christopher cocca

WordPress users might have noticed that one of the featured community posts today is about why the author of The BeAttitude “recently walked away from Christianity.” There’s a list of the Top 20 Reasons, and it seems to me that these are perhaps all very good reasons to walk away from any number of Christianities but that none of them in and of themselves have as their necessary logical conclusion something on the order of atheism or even the rejection of some of the more brazen Christian claims (like Christ arose, Christ is Lord, etc).

I think if you predicate your religious belief on the veracity of religious artifacts (tradition, the Bible, etc), you’re in for disappointment. But if faith is a different kind of knowing or a different kind of experience than preposition-proof-point-and-counterpoint, there are more possibilities. I’m going to get into this in more depth in Part II of the Postmodern Ontology, Epistemology, and Faith post, but seeing this a few minutes ago underscores what I think is a pretty common rejection of faith outright the rejection is floored by what the modern project has revealed about the foundational premises of certain religious epistemologies. And so we call to the mystic.

As I write, I’m listening to “The State I Am In” by Belle & Sebastian. Why does sad music make me feel better about everything?

I was surprised, I was happy for a day in 1975
I was puzzled by a dream, stayed with me all day in 1995
My brother had confessed that he was gay
It took the heat off me for a while
He stood up with a sailor friend
Made it known upon my sisters wedding day

I got married in a rush to save a kid from being deported
Now she’s in love
I was so touched, I was moved to kick the crutches
From my crippled friend
She was not impressed that I cured her on the Sabbath
So I went to confess
When she saw the funny side, we introduced my child bride
To whisky and gin

The priest in the booth had a photographic memory
For all he had heard
He took all of my sins and he wrote a pocket novel called
“The State I Am In”
So I gave myself to God
There was a pregnant pause before he said ok
Now I spend my day turning tables round In Marks & Spencer’s
They don’t seem to mind

I gave myself to sin
And I’ve been there and back again
I gave myself to Providence
The state that I am in

Oh love of mine, would you condescend to help me
I am stupid and blind
Desperation is the Devil’s work, it is the folly of a boys empty mind
Now I’m feeling dangerous, riding on city buses for a hobby is sad
Lead me to a living end
I promised that I’d entertain my crippled friend
My crippled friend

It’s odd the bearing this has on me today.

We’ve been talking here and on other blogs for the past month about the possibility of sincere activisms, politics, and spiritualities and how these relate to what we can say about our relationships in general. At base, we’ve been wondering out loud about what we have to offer each other beyond glib regurgitation and cultural meme.  We’ve discussed the way irony deconstructs some of the inherent absurdities of pop-consensus as collective wisdom one hand even as cheap, easy sarcasm feeds the consensus-as-culture myth on the other.  We’ve asked where deconstruction takes us from here and have wondered what we’re left with.

I’ve also had these conversations over beer and wings in person recently.  I’ve been thinking specifically about deconstruction as such as an outgrowth of these talks, and about the classic modernist apologetic that a statement on the order of “there are no absolutes” is itself an absolute statement and the apparent problem with that contradiction. It seems too glib to say that such a contradiction is only a problem for you if you have a problem with contradiction (that is, if you’re a modern), but in a broader (and admittedly modern context), I wonder about the taxonomy of various definitions of “deconstruction” or “postmodernism.”  Again, pesky categories and precise definitions seem anathema to postmodern epistemology, and in many ways, they are, but there’s also the question of postmodern epistemology vs. postmodern ontology that gets collapsed by the classic modernist defense. 

Some postmodern ontologies (by no means are these monolithic) may claim the nonexistence of absolute or overarching truths.  When someone says this, is she, herself, making an absolute statement?  I suppose that depends on what you think the difference between a statement about “absolute truth” and an “absolute statement” is.   “There is no truth” is a statement absolutely.  Does that mean that the person saying it takes it as an absolute truth?  No, because on the terms of her philosophic ontology, the concept we term “truth” is unintelligible.  That’s what the denial of truth means. So, is the denial of truth an assertion of truth’s nonexistence?  Yes.  Does that make it something a philosopher with a postmodern ontology would call a “truth”?  Absolutely not.   In the first place, we can assert things without supposing them to be ontologically true.  Indeed, someone with postmodern ontology can do nothing else.  

Consider what for all intents and purposes does appear to be a fact:  to function in the material world (I know that we can’t know for sure that the material world even exists, Descartes, but I get to postmodern epistemology soon) a postmodern ontologist needs to function as though he expects typical physical feedback from his inputs.  He provisionally assumes (but does not have to believe at a level of ontology) that when he turns the spigot on to clean his razor before shaving, water will come out.  He provisionally assumes that when he wills to move his hand toward the sink or his feet toward the bathroom that his body will respond.  He may (or may not) provisionally assume that it’s his will to do these things in the first place.  His actions are, in a sense, assertions of material science or physical laws, but that doesn’t mean he has to believe that these are true.  His participation in for what all intents and purposes seems to be “the world” is not a contradiction.   Neither is his participation in the conversation about absolutes.  Neither his walking down the hall nor his explicit denials of the existence of truth equate to tacit acceptance of a set of assumptions his ontology rejects.  We have no reason to assume that when he says “there are no absolutes” he doesn’t mean exactly that.

I know this still sounds like contradiction for a lot of people, and the vexing thing for moderns is that the postmodern ontologist can say “so what?” That said, I think it’s more helpful for us to deconstruct the modernist apologia from another angle.  

Let’s assume there exists a person for whom the deconstruction of truth claims begins and and ends with the assertion that “there is no absolute truth.”   Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there are many of these people.  My hunch is that when most of them are pressed, they won’t respond as I have above.  I think most people who say “there isn’t any absolute truth” actually mean “we can’t know absolute truth.”   Their epistemology is postmodern, not their ontology.  Indeed, their ontology is probably absent.  

Of course for moderns, postmodern epistemologies and postmodern ontologies have the same soft underbelly:  isn’t saying “we can’t know what is real/true”  also saying it’s true that we can’t know these things?  I don’t think so.  I think when someone says “we can’t know what’s true” they also mean that they can’t know with any certainty that that statement itself is true.  If I were to scale these things, this seems less contradictory, to me, than non-truth claims of the hypothetical postmodern ontologist.  

In Part 2 of this post In a future installment of this post, (there may be a new edition of Blog Love between this post and the next [there wasn't]), I’m going to talk about spiritual possibility when we take a postmodern epistemology (again, these are not monolithic) for granted.  Hint:  I think the possibilities are rich and perhaps our only real option.  

Part 2 is here, with more to follow. 

Queen Elizabeth II is the world’s only current head of state to have served in the armed forces during World War II.  As Elizabeth Windsor, the Queen trained as a mechanic in the British service and drove military vehicles during the war.  She really should have been invited to next week’s Normandy commemorations in France.  

I don’t live in the UK so I don’t know, but I’ve always felt like the monarch’s role as Head of State (the PM is the head of government) is slightly more than titular.  Sure, the British monarch doesn’t have any real power (I feel silly even pointing that out), but his/her function as a meta-political, historic, and cultural symbol that’s thought to somehow bind ideas of Britishness or UKness in the person of a king or queen is a pretty deft postmodern switch.

Obviously, the history of the monarchy since at least the Magna Carta is one of royal concessions of power to barons, bourgeoisie, quasi-constitutionalism, popular government, the rule of law, Parliament, etc, but for whatever reason the British have seen fit to preserve the vestiges of monarchy-as-idea.  And so the national monarchy, originally an oscillating locus of power, sometimes centralized, sometimes not, but certainly always meaning to grab more and giving it up only when forced, is crystalized as a genteel anthropomorphism for Britain’s political/legal history and culture.  (It’s important to note that at least in theory,  the monarch remains the sole ontological possessor of sovereign power, with the government acting on her behalf in concert with the will of the people via parliamentary elections. Consider how different that is from an political ontology that asserts the a priori sovereignty of the individual via nature and nature’s God).  

The preservation of the monarchy as a living metanarrative necessarily weakens it:  Elizabeth Windsor is not honored as a proto-feminist or a patriot on the eve of the Normandy ceremonies, she is forgotten.  The evolution of the monarchy from national head of government and geopolitical schemer to public relations firm is good for people who love the rule of law (ahem) and it’s a profound deconstruction of institutionalism as such.  When the monarchy had power it was a living, breathing organism.  When it crystalized as symbol it became museum piece. 

Wait for it.

Yes.  Yes, that’s exactly what religion does to God.  That’s exactly what the Church does to its Christ.  Over time, we got it in our heads that tradition is something other than our apotheosis of practices that flowed naturally from the communities that started them.  That because they’re old they’re holy, that because they’re ancient they’re that much closer (what, chronologically?) to God.  We freeze a sliver here from Acts 2 and a sliver here from Calvin or from Luther or from Vatican II or liberation theology and we make unnatural liturgy and set guilt-inducing expectations.  We codify, rinse, wash, repeat what was for someone once authentic worship.   And we forget about the one we say is sovereign.  We don’t invite him to our otherwise so well-planned, scripted parties.

I glossed this in one of my posts about “The Furious Longing of God” by Brennan Manning and “Jesus, Interrupted” by Bart Ehrman, but I’ve been thinking lately about mysticism as epistemology.   (This was also referenced on Micah Tillman’s blog recently).

On Monday night I was driving to Adrmore from the Lehigh Valley and I heard “Call To The Mystic” by Gandalf Murphy & The Slambovian Circus of Dreams.  I’m really digging the imagery of this song.  And if you ever wondered what a hypothetical folk-singing offspring of the Bon Jovi and Cougar Mellencamp clans might sound like, you’ll want to listen.  Also, more bands need accordions.

In this clip, Joziah Longo explains a little more about the song.

So you know how people who oppose embryonic stem cell research are often made to feel morally inferior by embryonic stem cell research supporters with appeals to quality of life issues for the already-born?  

What will ESCR supporters have to say to groups like PETA (or others opposed to animal experiments) about this?:

Scientists yesterday announced a breakthrough that could transform research into a range of incurable diseases but spark a dramatic increase in the number of monkeys used in experiments. Researchers have developed a technique to create genetically modified monkeys that suffer from human illnesses.

Experimenting on these monkeys, they believe, will advance our understanding and treatment of incurable conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. However, the scientific breakthrough has caused consternation among groups opposed to animal experiments because the development will almost certainly lead to a sudden increase in the number of primates used in medical research at a time when there are calls for fewer monkeys to be used in experiments.

Read more here.  I love it when self-granted moral high grounds get all ouchy.  

“We recently got wind that some of Shepard’s Obama illustrations are being used to protest Obama’s upcoming visit to Notre Dame University. The images are being used beside those of slaves and graphic photographs of aborted fetuses. The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Mid West is driving these billboards on semi-trucks around South Bend, Indiana and flying them from planes above the sky where the University is located. We fully support reproductive rights and in no way allowed the CBR to use these illustrations. While we completely support the first amendment, we are saddened to see people manipulate Shepard’s illustration of our President in this manner.”

Is ObeyGiant.com really upset by this?   I’m not suggesting that Shepard Fairey and his organization are kidding about being pro-choice, of course, but the fact that the renowned deconstructor of propaganda phenomenology also made the iconic image of the Obama campaign is one level of this I’ve always found compelling.  That his people are upset by the propagandization of that very image (which the AP claims was wrongly wrested from them  in the first place) is another.  This feels full-circle in a strange kind of way.   I get that the juxtaposition of the Obama images with those of slavery and abortions is jarring and I get that that’s point (speaking of phenomenology).   My own personal views about the intersection of fetal rights and progressive politics are elsewhere on this blog, but regardless of your position in that debate, don’t you find this fascinating?

This ties into the larger discussions we’ve been having about the almost-oppressive layers of irony that cover almost everything we say and our questions about the possibility of sincerity.  When we’re finally finished deconstructing and turn our energies to building,  will anyone believe us?  Will anyone trust us enough?  Or will we all be too afraid of not being in on the gag when the other shoe finally drops?  Because hasn’t it always?

Has it?

Last week a friend and I were talking and he was saying how great Canada is, “it’s like America without being America” or something and I took umbrage and he said “Oh that’s right, you’re a patriot.”

I’m not exactly sure what that means.  Like many people from across Leftist and Rightist politics, I love America.  It’s my home and I’m proud of it.  It should go without saying that loving a place doesn’t always mean agreeing with all of the policies pursued by detached regimes in Washington or Boise or Harrisburg or wherever.  You can love a place for all kinds of reasons.  You can love the mythology of a place, you can love the struggles to overcome the parts of those mythologies that end up hurting people.  You can love the freedom to do that.  You can love the bi-polar obsession with populism and individualism and all of their constituent myths. You can love William Jennings Bryan and Eugene V. Debs and Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.  All of them or none of them.  

Patriot for whatever reason has a jingoism to.  But if patriot means lover and fan then I’m fine. Patriot might mean manifest destiny and Monroe Doctrine but it doesn’t really have to. It could mean escape from the straw poverty of Southern Italy in the late 19th-century (my Dad’s family) or from the religious wars in Northern Europe in the 17th (my Mom’s) or a million other things.  And some went to Canada and some to South America and many came here.  So it could mean just loving where your family landed, loving their idea of possibility, loving the hope of it for yourself.  It could mean a million things.  

It could be in the Thomas Paine sense.  Or the Bob Dylan sense.  Like William Penn or Ben Franklin or Johnny Cash or Elvis.  It could be Frank Sinatra or Brian Wilson or Ronnie Specter or Mahalia Jackson. It could be Leadbelly and Alan Lomax.  It could be the Byrds.  It’s Rosetta Tharpe. 

I don’t believe in American exceptionalism like George Bush and John McCain and Barack Obama do, but I do have strong affinity for American things: American history, American writing, American cinema, American music.  Of course, saying I’m a fan of these things could also mean that I’m a fan of the the pop era, or of the last 300 years or whatever, but I’m not uncomfortable with collapsing these things together.  I think people know what you mean when you call something quintessentially American and aren’t trying to be ironic or hip (er, subversive).   So I like baseball and blues and the Carters and Disney futurism and Ellis Island and Ernest Hemingway and Teddy Roosevelt.  I don’t need to qualify my fandom by remembering to point out every evil counterpoint to the things I like best.  I know them.  You know them.  Does anyone really think that saying you like a thing means you’re blind to its whole history?

One thing I’m learning is just how frail we are.  I don’t know that there’s some ontological sin America must own up to.   America isn’t an existential being.  It’s a place where people who do good and bad live. America is in one sense what it always has been: El Dorado, New World, thing we need it to be.  The New Atlantis.  And it is also what we make it.  Some people make tyranny.  Some people make art.  Make art.   Rhetoric is mental violence; make your political philosophy art.  Make your protests art.  Make your love art and your myths art and make your struggle art.  Make your ridiculous luxury and your raw deal art.  Your liberty and your injustice.  Your privilege and your lacking.  

A few weeks ago Stanley Fish wrote a piece called “God Talk” for the New York Times discussing Terry Eagleton’s new book that deconstructs what Fish calls the “school-yard atheism” of articulates like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.  (I disagree with Hitchens about there being no God, by the way, but I find his conversations with South Park Republican Andrew Sullivan thoroughly delightful).

“God Talk Part 2” went up yesterday.  Stanley Fish is known for many things, the literary theory of “reader response” among them.  When I learned about Fish in div school I connected dots to Strauss and was roundly disregarded. (The same thing happened when I read Kant’s Ethics, but that’s a different story).  A few years later I read a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education where Fish said the Straussian influence on his own method is undeniable.  (I figure you don’t get to be an intellectual in Chicago without imbibing Strauss somewhere).  “Reader response” takes on a different meaning “God Talk Part 2″.  The entire piece is framed by Fish’s response to the commenter on the first essay.   I think this is a sly and also phenomenologically profound: a popular (and contrarian) intellectual responding in popular media to the vox populi of his readers.

The guts of his argument is something that postmodern theists have been talking about for a long time: it’s nothing new to people who have studied postliberal, paleo-orthodox, emerging church, or narrative theology or who have ever read Francis Schaeffer (note: Schaeffer’s epistemology is a leap-of-faith call to orthodoxy, but he deconstructs scientific certainty in ways that make postmodern theology understandable).   So Fish isn’t saying anything new, but the idea that belief in reason is belief is still so far off the radar of so many progressives and positivists.

Paleofuture.com is one of my all-time favorite blogs.  I’ll say more about that in a coming edition of Blog Love, but I spent some time today looking there at pictures like this from EPCOT books and other places:

I was going to write an essay about toroidal space colonies and what makes a thing authentic and I’d probably get into terraforming as human duty.  I started doing that and what’s below came out instead.  So rather than edit and refine it and make it palatable to everyone or into something finally constructive, I thought I’d share it as a writing experiment/free association with the picture as a prompt.

I was a kid in the 80’s and got to go to EPCOT.  I used to read Popular Mechanics and try to make crap out of batteries and magnets and draw fighter jets and space stations and curvy future cars and build paper ammo wristbows from rubber bands and hangers.  I did The Jason Project.

I remember when the Challenger blew up because the lady teacher had a kid  my age and my family had an Aerostar the first summer they came out.  After it happened Ford pulled the commercials that showed how the nose of their new mini-van looked just like the Shuttle.  I broke the sliding door with my first GI Joe and burned my arm on an interior light and it scabbed and cracked and leaked all summer and I’d touch the the puss with the fat tips of my fingers to see if it would hurt.

My grandmother made me watch INF when I was 7 so I could say that I’d seen history.  She didn’t say it but in 1987 you had no way of being sure you’d see more big human moments.  Imagine living like that for 4o, 50 years, thinking about the button, building schools with fallout bunkers, doing drills. I remember the first time I saw a plane, it was Wednesday, 9/19.  I went to college near a  power plant with two cement torch chimneys so these things made me nervous.  I imagine living like this for 40, 50 years, collecting history for my son just in case it stops.  Waiting for the break, the thaw, the Islamofascist perestroika. The Western glasnost Gorbachev and the Dubai-Vegas-Beijing Red Dawn white trash show.  Waiting for the INF bombs to come in off the market.  There is no end of history, Francis Fukuyama. There is history or nothing.

Obama will close Gitmo but will hold enemy combatants indefinitely without trial on the mainland.  Semantics must be justice. There are pictures of Pelosi toasting Cheney and Shepard Fairey laughing, obey, obey, obey, obey the giants and their posses.  I was a kid in the 80’s.

I thought we’d have more now:  sustainable communities instead of social networks.  Colonies in space.  Personal computers and their market like I didn’t get when I was 10, personal accessories and spirit trips but  lazy outward pushing.  If Richard Branson brings the heavens we should fill them.

From Tweedy & Co.:

Well, we made it nearly a month with copies of Wilco (the album) floating around out there before it leaked. Pretty impressive restraint in this day and age. But the inevitable happened last night. Since we know you’re curious and probably have better things to do than scour the internet for a download (though we do understand the attraction of the illicit), we’ve posted a stream of the full album at http://wilcoworld.net/records/thealbum/ . Feel free to refer to it as “wilco (the stream)” if you must.

We also have our usual guilt abatement plan for downloaders. If you have downloaded the record, we suggest you make a donation to one of the band’s favorite charities, the Inspiration Corporation — an organization we’ve supported in the past & who are doing great work in the city of Chicago. Information and donation button here: http://inspirationcorp.org/.

That’s all. Enjoy the stream. Tickets for summer shows, etc. http://wilcoworld.net/tours/ Note that we’ll be holding a free online midnight screening of the “Ashes of American Flags” film this Friday night (at both midnight US Central time and again at midnight Pacific). So get the popcorn or whatever together and be sure to log on and tune in on Friday.

Wilco HQ

I’ve only heard the first song, which my boy and I both like.  He sings along to the chorus.  The second song (am in the middle of it now) is strong, too.