I'm suspending (briefly) my strict No-Christmas-Before-Thanksgiving's-Over policy to issue this public safety announcement.
If I am within earshot when you complain that writing X-mas* is "taking the Christ out of Christmas," I will strangle you.
If you care to know why writing Xmas is not taking the Christ out of Christmas, read on.
Christ is the Anglicization of the Greek word meaning "the anointed." Since it's Greek in origin, people tended to write the title using the Greek alphabet. (I know, go figure.)
The Greek letter that begins the transcription of christos is called "chi" and written thus: X.
Xmas, then, is a sort of bastardized abbreviation comprised of both Greek and Latinate roots (-mas from missa, meaning "dismissed," from the last phrase of the Catholic liturgy of the Eucharist, and therefore by synecdoche, Mass itself.)
So I don't want to hear it. I'm serious about the strangling.**
*Or any variation thereof.
**This last sentenced should be pronounced in a bad Christopher Walken imitation: I'm SERious ... aBOUT... theSTRAngling.
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
12 November 2008
01 October 2008
Narrative, Hope & Everything — Part Deux: (a) The Scriptures I
So what do we do with the scriptures?
First, we should decide what they are. As texts, they comprise any number of genres, but the two most common are history and myth. (Also included are legal documents, poems, epics, epistles/letters, etc.)
A history is a text that seeks to describe lived events as they occurred. Since Herodotus and Thucydides in the fifth century BCE began the practice of not only writing down stories about past events but also attempting to compare and verify those stories to select the most accurate, history has sought to present as objective a record of human action as possible. You've heard the truism, though, that winners write the history books, and that's true. There is always some human bias in the selection and description involved in historiography. The values and ideologies of a historian's culture inevitably color her project.
Myth, like history (which it predates), attempts to explain events and phenomena by means of a causal narrative. (Tempests are the result of Poseidon’s anger; earthquakes and volcano eruptions are caused by Hephæstus laboring in his subterranean forge; this rock is glowing because it was touched by the finger of God.) Myth makes no pretense to objectivity; a culture’s myths explain its identity, its origins, its divine right, its social and legal values. Édouard Glissant writes that communities’ "identity [is] achieved when communities attempt to legitimate their right to possession of a territory through myth or the revealed word "(13). That is, our sense of who we are individually and within our various collectives (cultures, nations, churches, etc.) is founded in a group of narratives that tell us about our relationship to each other and to our god.
Today we tend to value history over myth. History is modern and legitimate; myth is antiquated and benighted. History is scientific and verifiable; myth is fairy tales and cute stories. Everyone knows that earthquakes are the result of tectonic shear, and that there is no (nor has there ever been any) such being as Hephæstus. History happened; myth was imagined. History is true; myth is false. History is ancient Israel’s divinely inspired writings; myth is the product of those pagan Greeks/Indians/Africans/Mesoamericans/Others and their silly multiple/multiply-limbed/animal/nature/bloodthirsty gods. History is what We know; myth is what They believe.
But we discount myth and mythmaking not only to our loss but to our condemnation. Mythmaking is essential to and reflective of our own narrative identity-making on any number of levels. We hold in our memories a number of stories and ideas about every group to which we belong from our world to our nation to our state to our town to our family (to ourselves—our Self/ves).
These stories may be straight history. They may be history inflected with mythic elements and values. Or they may be mythic narratives outright. In each and every case, they can be true. They can tell us true things about ourselves, our true relationships with others and with the divine. Myth can be as true as history.
Of course, myth isn’t necessarily better than history. Both are highly contextualized, contingent to the goals, limits, and worldview of the mythmaker or historian, or their cultures/nations/ideologies. Myths and histories can help us obscure the truth of our inherent connection to others, and can be powerful tools in both committing and justifying violence against those made Other by our myths and histories.
So what’s the point, you ask. This: that the scriptures are no less potent if we read them as myth rather than as history. In fact, doing so may make us more able to acknowledge the points where they obscure, rather than illuminate, the truths God wants us to have.
In such a view, we don’t have to believe that the earth was created in six twenty-four hour periods, or to parse the conflicting details in the four different creation accounts we have in the LDS canon. We don’t have to worry about what Noah did with all that animal dung (or how he managed to get two of every animal on board a single craft in the first place). We don’t have to explain how a man lived inside a sea creature for several days, or why there doesn’t seem to be enough ancient Mediterranean DNA in modern Native American populations.
We can focus on what the scriptures tell us about being human, and living with other humans. The dangers of discriminating according to ethnic, racial, or gender differences. The power of the two great commandments to heal us and bind us together. The absolute horror and evil of war, and the inescapable toll of killing. The absolute good of love and forgiveness.
First, we should decide what they are. As texts, they comprise any number of genres, but the two most common are history and myth. (Also included are legal documents, poems, epics, epistles/letters, etc.)
A history is a text that seeks to describe lived events as they occurred. Since Herodotus and Thucydides in the fifth century BCE began the practice of not only writing down stories about past events but also attempting to compare and verify those stories to select the most accurate, history has sought to present as objective a record of human action as possible. You've heard the truism, though, that winners write the history books, and that's true. There is always some human bias in the selection and description involved in historiography. The values and ideologies of a historian's culture inevitably color her project.
Myth, like history (which it predates), attempts to explain events and phenomena by means of a causal narrative. (Tempests are the result of Poseidon’s anger; earthquakes and volcano eruptions are caused by Hephæstus laboring in his subterranean forge; this rock is glowing because it was touched by the finger of God.) Myth makes no pretense to objectivity; a culture’s myths explain its identity, its origins, its divine right, its social and legal values. Édouard Glissant writes that communities’ "identity [is] achieved when communities attempt to legitimate their right to possession of a territory through myth or the revealed word "(13). That is, our sense of who we are individually and within our various collectives (cultures, nations, churches, etc.) is founded in a group of narratives that tell us about our relationship to each other and to our god.
Today we tend to value history over myth. History is modern and legitimate; myth is antiquated and benighted. History is scientific and verifiable; myth is fairy tales and cute stories. Everyone knows that earthquakes are the result of tectonic shear, and that there is no (nor has there ever been any) such being as Hephæstus. History happened; myth was imagined. History is true; myth is false. History is ancient Israel’s divinely inspired writings; myth is the product of those pagan Greeks/Indians/Africans/Mesoamericans/Others and their silly multiple/multiply-limbed/animal/nature/bloodthirsty gods. History is what We know; myth is what They believe.
But we discount myth and mythmaking not only to our loss but to our condemnation. Mythmaking is essential to and reflective of our own narrative identity-making on any number of levels. We hold in our memories a number of stories and ideas about every group to which we belong from our world to our nation to our state to our town to our family (to ourselves—our Self/ves).
These stories may be straight history. They may be history inflected with mythic elements and values. Or they may be mythic narratives outright. In each and every case, they can be true. They can tell us true things about ourselves, our true relationships with others and with the divine. Myth can be as true as history.
Of course, myth isn’t necessarily better than history. Both are highly contextualized, contingent to the goals, limits, and worldview of the mythmaker or historian, or their cultures/nations/ideologies. Myths and histories can help us obscure the truth of our inherent connection to others, and can be powerful tools in both committing and justifying violence against those made Other by our myths and histories.
So what’s the point, you ask. This: that the scriptures are no less potent if we read them as myth rather than as history. In fact, doing so may make us more able to acknowledge the points where they obscure, rather than illuminate, the truths God wants us to have.
In such a view, we don’t have to believe that the earth was created in six twenty-four hour periods, or to parse the conflicting details in the four different creation accounts we have in the LDS canon. We don’t have to worry about what Noah did with all that animal dung (or how he managed to get two of every animal on board a single craft in the first place). We don’t have to explain how a man lived inside a sea creature for several days, or why there doesn’t seem to be enough ancient Mediterranean DNA in modern Native American populations.
We can focus on what the scriptures tell us about being human, and living with other humans. The dangers of discriminating according to ethnic, racial, or gender differences. The power of the two great commandments to heal us and bind us together. The absolute horror and evil of war, and the inescapable toll of killing. The absolute good of love and forgiveness.
30 September 2008
If you think Bush talks good...
From Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek column this week (27 Sept 2008):
"Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that's why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street's most toxic liabilities. Here's the entire exchange:
One of my best friends is prepared for the way public dialogue seems to be headed. Here's the first paragraph of his revised cover letter:
"Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that's why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street's most toxic liabilities. Here's the entire exchange:
COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?Are you kidding me?!?
PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
One of my best friends is prepared for the way public dialogue seems to be headed. Here's the first paragraph of his revised cover letter:
I now on write in Palin style exchanges to do my communications to the utmost degree with the integrity of the nation on the line I fight for the little person who needs health care and free trade and debt relief because mortgage crisis is bailout city for people who just want to keep their jobs and there's Putin giving head to Alaskans all over the place and Canadia next door that is the key issue of all these affairs and with the right kind of change we can steer this ship straight to the destination point of the port of call.
Thank you and good night.
22 September 2008
Narrative, Hope & Everything — Part I
Note: I should know more about what follows than I actually do. If you are a serious literature critic or philosopher of language, please feel free to correct my errors/expose my débutanterie.
Narrative is a fancy word for the process of storytelling. It’s the process by which we relate events to one another along a timeline to tell a story. We usually structure the narrative such that it starts at a beginning, moves through a middle, and comes to an end. Further, narratives tend to assign causal relationships to the events they narrate. Thus, the events in the middle of the narrative are “told” in such a way as to make it clear that they were caused by the beginning events, and will in turn be the cause of the end events.
It’s not only famous authors who engage in narrative. We all do it, all the time. Our selves, our lives, our relationships, and our worlds are a more-or-less constant process of narrative. It’s how we make sense of our experiences, how we make sense of and view the world. This is so because much of life has no meaning.
I’m not saying that life can’t have meaning. Only that it doesn’t until we provide it through our narration. Our lives are full of meaning. But that meaning is largely constructed by and for us through the process of narration. Our experiences (the physical sensations received through our sensory faculties (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin, gaydar, georgempathy, etc.)) are just physical stimuli: pressure waves, ricocheting photons, molecules that fit specific sites on certain cells. These stimuli don't — can't — mean anything in and of themselves.
Our brains interpret those signals and organize them into concepts, which then are put into (you guessed it!) narratives. Much of our growing up is a process of learning to read not only words printed on pages, but also the concepts that flood into our brains all day long. Both sorts of reading are learned according to essentially the same model: an example is demonstrated and explained, over and over, until we know that the series of squiggles that looks like this /father/ mean, when written or pronounced, the man who takes care of us.
Similarly, we learn to read experiences into narratives by hearing narratives. "Daddy can't play right now."
"Why"
"Because I have to work."
"Why?"
"Because ...."
And so on and so on, until a narrative of cause-and-effect is composed (Dad can't play because the exigencies of late consumer capitalism demand that he put in his eight to ten hours of daily banality so that he can buy you your Polly Pocket Wets Herself dollies... "Why?" "Exactly.").
A lot goes into our instruction in "experience grammar." Most of these factors we'd call culture. For me this includes the late twentieth century. The Pacific Northwest. Late 20th-century U.S. Mormonism. Etc. Language also plays a part, albeit much more subtle, usually. Certain concepts get framed in certain ways because of the words (or lack thereof) we have to describe and narrate them.
I've been really interested lately in how religion (specifically the late 20th-century Mormonism I referenced above) works to shape my world narrative and to give meaning through it to my experiences. The next few posts will explore this influence, and where I am today in terms of it. I hope you enjoy, and even more, I hope you comment.
Narrative is a fancy word for the process of storytelling. It’s the process by which we relate events to one another along a timeline to tell a story. We usually structure the narrative such that it starts at a beginning, moves through a middle, and comes to an end. Further, narratives tend to assign causal relationships to the events they narrate. Thus, the events in the middle of the narrative are “told” in such a way as to make it clear that they were caused by the beginning events, and will in turn be the cause of the end events.
It’s not only famous authors who engage in narrative. We all do it, all the time. Our selves, our lives, our relationships, and our worlds are a more-or-less constant process of narrative. It’s how we make sense of our experiences, how we make sense of and view the world. This is so because much of life has no meaning.
I’m not saying that life can’t have meaning. Only that it doesn’t until we provide it through our narration. Our lives are full of meaning. But that meaning is largely constructed by and for us through the process of narration. Our experiences (the physical sensations received through our sensory faculties (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin, gaydar, georgempathy, etc.)) are just physical stimuli: pressure waves, ricocheting photons, molecules that fit specific sites on certain cells. These stimuli don't — can't — mean anything in and of themselves.
Our brains interpret those signals and organize them into concepts, which then are put into (you guessed it!) narratives. Much of our growing up is a process of learning to read not only words printed on pages, but also the concepts that flood into our brains all day long. Both sorts of reading are learned according to essentially the same model: an example is demonstrated and explained, over and over, until we know that the series of squiggles that looks like this /father/ mean, when written or pronounced, the man who takes care of us.
Similarly, we learn to read experiences into narratives by hearing narratives. "Daddy can't play right now."
"Why"
"Because I have to work."
"Why?"
"Because ...."
And so on and so on, until a narrative of cause-and-effect is composed (Dad can't play because the exigencies of late consumer capitalism demand that he put in his eight to ten hours of daily banality so that he can buy you your Polly Pocket Wets Herself dollies... "Why?" "Exactly.").
A lot goes into our instruction in "experience grammar." Most of these factors we'd call culture. For me this includes the late twentieth century. The Pacific Northwest. Late 20th-century U.S. Mormonism. Etc. Language also plays a part, albeit much more subtle, usually. Certain concepts get framed in certain ways because of the words (or lack thereof) we have to describe and narrate them.
I've been really interested lately in how religion (specifically the late 20th-century Mormonism I referenced above) works to shape my world narrative and to give meaning through it to my experiences. The next few posts will explore this influence, and where I am today in terms of it. I hope you enjoy, and even more, I hope you comment.
17 September 2008
Narrative (teaser trailer)
From a novel I'm currently reading:
Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; that was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story.
16 September 2008
04 September 2008
Does "Less Blessed" = "Less Fortunate"?
During his speech tonight at the RNC, Senator McCain said that his wife Cindy's "concern for those less blessed than we are ... show [sic] the measure of her humanity."
This reminds me of a phrase I often hear at church and in prayers: the wish that God bless those "less fortunate" than the speaker.
Are these two expressions equal? Are people less fortunate because they are less blessed? Are people less blessed because they're less fortunate?
This is an idea that goes way, way back in U.S. philosophy. In fact, it predates the U.S.A. In a famous sermon given on board the Arbella in 1630 by the British immigrant and Massachusetts Bay Company Governor John Winthrop, the Puritan leader argued essentially that God made some rich and others poor "for the glory of [their] Creator and the common good of the creature, man." It was important that both rich and poor existed, so that "so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against and shake off their yoke."
That is, poor people exist so that rich people can learn to be charitable. Rich people exist to govern the poor people. This causal link between material prosperity and God's favor is, it seems to me, a shaky proposition theologically, but it fits well into the idea of the (U.S.) American Dream and the concept of (U.S.) American exceptionalism.
By Winthrop's logic, and, it seems, Senator McCain's estimation, those who are materially prosperous are so because they are more blessed by God. By the same logic, then, those who suffer more of the many indignities of human life are less blessed.
I reject this equation of wealth and prosperity to blessing. We may receive whatever we have because God loves us. But what we have is not and should never be seen as an indication of God's favor. Such is a perversion of our relationship with our Heavenly Parents, a mean quantification of inscrutable providence and invaluable charity.
This reminds me of a phrase I often hear at church and in prayers: the wish that God bless those "less fortunate" than the speaker.
Are these two expressions equal? Are people less fortunate because they are less blessed? Are people less blessed because they're less fortunate?
This is an idea that goes way, way back in U.S. philosophy. In fact, it predates the U.S.A. In a famous sermon given on board the Arbella in 1630 by the British immigrant and Massachusetts Bay Company Governor John Winthrop, the Puritan leader argued essentially that God made some rich and others poor "for the glory of [their] Creator and the common good of the creature, man." It was important that both rich and poor existed, so that "so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against and shake off their yoke."
That is, poor people exist so that rich people can learn to be charitable. Rich people exist to govern the poor people. This causal link between material prosperity and God's favor is, it seems to me, a shaky proposition theologically, but it fits well into the idea of the (U.S.) American Dream and the concept of (U.S.) American exceptionalism.
By Winthrop's logic, and, it seems, Senator McCain's estimation, those who are materially prosperous are so because they are more blessed by God. By the same logic, then, those who suffer more of the many indignities of human life are less blessed.
I reject this equation of wealth and prosperity to blessing. We may receive whatever we have because God loves us. But what we have is not and should never be seen as an indication of God's favor. Such is a perversion of our relationship with our Heavenly Parents, a mean quantification of inscrutable providence and invaluable charity.
03 September 2008
Hi, I'm Mitt Romney, and I'm a Massive Tool
Someone needs to let Brother Romney know that he's a month early for Conference. This is a pretty good summary of his speech at the RNC tonight.
28 August 2008
Hot DAMN!!
Incredible speech. Inspiring, intelligent, unsparing of friend or foe.
If our next president needs any quality, it's that of eloquence. I know we in the US tend to denigrate the importance and power of what some term "pretty words." Many argue that our current president succeeded largely on the strength of that seemingly inherent distrust of rhetoric, of powerful words persuasively spoken. And his predecessor was excoriated for his gift with language—labeled "slick" for his ability to rouse emotion and inspire.
But the relationship of language to power goes back as far as words themselves. And so it is right and good that the man who would lead our country to back to hope be as gifted a rhetor as Barack Obama.
In almost every ancient creation myth (including our own), language is involved in calling order out of darkness, chaos or violence. Many of humankind's earliest heroes and leaders either spoke well themselves or with the divine voice of their god.
A president should be intelligent, thoughtful, rational, compassionate, and realistic. But he or she should be able to inspire us. To persuade us and those who oppose or disagree with us. It's been a long time.
I don't know what will happen in eight weeks. But today, as my sister just wrote me, is a beautiful day.
If our next president needs any quality, it's that of eloquence. I know we in the US tend to denigrate the importance and power of what some term "pretty words." Many argue that our current president succeeded largely on the strength of that seemingly inherent distrust of rhetoric, of powerful words persuasively spoken. And his predecessor was excoriated for his gift with language—labeled "slick" for his ability to rouse emotion and inspire.
But the relationship of language to power goes back as far as words themselves. And so it is right and good that the man who would lead our country to back to hope be as gifted a rhetor as Barack Obama.
In almost every ancient creation myth (including our own), language is involved in calling order out of darkness, chaos or violence. Many of humankind's earliest heroes and leaders either spoke well themselves or with the divine voice of their god.
A president should be intelligent, thoughtful, rational, compassionate, and realistic. But he or she should be able to inspire us. To persuade us and those who oppose or disagree with us. It's been a long time.
I don't know what will happen in eight weeks. But today, as my sister just wrote me, is a beautiful day.
10 July 2008
Revelation, obedience, conscience
Or, in other words: gay marriage.
I'm not trying to poke the bear, as it were. I just want to get this out there, and y'all can discuss or not. However you come down on this issue, please know that I harbor no hard feelings, nor do I think you're cooler if you agree with me. (I'm the kind that doesn't really want to belong to any club that would have me...)
You may have heard (I don't know, maybe I'm the only one) that the family is under threat. You may also have heard (again, maybe it's just me) that the Number One Threat to the Family in this day and age is the civil redefinition of marriage to include all adult couples, rather than just the traditional heterosexual unions we're used to.
This redefinition, according to some, poses a grave challenge to "traditional marriage" — the civil and religious union of a man and a woman. The supposed consequences are no less than the degradation of the "traditional family" and eventually the downfall of society as we know it.
I've had a lot of discussions with a lot of friends who fall on both sides of this issue, and I feel like I've heard most of the arguments for both sides. (I'd love to hear if I've missed any compelling argument pro or con, though.)
Here's what I currently think: marriage between two caring, consenting, committed adults is a good almost without equal, no matter the gender or sex of the partners.
My position is based on the following assumptions:
I just fundamentally do not get why same-sex marriage is a bad thing — except that my church tells me so. And apparently (at least according to whomever is writing the Daily Universe editorials these days) "'active Mormons' know that when the prophet speaks, the debate is over."*
Which brings me to the title and real question of this post: what to do when the same mechanisms by which I trust in the soteriology of LDS Christianity lead me to a conviction that is at odds with official statements from Salt Lake?
As a missionary, I got a lot of mileage out of a rhetorical fallacy that hinged upon the promise of personal revelation from God in Moroni 10:3-5. I assured people that they could know the truth of all things (but especially the Book of Mormon's authenticity) if they would pray with real intent. Then, I argued, if God confirmed to them that the Book of Mormon was true, they would ("logically") have to accept that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, and therefore that everything else he said must be true, too.
Of course it doesn't work that way. I love the Prophet Joseph, and revere him as a holy man who spoke, when moved upon by the spirit, for God. I value the scripture we have because of him, and the religious heritage he bequeathed us. But he was wrong about a lot of things. And, to his credit, he often acknowledged his shortcomings and failures — another of his qualities I admire.
What do I do, then, when I apply Moroni's promise to the "problem" of same-sex marriage? When I ask in faith, with real intent, whether it's immoral and dangerous and wrong, and get a no as definite and unequivocal as the yes I get when I ask whether Joseph was a prophet and whether I should remain a member of the church he founded? I can tell no difference in the mechanism or the means of the process. And so I find myself compelled by the same faith I hold in Joseph's message to believe also that monogamous sexuality is good when attended by the bonds of marriage committment.
*Never mind that no prophet, seer or revelator (latter-day or ancient) has ever uttered this statement. Closest these days is Elder Oaks, with his dictum that one should never criticize the prophet, even if he is wrong.
I'm not trying to poke the bear, as it were. I just want to get this out there, and y'all can discuss or not. However you come down on this issue, please know that I harbor no hard feelings, nor do I think you're cooler if you agree with me. (I'm the kind that doesn't really want to belong to any club that would have me...)
You may have heard (I don't know, maybe I'm the only one) that the family is under threat. You may also have heard (again, maybe it's just me) that the Number One Threat to the Family in this day and age is the civil redefinition of marriage to include all adult couples, rather than just the traditional heterosexual unions we're used to.
This redefinition, according to some, poses a grave challenge to "traditional marriage" — the civil and religious union of a man and a woman. The supposed consequences are no less than the degradation of the "traditional family" and eventually the downfall of society as we know it.
I've had a lot of discussions with a lot of friends who fall on both sides of this issue, and I feel like I've heard most of the arguments for both sides. (I'd love to hear if I've missed any compelling argument pro or con, though.)
Here's what I currently think: marriage between two caring, consenting, committed adults is a good almost without equal, no matter the gender or sex of the partners.
My position is based on the following assumptions:
- The family is the basic unit of our society. When it works, it's great. Really, really great. For a lot of very compelling reasons (intimacy, monogamy, stability both emotional and financial, and on an on). More families = stronger, more vibrant society.
- Monogamous sex in a caring, consentual, committed adult relationship is a really, really good thing — regardless of the gender or sex of either adult. That is, there is nothing that makes heterosexual sex more or less moral than homosexual sex, or vice versa.
- There is no accepted evidence that same-sex couples do any worse at raising children well than do mixed-sex couples. Until such evidence is produced, there seems no compelling reason to assume that a same-sex couple would be less capable parents than a mixed-sex couple.
- There is accepted evidence that traditional, heteronormative marriages are in more trouble today than they have been in the past. There are many reasons for this — none of which is the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage. Debt due to consumerism and infidelity top the list. Gay marriage isn't even on it.
- There is more evidence every day — even from the LDS Church leadership! — that sexual orientation is innate and not a deliberate (and rebellious or sinful) choice, as it has been presented in the past. In fact, LDS leaders have stated unequivocally that sexual attraction (hetero- or homosexual) is not inherently sinful.
I just fundamentally do not get why same-sex marriage is a bad thing — except that my church tells me so. And apparently (at least according to whomever is writing the Daily Universe editorials these days) "'active Mormons' know that when the prophet speaks, the debate is over."*
Which brings me to the title and real question of this post: what to do when the same mechanisms by which I trust in the soteriology of LDS Christianity lead me to a conviction that is at odds with official statements from Salt Lake?
As a missionary, I got a lot of mileage out of a rhetorical fallacy that hinged upon the promise of personal revelation from God in Moroni 10:3-5. I assured people that they could know the truth of all things (but especially the Book of Mormon's authenticity) if they would pray with real intent. Then, I argued, if God confirmed to them that the Book of Mormon was true, they would ("logically") have to accept that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, and therefore that everything else he said must be true, too.
Of course it doesn't work that way. I love the Prophet Joseph, and revere him as a holy man who spoke, when moved upon by the spirit, for God. I value the scripture we have because of him, and the religious heritage he bequeathed us. But he was wrong about a lot of things. And, to his credit, he often acknowledged his shortcomings and failures — another of his qualities I admire.
What do I do, then, when I apply Moroni's promise to the "problem" of same-sex marriage? When I ask in faith, with real intent, whether it's immoral and dangerous and wrong, and get a no as definite and unequivocal as the yes I get when I ask whether Joseph was a prophet and whether I should remain a member of the church he founded? I can tell no difference in the mechanism or the means of the process. And so I find myself compelled by the same faith I hold in Joseph's message to believe also that monogamous sexuality is good when attended by the bonds of marriage committment.
*Never mind that no prophet, seer or revelator (latter-day or ancient) has ever uttered this statement. Closest these days is Elder Oaks, with his dictum that one should never criticize the prophet, even if he is wrong.
06 June 2008
First lights
The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots. In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutglass vase. Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.So begins Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. A boy at his grandfather’s wake. The trembling, inadequate light of a single failing candle. A cold procession of silvered and silent ancestors barely intuited trailing behind. The remnant of his relation dead and unsleeping before him. No wonder he reaches out to leave his mark. In wax, however. It won’t last.
It’s silly to call McCarthy’s novels dark. To call them violent. You might get as near the mark by calling Mother Teresa nice or Jeffrey Dahmer an epicurean. The ground of McCarthy’s fictive worlds is that fuliginous and unseeing space where mountains have been torn from the page of the sky at night; they are terror, abyss, unmeaning enunciate.
Strange, then, that this novel begins with light, albeit scant and threatened. Blood Meridian, one of his most unrelentingly terrifying works, too, presents small lights in the darkness from the first paragraphs:
See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.These lights are threatened always with extinction. A breath would extinguish them; only breath and the memory of breath can possibly maintain them. And always, always the possibility that these lights are only dreamed to vanish when we wake to the world and its dark. The last three pages of McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. A dream of light, and a waking.
Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.
14 April 2008
Am I depressed because I read dark novels...
...or do I read dark novels because I am depressed?
A good friend at work once asked why, if I am so into nonviolence (another post), do I spend much of my time reading and thinking about incredibly violent novels.
Short answer: I don’t know.
Longer, but ultimately unsatisfactory answer: Maybe it has to do with purging. Think Aristotle, not Karen Carpenter.
The former developed the concept of purging (alternately, purification/cleansing) or, as he put it, catharsis, as the chief defense of poetry in his seminal — nay, Big-Bang-al — work of literary criticism, Poetics. That's right. Catharsis: literary bulimia.
In one of his many treatises (this one imagining the ideal republic and titled, with that inimitably imaginative flamboyance for which he wasn't renowned, The Republic), Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, had outlawed poetry* because it aroused in the audience the most un-virile of virtues: pity and fear. Since virility was necessary to the Ideal State, pity and fear just wouldn't do, and so poetry was right out.
Aristotle, though, liked going to the movies. So (he argues) yes: his Doktorvater Plato was right that poetry elicits womanly pity and fear. And yes: these work at crosspurposes to the noble efforts of Our Philosopher Overlords. Nevertheless (members of the jury) what Plato didn't see was that the theater could actually serve a positive role in society by giving The Man the opportunity to indulge his pity and fear to excess. After thus binging, the theatergoer would puke his emotional guts out in his empty popcorn bag before leaving the (amphi)theater. It's a win-win, he argues. Catharsis ensures that the Leaders of the (Nominally) Free World can go on being Manly Men, and the unsung and pimply-faced heroes of the Cineplex Janitors League are guaranteed gainful employment.**
Aristotle believed, then, that seeing our fears acted out on stage permitted us to externalize and purge them from our minds. Is that why I am drawn to violent novels and, to a lesser extent, films? Do I have a deep, frustrated Need to Visit Mayhem Upon the World? Are these artworks the vicarious equivalent of murdering people?
If so, I'm the lamest potential serial killer ever. Can you imagine the trial? Prosecutor: "I will show that when reading books wasn't enough anymore, the defendant turned to R-rated movies!" [Jury gasps, recoiling.] No. While I have had cathartic experiences (usually movies), I don't think catharsis quite explains my penchant for disturbingly violent books.
My Best Guess: One of my favorite novels is Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. It is easily the most violent novel I've ever read. It is also one of the most stunningly beautiful works of prose I've ever had the pleasure — the intense pleasure — to read. Once, I got to the end of an especially evocative chapter and realized that I had been holding my breath. I was so captivated by the stark and textured images, the raw power and primal immediacy of the passage that I forgot to breathe. The only other experience so potentially absorbing is sex (though unfortunately for me, the two activities don't produce the same physiological sensations).
Consensus View: I like good writing. Let me rephrase that, putting all the heft and bulk of my Powers of Eloquence behind it: I like good writing a lot. While descriptions of violence do produce pity and fear in me, when those passages are peculiarly wrought and crafted with unique precision, their effect is even more potent: it is simply and purely beautiful.
By beautiful, I do not mean attractive, pretty, desirable, or sexy. Beauty is pleasing but terrible: it commands acknowledgment, inspires awe, defies reduction to satisfaction or comprehension. Beauty is masterful, intentional, whole. Contemplation of the beautiful is its own reward; an attitude of reverence is appropriate.
Try this, then: the interstices of a text that renders beautiful in language the very impulse, intent, or expression of violence — that element of our humanity which impels us to suspend, in the interest of self, language's imperative to community — is one of the only spaces I've found where violence cannot and does not exist. Instead of being encouraged or inflamed, a reader's violent desires are subsumed to and in the integral beauty of the text. The imagination is enthralled. At least during the act of reading, violence — even violent intent unrealized — is at least postponed, at best consumed by and into the conversation of the reader's imagination with the text.
The experience of beauty — a temporary suspension of the self's solitude — is why I like reading, and especially why I like reading violent novels: they intensify beauty as darkness intensifies light. As much as I seem to thirst after darkness, I long for light.
*Poetry for the ancient Greeks included all forms of literary expression, including dramatic theater.
**Average time it takes to get chunks of Pity out of theater-seat fabric: 1.5 teenager hours (1 if they're prohibited "bathroom" breaks).
A good friend at work once asked why, if I am so into nonviolence (another post), do I spend much of my time reading and thinking about incredibly violent novels.
Short answer: I don’t know.
Longer, but ultimately unsatisfactory answer: Maybe it has to do with purging. Think Aristotle, not Karen Carpenter.
The former developed the concept of purging (alternately, purification/cleansing) or, as he put it, catharsis, as the chief defense of poetry in his seminal — nay, Big-Bang-al — work of literary criticism, Poetics. That's right. Catharsis: literary bulimia.
In one of his many treatises (this one imagining the ideal republic and titled, with that inimitably imaginative flamboyance for which he wasn't renowned, The Republic), Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, had outlawed poetry* because it aroused in the audience the most un-virile of virtues: pity and fear. Since virility was necessary to the Ideal State, pity and fear just wouldn't do, and so poetry was right out.
Aristotle, though, liked going to the movies. So (he argues) yes: his Doktorvater Plato was right that poetry elicits womanly pity and fear. And yes: these work at crosspurposes to the noble efforts of Our Philosopher Overlords. Nevertheless (members of the jury) what Plato didn't see was that the theater could actually serve a positive role in society by giving The Man the opportunity to indulge his pity and fear to excess. After thus binging, the theatergoer would puke his emotional guts out in his empty popcorn bag before leaving the (amphi)theater. It's a win-win, he argues. Catharsis ensures that the Leaders of the (Nominally) Free World can go on being Manly Men, and the unsung and pimply-faced heroes of the Cineplex Janitors League are guaranteed gainful employment.**
Aristotle believed, then, that seeing our fears acted out on stage permitted us to externalize and purge them from our minds. Is that why I am drawn to violent novels and, to a lesser extent, films? Do I have a deep, frustrated Need to Visit Mayhem Upon the World? Are these artworks the vicarious equivalent of murdering people?
If so, I'm the lamest potential serial killer ever. Can you imagine the trial? Prosecutor: "I will show that when reading books wasn't enough anymore, the defendant turned to R-rated movies!" [Jury gasps, recoiling.] No. While I have had cathartic experiences (usually movies), I don't think catharsis quite explains my penchant for disturbingly violent books.
My Best Guess: One of my favorite novels is Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. It is easily the most violent novel I've ever read. It is also one of the most stunningly beautiful works of prose I've ever had the pleasure — the intense pleasure — to read. Once, I got to the end of an especially evocative chapter and realized that I had been holding my breath. I was so captivated by the stark and textured images, the raw power and primal immediacy of the passage that I forgot to breathe. The only other experience so potentially absorbing is sex (though unfortunately for me, the two activities don't produce the same physiological sensations).
Consensus View: I like good writing. Let me rephrase that, putting all the heft and bulk of my Powers of Eloquence behind it: I like good writing a lot. While descriptions of violence do produce pity and fear in me, when those passages are peculiarly wrought and crafted with unique precision, their effect is even more potent: it is simply and purely beautiful.
By beautiful, I do not mean attractive, pretty, desirable, or sexy. Beauty is pleasing but terrible: it commands acknowledgment, inspires awe, defies reduction to satisfaction or comprehension. Beauty is masterful, intentional, whole. Contemplation of the beautiful is its own reward; an attitude of reverence is appropriate.
Try this, then: the interstices of a text that renders beautiful in language the very impulse, intent, or expression of violence — that element of our humanity which impels us to suspend, in the interest of self, language's imperative to community — is one of the only spaces I've found where violence cannot and does not exist. Instead of being encouraged or inflamed, a reader's violent desires are subsumed to and in the integral beauty of the text. The imagination is enthralled. At least during the act of reading, violence — even violent intent unrealized — is at least postponed, at best consumed by and into the conversation of the reader's imagination with the text.
The experience of beauty — a temporary suspension of the self's solitude — is why I like reading, and especially why I like reading violent novels: they intensify beauty as darkness intensifies light. As much as I seem to thirst after darkness, I long for light.
*Poetry for the ancient Greeks included all forms of literary expression, including dramatic theater.
**Average time it takes to get chunks of Pity out of theater-seat fabric: 1.5 teenager hours (1 if they're prohibited "bathroom" breaks).
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