Monday, April 16, 2012

The Elementary Forces V.


This is a post that draw on a few religious quotations. Normally I'd tell my atheist readers the heads up so they can avoid what they think is irrelevant babble.  But I think the problems bought to light by Houellebecq's novels have a direct relation to Christian Mysticism and it may be worthwhile to stick with the rest of the post.

If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.  
 (I Corinthians 13:1-3: Douay Rheims)
It all hinges upon a word.

Modern translations of the Bible tend to tend to replace the word charity with love. So that the above passage becomes:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
(I Corinthians 13:1-3: NKJV) 
This is unfortunate since charity is not love, at least in the sense that it does not operate in the same way as the love mechanism does. The problem with conflating Charity with Love is that it misattributes some of the features of Love, such as the pleasant feelings, with the notion of Charity. Charity is something wholly different and in order to understand what Charity is we first begin by illustrating what it isn't.
You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this?  And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this?  Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.
(Matthew 5:43-48 Douay Rheims)
Regardless what you think about the teaching, the psychology implied in this passage is profoundly counter intuitive. Jesus'  teaching here recognises the legitimacy of the natural love mechanism but sees it as being nothing special, what's really important to note here is that he wants us to do things in spite of our natural inclinations. There is an implicit command to do good to those who we don't love, in other words, to those with whom we associate no pleasant feelings with.  He is asking us to override our biological drives with our will.  He is asking as to be charitable to those who we don't naturally love.

Now unfortunately amongst the weaker minds of Christianity, this conflation of love and charity, and the counter intuitive imperative, has led to the notion amongst some Christians types that charitable love must be something unpleasant. So wedded is the notion of Charity and feeling that it's all about crosses and sacrifices. The Purtians and some of the hardline Trads exemplify this strand of thought. Any fun must somehow be evil, and therefore the only true Christian love is the love that sucks. Fun is banished in their world as a work of the Devil.

On the other hand, the conflation of charity with love in other individuals leads to a totally unhuman type of behaviour. That is, attempting to feel pleasant feelings for the repulsive. Here, the priority is once again is on the feelings, and what a good christian should do when faced with the repulsive is to try to will the love mechanism in operation. These type of Christians try to be "nice" to everyone whilst constantly suppressing their innate hatred of everyone's guts. The Liberal Christian Churches exemplify this strain of understanding.

In both variants, it's the hedonic understanding which strongly flavours their respective Christian interpretations. Both groups strive mightily yet both lack charity.

In order to understand what Charity is and how it binds, one must first disassociate it from any emotion. Christians like to illustrate charity by the example of the crucifixion but that only confuses things, given all the strength of feelings involved in the event. Charity is probably best illustrated by a curious odditty of the mystics, The Dark Night of the Soul.

Now, it appears that most people who chose the religious life do so because they get some form of psychological or hedonic benefit from their religious duties, however, over time, this zeal fades, and sticking to the faith and its concomitant duties becomes very, very hard. The Dark Night of the Soul is the time when the "hedonic juice" which powers the motor runs dry.  The interesting thing with these individuals is that, even though the tank is empty, the person continues to do objective good despite getting nothing for their efforts. No closeness to God, no joy, no intellectual pleasure, no emotion.....zero. Despite themselves, they are sustained by a force that impels them to do good. Their bodies have become vehicles of charity; the stuff of God. This is the operation of pure charity unsullied by the emotions of love.

A quite good example of this phenomenon is Mother Theresa. Her diaries have recently come to light, and in them she reveals that most of her missionary career was spent in this state of dry spirituality. She apparently did not get any "kicks" from helping the poor in Calcutta. Instead, she was God's cubicle drone. She got up in the morning, went to work and did good in the world; running on an empty tank for over 40 years;
Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.
Yep, that was the mindset of a woman who did so much good and is likely to be canonised a Saint.

Charity is a feeling-less property of the soul that directs the will to do good. In it's day to day operation our feelings sometimes want to work against it, whilst at other times our feelings can quite happily work with it. It's strength is probably most obvious in martyrdom where the will to live is opposition to the will to do good.  But to see it as something in opposition to our pleasures is to mistake it.

But it's not the possession of the property but it's actually nature that makes it the binding agent par excellence. Now, if we take the Aristotelian notion of evil as privation, and good, its opposite, we see that any good act will result in an improvement to whatever the act was directed. Charity, being the stuff of Goodness itself, will direct the will towards acts which both bring good and restore things to their rightful natures. But it's not only that. Its an expansive force that seeks things to fix, it doesn't passively wait;
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
(Matthew 25:31-36)
Charity de-atomises. Unlike hedonism, which eventually alienates, charity connects us to all beings, institutions and things. By being beyond emotion and reason, it keeps bonds intact when they fail.  It is the strong force.

Houellebecq writing is permeated with the sense that the world has lost a capacity for permanent love. The characters in his novels are wounded and atomised as a result of it. The modern world, thoroughly materialistic, still has some Christian cultural capital or at least the memory of it. I think this what the ultimate thrust of his novels is that materialism has killed our capacity to love within a Christian context. And I think it is in the context of this memory that he writes:

Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit.

(Atomised [The Elementary Particles])

24 comments:

spandrell said...

Now be charitable and let 100 million Indonesians in your country, please.

Charity doesn't account for hbd.

Charity was what made Christianity take over pagan society. Emperor Julian admitted as much. It is superior to hedonism as a social binder, I won't deny that.

But we have bigger problems right now. You really think that being charitable with our enemies is going to save Western Civilization?

Country lawyer said...

This is no more a solution than either passion or reason, perhaps even less so.

For though almost all men have passion, and many have reason, very few have this. Very few have EVER had this and they end up martyred usually.

You have implied that as a society we have lost this, but this is not something most people long for. It is not something you can "sell" other people on, nor can it be forced. And underlying it must be a belief and something worthy of believing in, and the church as it is now is not something that will inspire that in most people.

It is not something that most people "had."

You might as well have written "God will(possibly) save us by using us as He sees fit." and saved time.

spandrell said...

Your example of Mother Theresa says all really. The fact is that an Albanian had to go to India to be charitable. If the object of charity is deprivation, that's an economic issue.
What difference did Mother Theresa do? She lost her faith, doing "good" mechanically to cure hungry and sick Indians so they could go forth and have more children who will be hungrier and sicker than they were, with no end is sight.

What's the endgame?

Robert Brockman said...

From the Sufi mystic Rabia Basri:

"O God, if I am worshiping You out of fear of Your Hellfire, cast me into it. And if I am worshiping You out of desire for Your Paradise, prohibit me from entering it… But if I am worshiping You for the sake of Your Noble Face, do not prohibit me from seeing You."

Also, Charity as described here by SP is all about doing things that are ACTUALLY HELPFUL as opposed to things that merely feel good.

Anonymous said...

Mother Theresa ran a "hospice" without doctors, nurses, walls, beds, basic sanition and lacking in basic medication.

Nazi concenration camps get a better grade.

The Social Pathologist said...

@ Spandrell

Charity doesn't account for hbd.

In what way?

Charity, is comingled with truth. HBD is real and therefore charity acknowledges it. No problem there.

Now be charitable and let 100 million Indonesians in your country, please.

You're conflating charity with "niceness". Charity can also be implemented with the sword. The object of charity is to do good.

In raising the question of whether we should let the Indonesians in, Charity will first ask is it good? Does it benefit the Indonesians, does it benefit the Australians? It's not just a simple reflexive give out cash or benefit situation. Now your sounding like a liberal who gives money to both deserving and undeserving poor in equal measure.

Being Charitable to our enemies may sometimes involve fighting them. The Medieval knight was an personification of a type of Christian Charity. Christians were part of the Roman legions from early on, they only got into trouble because the wouldn't worship the emperor.

The fact is that an Albanian had to go to India to be charitable. If the object of charity is deprivation, that's an economic issue.

It's not just economic deprivation but moral, illness and spiritual and aesthetic deprivation as well.

What difference did Mother Theresa do

Ask the poor she comforted before she died.

She lost her faith, doing "good" mechanically to cure hungry and sick Indians so they could go forth and have more children who will be hungrier and sicker than they were, with no end is sight

She didn't lose her faith, it hung on by a thin thread and yet she was able to bring some limited comfort.

Some men are called to give hands on help to others, but other Christians are called to do the intellectual heavy lifting in economics to de-private the structural anomalies in the economy.

What's the endgame?

Can you elaborate?

The Social Pathologist said...

@Country Lawyer.

This is no more a solution than either passion or reason, perhaps even less so.

Your analyses is weak. A lot of the modern world lives of the cultural capital of Christianity. To understand the effect of Charity in a world devoid of Christianity refer to Emperor Julian. Or here is a book (10 Megabyte download) that you might find interesting. The pagan world resembles the modern in many ways.

For though almost all men have passion, and many have reason, very few have this. Very few have EVER had this and they end up martyred usually.

Uhm... No. Lot's of people had it. It was called Sanctifying Grace, which "infused" charity into the soul. Lot's of people live good Christian lives without any martyrdom.

but this is not something most people long for

People long for it alright, it's just that they wont pay the price. They'd rather be lonely in a brothel than married to a wife. Though you are quite right. It can be forced. People can live in pagan atomism or Christian Charity. It's their choice.

God will(possibly) save us by using us as He sees fit

You really don't get it do you. Charity isn't God saving us. Charity is what you get after God has saved you. You, in fact, become "God like" in a limited mortal way, and can act with this virtue as you see fit. The point isn't about God Saving us, the point is that charity works to restore the world and its people to its intended state. It binds, it restores the privated, it de-atomises. It brings back the possibility of love.

@Anon

Nazi concenration camps get a better grade.

Yeah sure.

As Chesterton said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."

A clean bed in a dry room is better that an imaginary 100% perfect hospital which those people will never get access to. Their only other option is the street.

spandrell said...

I think I'm not understanding your definition of Charity. And I really want to.

Is it addressing need? So a 80 IQ Indian is sick because of brushing his teeth in the Ganges, needs comfort before dying. Mother Theresa gives it to him. Doesn't tell him or anyone to stop bathing in the Ganges. Is that your definition of good?

If Charity is about addressing 'need', that's what we call 'utility'. Utilitarianism took us where we are. 100 millions are a lot of people, but let's say that letting 5 million Indonesians into Australia will be very good for them. Quite bad for present Australians though. What does Charity say? You need to calculate or what?

By endgame I mean what is Charity about? I am really not getting it.
Byzantine Christians devastated Italy to take it from the Arian Goths. Was that an act of Charity?

Houellebecq talks about the sexual freedom. You say that pre-modern mating practices were good because of Charity. Pre-modern practices were good because there was no choice involved. It werent any different with Indian or Chinese practice. You got a mate by family influence, and couldn't get rid of it whatever happened. To follow your hedonic base desires simply wasn't an option. Today it is.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Spandrell

Is it addressing need?

Not exactly. It's about remedying a privation.

Suppose a man wants to fornicate. Charity will not satisfy his need for sex with someone who is not his wife. . Charity gives a man what he needs, not what he wants. (Some wants are evil and charity will not facilitate it).

What does Charity say?

Charity is not as retarded as economics.

Charity aims at objectively perfecting the world. i.e. it pushes things in the direction that God wants it to. However Charity has to work through individuals, therefore, its expression is modified by the nature of the individual. Charity will be a haphazard affair when expressed by a person of low wisdom or intelligence but be closer to it's intention in a person with a good grasp of reality.

The expression of charity is governed by the the other virtues, prudence being the chief one. In your example of the Indonesians, I would say that it would be quite charitable to keep them out for a variety of reasons. 1) They are Muslim and the change in culture will ultimately be hostile to Christians. 2) Given the principles of homophilly the goodwill in society will be strained and perhaps lead to civil unrest. 3) The wealth of Australia is built on a Christian cultural foundation, therefore the dilution of this foundation will make everyone poorer. You get the picture.

This then leads to the problem of Christians full in Charity but devoid in prudence. We all know the individual who does something dumb but is justified by the saying, "his heart was in the right place."The ten commandments are basically signposts for idiots, making sure they don't do something stupid, afterwards claiming that their intentions were good. It's God's way of telling you how to express charity.

Doesn't tell him or anyone to stop bathing in the Ganges. Is that your definition of good?

Now being a Saint doesn't mean that you don't have any faults. Infection transmission may not be high on the list of Mother Theresa's priorities. She tries to look after the sick and dying that's all. She expresses her charity as she sees best. It may be the duty of others to tell Indians about their hygienic practices.

The Social Pathologist said...

You say that pre-modern mating practices were good because of Charity.

Charity worked to keep people bound, even when they didn't want to. The Protestant religions have long approved of Divorce, yet whilst people took their faith seriously from a serious variant of it, and were going to Church, the divorce rate was quite low. You'd be mad to think that people in the past didn't want to leave their partners. Yet they stuck it out, partly due to social reasons, but also due to the fact that God mattered.

spandrell said...

Objectively perfecting the world.

Good luck with that. it's been some time since everybody stopped believing in objective truth. Even the church is for multiculturalism and global warming.

You have a very rosy picture of premodern marriage. Many reactionaries.have it People screwes their neighbours wives, got syphilis. Monks screwed nuns. Not as widespread as today of course. But thats a function of societal pressure, fear of disease, and superstition. Real faith wasnt the norm.

Europe is not living off its christian capital. Old societies were stable because of tradition and fear of deprivation. We lost that basic prudence. Thats why we are all children.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Spandrell

You have a very rosy picture of premodern marriage

No I don't. I think pre-modern marriage had it's flaws as well.

What I'm trying to do is diagnose the cancer that is eating away at the West, it's symptoms all about us. Nothing depresses me more that coming to the conclusion that the West is dying because of a lack of charity.

Religion is so on the nose these days that it's far easier to advocate a legislative or technological solution. Unfortunately they won't work. This is why I like Houellebecq, he acknowledges pretty much the same thing.

mdavid said...

Great post. I need something to disagree with or improve upon to make a decent comment...and I come up short. Again. You are on fire as of late. Including the comment box.

As an engineer, I never thought I could be saying anything like this to a shrink...

The Social Pathologist said...

@mdavid.

Thanks. Sometimes you wonder if anyone's interested. Glad to see that some of the audience approve.

Just for the record, I'm what you guys in the U.S would call a family physician, not a shrink. Still, I hardly ever send my patients to the shrink because I do all the shrinking. I'm reasonably good at it btw.

Another little tidbit. I actually wanted to be an engineer, but unfortunately got enough marks to get into Medicine.

spandrell said...

The cancer of modernity isn't only chewing Christendom, it's chewing China and Japan, and slowly crawling into Islam too.

I agree that solution involves religion. I just don't get what's that Charity you talk about. I don't think that premoderns were so imbued with agape. People were as fallen and immoral as they could get away with.

A horny bastard like Houellebecq would have been less depresesd because he wouldn't have had access to porn or prostitutes to the same level as he has today. So he would have been more content with an uneducated wife with whom he would have to work day and night to make ends meet.
Still when he had some money to spare he would have fucked some harlot in the closest town, as there were many.

SP don't take this personally, I respect very much your writing and have been following this series with much interest.
But I just don't believe that you can bring back morals out of sheer will or divine inspiration. Marriage has been killed by choice, not a sudden lack of agape. Agape died for a reason.

mdavid said...

SP, No insult intended on the shrink jab...and I don't enjoy engineering particularly, just do it for quick cash. Medicine = too much commitment.

Btw, I used to find you painfully liberal on family/gender issues and rarely stopped by, but the Kennedy stuff? Pure gold. Put into book form and publish. You are wasting your time with us rabble.


spandrell, But I just don't believe that you can bring back morals out of sheer will or divine inspiration. Marriage has been killed by choice, not a sudden lack of agape. Agape died for a reason.

This is true in a macro sense (the structures of sin and all that), but untrue from an individual pov.

Most people seek agape...are desperate for it, in fact. Few can see from here to there, however. The devil is the father of lies.

I speak for myself in this regard: why not learn from others to take a shortcut through the structures of sin that exist everywhere modern times? I think this better illustrates what you are speaking of, not each person's personal choice. We are group creatures, and inherit the structures of sin from our family and culture. But we can still say no and start something new.

GK Chesterton said...

I liked this as much as I disliked the last one where I thought you conceded to much to materialism.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Spandrell

I don't think that premoderns were so imbued with agape. People were as fallen and immoral as they could get away with.

I don't know about that. I mean, take a look at the numbers of people who went into the priesthood and convent. Even in modern times, i.e 50's. There was no compulsion to join. Look at the number of Churches built in times when famine was real possibility. People have always been fallen, but people are more fallen now.

A while ago I was looking at the sexual partner count of French women. Now, the French have a reputation for being quite amorous, but as late as the early 70's the average no of sexual partners a French woman had was one. Yeah, I know there were social pressures, but to believe that the current increase in the number of partners is due to more openness is pushing intellectual credibility. Even Curtis Le May, writing about the conduct of officers, noted the massive drop in quality of their characters in the 60's compared to 30's. Something profoundly changed.

I'll put up another post on charity for you.



@mDavid.

I wasn't insulted at all. I actually took your comments as a complement.

Country Lawyer said...

"You really don't get it do you."

Oh I get it.

You want to believe there's something more, that's fine.

But this isn't a solution, this is decrying something that (you believe) is lost.

In order for there to be a solution, there has to be steps that can be taken to fix the problem.

So show me the steps.

Show me how human beings (Not God, since you decided to mock me for that statement) can reasonably turn civilization around.

Simply saying "if more people had this the west would be saved" isn't a solution, its just wishful thinking.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Country Lawyer

Chill.

since you decided to mock me for that statement

One of the things I noted in my recent travels in the U.S. is that people were far more polite in their interactions with each other that her in Australia.

mDavid felt that he needed to clarify that he didn't intend to insult me, whereas I did not see the insult at all. Here in Australia we're a bit more "roubust" in our day to day discussion and I imagine any American listening in would imagine that we were being rude to each other.

I wasn't mocking you. I apologise if you think I was.

Human beings, alone, can form some form of functional society relying on instinct and rationality. But the resultant societies seem quite harsh.

To get an optimal society, you need God and his his grace.

The way to restore the West is through a religious revival. That involves.

Preaching the word, living the life and saying the prayers. There's your program.

Simply saying "if more people had this the west would be saved" isn't a solution

No, I wasn't proposing a solution, but initially was trying to understand why alienation occurs. The thing is alienation is the natural state of affairs in men. The Christian world is unnatural. I hope you've had a brief look at that link I put up for you. The roman world resembles our own in many ways.

What's fascinating is just how "weird" the Christians appeared to the Romans, but the effect of their efforts was transformative on society. But the Christians of the time never thought they were doing it on their own. They thought that they were "transmitting" God's love through them to others. This is how charity works.

spandrell said...

Voltaire and his friends were having orgies regularly. Of course your average French didnt have the leisure nor the freedom to fuck around and still find a spouse. Once cheap food, the pill and antibiotics were in place, the temptation become way more feasible.

Also the 50s or the 4th century arent the whole of our past. It seems to me that there were cycles of morality where people let loose, things went to hell,the church cracked down, and again.

I look forward to your post

mdavid said...

SP, you have a busted link on optimal society, you need God and his his grace. I'm dying to read it.

Re your engine article, I feel it is missing something. Here's another POV:

1) Humans have bodies and souls.

2) Bodies are merely (very) complex machines.

3) Machines can run on different inputs, but each stable input has optimal operating conditions (e.g. different foods: Chinese food is not better than French, but both have objective quality and are perfected within each system over thousands of years). While too multifactorial to fully understand (see: The Omnivoir's Dilemma), these imput limits can be discovered experimentally over time and these boundaries are called Culture.

4) These highly complex machines also cannot survive on their own, not even in small families, due to the power of the larger group (the human evolutionary tree is straight with few branches like other species have as our larger groups rapidly kill off the smaller ones; see: Neanderthals). This interaction creates narrow limits for group survival, creating yet another strict set of operating limits called Civilization. Those who do not or cannot play by these rules go extinct (see: Hunter Gatherers).

5) Civilizational operating limits can be called Virtues. Extinction is the norm for all species, including 99% of human linage, but among humans who continue to expand with a continuous linage, the virtues always dominate. Said virtues can be scientifically articulated, and have culminated in the catechism of the RCC.

6) Summary: the RCC is God's Vicar, Darwin His prophet, and Demographics His angel of death. Current modern culure rejects key components of the Vitues, most importantly that of family and the proto commandment: to populate the earth. Hence, a whole host of bastard civilizations inferior to that of the West yet still maintain gender roles and thus their fertility (see Africa, Muslims) are making a comeback. In the end, the optimal Civilization will prevail, but the original linage may well indeed go entinct, only to be rediscovered by another. QED.

The Social Pathologist said...

@mdavid.

Here is the link.

Said virtues can be scientifically articulated, and have culminated in the catechism of the RCC.

I personally wouldn't use that approach. One of the things that you notice when comparing major cultures of the world, is just how similar the virtues are amongst them. It appears that are all discernible with a bit of reflective reason and personal experience. The fact that non-Christian cultures have come to same conclusion as Christianity with regard to the day to day running of civilisation leads me to think that civilisation is only possible within narrow cultural limits. From this point of view the Catechism is nothing special.

It needs to be understood that Western society has not just rejected God, but it has rejected reason as well and the current ascent of the Islamic cultures and Asia are not due to any particular virtue, but much more like Germany in the EU, their ascendency is a product of their competitors being more stupid than themselves. It's not that Islam is rising, it's just that the West is corrupting rapidly.

So your comment;

In the end, the optimal Civilization will prevail, but the original linage may well indeed go entinct, only to be rediscovered by another. QED

is very true.

mdavid said...

SP, ...personally wouldn't use that approach. One of the things that you notice when comparing major cultures of the world, is just how similar the virtues are amongst them. It appears that are all discernible with a bit of reflective reason and personal experience.

I think you misinterpret me here. My whole point is exactly what you are saying, that Virtue is empirically discovered with Civilization, and destroys those who reject it. The Catechism is merely the logical rather than empirical approach to the problem, and it's taken some time to get there.

And examining the world's approach to issues like birth control, methinks the data argues against just needing a bit of reflective reason and personal experience. The Greeks philosophers of old were not the norm, but the exception.