Tag Archives: Gabriel Marcel

Ego Integrity Amidst Constant Change

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Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me
Gabriel Marcel

This French philosopher echoes Shakespeare who assured us that “There is a divinity that doeth shape our ends, rough hew them how we may.” It is easier to a linear-thinking mind to extrapolate from this the presence of “mind” (i.e. “god”) who is calling all the shots. I understand that line of thinking but I think it reduces God to finite terms. But I like the idea of being “rough hewn” and having the hope that there is some “method to the madness” of what I’ve called, and do call, my life which is working out the loose ends. And I really like Marcel’s description of “a mysterious principle which is ‘in connivance’ with me.” I like the idea of having a hand in my fate, being in “conniving” with this “mysterious principle” which I still like to call “God.”

A similar theme as presented here was put into words by the poet Stanley Kunitz in his poem “The Layers” when he posited the notion that through the vortex of changes that characterize our life there is some “remnant of being from which I struggle not to stray.” Psychologists call this consistency “ego integrity.”

BY STANLEY KUNITZ
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.

Here is a link to the entirety of “The Layers”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/54897)

Words No Longer Matter

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But I cling, nevertheless, to my childish fantasy that words do matter, in spite of what Trumpism is unleashing in our world.  Donald Trump demonstrated repeatedly that he could say anything, including with his behavior, and people would dutifully overlook it.  The best example was when he declared brazenly, “I could shoot someone in the street in Manhattan and not suffer at the polls.”  He was right.  He once told a crowd in Iowa after falling behind in the polls, “How stupid can you get?”  He carried Iowa easily in the election.

But I must admit that I play loose and easy with words.  I do not believe they are the “thing in itself” so that when you passionately affirm your faith in “God”, for example, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with God.  But, we live in a less esoteric world where the meaning of words in popular usage carries weight.  Therefore, if I cry “fire” in a crowded theater, I have crossed a line.  If I tell a hot young woman, “You have a fine rack,” then I have crossed a line.  Usage of language requires a sensitivity to decorum and sensitivity so that when I run for President of the United States in four years, I promise I will not be insulting or denigrating of my opponents on the debate stage.  I will not defend the size of my “male member”, though let me assure you, “there is no problem there!”  I will not refer to women’s private parts at all and if I had to do so I would not use the “c” word.  Use of words has a contextual dimension and involves a sensitivity to that context.  Someone with the neurological disorder Tourette’s Syndrome illustrates what kind of problems happen if someone lacks that filter.  He creates awkwardness in the social body and this “awkwardness” now being legitimized by Trump if not stymied can lead to chaos.

Yes, words have a hidden meaning, they “burgeon forth into a region beyond themselves” (Gabriel Marcel) but they also have value on the superficial, contextual level.  What we are witnessing now in my country is the breakdown of verbal propriety, of decorum, and people with a reptilian brain in over-drive are feeling empowered by Donald Trump.  They can say, and do, whatever they wish because “words do not matter.”  Words do not carry consequences.  Donald Trump has demonstrated that my country lives in a meaningless universe of its own making in which words, and deeds, do not matter.  This is “meaninglessness” and, per William Butler Yeats, “mere anarchy is unleashed upon the world.

 

The sin of bibliolatry

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I really like the Bible.  Now able to approach it as an adult, I find that it offers profound wisdom about the human experience and has practical direction for day-to-day life.  But, I don’t feel you have to view it the same way and if you don’t…even should you burn it…I WILL NOT BE TRYING TO KILL YOU!

This recent “trouble” in Afghanistan re the accidental burning of the Koran reflects one of the problems that comes with being a “people of the book”, particularly those who are extreme literalists. I would never harm or deface the Bible; even if it was quite tattered and worn and I did not want to keep it, I would take it somewhere and leave it for someone else to make use of.  Yes, I am so traditional that I will always treat the Bible with reverence.  BUT IF YOU DO OTHERWISE, I WILL NOT BE ATTEMPTING TO KILL YOU!

The problem with this fanaticism is that the “holy writ” is taken to be sacred in itself, not being merely “words” that point one in the direction of the truth.  The literal words themselves are taken to be sacred.  The admonishment of the Buddha is not taken into account, “the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”  Or, to use the words of Gabriel Marcel, “Words have meaning only when they ‘burgeon forth’ into a region beyond themselves.”  Therefore the word, for example, “G-o-d”, is not “God” but merely a sign/symbol that makes reference to that Ultimate Experience that we all hunger for and many of us find in some faint tenuous fashion from time to time in our life.  The “word is not the thing.”

Now this is relevant to personal identity and this issue itself is relevant to personal and collective identity.  For example, my name is Lewis but “L-e-w-i-s” is not “Lewis” as a name is only a sound that we have learned to respond to.  But if I am guilty of the sin of misplaced concreteness, I might venture to the extreme in which I would take my personal identity to be only memories of those subjective experiences that are evoked when I hear the sound “L-e-w-i-s”; or when I ruminate about myself.  And, if I have ventured to that point even  the sound “G-o-d” could come to mean the experience of “God” and I might have to kill you if you believed differently than myself!

Now actually, I’ve said all of that not to address the problem with other religions.  In our culture, and in the Christian tradition, there is the same tendency to be guilty of the sin of “bibliolatry.”  We definitely have extremes in our culture but thankfully we channel our anger and violence in such a way…that is, we “sublimate” it… that rarely is anyone in danger of being killed because of believing differently than ourselves.  But, beneath the surface the same arrogance, contempt and scorn are usually present.

Jacques Ellul addressed this issue in The Ethics of Freedom:

For we have to realize that Satan can use God’s truth itself to tempt man.  He even uses holy scripture…Thus obedience to the letter of scripture can be obedience to Satan if the text serves to bring about isolation and independence in relation to the one who has inspired it.  It can be a means of self-affirmation over against God in in repression of his truth and his will.  The biblical text, and obedience to it, do not guarantee anything.  They may be the best means of not hearing God speak.  (Ellul here points out that the Pharisees were) authentic believers, faithful adherents of scripture, and rich in good works and piety.  In reality everything depends on our attitude to the text of the scripture.  If I seize it, use it, and exploit it to my own ends...then I am obeying Satan under the cover of what the Bible says.  (Or, as Shakespeare noted, “With devotions visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.”)

the Ultimate

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In fundamentalist Christianity there is the oft-used phrase, “in the word” as in “I’m in the word a lot now-a-days.”  I’ve been there, done that, and it has its place.  I now am “in the word” daily though my “word” has broadened to include non-Christian holy writ, spiritual teachings (contemporary and historical), and literature (past and present), philosophy, and religious tomes.

I’m aware of how much brain-washing is involved here.  It is a way of indoctrinating ourselves, filling the void that we are with something we deem important to keep that void from sucking us up.  It is part of maintaining the identity that we formulated a long time ago, that identity being “a veil we spin to hide the void” (Norman O. Brown).

So, what’s the point?  Is brainwashing all there is?  Am I merely espousing nihilism here?

I think the answer is to realize that the “stuff” that we have filled our minds and heart with must have meaning beyond itself.  This “stuff”   (words, images, ideas, etc) is important but it has no meaning unless we have an ultimate reference point outside the realm of time and space.  I think it was Gabriel Marcel who once noted that “words have meaning only when they burgeon forth into a region beyond themselves.”  So, when it comes to spirituality…at least…does our ideology, our words, our dogma “burgeon-forth into a region beyond themselves” or is it merely so much flotsam-and-jetsam that we have glommed onto to stave-off the existential abyss that we live in.

As a culture…and I could broaden that to “world culture”…I fear that we do not have an ultimate reference point.   Or to put it more correctly, an “Ultimate Reference Point.”  Therefore we “glom on” to “stuff”.  We are materialistic.