I heard the notion somewhere recently that left and right are stuck in different stages of grief, at least in regards to climate change: the right in denial, the left in bargaining. I quite liked that.
Something else that Buddhism and Christianity (Orthodoxy, anyway, which I know most about) have in common is the importance of cultivating detachment as the only way of surviving life with some sanity intact. In Orthodoxy the aim is to 'die to the world', to refuse to allow the passions (lust, greed, etc) to tie you too closely to this reality. For a Buddhist, detachment is the key to ending suffering. It makes intuitive sense. It is also extremely hard work! But possible.
Interesting angle. Possibly detachment is the other side of the 'sense of humanity's smallness' I talked about? I wrote from from the bird's eye perspective, bu of course religious practice can never approach things that way.
Detachment is also a fairly major theme of the Zhuangzi. There's little that is obviously about practice in the text, although there are many esoteric readings on that front, but Daoism as a whole quite obviously does have them.
Yes, I think so. Everything starts with humility - a sense that it is impossible to do anything without God. We have no power on our own, and when we think we do, we create tragedy. We have to make ourselves small and humble, and ask that God works through us. Become vessels. Detachment from our passions is a prerequisite to this, because our passions make us egotstical and self-centred. We follow our own desires rather than God's. The saint does the opposite. Most of us, of course, are quite a long way from that ...
True. Neither the religious nor Zhuangzi's response are easy. It's probably not entirely binary, though, we can be a bit less in denial and so on. I hope so anyway!
Again this is excellent. I have been pondering along similar lines. The Arsenios Option i.e., flee distraction and avoidance, be silent, dwell in stillness. I say yes. But how?
I think of people like Kierkegaard or maybe Thoreau, and the Holy Fools and Zen Poets, etc. They often cut a ridiculous figure (e.g., beating on a washtub after the death of one's wife) and are objects of ridicule, but they are also inescapable reminders of all the things the rest of us try all so hard to ignore. We've built an entire civilization dedicated to this denial, of death, or our need for one another...and it has made us crazy and miserable. And when the whole thing gets fundamentally shaky--as it now seems to be--instead of returning to reality, we double down.
At this point the childish response is probably too embedded in our "way of life" to be curtailed all that much. Where are the Kierkegaard's and his ilk to remind us of what he try so hard to forget? Do any of us have the courage, let alone the depth?
I suspect the Kierkegaards are still out there, but genius of that level will always be rare. They are probably also much easier to ignore in a media environment with orders of magnitude more background noise and in a society that is not as philosophically confident as the nineteenth century.
There's also a sense in which Kierkegaard's characteristic irony - for example, 'Christianity is not Christianity', where the term on the left refers to Christendom and the one on the right to the gospel message - no longer works.
The ironic criticism bites because it uses the normative ideal (right term) to criticise its putative embodiment (left term), but these absolute normative ideals have been abandoned in the West. Instead we have a plethora of relative terms - progress, equality, and so on - that are immune to ironic criticism because they don't stand for anything in themselves. This, it seems to me, is part of why societies that talk more and more about change are becoming more and more socially inert. They don't have the engine of ironic detachment that Kierkegaard exemplifies, and which is always there once you've committed to an absolute ideal.
Perhaps the Arsenios Option is what happens when a society cannot even recognise its Kierkegaard?
Writ large I think we are largely hopeless. Any "Kierkegaard" would either get absorbed into the media Abyss, or never bother to make himself known in the first place...why bother?
You are probably right that this makes fleeing the noise, remaining silent and dwelling in stillness all the more appealing. Maybe the real opportunity is at the very local level and face to face. The pub Kierkegaard, as it were.
Perhaps they 'cut a ridiculous figure' for a reason? Perhaps comedy is important in remedying tragedy? Spike Milligan's gravestone comes to mind "told you I was ill"!
“And when the whole thing gets fundamentally shaky--as it now seems to be--instead of returning to reality, we double down.”
It’s shaky for us on the fringes, but for those in the thick of the denial, doubling down is the only way forward. It’s a kind of faith, which will only become more fanatic as it becomes increasingly divorced from reality.
Christians have a set of beliefs (dogma) and rituals to help people deal with tragedy. I’m Catholic so I’ll discuss the ultimate tragedy, death, from a traditional Catholic perspective. We believe that death is not the end. The resurrection of Christ shows that persecution, suffering and death do not have the last word. There is always hope. And hope is actually one of the three theological virtues.
If a Catholic is terminally ill, he will receive Extreme Unction, a sacrament that provides a lot of comfort for a dying person, knowing that if he makes an act of sincere contrition, he will be forgiven and end up in heaven (he could spend some time in purgatory but eventually heaven). Hence we pray for the dead, have requiem masses said for our dearly departed (note how beautiful Mozart’s Requiem is), and find solace in praying for God ‘s mercy to shorten their time in purgatory. Every year, we commemorate the dead on All Saints Day (Nov. 1), while at the same time, meditating on the death, the shortness and fickleness of life. This forces us to reorder our priorities, placing the spiritual over the material. The meditation on death occurs, too, on Ash Wednesday when we receive ashes on our forehead and the priest says, “Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris” (Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return). Meditating on this at different points of the year makes you less materialistic, less grasping, less obsessed with stuff, less upset when things don’t go your way. You can actually become happy because no matter what happens to you, it isn’t the END. It’s not a total catastrophe.
I’m not saying all Catholics meditate on death, but the sacraments, masses, prayers and rituals have been around for over 1000 years to help people deal with death, and have provided much solace to many who otherwise would have been overcome by nihilistic despair.
Thanks for this. I'd agree that the sort of integration into the rhythms of life that you talk about is absolutely central.
I'd agree on the centrality of hope in Christianity too. I was careful to include the word in my one-line summary of the Christian response, but didn't want to go too far off track in what was already a fairly complex essay. I'm glad you've unpacked it a little more for me in the comments!
The societal-level denial seems to popularly manifest as utopianism and optimistic scientism. One sees this quite a bit in films and series, along with increasing displays of death and tragedy; not necessarily more tragedy than in movies of the past, but more vividly and sensually than in the past. It’s as if only here, in the unreal (virtual) space of film, that people can stop denying, and indeed (perhaps in a compensatory manner) symbolically indulge in the tragedy with perverse delight.
Definitely. I was tempted to include a paragraph on weird tech-utopias, but felt it was a bit of a tangent.
Interesting thoughts on death in media. Something strange seems to be going on. Actual tragedies in Aristotle's sense, where you identify with the character who loses everything, still seem pretty rare. Instead you have main characters wading though more or less disposable others or witnessing more or less disposable others suffering tragedies. There's still a lot of detachment and denial in that compared to the Greek model where you immerse yourself in the loss emotionally.
'Perverse delight' seems right: it's not so much an aesthetic appreciation of tragedy as transgressing your own denial just enough to get a transgressive thrill.
Really great essay. For me there is a lack of seriousness in the way we are living now, or a lack of seriousness regarding the most important things. Undercutting every attempt to come to terms with life’s inherently tragic nature is, I often find, a default reflex of irony.
Having imbibed deeply of The Life of Brian at young age I personally find engagement with the Christian faith quite difficult. Just when I think I’m grasping the tragedy, some snippet of dialogue from that film will pop into my head.
I’m not a massive fan of the ‘positive thinking’ trend, and I lament the often absurd lengths that people will go to polish turds, I do think there’s an element whereby the effort of thinking positively is akin to the virtue of hope. After all, virtues require effort.
Wonderful! Thank you! I feel like many Buddhist and Christians these days are focusing more on the “mystery” or “not knowing” approach you describe as the 4th “path”. I’m no expert and would love to hear if others have a similar sense...?
I'm not within either tradition, so I can't really say; but I think there are some 'mystery' approaches that fit more with the third response.
For example, a Christian might have strong hope for redemption while emphasising that their redemption is not within their own power and that the details are necessarily beyond their understanding. I'd still class that as the third response because there is that 'yes, but' that accepts tragedy but affirms something more.
The fourth response does not really believe tragedy can be transcended in the same way. Zhuangzi merely accepts it and does not dwell. I find that hard to square with Christianity; but then theology is complex and I am an amateur!
I am grateful for your insightful amatuerity ;) From my paltry understanding, even Zhuangzi leaves open the possibility that, for instance, he will become a rooster after his human death. I agree he is not “invested” in the outcome as in other “paths”. It has always struck me that reincarnation and redemption has something of a bribe to them to draw adherents into the fold. Perhaps reasonably because to live in accordance with the Tao is perhaps beyond the ability of most humans. I know how challenging it is for me that’s for sure but also what an inspiration it is as is your writing 🙏🏼🧡🙏🏼
Thanks. I think probably one of the crux differences between the last two responses and the first too is that they're not easy. It's definitely a challenge for me too: it's easier to talk the talk than walk the walk!
I heard the notion somewhere recently that left and right are stuck in different stages of grief, at least in regards to climate change: the right in denial, the left in bargaining. I quite liked that.
Something else that Buddhism and Christianity (Orthodoxy, anyway, which I know most about) have in common is the importance of cultivating detachment as the only way of surviving life with some sanity intact. In Orthodoxy the aim is to 'die to the world', to refuse to allow the passions (lust, greed, etc) to tie you too closely to this reality. For a Buddhist, detachment is the key to ending suffering. It makes intuitive sense. It is also extremely hard work! But possible.
Interesting angle. Possibly detachment is the other side of the 'sense of humanity's smallness' I talked about? I wrote from from the bird's eye perspective, bu of course religious practice can never approach things that way.
Detachment is also a fairly major theme of the Zhuangzi. There's little that is obviously about practice in the text, although there are many esoteric readings on that front, but Daoism as a whole quite obviously does have them.
Yes, I think so. Everything starts with humility - a sense that it is impossible to do anything without God. We have no power on our own, and when we think we do, we create tragedy. We have to make ourselves small and humble, and ask that God works through us. Become vessels. Detachment from our passions is a prerequisite to this, because our passions make us egotstical and self-centred. We follow our own desires rather than God's. The saint does the opposite. Most of us, of course, are quite a long way from that ...
True. Neither the religious nor Zhuangzi's response are easy. It's probably not entirely binary, though, we can be a bit less in denial and so on. I hope so anyway!
Oh yes definitely. It's all a long slow road, to walk one step at a time ...
Another word for detachment could be "acceptance", which is the last stage of grief. Maybe the whole world's just on different stages of their path.
Again this is excellent. I have been pondering along similar lines. The Arsenios Option i.e., flee distraction and avoidance, be silent, dwell in stillness. I say yes. But how?
I think of people like Kierkegaard or maybe Thoreau, and the Holy Fools and Zen Poets, etc. They often cut a ridiculous figure (e.g., beating on a washtub after the death of one's wife) and are objects of ridicule, but they are also inescapable reminders of all the things the rest of us try all so hard to ignore. We've built an entire civilization dedicated to this denial, of death, or our need for one another...and it has made us crazy and miserable. And when the whole thing gets fundamentally shaky--as it now seems to be--instead of returning to reality, we double down.
At this point the childish response is probably too embedded in our "way of life" to be curtailed all that much. Where are the Kierkegaard's and his ilk to remind us of what he try so hard to forget? Do any of us have the courage, let alone the depth?
Or is that even possible anymore?
I suspect the Kierkegaards are still out there, but genius of that level will always be rare. They are probably also much easier to ignore in a media environment with orders of magnitude more background noise and in a society that is not as philosophically confident as the nineteenth century.
There's also a sense in which Kierkegaard's characteristic irony - for example, 'Christianity is not Christianity', where the term on the left refers to Christendom and the one on the right to the gospel message - no longer works.
The ironic criticism bites because it uses the normative ideal (right term) to criticise its putative embodiment (left term), but these absolute normative ideals have been abandoned in the West. Instead we have a plethora of relative terms - progress, equality, and so on - that are immune to ironic criticism because they don't stand for anything in themselves. This, it seems to me, is part of why societies that talk more and more about change are becoming more and more socially inert. They don't have the engine of ironic detachment that Kierkegaard exemplifies, and which is always there once you've committed to an absolute ideal.
Perhaps the Arsenios Option is what happens when a society cannot even recognise its Kierkegaard?
Writ large I think we are largely hopeless. Any "Kierkegaard" would either get absorbed into the media Abyss, or never bother to make himself known in the first place...why bother?
You are probably right that this makes fleeing the noise, remaining silent and dwelling in stillness all the more appealing. Maybe the real opportunity is at the very local level and face to face. The pub Kierkegaard, as it were.
He had many virtues, but I'm not completely sure that 'brilliant drinking companion' was one of them :D
Perhaps they 'cut a ridiculous figure' for a reason? Perhaps comedy is important in remedying tragedy? Spike Milligan's gravestone comes to mind "told you I was ill"!
And there really is nothing to lose, for as they say, "comedy is the one thing you can do badly and no one will laugh at you."
I have tested this in the cauldron of brutal reality and it is true!
And if no one laughs at you, you can always laugh at yourself....this is something my 6 year old daughter teaches me daily!
She is a wee buddha!
“And when the whole thing gets fundamentally shaky--as it now seems to be--instead of returning to reality, we double down.”
It’s shaky for us on the fringes, but for those in the thick of the denial, doubling down is the only way forward. It’s a kind of faith, which will only become more fanatic as it becomes increasingly divorced from reality.
I think this is probably key. If you're deep in denial, you won't even recognise it as denial or what the other possible responses are.
"I say yes. But how?"
Aren't you answering that question right now, Jack?
Well, I suppose I am...what was the answer again?
We're all waiting for you to tell us. Though the one you just came up with sounds like a response to a koan, which may be apt ...
Christians have a set of beliefs (dogma) and rituals to help people deal with tragedy. I’m Catholic so I’ll discuss the ultimate tragedy, death, from a traditional Catholic perspective. We believe that death is not the end. The resurrection of Christ shows that persecution, suffering and death do not have the last word. There is always hope. And hope is actually one of the three theological virtues.
If a Catholic is terminally ill, he will receive Extreme Unction, a sacrament that provides a lot of comfort for a dying person, knowing that if he makes an act of sincere contrition, he will be forgiven and end up in heaven (he could spend some time in purgatory but eventually heaven). Hence we pray for the dead, have requiem masses said for our dearly departed (note how beautiful Mozart’s Requiem is), and find solace in praying for God ‘s mercy to shorten their time in purgatory. Every year, we commemorate the dead on All Saints Day (Nov. 1), while at the same time, meditating on the death, the shortness and fickleness of life. This forces us to reorder our priorities, placing the spiritual over the material. The meditation on death occurs, too, on Ash Wednesday when we receive ashes on our forehead and the priest says, “Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris” (Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return). Meditating on this at different points of the year makes you less materialistic, less grasping, less obsessed with stuff, less upset when things don’t go your way. You can actually become happy because no matter what happens to you, it isn’t the END. It’s not a total catastrophe.
I’m not saying all Catholics meditate on death, but the sacraments, masses, prayers and rituals have been around for over 1000 years to help people deal with death, and have provided much solace to many who otherwise would have been overcome by nihilistic despair.
Thanks for this. I'd agree that the sort of integration into the rhythms of life that you talk about is absolutely central.
I'd agree on the centrality of hope in Christianity too. I was careful to include the word in my one-line summary of the Christian response, but didn't want to go too far off track in what was already a fairly complex essay. I'm glad you've unpacked it a little more for me in the comments!
The societal-level denial seems to popularly manifest as utopianism and optimistic scientism. One sees this quite a bit in films and series, along with increasing displays of death and tragedy; not necessarily more tragedy than in movies of the past, but more vividly and sensually than in the past. It’s as if only here, in the unreal (virtual) space of film, that people can stop denying, and indeed (perhaps in a compensatory manner) symbolically indulge in the tragedy with perverse delight.
Definitely. I was tempted to include a paragraph on weird tech-utopias, but felt it was a bit of a tangent.
Interesting thoughts on death in media. Something strange seems to be going on. Actual tragedies in Aristotle's sense, where you identify with the character who loses everything, still seem pretty rare. Instead you have main characters wading though more or less disposable others or witnessing more or less disposable others suffering tragedies. There's still a lot of detachment and denial in that compared to the Greek model where you immerse yourself in the loss emotionally.
'Perverse delight' seems right: it's not so much an aesthetic appreciation of tragedy as transgressing your own denial just enough to get a transgressive thrill.
Really great essay. For me there is a lack of seriousness in the way we are living now, or a lack of seriousness regarding the most important things. Undercutting every attempt to come to terms with life’s inherently tragic nature is, I often find, a default reflex of irony.
Having imbibed deeply of The Life of Brian at young age I personally find engagement with the Christian faith quite difficult. Just when I think I’m grasping the tragedy, some snippet of dialogue from that film will pop into my head.
I’m not a massive fan of the ‘positive thinking’ trend, and I lament the often absurd lengths that people will go to polish turds, I do think there’s an element whereby the effort of thinking positively is akin to the virtue of hope. After all, virtues require effort.
I'd agree, I'm about a million miles away from the positive thinking trend by character, but there is a little nugget of truth behind the nonsense.
Wonderful! Thank you! I feel like many Buddhist and Christians these days are focusing more on the “mystery” or “not knowing” approach you describe as the 4th “path”. I’m no expert and would love to hear if others have a similar sense...?
I'm not within either tradition, so I can't really say; but I think there are some 'mystery' approaches that fit more with the third response.
For example, a Christian might have strong hope for redemption while emphasising that their redemption is not within their own power and that the details are necessarily beyond their understanding. I'd still class that as the third response because there is that 'yes, but' that accepts tragedy but affirms something more.
The fourth response does not really believe tragedy can be transcended in the same way. Zhuangzi merely accepts it and does not dwell. I find that hard to square with Christianity; but then theology is complex and I am an amateur!
I am grateful for your insightful amatuerity ;) From my paltry understanding, even Zhuangzi leaves open the possibility that, for instance, he will become a rooster after his human death. I agree he is not “invested” in the outcome as in other “paths”. It has always struck me that reincarnation and redemption has something of a bribe to them to draw adherents into the fold. Perhaps reasonably because to live in accordance with the Tao is perhaps beyond the ability of most humans. I know how challenging it is for me that’s for sure but also what an inspiration it is as is your writing 🙏🏼🧡🙏🏼
Thanks. I think probably one of the crux differences between the last two responses and the first too is that they're not easy. It's definitely a challenge for me too: it's easier to talk the talk than walk the walk!
🧡
I really like this post
Thank you!
To Dance is not to deny
Simply to be caught up in a greater Story
Off-topic, but this line spoke to me of the pleasures found by progressive participants in the culture wars;
‘a cathartic dwelling in fear and pity’