Surprises

I love the Wall Street Journal. I don't really care about the financial section, because I don't understand finances except as they apply to me--NOW or to my belief system and world view. But the rest of the WSJ is filled with the most fascinating perspectives on life and culture. Occasionally the various ideas I read from here and there and everywhere come crashing together and then my tiny brain has a revelation which seems to have significance, if only for me. The problem is gathering all of it together in a meaningful way--for you as well as for me. So here goes my feeble effort.
On Friday (9/19/08) I read an adaptation of a commencement address by David Foster Wallace given by him to the class of 2005 at Kenyon College. I was drawn to the article, not because I knew of Wallace's life or works, but because I didn't, and because I had heard that he committed suicide the previous week.


What would someone say about life or death or the future when within three years he will be dead? What is he doing right now? Why were his words so significant that he had been hailed as an up and coming, authentic voice of post-modernism? What I found was that his words from the grave were dangerously close to the truth and very appropriate for today's world. Pity he didn't see the financial crash of last week strengthen his argument, which goes something like this.
1. The most important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. (this assumes that there are realities)

2. Most of what we believe turns out to be wrong and deluded and the greatest delusion is " that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence." He calls this our "default system, hard-wired into our boards at birth."

3. "Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliche about "Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience." Eerily, he says that most suicides are actually dead before they pull the trigger.
The value of your liberal-arts education is "How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely imperially alone, day in and day out."

We take a deep breath and go on. He then takes a brilliant walk through what the phrase "day in and day out" means. It's his view of the rat race and the reaction choices one can make. You must read this yourself--priceless.
4. "If you have really learned how to think, it will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars--compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. The only thing that's capital T-True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. . . You get to decide what to worship. . .

5. "There is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."

6. "The world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdom, alone at the center of all creation.

7. "The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."

This speech blew me away. Sometimes the capital-T Truth is more clearly spoken by those on the other side of the philosophical fence than by those on our own. Just ten years ago, as I was finishing up a Masters in Education, we were warned that the school of liberal arts was in its death pangs and would not be resurrected. I don't believe that, because thinking about Truth needs a social institution or construct in which to function. I am not sure of the form it will take, but Truth will continue to exist no matter what we do, and there will always be those who seek it, and there will be those who keep it safe and distribute it to those who are awake and aware.
As Wallace concludes, "The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness--awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, . . . It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out."
What a tragedy, to be so close to the capital-T Truth and not to have really known it fully. As a Christian I would counter that not only is it hard to do this, it is impossible without the Holy
Spirit counseling and encouraging and renewing our minds constantly. Jonathan Edwards described our position as sliding down a steep incline with the inevitable outcome of Hell catching us at the end of the fall. The only way of salvation is for the hand of God to reach down and lift us up--not just to stop the fall, but to lift us up and put our feet on the solid ground of absolute Truth.
The other element of surprise for me was how this view into the mind of David Wallace reinforced what I have been studying by way of "Living Beyond Yourself" by Beth Moore.
What Wallace refers to as "Living by default" corresponds to the Biblical concept of " living by the flesh" in Galatians 5 and 6; we are by nature inclined to live within ourselves, slaves to sin and pride. Christian belief is not an intellectual assent to a religious construct and a desire to be better than we are, or even "religulous" as Bill Maher might call it; it is, in contrast, the sure knowledge that in ourselves, we hold no power of wisdom or knowledge that amount to anything of value. The Capital-T Truth is that I was as blind to the truth as David Wallace, and the reason I can live in hope instead of despair is because the Holy Spirit has opened my eyes to see spiritual Truth in spiritual Words. It has nothing to do with what I do to reach beyond my default option, it is all about how God has reached down to me and given me the Holy Spirit to show me the Truth. I don't know why He did that for me; I don't know why He didn't do that for David. My only response is to praise and worship God. What else can I do?

On the facing page of this article is a little one by Molly Hemingway, "Look Who's Irrational Now" an answer to "comedian"and atheist Bill Maher's claim that "You can't be a rational person six days of the week, . . .and on one day of the week go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a 2,000 year old space god." She uses strong emperical evidence to prove that it is actually the irreligious that tend to be more superstitious and "irrational." But most interesting to the discussion is her concluding quote from G.D. Chesterton's Father Brown character that all atheists, secularists, humanists, and rationalists are susceptible to superstition: "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are."
"Good" education teaches students to understand that the most essential realities exist outside of our senses and that they can only be" seen and heard" and understood by the power of the God who created them.

Womenists Reign

The presidential election, for which I could arouse no interest, much less passion, has taken an amazing twist, changed the political landscape, and hooked me with its surprises. I've been wondering why this is true, and why I feel a sense of release and freedom because of the inclusion of Sarah Palin into the mix.
First, my age gave me a distinct advantage as to perspective. Feminism as a political force was gaining speed during and after my college years. It rose from the 60's, the bra burners, the yellow Volkswagen vans painted with flowers and reeking with marijuana. It seemed to offer women freedom from the male oppression they had in many cases suffered in the past. It had profound effects on society--a few good but many bad. Personally, I was not one of their followers, not so much because I disagreed with their plan at the time, but because I was repulsed by being a member of any group that socially controlled me--not the social top of the heap (not that they would have wanted me)--not the loners--not the druggies--not the cheerleaders. This was no noble characteristic of mine, it was just the outcome of some factors in my life that I had not chosen but God had providentially placed there. I was born and raised in middle America, with small town values, strong Christian teaching and living, a value for loving and caring all people. My parents taught, they did not indoctrinate. They modeled, they didn't preach. They cared and served others,they didn't feel they deserved to be cared for. They worked long and hard and faithfully and treated each other with the respect you give someone who works equally with you for a common goal.
The Feminists' agenda opposed all of that and sneered at those elements of my life. Being a college student, and prone to stupidity and naivete, their ideas seemed attractive; you don't need men, you should not be forced to bear children, your life must not be given for the sake of others, you have the freedom to control your own body, money, health, and profession. Finally, independence for women was at hand. The social implications and fall-out were huge and immediate, and few were, in my opinion, positive. The assumptions grew that marrying and being faithful was giving in to old domination, that having children should be optional and that abortion was a right, that childcare should be a shared burden, and that it should never intrude on your rights and freedoms. Men and marriage were necessary evils and could be shed at will. In all fairness, women were given new professional freedom in a variety of areas--a benefit we still enjoy, although we are still waiting for equal pay for equal work!
There were shocking effects: the emasculation of a generation of men: a rising divorce rate: a rising abortion rate: the end of breast-feeding for many women: smaller families and broken families. It would be unfair to credit the Feminists for all this, but their radical views appealed to many, and their agenda was accomplished. The original leaders are nearly gone, but those who have taken their places are even more radical and hateful and now have the benefit of the media and the schools to carry out their agenda.
So, what does this have to do with Sarah Palin? She isn't Hillary Clinton. Hillary was the last great hope of the Feminists to achieve the highest politial office in the land. She seemed to be a shoe-in at first. Then came Obama. And even though they each had about 18 million votes, she was "let go" by the Democratic power faction. Then, she was ignored as a VP candidate as well.
Unbelievable! She represented far more than a woman candidate--she was a Feminist candidate. That's why the fact that Palin is a woman who has succeeded as a politician and as a wife and mother and a Christian means nothing to them. In fact, she is anathema to them. I am sorry for Hillary--she got a bum deal. But I am also sorry for Sarah, because she will have to suffer the wrath of many angry women. I am glad that the shake-up has taken place and that the good-old-girls club is powerless, at least for the moment.