The real meaning of Christmas.

Before you read the following please read this if you support marriage equality for same sex couples. (For a while I’ll post this link at the top of each new post)

Since before record, people across northern Europe celebrated the coldest and longest night of the year with a gathering together of family. Scarce food was shared in a wintery land. This was midwinter, late in December.

Stories of death and rebirth were told around campfires. Surrounded by what seemed to be a dead landscape of barren branches and iced rivers these stories wrought a fragile hope and instilled courage. The fir tree with its evergreen foliage was a potent symbol for these people for its signs of life did not die.

Two thousand and ten years ago a child was born in a manger in Bethlehem a dry hot place that never knew snow or ice. This child was to grow up to be called Messiah and Prince of Peace. They told their small band of followers to love their enemies and to turn the other cheek. They preached of a loving, forgiving God. They spoke of the resurrection of the dead.

One thousand and seven hundred years ago the Roman Empire adopted the symbols though not the content of this now called Christian faith. This Empire maintained its armies and its conquering agenda but now carried at its head the cross instead of the eagle.

This Roman Empire had previously marched armies into northern Europe but was never fully able to subdue its people. Now it sent forth Christian missionaries. Wealth and power were offered to those leaders who converted from pagan faiths to Christianity, particularly the bloody and authoritarian Christianity which served the interests of Rome. Swear fealty to the Bishop of Rome (and the child of Bethlehem) and you will be rewarded was the promise wrapped in a garland of divine salvation.

The pagan celebrations however were strongly adhered to amongst the people. The growing Roman Catholic Church struggled to outlaw these feasts. So they chose to replace them with Christian ones on the same dates and with the same symbols; the egg for Easter, the fir tree for Christmas.

Today a southern continent that has traditionally known eight indigenous seasons and that in many parts has no winter at all now shares a holiday on the 25^th December with most of the world. Complete with an introduced fir tree this holiday recognises the birth of the child who became a messiah of peace before becoming a champion for conquerors and the absent ruler of an authoritarian church.

Just like before recorded times, families gather to celebrate. Now for the most part in Australia they share in plenty – great swathes of food are wasted every year, children almost overdose on candy. The fear of the cold death around us and the need to cling to any hope we can to get through it is gone.

Or is it? Is there another “death” for this old midwinter rite to observe? We hear all the time that the “real meaning” of Christmas is dead or dying. Could it be then that the cold death around us may not be a natural winter but a spiritual one? Christmas can be seen as it was before Rome converted it. It can be used to mark the darkest hour in a time of death; rampant consumerism, gross kitch, gluttony, shabbiness, sparkle and spectacle distracting from an absence of character. Christmastime itself serves as spiritual winter.

But always fear’s greatest hour is hope’s greatest hour too. We can share what little we have of spiritual wealth at Christmas time. We share it with family and friends. The boldest of us share some with strangers. Still even to just remember family in a world in which every “contact” and “network” we have is mercantile is a radical act. At Christmas we can look for and hold up the evergreen; those parts of our culture that haven’t succumbed to spiritual death.

Paradoxically in this new spiritual winter the child who became the conqueror’s totem is a better pagan symbol of hope than the fir tree. Our venerance of the child is a something of life that hasn’t been killed even by it’s use to justify killing. Why? Because the child in the manger has a majesty in poverty which endures despite a season of overtime, shopping (and for children just getting.) The child speaks to the worth of us without what we have. There isn’t any contrast between the fir tree and Christmastimes’ spiritual winter. It is just one more thing to buy and to decorate gaudily.

Let’s huddle together in the spiritual cold of this peak shopping season. In a pagan spirit let’s pay attention to the child in the hay. The real meaning of Christmas is that we are never completely lost; snow cannot bury us and capitalism cannot totally commodify us. That’s the message that midwinter has always held. Everything just looks dead. Look there is still life.

Marriage discrimination: Not in our name.

To the extent that opposite sex couples are stakeholders in the same sex marriage debate we just arent being well represented.

The official Christian lobby groups would have the government believe the majority of opposite sex couples see their relationships as radically different from loving same-sex relationships and under threat from marriage equality. I see my relationship as fundamentally the same as a loving same sex relationship (as do many Christians in fact).

Please add your name to the comments section below if you are a) in a heterosexual relationship b) married or contemplating marriage and c) in agreeance with the statement (obviously).
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Our marriage happens to be (or will be) heterosexual but that's not the point of our marriage.
What really defines (or will define) our marriage is love and committment not being man and woman.
You won't be defending our marriages definition by excluding same sex couples from marriage.
In fact marriage equality allows our definition of marriage to be finally fully recognized alongside others. In a multicultural society that should be our right and the right of same sex couples.

Discussing Poverty and Greed with the Bendigo Baptists.

Recently I attended an event at Bendigo Baptist Church. It was part of a seminar series they’re holding with that weeks’ topic on “Greed and Poverty”. 

The worship side of things –a rock band for Jesus and the high tech, big stage prayer and praise left me unmoved. For one thing the hymns all proclaimed both a perfect god and a perfect worship of them; like “Jesus answers all my needs” and “I love you, God, more than anything else.” 

I had to wonder if this congregation ever sung a hymn like “Jesus, you’re driving me insane with your mysterious ways. I wonder if you’re really there at all”. If not, how many Christians leave church feeling like pretenders to this perfect faith? Although the grammar of these hymns was descriptive the content was prescriptive of an extremely (impossibly?) high standard of devotion.

The seminar itself however was humbling and inspiring. The panel were people involved in living out different responses to poverty with an approach of following the Christian gospel as they understood it. I was particularly impressed by the work of the Slatter family in giving to a Fijian community, the village of Rukurukulevu. They support schooling, including child and adult education, food hampers, toys for kids and small business sewing classes.

In this post I’d like to tease out what the panel highlighted as aspects of the Christian response to Greed and Poverty. I’m going to try and pull it together into a consistent philosophy/theology because I think it’s a fascinating approach to the issue. Also this way any Christian readers can challenge my comprehension of the matter.  

1.       1. Wealth is more dangerous than poverty.

Christianity has historically included views that poverty is spiritually “disabled” in some way. The Protestant work ethic grew out of Calvinism and is based on the idea that wealth is a seal of election while poverty is a mark of God’s disapproval. Putting this relationship in a different order Christian welfare organisations like the Salvation Army have in the past seen poverty as a consequence of immorality while wealth or at least a middle class existence is the direct result of honest living. These aren’t especially Christian views however. They crop up inside Hinduism, Confucianism, New Age philosophies and pretty much any religious (or irreligious) tradition somewhere.

The panel here wanted to correct this view with what they saw as a scripturally authentic opposite. The story of Jesus telling the rich man to sell all that he has and distribute it to the poor (Luke 18:18-25) was shared at the beginning of the discussion. This was interpreted by the panel as reversing the usual notion of riches being blessings. Jesus says “For it is easier for a camel to enter in through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:24)

It’s important to distinguish the panel’s attitude from one of asceticism. The problem they were identifying is not wealth in isolation but wealth in relation to others. There was no sense amongst the panel that luxuries were problematic in the way that we would understand as monkish. Ipods, fancy coffee and fashionable clothes were treated as reasonable objects of enjoyment in themselves. The problem was the enjoyment of luxuries while other people went without their most basic needs.

2.       2. It’s all Gods anyway.

The primary reason why the enjoyment of luxuries while other people go without necessities is problematic was expressed as “all of creation belongs to God to be shared with our brothers and sisters.”

This statement’s first element “that all of creation belongs to God” was contrasted with the idea that some of creation at least is owned (and owed) to me. My property is mine is obviously a core principle of capitalism. The panel pushed a consistent message of human stewardship but never ownership of creation.

The panel weren’t challenging legal rights to private property. Instead they were arguing that those legal rights can’t be moral rights for Christians. Christians can’t say to any claim on their wealth, “that’s mine.” This includes claims on their wealth from people in need.

3.       3. All other people are your family.

The second element in this statement; that creation is to be “shared with ones brothers and sisters” is what makes the claim from people in need righteous. It is why this claim outweighs the competing claim we have for luxuries. 

This is a notion of family that is non-immediate. It is a consequence of God’s “Fatherly” love for all humanity which creates firstly a special status for human beings and secondly a fraternal relationship between us all.

This universal family has not always been the Christian interpretation of scripture. There is a theology which disagrees strongly with “universal salvation” and asserts that Jesus came to save a few and not all. These few, the elect, have been set aside for salvation since before time just as others have been set aside for judgement. 

 Any common language definition would struggle to say how God “loves” those set aside for judgement or how they could be seen as part of a family with those saved. In this limited definition of family “one another” in Christs’ command to love one another can even be understood as meaning other members of the elect only or at least primarily.

This is the dark side of Christianity which has not only preserved the wealth of some over the needs of others but has justified the atrocities of the crusades, the brutal colonisation of South America, the attempted extermination of Germany’s Jews and hate crimes against gays and lesbians.

The panel at Bendigo Baptist Church didn’t express a limited definition of God’s family. No-one in the audience asked them about it. In hindsight I’d love to know if they have even encountered this theology.

4.       4. Intimacy is key.

A limited view of Gods family is a difficult theology to maintain in the intimate presence of those excluded by it. As are the beliefs that the poor deserve their fate or that the wealthy are more moral. The panel members all talked about getting to know those in situations of need and being in community with them as a key part of their path to share more.

This desire for intimacy with one’s brothers and sisters is a logical part of the notion of family. On a superficial level we can acknowledge its value as motivation for anyone sharing their wealth with others but for a Christian its motivation is especially valuable because it is directly attacking the core problem.

Intimacy is so key it can define the Christian conception of the problem by its opposite. Opposite to intimacy with the poor is individualism and distance from them. These opposites are clearly inconsistent with recognising God as universal Father. Greater intimacy however embraces siblinghood and erodes any proprietary attitude to ones wealth.

Intimacy was important to the panel members to change how they made their daily decisions. One panel member described having photos of the people they wanted to help around their house and in their wallet. This way they made mundane decisions like whether to buy a block of chocolate with the awareness that one of their siblings had no food.

5. Unmaking a Difference.

As in any discussion about poverty the question of how can we make a difference came up at the seminar. This aim of “making a difference” has sometimes allowed Christians to partition “sharing their wealth” as some kind of “social gospel” almost at odds with the rest of the gospel.

Christianity like many religions has a tolerant view of life’s suffering. If a child dies this is seen as a tragedy however the tragedy is mitigated (even replaced by blessing) by the promise of a joyous afterlife. Alternatively even if a person lives a long and healthy life the “good” of this is insignificant if balanced against eternal torment in hell.

Some Christians have disrespect therefore for action which aims to improve people’s material standard of living as if that was important. Such Christians would only give (and may even give generously) to evangelisation efforts but just don’t think they should give to drives to eradicate blindness for example unless the drive is intended to convert people to Christianity.

Personally I find this stance hypocritical unless a person would be willing to suffer their own blindness to further evangelise others – after all if they are already Christian its’ a waste to spend money on their own eyes as it won’t convert them twice. Derisions of the social gospel just seem to me to be excuses to evade any fraternal connection to the poor and to hold on to the pleasures of wealth.

The panel at the Bendigo Baptist Church sidestepped the whole issue of the importance of material benefits by framing the issues very differently. There was no separate social gospel for them but a social expression of the one gospel.

As a consequence making a difference to world poverty was not the primary goal. Certainly there was a desire to make a difference in specific lives however that was the result of intimacy with them. The primary purpose of their engagement with poverty, to create that intimacy, was actually about unmaking a difference between themself and their siblings - not making a difference at all. This difference to be unmade was one of value reflected in putting luxuries before the others needs.

To put it another way one argument against “selling all that you have and giving the money to the poor” is that this will just leave everyone poor. The really simplified gospel answer to this seems to be “Good.” The primary issue isn’t material benefit anyway but spiritual separation from our siblings.

6. A systematic approach

An emphasis on “unmaking a difference” can sometimes produce poor outcomes in alleviating poverty. For example people in poverty often have a culture of complete sharing of their wealth which unfortunately means that money is spent on immediate consumption. There is no way to share assets as completely unless there is a significant degree of coordination.

The panel members’ involvement in alleviating poverty incorporated both immediate consumption (eg. free food distribution) and more systematic goals like skills training and building community resources, even protesting for government action. This probably would have been discussed in even greater depth though at any non-church forum into poverty. It may be a limitation of the gospel approach that this can’t be easily based in scripture but the panel all seemed to embrace a systematic approach anyway.

7. It’s supposed to change you.

I had one question for the panel that there wasn’t time for but I was able to ask privately later. My work with people especially young people in situations of poverty has often involved trying to maintain some emotional distance. The fear I have is that if the lid came off my concern I wouldn’t be able to stop. I would be reduced to... I’m not sure what the fear is exactly but something like “caring all the time.”

Now that I am a father this fear is even greater because I feel like caring for others all the time would be in competition to my responsibilities to my child. This is illogically applied to protect spending on luxuries for myself not only my child’s needs. Sometimes I rationalise those luxuries for myself as for my happiness which is for my child in a round-about way. Very dodgy I know.

The interesting and challenging answer I received from Kim Slatter was to let intimacy with the poor change me. This was an answer I have a lot of respect for. Being broken down and remade and broken down again is a life well lived in my opinion. I have always subscribed to that view and as a philosopher I often despair at the lack of impact people allow philosophy to have. If these words are supposed to change you how much more should growing closer to actual people change me.

After all am I all that content surrounded by trinkets and emphasising the importance of my family over others? From a Christian perspective that discontent is a great place to start.

Next week the Bendigo Baptists continue their seminar series with a discussion on Same Sex marriage. I am currently wondering about attending it. If I do go it would be with the fervent hope that I won’t be the only one in the room prepared to throw confetti at a same sex wedding. A shout out through this site of anyone else attending who is supportive of same-sex marriage would be much appreciated.  

Sermons I would like to hear - On Marriage as a Sacred Institution.

This may be part of a series. I like to sermonise in the shower. To get the full effect you need to read this with a Desmond Tutu accent.
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Marriage is a sacred institution. Perhaps this is so. However those who say this in order to exclude people from marriage by their unfitness have forgotten what the sacred is for.

We do not utilise sacred institutions because we are eligible for them. We enter into them because we are inelligible for what lies beyond it. Sacred institutions are the means of approach given to us so that in our unholliness we can come closer to that which they point to. Were we already holy we would have no need for sacred institutions. Or rather the sacred would be paths leading to us.

Who can say that of themself? Who can say that they in their holiness are what the sacred points to?

Equally who stands before marriage and says “I am fit”. Who says before marriage our relationship is perfect and so deservedly we claim marriage as our right? Actually we are what marriage is about?”

I reply, “Then what do you need marriage for? Marriage is not for you who are already perfect. Marriage is for the rest of us to approach such perfection.”

I am not saying that Marriage perfects us. We long for that to happen. We want our vows to ensure we live up to them. They won’t. They are not magic words. We must ensure we keep our vows ourselves each day.

And we will probably fail. Most marriages fail. Most people don’t keep their vows. Marriage is just not that kind of magic unfortunately.

However maybe Marriage can improve us. There is something ideal in our hearts; the old couple who only grow more and more in love with each other; the one who has the others back even past death to ensure that their final wishes are served. If Marriage is a sacred institution, an institution of Gods design, then it is perhaps the best means we have to approach this ideal.

 But we only ever approach Marriage unfit for what it points to. We come to it deficient, distorted, looking nothing like the ideal beyond it. We try to feed on its sustenance without teeth, gummily draw what we can of it into a stomach riddled with tapeworms. We get distracted by its least sustaining qualities; the circus of the wedding. Time and time again we misunderstand it.

We misunderstand it most of all when we think it is a reward for being already sufficiently marriage-like. A wedding veil is not a homecoming queens crown. We do not fit it. In fact wedding attire should be several sizes too big to remind us we need to grow into it.

How foolish is it therefore to claim that a person mustn’t be gay if they want to enter into it, that gay people can’t fit this sacred institution – as if others did. I think if any of us are walking upright into it we are definitely going to bump our head. That’s the other thing that sacred institutions should do. They should take us to our knees.

Tolstoy feeds me humble pie.

As if to chastise me for my chutzpah in writing a cocky little manifesto for the 99% movement (last post) I read the following;

(Note: Just so that the lefties don’t stop reading at the first paragraph what Tolstoy means by “collective effort” is more like submission to a group program for change not just any form of co-operation.)

“This is why freedom from the servitude in which we find ourselves at present is impossible for those who seek it in collective effort. It can only be obtained by the substitution of the law of love for the law of violence, that fundamental principle of Christianity*.

“This doctrine says to each isolated individual: You cannot know the end of social life; you can only envisage it as a form of progressive approach towards universal happiness, towards the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth. On the other hand, you are aware of the aim of personal life: it is the development in each of the greatest amount of love, in order that the kingdom of God may be established. This aim is certain and is easy to approach.

“You can be ignorant of the best methods for attaining this external goal; you can meet obstacles in the way of its realization; but nothing can stop you drawing nearer to inner perfection: the increase of love in yourself and towards others.

“So it is enough to institute in the place of this illusory social goal, this individual aim of life, the only sure and accessible one; and the chains you thought were fastening you forever will drop immediately and you will feel yourself absolutely free...

“The Christian can ignore the laws established by the State because he has no need for them for himself, or for others; he considers that human life is better assured by the law of love he professes than by the law of violence imposed on him...

Can it be put any better? The writer is Tolstoy in The Law of Love and Law of Violence (p70-71). He is quoting his own earlier work. The abridgements in the above are his.

Tolstoy is saying that real change – the only meaningful change at all- doesn’t come with a clearly mapped world order (communism or capitalism). Instead the only meaningful and achievable change comes from personal commitment to the rule of universal love as professed by Jesus.

Amazingly there would be some people who might consider this a conservative position. The program of Jesus and the idea of love has become so diluted in our world that we are able to conceive issuing it from a gun or via carpet bombing. We profess to follow universal love in the police force and the army despite making oaths to follow orders first. We confess to follow universal love while not sharing our wealth - living like gluttons while others starve. We confess to follow it while buying the products of modern slavery, while profiting from that slavery with what we save at the counter or even what we make on the sharemarket. We confess to following it while protecting our luxurious standard of living over the environment. We confess it and nothing changes.

Or as Tolstoy points out ;

...as soon as it (the Law of Love) ceases to be an immovable law, its beneficence disappears and the doctrine of love is reduced to fruitless teaching, not modifying in any way the mode of life that is founded on violence. By contrast, the true Christian doctrine, making of the law of love a rule permitting no exceptions, in this way rules out the possibility of any violence, and cannot in consequence help but condemn all regimes which are founded on it.

It is exactly this significance of Christianity that was hidden from men by false Christianity, because the latter acknowledges love not as a supreme law, but, in the manner of all previous religions, only as one of the rules of conduct, to be usefully observed only when circumstances do not prevent it.

Tolstoy is amazing because he somehow reads Love like a child. I don’t know by what grace he manages it. If it truly is a Christian grace it is so sadly lacking in the historical practice of Christianity that it makes it all the more remarkable.

The entire book is downloadable for free from http://www.archive.org/details/lawofloveandthel001362mbp  Honestly I could just quote the whole thing. And at only a hundred pages there’s no reason to be intimidated by Tolstoy’s name. Please, please give it a go. I’ll be reviewing it more thoroughly when I’ve gotten over how great it is.

My particular reason for posting this immediately is Tolstoys essential message to the 99% movement and the Occupy Melbourne protestors and me;

Men, whether they submit or refuse to submit to governmental authority, never know and can never know what form this future state will take.

Don’t worry about not having a mapped out set of solutions. Love one another. Love even your enemies. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Now that’s a manifesto.



*I realise some people who know me may be astonished by how "Goddy" this piece is. I don't believe in the metaphysical claims of Christianity. However I will learn as much as I can from any Christian, Buddhist, Atheist, Jew, Hindu etc who is out-loving me. Absolutely. Using their language is a sign of respect to ones teacher. In Tolstoys case that respect is well earned.

The 99% Manifesto.

There’s something that shits me as a legacy of my lapsed political activism. It’s when the constituents of a representative movement, (the unemployed, gay men, whatever the movement) talk about what the movement needs to do before they will join it.

The latest example of this is the 99% movement. There are a chorus of voices, it seems, demanding that “they” articulate some demands and produce a model for change before “I” will listen to them. News flash; political change is not like television. You don’t flick through channels for what you want and whinge when there’s nothing to watch. You actually create it.

So I thought to myself maybe I should have a go at drafting this much demanded manifesto. I’m somewhere in the 99%. I can string a sentence together.

On the other hand, I am singularly unqualified as I have no t.v. and hardly ever listen to news radio. I mostly read books published at least fifty years ago, unless they are contemporary books about events older than that. Current affairs ain’t my thing. Blogging and even more recently Facebook is bringing me into contact with shorter news cycles but it’s a slow pick up. Bah, that’s negative talk. Let’s do it anyway.

The 99% manifesto.

1% of the world, it is increasingly apparent to us (the remainder) that we give you more than you give us. The size of the violin played for your sad day dwarfs the violin played for all the refugees of the world. Your birthday cakes are larger than the ones even bakers have. Meanwhile we plumb your toilets, nanny your kids and put food on your table. We make your profits.

1% of the world, we can see that you have no fear, not even the slightest concern that, failing a light aeroplane crash, your children will not also be a part of the 1%. They can be coke addicts and go on to buy the Presidency of the United States. Meanwhile the rest of us have no fear that our children will make it into the 1%. Instead we live in fear that unless we do everything right (or even then) our children will be a lot worse off than us. In fact for the vast majority of us that would mean imprisoned or dead.

1% of the world, these differences are so exaggerated that quite frankly we can no longer relate to you. We feel reasonably confident that you are not trying to relate to us either. Neither of us are people to each other. It’s worth pausing to mourn that fact. As a species we have lost 1% of our humanity. That would be you.

1% of the world, we do not intend to follow you into inhumanity. We have our own divisions. A percentage of us live in abject poverty. A percentage of us own more than one house. A percentage of us go to elite schools. A percentage of us can’t read. Those of us closer to you in privilege and opportunity pledge NOT to try in vain to join your class. We pledge to stop our aspirational nonsense that only feeds your importance. Instead we will be relating to the rest of the 99% as fellow people.

1% of the world, if you have what we need to relate to each other as fellow people, we will be taking it. Don’t panic. We can do without your mansion on a hill, your backyard swimming pools and tennis courts, even your personal automobile. Just let’s cut the crap. You don’t get to “own” all the farmland. You don’t get to “own” public transport or a monopoly on roads or a patent on our genes. Those things were never going to fly. (And you don’t get to own Federation Square.)

1% of the world, the first thing we will be taking back is our attention. Next will be our labour, our time, the focus of our education, the purpose of our industry, and our lives in your conflicts, but first it is our attention. We can’t do anything until we do that. We have a lot to talk to each other about and following your antics is only a distraction. This is therefore our last communication.

99% of the world, let’s talk.

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Okay, the above manifesto reveals a couple of things. One is that I am uneasy about a movement that ignores my privelage in relation to others. I am not a member of the 1% by a long shot, however I am pretty comfortable in my estimation. Hence I want to shift the emphasis onto how we treat each other rather than how the 1% treat us. I don’t think this shift is really what the 99% movement sounds like in name, so yes I am hijacking it.

Secondly I truly believe that the way we are relating to each other – when we put our luxuries above others needs – is not “natural”. I think it’s actually inhuman. In order to justify it we have to dehumanise those in need but I think we only succeed in dehumanising ourselves. There’s no doubt that the 1% do this from the simplest to the most extreme ways. More importantly we allow our governments to do it for them, enforcing the eviction of those who can’t pay their rent while entitling the ultra-rich to possess entire inner city towers. However in smaller ways I do the same. In the process I am making myself into a social alien to the rest of the human species.

Thirdly the irreverent tone of this manifesto should reveal that I am NOT saying that the 99% movement or Occupy (Insert City) really have to have a coherent justification for non-violent actions. Quite frankly I would rather a week of protesting without any point over another week of shopping without any point. The Occupy Melbourne Protest was peaceful, welcoming, democratic, shared its food and created a space where people could meet across economic classes. On the downside it disrupted a small cluster of upmarket eateries. The Spring Racing Carnival by comparison is drunken, violent, unsharing and uncaring and no-one demands it have a clear manifesto. The Spring Racing Carnival is justified because it’s fun (or addiction) for those who participate even though that fun disrupts others; the streets of Melbourne run with spew during it. Occupy Melbourne, although I missed it, looked like my kind of fun instead. Minus the police of course.

The Point of Philosophy. Part 1.

This is a multi-part topic. Part two is mostly written however I expect there 'll be atleast four parts in total. Not writing them all out first is dangerous as I may end up wishing I wrote this first post differently. However this way I can respond to peoples comments and hey, maybe even change my ideas!

Further the answers as we progress will get more and more uncertain so helpful comments are very appreciated. 

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The works of some philosophers
would make excellent table legs.



Whenever you do something regularly it starts to feel unnatural to partition off that activity from just living. At least that’s how it looks when I watch those superbly fit people doing stretches at the park. It’s certainly how it looks when I rock up unannounced to a friend’s house and they’re making some complicated dish that for me would be a major event. I feel like that with philosophy and theology. Sometimes it takes more effort for me to do anything else. However this post is about making the activity of philosophy and theology explicit and asking “What’s the point?”



It’s a pertinent question because I’ve recently been struggling with writing in a vacuum. While I was bemoaning that feeling, my partner identified that I don’t have a community. I’m a non-theist asking questions about God, I’m a non-student who tries to be a scholar. I’m not surrounded by fellow academics or a faith based community. So why do what I do?


Firstly some definition is necessary. Philosophy is the attempt to articulate our thinking and that of others usually with a value placed on going “deeper” to our primary assumptions. Don’t allow “thinking” to lead you to only consider certain kinds of algebraic-looking “thinking” as Philosophy. That’s logic. Philosophy includes a very broad idea of “thinking” including inspiration, intuition and even plain old dumb guessing as well as logic. Basically if you’re thinking “Do I think?, the answer is yes. 

One answer to why we do philosophy is that we can’t help it. If everyone agreed with everyone else then possibly philosophy would never come up. As soon as disagreement occurs some of us at least are going to ask why and whether we or those who think differently are wrong. Those questions are going to cause us to (rudimentally perhaps) articulate our thinking.

I don’t think that’s much of an answer because we can help doing philosophy. Certainly I can do less philosophy than I currently do. This is blog post sixteen after all of a mostly philosophy blog. We can all try and avoid disagreement. When we can’t we can label our opponents mad or evil or liars. We can punch people who ask us why we think we’re right. It’s reasonable to expect we’ll do less philosophy this way than if we celebrate the practice of articulating thinking.

Here's my rebuttal, Sirrah.

So we’re back to asking why DO philosophy after all. You could say philosophy is just a more powerful form of punching people (with our thoughts) who ask us why we think we’re right. With this rationale we are for a particular orthodoxy -no questions asked- and the whole value of philosophy is figuring out where those who disagree with us have departed from that orthodoxy so that their heresy can be cut off exactly at the base of the branch. Our weapons are wit and insult and argument. We can also use this sort of doing philosophy to police ourselves as well – to ensure that we are not deviating from orthodoxy. This is what Philosophy looks like in the hands of the Spanish Inquisition (now called the Doctrine of the Congregation of the Faith). It’s also what it looks like when Scientology does it. Can you imagine a world where philosophers for hire exist purely as thought cops for this purpose – pruning a communities thought processes to fit their employers design? In fact we’re there already – they are called management change consultants or corporate culture experts.


The classic alternative to this policing function of philosophy is that we care about TRUTH. For some this is the only alternative. In this approach our thinking “needs” to correspond with reality –this “need” can be considered a primal need like hunger, a divinely gifted longing or a self imposed goal (a need by choice basically). This approach encourages us to view the philosophy of those we disagree with not as weeds to be plucked out of a community but as potential sources of learning. The activity of doing philosophy in this approach is not merely to police but to develop and even overturn our own thinking if necessary. This is generally what Philosophy looks like in the hands of the “spiritual seeker” – that is one who is trying to align their self with reality even if they would depart from one spiritual tradition and enter another to do so. That’s not to say that a spiritual seeker can’t also stay in one spiritual tradition too. It is that they are not a loyalist to that tradition before or above the search for truth.

Two problems face the spiritual seeker however. One is that philosophy under the direction of a commitment to Truth can compete with our other needs such as for companionship and community or if not actually competitive Philosophy doesn’t inherently value these concerns. The image of the Truth seeking philosopher might be someone like a young Ludwig Wittgenstein. He constantly fought against his need for other people so as to maintain an isolation that served his work.  If you don’t know Wittgenstein you probably know the image; the unfriendly, tactless, driven scholar who considers their desire for company a weakness. If this is philosophy its fruits appear to be only self-referentially relevant. It is hostile to our social selves and the joys of life. Ultimately we will ask why we are cultivating that kind of thinking. It may be orientated towards truth but it isn’t always healthy. I think those in relationships with people who do a lot of philosophy may understand this point best.

Secondly what are we to do if we discover that Truth can’t be known? The spiritual seeker recoils from this statement as a matter of LOYALTY to their mission not as a matter of TRUTH. Paradoxically this means a betrayal of their mission. Even if they believe that Truth can be known the spiritual seeker knows their commitment to Truth in philosophy is not absolute. In the matter of Truth’s knowability they are a loyalist at heart.

It’s this realisation that has almost led me to give up philosophy more than once. It’s not so much that I despair that truth can’t be known but that I don’t know how to proceed with honesty and integrity without just assuming that truth can be known (which is itself a little dishonest and dis-integritous). Proceeding past this impasse was something I had to do before I started this blog.

And when I did proceed further a whole new territory opened up. This territory is defined by a new motivation. And I’m filled by a new joy. The image of the young Wittgenstein doesn’t have to be my ideal. We can celebrate life with others. That’s quite a relief to an extrovert like me. Ironically it was probably the older Wittgenstein who gave me the final inspiration to be in this territory.
You see in the end Wittgenstein was something other than a classic spiritual seeker. He was uncomfortable with his feelings for others and often a fish out of water (as a gay man in between the world wars from a foreign country and class) but he was also a lover of his friends, a sentimentalist (he carried a well read copy of Dickens’ A Christmas Tale) and enjoyed working with others who shared his way of seeing problems. In fact he was actually always pragmatic. Wittgenstein felt that philosophy’s purpose was to liberate us from the burdens of philosophy. You could even say that Wittgenstein saw the need for Truth as one of those burdens.

In my next post I’m going to explore a bit of this exciting new territory. Feel free to comment if I’ve already stopped making sense because after this it gets weirder.