Titanic Post

Part of the problem with this Cartesian Dualism, which seems to rule our society today, is that many of us can’t and don’t really enjoy life very much. Protestant thinking carries dualism further than mere separation of body and mind and suggests that each individual is detached from other individuals as well as everything else in the universe. Then add that the fate of the soul is determined by how much or how little the mind has caused the body to sin. Catholicism and the other major religions teach that we are connected. Protestant theology has, in the past, also suggested that labor is the sure way to salvation. When you believe unquestionably that the body is separate from the mind and that the mind is the better of the two, and humans are basically individuals all on their own, strange things start to happen. Either you make labor your life’s goal or you start to really love yourself.

The ones who are good at laboring become CEOs of huge corporations. The ones who fall deeply in love with themselves become narcissists. A few become both, like Howard Hughes did. My theory is that the people who work sixteen hours a day, seven days a week are not enjoying life a whole lot. Sure they have material wealth, but do they have the time or muse to enjoy it. I think not. These people are mistakenly labeled materialists, because they become wealthy. A real materialist, I think, would enjoy her possessions.

G.K. Chesterson, who was Catholic, wrote in the first verse of The Song Of The Strange Ascetic:

If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have praised the purple vine,
My slaves should dig the vineyards,
And I would drink the wine.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And his slaves grow lean and grey,
That he may drink some tepid milk
Exactly twice a day.

(I fancy that this Higgins was a protestant heathen.)

Every era has its own way of driving people crazy. The Victorians were fond of hysteria. Perhaps coincidentally, the Victorian Age came about a short time after protestantism and capitalism had solidified their marriage of convenience. Then the mid-twentieth century saw the rise of schizophrenia. Narcissism became popular in the 7os an 80s. Hysteria, schizophrenia, and narcissism all have detachment from reality. I speculate that the alienation of workers from their products, brought about by the Industrial Revolution, gave the first kick to our sense of separateness. Being separated from humanity, from nature, the universe, and God bears heavily on the human psyche. What else to do other that work yourself to death of fall in love with yourself.

I’m not saying we should feel sorry for the rich oil company executives and people who love themselves, but those of us who value time more than money and focus love on others do have more fun.

While I was in the mountains Sunday, sitting on a rock overlooking the great Tularosa Basin, this poem by Hafiz came to mind:

When
The violin
Can forgive the past

There is a Beautiful Creature
Living in a hole you have dug.

So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and milk
Beside your soft earthen mounds,

And I often sing.

But still, my dear,
You do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone
Who hides inside you.

We should talk about this problem—

Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.

~ Hafiz

Don’t let that horse
eat that violin
cried Chagall’s mother
But he
kept right on
painting
And became famous
And kept on painting
The Horse With Violin In Mouth
And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
and rode away
waving the violin
And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across
And there were no strings
attached

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys:
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches, and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanised automaton.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Whatever little we have gained we have gained by agitation, while we have uniformly lost by moderation.

~ Daniel O’Connell, 1824

I think as I please
And this gives me pleasure.
My conscience decrees,
This right I must treasure.
My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator,
No man can deny –
Die gedanken sind frei.
– German 16th-century peasant song (revived as a protest anthem against the Nazi regime)