Difficult People

What is so utterly frustrating about them is that you never can tell how much you are in the right and they are in the wrong. I would never think about this sort of thing for someone who is being reasonable. With reasonable men and women, I must guard my dignity with restraint. I would easily discover myself if I entertained unabashed feelings of superiority towards reasonable people. But towards difficult, unreflective, there's-always-a-problem sorts of people, I feel justified to do so...and because I do, immediately cannot dismiss the nagging question...

Am I so blind myself, that I cannot see my own vice? Is it pride? Impatience? Lack of love? Combativeness? Terseness? Etc.?

How is it that just when I am feeling comfortable that I am on strong grounds to criticize, I am yanked back, as if by a collar around my neck? Why must the ethic of interpersonal relations devolve into an endless cascade of parenetic "What are you going to do about it?'s" When do I get the satisfaction of vindication without the obligation to change myself? Whence the difference between agape and masochism?

"Here in a Manger": History Remixed (Pt.1)

I know I ought to write more often. If it were not for a lack of inspiration, I would. As I have realized that it takes a lot of energy to write a fictional narrative that actually conveys a point, I succumb to writing more reflectively, unless I'm actually inspired to do otherwise. And I feel much better that way, as I probably will convey my thoughts more clearly. I never said I was very good at writing narrative...anyway!

Subject....subject....ah! I realize now, on this Christmas-past, how difficult it is to appreciate the spatial and temporal reality of the coming of Jesus Christ. I'm not speaking just to the fact that I have never been to Bethlehem, Israel, nor that I've not lived in 4 B.C. I'm talking about how easily story can cease to correspond to reality in my...and I'm assuming, others' consciences.

There is something about the retelling of this story for me that causes it to take on a mythic quality. I would not say, “fiction”. It is certainly not fiction…and yet the story is so familiar. I could hear the story a dozen times, and it might never occur to me that the legend of Baby Jesus was once flesh on wood and straw.

All history vaporizes with distance. Attempting to grasp at this history only wisps and whirls the smoke and dissolves it into the transparent air. Oh, that I could live that history forever in a single moment…or live it at all. Might it then smash me like a sledge hammer if ever I dare fail to witness? Might I choke upon that song, “Away in a manger…” “Away, Away, Away?! Nay, Here in the manger. Here!” But why bemoan the point? History is contingent. It suffers the observer and I am sadly not he. What good can Christmas be to me except an inspiration toward my own future? But I ought to hold the question…

Perhaps a certain political question might make a good analogy. That Great Emancipator, the Moses of our own history, Abraham Lincoln set off the liberation of the African slave. What a context?! It would be more than a hundred years before the black man would gain his freedom and the black woman her rights. Now we know. Racism, prejudice, and segregation are forever the scars of our context and will sting our consciences if ever we turn our backs to it. Yet who am I? I’m a white man. It was not my liberation. I’m a GenXer. It was not my crime. What can I do but be disgusted at this history and hang my sorry head in shame? What atonement could I possibly offer to this history? None. I haven’t enough sense to know the ugliness of racism. I hate racism because history said so, not because I’ve tasted its bitterness. Is that all that history is...a bunch of lessons that shape my worldview? Ought I to appreciate this history for its happening, and not just for its historiography--the interpretation of the significance of this history?

Me apologizing for U.S. enslavement of Africans is like bin Laden congratulating Bush on winning the War on Terror…it justifies nothing and the well-wishes are quite impotent to account for the damage already done. Such is the insignificance of my time and place in history.

And so it is…”Away in a manger”—a long, long, long way. No crib, even if I had wanted to give him one. Has all of the significance of that day dwindled to “Peace on Earth, good will toward men”? If history were only a guidepost, then maybe. If history merely defined me, then it might be that. If I adopted history, put it on or drug it around like an heirloom, then “Away in a manger” might be a simple lesson, a context, a knick-knack to hang my assumptions on.

But if I were a witness to this history, all of that vanishes. “Away” becomes “Here” and “a manger” becomes “the Manger”. Then history would transcend legend and well traveled story would be throbbing, fibrillating, pulsing reality! “Ah-hah”, I say with a nodding head and a resigning sigh fused with new conviction, “So that is what Faith is up to.”

To be continued…

Contradicting the Law of Non-contradiction

Subjective realities are not all the same. If they were all the same, then we would agree on subjective reality. As it is, we do not disagree with other people’s subjective reality, because every body knows that there is more than one. Likewise, everybody knows that there is only one objective reality. There obviously can’t be two objective realities. If there were, then reality would be internally contradictory.

Now there is a well known set of laws about the difference between objective and subjective reality. They are the laws of non-contradiction.

Here are the laws:

Law #1: One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time. Postmodernist: Says who?! Shamby: So says Aristotle, that’s who!

Law #2: If someone is said rightly to be in violation of the first law, he or she shall cease to violate it (i.e. disappear). Gullible person: Really? Shamby: Not really, I made it up.

Law #3: If someone violates the first law and the second law, that person cannot be certain of what he or she is talking about. If one does become certain, one reverts to the second law. Gullible person: You’re not going to get me this time! Shamby: No, this one is actually true. Gullible person: Oh, really? Shamby: *shaking head*

I shall demonstrate these laws, and where I cannot, I will argue by convincing anecdotes. After all, everybody verifies truth through convincing anecdotes. Sarcasm: Hey, if it happened once, it obviously means its true for everything. Wow, what a discovery…Now I can write self-help books!

Anyway, oh, yeah, the first law. Take this pencil for instance. The Gullible person: “This pencil is yellow.” As you can see, there is nothing contradictory about this statement. Now, by contrast, see what happens when the gullible person tries to say the pencil is red; Go ahead, gullible person. “This pencil in the same respect and at the same time is rrrrrrrrr….rrrrrhee,he,he…*clear throat*…REEEEEEEEEE.” You see? Irrefutable proof.

Aristotle realized that this law worked with simple folk, partially because he had them reading off papyrus. Rather than concluding that they were illiterate, he devised the first law. It was only after Gutenberg’s printing press and the explosion of literacy that philosophers confirmed Aristotle’s premise. With the 20^th century and the advent of Quantum Philosophy, postmodernists have discovered that Aristotle’s law only works on humans with medium-sized brains at medium-sized thinking capacities, such as my gullible friend. Gullible person: “What about really smart people and really stupid people?”

Thank you for asking. But, , let’s not say “stupid”, let’s say smart in a different way. That way we don’t offend people when we tell them they are wrong.

Apparently most of us live in one of these two categories. Either we are really smart, and conclude that there is a somewhat mysterious, albeit transcendent objective reality, or we are really “smart in a different way”, and conclude that like “God” we can speak truth into being through a fancy little loophole called subjective reality. The “visual age” having scorned words and critical thinking has crept steadily closer towards the latter.

In either case, violation is possible and 2 extra laws are necessary to account for it. The laws spawn from Shamby's Uncertainty Principle which says that at any given moment one can neither know the whole truth nor the whole fallacy. This is because no human is omniscient. Our lack of omniscience, for the time being, allows us to escape the first law. We do it all the time, actually. Humans are walking contradictions. Subjectively, how else can a postmodernist assert absolutely that there is no absolute or a government bent on tolerance be intolerant towards intolerance? Likewise objectively, how else can Jesus be both God and Human or the Trinity be both Three and One?

In the future, I shall proceed to ridicule the law of non-contradiction. Stay tuned for more rapturous fantasy.

The Galley Slaves' "Truth"

What boggles my mind is how a culture of the higher minded ideals, such as the West, with Enlightenment principles of reason, Modern principles of experience, and post-Modern principles of “to hell with it all” cynicism can be so ridiculously obtuse in its pursuit of Truth. By cultural observation, I seek to elucidate the hilarious drama which goes on under our noses without the slightest laugh or snicker. I realize I am being a bit obstinate by using the phrase “pursuit of truth” but I would like to point out that no one denies the inherent goodness of Truth. That is why the word is so convenient a title to slap onto everything under the sun. A word with such rapport with the world was bound to be the source of all manner of vices and virtues. A word that has meant everything can in the end, only mean nothing. Of course, that is why we post-moderns think we have finally landed on the Truth…quite literally. Ah yes, here is our first punchline.

The pursuit of truth is like rowing a galley, like in that Ben Hur movie with Charleton Heston. 500 years, the West has toiled as a galley slave pursuing truth. One fine day, the post-modern said “Ah hah! I’ve got it, instead of pursuing truth, let’s make fun of everybody else who’s rowing.” It started out with one or two people saying “Ewww, this galley slave is all sweaty, pursuing truth.” When that bald guy dies in the movie, they yelled “Oh dip, this guy just committed suicide trying to find truth.” But pretty soon, a couple more galley slaves got the idea. Before long, even the drum-beating-guy was busting out in some reggae, and the galley was dead in the water. Everyone was laughing at the dead guy and all the other rowing galley slaves, except no one was really rowing anymore. In fact, everybody was laughing at no body and no body was laughing at himself. (Sorry Herselves, in this blog, gender inclusive language depends on the temperament of me, the author…and right now I feel like being concise, so that I can add off-handed comments like this one).

With a sudden lurch forward, the trireme ran into the Sandbar of Subjective Reality. While the galley slaves were breaking piñata’s and blowing their kazoos, the view from the upper deck took on a more grim perspective...just before this exchange:

“Hey guys, this isn’t funny, we just let Truth get away.”

“Yeah, it looks pretty bad” another one chimed in, “we don’t have enough morality to last us a week!”

“Hey, that’s right,” another one said.

“What do we tell the others? They won’t appreciate being told that they struck the Sandbar of Subjective Reality!”

The admiral thought for a moment as he surveyed the vast expanse of the ocean, his very presence exuding years of human history and secular wisdom. Directly, his grim countenance improved into the sincerest form of cheerful stupidity. With a chuckle, he slapped his knee as if it were obvious, “I know, we’ll just tell them the truth.”