dialogue

I have been thinking lately about the nature of dialogue. I have in mind principally religious dialogue, but this extends to any and all groups or individuals who undertake to express themselves and to understand others. The only bottom line is that participants show respect for the other. As you can see, I have a very wide definition of 'dialogue'. 'Dialogue' for me includes talking with, being with, working for, listening to, and a number of other verbs followed by a preposition that reaches out to another individual. The key element is the reaching out to another to bring that 'other' into some type of relationship with yourself. This is what I take to be the essence of dialogue. From what follows below, it is clear that I want to combat a narrow sense of dialogue that sees it only consisting in 'negotiating' differences in propositional belief in order to try to eliminate those differences and find the 'truth'. This is very far from what I consider to be the purpose or spirit of dialogue. True, 'unity' is the key to my definition of dialogue, but it is not one that consists of doctrinal unity, but rather a unity of spirit and love that is strongest when it emerges out of diversity. I feel strongly about this because dialogue simply signifies the desire to have a relationship with someone or something. And, at least, on an ideal or institutional level, we should be constantly seeking relationships with others. The significance of the act of speaking, listening. or the act of being together, to me, lies more in the act itself than in anything exchanged or said.

I am a bit pre-occupied with this topic at the moment because I recently read some statements by an evangelical who decried the attempt at dialogue by a Utah pastor at a recent event at which Mormons and Evangelicals spoke about Christianity together. This particular evangelical felt that, above all, interaction with 'cults' like Mormons had to be centered on proclaiming their error and pointing out the difference between the 'truth' and Mormonism. He writes:

"I [intend] to address the way we approach others of different faiths with the gospel. What happened at this event is not about becoming friends and learning about other faiths or even understanding their worldviews; God is concerned that we could and ultimately will be influenced by another's religious beliefs if we get too close, even becoming completely deceived to the point of compromising the gospel of Christ."

We'll come back to this in a second.

So as not to appear unbalanced, I will relate a similar attitude displayed recently by a mormon towards another group. I recently attended an Anglican service with a few mormon friends. During the pastor's short sermon, one of my friends got my attention, gestured at the text of the sermon, and mouthed the word 'blasphemy!' very intensely. When I asked him why he felt it was important to see another's belief system in such evaluative terms, he explained that he is doing his own belief system and the Anglican system a service: he is taking them seriously and not trying to water down our differences. Whenever he is in a foreign worship service, he scans the service and only participates in that with which he could agree.

These two attitudes towards belief are admirable on one level: both of them have a healthy respect for difference that sees compromise on that difference as a false value. But I fear that, in the first case, this attitude can never lead to true 'togetherness', i.e. the understanding and love that comes from seeing theological difference as only one aspect of a much larger relationship. I feel his view egotistically focuses on getting across his pet project, beliefs, and concerns to the detriment of communication. I do not see how any relationship could be healthy on that basis. Both sides need to speak. Not even a relationship with God, in my view, can be one-sided. God does not force-feed us truth, but lets us grow independently and speak for ourselves. In other words, God and man should be constantly in 'dialogue' for the relationship to be healthy. As for the second attitude, it is an improvement, but, once again, I think it focuses too narrowly on what we think we 'know' as being the deciding factor in who we identify and commune with. I have a strong aversion to sharply dichotomous ways of viewing the world. In effect, I think it is dangerous to base one's actions and one's interaction with others on the basis of it only being this one way because, simply put, the world is rarely only that 'one' way. If we stake everything on it being that way, we may end up having a painful, conflict-ridden existence.

To both of these individuals, 'dialogue' in the sense of seeking some type of common ground in order to have a conversation and be together, threatens the integrity of theological differences between them. I don't think it has to be seen that way. I, of all people would hate to be caught defending a notion of dialogue that simply erased individuality or difference. To be honest, I see only one thing being lost in dialogue: pride. I think what we implicitly express by seeking to find commonality as opposed to trumpeting difference is that we are more interested in being together than in putting ourselves and our own beliefs above another. I doubt that anyone would claim that Christ was expressing moral relativity by associating with marginalized and traditionally unclean groups. Rather, what Christ expressed with all of his striving to enter into dialogue with diverse peoples, was that, even above belief and manner of life, love and respect should unite us. Recently, a friend of mine made the point that Christ left us, essentially, only two things: a community and a meal. I love this because these two things express 'togetherness' more than 'right thinking'.

“Die Wahrheit ist also einem Saamenkorn gleich, dem der Mensch einen Leib giebt wie er will; und dieser Leib bekommt wiederum durch den Ausdruck ein Kleid nach eines jeden Geschmack, oder nach den Gesetzen der Mode.”

(The truth is like a grain to which man gives a form after his own preference; and this body receives again through that expression a dress after each one's tastes, or according to the laws of fashion.) (ZH I 335) Johann Georg Hamann

From Goethe's Faust:

GRETCHEN: ... Do you believe in God?
FAUST: My darling, who can (really) say:
I believe in God!
You may ask priests or wise men,
And their answer seems but a mockery
Of the questioner to be.
GRETCHEN: So you do not believe?
FAUST: Don't misunderstand me, you lovely sight!
Who may name Him,
And who declare:
I believe in Him.
Who can feel
And dare
To say: I do not believe in Him!
The all-embracing one,
The all-preserving one,
Does He not embrace and preserve
You, me, (and) Himself?
Does the sky not arch above us up there?
Does the earth not lie firm down here?
And do not with kind glance
The eternal stars rise?
Do I not look at you eye to eye,
And does not everything press
Upon your head and heart
And weave in eternal mystery
Invisible and visible around you?
Fill your heart, as big as it is, from that
And when you are completely blissful in the feeling,
Then call it what you like:
Call it happiness! Heart! Love! God!
I have no name
For it! Feeling is everything;
(The) name is sound and smoke,
Enshrouding heaven's glow.
GRETCHEN: That is all quite fine and good;
Much the same thing says the pastor, too
Only with slightly different words.
FAUST: It is said everywhere (by)
All hearts under the heavenly day,
Each in its own language:
Why not I in mine?


So here are two of my favorite quotes on the nature of transcendence. As with almost everything, I stop just short of saying that I take these ideas to be the "truth". I am more interested in the searching and in the striving to express what we understand and feel than in actually saying "I am certain". And maybe that is exactly what I like about these approaches to transcendence. They express the idea that the form in which we express our feelings will never perfectly approximate the nature of ultimate reality; or rather, that whatever form those expressions do take is ultimate reality. The truth can simply appear under an infinite number of names (God, spirit, love, heart) or a variety of images. So the question I want to ask is one that I've gone over with a lot of friends: how consistent is this approach? Does it do too much violence to the individual's experience? Or can we accept the individual's experience as valid, but simply recognize that the infinite is not limited to one form? But is this still inconsistent when we consider those whose experience "tells" them that there is only one form? One expression to truth? Am I really just being paradoxical in saying that I am sure that truth cannot be contained in only one word or image and then saying that I am sure of this? (You'll notice that I stopped short of being 'certain' though). Thoughts welcome

Transcendental Humanity

Here is an real anecdote taken from my real life here at Oxford. I had an interesting lunch a few weeks ago and I wrote this down right after the lunch. I figured I'd make it a blog post since I am trying (and failing) to use my blog to keep people up to date on my life (not that I am necessarily important enough for people to keep tabs on me). So, here it is and apologies for the unedited/stream-of-consciousness style:

Oh my heck!!!! Transcendental humanity!!!!! So I'm still trying to find friends here, but today was really nice. Yesterday was particularly rough because I was sick and confined to my room. Today I felt a lot better and went to the library and one of the German girls in my program came up to me around lunch time and asked me if I wanted to go to lunch. I of course jumped at the opportunity to have human contact. Well, we sat down and started chatting about life and career and then it got really interesting. She said that she used to get all worried about her future, but she now does not worry so much about it now because of "Gottvertrauen" (which is German for "trusting in God", i.e. faith). I kind of had to do a double take because this is not normal--or at least being here at Oxford makes you think that bringing up faith in a conversation is not normal. Plus, we had spoken before and there was not necessarily any inkling that she was religious. You have to understand my surprise. It is just not selbstverständlich, (understood/expected/natural) that a German--especially at Oxford--would be religious. So I kind of stammered, "wait, are you religious?" And she said yes and I asked what religion. She said that she was "catholic/protestant". She was raised catholic, but she recently realized that she thinks more like a protestant (wait for this), but she still identifies herself as catholic because she realizes that growing up catholic has made it such that catholicism is her identity and she can't escape it. It makes no sense to her to "convert" to another religion. And besides, if she just jumps ship, how could she ever effect change in her tradition? I got really excited when she said this and stammered "me too!!!!" but it did not end there. She then said, "yeah, the main thing is the claim about being the only true church." I almost lost it at about this point. But then she started talking again without letting me catch my breath: "But I've been thinking a lot about pluralism lately." And then she started explaining an analogy that tries to capture a pluralistic worldview. We all are blind and are feeling different parts of an elephant and describing what we feel from our vantage point. What we say ends up being different even though the ultimate reality is the same. hahahaha. I thought I was watching myself in a mirror. I had been using that analogy for a while as well. We both have realized that we don't like the analogy though and that the arguments for pluralism are just as unsatisfactory and contradictory as are one tradition's claims to absolute truth. We both kind of just left it at the thought of having an epistemological ceiling when it comes to certain matters. Tradition is not rational and there may not be any easy way to harmonize them all into one meta-system. I thought the conversation was such a crazy coincidence though and kind of made my heart jump about the possibility of connecting with people and finding commonalities. You know those moments when someone says something that really speaks to your experiences and suddenly you feel like we are not all just trapped in some hermetically sealed jar not really able to communicate with one another? This lunch was one of those experiences. We then wandered back to the topic of Gottvertrauen and how we both have derived a lot of strength from the religious mindset and have noticed that religious people are often characterized by a calm approach to life.

Just the other night I had the same conversation with a Jewish girl who is trying to figure out her place in her tradition. She came to a similar conclusion as the one above. It is interesting to me how many young people at this place come from religious backgrounds and are having similar experiences relating to their traditions as me. I suppose it is one of the effects of being in an in-between world with faith on the one side and secular academia on the other. Anyways, it is interesting how so many people deal with the same issues and questions. I think being at a place like this is kind of deceptive. You get the idea that with so many people from different places and backgrounds and religions that there is little you have in common. It seems to me that you just have to scratch a little below the surface to find surprising commonalities in human experience.

I'm on the train into London. 18:01. The indian man across from me eating tic-tacs for dinner. One after the other every minute or so. Can't blame him. I do the same sometimes. The well-dressed men all over the train give me new ideas on what accessories I'm lacking at the moment. Chatter in different languages. The 15 different conversations hitting my ears simultaneously, all at different pitches, different tempos, intensities and volumes. It's like putting ten different tapes on at once and the whole confusing buzz forms its own synthetic melody; like grasshoppers or birds all chirping forms a cacophony that is pleasant in its own right. But I notice more the silence of people not talking to each other. There are a lot of us on this train. Not enought seats for everyone. Some young boys sit on the luggage racks. Some passengers read, some sleep, some sit, blankly staring ahead or out the window. Some are in conversation. They all look different. We're all different but all together in the same hurtling tube going to one of the world's great metropolises. I'm thinking a lot about difference lately. All these people have different backgrounds, stories, values, hopes, beliefs, etc. I guess we all have a lot in common as well. We all must value practicality, efficiency, and order--getting along in order to make sure we can follow our different paths to the good life. But beyond that, we don't seem to want much to do with each other. We keep to ourselves. Train conversations with strangers are by no means rare, but they aren't exactly common either. I think this is because difference is uncomfortable and when forced to face it, we sit quietly or do our own thing until the train arrives. My brother calls me to tell me which restaurant I need to go to when I arrive in London...It's really rather just a coincidence that there are other people on the train with us. We tend to think of traveling as more about just getting to a destination than what the actual journey involves. Fair enough, but aren't we always kind of traveling from one place ot the next? Wouldn't it make sense to see the journey--and our fellow passengers as having more meaning than the buildings that wizz by the train?
I guess I'm people watching. It's rather fun. Well, I'm not doing a very good job of shaking this preoccupation with difference. I was thinking earlier today how silly my idealism upon coming to Oxford was. I was going to be friends with everyone. everyone. We were all going to be best friends and have very deep relationships. Ha! I've met a lot of nice people and had some very good conversations and with two people I felt a connection. We even set up lunch or dinner appointments to initiate our friendships. I was very excited. Then neither of them showed up! But it is just orientation week and that is understandable. I still felt really down though. I think I am really needing friendship at the moment. It's tough.
Another thing is tough. I noticed that without even dong anything I had become a curiosity for some people. "Are you really a mormon?" Their interest belied the fact that with the admission I had automatically become more of a joke--someone who believed in "gold plates" and "angels"--than someone to connect with or take seriously. The conversation was frustrating. They kept on asking "where did the gold plates go?" and "what about these magic underpants" in a very patronizing manner. That hurt. I think it hurt because I usually think of myself as a thinking, feeling, aware individual with a very thought-out relationship to his faith. Dismissal and being looked at askance is the worst. It is even worse because I know I do that sometime to others as well. Well, what I'm thinking now is that I may just have to accept that difference and other people's attitudes and even my own shortcomings (not to mention the constraints of space and time) may mean that I won't become friends with everyone. The train is coming into London. People are starting to get off at the stops. But now more people are getting on. It's gotten dark on the way in.
Come to think of it, I could very well comment on the uniformity of the people I see. All the guys basically wear the same thing: Jeans. Button-up shirt with a collar. And some type of jacket or blazer. Most have watches and there are about three types of cell-phones. I've been thinking about commonalities--and uniformity-- a lot lately as well. I feel an irresistible urge to look like everyone else in Oxford. I'm slowly being assimilated. I now just need a blazer, a scarf, and these boot-like shoes with fur around the top I keep seeing. Heaven forbid. What was Hayek saying again about the inability of central planning to figure out disparate tastes in a society...? I suppose uniformity is a also a necessary component of social life. I suppose as well that uniformity fits well with the idea of being uncomfortable with difference. As much as we can, we try to eliminate it. That's not really true. We try to be different as well. Why should difference be so scary or unbearable? I'm sure there are lots of reasons--our own way of being could feel threatened or because we depend so much on other people we need to be able to understand them. Would some of these barriers dissolve if I started talking to these people or would they become even more incomprehensible? Maybe it would work if we found some common interests and experiences. But there is a great chance that we would end up talking in generalities and things common to all humans--like the weather. Oh goodness no. The ultimate indicator of an impasse. Talking about the weather. But I've noticed old couples who know everything about each other also talk about the weather.
Arrived at Paddington. We all get off together. In a few minutes I'll be with some friends and feel at home for a little while.

oh, and I've posted some pictures of my new home and college.

My Thumb Hurts

I was listening to a rather worthless song today (okay, I admit it, I like the song even though it is pop) and I was struck by one pathetic line in which the singer describes her thought process about her emotions upon being heartbroken. She states that "It's not as if New York City/Burnt to the Ground/the moment you drove away/". She appeared to me to be engaging in what many of us do whenever we experience strong (usually negative) feelings related to some personal occurrence. She is trying to understand why such a small event (so she thinks) should have such a great impact on her. She compares the cause of her emotional devastation to another event and intimates that her event should not be so powerful. After all, no one died in her case, no great losses of wealth or property were incurred, and finally, she is only one person. Why should she feel so bad? This mental process seems unhealthy and disingenuous to me. Her "rational" side is playing the role of the prompter who tells the audience when to laugh and when to cry during a show. The only thing that the prompter ends up doing, however, is turning the show into a stiff, heartless production that no one watches. The audience is not allowed to find its own meaning and enjoyment in the show. The fact is that it is as if New York City burnt to the ground when "he drove away".

Said another way, New York City burning to the ground might not mean a thing to us unless there is some connection to ourselves. I have often wondered at this same process in myself of trying to rationalize my feelings away by comparing them to some objective factors like life (in the abstract) and money. I suppose that this can be healthy on one level--trying to "get perspective" on things--but it also seems destructive and self-denying to me. We attach meaning and importance ourselves to things in life and without emotion in the first place, a lost life would not matter to us at all. What "reason" ends up doing in the end is robbing us of our precious subjectivity and continually reintroducing us into the "herd" by pointing us in the direction of "objective" values that dictate to us what has meaning and what does not have meaning. I admit it would be dangerous to let go of "reason" all together--and let the world go up in flames--but when reason is introduced to suffocate individuality and to inhibit coming to terms with our own emotions (however inconsequential they may seem), then we need to let go of what reason may say is unimportant.

I suppose I agree with Hume (with a modern pragmatic twist) that we are not merely rational creatures. It is more satisfying and important to us to scratch an itch on our thumb then to stop Rome burning to the ground. Grimly put, and even though I think that we are just as much rational creatures as emotional, I think Hume has a point. In an extreme case, what happens when we let society, church, or other people dictate our values and what we can feel good or bad about? We end up with a whole lot of discontent housewives and guilt-ridden young men.

Tuned-In

What kind of change does being constantly connected through email, facebook, cell-phones, etc. cause in my daily life? Being face to face with other people--to me--involves several responses. The other is an attraction to be looked upon and spoken to as well as something that imposes duties on me; the duty to respond to them and pay attention to them. These interactions are necessary, exhilarating, addicting, but also taxing emotionally and time consuming. For all these reasons, we generally try to find a balance between time alone for ourselves and time in society.

Before, this balance was more or less easy to find as retiring to one's home meant moving beyond the reach of other people--at least to an extent. In order to connect with one another more energy needed to be expended such as writing a letter, visiting another house, or making a live phone call. These barriers to communication (and privacy and alone time) have now all been broken down. I find myself being bombarded with demands (each email, text-message, facebook post is a form of demand and attraction) from the other to which I feel a duty to respond. The computer is not a passive device for information or simply connecting with others; it is literally a gateway that allows people to shout at me 24/7 to which I must respond. I find this great on one level (as I am able to keep contact with loved ones), but for my particularly OCD personality, I find that a computer makes me less effective as my alone time is slowly whittled away. And I of course have not even mentioned the problem with the type of relationships that one forms in cyberspace, etc.

Fight The Methodology

One of my friends mentioned one time that philosophy has only taught him that you cannot be sure of anything. I was reading something today that gave me somewhat of an insight into this. I have thought a bit about how different methodologies (history, hard sciences, philosophy) seem to condition a certain worldview for those who employ them. Could it be that "philosophy" is prone to teach that you cannot be sure of anything because of a methodological bias that one learns in philosophy? I am thinking of critical thinking here. You are "taught" to question assumptions, and to try to come up with arguments against those assumptions. It is even taught that one should do this as a pure intellectual exercise even if you agree with the premises in order to detect errors, i.e. make your position stronger.

It seems to me that there are several problems with this. The first problem brings to light a fundamental problem for the methodology of philosophy. Before we even get started in asking about assumptions and beginning the project of criticism, we have the problem of defining what philosophy is--i.e. are we going to critique things that make no rational sense, that do not seem to fit into our experience, or are we just going to be absurdists and play with language all day? It seems to me that the nature of modern philosophy and academia predisposes the "methodology" of philosophy to take on purely a form that is conducive to discursive, abstract, presentation. I heard a philosophy professor--Dr. Jensen--describe philosophy in these terms as he ridiculed those who believed that philosophy really was "the love of wisdom" and said that philosophy is a certain way of going about answering a question, i.e., questioning assumptions, etc. I believe it is structural problem. In other words, the academy is incapable of accommodating an endless variety of definitions of what philosophy is and must naturally lean to one way of doing things. It is therefore doomed to cause people like Alex to only learn to "doubt everything" because that is the natural outcome of the particular methodology of abstract, discursive reasoning.

So the first problem of defining what philosophy is leads to the next problem I see in that "philosophy" (as we've defined it) could lead to sidestepping the question of practical reason and living. If one is focused on whether something is consistent in a logical, discursive format, one neglects empirical realities or subjective positions. This means that philosophy could overemphasize the ethereal, abstract, nature of things as opposed to other approaches such as intuition, emotion, empirical models. In other words, I've noticed that philosophers do not necessarily base their arguments of what is true on empirical studies and surveys of what people think. Just because most people believe in God does not make it true for the philosopher or even an interesting question. I am kind of rambling here, but I feel that there is an important gap here between a practical reality and the philosopher's reality.

Ok. I am going to sum up. Because I do not believe that "truth" necessarily forces itself upon us when it is seen, I feel that the methodology of philosophy may not be necessarily conducive to finding truth, but rather conducive to finding error and only error. So it is similar to the agnostics dilemma in which he is sure that God cannot be proven, but he is also sure that God cannot be disproven. If the agnostic is speaking of what human reason can tell us, then it seems that philosophy only pronounces upon the limits of its own methodology. For those who believe in God, this may point to the fact that philosophy must be combined with other approaches with different premises for what can count as "truth".

Please discuss.