Hart saying it better (and probably saying something better)

I promise I am not trying to ride the narrative theology bandwagon, it just keeps happening. Given my last two posts here and a conversation I’m having with a friend about the same topic, some of the little bit of BI I read yesterday really struck me as well-said and useful. Here’s what Hart writes in an introductory explanation preparing the reader for his use of the word “postmodern” (Note that he’s following Derrida here in asserting the metaphysical is necessarily a direction taken by a chain, or in my words, a narrative impulse):

“The notion that behind every speculative, confessional, or mythic story lurks a single governing pathos … repeats the very gesture of [Derrida's use of the term] “metaphysics”: it enacts a retreat from the bewildering world of difference to the secure simplicity of foundations. So long as he persists in reading all more or less “ambitious” tales as embodiments of the same suppressed motion, Derrida need never consider the real differences that distinguish each tale from every other: the difference of fathers from fathers, origins from origins, voices from voices. But … whatever makes Christian theology (for instance) beautiful is the force that is not accounted for by structural taxonomies.” For Hart, that which makes Christian theology beautiful and is invisible to bifurcative structural analysis is its constant reliance on (the historically particular) life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

This is another aspect of Milbank’s argument in Theology and Social Theory that functional explanations of social structures don’t explain anything that interesting since they cease as soon as the question is raised: why that form of that of that social structure in that society? Milbank’s example is something to the effect that, if one wants to argue Christianity functions in some times and places primarily as a means of effecting patriarchal power, then why was Christianity “chosen” in those instances since patriarchy functions in plenty of places without the benefit of the Christian faith. It is precisely here that sociological functionalism can have nothing interesting to say. Its only recourse is to assert another quasi-universal agenda (like, say, agrarianism) was at play along with patriarchy and Christianity happened to meet the needs of both. At this point someone like Milbank simply repeats his argument, this time asserting that there have been many patriarchal and agrarian societies with no need of Christianity and the conversation infinitely regresses in this manner. Until, that is, it becomes clear that the given historically specific expression of Christianity comprehensively gave the best account of reality to the people under discussion. The historical expressions of Christianity are thus legitimate.

To tie this into my neurologist analogy in a previous post: what is really interesting in talking about human mental activity is the actual thinking and behavior of real people (hence the existence and prominence of fields like psychology and psychiatry). In other words, the neurologist lecturing on the anatomy and physiology of the human brain is in precisely the same situation (analogically) as the sociological functionalist. She can tell you everything about human mental substance and activity except for that which everyone wants to know: why do certain people act in certain ways (and these are always “historical” concerns).

Upcoming Material

One of the most frustrating things about not being in grad school any longer is that without being forced to read books I do not want to read I’m not getting any reading done at all. So I’m going to read through D.B. Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite and write about it here (we’ll see how motivational an imaginary audience can be). He’s going to be in D.C. in April (see link at left) and I think I will be able to hear him so it would be nice to have an idea of what is going on. This will take a very long time so I’m sure other material will come up before I’m done. If there is anyone out there who has read the book and has a good grasp on the material please check back as I will surely have questions.

OK now I’m really going to answer the question (I hope)

Here is a brief overview of where I am at in trying to answer the question: does the assertion that humans are necessarily identified by narratives mean these narratives need to be historically accurate in order to function well as the “substance and parameters of human identity”? I ended my last post with the assertion that since we live historically actual lives we do in fact need narratives that are historically accurate (yes this needs loads of qualifications but read my last post, I’m not going to rewrite everything).

The question now becomes what aspects of these narratives need to be historically accurate? It would be non-sense to describe Jesus’ parables or the creation account(s) as historically innacurate, that’s not what is at issue there. They are still hugely important parts of the biblical narrative. If a scene within a narrative need not be historically accurate in order to function as it needs to function for the story to achieve what it claims to achieve then so be it. Something like the resurrection (and a ton of other biblical material), however, has to be historically accurate for the biblical narrative to not be deceptive.

While the details will inevitably get fuzzy with specific biblical scenes (the flood, Joseph, the Davidic monarchy, etc…) one thing becomes clear. The liberal protestant/stereoptypically-Bultmannian way of imaginitively latching onto a faith that is understood to be merely a cultural artifact (and that’s OK) is bullshit. I would rather be an honest non-Christian (or an honestly doubting Christian) than a Christian too afraid to admit I don’t believe in core doctrines anymore (i.e. the resurrection).

Good Sunday School Class

The Sunday School Class (which I’ve entitled Faithful Reading: A History of Biblical Interpretation) went well. I got a few good comments and two questions. We arrived at an answer to one of the questions with what I think is a really helpful point (just not an answer to the question asked). The question was in relation to this portion of my manuscript:

“For the purposes of this class we can refer to the Bible as a “story book.” One reason why this could be misconstrued is that the story-books we are all familiar with speak of events that did not actually occur. Little Red Riding Hood’s vicious yet non-fatal digestion by a wolf is historically doubtful at best. The four Christian gospels, on the other hand, present themselves as historical record and have been passed down as such since the time of the Apostles.”

I then went on describing my own take on a narrative theology of Holy Scripture. My most notable comment here was probably that stories (and, for Christians, hopefully the biblical story!) form the substance and parameters of human identity. At a break in the action a friend of mine asked if, according to my description of the Bible as a story book, it is necessary for a biblical story to describe historical events in order for the story to function as a basis for human identity.

I think my answer was a good answer but I now see it was an answer to a different question. We arrived at the example of Jesus’ parables. After telling a group of people a parable (some of whom were certainly trying to poke holes in his argument), Jesus is never questioned regarding the historicity of his tale. The implication here is that Scripture is certainly capable of presenting stories whose “truth” does not entail historical actuality as such (a more subtle example might be the first two chapters of Genesis. Read them and then ask yourself how many plot-lines you just read. Then ask yourself why a Jew might be comfortable with two plot-lines sitting right next to each other without explanation. That is, how does Scripture understand itself as true here?) . The only problem is that this answers a different question than the one I was asked. This answers the question: how might one be able to tell if Scripture intends to be taken as descriptive of actual historical occurrences in a specific passage? So I did come up with an interesting answer to an interesting question, just not the one I was asked.

To answer the question I was asked: it is certainly possible for human identity to be determined by a story that does not relate actual historical events. If one is faithful to a story that is not historically accurate, however, this will eventually play itself out. The paper posted below about martyrdom in the church and (not) in the state points to this. The way the church treats its dead verifies it as truer than the state insofar as it makes more sense to remember and venerate a human life than to pretend it did not exist. In other words, simply because a narrative is able to function as a basis for human identity(as the narratives of the state certainly do for many) does not mean it is therefore “true,” even if it functions as such for generations of an entire culture. Narratives are not effective means of getting on with life, narratives are the very dynamo of life insofar as they unify our past experience and enable our conceptualization of new ones (or, to take it all the way, our narratives are our unified experience: past, present and future). That is to say, there is no level of human experience or purpose more basic than the level of narrative.

That I can write this and in a way “get behind” a narrative is only possible in the way a medical school lecturer might lecture about the anatomy and physiology of the human brain. His knowledge of the brain does not involve any active mastery of its functioning. The neurologist cannot “turn off” a human brain by thinking “ahead” of it, knowing what it is doing in a way it itself is probably not aware of. In the same way, Lindbeck and Frei never escaped lives in which their identity was assigned them by a narrative just because they espoused narrative theology.

So my ability to identify to some degree the narratives that tell me who I am and thus actively attempt to be defined by certain narratives does not position me in such a way that I can make a story true if it is not. If we are living fully coherent lives we are not making our narratives true, we are revealing that they are true. I’m trying to get on in a materially real and historically actual world so I need narratives that respond to that sort of truth.  Even after all of this, however, one can still ask what “responding” to actual historical events looks like, and I’m going to put that off for now.

Long Day

It has been a very long day. I have literally been caring for handicapped people all day. Often times I’ll say “I worked all day” but today was one of those rare days that I actually did. In the cumulative hour that I was not directly involved with feeding, cleaning, toileting, etc… I had time to finish up my first Sunday School lesson for tomorrow. It is on the history of biblical interpretation and I’m excited about it. Tomorrow is more of a general theology of the Bible (and an ecclesiology of the Bible) for introductory purposes than anything else so we’ll see how it goes. I’m sure some of it will end up here.

My justification for posting this is that I was struck today by my ability to do something to another person (like feed them) and be totally unresponsive to their humanity, sort of like I were making coffee or shaving or something. I think religious communities should run group homes like the one I run. We need explicitly Christian practices like hospitality and regular prayer to remind us of the innate beauty of the human person. Making work like mine shift work is of course utterly not conducive to viewing the handicapped in the image of God since the worker has already rented themselves out for a price. I’ve heard of Nouwen going into a L’Arche community. Maybe that’s similar to what I’m thinking. Do they have those in the states?

Some of my best ideas come at night, which doesn’t say much for my other ideas…

My daughter just woke me up at 2:15am and I have to get up for work at 5:30am but I have a great idea and I want to get it down before I fall asleep. You know those conversations where one person says “I would go to church if I could find the right one…” and then every shrugs and sighs because we all know churches are terrible little (or big) monsters (or at least we have to assume so for respectable conversation)? Well, those conversations are over, at least over as legitimate, good-faith discussions. Why, you ask? Because there is a “right church.” Its in Johnson City, Tennessee off Milligan Highway. Its called Hopwood Christian Church (I am not and have never been a member and no I do not live remotely close to there). Its got everything. I’m not going to get into it all because there is so much right about it. Ok, I’m going back to bed. No one has any excuses now. East Tennessee is a very affordable place to live so if you can’t operate in all the broken churches go to Hopwood. I’ll add a link with the others.

O.K. one more thing because I can’t fall back asleep before I eat some cereal (yes I have plenty of other excuses for eating too much or when I shouldn’t). At what point does someone like Chomsky or your average pissed-off-Amy-Goodman-type stop assuming “special interests” have hijacked the liberal project and realize the necessity of doing something like what MacIntyre and Milbank and Hauerwas are doing? I ask this because the social democratice left, especially now, is so furious all the time (see Democracy Now! link to your left). Understandably so, given the disconcordance between American policies and the most commonly recognized aspects of liberal (read classically liberal) thought. I think I read somewhere on the internet an interview where Chomsky says the liberal project has been hijacked by big business. O.K. if one wants to look at it that way fine, but its occurred with such utterly total success it seems the driver was in on the hijacking and its some sort of insurance scam. Aaaawwww, I can feel my blood sugar count dropping. Sleep my friend I shall hasten to your embrace.

A recent paper I wrote on martyrdom in the church and (not) in the state.

 If this is a little much for you I understand but I really like this site layout and it does not have links to other pages (where I would have put this).  The stuff below this is not as time consuming so scroll down my friend!!! (If my constant parentheticals get on your nerves, however, you might like my paper since I don’t do this as much when I write “formally”).  This is a paper I wrote recently for admission to the U of Nottingham’s taught MA in philosophical theology, so if you’re from the University and you think you found out that some idiot got his paper off the internet I am not that idiot.  I’m the idiot who wrote the paper in the first place.  Its me, I promise.

William Cavanaugh’s Torture and Eucharist is a fascinating contrast between the edifying practices of the nation-state and those of the Church. [1]  While Cavanaugh’s larger agenda is not geographically specific, his ecclesiological proposals are tied up in the story of the Chilean Roman Catholic Church during Augusto Pinochet’s violent regime. Cavanaugh traces the ways in which the social philosophies of thinkers like Jacques Maritain and the policies of Pope Pius XI aimed to bring the twentieth century Catholic Church to terms with the secularization of the West.  Parishioners were understood as capable of living out separate temporal and spiritual agendas.  The Church was the proper arbiter of supposedly non-temporal spiritual matters, freeing the state to apply its unhampered attention to people’s “practical” loyalties (their jobs, their nations, etc.).           

While this enabled smoother international relations for the Vatican, the results of this sort of ecclesial liberalism in the lives of the world’s Catholics raised serious questions as to whether or not the church had any meaningful jurisdiction left.  In pre-World War II Germany, for example, Hitler (following Mussolini’s example) convinced Pope Pius XI to disband the Catholic Center Party, which legislated for the agenda of German Catholics and was the last major roadblock in Hitler’s drive for dictatorial powers.  The supposed trade-off would be the state’s tolerance of the a-political social project Catholic Action which sought Catholic unity on a “religious and moral basis” that would presumably be free of political implication.[2]  Hitler was not so naïve and shortly after the signing of the concordat the Nazis began persecuting German Catholics anyway. Hitler understood, as many in American history have, that alternative forms of governance like Catholic educational institutions and hierarchic ecclesial structures are always potential political threats to the aims of the nation.           

Cavanaugh sees the Chilean case as a similar abandonment by the church hierarchy of its legitimate influence over the lives of Christians thanks to suppositions that the church’s proper spiritual concerns, while parallel to the material and temporal concerns of the state, are essentially distinct from them.  Cavanaugh is at pains to emphasize throughout Torture and Eucharist that what is lost in such cases is the church’s control over the physical bodies of its members and thus, according to Paul, the church’s own body.[3]  For Cavanaugh the authority of the church over bodies is simultaneous to its existence; they are one in the same.  It is in this sense that he describes the thought of Pius XI and Maritain as the “ecclesiology of a disappearing church.” [4]           

Martyrdom becomes central to Cavanaugh’s narrative because it “makes the body of Christ visible.”[5]  The killing of a martyr by the state is the state’s admission that the church’s concerns, properly speaking, are in competition with its interests.  The martyr’s dead body witnesses that there is no delimitation between the presumably finite ventures of the nation-state and the ethereal tasks of a merely spiritual church.  In Chile both church and state had strong interests in the bodies of martyrs.  The state did everything in its power to hide the bodies while the church desired them as loci upon which she could discern her proper role. 

The entire mechanism of state terror under Pinochet was engineered to inhibit the creation of martyrs out of those killed or injured by the secret police.  Most of the regime’s victims “disappeared.”  Their families were unaware of the charges against them, where they had been taken, and if and when they had been killed.  Their bodies were thus unavailable as “the seed of the church,” or of any other organization that might make martyrs out of them.[6] 

A reading of Cavanaugh’s work in the United States today begs for application.  Do the U.S. Government’s decisions in recent years to kidnap and torture suspected terrorists place it in a similar role to Pinochet’s Chile?  If American policy violently repressed Christians could the fractured American churches respond?  These questions require answers too lengthy and complex for consideration at present.  A more brief analysis is made possible in light of Cavanaugh’s discussion of martyrdom and the nation-state.

For Cavanaugh, the story of the Chilean Church under Pinochet is a story about the church learning how to properly be itself through the performance of authentic Christian practices, of which martyrdom is a prime instance.  The whole point behind the regime denying the church martyrs is that doing so prohibited the church from functioning properly.  This is an especially interesting point of comparison with the current American situation since the United States is presently denying itself martyrs. 

Prior to illustrating this it will be helpful to take note of the American administration’s claims that the current military endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan are just, charitable, and worthwhile.  If one takes such claims seriously it seems natural for the leaders of the United States to encourage Americans to remember their dead soldiers in a way not unlike the church remembers her martyrs.  Indeed, if the “war on terror” is truly a cause worth dying for then dead Iraqi civilians should also be regarded by Americans as in some way martyrs.  It is consistent with the rhetoric of the administration and its supporters that they should regard all of the over half a million civilian deaths that have resulted from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as instances of martyrdom. 

Alongside this observation stands a consistent refusal by those involved in planning and carrying out the United States’ military agenda to deal with the resulting deaths as instances of martyrdom, or in many cases, to deal with them at all.  Since 1991, even the media have been prohibited from attending the ceremonies at Dover Air Force base that mark the return of dead soldiers to the United States.[7]  President Bush has not seen fit to attend a single funeral of a dead American soldier.  The President only just recently began appearing with wounded veterans after public outcry over his administration’s failures to ensure the wounded received basic quality follow-up care upon their return from the battlefield.[8]  Claims by administration spokespeople that these measures seek the respectful privacy of the families of the dead by keeping images of their beloved from the hands of tasteless propagandists are hollow.   Virtually all public voices claim unyieldingly to “support the troops.”

The American policy is in many ways unique.  When 19 Italians were killed in Iraq in November of 2003 they were given a state funeral with a quarter million people in attendance and another quarter million watching on television.[9]  As much, if not more, domestic controversy surrounded Italy’s military deployment in Iraq than has occurred in the United States.  Nevertheless, a state funeral for those now dying for the United States in Iraq is unthinkable in the present context.  The current policy is even unique to this country’s own history.  Some sixty years after the end of the Second World War American television is full of stories about bravery and sacrifice by the American airmen and soldiers of that era.  This essay’s composition is occurring only a short drive from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where every year in early July thousands of Americans from across the country come to “reenact” the fighting and dying of their ancestors during a seminal battle in the American Civil War.  Something about the way the American state views its own military agenda and the people who carry out this agenda has changed.  This change appears calculated insofar as it is part of explicit national policy.

An admittedly reductive formulation drawn from Cavanaugh’s work could describe martyrdom as a concrete witness to generalized notions of truth.  Such notions of truth are always potentially dangerous to the “vital interests” of the state.  For example, the U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled its government while claiming (at first in part and then eventually largely) to do so in response to atrocities the regime committed while it was receiving military aid from the U.S. (the gassing of Kurds in the spring of 1988).  The U.S. invasion of Saddam’s Iraq was only politically possible after the spectacular attacks on American symbols of power in the fall of 2001.  These attacks were financed and in some ways probably inspired by a former beneficiary of American weapons and cash (Osama bin Laden).  Generalized notions of truth are understandably unwelcome here.  Indeed, if the shifting priorities of the U.S. are taken as axiomatic for policy decisions it can always be argued that the absolutizing claims made in the naming of martyrs are categorically irrelevant to the “sphere” of modern political activity.  If, however, one takes the absolutizing claims inherent in death as basic then America’s own policies regard themselves as unworthy of death insofar as they avoid its witness.

That American policy both creates and denies so much death suggests something of the sinister. Why would a power be motivated to kill so many people while attempting to ignore (and thus conceal) their deaths?  Such policies are only comprehensible if one understands the concealment of death as a means to affecting those ends that required the death in the first place.  As his eventual removal from power attests to, General Pinochet’s application of state terror had much to learn from American methods.  It seems a power that can kill and instantly forget huge numbers of foreign people (and smaller numbers of its own people) is capable of a more vicious application of the Foucaultian mechanisms of silent state terror than the Pinochet regime ever dreamed of. If the present analysis is accurate it seems there would be only one real danger to present American policy: that it goes too far in its exercise of power for power’s sake and in so doing allows too many of those it has mobilized to discern its ultimately arbitrary ends. 

One thinks here of a story related by Slavoj Zizek about an imaginary town meeting in Stalinist Russia.  A townsperson stands up in the middle of the room and begins to berate the leadership and person of Joseph Stalin.  After a few minutes another person stands up, interrupts the dissident and says, “Stop! Don’t you know we are not allowed to speak of Stalin that way?”  Zizek suggests the second townsperson would meet death before the first.[10]  In this line of thinking the common, arbitrary presumptions that maintain state power are effective insofar as they go on unnoticed.  The story suggests that those who obey (and thus further) the power of the state cannot bear to look in on the very mechanisms of arbitrary power they are part of.  One could conjecture that those who can and do bear to look in plant the seeds of revolution.

To conjecture thus in America today, however, would be too optimistic.  The failure to name as martyrs those killed in America’s current military adventures is not a missed opportunity as it was for the church in Pinochet’s Chile.  Virtually no public voices in the U.S. today characterize dead soldiers and civilians as martyrs because no one takes what it is they are dying for as worthy of human life.  The pursuit of deadly policies which no one really “believes in” is thus not only an indictment of the nation’s leaders.  A secular culture whose public discourse is committed to a supposedly innocent agnosticism regarding all things transcendent has thus abandoned the only category of thought (theology) that is really equipped to discern what it is they are doing.  The American public dialogue concerning the “righteousness” of its wars has been primarily a conversation about their utility in securing the nation’s “vital interests” and their probability of success.  It is not a minority interpretation to assume, in the case of Iraq, that had objectives there been achieved with relative ease the current popular objections to the war would be of no concern to most Americans.  This in itself suggests the American public will support wars without assuming them to be anything more than the convenient, if violent securing of national self-interest.

This is not to say that attempts at moral reasoning concerning the conduct of warfare are not made.  Rather, honesty requires we admit the standards and presumptions of political discourse in the West today do not identify moral discourse as a primary tool in determining appropriate action.  “What should we do?” is no longer viewed by a large portion of the population as a necessarily ethical dilemma. 

At a certain point, once a certain portion of the population has consciously come to terms with a social and foreign policy based solely on (perceived) self-interest, a new, much more frightening, story about an imaginary town meeting becomes possible.  The new plot twist is that, after the second townsperson stands up and tells the dissident that dissidence is not allowed by the authorities, all of the townspeople look at the dissident and nod.  Astonished, she sits down.  They are all conspirators.  Discourse that purports to make society good is rendered impossible.

That it is crucial to the identity of the church that she claim martyrs and equally crucial to the identity of the (post)modern super-state that it avoid martyrs is thus a telling point of comparison.  For the church the body of the martyr is a locus of natural value beyond death and those forces that hasten it.  The U.S. desires to know nothing of any evaluative standards apart from those that arise in its pursuit of greater power.  The testmmony of human life is thus that the  church is “truer” than the liberal state.  The American churches will be faithful to the degree that they take death seriously and do not succumb to the temptation surrounding them to ignore death.  The witness of Christ is the witness that the only real victory for humanity and for the God of humanity is victory over death, not feigned ignorance of it.

---

[1] William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist (London: Blackwell, 1998).

[2] Ibid., 132.

[3] 1 Cor. 12.

[4] Cavanaugh, 148.

[5] Ibid., 63.

[6] Ibid., 59.

[7] Ann Scott Tyson, “Hundreds of Photos of Caskets Released” Washington Post [database on-line] (Washington D.C.: The Washington Post, 2005, accessed on 28 August 2007); available from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042802078.html; Internet.

[8] David Cloud and Jim Rutenberg, “Bush Panel Seeks Upgrade in Military Care” The New York Times [database on-line] (New York: The New York Times, 2007, accessed on 29 August, 2007); available from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/washington/26medical.html?ex=1188532800&en=d498871c68962dc7&ei=5070; Internet.

[9] “Italy Halts in Grief for Iraq Dead” BBC News [database on-line] (London: BBC, 2003, accessed 30 August 2007); available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3279201.stm; Internet.

[10] Slavoj Zizek, “Lacan’s Plea for Fundamentalism” Other Voices: The (e)Journal of Cultural Criticism Vol. 2 No. 2 [database on-line] (Other Voices, Editorial Collective: Philadelphia); available from http://www.othervoices.org/2.2/index.php; Internet.

Looking for Trouble

Today while I was driving one of the guys I work with to his day program, I was stopped at a light and had a chance to take a long look at a police officer in a Sherrif’s car. This is of course not exceptional.

Today, however, it occurred to me that what he was doing was really quite odd if one is actually interested in producing a better society. Police patrols reinforce in citizens a belief that they cannot take care of themselves and each other without the ever-present threat of deadly force.

Many thinkers follow Carl Schmitt in asserting that classically liberal societies are founded on the instance of the exception. If this is true then police patrols are a way of making the founding exception ever-present. The dreaded (yet hoped-for) confrontation in which we will have to band together once again to destroy the indian/black person/communist/terrorist is always potentially a moment away.

I have recently begun thinking about what a good society would look like (instead of just complaining about this one). For me it is important to envision what my town would look like if it were a good town, it keeps my vision grounded. There is certainly room for police officers in this vision. These officers would respond to calls from concerned people or people that needed help (I’m guessing that the vast majority of the time police officers are helpful is when their presence has been requested).

That the modern liberal state’s patrolling gunmen are actually unnecessary, whether they are in my neighborhood or an Iraqi neighborhood, is really a testament to the fact that the modern liberal state is unnecessary. Or, perhaps more accurately, the necessity of these gunmen is self-necessitating insofar as the presence of gunmen (and gunwomen) always raises the stake and makes more probable the deadly violence they are supposedly holding at bay.

Why I don’t think blogging is stupid anymore

I never understood why people would write blogs, letters to everyone that (I presumed) no one read. Then I became an un-enrolled graduate student.

No. Actually there is much more to it then that. Why would one think blogging is stupid? One likely reason is that one has abandoned or has never held that good (read Aristotelian good) social discourse is actually possible and desirable. This is also what is at play in the current popular sport of making fun of Wikipedia. Take, for example, what Steven Colbert did when he encouraged his viewers to log onto Wikipedia and spread nonsense. The idea is that by showing how easily the obviously stupid can be imputed into a Wikipedia article the entire project will be shown to be silly. Attempts at social knowledge are naive. Private knowledge and the experts who cultivate it (and charge for it) are the only things we can trust.

Colbert thus attempted to stage something of the spectacle that occurred at the end of the recent American movie Little Miss Sunshine. The remnant of a family finally makes it to the obviously shallow beauty pageant and, upon realizing the entire thing is a meaningless celebration of pride, “heroically” decides not to leave but to mock the pageant, abandoning themselves to be misunderstood. If one does not hold to the possibility of good (and thus useful) social discourse such misunderstanding is not a problem since it is actually inevitable (insofar as it is presumed the only real understanding is self understanding. This is why the teenage boy is silent throughout the first part of the film. If social discourse that purports to accomplish the good is impossible the only responsible thing to do is shut up. Or, to take it all the way, stop existing).

This is irresponsible and it is un-Christian. It is irresponsible because we have all benefited from social discourse (insofar as all discourse is social discourse). Your employment, your hobbies, your computer, indeed your very person are all to some degree a result of social discourse (yes, sex is an instance of social discourse). To attempt to withdraw from this discourse and mock it is thus irresponsible (not to mention impossible). It is also un-Christian because it does not take people seriously. Christians are to take people seriously qua people because all people are created in the image of God.

This is not a retreat from the critique of nihilism but rather a move to a vantage point from which it becomes clear, as David B. Hart writes, that “Critique is never merely doubt, but always a vantage (and advantage); it is always already principled, already dependent upon firm metaphysical assumptions, already a transcendental surveillance that has determined in advance the limits of every story’s credibility” (The Beauty of the Infinite, p7).

I have thus decided to be more responsible and to be a better Christian by blogging.