I had an interesting ad-hoc conversation tonight. Since my mind has been in Wittgenstein-land, when I started a rant about my position on Modern law-oriented ethics, things got ontological. Let me start here: verbs are funny things. They really don’t have any material existence; I cannot really point to “walking” in matter. Yet we speak of it, and affix unto it a label as if it were material. That’s not really my point though, rather just a preface, just in case I’m wrong with what I’m about to say:

Love, if viewed as an object, lives and survives in a “space” in our lives. Hopefully deeply-infused in our motions, thoughts and motives. Love can live in 2 realms: the ideal, and the real (the possible and the actual). Love is really love when I actually enact it, perhaps by easing the work-load of another, instead of reducing my workload. But Love in the ideal-realm is one independent of action. Perhaps this is what my wife is speaking of when she asks me, “Do you love me?” (Side-note: yes hon, I do!)

There’s a down-side to all this non-pragmatic love: that love can be had, felt, said.. but not enacted or lived in re. In fact, it seems to be much worse than that! Love seems to have a dualist parallel, and it’s not hate.. to use Christian language it’s Sin. You see, Sin is the exact opposite of Love in content, but exactly the same in internal form. That is to say, Sin also has an ideal & real existence, and Sin can entirely take the place where Love is to be. It’s a dandy replacer, focusing all our concerns on self instead of others, on an economy of gain instead of an abundance of mutuality.

To say it again: Love covers Sin, and Sin removes Love. They exist in the same “space” in our lives. Notice, though (thanks to their ideal & real forms) that love and sin can appear to coexist, and often they do! The possibility exists where we may have an ideal Love in our lives which isn’t sufficiently expressed, but instead living out specific sinful acts. This middle-stat won’t last long; Sin will take it’s foothold and twist what little Love we have remaining. ‘Tis a nasty brute! But Ideal Love can push Sin out- such is the life of the Good.

Note: Specific to Christianity, Love’s opposite is often described as fear. Fear is a specific subset of Sin, having misjudged Christ’s condemnation over our Sin.. that is to say, if we fear this encroachment of sin in our lives, if we fear the only hope of freedom from sin, then what hope or power do we have over sin? It will have it’s sway, and we will be left alone in our Sins.. (hint: don’t do this!)

..is hard to do?

It seems most of my life is on a project of curiosity — how has humanity through the ages viewed the transcendent realms: the location of hope, of curiosity, of mystery and potential and of infinite fear? Religions deal with this, philosophy like Existentialism deals with this. So as I view these various perspectives and values, I find that Christian beliefs are surprisingly sturdy, and they get pretty-well along with many ideas. In this dialogue, I end up finding a new sense of depth and goodness to my faith.

But that’s intellectual appreciation. It doesn’t really do much for the soul. I can appreciate an idea, but act entirely outside it’s parameters. And that’s where churches get curious. Sunday mornings are filled with squishy songs, and large groups of people wearing their heart on their sleeves, embracing the aesthetics of language and sound (albeit in the form of socially-normative prescribed behaviors). I think a lot, and I’m thinking about what’s occurring instead of embracing and embodying like other people.

I remember asking myself, around age 20, “Do I wanna be like (committed, expressive) person “A” over there?” It scared me. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be, but I was still attracted to what it could be like. Being convinced, being self-transcendent, being energetic, being hopeful. And for a time, I was, or at least thought I was, but it didn’t do/accomplish much. Finding myself no further in life, I guess I’ve regressed into myself again. Given alternatives, I’m thrilled with the person and work of Christ.. I’m thrilled to be with my wife in the face of being alone. Life together is great, and so much more dynamic.

I think what I’m saying is that reminders and motivators for love certainly vary by time, place and person. But what seems screwy to me is the general church assumption that worship-music helps people fall in love with Jesus more. That seems a little weird, since love itself is the kind of thing which multiples itself. Oh sure, eucharist is all about remembering, sermons are all about remembering, songs are about remembering, and Peter said his whole duty was to remind the church of what she forgets.. but there seems to me that sometimes words aren’t enough. Sometimes I need to talk with people. Sometimes I do like my heart on my sleeve, but oftentimes it’s been beat down into hiding with cliche. Authentic love is amazingly powerful, and that’s why I’m thrilled to be married. And that’s what I’m looking for among church-members. Does such love cross intellectual borders? Yes, but not when we’re all reveling in our own understandings. I’ll love you and I’ll listen to your stories about your kids, but I need you to listen and hear me ramble about Sartre & Wittgenstein.. because ya just did.

Background Point #1: The 20 Statements Test
I was forced to do the 20 statements test last Monday in Socio Theory class, only to discover 2 things:
(a) a deep, anti-labeling drive/push (based surely in too many labels placed upon me through my life)..
(b) a natural reaction into the subjective.
Obviously this is an accusation that I’m self-focused..

But this sociology class is teaching me more about myself than any other class. It is showing me some distinct traits which are good & bad. Philosophy only gives me options. I like studying the human nature, and I like considering the philosophical options, however, I still enjoy some concrete things every now & then. But I’m not a scientist. I’d rather let someone else run the numbers, do the methods (is that what research assistents are for?). I’ve got plenty of ideas.

Background Point #2: Carmen’s Theory of Society.
I (like most people) value what’s in me too much; others read this in me, and find no ‘room’ in/nearby me for themselves to value me/attributes of/things in me. I have been actively stopping other ppl from valuing me. I should start letting other ppl value my qualities.. cuz that’s their job, not mine.  Society only works when other ppl value what’s in me, and I in them.

Background Point #3: NYT Depression Article. Just read it. (over & over again! )

Quick, Fake Responses to all this, in particular to Carmen’s Theory:
-Waaay too idealistic.
-That’ll never work
-That hasn’t worked
-That’s why I’m so self-consumed; others never valued me
-Ok, so maybe some ppl valued me, but I didn’t value them, cuz of an unequal distribution. That is, Older ppl might have valued me, and I might have valued them for their place in my life (being old ppl).. but a lack of peer-valuing has contributed to an uneasiness in me, and self-reflection. The “rumination” theory of the mind, that we get focused and obsessive about certain attributes we got picked-on by others long ago.

Perhaps a real response:
What I value is what I value; it is initially sourced in what I find outside myself (like everybody else). But because of various ruminations/imaginations/strong-mindedness, I create a world about me, fanciful, unique-to-me, and nearly impenetrable.

It all starts with something very small which I find amazing or appauling. Then, instead of  (a) “tempering” any next idea or thought regarding this against reality, or (b) perhaps as many others do: just leave it be, I continue on my mental jaunt, which to me is fun. It no longer seems imaginative but very, very real – more real than the external world in which the idea was sourced. This, of course is not simply my personal, willful “commitment” to rationalism; a free-willful choice is hardly what I feel! Rather, my mind has come to a near-enslavement of rumination by sheer habit. This enslavement is where I feel all/most of my determinism/anti-will ideology.

Consequences of all this:
I feel oddly confused, relieved and surprised by all this self-learning. Carmen noted how most of this information did not come from inside of me. (Read: I’m not that amazing after all.) Second, this is all certainly a relief, that there is a new platform from which I can actually live my life and take part in what actually is the external world.

Most importantly, for all those med-students who wish to be psychiatrists (which likely I should have seen a loooooooong time ago! ..but they’re all booked up in this city..) I have some words of advice:
1) You will not solve your patient’s problems unless you understand their context, and method of mental processes. Read: I hope you took your psychology & sociology classes seriously in undergrad!
2) You will not change the world with drugs. Hopefully you already know this. But hopefully you understand your role as a counselor more than as a doctor.
3) You will get more “data” on mental issues than anyone else ever will. You have the chance to be the best at what you do. Make sure you get the data & be a good mental scientist. (See #1).

Philosophy, by the way, is not about saying “I don’t believe that” and it sure isn’t about saying “I don’t see/can’t see… how … is..” Philosophy is that incredulity, which says to your beliefs not, “you are wrong”, but “how is it that you function?” It’s not a matter of if your beliefs are or are not ‘foundational’ or ‘supported’, or ‘right’, but how your beliefs are destroying or building yourself, another person, another society.

Now, go ahead and say I’m wrong, but please do so in an original way.

1) Mention everything (in passing), so the readers (graders, profs) know you know all that is involved.

2) Mention only what’s within-scope & keep it a tight (albeit closed) paper. But then what of all the contingencies I just left open? What of all the things I know are involved, but don’t have time or space to mention?? These are the questions which drive me (a) crazy and (b) back to #1.

I’ve previously gone with #1, but no one seems to like that way of writing. It’s certainly how my brain works. I’ve got a paper due in exactly 48 hours. Looks like I’ll try for #2. Still I fuss: “Sure it’s easier to leave stuff out, but it’s a Western-minded induced inaccuracy!” ..And I’m a fan of accuracy.

Anyone who has read this blog knows I’m a HUGE fan of Johannine lit, and that thanks to the last class in undergrad I took which explained it for me. But in detail, John, being a good shepherd himself, attempts to teach each person to listen to God’s voice (truth) – not just in example, not in knowledge, but in experience – in a soul. “You already know, what you have already heard from the beginning..” He is always calling us to look to what we know, and dive in deeper instead of thinking you already know it, and trying to add on novelties.

Contrast this with Conservative Evangelicalism, which seems to presume Jesus & Paul going around shouting. So in the image they perceive, they fulfill and follow! However, such shouting to the masses is likely not the reality of the matter: Jesus was very discerning, even selective (Zaccheus!) & did not shout or assume all men were willing & able to listen..

John however, followed this selectiveness, speaking to those who can hear instead of forcing ears to be open, or trying to open men’s hearts and lives into conformance, only killing men in the end, creating callous hearts unable to feel or hear the shepherd’s voice, which ought to be known and heard much easier without all this violence..

Now, I understand how all this happened: mid/late modern individuals felt the truth needed defense or modernizing.. that it was an untenable position in the eyes of the masses and needed to be made ‘hearable’ to men’s ears. Sadly, with the updating of this ‘hearability’ or the truth, it weakens the hearability in one’s soul, and even those ‘ears’ were already being closed up by other anti-humane Modern traits and trends.

So what of it all? We are now in a place historically where men’s hearts are pushing against these systemic heart-closing trends, and the most of us who grew up with the half-truth are returning to its fullness once again. To avoid such troubles, what ought we expect in our lives? In our ‘small groups’, amongst our friends, towards our modern cubicle jobs?

Most of us in our 20′s are holding on to some form of identity statements. There’s a set of reactionary statements we make, pushing us from our stodgy, modern childhood & adolescence through our college brains into something called ‘life’ now. Most of us don’t have a good idea where we’re being pushed into, and most of us are ok with just being reactionary. It’s a tad healthy to ‘get away’ from all that was killing us and driving us crazy, but at the same time, it’s not very healthy to not have a solid, grounded, well-explained and considered position or two. Most of us are addicted to reactionism, since it’s just too easy, relative to being responsible & chained down or something.

So what are we to hold on to? What is “what we have heard since the beginning”? Our childhood? The politics and weird social ideologies surrounding “Jesus loves me”? How our parents are too squishy to have anything behind them? Or, our novel ideas which we would say are ‘the beginning’ to our ‘new’ lives as rational adults?

The answer to these q’s are obviously “yes and no”. There’s truth just about anywhere, and that’s the point. Modernism has taught us to learn something, learn it’s place, and them move on from it. That is “growth”. But John’s repetitive writing is obnoxiously incompatible with such a late western ideal. In all my studying of the philosophy of mind and Artificial Intelligence, there’s one thing that makes us human, and it’s not ‘choice’ like The Matrix held up. It’s our forgetfulness. Sure we can ‘learn and move on’, but life isn’t so hierarchical or ordered. We forget (oddly enough, in a logarithmic curve), and we need to be reminded, and relearn not just ‘the place’ but the places each idea influences.

For instance, we are taught to ‘love your neighbor’. (That is sufficiently ‘from the beginning’ as well!) Our first modern question is “and who is our neighbor?” We can learn through someone telling us that we are “to love everyone.” But most of us will not learn such a lesson until they fail to love everyone they meet, and learn the consequences of creating so many broken hearts in this world. This is the repetition we need, for the forgetfulness we bear, and the central point behind grace and mercy shown to another as well as us: we fail, and given enough time, we just might succeed once in awhile.

So back to our small-group. What and how are we to expect our friends to grow and learn? It’s awfully depressing to hear the same issues and concerns each week over and over again, but it’s awfully pressured to feel like we ought learn something weighty upon our hearts.

I’ve never been a fan of ‘a new topic each week’. It’s fickle, and who is doing anything more than repeating their trite identity-building resolutions/reactions anyways? Book-studies are better, and oddly enough, they are more pointed. That’s my point: perhaps ‘small groups’ ought not be focused on the people involved, the times that are compatible to meet, topics agreed upon, but each group have one central goal/theme/recurring idea. “We go to the ‘grace’ group”, or “This is the ‘wrath of God’ group”( ) that kinda sounds fun. The point is to focus our lives around a topic we believe we need to learn, and then to dive in, reminding each other each week ow that has played out in our lives for good or ill, how we forgot, how that could have been useful to survive the week, or perhaps in mildly more intellectual fashion: compare-contrast: each week is a new topic, yes, but how does some societal problem, theological point, sermon this week fail or succeed with or without mercy, or love? This way we learn the depths of God’s truth, love, mercy and wrath. Perhaps even reading a book on the topic, or reading another book off-topic to see how it is or is not shown in characters’ lives..

This all sounds so fruitful to live in the reality of  human forgetfulness instead of in the modern assumption of learn-and-move-on. Most of us will never move on from the Gospel. The love of God is not something to ‘step up from’.. Our lives are not just built on top of his grace, but each brick’s substance is his grace.

This week I’ve been doing some thinking and reading on affection and cognition.. good phenomenology stuff. In doing so, I’ve been focusing on 2 terms: expression and it’s complement, impression. Of course these terms were used in the art world 50 to 100 years ago, but I’m focusing on their value and place in the soul.

Being a quieter creature, I can have trouble with expression. Too much of it from others around me, and I’m going crazy. So impression should be easy for me then, right? To some degree, yes. But when I speak of impression, I refer to direct inputs one has in their life. So, taking an audit this morning, I asked, “Generically, what inputs do I have/allow in my life?” My first response: “very few.”

1. Listening to others: few speak other than my pastor & some in community group
2. Reading: I rarely take the time (though I’ve been trying and starting to enjoy this week)
3. Learning: This directly takes place in the trenches at work, and that is a painful version.

If Impression is a form of humility, what then is its role against (in dialectic fashion with) self? Does it mean ignorance of self? At least not placing enough time and energy on self. And what of the self’s reaction to this? Does it whine? Revolt? Fuss? Complain, “What about me?” “Well, What about you? Self, do you so need the attention of the world? You already have it of the Father & the death and life of his Son!” This is what/who I need Impression from.

Yet I’m unwilling to bow to this. This is myself demanding to push away impression, yet crying out. What is this?! Needing and receiving love is a need for impression: the expression of another unto my self. Why then have I focused on my need for the impression of love, yet pushed away the one capable & desiring to express his love to me – to fill my impressing need?

My day devalues love & the source of it, yet my self cries for it. I need and am unwilling to admit it, to label it, to accept that my need, with all that I describe it as, is precisely love.

So how to convince self? Look & find that needy part of me? Have I just not heard enough? No habit built-in of hearing.. of hearing his love? Indeed all I’m left to do is cry, “Open my ears!” I see well enough, but my ears are closed off. You’ve spoken through signs to this deaf man – let me hear the cries of others & of your love! Turn my will to accept & admit my need of love.

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Is this management not of affection but of communication: impression & expression? It’s hard to manage theory.. So most have sold to hearing with-out hearing: daily impression of reading, fighting to hear and hear. Is this that mechanical and formal of a relationship? What other means of communication are there? Surely reading the rational form of creation, as well as the aesthetic in it and that reflection of deity within man and his role here. Such are more subjective re-readings from the original objective source.. and subjectivity is where truth, love and faith are to reside to have any value for one’s soul.

While I was first introduced to Myers-Briggs (Jung!) I’ve long since revelled in the DISC system. And tonight, I think I finally have found explicit use for the Jungian system.

The first analytic idea is to assume any one of the 16 MB categories is the ideal of one of the D,I,S or C. This is utter failure though. I realize now it’s more of a noun-verb thing. The DISC is pretty clear on behavior. MB is horrid at behavior, but *so much* better at means and intention.

For instance: I know a few people who are dominant “I” folk. (In fact all my major friends are IC’s!) But there is huge variation in what constitutes their actions. One will talk and talk and talk thinking he’s adding to an idea, when truly, he’s only saying the same thing 5 different ways. This gets old quick, but fact is, he’s focusing on the interpreting of info part of the Feeling over Sensory on MB. However, there’s another character who likes to come up with stories as he speaks.. his words take him places: he actually IS adding meaning, but he’s also open the new things (MB: Intuition!), whereas the first guy is stuck, having already decided, and now just trying to influence his decision. I like stories. And short attention spans.

Know what this is? Goodness. And I’ve found out that there’s a little short-list of the goodness we tend to include in our dinners:

• Cilantro
• Tomato
• Soft white cheese (provolone of late)
• Green onions
• Cilantro
• Olive oil
• Lime
• Diced Jicama

Just.Plain.Good. Toss any amount of any of the above in with rice, cous-cous, fish or chicken, served up with some pita or tortilla, and I’m a happy fellow.

It’s no surprise that this world takes some up-keep. Few things ‘just work’, and that certainly goes for life and the daily hassles therein, be it traffic to simple forgetfulness to emotion distress that stops us from anything remotely responsible or enjoyable.

This up-keep that is needed is a healthy aggression often labeled pro-activity or responsibility among other titles. But such things are hardly what we as full human beings want or expect out of life. Don’t get me wrong, life certainly includes continual self-giving.. but to never receive back (whether in perceived or actual form from God and/or others) is too much to bear.

Rather, in the face of all this that is required of us, we often seek that which is to us, peace. Here is where either responsibility or addictions take root. For what is peace? Has it more similarity to non-motion, inactivity or unmovedness than to activity? If peace is simply the ‘hassle-free life’, then non-motion it is. But what of relational peace? Will unmovedness suffice? Clearly not: a united mind, affection and action bring peace in that realm. Perhaps peace is to be a stoic or eastern hassle-is-as-no-hassle, betraying any true emotion in me..

I find all ‘answers’ entirely weak in light of the goodness found in renewal. Would I rather sit in unmoved fashion bitter and sulking at the cruel world around? Sure it may feel right and true for a while, but not for a lifetime. Rather, what I find in my days is so much hope and energy in the morning, and fear of the day’s work taking it all away before I can get to my true loves in life: thinking, writing, music, friends and my soon-to-be wife. These good things are part of what God has built me for.. they are good things, requiring of me. They require motion. And in good Aristotelian fashion, this motion towards them must overcome the daily stresses. This is peace.

But I’m not sure how that overcoming goes down. I know there’s something scary about human resiliency. We just won’t give up. We can, but quite often we don’t. Simple pride is enough for some, if you’ve normalized to a culture of it. But pride seems to be an all or nothing thing: if I have too much, it will drive me. If I instead take on humility, then I find myself less worn-thin, and having more energy. But If I try for the middle-lands, assuming and controlling over some small domain, then I’m worn out, seeking to regain control over something else, or nothing at all: numbness & apathy.

Peace is not the numbness from all of the external forces beating on me. Peace is not the apathy which comes either. Peace is overcoming this numbness and apathy of self-defined & controlled life of knowing-what-I-can-handle and instead being reminded and re-associated, familiarized again to truth and love. Allowing self to experience when experience has only brought hurt and frustration and tiredness and be influenced towards the foundation of this world and beyond it. Hope of goodness.

Peace is then tied to humility. And humility is enjoyment, quite near to love which moves: responsibility. That’s my taxonomy.

My trouble? I become so embedded in the day.. making me smaller than human, and less near to goodness, hope, love and truth.