It is useless and meaningless to tell a person, “Think for yourself.” The command is both impossible to obey, and impossible to disobey. If the person obeys the injunction, he or she has already disobeyed it by blindly following your advice. However, if the person decides to disobey the injunction, he or she must then obey it as a matter of course. Disobeying and obeying are joined seamlessly; each necessitates the other. This is a classic paradox; one side slides into the other seamlessly and eternally, forming a kind of Möbius loop, a surface with one continuous and endless side. (This is essentially the same as the paradox in Kierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus, which is a mind-bending read that I would highly recommend. It's the other half of the Kierkegaard edition we had to purchase for Sem. 5.)

If a person is to think for himself, the impetus must come from within himself; likewise, if a person is to not think for himself, no impetus must come from within himself. The mind is either active or passive; it either deliberates or it is acted upon, at any given moment. Our humanly existence consists in an unavoidable fluctuation between these two states, often in rapidly shifting and unpredictable patterns. If a person thinks that he always thinks for himself, then he is hopelessly arrogant and absurd. However, if a person thinks that he never thinks for himself, then he has already proven himself wrong. To never think for oneself would mean to have no self-consciousness, like animals and babies. Nevertheless, the task of a human is to increase the amount of time he spends thinking for himself—to increase more and more the ratio of active to passive mind, even if passive mind can never be completely eliminated. In this way, man more and more approximates Complete Knowing and Complete Self-knowing, which are one and the same thing. In this way, man becomes wise and approaches God.

But now I think I have left something out, because I started with a paradox and ended with a straightforward assertion; I started with a Möbius loop and ended up with a straight line. Is that because I straightened out the loop, untwisted the faulty language that caused the paradox to arise in the first place? Or is there another paradox here, in which active and passive mind are really one and the same, so that we ought to aim for both completely active and passive minds, or ought to aim for some ideal blend of the two?


-JMK

(This is excerpted from an email I wrote earlier this week.)


I don't know if I would say I'm "disillusioned" with journalism, because I don't think I came into it with that much illusion to begin with. I don't think I really had much of an opinion on it. Well, maybe I am a bit disillusioned; I guess journalism has sunk lower in my eyes since starting this job, or at least most types of journalism have. I think the idealistic image of journalism I had in my mind was of an investigative journalist who goes out and sort of snoops around and inconspicuously watches and observes everything until he kind of formulates the story, figures out what's really happening, and reveals to people the truth that was hidden to them before. Obviously I haven't gotten to do much of that (although the story I just wrote today was a little bit like that). I think there are those kind of journalists, but you have to work your way to the top before you have the freedom and expertise to write that kind of story. And of course, that ideal journalist I had in my mind would have been a reporter of complete integrity, loyal to no parties but the truth. The more I do this job, the more I see every day that everyone has their angle. It can be really disenchanting. It breaks down your sense of trust and makes you suspicious of everyone, which may be useful and necessary if you're to survive in the tough, hardened worlds of politics and business and media, but it seems harmful and degrading to one's humanity. It's almost like being a soldier...like you are forced to bite back the better instinct inside yourself in order to do your job, which may be a necessary and even noble sacrifice to make, but still, it's not good for you. Or like carrying the Ring of Power (if you think about it, the media is power...). I'm afraid of what would happen if I stayed in this job for a long, long time.

There is no objective journalism...which makes sense and is unavoidable, because no person can be completely objective. But what disturbs me is that it seems that virtually nobody's even trying to be objective anymore. It's like all the news places have just started letting their completely unobjectivity hang out, without any shame--often they even take pride in being biased. I'm just so not into the politics game, the power plays...I don't want anything to do with it. I'll support causes I think are just, but I feel like so many people in journalism are so caught up in politics, like that's all they can think about, as if it were the be-all and end-all of human action. Actually, the more I follow politics and the more I learn about how things are done in Washington, D.C., the more convinced I am that politics really does very little to help people. It's all a lot of grandstanding with very little actually accomplished. Beyond ensuring that the minimum conditions for security and commerce are met, providing a few basic services, and ensuring that all are treated with the minimum level of human decency, and the political system is pretty much impotent. I mean, it's impotent when it comes to actually making the world a better place. (But just so that you don't think I've gone Republican, so is the free market.)

-Joey

This post was prompted by my own independent experiences, but it just happens to be about the same things Laura was talking about in her post below, so it is in some ways a response to that post.

I have lately been thinking more about pursuing further studies, most likely in English literature, at the master's and/or doctoral level. The problem is, it seems like you need to have a pretty good idea of the area you want to study and your dissertation topic, especially for doctoral studies, and I can't pin down one area that I'm especially interested in. I was looking at the websites for the English departments of some well-known universities, just browsing to see if there were any professors whose research interests sounded like something that I would be interested in studying further. After some time, a subtle sickening feeling began to steal over me. I had had this experience before, when I was trying to decide on a major before settling on PLS and thus was reading the topics of the professors' research in several different fields, including English, psychology, and a few others. The sickening sensation, I think, was the result of plowing through heaps upon heaps of what sounded like hopelessly pedantic and narrow research topics, things that no one in their right mind would ever think to spend a lot of time learning about because they were so narrowly focused. My impulse then, as it still is now, was for greater and greater broadness, for expansion rather than narrowing. My ideal, I later came to realize, was that of the Renaissance man or the "gentleman" in the Pascalian sense, the man who is not necessarily an expert on anything but who knows a lot about many different things. 

The trouble is, I want to learn it all. Almost everything seems interesting to me, but this prevents me from choosing any one thing to focus on in great detail and depth, at the exclusion of other things. At the same time as all of these professors' research topics sound interesting, I don't want to learn any of it, and it all seems like vanities upon vanities. 

This way of expansion seems to be contrary to the way of the scholar, or at least the professional scholar. Perhaps it is the way of the auto-didact, the self-directed and free scholar, such as I imagine Erasmus, Pascal, and virtually every other great figure in the history of thought were. The more I think about it, it seems that almost none of the truly great, original thinkers, none of the most remembered and renowned artists and poets, were university men. From the little biographical reading I have done about famous writers and thinkers, it seems that most pursued jagged and erratic career paths. Some studied at universities for a time, some earned graduate degrees, but usually, they eventually at some point broke from the well-worn rut of academia. They took the road less traveled.

Perhaps it is possible, as I said in my first response to Laura's post, to pursue the academic career path but to retain your integrity, to expand and broaden rather than narrow yourself, to hold the best of yourself in reserve. Perhaps it is possible to be in academia without being of academia. I can think of professors I have had who seem to fit this description somewhat (Weinfield comes to mind). But it is probably exceedingly difficult. Then again, it is also exceedingly difficult to pursue one's own self-directed program of learning while fully involved in the real world, contending with the intractable and insistent pressures of time and economics. Ah well, c'est la vie. We were condemned to labor under the sweat of our brows.

-Joey

P.S. Lilly, I'd be interested in reading the pensee you wrote for Munzel.

What am I thankful for? I am thankful for Thanksgiving, the perfect opportunity to stuff your face while enjoying the company of the people you love. I am thankful for the gift of food and eating, an indescribable experience no matter what food you have--a music in the mouth that somehow emerges miraculously from a blend of chemicals and neurons. Last night while out at a bar with my friends from high school, I realized suddenly how thankful I was for all of them, for each one of them is beautiful in their own way, and how thankful I am for the many more people in the world whose lives have just barely touched mine, for the gift of walking into a crowded bar and seeing faces I once knew, laughing and relaxing and enjoying drinks, and getting the chance to catch up with them again, and everyone being more beautiful and more fully themselves than they were when last I saw them. I imagine this is what heaven would be like. I am grateful for the continuity and entanglement of space and time, for these fetters that set us free and allow us to experience reality, because without these filters reality is an inchoate explosion that only Itself can understand. I am grateful for having a mind, for having a brain that allows so many millions of thoughts to pass through me every day, allowing me to think back and forward, giving me some measure of freedom from the present. I am grateful for each one of you, my friends, who each of you find ways to appear every day in those millions of thoughts flitting through me, who thereby enrich my life, and hopefully I yours in turn. I am grateful for Whatever holds us up and keeps us going, for That which has kept me and keeps me from falling apart at every moment. I am grateful for life, and I am grateful for death, for without death life would be unendurable.

-JMK

First, since this is not a pensee over which the threat of professorly displeasure looms, can I apologize for completely dropping the ball in posting thus far?  I really have no excuse - except for that strange, frenetic voice in my head that stammers and rapidly and repeatedly insists on doing anything and everything tomorrow, preferably when no one is looking.  At any rate, I'm very sorry and I truly will try to make up for it - every other week for the foreseeable future...

As someone very much in limbo right now, I've been thinking a lot about the where and the why - oh, and quite frantically about the how.  We're all PLSers; we seem to have an almost pathological (pardon the negative connotation!) need to do and be... better and more - to make something real and amazing and dumbfoundingly splendid with our lives.  Goodness knows I want that, and I think anyone who forges ahead through three years of Kants and Euclids and Hegels (no offense meant - just imagine I picked people you hated too...) for the sake of not only the luminous Dantes and Dostoevskys but also for the possibility of understanding everything a little better - well, I think you must want IT too. 

Now maybe my weird disillusionment with academia wouldn't have wormed its way in if I had been a faithful reader and poster over the past few months.  I still love PLS and I still itch to continue exploring the Great Books and the great ideas  - and the possibilty of IT - but more and more I keep coming back to the little things... and I think maybe those "sticky little leaves" don't have anything to do with philosophic knowledge after all (I always tried to make them coincide - maybe I was the only one).  ...And then I wonder what the real difference is between the two roads in the yellow wood:  maybe just the quiet ability to love the small things as much as the large - and to pay as much attention to the shadow the leaves make on the path or the way the phone sounds when it rings in your pocket as whether or not the space around you is a mental construct or what time really means.  Maybe it's enough to just get the hang of living life as a gift from Him - and trying to communicate that in whatever language you know best and whatever life you love with your best and most peaceful self.  

I don't know.  This is most likely something you all already knew - and here I am with my leftover epiphanies again...  Or maybe I'm just giving academic endeavor the "rottenest kind of a deal."  That may well be.  But they're my honest thoughts for better or worse.

-L Schaffer

I once heard a criticism of Great Books programs (I'm pretty sure it was in The Closing of the American Mind) that charged that reading the Great Books in such a cursory fashion gives people a "spurious acquaintance with greatness." That may be so, but I would charge that an education that consists of reading a lot of history books or news articles without any philosophical training gives people a spurious acquaintance with awareness.

-Joey

The back cover of my well-worn copy of Brideshead Revisited describes the novel as Evelyn Waugh's homage to the past, a book "alight with the glittering-candle glow of an elegant age that was already passing away."

In another well-worn favorite, A Severe Mercy (a natural sequel to Brideshead which I highly recommend to those who haven't read it), author Sheldon Vanauken describes his 1940s-era courtship of his wife, Davy.  As college students, the two loved to spend hours in the library of his father's genteel club, sipping drinks and talking or reading in front of an enormous fireplace.  Above the ornate fireplace, these words were inscribed: "Music, Books, and Friends decree Wisdom, Strength, and Courtesy".  The two young lovers took the quote to heart, and made music, books, and loving friendship integral parts of their marriage.

Yesterday I attended a lecture at the old and prestigious University Club of Chicago.  One room in particular featured a stone fireplace, chairs, and books - reminding me of Vanauken's description of his father's club.  Unfortunately the lecture and discussion afterwards centered on the demise of Western civilization; the modern disrespect for old ways, traditions, and places.

Out of all this, came the following.  I am sure that you all have places where you have felt the same way.

On Evening
I like these enclaves of old, their often moss-grown quietness.
The robust armchairs before a vast fireside of stone. 
Bound books line walls of places too loved, to be allowed to live long. 
Will you sit with mead and mugs before the fire, care not for drops of snow that mist the pane. 
Will you breathe the scent of must and conversation in places that for years have been the same.

Preserve the enclave, grey stone and ivy clinging.  A berth, a port, to feet that wander far.  How long can comfort last beneath these ill-crossed stars?

Music, books, and friends decree wisdom, strength, and courtesy

Will we lose plush carpets, slightly worn where soft-shod feet have stood.
The diamond panes of windows built for carriage views and not for conservation.
Will it last?
Can it last?
Carry the flame of impractical oak logs and hearts and tongues that dance to the tune of port and sherry.
Carry this, for it cannot last long.

- LC

I hate to post on top of my own post, but I have an urgent question. I can't explain why it is urgent, but it is. If anyone has any information relevant to this question, please turn it over, honestly, without any hedging. The question: Have there been any well-known Christians, especially Catholics (like saints or popes or theologians or Doctors of the Church) who eventually went insane, á la Nietzsche at the end of his life? (I couldn't find an answer on Google.)

Do you wash your clothes so religiously, week after week, because they are truly dirty, or only because you wish to smell sweet and fragrant and appear bright and clean to your neighbor?

JMK

"Arriving in Paris always causes me pain, even when I have been away for only a short while.  It is a city which I never fail to approach with expectation and leave with disappointment.  There is a question which only I can ask and which only Paris can answer; but this question is something which I have never yet been able to formulate.  Certain things indeed I have learnt here: for instance, that my happiness has a sad face, so sad that for years I took it for my unhappiness and drove it away.  But Paris remains for me still an unresolved harmony.  It is the only city which I can personify.  London I know too well, and the others I do not love enough.  Paris I encounter, but as one encounters a loved one, in the end and dumbly, and can scarcely speak a word.  Alors, Paris, qu'est-ce que tu dis, toi?  Paris, dis-moi ce que j'aime.  But there is no reply, only the sad echo from crumbling walls, Paris."
- Under the Net

Dans le Bureau
I teeter on the edge of an abyss
My worlds, my words, are telling and are true
Quick-painted, light, and tinged with bitter bliss
Wrapped coils circle round my self and you -

You strangely stir, and file for disaster
Beyond the brink of bright bespattered blue
Beyond the known, approach the throne, my Master
Creating ken from what we thought was through.

Within my box I write, in sudden snatches -
They'll catch me not; excelling as I hide
The buried flame, I'll tame,
And tame it faster,
For all the hurts that chink away my pride.
(What's that, inside?)

Bestride the subtle edge, I barely balance
Slight shift could send me swift into the brink

This tight, taut line is all that's mine -
But I was made to dance, and not to sink.

(What then, you think?)

- LC