Broken Promises

"Religion in general compensates for the fact that modern society doesn't deliver us what it promises." - Dr. Jeffrey McPherson

I won't quote anyone specific at you, but the simple fact is that when religion is taken out of the equation, Western people measure their success in life with only two factors: the status of their work lives, their professional accomplishments, and the status of their personal lives, generally measured by the amount and quality of their personal relationships.  These lives are generally distinct from one another, but more importantly they are the primary evaluative mechanisms of modern society.  An example will help.

If I were to walk up to you some time tomorrow and tell you that my friend John is very successful, you would imagine that he is either gainfully employed or engaged in an educational path that will make him so, and that he similarly partakes in fulfilling relationships with his family and friends.  There will be some other nonsense about happiness somewhere in there, but this is mostly assumed to derive from the fact that he's financially successful and has fulfilling relationships.

We covered this general topic today in a class I'm taking with the aforementioned Dr. McPherson, and we specifically covered the fact that these are both lies.

The great English philosopher Thomas Hobbes had a good deal correct when he said that men are dangerous, not because they seek happiness, but because the happiness that they seek is only found when they have both met their needs and desires and ensured that they will forevermore have those same needs and desires met.  In other words, what Hobbes is saying is that having $500 in your pocket will make any person happy, but most people will only be happy if they can ensure that a continuous stream of cash will supplement that $500, enough to sustain a comfortable, enjoyable existence.  Without that security, without knowing that tomorrow and the day after and the day after that will also be fine, most people tend to not be happy.

This becomes a problem in the modern world, because our primary indicator of status and success is directly tied to our occupations.  One man is a cashier at McDonald's, another is the teller at a bank and still another owns the bank.  We would probably evaluate these men, given no other criteria, as being progressively more successful.  The problem with the modern world is that in an instant, that can change.  To be fair, people at all times in history have been at the mercy of their employers, but workers (or those seeking work) in the modern age definitely seek a more ruthless kind of devaluation.  Workers are hired and fired at the whims of employers in the modern world because they tend to be almost completely replaceable.  If Jerry who works as a cashier begins acting up and making it clear that he believes he has earned a raise for himself, it is usually easier to find someone to replace him in his meaningless job than it is to give him a raise: and most employers will do just that.

This problem stretches on and on throughout the modern workforce: valuable, skilled people lose their jobs daily because "the company is going in a new direction" or because they've just been off of their game for the last few months.  Thus, one of our primary methods of self-valuation and of evaluating others is, at least in the modern world, as ephemeral and vulnerable as a mist on a windy day.

"That's fine," some might say, "I actually derive my personal value from my relationships."

...okay, I'll admit that I may be the only person I know that would actually say those words, but you get my point.

The problem is that this often over-burdens our relationships.  There's a reason that we all buy into the Hollywood myth of the perfect love story: we want it.  There's an intimacy and a meaningfulness in our love myth that's lacking in our professional lives, and we want our lives to mean something the way that lives (and loves) in the rom-com do.  Who doesn't want their life to be enveloped in fulfillment and deep personal intimacy with Zooey Deschanel?

Maybe I'm getting too biographical...

Anyway, the point is that we take all of the meaning and weight that we can no longer derive from our occupations (given their ephemeral nature) and we thrust all the impetus for our personal meaning onto our personal relationships.  The really funny thing is that we are then genuinely surprised when our relationships leave us emotionally drained and longing for respite.

Another problem with our relationships is that in the modern world, more than ever before, our relationships are disposable.  If tomorrow I decided to permanently cease all contact with my family members, relocate to Denver, Colorado and start a new life in which I didn't utilize social media, the thing that would give most of my new friends a feeling of uneasiness and distrust about me would not be that I seemingly had no family, no friends and no life prior to January 29th, 2013, it would be that I didn't use social media!

We live in an era where the single most "meaningful" aspect of our lives can be put on and taken off like a ratty sweater whenever we want.

So, in the end, we have two criterion for happiness and personal success, both of which can be ripped out from under us at a moment's notice, completely outside of any control we might exert.

Feeling happy yet?

It's no wonder then that so many people turn to religions to derive their meaning.  As the quote at the beginning of this diatribe reiterated, we are promised the world.

Chuck Palahniuk says in Fight Club, "we grew up believing we would end up as rock stars and pro football players," we have been fed the lie that if we work hard and do our best to be nice we will have great, rewarding jobs and fantastic personal lives and that these will give us meaning.

Then we put out 18 applications to fast food restaurants, get a college degree, try and fail in our personal relationships and we're left with no money, no means to acquire it, the shame of living under someone else's roof, and none of the interpersonal comforts that are supposed to make it all feel better.

What religion does, whether it's true or false, is provide us with a metaphysical, invisible system by which we can look at a lonely, unemployed life and still say two ourselves: 1) I am unconditionally meaningful 2) Things are going to eventually get better for me, and 3) All of this bad stuff really might not be my fault, and even if it is, I'll eventually be okay as long as I behave.  Not always, but they usually tend to offer some solid advice as well.

I dare you to find a religion that doesn't do that.  I don't even mean the big ones, although they also fit those parameters.  Look at Mormonism, Scientology, Satanism, Neo-Paganism, old paganism, greek mystery religion, theravada Buddhism, shinto Buddhism, etc.

Again, I'm not trying to say anything about the truth or untruth of religious claims.  I for one am a Catholic, and a proud one at that.  But even though I believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is an historical fact, I do acknowledge that my whole worldview does a pretty good job at telling me that I'm unconditionally meaningful, that eventually, no matter what, things are going to get better, and that most of the evil in the world, even when it happens to me, isn't my fault at the core.  And where it is, I can fix that.

Those are comforting thoughts in any time period, but especially in ours they offer a powerful impetus.

That's enough for now, but tomorrow we'll tackle truth claims.

It's been wonderful,

     J.R.M.C.

Untitled - A return to poetry.

I haven't posted a poem in a while, so here's one for your viewing pleasure.

Depart from me,
     cruel visage of my defeat.
Pale spheres of grief which linger lifeless and lull me to lunacy,
Captivating paradigm of peace, prosper not and project thyself from my presence!
Prostrate and pummeled with pain I plead with you!
Show me not the magnified curves of your continental countenance before which I cower and crawl, crazed and confused by your cold, crisp charisma.
And yet,
Look!
You turn about to assault me once more!
What foul torment is this faceless fate which fondles my fantasies and forges them fated for failure?
Come to me no more!
May your lovely and ludicrous lens let languish my long, lamenting labors
and close!

Some things never change.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

As most of you are aware, I'm at the beginning of my final undergraduate semester at Robert's Wesleyan College.  I've taken all of my important classes, I've passed them, I've learned a great deal and soon enough it will be time to move on out into the "real world".  In a very real sense, I'm facing a new beginning.  Wherever I end up going to graduate school, I'll be moving away from Rochester, starting graduate school and beginning my academic career in earnest (assuming that I get into a grad program.)  No matter what, I'll be packing up, shipping out and doing something genuinely new in about four months, and I'll be doing it in a genuinely new place.

As an army brat, there's literally nothing new to me about the process.  The next few months will be hard as I wrap up and end most of my relationships at Roberts, the month or two which follow will be difficult and exciting as I forge new relationships, and then life will assume a normal rythym again.  

The only thing I would call into question is the whole notion of a "new beginning".

Let me put it this way: no one that I know here at Roberts will join me at grad school, and based on the locations of my choices no one that I even know will either.  I'll be in a new place, at a new school, in a new program doing new (and from what I hear, horrendous) amounts of work.  All of that is both new and true, but I'm still going to be the same person.  My experiences at Roberts (and every other place I've ever been) have still formed me into a certain kind of person, and the same can be said for every person with whom I've interacted

I can change where I am, and I can change what I'm doing, but the decisions I've made and the habits I've formed will always form my basic self.  I'm still the one who's going, and it will be my past experiences that determine how I interpret and react to the events around me when I get wherever I'm going.  It's not a new beginning, it's just a different set of circumstances.

It's not even really that fundamental of a change, frankly.  And even if it was, I'm still the same person, and I'm not dead or dying, so it's still the same story.

If Shakespeare had written "The Chronicle of Horatio" and wove a grand tale of how, after Hamlet's death, Horatio left on a ship for the orient and took over a small province there, Horatio would still be the same character, and would probably still react the same way to most situations he encountered, and he would probably fulfill a similar role.

My deeper point is this: we always choose who we are, either directly or indirectly, with every decision that we make.  Thus, if we move ourselves to a different place, even if we start doing different things, the likelihood that anything will actually change is negligible at best.  You got where you are and I got where I am by being a certain kind of person and acting a certain kind of way.  It may seem hopeless to say it, but in all likelihood none of us are likely to fundamentally change the roles we fill, ever.

So then, my point would be that this isn't a "new beginning" because they don't exist.  Every moment is an opportunity to create a self, and moving around the scenery doesn't do one thing to change who we are or how we react.

+10 Health, 5% resistance to magic

Anyone who knows me fairly well knows that like most American 15-25 year old males, I’m a gamer: ever since I was little I've been fascinated with the medium.  In particular I have always loved RPGs or Role Playing Games.  For the uninitiated, these extensive games often focus on fantasy themes and take a stereotypically weak and naive protagonist through a fantastic world.  Typically, you start out at your home village in a green tunic, fighting rats with a rusty knife and by the end of the game you’re on the top of a grand tower, wielding an 8-foot broadsword against an infernal ax demon.  And that’s not even the final boss.

Now, anyone who’s played one of these games knows that all items come with statistics.  The green shirt you start out with doesn't do jack-shit, but somewhere along the line you find the hat of magical magicyness or the scythe of supercool killingness and the readout will be something like “+5 intelligence” or “180000 fire damage, 8 attack”.  The basic gist is that just by equipping the item or weapon or whatever it may be, your statistics go up and you can kick more ass.  It’s really fun, and it works well in games.

The sad thing is that, while we all know it isn’t the case, we tend to think along these lines in real life.  I know I’m guilty of this too, lest I fall victim to the pot’s case against the kettle.

You might question the notion, but all you have to do for confirmation is walk into your closest athletic goods store and you’ll see.  Especially around this time of year, you’ll see all kinds of people making their way to these stores and dropping vast amounts of money on name-brand super-science shoes, under armor jock straps and north face backpacks.  Most of these people don’t need them and won’t really use them.  Jerry McFatfat might drop $300 on sporting goods because they’ll make him better at working out, but he knows and we know that he’s probably not going to work out because he’s trusting his stuff to take care of that for him.

Bottom line is, there’s not a pair of shoes that makes you faster, a lifting shirt that makes you stronger, a backpack that makes you more outdoorsy or a tweed coat that makes you smarter.  A diploma or degree doesn’t, as a thing you possess, make you more educated any more than owning a Tom Brady jersey lets you throw a football 49 yards and hit a moving target with a total effective radius of about 6 inches.

You become good at things, whether it’s running, thinking, acting, lifting, baking pies or underwater basket weaving, by simply doing them.  There’s not a thing that will make you better at them.

Granted, there is such a thing as necessary equipment.  Some tasks cannot be completed without certain items: baseball kind of requires a ball and if you try to play hockey without a stick and pads you’re going to end up both losing and badly bruised.

But nonetheless, we only become what we want to be through vigorous effort.  Whether you’re trying to write computer programs or run a marathon, the only way you get better at doing that thing is by getting up off your ass and DOING THEM!  Life doesn’t come with any free passes and there’s no such thing as a thing that automatically makes you better at something.

It’s been wonderful,

-J.R.M.C.

P.S.  Sorry for the radio silence over the last week, it was Christmas vacation.