Seamus Heaney

I was the sort of child who found more satisfying relationships in books than in real life, on the whole—and certainly more rewarding understandings of reality in books than in the social world I inhabited. I got vicarious satisfaction, for instance, from the power Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames had in their lives—how they were free to act out of their own understandings of the world.

As an adult I have received great pleasure and affirmation from the writer–reader relationship in poetry and from the depths and variations of perception and insight that poetry can make possible. Seamus Heaney was coming into his own as an internationally recognized poet just as I was initiating my own academic career in literature. I had the honest pleasure of meeting Heaney several times, once sitting next to him and conversing (as he later put it in his typically concrete way) “on the cusp of that formal horse-shoe bend at lunch.”¹

Seamus Heaney was an unpretentious man who lived in a very sensual world. His poetry is anchored in imagery and metaphor to a greater extent than for most poets. For Heaney, a “spirit level” (for instance) is not only the thing itself (what we call here a carpenter's level), but also the intangible concept the words evoke. I learned most of what I appreciate in metaphor from his poetry.

Heaney's poetry is mostly simple on the surface and very deep--comprehensible because anchored in the everyday images of this world, to which both poet and reader can respond sensually, via the five senses in the imagination. Simplicity in literature is mostly derided, especially in poetry, by academics. It is an achievement most poets and academics could never approach and thus dismiss.

But it gives hope to those who can accept it and see into it—hope that we tortured, bifurcated bags of flesh and bones and blood and brains can live with meaning, metaphorically, with our feet planted in the ground of our origins and our heads swaying in the passing winds of ideas. Seamus Heaney wrote two poems about the mythical character Antaeus², son of Gaia, who could not be killed as long as he maintained contact with his mother Earth, “cradled in the dark that wombed me / And nurtured in every artery / Like a small hillock.” It is only Hercules who can defeat Antaeus, Hercules who

. . . lifts his arms

in a remorseless V

. . . lifts and banks Antaeus

high as a profiled ridge,

a sleeping giant,

pap for the dispossessed.

I gather some hope from this ending, despite its apparent agony of loss for those of us who are not “sky-born and royal,” like Hercules, son of Zeus, nursed by Hera. Heaney specifies that despite Hercules' triumph, Antaeus is not dead but sleeping, thus revising the myth that has Hercules smother Antaeus by breaking his ribs while he is elevated.

I cannot help but feel that we are becoming the dispossessed, that we are dispossessing ourselves from our native, physical world. Like Heaney's Antaeus, though, I hope we are just sleeping and that we will escape one day the very powerful grasp of the abstract realm and understand the vital necessity of our relationship with the natural world—not only for our own continuance as a species in this world but also for our ability to see and share through metaphor the greater values and meanings that emanate from this world. It is our “pap” and always will be.

With the death of Seamus Heaney this past week, we have lost a spiritual companion, a truly alert and hopeful soul, who loved this awful, aweful world. Thankfully, we can still be nourished with his words.

1Personal letter.

2The first and third quotes to follow are from the poem “Antaeus,” the second from the poem “Hercules and Antaeus,” both from the volume North (1975).

Milosz on Metaphor

The New York Review of Books recently reprinted the Nobel Lecture of Czeslaw Milosz, which he presented in 1980 and the Review first published in 1981.¹ In reading it I found clear statements of what I have been trying to say about metaphor in this blog. I'd like to quote some passages from Milosz's lecture here, interpolated with some of my own developing thoughts on the importance of metaphorical thinking. Milosz's comments are presented in italics; my comments follow his in brackets.

“One of the Nobel laureates whom I read in childhood influenced to a large extent, I believe, my notions of poetry. That was Selma Lagerlof. Her Wonderful Adventures of Nils, a book I loved, places the hero in a double role. He is the one who flies above the earth and looks at it from above but at the same time sees it in every detail. This double vision may be a metaphor of the poet's vocation.”

[I would say this double role is not just “a metaphor” but the very action of metaphor, metaphorical thinking itself—seeing the forest and the trees at once.]

“And yet perhaps our most precious acquisition is . . . respect and gratitude for certain things which protect people from internal disintegration and from yielding to tyranny.

Precisely for that reason some ways of life, some institutions became a target for the fury of evil forces, above all the bonds between people that exist organically, as if by themselves, sustained by family, religion, neighborhood, common heritage. In other words, all that disorderly, illogical humanity so often branded as ridiculous because of its parochial attachments and loyalties.”

[Milosz is, of course, speaking here about the rise of the totalitarian state in Eastern Europe during and after World War II and the resistance of some of the people from within their more local senses of community. But what I particularly like in this statement is Milosz's use of the term “organic.” Totalitarian states function abstractly, assigning all to absolute categories, proclaiming such “truths” as all Jews are inferior, all religion is merely an opiate for the masses, etc. People often do prefer to think abstractly, probably because relating to others through feeling is more particular and messy and not as “safe.” It's quite possible to love one human being or several, but probably not possible to “love” humankind—at least, the two kinds of love are very different. The first is sensual and emotional, immediate; the second is just the opposite, a mental concept rather than a personal commitment. Even if we see a butterfly and look up what kind it is, we put that real insect that we had a brief relationship with into an abstract category. And the categories tend to drive our experience, so that we really don't expect to see a butterfly that does not fit into a neat category. And if one is discovered at some point, then we have to create a new category for it and look for others to fit into that category. Essentially, we deny individual reality, relationships in the moment, when we confront the world this way. And totalitarianism can anchor and build itself on this human tendency. So, as Milosz says, we need to respect and love what does not fit into categories so easily, that which has identity sui generis, organically, and does not need our categorizations to matter, to be noticed. Only such messy, ridiculous, parochial experiences can help us to recall that we are not just items in an abstract category that authorities can manipulate as they like—but individuals, with a unique presence in time and space, and so are all the other living things in this living world.]

“The exile of a poet is today a simple function of a relatively recent discovery: that whoever wields power is also able to control language and not only with the prohibitions of censorship but also by changing the meanings of words. . . . there is no reason why the state should not tolerate an activity that consists of creating 'experimental' poems and prose [what Milosz earlier terms 'theories of literature as ecriture'], if these are conceived of as autonomous systems of reference, enclosed within their own boundaries. Only if we assume that a poet constantly strives to liberate himself from borrowed styles in search of reality is he dangerous. In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. And, alas, a temptation to pronounce it, similar to an acute itching, becomes an obsession which doesn't allow one [poet] to think of anything else. That is why a poet chooses internal or external exile.”

[Note that when Milosz talks about the poet feeling compelled to speak the truth, he uses metaphors: a pistol shot and an acute itching. It is the poet, more than any other kind of artist, who feels compelled to keep language tied to actuality, to the raggedness of being alive, in order to protect us from the smooth abstractions that can lead to tyranny. And yet this compulsion feels threatening to others who want to live according to abstract categories (such as are readily available in politics and religion and, yes, even in academia), so that they do not themselves have to negotiate the reality of every moment²; thus, the pistol shot—and thus the danger of the poet, the truth-teller, to others. If the poet is to survive as an individual and go on writing, she very often must exile herself—internally, if not externally, as Milosz says. (The one thing that really irritates me about this essay is Milosz's constant use of “he” for the poet, even though he starts out with a reference to a female writer and fellow Nobel laureate.)]

“He [the Eastern European poet] feels anxiety, for he sees in this [media fictionalizing of the past, such as denial of the Holocaust] a foreboding of a not distant future when history will be reduced to what appears on television, while the truth, because it is too complicated, will be buried in the archives, if not totally annihilated.”

[Truth is complicated because reality cannot be contained in easy abstractions, as much as we want it to and try to make it do so. What is that saying, again?--Paradox is the only basket that can hold reality. Metaphor enables us to link the difficult, messy reality with the easy abstract idea. The concrete image, like scratching an itch, is something we can all relate to in our individual physical experience, while the abstract idea, compulsion, is only an idea. Metaphor ties ideas to reality. Without metaphorical thinking we are far too easily led by authority, because if we give up the concrete image that provokes our own physical, embodied understanding, we give up our own individuality and allow ourselves to become just part of an abstract category—and to see others as just part of an abstract category as well.]

Towards the end of his speech, Milosz mentions how one of his relatives, Oscar Milosz, and the great visionary poet William Blake both drew on the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg for inspiration. Swedenborg's spiritual philosophy attempts to forge links between aspects of the real world and spiritual essences, links that he called “correspondences.” (More on Swedenborg in a later post.) Essentially, Swedenborg's writings flesh out the process of metaphorical thought, striving to keep the concrete and the abstract ever tied together. Milosz says that Swedenborg, who was also a scientist, “earlier than anyone else foresaw the defeat of man, hidden in the Newtonian model of the universe”--in other words, in a universe subservient to abstract ideas and laws. Perhaps Blake's greatest literary work is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, an argument for a unified duality, a vision of a metaphorical world. Many a poet has said that the poet is the defender of language, but clearly the poet is also the defender of the diversity of individual experience and thus of reality.

1 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1981/mar/05/the-nobel-lecture-1980/

   Copyright 1980 by The Nobel Foundation.

2Obviously, no human can “negotiate the reality of every moment”; the brain categorizes sensory perceptions even before they reach consciousness. We need to work via some abstractions to survive in this very complex world. The problem with abstraction arises when some authority uses it to manipulate others and those others cede their own baseline experiences of reality in order to conform with authority and thus gain some measure of protection or preference.

Mind AND Matter

Over the past month, I have been trying to read and understand Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos.   I have been struggling with this book, in part because it is highly abstract philosophy (and I find extreme abstraction almost impossible to understand) but also in part because it seems to keep stating the same idea over and over in slightly different terminologies. So, I was very happy to see in the New York Times today a concise overview by Nagel of the book's argument¹—on the very day the book is due, with no more renewals allowed!

What Nagel is calling for, as I understand it, is a new paradigm of reality. We have materialism, which reduces all existence to matter in order to understand it, “subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental—consciousness, meaning, intention, or purpose.” And we have theism, “the polar opposite of materialism,” which “makes physical law a consequence of mind. . . . theism interprets intelligibility ultimately in terms of intention or purpose.”² And we have a battle of philosophies on our hands, waged primarily in the political arena.

Nagel does not present the new paradigm, only argues that it is necessary: “Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy.” I believe this is a very important first step--for us humans to move from an either/or understanding of reality to a both/and understanding. I have no idea how this new paradigm will develop, but I do think that metaphorical thinking will have a place in it. In metaphor, after all, the abstract idea is from the realm of mental reality and the concrete image from the realm of material reality. Metaphor joins mind and matter together. We need to learn how to apply this both/and thinking to our understanding of the world we live in, both social and natural.

Kudos to Nagel for delivering the call for this new paradigm!

1http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/?emc=eta1

All quotes will be from this essay unless otherwise noted.

2The quotes on theism are from the book: Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (NY: Oxford UP, 2012), pg 21.

"Real" Time

The New York Review of Books published a mind-widening essay on time a few weeks ago, in the form of a review of Time Reborn by theoretical physicist Lee Smolin.¹ The review, by James Glieck, discusses Smolin's meditations on the difference between what we might call real time vs. ideal time. Any ideal, of course, is inherently perfect, and thus does not exist in our real world of mutability. Many people are attracted to abstract studies like mathematics and theoretical physics because such studies allow them to dwell, in their minds at least, in a perfect world. Smolin says as much of himself:

I used to believe in the central unreality of time. Indeed, I went into physics because as an

adolescent I yearned to exchange the time-bound, human world, which I saw as ugly and

inhospitable, for a world of timeless truth.

Time, in theoretical physics, is dealt with in an ideal manner, as one of the four dimensions of our world—i.e., as an abstract concept. Yet Smolin now finds himself questioning the reality of time in the abstract, if I may put the issue in that paradoxical manner. (More on paradox later.) As Smolin puts it:

Everything we experience, every thought, impression, action, intention, is part of a moment.

The world is presented to us as a series of moments. We have no choice about this. No choice

about which moment we inhabit now. . . . In this way time is completely unlike space [which

can be subverted by electronic communications, e.g.]. This is not a small distinction; it shapes

the whole of our experience. . . . The world remains, always, a bundle of processes evolving in

time. . . . Logic and mathematics capture aspects of nature, but never the whole of nature.

There are aspects of the real universe that will never be representable in mathematics [i.e., in

ideal form]. One of them is that in the real world it is always some particular moment.

It is pretty easy to see, from Smolin's perspective, that some of our abstract ways of knowing our world, such as theoretical physics, are akin to religion. Both abstract science and religion attempt to mediate between the real messy world as we experience it in time and abstract ideals outside of the passage of time, whether those ideals are called laws of nature or God. Smolin is especially helpful on this point: “In science, experiments and their analysis are time-bound, as are all our observations of nature, yet we imagine that we uncover evidence for timeless natural laws” (emphasis added). This is not so different from a religious person who deduces a perfect creator from the intricacy of an eye, not being able to conceive that such intricacy can evolve naturally through time. Smolin argues against the assumption of abstract ideals, though, by remarking that “laws are not timeless. . . . Like everything else, they are features of the present, and they can evolve over time.” We need only think of the changes in our understanding of the “law” of gravity from Newton's time to Einstein's.

The problem with this juggling act of balancing real time and ideal time is “cognitive dissonance,” as Glieck puts it: “We live in one world while imagining the existence of another, outside: a heavenly plane.” Or, as Smolin worries: “We act inside time but judge our actions by timeless standards. . . . As

a result of this paradox, we live in a state of alienation from what we most value.” Here is Glieck again, in what strikes me as an amazing statement: “ . . . Newton's laws, the laws of nature, are meant to be timeless, true now and forever. Otherwise what good are they? We can hardly value the ephemeral.” It's that last sentence that I find so revealing and have thus highlighted. We, many of us, feel we cannot value the ephemeral because the ephemeral will always disappoint us. Loved ones will die; the body will age; a tree will fall on a home. How can we value what is so precarious?--not even precarious, really, but doomed! Surely it's smarter (not to mention easier) to value absolute, abstract ideals, like God and 2 + 2 = 4. So both the scientific mind and the religious mind to some extent seek solace in abstract absolutes, outside of the experience of passing time.

The difference between science and religion (in general) as I see it is that science ultimately works by induction, reasoning from the specific to the universal, from the real to the ideal. So, as the story goes, Newton is hit in the head by an apple and develops through reason the law of gravity. Religion, on the other hand, works for the most part deductively—it posits certain premises that must be accepted absolutely on faith by its believers, even if those premises contradict the actual sensory experiences in time of those believers. Religion relieves its adherents from trying to make sense of the world as individuals; it presents them with a pre-formed package of understandings, or at least attempts at answers. The problem with deduction is that it cannot evolve easily; thus in recent times we have had an arch-conservative Vatican that so far cannot even bring itself to approve of the use of condoms in a marriage when one partner has H.I.V.² In religion, values and beliefs are ultimately more important than experience in time.³ The sufferings of Christ as a man in this mutable world you would think would compel compassion for those of us living through time right now, but too often it does not. Science, at least, sees the fact of disease as a present reality and not an indicator of morality and thus can respond to real people in real time with efforts to help them heal or at least not suffer so much.

For Smolin as reformed scientist, being anchored in the real world, in real time, is the better alternative to living in the cognitive dissonance that results from aspiring toward a world of ideal laws. Here is how Glieck explains it:

We reenter time when we accept uncertainty; when we embrace the possibility of surprise; when

we question the bindings of tradition and look for novel solutions to novel problems. The

prototype for thinking “in time,” Smolin argues, is Darwinian evolution. Natural processes

lead to genuinely new organisms, new structures, new complexity, and—here he departs from

the thinking of most scientists—new laws of nature. All is subject to change.

On one level, we are dealing here with the difference between conservative and liberal mindsets. The conservative mind wants certainty and stability--as much as possible in this world of change, and so embraces what it conceives of as unchanging laws, even if those laws are arbitrary or potentially harm others. The liberal mindset is more amenable to accepting change and certainly diversity, with the faith that change is the surer way to improvement than stability. Social life has to be, obviously, some compromise between change and stability—and that's why the word “paradox” keeps coming up in this essay. Two viewpoints that are, in essence, mutually exclusive, must coexist somehow in a dynamic society. We must both respect the “law of gravity,” however we conceive of it now, but also be able to accept that we humans will probably understand it differently over time, perhaps even in our own lifetime. We humans are inescapably abstract thinkers—if we were not, we would not be able to piece together the discrete moments of our experience into an apparently comprehensible individual consciousness or collective culture. But we also have to understand that there are no absolutes in our experience—and also that absolute values, to the extent that they deride the temporal, can be downright life-denying. The Holocaust, as part of the Nazi effort toward racial purity, speaks for itself.

Have you heard the phrase “paradox is the only basket that can hold reality”? I heard it at a conference once but have never been able to find its source. Isn't it true, though, much as we might be uncomfortable with this truth? Life is paradox. An individual life is worth both everything and nothing, depending on the context within which you view it. An individual soldier's life is worth considerably less to the state he represents than the abstract goal toward which he is fighting. But to grieving parents, that individual life was virtually everything to them and they might even question the value of any ideal that would require the death of their son. Both are true, at the same time. Life is both real and ideal, depending on how you view it at any one moment.

Let me go back to Glieck's sentence “We can hardly value the ephemeral.” Perhaps he says this tongue-in-cheek. I hope so, but I can also understand if the sentence is earnestly intended. From my viewpoint, especially after reading this essay, it's obvious that we so greatly need to value the ephemeral and question the abstract—especially in these days when we have so much of the natural world under our control. Yes, the person we love will age and perhaps die before we do, perhaps in terrible pain. But if we do not love the ephemeral nevertheless, we will understand the world only through abstract reason and only the perfect will be lovable—which means that we ourselves cannot be, or at least “others” cannot be. How does Portia put it?-- “. . . in the course of justice none of us / Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, / And that same prayer doth teach us all to render / The deeds of mercy.” I think also of the ending of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, when the intellectual Raskolnikov prostrates himself before the prostitute Sonia. As brilliant as our intellects are, they must always be tempered by the body, by the world of real time and suffering. We cannot live up to our own abstract ideals. That does not mean we have to reject them, but certainly it means we should question them more than blindly devoting ourselves to them.

I recently read in an historical biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine this passage regarding Bernard of Clairvaux, perhaps the most renowned religious man of his era in Europe and now remembered as Saint Bernard: “As an adolescent, first experiencing physical desire for a young girl, he had been so filled with self-disgust that he had jumped into a freezing cold pond and remained there until his erection had subsided.”⁴ This domination of the abstract ideal over physical reality is no longer something we should revere. Wouldn't we admire Bernard so much more if he were able to accept the natural responses of his physical body and perhaps even so commit himself to celibacy—so that it would be a choice made not out of disgust for the mortal body but with understanding and free will and compassion for those who choose differently?--and so that he would not live “terrified of women and their possible effect on him” and thus at times revile them simply for being women, temptresses, descendants of evil Eve? Wasn't Augustine, with what is often judged as his hypocritical attitude of “God grant me chastity but not yet,” a more sane and healthy man?

Abstractions necessarily involve judgment and rejection of others who do not live up to our ideals and also hypocrisy on the part of the judgers, since they are as human as any of us. In a commencement address published in part in the New York Times, Jonathan Safran Foer says to his audience of college graduates: “Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die.”⁵ We may pursue goals and ideals, but we need also always to be attentive to reality, to being in time, to human suffering. This is metaphorical thinking—the pairing up of the concrete and the abstract, a paradox. Christ is a metaphor, divine immortal and suffering mortal simultaneously—a paradox. I would go so far as to say that Christ is the epitome of metaphor, the consummate metaphor. Like Christ, to be fully alive, we need to carry together the real and the ideal, but the real should lead us, as the concrete image in a metaphor is sometimes referred to as the “vehicle” that carries the abstract idea—brings it to us in comprehensible form, as Jesus brought his fellow humans the word of God in his time. Striving to live this way is certainly a paradox and it demands courage and humility, but isn't that the real wisdom of time?

1http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/06/time-regained/?page=1

2The last I heard was that Pope Benedict allowed for the use of condoms by prostitutes who might develop compassion by avoiding passing disease on to others, but married couples may still not use condoms according to church doctrine, even if one partner is infected with H.I.V.

3We might recall the Indian woman in Ireland who died from septicemia not long ago because the Catholic hospital in which she sought help during a miscarriage would not abort her dying fetus until it was determined the fetus was positively dead.

4From Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life (NY: Ballantine, 1999), pg. 44. There is no source reference to this particular passage in Weir's book, but she seems to be taking her information about Bernard from Galfredas Claras Vallensis, Vita Tertia: Fragments of a Life of Bernard of Clairvaux, in J.P. Migne, Patrologiae Latinae.

5http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/how-not-to-be-alone.html?emc=eta1

Dog Days

I like old dogs—they are so honest and stoic in their aging. They don't understand, it seems, but they accept. Our first dog was really neurotic, but we got along. Toward the end of her life, after I got home from work and finished dinner, I'd lie on the couch beside her, head to head. Two old ladies spacing out, I'd say to her! Not that I was old yet, but I was about twenty years over the median age in this country and teaching students who never got older—and beginning to realize I was on the down slope of the circle of life. That dog is dead now, but I adopted another one when she was about eight (the keepers did not know her age), and she's now about thirteen and chugging along beside me, though slowing down—as, indeed, I am as well, just a bit!

One of the things that worries me as I see more and more time pass is how we as a species are becoming increasingly more detached from nature, year by year, day by day. Incredibly, more than 80% of us Americans live in urban or suburban areas, leaving (as Wikipedia puts it) “vast expanses of the country nearly uninhabited.”¹ This growing estrangement from our original ground, from that within which we have evolved has, obviously, very great implications for how we see our world—and how we think metaphorically, even if we can think metaphorically. Several recent news article have touched on this issue.

The most scary article was, to me, an essay by Justin Cronin titled “Confessions of a Liberal Gun Owner.”² Mr. Cronin, a well-regarded novelist and professor, relates that he keeps “half a dozen pistols in my safe” at home, and he's “currently shopping for a shotgun.” He lives in the Houston metropolitan area and thus has little likelihood of defending himself from wild animals. In his essay, he is quite open about the fact that what he feels he needs to defend himself and his family against is society, other people. He recounts that in advance of Hurricane Rita, which hit Texas soon after Hurricane Katrina, he and his family tried to drive inland, only to confront this situation:

By 2 in the morning, after six hours on the road, we had made it all of 50 miles. The scene was

like a snapshot from the Apocalypse: crowds milling restlessly, gas stations and mini-marts

picked clean and heaped with trash, families sleeping by the side of the road. The situation had

the hopped-up feel of barely bottled chaos. After Katrina, nobody had any illusions that help

was on its way. It also occurred to me that there were probably a lot of guns out there — this

was Texas, after all. Here I was with two tiny children, a couple of thousand dollars in cash, a

late-model S.U.V. with half a tank of gas and not so much as a heavy book to throw.

Cronin concluded from this experience: “Like most citizens of our modern, technological world, I am wholly reliant upon a fragile web of services to meet my most basic needs. What would happen if those services collapsed? Chaos, that’s what.” One thing I find disturbing here is the conclusion that it will have to be us or them, not that we will all be in this bad situation together. But even more clearly, this intelligent man feels acutely how precarious we all are, how dependent upon our social web which is maintained by our rather vulnerable technology—and at a level that most of us by far cannot understand or affect.

Not only that, but we have drastically minimized how often we come into contact with the basic facts of biological life—even of human biological life. In his recent essay, “You Are Going to Die,”³ Tim Kreider (writer and artist) worries about this estrangement, after accompanying his mother to her new elder-care home.

Segregating the old and the sick enables a fantasy, as baseless as the fantasy of capitalism’s

endless expansion, of youth and health as eternal, in which old age can seem to be an

inexplicably bad lifestyle choice, like eating junk food or buying a minivan, that you can avoid

if you’re well-educated or hip enough. So that when through absolutely no fault of your own

your eyesight begins to blur and you can no longer eat whatever you want without consequence

and the hangovers start lasting for days, you feel somehow ripped off, lied to. Aging feels

grotesquely unfair. As if there ought to be someone to sue. 

 

There is humor here, but it is a grim humor—for people do sue other people for not controlling nature, as surely we should be able to do by now! A tree limb falls in Central Park on a pedestrian below, and it's no longer an accident of nature (to be dealt with with your own insurance); now it is a breach of social trust and the city can be held responsible for the bad behavior of its trees and sued for millions of dollars.

What I'm trying to get at here is that our baseline for understanding reality is increasingly social these days, no longer natural. People who live on a beach and lose their house during a storm, which is a predictable and inevitable event, given enough time, now are often fully compensated by the government for their loss. In effect, we deny nature; we deny the insecurity that nature can provoke; we prefer to believe that we should be able to control nature, even if we often can't—and that someone should be held responsible when we don't. To me this is ludicrous—a real slip away from reality, even pathological.

My husband and I took a trip to the still-wild Amazon River region when we were young, decades ago. We bought heavy hiking boots and heavy wools socks for the trip, but there were women on the excursion who brought only indoor shoes and stockings—and we were staying alternately on mountains or in jungles in decidedly primitive conditions! How many of us have come to the reassuring but deluded conclusion that the life we live in a comfortable city or suburb, with sidewalks and very little in the way of wildlife, is the norm—and that when we stray from that norm unprepared, someone should be blamed for not maintaining the norm. This kind of insular blindness leads to a false basis of reality. Metaphor doesn't work very well in this artificial world, because so much of the artificial world is abstract, as opposed to the real concrete existence of nature. In society we often start with abstract ideals, such as that no one should ever have to die from a falling tree limb, and then we create laws and lawsuits to try to secure that abstract reality as the world we actually live in. In nature, however, you always have to start with the real things around you; if you don't know how to interact with them properly, you will eventually get hurt or die.

Some people, aware that technology will probably not always serve us successfully, have begun to study means by which we can survive the effects of our own technologies. Huw Price (Cambridge philosopher) has created a think tank at Cambridge University to study what might happen to us biological beings if our technologies get too successful and escape our control.

I do think that there are strong reasons to think that we humans are nearing one of the most

significant moments in our entire history: the point at which intelligence escapes the

constraints of biology. And I see no compelling grounds for confidence that if that does

happen, we will survive the transition in reasonable shape. . . . our own intelligence is an

evolved biological solution to a kind of optimization problem. . . . . The hardware needs to fit

through a mammalian birth canal, to be reasonably protected for a mobile life in a hazardous

environment, [etc.] . . . the distinctive thing about our peak in the present biological landscape

is that we tend to be much better at controlling our environment than any other species. . . . the

question is then whether machines might at some point do an even better job (perhaps a vastly

better job). . . . Indeed, it's not really clear who 'we' would be in those circumstances.”⁴

Throughout his essay Price uses the metaphor of a large volcano—Mt. Fuji, to be precise. We socialized humans are that big volcano; we dominate our environment. But if a larger volcano emerges (the regrowth of Krakatoa, perhaps, which is actually occurring), where does that leave us? Instead of spewing our own make up over our surroundings, something more powerful than us will be spewing its make up on us and our environment. That is essentially our choice—that we remain the big shot in our natural world or that we risk becoming subordinates in a technological world. Nature is the environment we evolved within; it is what we have learned to succeed in. Technology is abstract—we make it out of our thoughts; it has evolved from us. It is an entirely different world, one in which we may not succeed because of how we have evolved.

Ironically, technology may do to us someday what we have done to nature—ignore our reality, try to control us. The more we measure ourselves against the social world instead of against the natural world in our thoughts and thus our metaphors, the more we prepare ourselves to accept that eventuality. In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell laments that many metaphors have become so common that we no longer respond to them as metaphors; they have become cliches.⁵ He uses as an example of a metaphor long past functioning as a fresh image the phrase “iron resolution.” But why do we need to give up on such common metaphors, surrender them to the realm of clichés? What if we were more alert to, even educated to watch for images that anchor ideas in our speech and writing—and even try to use more of them? What if we actually paused to imagine something like an iron railing, perhaps running along a cliff or perhaps separating a private beach from a public beach, when we use the term “iron resolution.” Sometimes we are very grateful for the unyielding nature of that iron, sometimes not. And we know that iron will, eventually, rust—even when nicely painted. Abstract ideas are often like iron railings. They have a purpose, but they can also be prohibitive and punitive—and they will eventually decay, hopefully unlike our (so far) renewable natural world.

1See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States

2http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/opinion/confessions-of-a-liberal-gun-owner.html?emc=eta1

3http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/you-are-going-to-die/?emc=eta1

4http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/cambridge-cabs-and-copenhagen-my-route-to-existential-risk/?emc=eta1 . I have moved the final sentence in the quote above to that point from earlier in the article in order to clarify the meaning of Price's argument in this extract, as I see it.

5Please see my previous blog post, “Stupid Guns,” which discusses this essay at some length.

Stupid Guns

Newtown, CT, is about twenty-five miles from here, less as the crow flies. Like many other people near and far, I have been in a state of mourning these past weeks—not a voluntary, consciously assumed state of mourning, but an ongoing troubling, even choking, of the soul—anguish, I guess it is. Any rational thoughts I've been able to call up have centered on this tragedy being another example of how we so often do not think metaphorically and then suffer the consequences of that failure.

A New York Times editorial¹ came closest to describing my feelings coherently. The title was “It's the Guns,” to which I immediately wanted to add the word “Stupid!”--not to be insulting but to try to shake up some consciousness of our willful ignorance and our rationalizations on the issue of guns. The editorial was reviewing the gun-defenders' retreat into abstractions after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The unnamed editor noted that this mental retreat has become common among politicians, even those who do not openly support free access by individuals to guns:

“Mr. Obama played into that argument on Wednesday, talking about the 'culture that all too

often glorifies guns and violence' and saying that any actions should begin 'inside the home and

inside our hearts.' It is tempting to blame abstractions, and give in to fatalism, knowing that

America is a land of hundreds of millions of guns and of a rabid, well-financed lobby that

shrouds its unreason in appeals to individual liberty and freedom from government.”

Abstract ideas, on their own, can be viciously dangerous. The Crusades would serve as a handy example. Or, more locally, a father might say to his daughter, “I love you so much that I will not let you out of the house, because I do not want you to be harmed.” The father speaks and acts through the abstract idea of love, but in the process he is causing suffering in a very real young woman.

Abstract ideas, even the best of them, have to be anchored in reality to be helpful rather than harmful—even as metaphors pair abstract ideas with concrete images. The gun advocates who defend such wonderful abstract ideas as liberty and self-defense but also refuse to suffer (in deed, not just in words) with the children and adults who suffered and died at Sandy Hook--in other words have com-passion² for them--cannot in terms of metaphorical thought be justified or right in their ideas. What happens to real people or animals or other forms of life when they are put at the mercy of abstract ideas must be taken as a counterweight at least as strong as the ideas themselves. As George Orwell says in his still very relevant 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” “When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you . . . .” In other words, concrete objects from the real world force you to think and feel for yourself and relate to the real world; abstract ideas impose certain pre-digested thoughts and feelings on you, allowing you to withdraw from the real world.³

None of us, not even the Newtown parents apparently, were allowed to see the mangled bodies of the children who were shot with up to eleven flesh-destroying bullets each. And yet that (in metaphorical thinking) is the image that must balance out calls for guns available to all to protect the abstract notion of liberty. Or perhaps you would prefer the image of a U.S. Congresswoman who can no longer speak or move easily. There are so many images to choose from! A New York Times article has recently exposed how many variations on the image of a gun we throw around in everyday speech without even thinking about the real-world implications of the imagery: “a gun to your head,” “take aim,” “under fire,” etc.⁴ What if we actually paused to think about the imagery we are throwing around so casually? Orwell says: “The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. . . . [when] the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming . . . he is not really thinking.” We are not being responsible in our language, and therefore we are abetting the powers that advocate common, casual availability of guns. Orwell, again: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. . . . Such [stale, abstract] phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up pictures of them,” pictures that might actually stir our compassion or moral outrage. “Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable . . . .”⁵

My own preference is that the fates of real beings should weigh more than abstract ideas. If, in the process of promoting or defending an abstract idea you are causing harm to real, living beings (against their will⁶), then your abstract ideas are illegitimate and need rethinking. That's metaphorical thinking. If we, as a society, cannot handle the brutality of the image or cannot see the reality of the image, then we should think very hard about the abstract idea associated with it.⁷ As far as I can see, only metaphorical thinking that pairs real, living beings with abstract ideas can correct the kind of rationalizing abstractions that threaten to turn us into a death-seeking society. Or are we there, already?

1Editor, “It's the Guns,” New York Times online, 19 December 2012.

2The word “compassion” derives from Latin words that mean literally “to suffer with.”

3Neuroscience has confirmed that we respond neurologically to concrete images in our imaginations in the same way we respond to those actual things in the real world. In other words, we become personally involved with images; we interact with them internally through our emotions and our thoughts. This is not true of abstract ideas. See, for instance, Annie Murphy Paul, “Your Brain on Fiction,” New York Times online, 17 March 2012.

4Peter Baker, “In Gun Debate, Even Language Can Be Loaded,” New York Times online, 15 January 2013.

5More from Orwell's essay: “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems to be able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed.” The result is a failure to think, to respond the the immediate situation; we are in thrall to abstract ideas. Again, political language for Orwell is abstract, formulaic language—language you can use without having to think, language that lacks relevant imagery, non-metaphorical language. “Politics and the English Language” is widely available on the web.

6A person who voluntarily joins an army may well choose to suffer and even die for abstract ideas—that's not at issue here. The children and adults who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School did not choose to die for the liberty or self-defense of others or even of themselves.

7More from Orwell's essay: “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems to be able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed.” The result is a failure to think, to respond the the immediate situation; we are in thrall to abstract ideas. Again, political language for Orwell is abstract, formulaic language—language you can use without having to think, language that lacks relevant imagery, non-metaphorical language.

Christmas Gift

On Christmas morning, I received a “gift” of sorts that completed my five-year quest to give myself enough physical, economic, and psychological stability that I could devote myself primarily to writing. So, I want to make a personal statement here, as premise to my future writing in this blog.

I often feel compelled to write, and I am by far happiest when I am actively thinking and writing. I have a sense of metaphor as a way of being that I want to develop in this blog. I feel that this is what I'm here to do at this point in my life. To some extent, then, this blog is a self-indulgence—a development of my own ideas. But that's why I'm writing a blog and not scholarly articles. A blog allows for freer, more creative thinking, and the audience is more voluntary and not even necessary. I think actually, what I would most like would be to write this blog for an imaginary audience. Writing only for myself is not satisfying for some reason (I guess I need some reality check), but I really do not want to write to convince others of anything—I want to write because this is how I think most clearly, in writing.

When I have stopped writing for periods of time (as in the past year in which I did not add a post to this blog), it is because I have been troubled that some others have been interpreting my writings as having a particular political agenda. I do not intend my writings to have an agenda other than facilitating my own thinking. I get joy from writing at times, and almost always I get satisfaction from developing my ideas. Certainly my thoughts arise in part from personal experience, but also from much reading and thinking. I like to see how my personal experiences fit into larger philosophical and/or psychological contexts. I have certainly had unfortunate or unhappy experiences in my life, as everyone does. But I feel now that I have brought myself to a good place and that I am ready now to do what I have always wanted to do in this life—write, for myself. I carry forward no grudges or regrets; if I did, I would not be able to explore my deepest thoughts.

I have learned to take experiences other than what goes on in my own head pretty much impersonally—and I'm even careful about evaluating what goes on in my own head. As Jung said, some dreams are from the personal unconscious and don't give us much of value in the long run; other dreams are from the collective unconscious and can indeed give us much of value, with some thought and work. I think the same distinction can be made about thoughts and feelings. As for external experiences, what happens to me socially is just not that important to me anymore. I have stepped back from my career for that reason; I no longer feel competitive. I no longer measure myself against others, except in some occasions that I try hard to avoid.

I am an older person; I've done my duty to society and now feel I have the right to “drop out.” (The “gift” I received on Christmas morning was my first Social Security deposit. The feeling that came along with it was something like, “Thank you for your previous contributions to our society. Now do what you want to do with the rest of your life!” And that's exactly what I intend to do with this financial support.) My experiences have provided fertile ground for thought, and I want to develop some of those thoughts here. I'm much more of a mystic, a contemplator than a social person. I am also a Jungian, in his sense of the main goal of the latter years of life being individuation.

I now have the means and the grounds to write. I will do so. I do not do so to criticize but to reflect. Seeking metaphor is like seeking internal unity—my ultimate goal.