I searched for a ray of warmth,
I found glitter.
What does it conceal?
I am afraid of the glitter,
but will I ever find the ray I sought?
Out of this dark,
show me light. I have none else to ask.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Blunt Edge
Does the conscience regulate our actions or do actions silence or awaken the conscience?
It seems to work both ways. Take dietary habits, for example:
In his essay, "Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?", Leo Tolstoy examines the habit of consuming intoxicants, referring back to his own past experiences. It is easy enough to notice the ill-effects of the excessive use of intoxicants -- how narcotics or drink seem to give strength and courage to any act that requires the blunting of the conscience. But what about consumption of these in moderation?
Tolstoy appeals to our sense of self-honesty, our ability to get over the impulse to darken the conscience:
One is not living as conscience demands, yet lacks the strength to reshape one's life in accord with its demands. The diversions which might distract attention from the consciousness of this discord are insufficient, or have become stale, and so—in order to be able to live on, disregarding the indications conscience gives of the wrongness of their life—people (by poisoning it temporarily) stop the activity of the organ [the brain] through which conscience manifests itself, as a man by covering his eyes hides from himself what he does not wish to see.
We live with glaring contradictions within our personalities, choosing to supress the voice of the conscience by means of rationality, because the desire for comfort is overwhelming.
Tolstoy's conclusion is unambiguous:
[I]if the use of stupefiers in large occasional doses stifles man's conscience, their regular use must have a like effect (always first intensifying and then dulling the activity of the brain) whether they are taken in large or small doses.
This stance can obviously provoke many counter-arguments. Is the author's claim about small doses of intoxicants proved in fact? Tolstoy points out that to be honest to oneself, one has to observe the changes in one's life and one's choices at different points in time objectively, without zealously protecting one's insecure inner self that clings to the all-important 'freedom of identity'. Only then can true reason emerge:
Life does not accord with conscience, so conscience is made to bend to life.
This is done in the life of individuals, and it is done in the life of humanity as a whole, which consists of the lives of individuals.
To grasp the full significance of such stupefying of one's consciousness, let each one carefully recall the spiritual conditions he has passed through at each period of his life. Everyone will find that at each period of his life certain moral questions confronted him which he ought to solve, and on the solution of which the whole welfare of his life depended. For the solution of these questions great concentration of attention was needful. Such concentration of attention is a labor. In every labor, especially at the beginning, there is a time when the work seems difficult and painful, and when human weakness prompts a desire to abandon it.
Physical work seems painful at first; mental work still more so. As Lessing says: people are inclined to cease to think at the point at which thought begins to be difficult; but it is just there, I would add, that thinking begins to be fruitful.
A man feels that to decide the questions confronting him needs labor—often painful labor—and he wishes to evade this. If he had no means of stupefying his faculties he could not expel from his consciousness the questions that confront him, and the necessity of solving them would be forced upon him.
But man finds that there exists a means to drive off these questions whenever they present themselves—and he uses it.
As soon as the questions awaiting solution begin to torment him, he has recourse to these means, and avoids the disquietude evoked by the troublesome questions. Consciousness ceases to demand their solution, and the unsolved questions remain unsolved till his next period of enlightenment.
But when that period comes, the same thing is repeated, and the man goes on for months, years, or even for his whole life, standing before those same moral questions and not moving a step towards their solution. Yet it is in the solution of moral questions that life's whole movement consists.
What occurs is as if a man who needs to see to the bottom of some muddy water to obtain a precious pearl, but who dislikes entering the water, should stir it up each time it begins to settle and become clear. Many a man continues to stupefy himself all his life long, and remains immovable at the same once-accepted, obscure, self-contradictory view of life—pressing, as each period of enlightenment approaches, ever at one and the same wall against which he pressed ten or twenty years ago, and which he cannot break through because he intentionally blunts that sharp point of thought which alone could pierce it.
It seems to work both ways. Take dietary habits, for example:
In his essay, "Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?", Leo Tolstoy examines the habit of consuming intoxicants, referring back to his own past experiences. It is easy enough to notice the ill-effects of the excessive use of intoxicants -- how narcotics or drink seem to give strength and courage to any act that requires the blunting of the conscience. But what about consumption of these in moderation?
Tolstoy appeals to our sense of self-honesty, our ability to get over the impulse to darken the conscience:
One is not living as conscience demands, yet lacks the strength to reshape one's life in accord with its demands. The diversions which might distract attention from the consciousness of this discord are insufficient, or have become stale, and so—in order to be able to live on, disregarding the indications conscience gives of the wrongness of their life—people (by poisoning it temporarily) stop the activity of the organ [the brain] through which conscience manifests itself, as a man by covering his eyes hides from himself what he does not wish to see.
We live with glaring contradictions within our personalities, choosing to supress the voice of the conscience by means of rationality, because the desire for comfort is overwhelming.
Tolstoy's conclusion is unambiguous:
[I]if the use of stupefiers in large occasional doses stifles man's conscience, their regular use must have a like effect (always first intensifying and then dulling the activity of the brain) whether they are taken in large or small doses.
This stance can obviously provoke many counter-arguments. Is the author's claim about small doses of intoxicants proved in fact? Tolstoy points out that to be honest to oneself, one has to observe the changes in one's life and one's choices at different points in time objectively, without zealously protecting one's insecure inner self that clings to the all-important 'freedom of identity'. Only then can true reason emerge:
Life does not accord with conscience, so conscience is made to bend to life.
This is done in the life of individuals, and it is done in the life of humanity as a whole, which consists of the lives of individuals.
To grasp the full significance of such stupefying of one's consciousness, let each one carefully recall the spiritual conditions he has passed through at each period of his life. Everyone will find that at each period of his life certain moral questions confronted him which he ought to solve, and on the solution of which the whole welfare of his life depended. For the solution of these questions great concentration of attention was needful. Such concentration of attention is a labor. In every labor, especially at the beginning, there is a time when the work seems difficult and painful, and when human weakness prompts a desire to abandon it.
Physical work seems painful at first; mental work still more so. As Lessing says: people are inclined to cease to think at the point at which thought begins to be difficult; but it is just there, I would add, that thinking begins to be fruitful.
A man feels that to decide the questions confronting him needs labor—often painful labor—and he wishes to evade this. If he had no means of stupefying his faculties he could not expel from his consciousness the questions that confront him, and the necessity of solving them would be forced upon him.
But man finds that there exists a means to drive off these questions whenever they present themselves—and he uses it.
As soon as the questions awaiting solution begin to torment him, he has recourse to these means, and avoids the disquietude evoked by the troublesome questions. Consciousness ceases to demand their solution, and the unsolved questions remain unsolved till his next period of enlightenment.
But when that period comes, the same thing is repeated, and the man goes on for months, years, or even for his whole life, standing before those same moral questions and not moving a step towards their solution. Yet it is in the solution of moral questions that life's whole movement consists.
What occurs is as if a man who needs to see to the bottom of some muddy water to obtain a precious pearl, but who dislikes entering the water, should stir it up each time it begins to settle and become clear. Many a man continues to stupefy himself all his life long, and remains immovable at the same once-accepted, obscure, self-contradictory view of life—pressing, as each period of enlightenment approaches, ever at one and the same wall against which he pressed ten or twenty years ago, and which he cannot break through because he intentionally blunts that sharp point of thought which alone could pierce it.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
"It rides time like riding a river"
The Silence of Suffering
A discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Wreck of the Deutschland with references to the Holocaust, here.
Not out of His Bliss
Springs the stress felt
Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt—
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt—
But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss).
[Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland]
The ride through time is real enough, but are there any that can escape the "fable and miss"?
Elie Wiesel's Night came back to me today, with its pictures of a terrible suffering that challenges every human hope for meaning through all history, and even the remote possibility of lasting peace. It reminded me that the suffering I know directly will always be lengths shorter than this triumph of brutality. It also suggested that the worst might always be yet to come, and I cannot ask why or how.
A discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Wreck of the Deutschland with references to the Holocaust, here.
Not out of His Bliss
Springs the stress felt
Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt—
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt—
But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss).
[Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland]
The ride through time is real enough, but are there any that can escape the "fable and miss"?
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The need to trust
What is seen is not the Truth
What is cannot be said
Trust comes not without seeing
Nor understanding without words
-- Kabir
Caution, warns the wary instinct,
trust, says a need, deep as water.
Trust what, asks the desolate child --
trust comes with knowing,
how can I trust what I do not know?
But can I know if I do not trust?
"That music cannot be written",
says Kabir. I only want
to feel it in my veins.
What is cannot be said
Trust comes not without seeing
Nor understanding without words
-- Kabir
Caution, warns the wary instinct,
trust, says a need, deep as water.
Trust what, asks the desolate child --
trust comes with knowing,
how can I trust what I do not know?
But can I know if I do not trust?
"That music cannot be written",
says Kabir. I only want
to feel it in my veins.
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