The Ontological Lapsometer

Saturday, November 2, 2013

All Souls' Day

God is the God of the living. With confidence, we pray:
For all the dead whom we have loved in life: Raise them up, O Lord.
For all the dead of our parish: Raise them up, O Lord.
For all the dead among those who have harmed us: Raise them up, O Lord.
For all the dead whom no one remembers in prayer: Raise them up, O Lord.

Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed, and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being. - Pope Benedict XVI

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Not Just the Paradox of Choice but the Tyranny of Freedom Wrongly Understood

I little while ago I read Barry Schwartz's book "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less".
Schwartz provides a nice summary of his work at one of the TED Conferences which can be watched here.

It is certainly worth your 20 minutes. Schwartz very well may rattle you a bit because he takes some basic assumptions of our society out for re-examination. In fact, Schwartz doesn't rest at calling them assumptions he calls them dogmas and as he explains, the official dogma of all Western Industrial societies runs like this:

"If we are interested in maximizing the welfare of our citizens, the way to do that is to maximize individual freedom. The reason for this is that freedom is both, in and of itself good, valuable, worthwhile, essential to being human AND because if people have freedom than each of us can act on our own to do the things that will maximize our welfare and no one has to decide on our behalf. The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice. The more choice people have, the more freedom they have; and the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have."

A main theme of Schwartz's work is in making observations that our overwhelming options for choice, (particularly in, but not limited to, the area of consumer goods), are making us less happy not more happy. Schwartz is a psychologist so he looks at this from a psychological point of view and discovers that people's brains just are equipped to deal with all of the options and endless possibilities. In other words, we are finite, and when marketeers offer us what is seemingly infinite or limitless, our brains simply cannot cope. In fact, this constant barrage of choice leads to what is often called analysis paralysis and when we do make choices we end up less satisfied with the choices we have made. A more troubling side effect of all of this choice however is the heightened anxiety that is always buzzing in our heads, internally. In summary, Schwartz prescribes low expectations and reduction, (but not elimination), of options for choice.

But that can't be all there is to it, can it?

I'm not religious...I just love the Lord.

This is a line that I've seen floating around Evangelical circles in some way, shape or form since I was a kid. I think it basically means: "We love Jesus but we acknowledge that sometimes religious people have done things that are an embarrassment to our um...their religion." Anyway, that line has been floating around at least since the 70's but the Emergent Evangelicals are having their own go at is if it's something they just discovered.

I always feel bad for the Emergents, (you know Brian McLaren, Rob Bell and that guy who wrote "Blue Like Jazz"). I mean I get what they're reacting to. Somewhere in the last couple of decades American Evangelicalism seems to have reached it's zenith. Of course, this is debatable but certainly there has been a surge of Evangelical influence in the near recent past and the Emergents were not impressed. Or, if they were impressed, they also experienced a let-down. Some of their criticisms are well placed. It's just that they're wrong about what they propose as far as how to fix things.

Another Emergent, Jim Palmer, prescribes 25 Reasons Why It Is Time For A Religion-Free Bible.
However, I really think Palmer's take really begs a few questions, (which I responded with in red).
1. The Bible is not a religious book.
Question: What sort of book is it then?

Intellectual Hubris

From Purgatorio, Canto 3:

"Insane is he who hopeth that our reason
Can traverse the illimitable way,
Which the one Substance in three Persons follows!
Be ye content oh human race with the queer;
For if ye had been able to see the whole,
No need there were for Mary to give birth;
And ye have seen such sages desiring without fruit,
Whose desire had else been satisfied,
Is given them for eternal grief.
I speak of Aristotle and of Plato,
And many others;"

There's an impulse sometimes try to reason our way into salvation - to find the specific clue to our particular brokenness as it shows up in our time and place and present the key to everyone.
Salvation as a simple syllogism.

There's an arrogant frustration that comes in not being able to peer into the depths of infinity and turn the key, as if mere knowledge can save us.
If we just get our theology right, if we just squint our eyes and strain to see the clues it will all click.
This is probably a flavor of Gnosticism - a mystical knowledge the originates from within.
Otherwise known as plain old worship of the intellect.

There is comfort in Solomon here:
"Vanity, vanities. All is vanity...
All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor is the ear filled with hearing."
Ecclesiastes Chapter 1

Or St. Paul:
"Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away."
1 Cor 13: 8