The invisible community.

There has always been a tension within me between the poet and the clear headed rationalist. The former stalks about in-between intense musical chords of string instruments and her personal struggle beside a wine glass cements her place in history – the latter rises above the usual folly of humanity by clearing her mind of the clutter of sentimentality and insincere thought.

Depending on my state of mind, which I favor at any given point, and in what combinations, varies. Yet overall it is fair to say that ever since college I have usually tried to hold my poet-side down; to reign in that primordial urge inside of me to communicate my subjective experience of life to others, and to receive either commentary or admiration in return. I usually fail, however, to contain the beast, and the results vary as well. However, when they are bad – when I have made a fool of myself or simply appeared foolish – my other self rears up mercilessly, and I can feel nothing but an overriding contempt for that stupid girl who so stupidly opened her mouth, or picked up her pen.

I come to think of this not because the conflict has been acute lately – quite the contrary. I have been finding my emotions, meanings and passions to focus increasingly on, and join with that which preoccupies my rational mind most of the time. This has, as already discussed, led me to start seriously considering how to best lay plans for making my best attempt to matter, somehow, to this world. But therein lies the question at hand – in order to do so, how must I present myself to the world? How do I go out and argue for ideas, while those ideas are being transmitted, not purely as though out of ether, but from a human being, full of – amongst other things – poetry?

The model I see all around me is one of limited restraint – the intellectuals I know and admire do not seem particularly afraid of letting their human sides show, but they do not offer them very often for consumption. There is a tacit understanding that for ideas to really convince, they need to be separated, at least in principle, from subjective experience. I would certainly concur – but I am not sure it helps explain why the ideas are worthy, valuable, and powerful to rip them from the context through which they are spoken. In other words, I do not know that I can better advance my idea of what would make a better world if I cannot explain how it is for me living in the current one.

And this of course, means perhaps much will come out in this act of conveyance that the most austere among us will define as strictly “personal,” and perhaps it is only this. But I hope not only to be a writer of facts and logic, but of consciousness and experience – I hope to keep and include my poet. And if I am going to do that – if I am going to aim for that larger net, that wider goal – I have to go ahead and give myself up to the world, whatever they might end up doing with these sides of myself or however they might judge me. For once I have wedded my fate to history, there is no part of myself that does not rightly belong to it.

And if you think about this, inevitably this happens to all participants in the moving of society, whether minor or major – their family, relationship and mental histories are looked over and researched articulately, some of the top names earning entire books solely on the matter of their psychology and how that contributed to the thoughts and deeds they gave to the world. Why not simply make it easier for everyone by giving them the book, handing over the diary – it would at the least satiate that poet yearning for connection to an audience, and would do so in the long run goal of satisfying much more than merely my overly reflective self.

“That echo chorus lied to me.”

A significant portion of my consciousness is occupied by an awareness of suffering. But not only the immediately conceivable injustice of politics or oppression, but of personal suffering — existential suffering. This personal suffering is rarely if ever given political expression or cultural legitimacy; it is a suffering regulated to the corridors of silence, where it stifles without an audience, and equally without a solution.

Where better to clarify what I am talking about than Oprah? In her book, The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby pinpoints what has always made me anxious about Oprah. Central to her show is a narrative – one narrative – about the meaning of human trial and suffering. Suffering which arises out of misfortune is an opportunity in disguise to learn some new profound, spiritual lesson; and if you only have faith in this design of providence — often explicitly referred to as God’s providence — one will find the path to internal peace and, if your misfortune was due to some personal defects, redemption. There is, in other words, no meaningless sufferings. Every guest on Oprah’s show follows this script — and it is a script — of salvation through pious suffering. To my knowledge, she has had no one on the show to counter this narrative with the denial of providence, or an ultimate moral reason behind suffering.

Now, I am all for making lemonades out of lemons. But the pervasiveness of this doctrine, epitomized not only by Oprah but pretty much any media outlet that comments on existential questions, results in the condemnation of those who fail to find such edifying meaning in their suffering. There is something fundamentally wrong with people, in other words, who are depressed despite the best medication and therapy available, who persist in denying God or any objective meaning to human experience. They are the ungrateful, the weak, the failed and the arrogant.

What is responsible for the fact that what is in fact very historically rich experience is virtually ignored in American culture? I could probably research and write a whole book on it, so I hardly have an answer to offer immediately — but I would suspect it has a bit to do with stoicism, and a bit more to do with stoicism mixed with Christianity, and then a whole lot to do with the general belief in God that such Christianity has engendered, whether or not this providence is understood in strictly Christian terms. Throw in a bit of capitalist contempt for those deemed unproductive and unappreciative members of society, and you have a rich recipe for collective denial of persistent, unaccountable suffering — a denial of our own powerlessness over the human condition – and this denial makes life for those who dwell in it all the more isolated and unbearable.

Put simply, our culture usually denies that sometimes life just sucks, hard, painfully and long, and without any good reason. For sure you can learn things to your benefit from this suffering, and much art of great worth has been produced out of it, but this by no means is a reason for arguing that ultimately all the sad should reach some level of happiness, or that all sadness ultimately finds purpose and was intended for it. For those who believe they do not measure up to the level of control and happiness our Oprah-consuming world posits is waiting for all those sincerely seeking, there is nothing but a endless well of self-loathing waiting for them; there are hardly any voices to tell them that such is the human condition, and those who experience and realize its harsh realities cannot, through sheer mental exertion, do anything to change it.

I do not argue this in the cause of nihilism, or to bring despair to the world. Quite the opposite. For it seems to me that in light of this, all we can do is love and support each other, to help each other through. For some people, life is mostly the struggle, a sometimes continuous one that lacks storybook moments of triumphs. That does not mean it cannot have personal meaning or joyousness for them; but rather our society says to them persistently: “You ought to be happy as I am happy. Something is wrong with you if you are not.”

I believe that this attitude in fact brings much more suffering, much more loneliness upon the world than would otherwise be so if our culture as a whole lived with a consciousness and acceptance of the reality of existential suffering. But to stigmatize the unrepentant or unreformed individual who persists, and remains in an existential crises is merely the culture’s way of avoiding such a general shock to itself. In America, at least, the possibility that there is no ultimate, objective meaning haunts our deepest nightmares; it casts in doubt all we work for, strive for, believe is right and moral. It does not necessarily have to – but it does force us to bring our own souls to bare when formulating meaning, and it does mean we cannot demand of others the same experience, mission, or experience. And for those who have not been there, and fear both the darkness and know not the beauty of the endless internal universe, this is an idea worth all their anxious energy to deny.

Compared to some I’ve been around, but I really tried so hard

That echo chorus lied to me with its hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

–Neko Case.

What have I been doing?

So, what the fuck have I been up to the past, er, two or three weeks or however long it has been since I have blogged?

Quite a lot actually. I’ve started attending AGASA meetings on campus where a bunch of nonbelievers get to engage in lively debate about all sorts of yummy nonbelieving topics. I’ve also been attending a lot of talks hosted by the Department et al.,which have given me some hope for improving the public discourse in this country, although not too terribly much.

But any sign of improvement is encouraging considering that I’ve pretty much decided to go into the business of doing just that. Although not just when it comes to the public discourse surronding history, but the public discourse surrounding politics, culture, and oh yes, even religion. This has something to do with the possiblity that I might switch my dissertation topic to the twentith century, since that would be much more relevant to you know, now. But as I’m having trouble seeing what I would want to do in this very depressing century devoid of white, virtuous old men in wigs I’m not too confident about that yet.

But in order to make sure I can at least make something ultimately relevant out of my dissertation to someone beyond Gordon Wood and…well yes just Gordon Wood, I’m taking a seminar on non-academic job searches for that time in the future where I’m going to try to make my living off of being clever, making arguments, and writing well.

So what I have been up to? A hell of a lot, as I’ve basically decided to seriously start embarking on my life goal to basically change the world. Yeah. Wish me luck. On that.

But oh, the excitement and the beauty of it all. Really, it can just astound me sometimes.