|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE DRAMA OF THE HOLY
CHAPTER 2
Creating a Postmodern Theology:
Some Problematics
Introduction The central problematic of postmodern philosophy or theology is how to create a knowledge process with which human beings can understand each other across conflicting interests, across time, and across cultures. The immediate task of postmodern epistemology is how to interpret a word, a poem, a story, a law, a single act, a life, a war, an entire social formation or an epoch.
The most general approach used by those in such epistemological endeavors is to re-locate that word, that poem, that society in its own context (con-text) and to deconstruct (i.e., re-examine) its origins, its intentions and its effects. In trying to deconstruct the god concept, one looks at it from as many perspectives as there are distinct social groups involved. If there are 6 social groupings in a society, there can be 6factorial over 6-1 possible interpretations.
The official interpretation will emerge as a consequence of the distribution of social power among those groupings. If there are 160 distinct social categories each with its own social base and each insisting on a separate meaning of the same event, the task becomes more difficult. In societies stratified by gender, meanings congenial to the interests of the dominant gender will be privileged. In societies stratified by wealth, meanings amenable to the interests of the wealthy will take precedence. Minorities have to, continually, cope with interpretations thrust upon them by economic, moral, social and physical power. Pluralistic societies require more than power to establish the meaning of a thing; they need an interactionally rich and an informationally rich knowledge system.
The most direct lesson one takes from such efforts, in terms of postmodern epistemology, is that the meaning of a word, poem, a war or a god concept is as varied as the audiences which decode it; that there is no stable, enduring meaning. The larger lesson, in terms of postmodern philosophy of science and knowledge, is that there are no universal standards nor are there eternal rules by which interpretation, decoding, translating, or judging a word, a poem, a war or the god concept can be made.
The obverse of that lesson, in terms of postmodern ethics, is that it is possible to center the meaning of a poem, a law, or the god concept only by intersubjective agreement. The practical problem is how to satisfy the human interest in stability of meaning together with a second human interest in flexibility, change and renewal. The practical solution is, in theory, to accept a shifting center of meaning and interpretation; that the content of any intersubjective agreement slowly shifts since new context requires new content.
Immanent Critique It is always possible to critique the social process in any given society in terms of what it promises to do either in terms of its organizing religion or its founding constitutional documents. However reason needs a social base for it to have any practical effect. As long as societies are isolated and can survive without heed to oppressed peoples within it or response to opinion outside it, then immanent critique is a frail reed upon which to rest any hope for social justice.
Immanent critique gives way to transcendent critique as the social base of a god process expands beyond the boundaries of the society in question. Today there are few societies which are isolated enough such that they can worship their gods in private and use them to oppress their minorities groups or to inflict pain upon their deviates. As the global world system becomes consolidated, and it does so daily, transcendent critique becomes possible. The interesting question arises as to the grounds for transcendent critique.
The shortest answer I know is the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. The Pastoral Letter of American Catholic Bishops of 1986 is another such grounding. Pope John Paul in his Centissimus Annus has offered still another such grounding as has the World Council of Churches in their 1991 statement. But it is a long way toward such grounding of human rights and human obligations. There are several obstacles not the least of which is the role the United States plays in policing the new World Order. The USA arrogates unto itself the role of the Universal We in its policing tactics, picking and choosing which country and which policy to police. In effect, the World Bank sets the standards for economic behavior and, in doing so, privileges transnational finance and transnational commerce.
These transnational operations have many benefits; they extend market dynamics to remote areas of the world. Market dynamics offer flexibility, productivity, reliability, creativity, and they require a knowledge process far better than any previous information flow system. Market dynamics require accurate, timely, comprehensible information for its best functioning. Market dynamics require a wide ranging freedom of movement and of ideas. Market dynamics require peace and safety for the movement of its profits, its products and its agents around the world. Yet there are some negative attributes of market dynamics as they are instituted by the gnomes at the World Bank and enforced by the military alliances of the G-Seven; the rich capitalist countries led by the USA.
Focus on profits tends to decenter human need as the driving force of the market. Focus upon Transnational Corporations tend to decenter small business and family needs. The concentration of wealth in few transnational corporations gives them a great advantage in shaping the political process and in preshaping the scientific process. The globalization of the economy means that entirely new dimensions of social life take center stage. As the new world order consolidates, decisions affecting billions are made in secret and orders, commands, policies and processes affecting banking, trade, industry and environment are located in cyberspace far away from critique and assessment. In another essay, I examine the geography and demographics of cyberspace and find it to be people almost entirely by agents of giant transnational corporations and by employees of the state not the least most frequent traveler is the military officer. Such nonvisible forms of social space are inimical to transcendent critique.
Transcendent Critique Given such a wide array of societies each with their own version of the god process; each with widely varying social forms; each with privileged groups wielding economic, social, physical and moral power with which to pursue such privileges, the practical question becomes, How is a Transcendent Critique possible.
Part of the answer is, I think, the establishment of a Universal We in which no one nation or one economic bloc has hegemony. Economics and politics have much in the way of power with which to enforce codes, rules, protocols, treaties, and laws. Against the economic power of the transnational corporation is the moral power of religion and perchance, the military power of the state. Against the military power of the state is both the economic power of the transnational corporation and the moral power of religion. Against the moral power of religion there is no enemy save other religions since behind moral power is the social power of peoples. One cannot rule without consent. One cannot market without consent. One cannot wage war without consent of both soldiers and civilians who supply the soldiers.
Transcendent critique relies upon religion both for the setting of standards and for the enforcement of them. The quality of postmodern religion is thus crucial to the possibility of transcendent critique.
POSTMODERN THEOLOGY The chief problematic of postmodern theology is how to create the realm of the Holy in a time of profound cleavages that answers to the social and cultural needs of a plurality of peoples, classes, genders and ethnic groups on a global scale. The problem is compounded by the desanctification effects of modernity that denigrates the Drama of the Holy and elides the god process.
I will develop the idea of godlessness and offer a post-modern solution to the problem of godlessness in the next chapters for the reader but here I want to spell out the importance of the Holy, apart from the question of the nature of God, as such a question is approached from the postmodern. There is, in the postmodern view, equal standing for both sanctification and for desanctification. As between the two processes, both equally human, there is no metaphysical grounding with which to justify the one in preference to the other. There are, however practical, historical and political grounds upon which the social process can be centered that are not to be lightly set aside.
Desanctification The heart of postmodern social philosophy; ethics, aesthetics and epistemology, is a radical understanding that whatever exists as a product of human language and human purpose. There are no absolutes; no universals; no centers from which to extend a metaphysics nor any natural or divine grounding for theology. An easy reading of this understanding, from the point of view of both premodern and modern sensibility is that, if nothing is forbidden, then everything is allowed; if everything is allowed, then one gives up on the drama of the Holy. One has no moral or ethical grounds for sanctification therefore, one profanes everything. That is, of course, a child's reading.
A more human and humane reading of the postmodern is that, if nothing is forbidden, then a plurality of god concepts is possible including a god concept that admits its human authorship. Sanctification and the drama of the Holy is within the universe of things not forbidden, just as nihilism and solipsism are not forbidden. It then becomes a matter of choice about which reading to use; matters of choice are always matters of politics. The distribution of power then comes back to settle questions of moral standards and ethical principles.
While postmodern science, art and epistemology offer reason enough for it, continual desanctification of the earth, of society and of the individual is not in the self interest of the individual; of any given society and certainly not in the abstract interest of the earth understood as an integrated whole.
The desanctification of the holy leads to unacceptable consequences at each level of human existence. At the level of the individual person, desanctification leads to rape, child abuse, murder and an ever widening circle of exploitation and incivility. At the level of social groups, desanctification leads to discrimination as well as exploitation and abuse of each other groups for the collective gain of each competing group. At the level of the social institution, desanctification leads to the impersonal, heartless, and mechanical processing of those who pass through the portals of its social space.
At the level of the socio-cultural formation, desanctification leads to crime, poverty, population booms and crash together with disregard for whole sections of the population and whole segments of the society. Cultures that reach back into the deep structures of time are disprized and dismantled without shame or remorse. At the level of international, intercultural congress, desanctification permits warfare, the extraction of food and wealth from poor and defenseless nations, the sexual and commercial exploitation of men and women in the third world; it orchestrates an ever widening inequality between rich and poor nations.
At the level of the entire ecosystem, Gaia, in which we all must live and breath and raise our children, desanctification of nature leads to the ruthless ripping of coal, ore, and minerals from the earth regardless of the consequence to the next and the next generation. It leads to pollution of air, sea, and soil by pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, solvents, catalysts, and waste products of every toxic sort as a way to lower costs and to reap short term profits while maintaining a profligate life style.
When people, societies and nature are excluded from the realm of the Holy, the short term advantage of each successful person adds to the long term disadvantage of all in an irrational and unseemly struggle for individual advantage if not survival. Such struggle is not the Law of Nature; nature may be but society is not, necessarily, red and bloody. Human societies must extract energy and nutrients from their environments but, differently from animals, they need not prey on each other nor must members of the same society prey each on all. Such predatory warfare is the result of human choice. It is possible to live in peace with each other and at peace with the larger ecosystem upon which all species depend and are interdependent.
The transcendent ethical point with which to understand postmodern consciousness is that, if all standards, all universals, and all claims for privilege and preference are equally human, equally political, equally artificial, just so it is impossible to ground privatization, nihilism, or libertarianism in any metaphysics. The corollary to that point is that if all standards are tailored to human purpose, then it is possible to tailor standards to fit the kind of social life world that sustains and sanctifies rather than one that exploits and profanes the natural and social world.
The point is that the consequences of desanctification of nature and humanity are overwhelmingly hostile to all forms of life. In consequence, it is necessary to work toward a constant and continuous creation of the Holy else live in social formations fragmented by ethnic conflict, class privilege, soliptic consumption, unrestrained physical violence as well as a continuing degradation of the natural and human environment.
In the essays which follow, I will make a case that the premodern God concept is a human construct that has outlived its utility. In the face of anthropological understandings, sociological relationships, and scientific explorations, that God concept is, simply, untenable. All this will be set forth later, however I want to say as emphatically as each reader can hear that, apart from the Death of a Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent god who watches, judges and punishes or rewards, it is necessary to sanctify the human project; to sanctify each and every child; to sanctify each and every culture that answers to the human project and to encapsulate all in a view of nature as itself, holy.
If we do this, we will have re-possessed the god concept; reconstructed it to sit comfortably within a knowledge process that embodies the best of premodern, modern and postmodern understanding. In a word, we will have created a postmodern theology that is centered yet infinitely varied; that is local but loosely transcendent; that is a human work yet a holy one. The possibility of a transcendent re-sanctification that admits its human authorship is what postmodern enquiries into the drama of the Holy are about.
Dramas of the Holy Human societies can be organized to minimize the long term disorder they leave in their wake. Such societies can be organized to view themselves and their ways of life as an integral part of the natural realm. In such a holistic view, concern for each Species as valuable book; as a veritable, venerable bible enchants the world--or should one say, re-enchants the world. American Indian religion, Buddhism, many African religions as well as elements of the founding religions of Western societies have, in their original Earth Goddess form, viewed and view the human species as part of the holiness of the land.
The re-unification of the Human species with the rest of nature can mean an expansion of the realm of the Holy or it can mean the degradation of humans. In Western societies, such reunification of Human beings with the natural world has resulted in the desanctification of Human beings. Rationality and control over humans and nature has emerged to be a major theme of this age. Each person, each species of animal or plant is seen to be an object to manage or manipulate instead of an interested subject with which to commune and cherish.
We have observed a desanctification process over the past four centuries. It has been depoliticized by calling it a secularization process and by interpreting that process as a normal part of progress in the modern world view. The modern world view deems it odd to honor the spirit of the forest or to respect the life of an insect or to abstain from killing an cow. In the pre- modern world view, the secularization of the world is seen as unmitigated disaster.
In post-modern times, there are other ways to view secularization. Choices are open as they never were in pre-modern or in modern times. One set of choices is to sanctify nature and society by treating both as a rare and lovely event in the cosmos. Having come this far in nuclear, molecular, organic and social evolution, it is possible to view this most improbable concatenation of events we see before us for what it is; a wonderful and precious heritage. We can waste it or we can conserve it.
The choice we make depends upon the kind of society we make and how we fit it into the realm of the natural. If we treat others, natural resources and the biosphere as commodities to buy and sell as profit and markets dictate, we profane that heritage. If we treat natural resources, the biosphere and human cultures as rare and endangered assets, we sanctify that heritage. The latter choice requires each person to come to a postmodern understanding; the modern worldview does not lend itself to such sanctification. Nor do most premodern world-views lend themselves to human agency. It leaves the work of judgment to non-existent gods and uses rewards in an after-life to stimulate redemptive behavior.
However, we must make these choices collectively, globally. It does not serve that some resanctify the world while others despoil it. It does not serve that small and weak nations honor all forms of life and infuse the inorganic with sacred meaning while the super-powers ravage it for consumer and military goods. It does not serve to re-cycle newspaper or to live in harmony with the forest and meadow for a minority when large and powerful nations continue to exploit the resources of the earth while polluting its oceans, soils, and airways. We must each and all live, breath, and die; for some to make decisions which change our lives and shorten our days does not serve the drama of the Holy.
As the ancient poets said, it is possible to do good for good is good to do. If we know how to constitute the good earth and all its societies; human, plant and animal, as holy, we know how to do good.
It is a holy work to create a theology and a practice that unites and respects each part of the whole. The drama of the Holy requires that we do good work understood as compassion, justice and prudent conservation of resources. Indeed, the English word, Drama, comes from the Sanskrit; in the original it means to do. But it means more than to do since goal and purpose must resonate with righteous living, righteous thought, and righteous feeling. I will offer a view of postmodern theology as the drama of good work; I will bring forward a view of the god process and the sanctification process as human drama involving all of the elements of grand theatre; roles, scripts, performances, suspense of disbelief; revelation and surprise as well as mystery and magic.
Postmodern Understandings of the Holy In this section, I want to develop an understanding of the drama of the Holy that transcends the notion of God as the special agent of one tribe or of the human race as a whole. I argue for a notion of the Holy and the god concept that treats all of Nature with profound respect; which includes every living creature as a thing to be valued; which places human beings at the center but not at the top of that ocean of respect. If we do center the human species, and if we include the next seven generations of humans in that concept, in the same moment we include all of nature in the drama of the Holy. The operative point is that future generations cannot survive in a world made worst for other species by ruination of habitat; by spoilation of atmosphere; by degradation of soil.
I want to be very careful in how the reader conceptualizes the term, Holy. I want to exclude the intrusion of elements of supernatural since the process by which we constitute the drama of the Holy is and always has been quite a natural, if wonderful, process. I want to avoid recourse to the world of ghosts, spirits, faeries, gods, devils, and other supernatural, non-natural constructs. Yet I mean to emphasize the importance of the spiritual and spiritual values in the re-emergence of the holy as the proper work of humankind.
What I have in mind when I speak of the Drama of the Holy is an attitude of reverence toward the realm of Nature and the reach of Human life that precludes the abuse of either. Complementary to this attitude of reverence is an encompassing practice of reverent use and renewal of all the resources essential to the production and reproduction of social life. I will make a case that, entirely apart from the god-question, it is appropriate to use the concept of the Holy to speak of this reverence; this profound appreciation of natural and social life.
The word, holy, is an old English word the base of which is halig. Halig meant and still means, sound, whole, or happy. The word, Helige, in the German, still means Holy. In order to conserve the ancient sense of the word, Holy, it is necessary to organized social life as to preserve the soundness of the world; it is necessary to preserve the wholeness of the world; it is necessary to include the concept of good health in our notion of what the Holy is.
The word, Holy, is often used in translation of the Latin word, sacer, (or sanctus in the Vulgate). The sanctification of Nature and social life in this sense of the Holy, is not mysterious. It requires quite ordinary things: protection of the environment, care to maintain the ecological niches in which each species of life is located; programs of preventative health for all species; programs of therapeutic care for all endangered species; prevention of biological, chemical, conventional and nuclear warfare as well as an over-arching opportunity to be an unobtrusive part of each ecological niche for a time for each person.
The Holiness of Nature More than most, the poetry of Emily
Dickenson captures enchantment of the natural world. One cannot
read Dickenson without appreciating her great delight and sense of
awe at the loveliness, the magic of Nature. Here are a sampling of
her sense of the Holy in Nature with which I want the reader to
share:
A Ribbon at a Time
I'll tell you how the sun arose
A ribbon at a time;
The steeples swam in amethyst;
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets;
the Bobolinks begun;
Then said I softly to myself
that must have been the Sun.
But how he set, I do not know;
there seemed to be a purple style
that little yellow boys and girls
were climbing all the while.
Til when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray,
Put gently up the evening bars
and led the flock away.
Good Work
I know a place where Summer strives
with such a practiced hand.
Each year she leads her daisies back
to smile upon the land.
And when the South wind stirs the pools
and struggles in the lane;
Her heart forgives her for her vows
and she pours forth the rain.
The Color of Spring
A Light exists in Spring
not present on the Year
at any other period;
When March is scarcely here.
A Color stands abroad
On solitary fields
that science cannot overtake
but Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the lawn,
It shows the furthest tree,
Upon the furthest slope you know,
It almost speaks to thee.
Then, as horizons step
and Noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes and we stay.
A quality of loss
disturbing our Content;
as Trade had suddenly encroached
upon a Sacrament.
Spring
I cannot meet the Spring unmoved,
I feel the old desire
A hurry with a lingering, mixed;
A warrant to feel fire.
A competition in my sense
with something hid in her;
and as she vanishes, remorse,
I did no more for her.
Imagination
I never saw a moor
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks
and what a billow be.
I never spoke with God
nor visited in Heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
as if the checks were given.
If one is able to reify and vivify Nature as a subject of respect and awe, as does Dickenson, in addition to the quite ordinary reading of nature by chemists, physicists, geologists and biologists, one can reunite the modern and the premodern into a postmodern theology. But the enchantment of nature without the parallel enchantment of human beings and society is an exercise in folly that belittles Dickenson. We can turn to an earlier poet to help with the sanctification of both nature and society.
The Holiness of Society One must be very careful in speaking
of the holiness of society since it
is easy to confuse the general with the particular. The general
statement that human beings must treat their societies as holy can
be read as an endorsement for some of the most brutal and most
inhumane forms of social organization: slavery, bureaucratic
socialism, feudalism, predatory capitalism and structures of
patriarchy which tread through all of these.
The case I want to make here as elsewhere is that self and society are twinborn; one cannot have a human being outside of social life. In slave societies, in racist societies as in societies marked by gender preference, those defined as inferior become inferior. The degradation process is in the social relations not in the person of the peasant, slave or woman degraded.
The caveat is clear: while society is necessary to the human
condition, not all societies are equally hospitable to it.
In order to make a case that the sanctification of society is essential to the human condition, it is necessary to make a case that human beings as we know them are not possible without a supportive social matrix. Human individuals do not develop automatically; they are the product of a complex series of social processes which when absent, subvert those who have hitherto acted in human and humane ways while others fail to develop humanity.
The data to support this basic premise is straightforward. Cases of neglected children; of inmates degraded in prison or concentration camps; of infants in bureaucratically minded hospitals; of tribes separated from their crop and hunting lands; of migrant men in mining camps and of soldiers marauding in enemy territory all bespeak the intimate connections between self and society. If we want a strong and decent self system, we must have a compassionate and supportive social order.
We cannot expect good individuals to develop in predatory societies or in dis-organized societies. The interesting questions center around the problematics of how to best organize social life in such as way as to promote prosocial behavior. It requires more than exhortation of members of a society to honor and to be loyal to that society. Esteem and loyalty must be continually renewed; they are a function of the ways in which social justice is handled. If we are to gain a sense of the sacred for any and all societies, the objective conditions of social organization inside and between societies must be worthy of that honor and that esteem.
In another place (Young, 1981), I have suggested that the drama of the sacred must be grounded in a theory of human rights and human obligations. To sanctify a society, social justice processes are essential. Housing, health care, caring education, low energy systems of transport, prosocial jobs, wide ranging democratic forms at work and in church as well as recreational forms which make the enjoyment of life--the filling of life with joy--possible.
This book is the sequel to that effort in which I want to say in some depth that, to gain acceptance of a theory of human rights, more than rational arguments are necessary. It does not suffice to argue, rightly enough, that zero-sum games are demeaning. It does not suffice to argue, rightly as it is, that the fate of each is tied to the fate of all. These arguments and more are too abstract, too impersonal, too vague to mobilize the energies of people to work together and to constrain those for whom abstract reason does not suffice to deter private advantage.
Adjoining and supporting rational argument are faith, belief, commitment and passion. Spiritual values must be linked, ineluctably, to intellectual arguments if a distinctly human individual is to be enjoined in the pursuit of social justice. It is appropriate to confine enquiries and entreaties such as this to dispassionate discussion. It is necessary to challenge and to reevaluate beliefs. It is necessary to distance oneself from commitments on occasion if emancipatory knowledge is to be produced but even in the most through-going of critiques, it is necessary to retain compassion as the over-arching value in such discourse.
If one can remember, as most feminist social psychologists remember, that people are more important than principles, then one cannot go too far afield from social justice. If one can remember that everything comes from the earth and from the biological network on it, then one will not go to far from a sense of the holy. Mercy mild is an important leaven to even the most disembodied meta-theoretical speculation. Mercy sets aside the rational application of formal rules and reunites a person with the human project apart from merit or payment.
In our quest for a post-modern morality that picks up on the more positive moments of this world view, we can benefit from William Blake, arguably the most post-modern poet of his age. In his world view, Blake saw the use of human agency to create, for better or for worse, the worlds in which we live. Blake challenged the rationality of a God who would put tigers among lambs; of Gods who would make hate, greed and envy part of the human form. Blake's answer, was of course, that there was no such God in nature; that god was a human construct. Since we build our gods, we can built better gods than now we have.
In his spare time, Blake wrote religious philosophy and poetry that transcended the parochial and exclusionary philosophies of Christian church fathers. His views are decidedly post-modern. From his work we can see his doubts about the rule of reason so cherished by modern science and philosophy. We can also appreciate his effort to locate the Godhead in the world of human beings rather than in some remote and inaccessible heavenly sphere as did Milton. Using the form of deductive reason but not the content of it, Blake asserted that each religion had the same status as any other religion. From Blake, we learn that there are no natural religions:
ALL RELIGIONS ARE ONE
The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness
The Argument: While the true method of knowledge is experience; the true method of understanding experience is poetic genius.
Principle 1: To be truly human, one must employ one's poetic genius. The forms of all things are derived from that poetic genius...which the Ancients called Spirit or Angel or Demon.
Principle 2: As all human beings are alike in outward form, so (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in poetic genius.
Principle 3: No human can think, write, or speak from the heart, but that they intend truth. Thus all sects of religious philosophy derive from the infinite variety of the poetic genius of truthful but differing humans./
Principle 4: None, by travelling over known lands can find out the Unknown...therefore, no person could know more than that which the common experience of all; but having access to the common experience of all, a universal poetic genius emerges which is accessible to all.
Principle 5: The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation's different use of poetic genius...which is everywhere called the Spirit of Prophecy.
Principle 6: The Jewish and Christian Testaments are An original derivation from Poetic Genius. This is necessary from the limitations of perception...the limitations of bodily sensation.
Principle 7: As all humans are alike (tho' infinitely various), So all Religions, &, as all similars, have one source: the true source is the true Human, s/he being the Poetic Genius.
THERE IS NO NATURAL RELIGION: Part A
The Argument: Humans are a natural beings capable of sense impressions. Humans have no notion of moral fitness but from education.
I. Humans cannot naturally Perceive except through natural or bodily organs.
II. Humans, using reasoning power, can compare and judge only in terms of that which is already perceived.
III. From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements, none could deduce a fourth or fifth.
IV. None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if there is none but organic perceptions. [Ed.: Should this be II rather than IV.?..it seems to be a complement to I.]
V. Human desire is limited to perceptions: none can desire that which is not learned through education.
VI. The desires and perceptions of humans, untaught by anything but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense. [Ed.: this seems a paraphrase of V.]
THERE IS NO NATURAL RELIGION: Part B
I. Human perceptions are not bound by organs of perceptions: one is able to conceive more than sense alone (tho' ever so acute) can discover.
II. Reason...that is to say, the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.
[There is a very special use of the term ratio here which should be understood...the whole passage means that new experience can require a qualitative change in our understanding...not merely more of the same understanding. This foreshadows dialectic theory in which the whole can be greater than and different from the sum of the parts; tile theory; paradigmatic shifts and sea changes...whatever your pleasure. But one must realize the limits of formal logic in the knowledge process].
III. [This proposition is missing.]
IV. The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round...even as wide as a universe...would soon become only a vast complicated mill with more and evermore complicated wheels and gears.
V. If the many become the same as the few when possess'd; More! More! become the cry of the mistaken soul; less than All cannot satisfy it.
VI. If any could desire that which one is incapable of possessing, despair must be one's eternal lot.
VII. The desire of Humans, being infinite, possession is infinite & oneself infinite.
Conclusion: If it were not for the Poetic Genius of Human Beings, Religion and Philosophy would soon be only the ratio of all currently existing things...and stand still; unable to do anything but repeat the same dull round over again.
[Note: this conclusion foreshadows and is in harmony with the metaphysics of Chaos theory and its concerns with infinite variations within the most elegant patterns. Mandelbrot sets embody the logics of chaos against the logics of linear, cyclical systems of thought or of social life].
Application: Those who are able to use their poetic genius to transcend the finite world of sense experience sees God. Those who sees the ratio only, sees themselves only.
Therefore: God became as we are, that we may be as he is.
Without ever having seen a Mandelbrot set or hearing of Chaos theory, Blake's conclusion above is a perfect statement of the theory and an apt description of the problems of purely mechanical ratiocination.
There are two arguments in the passages from Blake above; the second argument having two 'proofs,' A and B together, tell us that there are no Gods but those we make. We make God possible by our Poetic Genius. If we don't use our poetic genius, we lose the possibility of becoming divine. One doesn't need Blake to tell us that...nor, since it is told by Blake, need it be true.
What is of interest to the post-modern quest for a morally informed religion is that Blake tried to think about God as a natural event. He tried to use the philosophy of knowledge as it existed at the time and he tried to credit human beings with more agency in creating their gods and their worlds than most did at the time.
To his credit, Blake worked harder to preserve the Idea of God to the legacy of Humanity than did either those who sought to discard God or to preserve Him by forcing faith and unquestioning obedience upon a species which will question and will be disobedient. Even the most devout atheist can accept the God of William Blake...only the technician and the logician loses since they have not the poetic genius to transcend their grounded techniques and their narrow logics].
Centering the Human Project Blake's poetry is worthy of note on its own terms but is of even more interest when located within the structure of his post-modern project for the sanctification of human life and human acts. Some of its lines echo through the long centuries of human thought and human endeavor to center ourselves as the object and the agent of our own joys and sorrows against the attribution of these joys and sorrows to gods or to necessity.
Another's Sorrow
Can I see another's woe and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?
...excerpt
Decentering The God Concept There are several poems by Blake that have the effect of decentering the god concept. Removing it from its home in heaven and relocating it in the activity of human beings. The first poem below assigns divine agency for mercy, pity, peace and love to each person. The second poem is a more direct challenge to the god concept. In it Blake questions the reason and wisdom of any god that would create both the tiger and the lamb.
The Divine Image
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
all pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
is...God!...our Father, dear.
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
is Man...his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human Face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, a human dress.
[Interpretation: God is created and embodied in Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. These are the human form...that is, when they are given freely, one is, in the act of giving, a human being...and the human form becomes, in that moment, divine. Since these are human feats, they often fail when needed most. If we want to continue the possibility of transcending logic and experience, we must dress ourselves in these clothes: Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. If you doubt the human source of love; perhaps the source of fear is clear...see below].
Perhaps the best known and often recited poem by Blake is the one below. In it Blake asks, "How does one explain the presence of both lamb and tiger...what God would make the one to devour the other of his creations?" More, generally, how does one account for the contradictions and imperfections of a world made, presumably, by rational mind. Whoever made the tyger, the poetry of Blake embraces both the lamb, the tyger, and that unanswerable question.
THE TYGER
Tyger, tyger, burning bright in the forests of the Night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet?
Where the Hammer, where the chain? And what furnace forged thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp dare your deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears and water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Tyger, tyger burning bright in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful majesty?
Decentering National Chauvinism Blake, part of the Romantic movement that centered around the Godwin household, did not see that the political economy of England lead to progress nor was England the center of progressive social evolution. In the next poem, he sees quite a different London from that of those historians who celebrate King and Capitalist in England.
London
I wander thro' each charter'd street Near where the Charter'd Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet wounds of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man, In every infant's cry of fear, in every voice, in every land, the class-forged chains I hear.
How the fact'ry workers' cry Every praying monk appalls; And the hapless soldier's sighs runs with blood down banker's walls.
But most thro' midnight streets I hear how the youthful harlot's curse and the new born infant's tear, runs to fill the banker's purse.
...adapted from Blake
It is this sort of view on social life which makes each of us a revolutionary...it is this understanding which fuels the furnace of our brain and leads us out to fight again. Blake was appalled at the fate of women, children and men in London at the turn of the 19th Century. Should not one be appalled at the fate of women, children and workers in one's own land in every age? Is one's own private prosperity and peace sufficient to justify the price that others pay for a competitive, acquisitive, solipsic, impersonal society? How can we look on the woe of another creature and still claim the estate of humanity; still claim to be religious; still claim to embody the spirit of the Holy?
Recentering the Sanctification Process One can learn from Blake that the task of sanctification; the task of redemption lies with each morally informed individual.
From the Preface to MILTON
Bring me my bow of burning gold; Bring me my Arrows of desire; Bring me my Spear; O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from this dread fight Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand, 'Til we have build Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.
Transcendent Critique The purpose of these poems is to offer Blake to those who would answer the ultimate questions of life: from what authority do we get our beliefs; by what authority may we judge the ways of men and women; by what authority do we author change? The answer for Blake is, I believe, that all authority flows from that which is best in humankind. Mercy, Pity, Love and Peace are anchor points from which to start the awesome task of judging; the aweful task of changing. These anchor points do not come from God...rather they and God both come from the Poetic Genius of simple human beings.
In the poetry of Blake, there is a terrible anguish at what we do to each other; yet there is a profound confidence that we can do better. I offer this window as one of many from which to view the problematics of religion. There are few who better caught the drama of the Holy and the drama of failed religion than did Blake. He remains useful to the human project...would that one day you and I can say the same.
Limitations of the God Concept One cannot accept the idea of an omnipotent and eternal Creator which exists in some form and place beyond the reach of human reason or human understanding without a leap of faith and an abdication of responsibility that beggars the mind and diminishes the soul. Yet so many do. It is touching to the heart that they can accept with such tranquil confidence that which other minds and hearts resist. One should not lightly challenge such trusting faith. To do so for merely the sake of Truth is not enough...one must show that premodern concepts of God as it exists does actual harm to the human form...to the human potential.
That task is, I believe, easy on a number of counts. Two points loom large: first, premodern concepts of God limit and diminish the human species. If we create our Gods in our own image; if we attribute to them agency for the evil we do...and then go on doing that evil to other groups in the Name of our god, we degrade both our God and ourselves.
A second limiting problem with premodern god concepts is that, given the objective and remote nature of that god, it becomes an easy matter to recast the god concept into different form--and to escape responsibility for such recasting. We can claim with equal (ungrounded) authority that our god is good and benevolent; angry and punitive; remote and indifferent; omnipotent or merely spectator. Whatever we want our god to be; we can simply assert those attributes and quote any number of religious texts to support that assertion.
Other problems with premodern and modern god concepts present themselves that are resolved within a postmodern theology. The question of how to interpret the will of god dissolves into the question of what is it that we, the architects of the Holy wish and will. The question of retribution for sin is dissolved as well; a postmodern theology displaces the promise of retribution after death with a requirement for distributive justice in this world. One need not ask why a good and just God punishes good people nor why those who gain great wealth and power through great crime are immune to retribution.
It is not unimportant to consider that postmodern understandings of the drama of the Holy forecloses endorsement of the various stratifications which degrade the human project and usurp social power. When the god process is located in the drama of human knowledge and the drama of social action, structural evils have to be endorsed by discourse and reason in the public sphere. There is no secret, holy place from which these edicts are sent. Nor do we need a special cadre of holy men to seek out the oracles, interpret the omens, or receive the messages from these remote gods.
Only when we accept that the God process and religion are our own; that we create and sustain them through the drama of the Holy that they then become our own responsibility. We must build better Gods and do better Religions...that is not possible if God is beyond human reach. Jerusalem remains only a dream in that green and pleasant land of which the poet speaks when the architect remains only shadow into which we peer and see whatever suits.
The Possibilities of the God Concept The fundamental question remains; can we build better religions if we accept that God is our own creature; our own responsibility? Why bother with Gods and Religion if neither exist apart from human imagination and human need; apart from our Poetic Genius as Blake put it? The answer is simple: there is human need for religion if, by religion, we mean that which binds us together in some sort of merciful and peaceful community; that which locates us in the larger web of all creatures bright and beautiful. Given the need, have we the capacity? Blake says yes. I say yes...but only if we take the responsibility from God and cradle it well; nourish it well; husband it well.
If the need for religion stands alone; if the need for religion...a set of values with which to order and to filter our own behavior...if that need exists, how then can we answer the other question...Do we need God?
The answer is, I tend to think, Yes. I think the concept of God is needed in order to legitimate the social philosophy we call religion. I think the concept of God is necessary to repress the arrogance of the powerful and the wealthy; to stop the brutality of the semi-savage creature that preys upon the weak; to enliven the spirit of those wounded women and men who are and remain victim to the exigencies of nature and the failings of other people.
There is a need for Authority. The concept of God gives us that authority. In other parts of this work, I make a case that God does, in fact, exist. The facticity of that god, a postmodern god is a phenomenological facticity rather than an objective ontology. We create our God in the moment we learn to take each other into account in the construction of social reality. Radical libertarians resist the authority of the collective and turn their hand to any mischief that serves the moment.
When we learn that we must allow others to shape our meaning; we also learn to defer to the abstract principle that mind, self, society, language, and behavior are products of a collective. We must defer to that collective if there is to be mind, self, society, language, or response from another. It is that collective which takes the form and spirit of God. Without the other, we are nothing. As long as we are open to another, we are open to God...as The Collective Other. Without others, meaning and social life are impossible. Since, they exist, the Collective Other exists...This we can call God.
Blake helps us understand the necessity of a postmodern god with its twinfold character of superior authority and its decidedly human face. For those who cannot do good for its own sake; for those whose wants trump the well being of others; for those who confuse between themselves and the public office to which they are entrusted; for those who have not sit down and given serious thought to the drama of the Holy; to these and others, the god concept can speak forcibly:
GO SPECTRE!
Go, Spectre! Obey my most secret desire,
Which thou knowest without my speaking
Go to these fiends of Righteousness.
Tell them to obey their humanity
and not pretend Holiness when they are
Murderers, as far as they are able to.
Go, tell them that the worship of God
is honouring his gifts in other men
and loving the best men best
each according to his own genius
which is the Holy Ghost in men;
there is no other
God than that God who is the poetic genius of
Humanity.
He who envies or calumniates,
which is murder and cruelty,
Murders the Holy-one.
Go, tell them this,
and overthrow their cup,
their bread, their alter-table,
their incense and their oath,
their marriage and their baptism,
their burial and their consecration.
He who would see the Divinity
must see it in the children.
...from Jerusalem