Existential Inventions

As an example of contrapuntal improvisation, inventio is the quintessential form of a musical exercise. In J. S. Bach’s work, inventions (or Aufrichtige Anleitugen) usually entail a short exposition, a longer development, and, sometimes, a short recapitulation (Invention # 5, for example). In contrast to the fugue, inventions do not generally contain an answer to the subject in the dominant key. They are less developed, less complete, not so grand. Frequently, the recapitulation is left open, hanging as it were, unfledged and without finality. Inventions are meant for developing students, for personal development of competence, and as a rule do not aspire to the limelight of concert halls, although many outstanding recordings of Bach's inventions exist (Glenn Gould!). When practiced regularly, they form the body to respond adequately to the stimuli of notes and measures, keys and metronomes. They require an embrace of askesis, a disciplined reiteration of practices whose stated aim is to turn us into proper practitioners, masters of the fundamentals of music performance. In a sense, they are both initiation rites and “technologies of the self” (Foucault), preludes to greater musical complexities with their balance of innovation and structure, predictability and surprise.

I want to utilize this simile of inventio as a symbolic shortcut for a particular existential style, a way of thinking about God, culture, and self through a cluster of interrelated metaphors: elaboration, incompleteness, discipline, practice, thematic unity, and performance...

On Anger, via Plutarch

To see oneself in a state which nature did not intend, with one’s features all distorted, contributes in no small degree toward discrediting that passion.—Plutarch

I don’t know how it came about, but somehow, for some reason, Debbie, my wife, surreptitiously took a video of me getting worked up about something. That happened some time ago now, during an overseas trip. When I stumbled upon it a couple of years later, I was taken aback. The facial contortions, the unpleasant wining, the huffing and puffing over some inconsequential thing—what a spectacle to behold! I am still ashamed to think of it. Mortified, actually. And then the thought: “How often have I looked like that in my life, oblivious to the imprint I was leaving on the world around me?”

That experience primed me to read Plutarch’s “On the Control of Anger” (Moralia VI) with keen interest. As one is right to expect, he comes down hard on anger. What intrigued me most, though, is a practical solution he suggests, which is a strategy and statement about human nature in equal measure. In short, he proposes that we should pay a person to walk behind us with a mirror in hand. The only task of the said companion would be to put the speculum in front of our face the moment we lose our temper. The intuition behind that somewhat facetious thought experiment is that if we could only see our visage in such ignoble moments, we would be forced to concede the ugliness of our reactivity and perhaps nib it in its bud.

As I think about that video, I see what Plutarch is after. The mere remembrance of those images has had a deterring force in many a moment. The thought, “I don’t want to look and sound like that,” has stopped me dead in the tracks more than once. One could name this the moral force of negative self-exemplarity. And sometimes, that’s all we need.

COVID, Montaigne, and Attentiveness

For many people in my circle of care and friendship, COVID has brought a profound sense of loss, a sense of fragility. I feel that too, quite acutely. But perhaps, right there, is an opportunity for reorienting. Perhaps such a seeping sense of impermanence reasserts an existential truism common to many wisdom traditions—the centrality of attention and mindfulness to a good life.

As Bakewell’s splendid biography highlights, Montaigne's essays repeatedly point us to that theme, so much so that the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes him as someone who put "a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence" (60). Such a commitment to attentiveness only intensified as Montaigne got older. "Knowing that the life that remained to him could not be of great length, he said, 'I try to increase it in weight, I try to arrest the speed of its flight by the speed with which I grasp it…. The shorter my possession of life, the deeper and fuller I must make it" (61).

Few life-truths press upon us with greater alacrity, regardless of age. But how to grow into it?

Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday"

I have learned so much from Stefan Zweig's book, as one invariably does from superb autobiographies. The fleetingness of memory, the penchant for downplaying ominous sings, the irrationality of violence, the self-destructive instincts at the heart of the human psyche, the self-crushing effect of exile, the fragility of civilizational guardrails, the redeeming power of art, and the disorienting character of unhinged cultural changes. All that and more is to be gleaned from this fin de siècle account ominously cast in the shadow of the two great wars.

Here are but a few quotes that give food for thought:

"It remains an irrefragable law of history that contemporaries are denied a recognition of the early beginnings of the great movements which determine their times."

"For I regard memory not as a phenomenon preserving one thing and losing another merely by chance, but as a power that deliberately places events in order or wisely omits them. Everything we forget about our own lives was really condemned to oblivion by an inner instinct long ago."

"National Socialism, with its unscrupulous methods of deception, took care not to show how radical its aims were until the world was inured to them. So it tried out its technique cautiously—one dose at a time, with a short pause after administering it."

"Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life."

The Rhythms of Nature, the Rhythms of Life

Last month, Jonna Jinton, an artist from Grundtjärn, a tiny village in northern Sweden just below the arctic circle, released this wonderful video. An inspiring meditation on light and darkness, the seasons of life, the connection with nature, gentle self-care, and the beauty of existence. While southwest Michigan where I live in is a different world, I felt that her visual story-telling speaking to some of my important values and aspirations.

The Craft of Living Q&A

This post amounts to a manifesto statement and will thus function as a living document. As with the “Principles of Life-Change” reflection, I will continue to revise and fine-tune it as time goes on.

What is the Craft of Living?
In the context of Western theology and philosophy, “the craft of living” is an English rendering of the Greek term techne peri ton bion and the Latin one ars vivendi. It carries the idea of increased life-competency that comes as a result of experience, mastery, formation, and, grace—the Scriptural term for divine intent and action which illuminates, directs, and changes the human “heart.”

OK, but what is it about?
Well, let me give it another try. At the heart of the craft of living is, not surprisingly, the notion of craftsmanship. We don’t become craftsmen overnight. We need examples and instruction. We need failure and experimentation. We need repeated practice, deliberate practice, where we often work on skills and resources that might not be directly connected to performance. Think of a musician practicing scales, or an athlete working on her mobility and proper nutrition. (See my previous post on this theme.)

What elements does the Craft of Living entail?
At the first glance, there a couple of them. First, there must be some vision of the flourishing life, including an account of moral goodness. In other words, there is always some goal involved; some ideas of destiny and meaning. Second, there are also context-specific goals connected to an individual’s vocation or particular circumstances. A mother of newly born twins will have different priorities than a freshman college student. Third, the craft of living, both the definition and practice of it, rest on, always so, on an understanding of human nature, including capacities and agency. Such an understanding is enriched both by wisdom traditions and contemporary science. Fourth, the craft of living implies apprenticeship and exercises (askesis), over a period of time with an attitude of intentionality, consistency, and assessment. And finally fifth, the craft of living is about acting with wisdom, courage, and compassion.

Could you simplify that?
The craft of living is about the basic assumption that a flourishing life, a “life to the fullest,” is both a gift and a result of an intentional quest.

Does the CL invalidate God’s grace?
Christians believe that grace comes to us through divine providence and empowerment. None of that invalidates the truth that God’s gifts need to be received, nurtured, implemented, etc.

If one were to distill the basic goals of the CL, how they look like?
Wisdom, contentment, humility, resilience, wholeness, mindfulness, and love, among other. For a believer, all these would be in the context of devotion to God.

What aspects of human life does it pertain to?
All of them! True to the conviction that humans are psycho-somatic unities where every dimension impacts all others, the CL concerns matters such as sleep, nutrition, relationships, spirituality, work, and physical activity.

Does the CL require a commitment to a metaphysic?
It depends! There are elements of the CL that anyone can do and benefit from. At the same time, the CL always assumes, implicitly or explicitly, what it means to be human, which in turn rests on wider metaphysical commitments. A believer for whom union with God is the ultimate goal will be driven by different motives, moral exemplars, and means than someone who is a committed naturalist.

What are the universalistic claims of the CL?
There are basic needs essential to human flourishing, irrespective of his or her socio-historical and cultural location. The CL, while being particularist—we all have different callings, needs, challenges, etc.—understands this universalist dimension of human life.

Is the CL individualistic, neglecting the broader issues of social justice?
How could it be so, unless someone’s values themselves are narcissistic? The CL entails but a pursuit of authenticity, namely, the commitment to make one’s life reflect one’s beliefs.

Laughter: A Practice of Resistance

The following is an excerpt from a chapter I recently wrote for a collection of essays. It considers laughter as a practice of resistance.

The human being in addition to being a homo faber (a working man) a homo ludens (a playing man), to name but two of the many descriptors of “man,” is also a homo ridens (a laughing man).[1] Laughter and humor seem to be universal human characteristics, so much so that joy, humor, irony, and laughter are all celebrated in the Bible. Can we think of Miriam, Hannah, Mary, Elizabeth, the Father of the Prodigal Son, the healed paralytic, the disciples after Christ’s resurrection—and not think of laughter? And is God not having his moment of humor when he promises a son to the ninety-nine-year-old Abram and ninety-seven-year-old Sarai? And then “as a reward for their faith in Him, adding syllables to the elderly couple’s names, becoming AbrAHam and SarAH—an onomatopoeic ‘Ha-Ha’”?[2]

Of course, laughter can be derisive, blasphemous, or an expression of unbelief (Sarai again). It can ridicule and harm, diminish and discourage. It can be deceptive and hypocritical, manipulative and violent. It can be an instrument of death as much as of life, an instrument of oppression as of celebration. Have not most of us at times indulged a snicker of Schadenfreude—a joy in the misfortune of others—especially if they, as we see it, had it coming? This brings us to an important point. The way we cannot talk about experiences of beauty apart from moral considerations—beauty can be profoundly exploitative and aesthetic experiences can be self-destructive—so laughter too belongs to the sphere of ethics.

That laughter can also serve as a way of resistance in the most inhumane of circumstances is a theme that we regularly find in novelists such as Elie Wiesel (e.g., Gates of the Forest), Toni Morrison (e.g., Beloved), and Shūsaku Endō (e.g., Silence).[3] Wiesel, for instance, writing from the perspective of a Holocaust survivor, notes that the name “Isaac” etymologically derives from the verb “to laugh.” Indeed, 

as the first survivor, [Isaac can teach us] that it is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime, and still not give up on the art of laughter. [Of course, Isaac] never freed himself from the traumatizing scenes that violated his youth; the holocaust that marked him and continued to haunt him forever. Yet he remained capable of laughter. And in spite of everything he did laugh.[4]

The validity of Wiesel’s observation comes through in a recent study of fifty-five Holocaust survivors. The study notes that while laughter did not remove the horrendous circumstances of those survivors, their “macabre humor” help them subsist in the context of unspeakable tragedy.[5] True, theirs was not quite the slapstick comedy of Life is Beautiful, a controversial Holocaust-themed movie by the Italian comedian Robert Benigni. Nevertheless, the survivors’ humor did indeed function as a means of survival and resistance, thereby showing us that the human spirit is capable of life-affirming gestures even in the midst of horrendous evil. Tragedy and the tears are still there; there is no diminishing of that. Nevertheless, micro-practices of hope have genuine meaning. All that speaks to Harvey Cox’s contention that laughter, at times at least, “is hope’s last weapon. Crowded on all sides with idiocy and ugliness, pushed to concede that the final apocalypse seems to be upon us, we seem nonetheless to nourish laughter as our only remaining defense.”[6]

For Christians, of course, much more is at play than a mere Sisyphean decision not to give in to the absurd. The belief in the resurrected Christ introduces a whole different level of spiritual jocularity. To that end, Eugene O’Neill’s play Lazarus Laughed dramatizes how holy mirth is a proper provenance of hope. It is the story of Lazarus after Jesus brought him back from the dead. His life is controversial now for he laughs at everything, even at death. Everything is trivial. And so, everyone considers him a little off-kilter, a little dangerous. His home in Bethany is now called the “house of laughter.” At one point in the play, Lazarus says: “Laugh! Laugh with me at death. Death is dead! Fear is no more! There is only life! There is only laughter.”[7] Here, Christian praxis takes the shape of a stand-up comedy; a liturgical hilarity enacted by those who know how the story will ultimately end.

________________________
[1] See Simon Critchley, On Humour (New York: Routledge, 2002), 41.
[2] Critchley, On Humour, 42.
[3] For a helpful exploration of laughter in the listed authors, see Jacqueline Aileen Bussie, The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo (New York: T&T Clark, 2007).
[4] Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Random House, 1976), 97. For the wording and reference to Wiesel in this paragraph I am indebted to L. Juliana Claassens, “Tragic Laughter: Laughter as Resistance in the Book of Job,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 69, no. 2 (2015): 143-144.
[5] Chaya Ostrower, “Humor as a Defense Mechanism During the Holocaust,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 69, no. 2 (2015), 195.
[6] Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 157.
[7] Eugene O’Neill, “Lazarus Laughed,” http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400131h.html, last accessed October 2, 2019.

Engaging Stoicism II (2012)

Shortly after I wrote my post on Stoicism, I perused through my Evernote and noted a journal entry from 2012. It focuses on “living in the present” which, according to P. Hadot, is a central theme in both Stoicism and Epicureanism. What follows is the ensuing meditation for that day (with a brief editorial brush up). I still stand by those words.

For the Stoics and Epicureans “carpe diem” had a very specific meaning, and so did prosoche (mindful attention). Here is how I would summarize and appropriate their insights (with minor editorial brush-up. I still stand by most of these observations.

1. We are a part of an intelligently crafted universe. You are a part of this cosmopolis.

2. View things from a bird’s-eye perspective.

3. Keep in mind the trichotomy/dichotomy of desire. In other words, what is up to us and what is not.

4. Dwell in the present. Have no regrets about the past or anxiety about the future.

5. Privilege the purity of moral conscience.

6. The Other is God's will for me in this moment.

7. Nurture a connection with humanity, both synchronically (in the present) and diachronically (historically). Do so by prayer, intercession, and remembrance.

8. Practicing the presence of God is about willing determination and determined willing, in other words, an act of will. Do so by nurturing an awareness of and conversation with the divine. 

9. Live today as if it was your last day.

10. Discern the presence of God through evocations of beauty: nature, music, and art in general.