
Are they doing all they could? Yes 15%, No 81%
Obama administration doing all they could? Yes 28%, No 67%
Trust BP or federal government BP 27% Feds 56%
Let’s see. The country’s going the wrong direction say 60% to 32% of the people and no one has a clue what to do about it. The businesses don’t really want to help and the government doesn’t know how. Let’s take one more try.
Q. Are you ready to think big on energy? A. Sure, as long as we don’t have to pay for it.
Does U. S. energy policy need a complete change? Most people, 58% said yes to that. Rebuild a major part of it, 31%; minor changes would be enough 6%, So, compare how important it is to protect the environment v. developing new energy. Environment 29%, New Energy Sources 49%--and, in all fairness—Both 20%.
So how about paying for the development of those new sources by an increased tax on gas? Favor = 45%, Oppose = 51%.
Let’s say a n added dollar of federal tax to support new sources—this would be what columnist Thomas Friedman calls “a patriot tax.” Favor =32%, Oppose = 65%.
Well, how about 50 cents? Favor = 19%, Oppose = 48%
Do you thin that sometime in the next 25 years, the U. S. will develop an alternative to oil. Very likely = 24%, Somewhat likely = 35%, Not too = 17%, Not at all = 9%
And this is just the oil spill. This isn’t regaining American dominance in industry and trade. It isn’t replacing the old industrial era jobs with spiffy new green economy jobs. It isn’t cutting entitlements like Social Security and increasing the public funding of them at the same time. It isn’t controlling the annual deficit, much less beginning to shrink the national debt.
And this guy has been in office a year and a half already! What’s he been doing?
President Obama is not the problem BP is not the problem. Here’s the problem. The Framers , all from the East Coast, built us a government with a West Coast offense in mind. A three step drop and throw the ball on a timing pattern. We still do that pretty well. Conservatives probe weaknesses in the left side of the defense; liberals do the same on the right side. You can make small gains that way.
But controlling entitlement spending and reinvigorating the economy and replacing our tattered infrastructure aren’t things you can do with a three step drop. If you are willing to see the time the public gives its chosen leaders to solve its chosen problems as the same as the time a quarterback has to get rid of the ball, you can see why the Framers were such fans of the West Coast offense. They were pretty sure that no one, maybe George Washington, would have an offensive line that would allow him to look down the field and hit the big one. Controlling federal spending is a big one. It will take a politically insulated non-partisan commission with the power to hurt people or a bipartisan commission that neither party can withdraw from and which has the power to hurt people.
Either of those could hold off the pass rush long enough for a gifted quarterback to score a lot of points. Neither is remotely likely in the present partisan environment where there are no long term allies and all the leaders are predators of opportunity.
So we are committed to dinking and dunking, as they call it. We can make some first downs that way, but we can’t score the points we need and the clock is winding down. We look at the clock and we see that we need some big plays. Then we look at the pass rush and we’re still dinking and dunking when the clock runs out.
We’re going to have to find a way to elect someone and give him or her the time and the resources to formulate and execute an ambitious and excruciatingly painful plan. I don’t see it.
If you don’t oppose public opinion surveys on principle, here are the results that interest me the most and might interest you. The New York Times provides a hyperlink to the full survey.
Q. Can Congress handle the challenge A. Are you kidding?
Do you approve of the way Congress is handling its job?
Approve 19%, Disapprove 70%
Do you think “most members of Congress” have done a good enough job to deserve re-election or do you think it’s time to give new people a chance?
Deserve 14%. New People 73%
Note: “most members of Congress” will be returned to office as usual.
Q. How about Barack Obama? Nice guy but isn’t up to the challenge.
Plan for creating Jobs, No 55% to Yes 35%
Plan for new energy No 39% to Yes 48%
Plan for oil spill No 64% to Yes 30%
Good job as Pres. Yes 47% to No 43%
Note: Approval rating were in the 60s until June ‘09, in the 50s until January ’10 and in the 40s, with two bumps up into the 50s, since February ’10.
Is Barack Obama a good guy
Qualities of Leadership Yes 62% to No 35%
Cares about people like me Yes 68% to No 31%
Note: I got those by combining cares a lot with cares some and combining not much with not at all. You might say 68% to 31% isn’t bad, but in February of last year it was 83% to 8%.
Q. Maybe the oil companies can to the job. A. They can’t be trusted. Even the feds are better and they aren’t doing what they could be doing.
How much to you trust the oil companies to act in the best interest of the public?
A lot + some =26%, Not much and None at all 74%
Who do you trust to manage this oil spill?
Do you approve of the way BP is handling the oil spill? Yes 13%, No 79%
Are they doing all they could? Yes 15%, No 81%
Obama administration doing all they could? Yes 28%, No 67%
Trust BP or federal government BP 27% Feds 56%
Let’s see. The country’s going the wrong direction say 60% to 32% of the people and no one has a clue what to do about it. The businesses don’t really want to help and the government doesn’t know how. Let’s take one more try.
Q. Are you ready to think big on energy? A. Sure, as long as we don’t have to pay for it.
Does U. S. energy policy need a complete change? Most people, 58% said yes to that. Rebuild a major part of it, 31%; minor changes would be enough 6%, So, compare how important it is to protect the environment v. developing new energy. Environment 29%, New Energy Sources 49%--and, in all fairness—Both 20%.
So how about paying for the development of those new sources by an increased tax on gas? Favor = 45%, Oppose = 51%.
Let’s say a n added dollar of federal tax to support new sources—this would be what columnist Thomas Friedman calls “a patriot tax.” Favor =32%, Oppose = 65%.
Well, how about 50 cents? Favor = 19%, Oppose = 48%
Do you thin that sometime in the next 25 years, the U. S. will develop an alternative to oil. Very likely = 24%, Somewhat likely = 35%, Not too = 17%, Not at all = 9%
And this is just the oil spill. This isn’t regaining American dominance in industry and trade. It isn’t replacing the old industrial era jobs with spiffy new green economy jobs. It isn’t cutting entitlements like Social Security and increasing the public funding of them at the same time. It isn’t controlling the annual deficit, much less beginning to shrink the national debt.
And this guy has been in office a year and a half already! What’s he been doing?
President Obama is not the problem BP is not the problem. Here’s the problem. The Framers , all from the East Coast, built us a government with a West Coast offense in mind. A three step drop and throw the ball on a timing pattern. We still do that pretty well. Conservatives probe weaknesses in the left side of the defense; liberals do the same on the right side. You can make small gains that way.
But controlling entitlement spending and reinvigorating the economy and replacing our tattered infrastructure aren’t things you can do with a three step drop. If you are willing to see the time the public gives its chosen leaders to solve its chosen problems as the same as the time a quarterback has to get rid of the ball, you can see why the Framers were such fans of the West Coast offense. They were pretty sure that no one, maybe George Washington, would have an offensive line that would allow him to look down the field and hit the big one. Controlling federal spending is a big one. It will take a politically insulated non-partisan commission with the power to hurt people or a bipartisan commission that neither party can withdraw from and which has the power to hurt people.
Either of those could hold off the pass rush long enough for a gifted quarterback to score a lot of points. Neither is remotely likely in the present partisan environment where there are no long term allies and all the leaders are predators of opportunity.
So we are committed to dinking and dunking, as they call it. We can make some first downs that way, but we can’t score the points we need and the clock is winding down. We look at the clock and we see that we need some big plays. Then we look at the pass rush and we’re still dinking and dunking when the clock runs out.
We’re going to have to find a way to elect someone and give him or her the time and the resources to formulate and execute an ambitious and excruciatingly painful plan. I don’t see it.
Faith Seeking Understanding
“Faith seeking understanding.”[1] What a puzzle. But first a little throat-clearing. This seems to me a long post. It seemed to me a short to medium “essay,” but as I put it in the blog, it seems long. At the moment, there are 2171 words. I tried to break it up into several posts, but they are connected and I don’t want to start serializing like Charles Dikkens (the well-known Dutch author, thank you Monty Python).
So here is the idea. There are three parts. In the first, I tell the story of how I learned to hear the low trumpet/flugelhorn part in the march, The British Eighth. In the second, I identify the two relevant parts of that experience as “faith” and “understanding.” In the third part, I illustrate just how sticky that relationship between the two can be and end with a passing note on what the church is for. I thought if I said where this journey goes and pointed out that there are, in fact, rest stops along the way, that fewer of you would simply sign out and wait for a shorter one. The episodes can serve you as rest stops. That's how they served me.
Second throat-clearing. It’s hard to get really accurate about The British Eighth without distracting myself and all of you from the point I am trying to make. That’s why I didn’t embed a hyperlinked recording or paste in the first six measures of the score. So some of the “facts” about this march are just invented as a convenience. Is D the first relevant tone? Does the run end at D#? I don’t really know. Just call the music part “fiction” and I’ll get on with the story.
So. Where was I. Oh yes.
“Faith seeking understanding.” What a puzzle! And no prominent role at all for knowledge.
Today, I would like to tell you a story that has provided the context for most of my thinking about this in the last year. It isn’t, except by analogy, about religious faith, but it does set trust and experience dramatically at odds with each other and I want to tell you, it is not a comfortable experience.
Episode 1: The British Eighth March
Marilyn and I both played musical instruments. She was a virtuoso and I was good enough not to get myself thrown out any of the several bands I played in. But we had both played a lot of marches. A lot of marches. We took it upon ourselves, sometime back in the late 1990s to figure out what was going on in the first six bars of the march, “The British Eighth.” We had the Ohio State band’s recording of it to work with.
We listened to it over and over and couldn’t make it work. The trumpets doodle a little, (two measures)drop an octave, and they work back to half a tone higher than when they started (four measures) and they do it in eight notes. Let’s say that the ru begins on the D above middle C, drops an octave to the next lower D, then crawls back up: D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D. Oops. That’s my eight notes. That’s all I get and I’m not at E yet.
It’s a very common band phrase: flutes and clarinets do it all the time, which might by why Marilyn and I were so sure we were hearing what we knew what we were hearing.. This time it’s trumpets, or possibly, since it’s the Ohio State Band, flugelhorns. Two very experienced musicians who couldn’t account for what we were both hearing. Eventually we gave up.
Episode 2: Cold Case
Sometime within the last year, I decided enough was enough. This was a mystery that really shouldn’t be allowed to linger, so I took it on in a “Cold Case” spirit. I went to one of the most talented musicians I know, our church’s organist and choirmaster, Jon Stuber. We put the Ohio State disk in his player and he followed the trumpet line on his keyboard. It didn’t work. He could tell what the pitches were, but he couldn’t get back to D# in eight notes.
So he called in our mutual friend, Ann van Bever, who is, among other things, the best oboist I know. Jon explained our dilemma to her. It starts here and drops an octave and gets backto D# in eight notes. She listened to it once. She said to Jon, “What do the trumpets do?” He repeated it. We listened again. “No,” she said, “They don’t do that.”
She said that as an oboist, she had played a lot of marches and had learned how to hear them. I remembered at that point that I had gone first to a church organist. What they actually do, she said, is drop to the low D, then drop further to C, then make the run up to thefinal D#. Jon said, “OK, let’s listen to it again.” I said, “No, it can’t be.”
So we listened to it twice more. Not the dozens of time Marilyn and I had listened to it. Yup. We all heard it the same way. D, then C, then the run, ending where it was supposed to end. In just eight tones. I went home a bemused and happy man.
It almost goes without saying that I put that disk in the CD player on the way home, mostly in celebration of a problem resolved at last. I wasn’t much of a celebration. I heard it just the way I had always heard it. I “heard it,” that is to say, in a way that is not really what they were actually playing. And by that time, I , I knew they were not playing it that way.
The solution, in any case, was straightforward. I played that track every time I got into the car for several days. I instructed my mind to hear it in the way I knew it was, despite my continuing to hear it the way it wasn’t. Hearing it truly flickered for a little while; now on, now off. Then it stopped flickering. Itcame on and stayed on. I actually heard it the way it actually was. And, if I am careful, I still hear it that way. And eventually, I won’t even have to be careful.
Episode 3: And your point is…..?
Remember that this is a reflection on faith seeking understanding. The people I have been reading and listening to recently have been pushing for a notion of faith that has more the flavor of trust. I am attracted by it; I am trying it out. I have someone who says the music goes like this when my own experience tells me it goes like that. On the other hand, my experience is ineffective. It doesn’t solve the problem I know I have. That’s the dilemma.
What I could do is to trust Ann. I could, in language I am more familiar with, “have faith in Ann.” That means that I refuse to do, in this case, what I do in virtually every other situation in my life, which is to bring the views of another person to the bar of my own experience and see how it fits. In this case, I would be rejecting my own experience and trusting someone else. But what the heck, right? It’s just a piece of music, right?
Let’s imagine the same dilemma in another form. I visit my parents-in-laws. I’ve had three complete sets of parents-in-law, so I can use this example without pointing the finger at anyone. My father-in-law hates me. He is belligerent and aggressive and sarcastic. Not so, says my wife (three of those too, of course) in this unspecified example, “He is a shy man and he is intimidated by you. He isn’t really being mean; he is just trying to get comfortable with you. Just respond in a friendly way and all well be well. Eventually.”
. “Faith seeking understanding” might have stuck you as a little abstract. The father-in-law who is so obnoxious is not abstract. I know what he is doing and I know why. I tell myself that I have experienced both the “what” and the “why” even though some academic part of my brain knows that you can’t really experience “why.” That means I also know what the effect will be of my playing nice with him. It is three more days of being his piñata. I don’t think so. That is Lemma ! of the di-lemma.
Or, I could trust—I could have faith in— my wife. That is Lemma 2 of the di-lemma. I could privilege her experience and her understanding. I could try to hear in her father’s manner what she is hearing rather than what I am hearing.. I could discipline my own experience so that it reproduces in my own mind, what her experience is. I could, to refer back to the British Eighth, “try to hear what Ann is hearing.”
Episode 4: Finally. Faith Seeking Understanding
Which brings to the last two points, the first of which offers a more conventional example (religious) of faith seeking understanding and the second of which speculates about what the church is for.
Many times, when I was young, I stood in church beside my father and listened to him repeat the parts of the Apostles’ Creed he agreed with. He would have said, “those parts he understood,” but he was a gentle man. I heard the Creed go on then off then on as if Dad had a loose wire. What does it mean to say that we believe Jesus “descended into hell.” Or in the confession based on Philippians 2: that every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Under the earth? The sound came on; then it went off.
Dad had his own reasons and chose well from the options available to him. But the options we are considering today were not available to him. Dad’s cosmology made “under the earth” a silly thing to say. Dad’s Christology made “descended into hell” incomprehensible. To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t know what “the church” had meant by saying those things across the centuries: all those scholars and mothers and mechanics. He had his way of looking at the world to guide him. He would have called it his integrity. He felt that if he gave that up, he would be giving up everything.
Now you see why I started with the trivial example of The British Eighth. It gets harder. Giving up the way Marilyn and I heard the flugelhorns was something I could do. More specifically:
*I could withdraw my consent from the way I heard it.
*I could decide that I was hearing it in error, even as I continued to hear it that way.
*(Having faith in Ann made a new choice possible for me. )
*I could believe that reality was the way she heard it; not the way I heard it.
*I could not only withdraw my consent from the way I was hearing it, but I could give my consent to the way she heard it. And,
*I could do that, could give my consent, even when I couldn’t hear it that way myself..
So how does faith seek understanding. Well, I could, in the same way:
*withdraw my consent from the objections I have learned to make to the creeds.
* I could give my consent to another way of hearing the creeds, even if I am not at the moment able to hear them that way.
*I can tell myself what I believe (what I am trusting) the truth to be and instruct myself to see it that way. Even for the British Eighth, it didn’t happen right away. But I kept trying to hear the truth and eventually, I did.
The last light touch is on the question of what the church is for. In the example I have been playing with, Jon and Ann and I are “the church.” We are listening to the same music. Jon and Ann are “the church” for me. As I stand there with them, knowing what they are hearing, I can hear it. But I am new at hearing that and very experienced in hearing something else. So when I go home and put the CD on, I can’t hear it. I have lost my sense of what they are hearing. I’m not denying it. I’m still remembering what we all heard. But by myself, I can’t really hear it..
That worked for Jon and me because we had faith in Ann. Can I have faith in “the church?” Are there things that all Christians though all the ages have said to be so? Have they come, after years of work, to experience on their own the reality they have trusted? Is that what the church is really for? I have no idea. It does seems worth asking, though, doesn’t it?
[1] Augustine. Also Anselm. I am reminded of it every time my copy of The Christian Century comes in the mail.
So here is the idea. There are three parts. In the first, I tell the story of how I learned to hear the low trumpet/flugelhorn part in the march, The British Eighth. In the second, I identify the two relevant parts of that experience as “faith” and “understanding.” In the third part, I illustrate just how sticky that relationship between the two can be and end with a passing note on what the church is for. I thought if I said where this journey goes and pointed out that there are, in fact, rest stops along the way, that fewer of you would simply sign out and wait for a shorter one. The episodes can serve you as rest stops. That's how they served me.
Second throat-clearing. It’s hard to get really accurate about The British Eighth without distracting myself and all of you from the point I am trying to make. That’s why I didn’t embed a hyperlinked recording or paste in the first six measures of the score. So some of the “facts” about this march are just invented as a convenience. Is D the first relevant tone? Does the run end at D#? I don’t really know. Just call the music part “fiction” and I’ll get on with the story.
So. Where was I. Oh yes.
“Faith seeking understanding.” What a puzzle! And no prominent role at all for knowledge.
Today, I would like to tell you a story that has provided the context for most of my thinking about this in the last year. It isn’t, except by analogy, about religious faith, but it does set trust and experience dramatically at odds with each other and I want to tell you, it is not a comfortable experience.
Episode 1: The British Eighth March
Marilyn and I both played musical instruments. She was a virtuoso and I was good enough not to get myself thrown out any of the several bands I played in. But we had both played a lot of marches. A lot of marches. We took it upon ourselves, sometime back in the late 1990s to figure out what was going on in the first six bars of the march, “The British Eighth.” We had the Ohio State band’s recording of it to work with.
We listened to it over and over and couldn’t make it work. The trumpets doodle a little, (two measures)drop an octave, and they work back to half a tone higher than when they started (four measures) and they do it in eight notes. Let’s say that the ru begins on the D above middle C, drops an octave to the next lower D, then crawls back up: D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D. Oops. That’s my eight notes. That’s all I get and I’m not at E yet.
It’s a very common band phrase: flutes and clarinets do it all the time, which might by why Marilyn and I were so sure we were hearing what we knew what we were hearing.. This time it’s trumpets, or possibly, since it’s the Ohio State Band, flugelhorns. Two very experienced musicians who couldn’t account for what we were both hearing. Eventually we gave up.
Episode 2: Cold Case
Sometime within the last year, I decided enough was enough. This was a mystery that really shouldn’t be allowed to linger, so I took it on in a “Cold Case” spirit. I went to one of the most talented musicians I know, our church’s organist and choirmaster, Jon Stuber. We put the Ohio State disk in his player and he followed the trumpet line on his keyboard. It didn’t work. He could tell what the pitches were, but he couldn’t get back to D# in eight notes.
So he called in our mutual friend, Ann van Bever, who is, among other things, the best oboist I know. Jon explained our dilemma to her. It starts here and drops an octave and gets backto D# in eight notes. She listened to it once. She said to Jon, “What do the trumpets do?” He repeated it. We listened again. “No,” she said, “They don’t do that.”
She said that as an oboist, she had played a lot of marches and had learned how to hear them. I remembered at that point that I had gone first to a church organist. What they actually do, she said, is drop to the low D, then drop further to C, then make the run up to thefinal D#. Jon said, “OK, let’s listen to it again.” I said, “No, it can’t be.”
So we listened to it twice more. Not the dozens of time Marilyn and I had listened to it. Yup. We all heard it the same way. D, then C, then the run, ending where it was supposed to end. In just eight tones. I went home a bemused and happy man.
It almost goes without saying that I put that disk in the CD player on the way home, mostly in celebration of a problem resolved at last. I wasn’t much of a celebration. I heard it just the way I had always heard it. I “heard it,” that is to say, in a way that is not really what they were actually playing. And by that time, I , I knew they were not playing it that way.
The solution, in any case, was straightforward. I played that track every time I got into the car for several days. I instructed my mind to hear it in the way I knew it was, despite my continuing to hear it the way it wasn’t. Hearing it truly flickered for a little while; now on, now off. Then it stopped flickering. Itcame on and stayed on. I actually heard it the way it actually was. And, if I am careful, I still hear it that way. And eventually, I won’t even have to be careful.
Episode 3: And your point is…..?
Remember that this is a reflection on faith seeking understanding. The people I have been reading and listening to recently have been pushing for a notion of faith that has more the flavor of trust. I am attracted by it; I am trying it out. I have someone who says the music goes like this when my own experience tells me it goes like that. On the other hand, my experience is ineffective. It doesn’t solve the problem I know I have. That’s the dilemma.
What I could do is to trust Ann. I could, in language I am more familiar with, “have faith in Ann.” That means that I refuse to do, in this case, what I do in virtually every other situation in my life, which is to bring the views of another person to the bar of my own experience and see how it fits. In this case, I would be rejecting my own experience and trusting someone else. But what the heck, right? It’s just a piece of music, right?
Let’s imagine the same dilemma in another form. I visit my parents-in-laws. I’ve had three complete sets of parents-in-law, so I can use this example without pointing the finger at anyone. My father-in-law hates me. He is belligerent and aggressive and sarcastic. Not so, says my wife (three of those too, of course) in this unspecified example, “He is a shy man and he is intimidated by you. He isn’t really being mean; he is just trying to get comfortable with you. Just respond in a friendly way and all well be well. Eventually.”
. “Faith seeking understanding” might have stuck you as a little abstract. The father-in-law who is so obnoxious is not abstract. I know what he is doing and I know why. I tell myself that I have experienced both the “what” and the “why” even though some academic part of my brain knows that you can’t really experience “why.” That means I also know what the effect will be of my playing nice with him. It is three more days of being his piñata. I don’t think so. That is Lemma ! of the di-lemma.
Or, I could trust—I could have faith in— my wife. That is Lemma 2 of the di-lemma. I could privilege her experience and her understanding. I could try to hear in her father’s manner what she is hearing rather than what I am hearing.. I could discipline my own experience so that it reproduces in my own mind, what her experience is. I could, to refer back to the British Eighth, “try to hear what Ann is hearing.”
Episode 4: Finally. Faith Seeking Understanding
Which brings to the last two points, the first of which offers a more conventional example (religious) of faith seeking understanding and the second of which speculates about what the church is for.
Many times, when I was young, I stood in church beside my father and listened to him repeat the parts of the Apostles’ Creed he agreed with. He would have said, “those parts he understood,” but he was a gentle man. I heard the Creed go on then off then on as if Dad had a loose wire. What does it mean to say that we believe Jesus “descended into hell.” Or in the confession based on Philippians 2: that every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Under the earth? The sound came on; then it went off.
Dad had his own reasons and chose well from the options available to him. But the options we are considering today were not available to him. Dad’s cosmology made “under the earth” a silly thing to say. Dad’s Christology made “descended into hell” incomprehensible. To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t know what “the church” had meant by saying those things across the centuries: all those scholars and mothers and mechanics. He had his way of looking at the world to guide him. He would have called it his integrity. He felt that if he gave that up, he would be giving up everything.
Now you see why I started with the trivial example of The British Eighth. It gets harder. Giving up the way Marilyn and I heard the flugelhorns was something I could do. More specifically:
*I could withdraw my consent from the way I heard it.
*I could decide that I was hearing it in error, even as I continued to hear it that way.
*(Having faith in Ann made a new choice possible for me. )
*I could believe that reality was the way she heard it; not the way I heard it.
*I could not only withdraw my consent from the way I was hearing it, but I could give my consent to the way she heard it. And,
*I could do that, could give my consent, even when I couldn’t hear it that way myself..
So how does faith seek understanding. Well, I could, in the same way:
*withdraw my consent from the objections I have learned to make to the creeds.
* I could give my consent to another way of hearing the creeds, even if I am not at the moment able to hear them that way.
*I can tell myself what I believe (what I am trusting) the truth to be and instruct myself to see it that way. Even for the British Eighth, it didn’t happen right away. But I kept trying to hear the truth and eventually, I did.
The last light touch is on the question of what the church is for. In the example I have been playing with, Jon and Ann and I are “the church.” We are listening to the same music. Jon and Ann are “the church” for me. As I stand there with them, knowing what they are hearing, I can hear it. But I am new at hearing that and very experienced in hearing something else. So when I go home and put the CD on, I can’t hear it. I have lost my sense of what they are hearing. I’m not denying it. I’m still remembering what we all heard. But by myself, I can’t really hear it..
That worked for Jon and me because we had faith in Ann. Can I have faith in “the church?” Are there things that all Christians though all the ages have said to be so? Have they come, after years of work, to experience on their own the reality they have trusted? Is that what the church is really for? I have no idea. It does seems worth asking, though, doesn’t it?
[1] Augustine. Also Anselm. I am reminded of it every time my copy of The Christian Century comes in the mail.
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