Admit something:
Everyone you see you say
“Love me!”
Of course, you don’t say this out loud
Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this,
This great pull to connect.
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye,
Who is always telling in that sweet moon language
What every other eye in this world
Is dying
To hear.
-Hafiz
http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/faq#t59n54392
Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation”, written in 1989, was not directed to Centering Prayer, which is the traditional form of Christian prayer, but rather at those forms of meditative practices that actually incorporate the methods of Eastern meditations such as Zen and the use of the Hindu mantras. The letter is chiefly concerned with the integration of such techniques into the Christian faith. It does not forbid their use and indeed, states, “that does not mean that genuine practices of meditation which come from the Christian East and from the great non-Christian religions… cannot constitute a suitable means of helping the person who prays to come before God with an interior peace even in the midst of external pressures” (#28).
Having noted this affirmation of the value of the Eastern practices when rightly integrated into Christian faith, may I point out that Centering Prayer is the one contemporary form of contemplative practice that does not make use of any of these techniques. The quotation from the Letter that the gift of contemplative prayer can only be granted through the Holy Spirit is precisely what we teach. Nor does Centering Prayer encourage a privatized spiritual journey or the seeking of spiritual experiences, but rather fosters the complete surrender of self in faith and love that leads to divine union. There is much greater danger in concentrating on oneself in discursive meditation and in intercessory and affective prayer, especially if one is preoccupied with one’s self feeling and reflections. In Centering Prayer one is not reflecting on one’s self or one’s psychological states at all.
Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina and Contemplation
It is important to situate Centering Prayer in the context of the monastic tradition of Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina is the most traditional way of cultivating contemplative prayer. It consists in listening to the text of the Bible as if one were in conversation with God and God were suggesting topics for discussion. Those who follow the method of Lectio Divina are cultivating the capacity to listen to the word of God at ever deepening levels of attention. Spontaneous prayer is the normal response to their growing relationship with Christ, and the gift of contemplation is God’s normal response to them.
The reflective part, the pondering upon the words of the sacred text in Lectio Divina, is called meditation, discursive meditation. The spontaneous movement of the will in response to these reflections is called oratio, affective prayer. As these reflections and particular acts of will simplify, one tends to resting in God or contemplatio, contemplation.
These three acts –discursive meditation, affective prayer, and contemplation – might all take place during the same period of prayer. They are interwoven one into the other. One may listen to the Lord as if sharing a privileged interview and respond with one’s reflections, with acts of will, or with silence –with the rapt attention of contemplation. The practice of contemplative prayer is not an effort to make the mind blank, but to move beyond discursive thinking and the multiplication of particular acts to the level of communing with God, which is a more intimate king of exchange, a matter of the heart.
In human relationships, as mutual love deepens there comes a time when the two friend convey their sentiments without words. They can sit in silence sharing an experience or simply enjoying each other’s presence without saying anything. Holding hands or a single word from time to time can maintain this deep communication.
This loving relationship points to the kind of interior silence that is being developed in contemplative prayer. The goal of contemplative prayer is not so much the emptiness of the thoughts or the conversations as the emptiness of self. In contemplative prayer, one ceases to multiply reflections and acts of the will. A different kind of knowledge rooted in love emerges in which the awareness of God’s presence supplants the awareness of one’s own presence and the inveterate tendency to reflect on oneself. The experience of God’s presence frees one from making oneself or one’s relationship with God the center of the universe. The language of mystics must not be taken literally when they speak of emptiness or the void. Jesus practiced emptiness in becoming a human being, emptying himself of his prerogatives and the natural consequences of his divine dignity (cf. Phil. 2:5-8). The void does not mean void in the sense of nothing at all, but void in the sense of attachment to one’s activity. One’s own reflections and acts of will are necessary preliminaries to getting acquainted with Christ, but have to be transcended if Christ is to share his most personal prayer with the Father which is characterized by total self surrender.
Centering Prayer is only one method of developing contemplation and preparing oneself for this great gift of the Spirit. I would think it would have strong appeal for the people in the charismatic renewal movement, especially for those who enjoy the gift of tongues. The gift of tongues is already a form of contemplative prayer since one is fully aware of the presence and action of the Spirit without thinking about what one is saying.
The practice of Centering Prayer is basically a waiting upon God with loving attentiveness, fulfilling the Gospel injunction, “Watch and Pray.” If one can accept the notion of prayer as primarily relationship with God, it becomes obvious that one’s relationship with God can be expressed without words, simply by a gesture or even by one’s silent intention to consent to God’s presence. This is not to deny the value of other forms of prayer which are normally necessary to prepare one for this level of relating to God. It simply moves one to a deeper dimension of intimacy with God. Thus, it is a more personal kind of prayer than discursive meditation and affective prayer. As a result, it enables one to penetrate to a greater degree the meaning of scripture and liturgical texts and symbols.
Pantheistic and Panentheism
The term “pantheistic”, often used in connection with Eastern practices, is ambiguous and misleading. A distinctions needs to be made between “pantheism” and “panentheism”, as is done in inter-religious dialogue. Eastern practices are not necessarily pantheistic. Many forms of Buddhism and Hinduism are just as devotional as similar practices in the Christian faith, though directed, of course to their particular deities. Pantheism is usually defined as the identification of God with creation in such a way that the two are indistinguishable. Panentheism means that God is present in all creation by virtue of his omnipresence and omnipotence, sustaining every creature in being without being identified with any creature. The latter understanding is what Jesus seems to have been describing when he prays “that all might be one, Father, as we are one” and “that they may be one in us”. Again and again, in the Last Supper discourse, he speaks of this oneness and his intentions to send his Spirit to dwell within us. If we understand the writings of the great mystics rightly, they experience God living within them all the time. Thus the affirmation of God’s transcendence must always be balanced by the affirmation of his imminence both on the natural plane and on the plane of grace.
An Invitation
The practice of Centering Prayer is simply offered to those who feel called to a deeper life of prayer and who are looking for a method that will help them to do so in the context of a very active life in the world. These people should not be deprived of such an opportunity on the basis of false fears raised by superficial understanding of Centering Prayer and a failure to recognize the significant distinction between traditional methods of preparing for the gift of contemplation, such as Centering Prayer, and the techniques of the Eastern spiritual traditions.
During the last decade, many have discovered the limits of the intellect. More and more people have realized that what they need is much more than interesting sermons and interesting prayers. They wonder how the might really experience God. The charismatic movement is an obvious response to this new search for prayer. The popularity of Zen and the experimentation with encounter techniques in the churches are also indicative of a new desire to experience God. Suddenly we find ourselves surrounded by people saying, “Teach us to pray.” And suddenly we become aware that we are being asked to show the way through a region that we do not know ourselves. The crisis of our prayer life is that our mind may be filled with ideas of God while our heart remains far from him. Real prayer comes from the heart. It is about this prayer of the heart that the Desert Fathers teach us.
—
From the book, “The Way of the Heart” by Henri Nouwen:
For many of us prayer means nothing more than speaking with God. And since it usually seems to be a quite one sided affair, prayer simply means talking to God. This idea is enough to create great frustrations. If I present a problem, I expect a solution; if I formulate a question, I expect an answer; if I ask for guidance, I expect a response. And when it seems, increasingly, that I am talking into the dark, it is not so strange that soon begin to suspect that my dialogue with God is in fact a monologue. Then I may begin to ask myself: To whom am I really speaking, God or myself?
Sometimes the absence of an answer makes us wonder if we might have said the wrong kind of prayers, but mostly we feel taken, cheated, and quickly stop “this whole silly thing.” It is quite understandable that we should experience speaking with real people, who need a word and who offer a response, as much more meaningful than speaking with a God who seems to be an expert at hide-and-seek.
But there is another viewpoint that can lead to similar frustrations. This is the viewpoint that restricts the meaning of prayer to thinking about God. Whether we call this prayer or meditation makes little difference. The basic conviction is that what is needed is to think thoughts about God and his mysteries. Prayer therefore requires hard mental work and is quite fatiguing, especially if reflective thinking is not one of our strengths. Since we already have so many other practical and pressing things on our minds, thinking about God becomes one more demanding burden. This is especially true because thinking about God is not a spontaneous event, while thinking about pressing concerns comes quite naturally.
Thinking about God makes God into a subject that needs to be scrutinized or analyzed. Successful prayer is thus prayer that leads to new intellectual discoveries about God. Just as a psychologist studies a case and seeks to gain insight by trying to find coherence in all the available data, so someone who prays well should come to understand God better by thinking deeply about all that is known about him.
In thinking about God as with speaking to God, our frustration tolerance is quite low, and it does not take much to stop praying all together. Reading a book or writing an article or sermon is a lot more satisfying than this mental wandering into the unknown.
Both these views of prayer are the products of a culture in which high value is placed on mastering the world through the intellect. The dominating idea has been that everything can be understood and that what can be understood can be controlled. God, too, is a problem that has a solution, and by strenuous efforts of the mind we will find it. It is therefore not so strange that the academic gown is the official garb of the minister, and that one of the main criteria for admission to the pulpit is a university degree.
This, of course, does not mean that the intellect has no place in the life of prayer, of that theological reflection and prayer are mutually exclusive. But we should not underestimate the intellectualism of the mainstream North American churches.. If the public prayers of ministers inside as well as outside of church buildings are any indication of their prayer life, God is certainly busy attending seminars….
During the last decade, many have discovered the limits of the intellect. More and more people have realized that what they need is much more than interesting sermons and interesting prayers. They wonder how the might really experience God. The charismatic movement is an obvious response to this new search for prayer. The popularity of Zen and the experimentation with encounter techniques in the churches are also indicative of a new desire to experience God. Suddenly we find ourselves surrounded by people saying, “Teach us to pray.” And suddenly we become aware that we are being asked to show the way through a region that we do not know ourselves. The crisis of our prayer life is that our mind may be filled with ideas of God while our heart remains far from him. Real prayer comes from the heart. It is about this prayer of the heart that the Desert Fathers teach us.
The Prayer of The Heart
…We find the best formulation of the prayer of the heart in the words of the Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse: “To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seeing, within you.” … Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God’s spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, within us.
We have to realize here that the word heart is used in its full biblical meaning. In our milieu the word heart has become a soft word. It refers to the seat of the sentimental life. Expressions such as “heart-broken” and “heart-felt” show that we often think of the heart as the warm place where the emotions are located in contrast to the cool intellect where our thoughts find their home. But the word heart in the Jewish-Christian tradition refers to the source of all physical, emotional, intellectual, volitional, and moral energies.
…One of the Desert Fathers, Macarius the Great, says, “The chief task of the athlete [that is, the monk] is to enter into his heart.” This does not mean that the monk should try to fill his prayer with feeling, but that he should strive to let his prayer remodel the whole of his person. The most profound insight of the Desert Fathers is that entering into the heart is entering into the kingdom of God. In other words, the way to God is through the heart. Isaac the Syrian writes: “Try to enter the treasure chamber … that is within you and then you will discover the treasure chamber of heaven.”
“Happy the pure in heart: they shall see God.” – Jesus (Matthew 5:8)
Preface to the Happiness
We have talked a few times about getting along with individuals at work and a passage that meant a lot to me a couple of years ago came to mind. I came across this during that period in my life when I was just beginning to make the transition from a cynical, pessimistic, and miserable smart-ass to someone who has experienced, and been transformed by, true joy.
This is from the writings of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor and philosopher, in his Meditations:
“Put yourself in mind, every morning, that before that night you will meet with some meddlesome, ungrateful and abusive fellow, with some envious or unsociable churl. Remember that their perversity proceeds from ignorance of good and evil; and that since it has fallen to my share to understand the natural beauty of a good action and the deformity of an ill one; since I am satisfied that the disobliging person is of kin to me, our minds being both extracted from the Deity; since no man can do me a real injury because no man can force me to misbehave myself; I cannot therefore hate or be angry with one of my own nature and family. For we are all made for mutual assistance, no less than the parts of the body are for the service of the whole; whence it follows that clashing and opposition are utterly unnatural.”
Because I spent so much time as a meddlesome fellow myself, when this affliction was taken from me I was able to truly see it as an affliction and my heart flooded with empathy for my meddlesome brothers and sisters still suffering out there. I have since realized that just as it is our duty to care for the sick and the poor, so is it the duty of those of us living in the joy of Christ to be gentle and loving in the midst of the angry and nasty.
Each moment throughout the day when we encounter these meddlesome fellows, we have the opportunity to conquer a small piece of the darkness that is present in the world, and in ourselves – simply by refusing to allow that darkness to touch us. Your story of smiling in that line at the store is the perfect example of this.
Your smiling face was a healing presence to the lady trying to serve her customers, and she expressed gratitude. Allowing God to be present in the world through a simple smile had a measurable effect on the world and the response from the world was gratitude… what better evangelization is there?
Unlikely Happiness
A couple of years ago, before reading Aurelius, I made a vow to never get angry, impatient, or frustrated in traffic – ever. This works very much like a meditation of sorts, where you try to not think. Well, of course you are going to think! But then you realize that you are thinking and you stop (for a few moments at least). This cycle repeats and the point of the exercise is that it is an exercise. It is a practice. It builds focus, attention and self awareness, and therefore self control. Through continued practice, the thinking becomes less and something new starts to happen.
Well, this sort of exercise has helped me in traffic. When I find myself feeling frustrated, I realize that I am frustrated and I stop (for a few moments at least). I have been practicing this for a while now and I frequently find myself actually laughing out loud and having a wonderful time in moments of the worst traffic, when the frustration sneaks up on me. Because when this happens – when I am frustrated – I realize that I am being me too much, that I have left no room for God to be, and so I let go of me and God comes rushing in and I am grateful; I smile and I laugh – and it is genuine.
In this way, traffic often becomes a close moment for me in the same way meddlesome people can become close moments for us. I am reminded that God is with me, and for this I am grateful. So traffic leads to frustration which leads to remembering God which leads to experiencing God’s presence, which leads to joy and gratitude.
Bad traffic is sometimes the highlight of my day. I had a great laugh just recently… I was frustrated in traffic and remembered God – and then chose the frustration! Or, at least I tried to. But my frustration retreated like oil to soap, dark to light, in God’s presence. All I could do was laugh at myself for thinking that I could choose to hold onto that frustration in His presence.
This was truly an unlikely happiness.
Gratitude
Not only can we defeat these dark moments, but we can be thankful for them. Not because we are sadists, but because these are the moments of our spiritual growth which strengthen us for real suffering.
I am very grateful for my meddlesome moments, for in them I am witness to God’s love conquering the darkness; in these moments I am offered the opportunity to allow God’s work to be done in me. These moments build my faith. And all I have to do is to choose to allow it to happen.
When we find ourselves in long lines and everyone is miserable, these are the moments in which we need to remove ourselves to allow God’s healing presence to be. As you noted, this smile, this presence of joy in a long line listening to people complain, it is so easy and it makes a difference in the world. People do notice, and though they may not know it at the time, they are being touched by God, for it is not our smile but God’s that heals.
The Primacy of Being
I believe in something I call the primacy of being. I believe that above what I think (the primacy of thought) and above what I do (the primacy of action), is who I am (the primacy of being). This is a philosophy that reminds me that we are called to “be” like Christ – not just to “do” Christ-like things or “think” Christ-like thoughts, although these will certainly follow as all thoughts and actions ultimately proceed from being.
I began to think about this yesterday when you asked if there was anyone Christ did not like. I think that while the temptation to dislike someone may have been present to Christ, that He, being sinless, was not defeated by it. Which is to say, no.
This has profound implications for us, who are called to be “Christ-like.” Disliking someone is a willful act, and while it may seem involuntary to us at times, that is only because we are unaware of our willfulness, and in our unawareness, we make a choice that moves us away from God. I would think that Christ, unlike us, was aware of such choices and never chose any act that was in a direction away from God.
Moreover, this reminds me of Marcus Aurelius again. When we find ourselves disliking someone, we have in this moment the opportunity to grow in an important way, for it is in this moment where we can choose to let go of another piece of that dark part of ourselves and allow Christ to fill us more completely. The more we can do this letting go, the more fully we can live in Christ. And while it is easy to live in Christ during the happy, peaceful moments of our lives (sitting in Church), we will never fully live in Christ until we can live in Christ in the unpleasant, frustrating, and tormented moments of our lives. Our capacity for this grows each time that we conquer that part of ourselves that does the disliking. As such, these moments – standing in line behind a hostile customer, etc – are actual gifts given to us that we may conquer another small piece of the darkness inside of us. This was the realization that I came to after reading the Aurelius passage.
These tiny trials that we encounter are opportunities for us to strengthen and grow our joy through the exercise and practice of actively choosing the good. We retrain our instincts this way and as such, we re-orient ourselves more fully to God and we therefore live more fully in joy.
Everlasting Joy and Hope
There exists a joy and a hope that the world cannot take from us. Pope Benedict writes elegantly and profoundly of this in his encyclical on hope. If we can live inside of this joy, if we can stay in contact with it, then we can truly say, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
In our meeting, I tried to recount the story of the of the lady whose husband told her he did not love her and in fact never had. The title of that book is. “This is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness” by Laura Munson.You can find the article that sparked the book on the nytimes.com site
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/fashion/02love.html
I was drawn to the part about “unlikely happiness” and I read the first pages in which she describes her worst moment. When she wanted to “fight, rage and cry” she was instead, able to feel calm – because she had decided not to participate in suffering.
We can make that same choice in our meetings, in traffic, and standing in line. And because we are with God, we never have to do it alone. Moreover, when we rely on God to enter our being in these moments, we are transformed in new ways as dark, hidden cul-de-sacs of our hearts are washed clean with light. Through this, our capacity for “being Christ-like” expands.
I love the phrase, “unlikely happiness,” for that so perfectly describes the joy we are given in Christ, who transforms our meddlesome moments to profound moments of joy. And for this, we are thankful.
“In the midst of these torments, which usually terrify others, I am, by the grace of God, full of joy and gladness, because I am not alone” – Paul Le-Bao-Tinh
Over the centuries the Church has done enough to make any critical person want to leave it. Its history of violent crusades, pogroms, power struggles, oppression, excommunications, executions, manipulation of people and ideas, and constantly recurring divisions is there for everyone to see and be appalled by.Can we believe that this is the same Church that carries in its center the Word of God and the sacraments of God’s healing love? Can we trust that in the midst of all its human brokenness the Church presents the broken body of Christ to the world as food for eternal life? Can we acknowledge that where sin is abundant grace is superabundant, and that where promises are broken over and again God’s promise stands unshaken? To believe is to answer yes to these questions.
-Henry Nouwen
“I understand the intellectual critique of the Church and of its ecclesiology. I get it. The problem is that the accusations and complaints do not correspond to my EXPERIENCE of “church” in the least. I go to church to be with Christ, for I am with Christ and know Christ through Bob, Pete, Rob, Thomas, John, Jerry, Kathy, Mary Lou, Celia, Christian, Michael, Mary Lyons, Nellie, Mike, Claire, Valeria, Tricia and all those brothers and sisters who are now my family in the body of Christ. My church family mediates an experience of Christ that I cannot get anywhere else in the universe, and no intellectual critique will ever change this fact.Moreover, the laws of nature are unaffected by the sins of your science teacher. Should your calculus professor commit a crime, satellites will not fall from the sky. Do not allow any scandal that occurs among the clergy, or anyone, anywhere, dissuade you from the truth that is carried in the womb of the Church.”
Logical positivism’s position is that the only thing philosophy can concern itself with is propositions. As such, it cuts itself off from the possibility of any encounter with Christ. This type of philosophy deals with “religion” through a method that reduces religion to propositions such as, “God exists” and “X is immoral.” This is how positivist philosophy sees religion – as a collection of propositions. It has taken up its hammer and now sees only nails. The point I am making is that it is precisely this view of religion as a series of propositions where the folly lies. It is the rampant unquestioned positivism inherent in these thinkers that cuts them off from any religious experience and without that, they are in no position to understand, much less judge such experience.To quote Henri de Lubac, “The object revealed is not conceived as a series of propositions … but recognized in its original unity as the Mystery of Christ, the reality of a personal, living being.”
Yes! Christianity cannot be reduced to a code of ethics on top of a metaphysical platform any more than eating can be reduced to reading a menu.
Fr. Giussani says it like this: “If one wishes to know for certain that Jesus is the definitive revelation of the mystery of God – of the final meaning and destiny of all things – one can do so only from within an encounter.”
Yes! This is what Martin Buber means about the difference between theology and religion. Religion is where the encounter happens, not in theology.
Again, Giussani: “The religious method is overturned by Christ: In Christianity it is no longer the person who seeks to know the mystery but the mystery that makes himself known by entering history.”
The philosophers are like Job’s friends. They are good men. They came to be with their friend, to comfort him. They love justice. They are obedient to the law as it is revealed. They are defending God against Job’s anger and judgment of God. But they are human, just like these philosophers, and their philosophies, however clever and wise and logical are merely human; they cannot build a bridge to God with propositions (menus), no matter how smart or moral or obedient they are. In the end, they either accept the living presence of God through Jesus Christ (the meal) or they remain locked up in their tower of Babel.
But in this tower, they wish to enclose all the world. This is why Pope Benedict has repeatedly called us to action against this positivism:
And…
–snip–
it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology’s claim to be “scientific” would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by “science”, so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective.
Imagine the day on which your bank account balance is zero. Then imagine a deposit the next day that raises it to one thousand dollars. A quantum theory of the creation of a universe (in Hawking’s version, or Vilenkin’s, or anyone else’s) is akin to this transition from an empty account to one full of money. Obviously, therefore, the “nothing” that Hawking makes part of his theory of the creation of our universe is not nothing in a metaphysical sense. The “no-universe” of his speculations is like the “no-dollars” in my account. It exists within the framework of a complex overarching system with specific rules. So we can see that, if true, the way of thinking put forward by Hawking does not threaten the classical doctrine of creation out of nothing.
And so in her uncertainties, she decided that she would go with science. In this way, her opinions would be based on facts, on knowledge, and not superstition. And so, with a thorough skepticism, she searched her heart for its existing superstitions so she could root them out and replace them with knowledge. She compiled a list and marched down to the local science lab in search of the facts and the proofs:
But the test tube labeled “justice” was empty. And so was the test tube labeled “love.” And she shocked to learn that there was no proof that murder was wrong, or that freedom was good. In fact, there was no test tube called “goodness” at all.
“Well,” she wondered, “how are we supposed to know what is right and what is wrong?”
In the end science could not tell her what she “should” do and she began to wonder if this “should” was itself a superstition. But science was silent, so she was faced with a choice, which is what she wanted to avoid in the first place.
Thus she learned that the Pope was correct: “There is no escape from the dilemma of being human.”
Desire is wanting something; greed is wanting everything. Desire is healthy, like hunger, which leads to nourishment; greed is unhealthy, like gluttony, which leads to disease. Desire is limited and moderate. Greed is excessive and immoderate. Greed says to hell with everybody and everything; greed acknowledges no master, no law, no limit. If a man says of another, “You are full of passion and desire” he pays him a compliment, whereas if he says, “You are full of avarice and greed” he condemns him.
I say that those who confuse desire for greed and say that greed is good may as well confuse alcoholism with thirst and go about advocating drunkenness.
They: I say, where is the line between the thirsty man and the alcoholic? At what point does one become the other?
Me: That is the correct question, yes.
They: What is the answer?
Me: You tell me.
They: People disagree on where the line is.
Me: But they do not disagree that there are alcoholics.
They: Some people might.
Me: But no one with common sense would. Only a lawyer, or someone playing a trick or trying to win a game of making the weaker argument the stronger would say such a thing, but it is plain common sense that greed is not good.
They: I don’t see how it is common sense because…
Me: That doesn’t surprise me that you don’t see it, because you don’t seem to have any of it.
[This got a lot of laughter and scored me the win, I think, although the debate continued for quite a while. We went on (like we frequently do) and got into stoicism vs epicureanism, virtue and vice and types of sin. We went on into the elevator after work, still debating.
They: But everyone will define the line at a different point, and if everyone disagrees on where the line is…
Me: Then we will disagree on the where the line is. We may never agree. For two thousand years we have been disagreeing. How much is too much wine? I don’t know, but I know you can have too much wine!
They: But if one glass is too much for you and five glasses is not too much for Andre the Giant and the line keeps changing from person to person…
Me: Yes, the line changes from person to person, and perhaps even for the same person from moment to moment. There is no formula, no equation that can solve the problem for you. There is no escape from the dilemma of being a human being.
[This got a few laughs from the people in the elevator and that was the end of the debate (for today)]
The number of galaxies in the observable universe = 10^12
10000000000000
The number of grains of sand to fill an average office = 5×10^13
50000000000000
Meters from the earth to the edge of the observable universe = 4.3×10^26 (46 billion light years )
4300000000000000000000000000
Meters in the observable universe = 8.8×10^26 (92 billion light years)
8800000000000000000000000000
The number of particles (baryons) in the observable universe = 10^80
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000
The number of grains of sand to fill the observable universe = 10^90
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000
A googol = 10^100
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
The number of possible chess games (Shannon’s Number) = 10^123
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000
Number of plank volumes in the observable universe = 10^183
100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000
A googolplex = 10^(googol)
[there is not enough space in the universe to write this number down, even if each digit were the size of a subatomic particle]
Graham’s number = ?
(This number, the solution to a real, applied math problem, is too large for scientific notation so we need to invent a new way to write it down)
let us say that 3^^3 = 3^3^3 = 7625597484987 (a puny number in our collection)
such that 3^^^3 = 3^^3^^3 = 3^^7625597484987 = 3^3^3^3^3^….^3
where the number of 3’s in the stack is = 7625597484987
(note: if we were to calculate this tower of powers of 3 (which is 7 trillion 3’s tall)
even the number of digits in this number would be way more than a googleplex)
and so, 3^^^^3 = 3^^^3^^^3 = 3^^^(3^^7625597484987) = 3^^3^^3^^…^^3
where the number of 3’s in this new stack is = 7625597484987
(remember, each 3^^3 = 7625597484987)
so now we are talking about the number:
7625597484987^7625597484987^…^7625597484987^7625597484987
where this stack of powers of 7625597484987 is 7625597484987 high
now, let us call this last number g1, such that g1 = 3^^^^3
and then let us say that g2 = 3^^^…n…^3 where (n) = g1
and that g3 = 3^^^…n…^3 where (n) = g2
and so on…
such that Graham’s Number = g64
“Normal adults don’t stop to think about such concepts as space and time. These are things children ask about. My secret is I remained a child. I always ask the simplest questions. I ask them still.” — Einstein
That quote comes to my mind especially today, reading the headline: “Discovery of New Particle Could Redefine World”
So let us be like children now, just for a moment, and take time to think a bit about time, and space, and everything. Particularly, let us pause and consider this unimaginable fact: gravity, the most powerful thing in the universe, this inconceivable force that has the power to crush space and time into nothingness; let us pause and ponder the power and mystery of this monster at the center of our galaxy, the black hole that eats space, and time, and everything.
Once upon a time, when Einstein predicted that such a monster must exist, no one could believe it. How could anything stop the flow of time? How could anything be so powerful as to crumple up space itself like a measly wad of paper? Surely you must be joking, sir!
But by the time this monster had been conceived, the unthinkable genius of Einstein’s general theory of relativity had already accurately predicted and described what no other theory, not even Newton’s, had been able to describe before. And now this theory predicted this: a monster beyond anything that any man had ever conceived before.
But still, we needed proof (as we always do) so we went looking for this monster, and the amazing thing, the incomprehensible thing – we found it!
The theory is true: black holes exist! And because we know about black holes now, because we have a precise measurement of how gravity bends space and warps time, we have GPS.
But one thing is connected to another. And another. And another… so it is that this theory is connected to ideas that go back to Aristotle, nearly 3000 years ago. And to mention but one of the ideas that formed the building blocks of this cathedral of understanding, one of the theories that came first, just before Einstein’s, was one that James Clark Maxwell first wrote down. The mathematics of his field theory, which describe the electro-magnetic force – this is why we have radio, and cell phones, and “Angry Birds.”
And likewise, because Richard Feynman, after Einstein, wrote down the mathematics of the QED (quantum electro-dynamics), we can now fully explain the colors and shapes of rainbows, the sound of a jet engine, the feel of sandpaper, a droplet of water, the waves on the ocean, why ice floats, and why the sky is blue. In fact, the QED is the most successful, accurate theory mankind has ever produced. It explains the material universe because it explains the very heart of physics, which explains chemistry, which explains biology, which explains psychology and consciousness itself (have we left anything out?)
In fact, these theories, which have combined to become what is known as “The Standard Model of Particle Physics,” describes and explains every single phenomenon in the universe from the Big Bang, to the warmth of the sun on your skin, to the transmission of this email, to the neurons firing in your brain, and the giddiness scientists around the world are feeling right now.
This theory describes every phenomenon in the universe, that is, except for gravity.
Because, although Newton calculated its effects and Einstein unveiled its power over space and time itself, no one has ever been able to actually explain it! As difficult as it may be to believe, we have never had an explanation of gravity.
Yes, we have been to the moon and yes, we have GPS and have sent satellites to Saturn, but what we don’t have, what we have never had, is an explanation – not one that had been tested.
Until now.
A body in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force – but why?
We call this fact (the very first law of the universe) “inertia” (thank you, Newton) and we say that it is a consequence of “mass.” But naming something – even describing its effects – does not explain it, not really.
Newton admitted that he was clueless to explain what was behind his observations, what explained the calculations. In fact, we have known all too well of our own ignorance for quite a long time now. And for a certain kind of person this ignorance is an irresistible temptation.
You know this type of person. As a child, they asked, but why? … but why? … but why? … but why? And they always tried to reveal the magician’s tricks at birthday parties. These are the type of spoiled brats that no business executive in his right mind would hire, the type of stubborn individual who would never dream of working for a business executive anyway (thank goodness for that).
Because for a certain kind of person The Mystery is the ultimate business of the universe. For a certain type of person, mysteries are like women: seductive and challenging, coyly hiding their true nature, waiting for one who is worthy, a champion who can discover their secrets.
The Mystery cries out to be solved and so, for a certain type of person, a courtship ensues: a dance begins between Man and Nature. This is how we communicate with her. This is how she reveals herself to us. This is how it works: the universe, and everything.
But The Mystery, she is a flirt, and this is what makes the dance so very delightful. Einstein knew this. And he knew that children naturally understand this. Because curiosity, and romance is in their nature. And if it is so, then it must also be in ours, somewhere deep inside, in the part of our eternal soul that is untouched by time. Somewhere in our hearts there is this universal desire, this romance that will not die.
And this is the romance you read in the headlines today. This is the romance we are in now.
Einstein (God love his soul) he went to his grave scribbling equations in his notebook, calculating and computing in his hospital bed to the very end. He searched for answers until his last breath, trying to crack the mystery that would explain gravity. Einstein was a very religious man in his own way, and he had faith that there was an explanation, one explanation that could explain it all – a unified field theory of the universe, and everything – he said he was seeking “the mind of God.” This was his response to the universal religious sense: to know the creator. He was drawn, as we all are, to the Ultimate Source of the Universe, and Everything.
So fast forward to yesterday: we have four forces of nature in all and three of them – the strong force, the weak force, and the electromagnetic force – solved. But the most basic, most obvious force of them all, the very force that keeps our feet to the ground, still remained elusive. There simply was no explanation for it. Measurements, yes, observations, yes. But nothing more than this. Neither Newton nor Einstein, the two greats, would crack the code. Ultimately, this Mystery would prove itself too big for any one man, or woman. It would take the cumulative efforts of generations of curious, stubborn child-like romantics to get at this secret, the deepest secret of the universe that science has ever pondered.
Why do things have mass? Why, how, does matter bend space, warp time? How does the black hole at the center of every galaxy in the starlit sky capture light itself?
These questions about the mysteries of gravity, no man has ever been able to adequately answer.
Ultimately, it would take the effort of governments, and thus, the combined capital of tens, even hundreds of millions of men adventurous enough to put it all on the line and go for it. This is what separates science from philosophy: an experiment would be be needed. And no small thing, this experiment. This would be an experiment that would separate the boys from the men. Tens of billions of dollars, decades of effort…
That experiment, mankind’s largest, most expensive yet, has now been deemed a success. The Standard Model is complete.
Imagine: on this day, the universe has officially evolved to the point at which it has produced a consciousness sufficiently sophisticated as to have become aware of itself in a new way – a profoundly deep way.
That awareness has happened, is happening, in us – right now! In this moment we are in, this unique moment in the history of the universe. A first has happened in the world today. Through the efforts of many, many generations of men and women the universe has accomplished in our generation something quite special, something that no other generation could have ever possibly conceived. For thousands of years we have asked the question, and only now, today, have we found the answer.
To all the men and women throughout the ages – Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Feynman and all the thousands of others who all contributed to this quest – we congratulate you. Today we are all like children – for a moment at least – when we read these headlines and we take a moment to marvel at space, time, the universe, and everything.
Thank you.
His first major philosophical work, A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts… Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality. The Academy of Dijon posed the question, “Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals?” Rousseau’s answer to this question is an emphatic “no.” The First Discourse won the academy’s prize as the best essay. The work is perhaps the greatest example of Rousseau as a “counter-Enlightenment” thinker. For the Enlightenment project was based on the idea that progress in fields like the arts and sciences do indeed contribute to the purification of morals on individual, social, and political levels.
Rousseau paraphrases Socrates’ famous speech in the Apology. In his address to the court, Socrates says that the artists and philosophers of his day claim to have knowledge of piety, goodness, and virtue, yet they do not really understand anything.
Philosophical and scientific knowledge of subjects such as the relationship of the mind to the body, the orbit of the planets, and physical laws that govern particles fail to genuinely provide any guidance for making people more virtuous citizens. Rather, Rousseau argues that they create a false sense of need for luxury, so that science becomes simply a means for making our lives easier and more pleasurable, but not morally better.
Artists, Rousseau says, wish first and foremost to be applauded. Their work comes from a sense of wanting to be praised as superior to others. Society begins to emphasize specialized talents rather than virtues such as courage, generosity, and temperance. The great majority of people ought to focus their energies on improving their characters, rather than advancing the ideals of the Enlightenment in the arts and sciences.
The central claim of his second, longer work, The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality is that human beings are basically good by nature, but were corrupted by the complex historical events that resulted in present day civil society. If the First Discourse is indicative of Rousseau as a “counter-Enlightenment” thinker, the Second Discourse, by contrast, can rightly be considered to be representative of Enlightenment thought. This is primarily because Rousseau, like Hobbes, attacks the classical notion of human beings as naturally social. In terms of its influence, the Second Discourse is now much more widely read, and is more representative of Rousseau’s general philosophical outlook. In the Confessions, Rousseau writes that he himself sees the Second Discourse as far superior to the first.
The scope of Rousseau’s project is not significantly different from that of Hobbes in the Leviathan or Locke in the Second Treatise on Government. Like them, Rousseau understands society to be an invention, and he attempts to explain the nature of human beings by stripping them of all of the accidental qualities brought about by socialization. This is in stark contrast to the classical view, most notably that of Aristotle, which claims that the state of civil society is the natural human state.
his later works include his comprehensive work on the philosophy of education, the Emile, and his major work on political philosophy, The Social Contract: both published in 1762.
Rousseau greatly influenced Immanuel Kant’s work on ethics. His novel Julie or the New Heloiseimpacted the late eighteenth century’s Romantic Naturalism movement, and his political ideals were championed by leaders of the French Revolution.
Human beings in the state of nature are amoral creatures, neither virtuous nor vicious. After humans leave the state of nature, they can enjoy a higher form of goodness, moral goodness, which Rousseau articulates most explicitly in the Social Contract.
there is dispute as to whether Rousseau’s thought is best characterized as “Enlightenment” or “counter-Enlightenment.” The major goal of Enlightenment thinkers was to give a foundation to philosophy that was independent of any particular tradition, culture, or religion: one that any rational person would accept. In the realm of science, this project has its roots in the birth of modern philosophy, in large part with the seventeenth century philosopher, René Descartes.
Descartes was very skeptical about the possibility of discovering final causes, or purposes, in nature. Yet this teleological understanding of the world was the very cornerstone of Aristotelian metaphysics, which was the established philosophy of the time. And so Descartes’ method was to doubt these ideas, which he claims can only be understood in a confused way, in favor of ideas that he could conceive clearly and distinctly.
The scope of modern philosophy was not limited only to issues concerning science and metaphysics. Philosophers of this period also attempted to apply the same type of reasoning to ethics and politics.
http://www.amasci.com/emotor/stmiscon.html
We always talk of matter as if it only had passing relation to electrical effects. Yet if we look in detail into the nature of matter, we find physical substances, made of molecules, made of atoms, made of positive and negative electric charge. Matter is not electrical? No, quite the opposite: electric charge is the major component of all atoms. Therefore matter is *made out of cancelled electric charge.* If we cancel out some opposite charge by placing positive charge together with negative charge, do we get NOTHING? No, instead we get material substance. Positive protons plus negative electrons equals neutral atoms. Physical objects normally have no charge? Wrong. The physical objects *are* the charge.
Bertrand Russell adopted Frege’s predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, a method he thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word “is” has three distinct meanings by predicate logic:
1) Schools Getting it Right: Moorseville
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2) Schools Getting it Right: The Relationship School
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/opinion/brooks-the-relationship-school.html?_r=2&hp
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3) I have been following Khan Academy for a couple of years, very interesting. Here is a recent 60 Min piece on Khan Academy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9kh60v5PxMk
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4) Why Every Country on the Planet is Reforming Education (very good presentation):
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html
(above link is a very good animated video which also discusses ADHD – very good)
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5) Study reveals that gov subsidies raise tuition costs by 75%
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/14/profits-receive-federal-aid-charge-more-study-finds
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6) What the Academy Should Be:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/02/12/cormac-mccarthy-on-the-sante-fe-institute-s-brainy-halls.html
From Part 8, the final section, near the end of the book…
Chapter VIII
From that moment when, at the sight of his beloved brother dying, Levin had looked at the questions of life and death for the first time through those new convictions, as he called them, which imperceptibly, during the period from twenty to thirty-four years of age, had come to replace his childhood and adolescent beliefs, he had been horrified, not so much at death as at life without the slightest knowledge of whence it came, wherefore, why, and what it was. The organism, its decay, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, development, were the word that had replaced his former faith. These words and the concepts connected with them were very well suited to intellectual purposes, but they gave nothing for life, and Levin suddenly felt himself in the position of a person who has traded his warm fur coat for muslin clothing and, caught in the cold for the first time, is convinced beyond question, not by reasoning but with his whole being, that he is as good as naked and must inevitably die a painful death.
From that moment on, though not accounting for it to himself and continuing to live as before, Levin never ceased to feel that fear at his ignorance.
Moreover, he felt vaguely that what he called his convictions were not only ignorance but were a way of thinking that made the knowledge he needed impossible.
At first his marriage, the new joys and responsibilities he came to know, completely stifled these thoughts; but lately, after his wife gave birth, while he was living idly in Moscow, Levin began to be faced more and more often, more and more urgently, by this question that demanded an answer.
The question for him consisted in the following:’If I do not accept the answers that Christianity gives to the questions of my life, then which answers do I accept?’ And nowhere in the whole arsenal of his convictions was he able to find, not only any answers, but anything resembling an answer.
He was in the position of a man looking for food in a toymaker’s or a gunsmith’s shop.
Involuntarily, unconsciously, he now sought in every book, in every conversation, in every person, a connection with these questions and their resolutions.
What amazed and upset him most of all was that the majority of people of his age and circle, who had replaced their former beliefs, as he had, with the same new beliefs as he had, did not see anything wrong with it and were perfectly calm and content. So that, besides the main question, Levin was tormented by other questions: Are these people sincere? Are they not pretending? Or do they not understand somehow differently, more clearly, than he the answers science gives to the questions that concerned him? And he diligently studied both the opinions of these people and the books that expressed these answers.
One thing he had discovered since he began to concern himself with these questions was that he had been mistaken in supposing, from memories of his youthful university circle, that religion had outlived its day and no longer existed. All the good people close to him were believers. The old prince, and Lvov, whom he had come close to love so much, believed as he had believed early in his childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of all the Russian people, that people whose life inspired the greatest respect in him, were believers.
Another thing was that, after reading many books, he became convinced that those who shared the same views with him saw nothing else implied in them and, without explaining anything, simply dismissed the questions which he felt he could not live without answering, and tried to resolve completely different questions, which could not be of interest to him – for instance, about the development of the organism, about the mechanical explanation of the soul, and so on.
Besides that, while his wife was giving birth an extraordinary thing had happened to him. He, the unbeliever, had begun to pray, and in the moment of praying he had believed. But that moment had passed, and he was unable to give any place in his life to the state of mind he had been in then.
He could not admit that he had known the truth then and was now mistaken, because as soon as he began to think calmly about it, the whole thing fell to pieces; nor could he admit that he had been mistaken then, because he cherished his state of soul of that time, and by admitting that it had been due to weakness he would have profaned those moments. He was in painful discord with himself and strained all the forces of his soul to get out of it.
Chapter IX
These thoughts wearied and tormented him now less. now more strongly, but they never left him. He read and pondered, and the more he read and pondered, the further he felt himself from the goal he was pursuing.
Recently in Moscow and in the country , convinced that he would not find an answer in the materialists, he reread or read for the first time, Plato, and Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer – the philosophers who gave a non-materialistic explanation of life.
Their thoughts seemed fruitful to him when he was either reading or devising refutations of other teachings, especially that of the materialists; but as soon as he read or himself devised answers to the questions, one and the same thing always repeated itself. Following the given definitions of vague words such as spirit, will, freedom, substance, deliberately falling into the verbal trap set for him by the philosophers or by himself, he seemed to begin to understand something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of thought and refer back from life itself to what hd satisfied him while he thought along a given line – and suddenly the whole artificial edifice would collapse like a house of cards, and it would be clear that the edifice had been made of the same words rearranged, independent of something more important in life than reason.
Once, reading Schopenhauer, he substituted love for his will, and this new philosophy comforted him for a couple of days, until he stepped back from it; but it collapsed in the same way when he later looked at it from life, and turned out to be warmthless muslin clothing.
His brother advised him to read the theological works of Khomiakov. Levin read the second volume of Khomiakov’s writings and, despite the elegant and witty polemical tone, which put him off at first, was struck by their teachings about the Church. He was struck first by the thought that it was not given to man to comprehend divine truths, but it is given to an aggregate of men united by love – the Church. He rejoiced at the thought of how much easier it was to believe in the presently existing, living Church, which constitutes the entire faith of men, which has God at its head and is therefore hly and infallible, and from it to receive one’s beliefs about God, creation, the fall, redemption, than to begin with God, the distant, mysterious God, creation and so on. But later, having read a history of the Church by a Catholic writer and a history of the Church by an Orthodox writer, and seeing that the two Churches, infallible in their essence, rejected each other, he became disappointed in Khomakov’s teaching about the Church as well, and this edifice fell to dust just as the philosophical edifices had done.
All that spring he was not himself and lived through terrible moments.
‘Without knowing what I am and why I’m here, it is impossible for me to live. And I cannot know that, therefore I cannot live,’ Levin would say to himself.
‘In infinite time, in the infinity of matter, in infinite space, a bubble-organism separates itself, an that bubble holds out for a while and then bursts, and that bubble is me.’
This was a tormenting untruth, but it was the sole, the latest result of age-long labors of human thought in that direction.
This was the latest belief on which all researches of the human mind in almost all fields were built. This was the reigning conviction, and out of all other explanations it was precisely this one that Levin, himself not knowing when or how, had involuntarily adopted as being at any rate the most clear.
But it was not only untrue, it was the cruel mockery of some evil power, evil and offensive, which it was impossible to submit to.
It was necessary to be delivered from this power. And deliverance was within everyone’s reach. It was necessary to to stop this dependence on evil. And there was one means – death.
And, happy in his family life, a healthy man, Levin was several times so close to suicide that he hid a rope lest he hang himself with it, and was afraid to go about with a rifle lest he shoot himself.
But Levin did not shoot himself or hang himself and went on living.
Chapter X
When Levin thought about what he was and what he lived for, he found no answer and fell into despair; but when he stopped asking himself about it, he seemed to know what he was and what he lived for, because he acted and lived firmly and definitely; recently he had even lived much more firmly and definitely than before.
Returning to the country in the middle of June, he also returned to his usual occupations. Farming, relations with the muzhiks and his neighbors, running the household, his sister’s and brother’s affairs, which were in his hands, relations with his wife and family, cares about the baby, the new interest in bees he had acquired that last spring, took up all his time.
These things occupied him, not because he justified them to himself by some general views as he had done formerly; on the contrary, now, disappointed by the failure of his earlier undertakings for the general good, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, too occupied with his thoughts and the very quantity of things that piled upon him from all sides, he completely abandoned all considerations of the common good, and these things occupied him only because it seemed to him that he had to do what he was doing – that he could not do otherwise.
Formerly (it had begun almost from childhood and kept growing till full maturity), whenever he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing itself was always awkward, there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing and diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much better than before and that it was expanding more and more.
Now, as if against his will, he cut deeper and deeper into the soil, like a plough, so that he could no longer get out without turning over the furrow.
For the family to live as their fathers and grandfathers had been accustomed to live – that is, in the same cultural conditions and with the same upbringing of children – was undoubtedly necessary. It was as necessary as dinner when one was hungry; and just as for that it was necessary to prepare dinner, so it was necessary to run the farming mechanism of Pokrovskoe in such a way as to produce income. As undoubtedly as it was to pay debts, it was also necessary to to maintain the family land in such condition that when his son inherited it he would thank his father, as Levin had thanked his grandfather for everything he had built and planted. And for that it was necessary not to lease the land, but to do the farming personally, to keep cattle, to manure the fields, to plant trees.
It was as impossible not to take care of Sergei Ivanovich’s affairs, the affairs of his sister and of all the muzhiks who came for advice and were accustomed to do so, as it was impossible to drop a baby one is already holding in one’s arms.
But besides the fact that Levin firmly knew what he had to do, he knew just as well how he had to do it all and which matter was more important than another.
He knew that he had to hire workers as cheaply as possible, but that he should not put them in bondage by paying them in advance at a cheaper rate than they were worth, thought it was very profitable. He could sell the muzhiks straw when there was a shortage, though he felt sorry for them; but the inn and the pot-house, even though they brought income, had to be eliminated. For felling timber he had to punish them as severely as possible, but he could not fine them for cattle that strayed into his pastures, and though it upset the watchmen and eliminated fear, it was impossible not to return the stray cattle.
[…]
Reasoning had led him into doubt and kept him from seeing what he should and should not do. Yet when he did not think, but lived, he constantly felt in his soul the presence of an infallible judge who decided which of two possible actions was better and which was worse; and whenever he did not act as he should, he felt it at once.
So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any possibility of knowing what he was and why he was living in the world, tormented by this ignorance to such a degree that he feared suicide, and at the same time, firmly laying down his own particular, definite path in life.
“What was the point of a bachelor of arts degree? Was it to plumb the depths and origins of Western civilization, which had after all invented the university, and to develop the student spiritually and morally? Or was it to set the kid up for a cushy job?”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/book-drove-them-crazy_634905.html?nopager=1
“The crisis of liberal education,” he wrote, “is a reflection of a crisis at the peaks of learning, an incoherence and incompatibility among the first principles with which we interpret the world, an intellectual crisis of the greatest magnitude, which constitutes the crisis of our civilization.”He asked readers to consider contemporary students as he encountered them. They arrived ill-equipped to explore the large questions the humanities pose, and few saw the need to bother with them in any case. Instead, he said, they were cheerful, unconcerned, dutiful, and prosaic, their eyes on the prize of that cushy job. They were “nice.” You can almost see him shudder as he writes the word. “They are united only in their relativism,” he wrote. “The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate.”Relativism, in fact, was the only moral postulate that went unchallenged in academic life. Defenders of relativism often defend it by denying it exists: No one, they say, truly believes that one idea is ultimately as good as another. And of course they’re right that none of us in our own lives act as though we believed this. But most of us profess it nonetheless, especially if we’ve got a college education, in which case we will be careful to use air quotes when we are forced to say the word “truth” in polite company. In a genial but harrowing review of Closing, a professor at -Carleton College, Michael Zuckert, told of canvassing the students in his class on American political thought. He asked whether they agreed that the truths in the first lines of the Declaration of Independence were indeed “self-evident.” Seven percent voted “yes.” On further conversation, he wrote, it turned out “that they were convinced there is no such thing as ‘truth,’ self-evident or otherwise, in the sphere of claims of the sort raised in the Declaration.” He would have gotten the same response in almost any college classroom today, and I’m not too sure about the 7 percent.What follows when a belief in objectivity and truth dies away in higher education? In time an educated person comes to doubt that purpose and meaning are discoverable—he doubts, finally, that they even exist. It’s no mystery why fewer and fewer students in higher education today bother with the liberal arts, preferring professional training in their place. Deprived of their traditional purpose in the pursuit of what’s true and good, the humanities could only founder. The study of literature, for example, was consumed in the trivialities of the deconstructionists and their successors. Philosophy curdled into positivism and word play. History became an inventory of political grievances.Into the vacuum left by the humanities comes science, which by its own admission is unconcerned with the large questions of meaning and purpose. Even so, on campus and elsewhere, science is now taken as the final authority on any important human question—and not always the rigorous physical sciences, either, but the rickety, less empirical, more easily manipulated guesswork of behavioral psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, developmental studies, and so on. Nowadays, if we seek insight into the mysteries of the human heart (not high on the academic agenda in any case) we are far more likely to consult a neurobiologist or a social psychologist than Tolstoy or Aristotle. This is not progress.
“Teenagers shouldn’t read “great” literature because it’s good for them, but because it’s like them. ”
But teenagers – at least the teenagers I knew and know, and the teenager I happened to be – are not so world-weary. They’re still trying to figure out this place, this land, and to assimilate all the sensations that come with being a new sort of creature: suddenly not a child. When I started reading fiction like Kafka’s Metamorphosis (and who but a teenager is the perfect audience for Gregor’s alienation from his body and his family, waking up suddenly a bug?); or Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, with their subtle heartbreak and humour; or Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, with its haunting amorality and self-torture – I finally felt understood: These writers became my closest friends, able to articulate life and feelings in ways I was needing to, but could not.
What we tend to think of as “real” or “great” literature are just those books whose primary concern is our place in this confusing universe, and what sort of world or society this is, and existence and relationships and our deepest feelings and sex. All of this is conveyed in a style and form that is the most appropriate and best, with sentences that are simple and complex, messy and beautiful and true. Yet these books evoke suspicion – certainly in the mind of a teenager who doesn’t know any better – the same exact same way “the nice daughter of someone at work” might evoke suspicion in the mind of a boy whose mother wants to set him up.
Canonized by adults, these great writers are often assumed by teenagers to be the ur-adults: wise (as opposed to seeking); sure (as opposed to desperate and lost); transmitters of the most conservative social values (as opposed to those values’ most ardent questioners). Yet the greatest writers are more like teenagers than anyone else – they are people who are obsessed with questioning social structures, consumed with the minutiae of their own emotional, psychological andromantic lives, and the state of their soul. Teenagers shouldn’t read “great” literature because it’s good for them, but because it’s like them. So why isn’t it being marketed to them? Why doesn’t the publisher of Herman Hesse’s Siddartha, for instance, package it for teens, and advertise the book on subways? It just doesn’t make sense.
Heidegger, of all the Existentialist philosophers, stands apart in his philosophy of Being, which turns out to be the Western Mind’s analogue of the Eastern Mind’s Zen. Zen is the practice of, or experience of, or awareness of, Heidegger’s Being. Like Zen, it is difficult to think of or state what Being is. For one, Being is not itself a being, yet it is the source of all beings.
Likewise, Merton says of Zen:
“One might say that Zen is the ontological awareness of pure being beyond subject and object, an immediate grasp of being in its ‘suchness’ and ‘thusness.'”
“Zen awareness is not our awareness, but Being’s awareness of itself in us. A recognition that the whole world is aware of itself in me.”
Two anecdotes come to mind, which I will share here:
The disciple asks: What then is it [i.e., no-thought]?
The master replies: It is nothing like “what is.” Therefore, we can not explain “no-thought.” The reason why I am speaking about it now is because you have asked about it. If you hadn’t asked about it, there would be no need to explain it.
The other one, more widely known goes like this:
“Excuse me,” said an ocean fish. “You are older than I, so can you tell me where to find this thing they call the ocean?”
“The ocean,” said the elder fish, “is the thing you are in now.”
“Oh this? But this is just water. What I am seeking is the ocean,” said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.
The point of these parables is that it is the seeking itself that causes one to be lost. The lesson is to stop searching, for there is nothing to look for. All you need to do is look.
When Heidegger sets out on his ambitious task of what we might now refer to as “finding the ocean,” he both recognizes and ignores the basic Zen lesson we have just outlined.
“Being,” Heidegger says, “cannot be thought. It is pre-conceptual, non-propositional, and hence pre-scientific.” This description fits Zen perfectly.
Being, existence, he says, is not a real predicate. It cannot be added to the concept of a thing. Try it: think of a thing; now think of that thing as existing. You have added nothing. Existence is not predicable.
Likewise, Zen masters refuse to say what Zen is, because in the very moment you would be able to pin it down as such – that is the precise moment when you would lose it. Thus with Zen as well as with Heidegger’s Being, we are attempting to speak of that which cannot be spoken, to think what cannot be thought. And this is the first lesson of the Zen masters, with the practice of the koan. The koan is not a riddle, but a mystery. Riddles can be solved, but a true mystery is beyond (rational) solution.
As Parminides says, “the real is rational and the rational is real.” Which is to say that the set we refer to when we refer to the real is the set bounded by reason. Mysteries differ from riddles in that mysteries, unlike riddles, are not part of this set.
The positivists assert that the set of the real (as defined by the confines of reason) is all there is: that which language itself constructs. But the mystic’s experience is simply the direct experience of the mystery of that which is beyond reason, beyond the rational, beyond language, beyond thought. That is the meaning of Zen’s question: what face did you have before you were born? Heidegger provides the answer for the Western Mind: the face of Being.
And yet, following on the heels of Hegel and his Great Logical System of Systems, Heidegger cannot resist the urge of his Western Mind to formally systematize and logically construct a framework for thinking about that which “cannot be thought” and talking about that which “is not predicable.” In fact, Heidegger says, “our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the sense of being and to do so concretely.”
Zen takes a different approach, and remains eternally resistant to any doctrine, philosophy, or system of thought.
Merton:
What, exactly, is Zen? If we read the laconic and sometimes violent stories of the Zen Masters , we find that this is a dangerously loaded question: dangerous above all because the Zen tradition absolutely refuses to tolerate any abstract or theoretical answer to it. … Zen simply does not lend itself to logical analysis.
…
Many of the Zen stories , which are almost always incomprehensible in rational terms, are simply the ringing of an alarm clock, and the reaction of the sleeper. Usually, the misguided sleeper makes a response which in effect turns off the alarm so that he can go back to sleep. Sometimes he jumps out of bed with a shout of astonishment that it is so late. Sometimes he just sleeps and does not hear the alarm at all!
In so far as the disciple takes the alarm to be a sign of something else, he is misled by it. The Master may (by means of some other fact) try to make him aware of this. Often it is precisely at the point where the disciple realizes himself to be utterly misled that he also realized everything else along with it: chiefly, of course, that there was nothing to realize in the first place except the fact. What fact? If you know the answer you are awake. You hear the alarm! {I will add to this to think of the fish parable here.}
But we in the West, living in a tradition of stubborn egocentric practicality and geared entirely for the use and manipulation of everything, always pass from one thing to another, from cause to effect, from the first to the next, and to the last and back to the first. Everything always points to something else, and hence we never stop anywhere because we cannot. … Nothing is allowed just to be and to mean itself: everything has to mysteriously signify something else. Zen is especially designed to frustrate the mind that thinks in such terms. The Zen “fact,” whatever it may be, always lands across our road like a fallen tree beyond which we cannot pass.
Wu: The No-Thing of Zen
The strength of Zen is that above all else, it insists on the doctrine of “no-thought and no-image.” In the West, this “wu” is translated as no-thing. But this word comes with baggage and has to be re-imagined. The wu, or no-thing of Zen, simply refers or denotes or points to something beyond “an either-or logical understanding or an affirmation-negation linguistic expression.”
Upon hearing the phrase, “no-thought and no-image,” one may wonder if there could be such a thing. To properly respond to this question, Zen thinks it important to determine whether it is posed with a practical concern or a theoretical concern in mind. The difference allows a Zen master to determine the ground out of which this question is raised, for example, to determine if the inquirer is anchored in the everyday standpoint or in a meditational standpoint. In the case of the former, for instance, Zen would respond by saying that as long as the inquirer poses this question from within the everyday standpoint with a theoretical interest, relying on Aristotelian either-or logic, the inquirer cannot understand the meaning of “no-thought and no-image,” as intended by Zen. This is because to formulate the question, “Is there or is there not no-thought and no-image?” linguistically drives the inquiry into a contradiction, for one cannot predicate “is” on “no-thought.”
This is exactly what Heidegger is saying about Being: that it is “not predicable,” and “cannot be thought.”
Thus, Zen teaches that the True Self is no-thing; I am nothing. Which means that my True Self rests in a transcendence of being and non-being. This is exactly what Heidegger had in mind.
All of this is perfectly in line with Christian concepts…
(more coming…)
Worldview Naturalism in a Nutshell
If you don’t believe in anything supernatural – gods, ghosts, immaterial souls and spirits – then you subscribe to naturalism, the idea that nature is all there is. The reason you’re a naturalist is likely that, wanting not to be deceived, you put stock in empirical, evidence-based ways of justifying beliefs about what’s real, as for instance exemplified by science.
This “empirical, evidence-based way” works well in “justifying beliefs about what’s real” as long as the object of investigation is material and measurable. But what if I were to ask, is this love real? In terms of “science,” does this question even have meaning? In other words, is it measurable? This is an important question because implicit in the ideology of Naturalism is the idea that if it is not measurable, it is not “real.”
You probably (and rightly) hold that such beliefs are usually more reliable and more objective than those based in uncorroborated intuition, revelation, religious authority or sacred texts. Kept honest by philosophy and critical thinking, science reveals a single manifold of existence, what we call nature, containing an untold myriad of interconnected phenomena, from quarks to quasars. Nature is simply what we have good reason to believe exists.
So, do I have “good reason” to believe that I am loved? That I am in love? That I should marry?
We can see, therefore, that naturalism as a metaphysical thesis is driven by a desire for a clear, reliable account of reality and how it works, a desire that generates an unflinching commitment to objectivity and explanatory transparency.
How does this “unflinching commitment to objectivity” help me decide the case of my love? Where, exactly, do I find the “explanatory transparency” that explains the meaning of my life?
Supernaturalism, on the other hand, thrives on non-scientific, non-empirical justifications for beliefs that allow us to project our hopes and fears onto the world, the opposite of objectivity. As naturalists, we might not always like what science reveals about ourselves or our situation, but that’s the psychological price of being what we might call cognitively responsible, of assuming our maturity as a species capable of representing reality.
What exactly does this “objectivity” reveal about Nietzsche’s claims about morality? As a Naturalist, Nietzsche claimed that those who could kill and murder their opponents should do so, as the law of nature and the survival of the fittest would prevail. What does Naturalism have to say, objectively, about this claim?
To be a thorough-going naturalist is to accept yourself as an entirely natural phenomenon. Just as science shows no evidence for a supernatural god “up there”, there’s no evidence for an immaterial soul or mental agent “in here”, supervising the body and brain.
Science – or the investigation of the natural – by definition cannot comment on the supernatural since the supernatural cannot be measured by natural (scientific) means. Therefore the lack of “scientific” evidence for the supernatural is not evidence of the lack of the supernatural.
So naturalism involves a good deal more than atheism or skepticism – it’s the recognition that we are full-fledged participants in the natural order and as such we play by nature’s rules.
Ah, so as Nietzsche said, to “be a thorough-going naturalist” and to “play by nature’s rules” one must follow the lead of the savages and the law of the jungle where “might makes right.” In other words, the naturalist must succumb to the objective fact that there is no “right” or “wrong” but only “winners” and “losers.”
We aren’t exempt from the various law-like regularities science discovers at the physical, chemical, biological, psychological and behavioral levels. The naturalistic understanding and acceptance of our fully caused, interdependent nature is directly at odds with the widespread belief (even among many freethinkers) that human beings have supernatural, contra-causal free will, and so are in but not fully of this world.
So not only are we to understand that there is no morality, no wrong and no right, but also no free will. All of our thoughts and actions are as predetermined as a game of bingo.
The naturalist understands not only that we are not exceptions to natural laws, but that we don’t need to be in order to secure any central value (freedom, human rights, morality, moral responsibility) or capacity (reason, empathy, ingenuity, originality).
Wait a minute. Where did these central values come from? Where is the “explanatory transparency” that accounts for freedom, human rights, morality, and moral responsibility? Where is the “empirical, evidence-based ways of justifying” the belief in these values? Where is the objective refutation of Nietzsche’s claims which cite naturalism as the source from which the absolute refutation of these values is based?
We can positively affirm and celebrate the fact that nature is enough. Indeed, the realization that we are fully natural creatures has profoundly positive effects, increasing our sense of connection to the world and others, fostering tolerance, compassion and humility, and giving us greater control over our circumstances.
Interesting that the science of eugenics and nazism, which was born of naturalist philosophy should be called tolerant, compassionate and comprising humility! Control and power, however, does seem to be a virtue of natural science. Nothing displays this “objective, empirical” truth than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Talk about greater control over nature!
This realization supports a progressive and effective engagement with the human condition in all its dimensions. So we can justly call it worldview naturalism: an overarching cognitive, ethical and existential framework that serves the same function as supernatural worldviews, but without trafficking in illusions. By staying true to science, our most reliable means of representing reality, naturalists find themselves at home in the cosmos, astonished at the sheer scope and complexity of the natural world, and grateful for the chance to participate in the grand project of nature coming to know herself.
Saying that it is so is hardly the same as presenting an “empirical, evidence-based ways of justifying” this proclamation. Where, sir, is your objective evidence and empirical data regarding my love? Where is your evidence-based denial of Nietzsche’s nihilism? My proclamation is that you have none.
Another thought came to me today, a refrain on the metaphor of love that keeps running through my mind, which is that when you are in love, you seek to understand that love and you use reason in your search to understand, but if you are not in love, no amount of reason will produce the love you do not have.
Is this a good metaphor for faith?
For many people, this seems to be why religion rings hollow. They are being given answers to questions they have not asked. It is as if all the reasons are given to understand an experience which has not occurred. And mistaking these reasons for the experience itself, they drift away because the true desire of their hearts have not been met, simply because they never properly identified it.
Religion is the product of a love affair, it is not the love itself, rather, it is what has grown out of the love. Like a couple in love who walks hand in hand on the beach as the sun sets, we see this and so we set out to walk the beach ourselves, not understanding the original reason from which that walk was made special. It is not the beach, nor the setting sun, but the love that made the walk holy. So many are walking the beach, thinking that to walk is to love. No wonder so many give up!
Trying to understand God while not in faith is like walking the beach while not in love. You can only come to the conclusion that the beach is nothing special, no better than a walk in the woods and so there is no “reason” not to leave the beach and go looking for other walks, all the while thinking that it is the walk which is the content of judgment in question instead of the love. No amount of walking will bring the love and so in the end all walks seems to be the same.
Feynman talks about a village visited by modern technology for the first time. After the interlopers leave the indigenous people to themselves once again, they go to great lengths building air strips, mistakenly thinking that this is what causes the planes to come. After all, they are just repeating what they saw with their own eyes. They even build elaborate airplanes, and towers, all made of wood, expecting it to bring forth what came before. They mistake the results for the cause. This seems so silly but how many of us do the very same thing with religion, faith, and reason? We think that we can produce faith by reasoning and that we can be religious with no love in our hearts, or that by being religious we are in fact in love. But this love would then be like the broken technology above, just wooden simulacrum.
I just posted this on a forum where they were talking about the sustained attention that is required of reading books and whether we are losing that ability, or whether it was always small minority who ever had it. Some comments included the value of reading fiction vs non-fiction and one commentator mentioned reading “The Idiot” on the subway and studying Dostoevsky in school.
I just finished “The Idiot.” I thought it was amazing. I am also reading two of Orlando Fige’s histories of Russia, “A People’s Tragedy” and “Natasha’s Dance.” They are excellent. With new insight into the Russian people and their history, I am planning on re-reading “The Brothers Karamazov” and I am already halfway through “Anna Karenina” right now. I have never understood people who read only fiction, or only non-fiction. Culture is history too. And certain books and authors transcend a particular culture and become a part of history. More people attended Tolstoy’s funeral than the Tsar’s. Who thinks that they can really understand (or appreciate?) that historical fact without reading Tolstoy? Some artists do a better job of understanding their time than the historians do. Incorporating both into your study provides a fuller understanding. “War and Peace” is on my shelf, but I would not approach a full appreciation of that book until I study the history of the Napoleonic wars, so I plan to study the history first and then study the art and culture that came out of that history so to understand myself, as a human being, better. Fiction and non-fiction -again, I don’t understand how you can separate these, or understand one without the other. And for those who don’t care about fiction because it is not true, I would argue that the truth that is captured so well in “The Death of Ivan Ilych” – a profound, universal truth about life and death – is a far more important kind of truth than the names and dates of history found in non-fiction. Non-fiction is a form that cannot touch the true desires and passions of the human heart the way “fiction” can when it is done at its best. Shouldn’t love of history include love of the human spirit which breathes life into that history? Fiction at its best captures that human spirit in action. The world and all its history – including cultural, technological, civil and military – is breathtaking in scope, depth, nuance, and pathos. These are just a few things that reading has to offer. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. If we don’t take the time to reflect on life – on its history (expressed in non-fiction) and on its meaning (expressed in art and religion) – then we risk leading lives that more resemble the lower animals than that of the fullness of the human being. Reading, whether fiction or non-fiction, offers edification. Those who choose to cut themselves off from this due to some prejudice against a category of book are the silliest of fools.
Cameras in cellphones do not have a mechanical ‘shutter’ as in conventional cameras, but scan an image line-by-line as is typical in video cameras. When shooting a moving or rotating object, the shutter scan interferes with the subject’s motion and results in some odd images — very much like the “backwards wagon wheels” you see in old movies and TV westerns.
Check out this rubber propeller, caused by the action of the shutter against the motion of the airplane engine
What we have in this thought-experiment is a place to start thinking about our instinctive moral responses (what philosophers call our ‘moral intuitions’) and the way that these intuitions may or may not cohere together or be capable of any kind of rational justification.
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue86/How_To_Get_Off_Our_Trolleys
This passage from “Jesus of Nazareth” has stayed with me, but the basic content of is something I have come across in Pope Benedict’s writings before, however. In Pope Benedict’s encyclical on hope, he says:
“Christianity did not bring a message of social revolution like that of the ill-fated Spartacus, whose struggle led to so much bloodshed. Jesus was not Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like Barabbas or Bar- Kochba. Jesus, who himself died on the Cross, brought something totally different: an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within.”
In his book, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Pope Benedict describes Barabbas as a rival messianic figure, a well-known freedom fighter. Barabbas, whose name translates, literally, as “Son of the Father” is presented as alter ego of Jesus, Son of the Father,
“who makes the same claim but understands it in a completely different way. So the choice is between a messiah who leads an armed struggle, promises freedom and a kingdom of one’s own, and this mysterious Jesus who proclaims that losing oneself is the way to life. Is it any wonder that the crowds prefer Barabbas?”
“If we had to choose today, would Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, the Son of the Father, have a chance? Do we really know Jesus at all? Do we understand him? Do we not perhaps have to make an effort today as always to get to know him all over again? The tempter is not so crude as to suggest to us directly that we should worship the devil. He merely suggests that we opt for the reasonable decision, that we choose to give priority to a planned and thoroughly organized world, where God may have his place as a private concern but must not interfere in our essential purposes.”
He cites an author for further reading, and apparently in this work the author
“attributes to the Anti-Christ a book entitled, ‘The Open Way to World Peace and Welfare.’ This book becomes something of a new Bible, whose real message is the worship of well-being and rational planning.
“Jesus’ third temptation proves then to be the fundamental one, because it concerns the question as to what sort of action is expected of a savior of the world. It pervades the entire life of Jesus. It manifests itself openly again at a decisive turning point along his path. Peter, speaking in the name of the disciples has confessed that Jesus is the Messiah Christ, the son of the living God. […] At this crucial moment […] the tempter appears, threatening to turn everything into its opposite. The Lord immediately declares that the concept of the Messiah has to be understood in terms of the entirety of the message of the prophets. It means not worldly power, but the cross, and the radically different community that comes into being through the cross.
“But that is not what Peter has understood. Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying “God forbid Lord, this shall never happen to you. (Mat. 16:22)
“Only when we read these words against the backdrop of the temptation scene, as its recurrence at the decisive moment, do we understand Jesus’ unbelievably harsh answer: ‘Get behind me Satan. You are a hindrance to me for you are not on the side of God, but of men.’ (Mat 16:23)
“But don’t we all repeatedly tell Jesus that his message leads to conflict with the prevailing opinions, so that there is always a looming threat of failure, suffering, and persecution? The Christian Empire, or the secular power of the Papacy, is no longer a temptation today, but the interpretation of Christianity as a recipe for progress and the proclamation of universal prosperity as the real goal of all religions, including Christianity – this is the modern form of the same temptation. It appears in the guise of a question: ‘What did Jesus bring then, if he didn’t usher in a better world? How can that not be the content of messianic hope?'”
Pope Benedict goes on to discuss the Old Testament hope and
“expectation of a worldly paradise in which the wolf lies down with the lamb (Is 11:6), the peoples of the world make their way to Mt Zion, and the prophecy, ‘They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,’ comes true (Is 2:4, Mic 4:1-3).
“Along side this expectation, however, is the prospect of the suffering servant of God, of a messiah who brings salvation through contempt and suffering. Throughout his public ministry, and again in his discourses after Easter, Jesus had to show his disciples that Moses and the prophets were speaking of Him, the seemingly powerless one, who suffered, was crucified, and rose again. He had to show that in this way, and no other, the promises were fulfilled.”
“[…] we too are constantly presuming that in order to make good, He must have ushered in the golden age. Jesus, however, repeats to us what he said in reply to Satan, what he said to Peter, and what he explained further to the disciples of Emmaus: No kingdom of this world is the kindgdom of God, the total condition of mankind’s salvation. Earthly kingdoms remain earthly, human kingdoms, and anyone who claims to be able to establish the perfect world is the willing dupe of Satan and plays the world right into his hands.
“Now, it is true that this leads to the great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: ‘What did Jesus actually bring if not world peace, universal prosperity and a better world? What has he brought?’ The answer, is very simple. God. He has brought God. He has brought the God who formally unveiled his countenance gradually, first to Abraham, then to Moses, and the prophets and then in the Wisdom literature; the God who revealed his face only in Isreal, even though he was also honored among the pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, the true God who He has brought to the nations of the earth. He has brought God and now we know His face, now we can call on Him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God, the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope, and love.
“It is only because of our hardness of heart that we think this is too little. Yes, indeed, God’s power works quietly in this world, but it is the true and lasting power. Again and again God’s power seems to be in its death throws, yet over and over again it proves to be the thing that truly endures, and saves. The earthly kingdoms that Satan was able to put before the Lord at that time have all passed away; their glory, their doxa, has proven to be a mere semblance, but the glory of Christ, the humble, self-sacrificing glory of His love, has not passed away, nor will it ever do so.
“Jesus has emerged victorious from his battle with Satan. To the tempter’s lying divinization of power and prosperity, to his lying promise of a future that offers all things to all men through power and through wealth, he responds with the fact that God is God, that God is man’s true good. To the invitation to worship power, the Lord answers with a passage from Deut., the same book that the devil himself had cited: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve’ (Mat 4:10, Deut 6:13).”
Less mind, more judgment. With regard to the intellectual faculties, the postulant need not have talents so brilliant as to make him a great mind; but he should have a sound, practical judgment, that is, common sense. “Moins d’esprit, plus de jugement – Less mind, more judgment,” as the French say.
Neither great talents for some certain branches of science, nor piety and the spirit of devotion can make up for deficiency of judgment or common sense. Subjects of medium talents, yet gifted with a sound, practical judgment are generally the best suited for Religious Communities, because they are humble and docile.
“Men of superior talents,” says St Vincent de Paul, “not possessing at the same time an unusual disposition to advance in virtue, are not good for us; for no solid virtue can take root in self-conceited, and self-willed souls.”
In reference to the intellectual faculties of the postulant, St Francis de Sales expresses himself thus: “If I say that, in order to become a religious, one should have a good mind, I do not mean those great geniuses, who are generally vain and self-conceited, and in the world are but receptacles of vanity. Such men do not embrace the religious life to humble themselves, but to govern others, and direct everything according to their own views and inclinations, as if the object of their entrance into religion was to be lecturers in philosophy and theology.”
“These great minds,” says St Jane Frances de Chantal in one of her letters, “when they are not given to devotion, submission and mortification, serve to ruin a whole religious community, nay even a whole religious Order.” “We must pay special attention to these,” says St Francis de Sales, “I do not say they should not be received, but I do say, that we should be very cautious about them; for in time and by God’s grace, they may greatly change; and this will undoubtedly come to pass, if they are faithful in making use of those means which are given them for their cure.
http://www.papastronsay.com/fssr/Vocation/marks_of_vocation.html