I don't know what I want: on the ambiguity of desire

"How can we know what the desire is for? The language of "expression" is treacherous. It lets us suppose that our desires are perspicuous, when they are not. Sexual desire in particular is notoriously difficult to interpret; the biblical story of Ammon and Tamar is just one of many ancient warnings of how obscure its tendency may be. It is characteristically surrounded by fantasy, and fantasies are never literal indicators of what the desire is really all about, but are symbolic revealer-concealers of an otherwise inarticulate sense of need. But the point holds also for many other kinds of desire - let us say, the desire for a quiet retirement to a cottage in the countryside, or the desire to own a fast racing-car. We cannot take any of them at their face value. "It wasn't what I really wanted!" is the familiar complaint of a disappointed literalism. To all desire its appropriate self-questioning: what wider, broader good does this desire serve? how does it spring out of our strengths, and how does it spring out of our weaknesses? where in relation to this desire does real fulfilment lie? It is in interpreting our desires that we need the wisdom of tradition, which teaches us to beware of the illusory character of immediate emotional data, helping us to sort through our desires and clarify them. The true term of any desire, whether heavily laden or merely banal, is teasingly different from the mental imagination that first aroused it."

- Oliver O'Donovan, Good News for Gay Christians:
Sermons on the Subjects of the Day (7), §11.

The opacity of experience embraces the ambiguity of desire. We can never simply express our desires, since our desires are themselves both questionable and frequently corrupted - or rather, universally corrupted, but in variegated ways that render them not just morally but hermeneutically problematic. In other words, we don't always know what our desires mean and need to reflect upon them together in light of scripture and tradition. They are not to be taken at face value, far less defended against all external evaluation as a matter of principle.

This perspective runs counter to the popular notion that questioning someone's deeply felt desire is itself immoral. Contemporary liberalism is based on the assumption that personal desires are sacrosanct and beyond interrogation. That way lies not only political but also psychological incoherence, since I can never ask the question, "what is that I truly want?" and so am barred from ever asking, "what is it that we truly want?".
I was recently reminded of these lectures by O'Donovan and found that re-reading the final one in particular was a very fruitful exercise. If only more Christian discussions of homosexuality were as patient and gracious.

Willful ignorance

I also wrote a brief piece on the preference for the political newcomer back here.
H/T Michael.

Hope in what is unseen

"The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

"Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but, rather, an ability to work for something that is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from 'elsewhere'. It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless as ours do, here and now."

- Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace: A conversation with Karel Hvížďala,
(Knopf, 1990), 181.

H/T Entersection.

"Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?"

- Romans 8.24b.

We act (and wait) because of hope. The wellspring of genuine Christian action (and patience, even in adversity) is found not in the conditions which confront us. We do not act because we might be successful. The shape of Christian action may be tempered by compromise, the recognition of the good that is actually possible, but the motive for action is never the success of the enterprise. It can only be faithfulness to the God who has promised, love for the groaning world and the hope that what is not yet seen may yet appear.

The root of freedom: experience and repentance in politics

...the freedom at the root of all freedoms [is] the freedom to repent."

- Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations (CUP, 1996), 14.

A new article in Southern Cross by Jeremy Halcrow reflects upon the US Presidential Election and the apparent preference of voters for political newcomers (Obama, Palin, also Premier Rees in NSW politics), who arrive untainted by any experience in power. Experience is here seen as a negative, rather than as the possibility of having learned from previous mistakes.

Does this preference for the newcomer amount to an expression of mistrust in politicians' ability to learn? Or simply in their willingness to repent? The media and political opposition usually paint any repentance in negative terms as a 'flip-flop' (or in Oz, as a 'backflip'). Our leaders, like the rest of us, must be allowed to change their mind when they become convinced through good reasons (not simply through populist pressure) that the common good lies elsewhere. Consistency in unpopular policies can be a virtue when there is no good reason to change (just a popular mood). Conversely, fear of being branded "indecisive" ought not prevent policy change in light of superior evidence or arguments.

I have reflected previously on the "politics of change", in which the present must be painted in terms of crisis in order to justify (any) change. It is this devaluing of the concept of crisis (crying "wolf!") for political gain that leaves us more exposed to the arrival of a real lupous predator.

Individualism and Christianity

"When they [pagan philosophers] wish to say that the wise man’s life is a social one, we agree, and we say it much more clearly than they do."

- Augustine, City of God 19.5.

A Christianity that simply mirrors the individualist assumptions of contemporary western culture - my salvation, my faith, my "values" - poses little threat to the powers that be.* The idols of self, family, security, success and money can all be comfortably worshipped alongside (or as) Christ. Membership in a Christian community is seen as an optional extra, a useful tool for my spiritual growth, a place to express my spirituality, a shop at which I "purchase" those items of tradition that suit my taste and opt out of those that are too difficult, or which I don't understand. Once I am made too uncomfortable, I move on to find a more suitable mix at another church down the road (or just at home). Beliefs are transformed into values, and what is important is that they are mine, not whether they are true. My own experience is sacrosanct and perfectly transparent to my understanding (or so fascinatingly opaque as to justify endless introspection). I find myself without reference to others (if this doesn't sound like a recipe for being lost, I don't know what does) and only then need to interact with those with whom I choose. I live on a gated island of my own making, to which others visit only with permission.

Does any of this sound familiar?
*See this post by Dan for further analysis of the alliance between individualism and the dehumanizing powers at work in modern society. He argues that individualism is not directly a worshipping of the self, but a hidden worship of other gods.

Can we trust experience?

Experience is itself a kind of text, and texts need interpreters. How often have we thought that we understood our experiences, only to realize later that we had only the barest understanding of our own motives and impulses? We all know how flexible memory can be, how easy it is to give an overly gentle account of our own motivations, how hard it is to step outside our lifelong cultural training and see with the eyes of another time or place. ... To take personal experience as our best and sturdiest guide seems like a good way to replicate all of our personal preferences and cultural blind spots. Scripture is weird and tangly and anything but obvious-but at least it wasn’t written by someone who shared all our desires, preferences, and cultural background. At least it wasn’t written by us. And so it’s necessary to turn at least as much skepticism on “the voice of experience” as [critical scholars] turn on the voice of Scripture. It’s necessary to look at least as hard for alternative understandings of our experience as for alternative understandings of Scripture.

- Eve Tushnet, "Experience and Tradition" in Commonweal: a review of religion, politics and culture CXXXIV:12 (2007).

Many people appeal to 'experience' as the highest court of appeal, especially in spiritual matters. It was reading Sartre that I first realised the opacity and ambiguity of my own experience - in short that everything, experience included, needs to be interpreted. This insight (itself an interpretation of tradition and experience) is not a threat to intelligibility or a retreat into anything-goes relativism. It is a threat to the assumption that in order to know something, we must know it with certainty.

The question then becomes not so much "can we trust our experience?" as "how are we to understand it?"
Five points for the artist. Eight for the title. Ten for the location. No individual to guess more than one.

"There is nothing new under the sun"

What does it mean?
Well, it's been over a year since I started this blog, and I've just realised that I had never attempted to explain my title. I seem to get a number of people ending up here after googling "What does 'there is nothing new under the sun' mean?" and similar questions, so I thought I'd offer my take on the phrase.

It originated in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes:

What has been will be again,
     what has been done will be done again;
     there is nothing new under the sun.

Indeed, this verse appears as part of the famous opening passage of that book:

The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
     vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
     at which they toil under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
     but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun goes down,
     and hurries to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south,
     and goes around to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
     and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
     but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
     there they continue to flow.
All things are wearisome;
     more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
     or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
     and what has been done is what will be done;
     there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
     “See, this is new”?
It has already been,
     in the ages before us.
The people of long ago are not remembered,
     nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come
     by those who come after them.

Ecclesiastes is famous for its pessimism, its repeated claim that everything is hebel: mist, vapour, empty, transitory and unsatisfying - vanity. Life under the sun is filled with injustice, repeated disappointment, the same old same old. And this is just as true for someone who believes in God as it is for everyone else. Religion brings no guaranteed safety against absurdity and futility. There is nothing new under the sun.

Discovering this perspective in the Bible is usually a surprise when people first stumble upon it. It's not what we expect to hear. Doesn't God provide meaning and purpose, safety and joy? Why do anything at all if Ecclesiastes is correct? Why was this downer of a book left in? The fact that it was, and that it continues to provide an authorised testimony to what life is like, ought to make us pause in our construction of neat theological systems (or caricatures, if that's more your taste).

Yet Ecclesiastes is also a surprise because it is so refreshingly honest, so frequently accurate to our experience of life. Things do fall apart, whether objects, buildings, bodies, relationships or communities. We do repeat yesterday's mistakes. The sun keeps rising on the same old injustices. Sure, we might now have microchip technology and be able to hit a golf ball on the moon, but we still get bored at work, and whether you're wise or a fool, your heartbeats are still numbered. There is nothing new under the sun.

Yet despite his pessimism (or refreshing realism, depending on your taste), the teacher doesn't offer a council of despair. He doesn't throw up in his hands in nihilistic quietim - "why bother?". He still realises that the best thing to do is to continue to throw yourself into those very things that are hebel, ephemeral and frustrating: work and relationships, celebration and mourning.

I love the book of Ecclesiastes. There is nothing new under the sun.

Yet there is more to come.
Second photo by CAC.

Experience and tradition

Experience is itself a kind of text, and texts need interpreters. How often have we thought that we understood our experiences, only to realize later that we had only the barest understanding of our own motives and impulses? We all know how flexible memory can be, how easy it is to give an overly gentle account of our own motivations, how hard it is to step outside our lifelong cultural training and see with the eyes of another time or place. ... To take personal experience as our best and sturdiest guide seems like a good way to replicate all of our personal preferences and cultural blind spots. Scripture is weird and tangly and anything but obvious-but at least it wasn’t written by someone who shared all our desires, preferences, and cultural background. At least it wasn’t written by us. And so it’s necessary to turn at least as much skepticism on “the voice of experience” as [we turn] on the voice of Scripture. It’s necessary to look at least as hard for alternative understandings of our experience as for alternative understandings of Scripture.

- Eve Tushnet, Experience and Tradition.

This was an interesting article in a online journal also containing a scathing review of Hitchens' God is not great. H/T Matheson.