self-improvement, self hatred, and grace

I remain quite thoroughly among the thoughts that I last wrote about. (I'm thinking this once-a-month blogging thing may be sustainable.)

Have been reading a book by Paul Tillich about faith. It's still tough for me, because I definitely feel very resistant to religion in many ways, because it has caused so much harm for so many people over history as well as in our world. And because it has caused so much harm for me (see below).

But at the same time, I do think I've been overreacting against some parts of it, and I want to stop doing that. So I've spent a lot of time (to the detriment of law school commitments, perhaps) continuing to consider the things I admire in people, the things that I think really matter in life. Love, forgiveness, curiosity, compassion, courage, creativity, humility. I don't know if I'll ever be able to associate myself with any specific religion, because there's too much baggage to them. But I think my belief in these ideals does in some way resemble a belief in God. Not sure exactly how, but that's what it seems like.

The topic I'm thinking about now, though, is something slightly different: What to do when you fall (far) short of these ideals?

I was raised on the idea of "love the sinner, hate the sin." Seems like a logical plan for improvement, criticism. But I'm wondering how much is it really possible, especially with oneself. That is, how much is it really possible both to commit yourself to change things about yourself, while not simply descending into self-loathing?

I happen to think that for me, my all-pervasive self-criticism frequently hinders my actual self-improvement. It makes me profoundly unhappy. And in the end it actually feeds the sorts of insecurities and anxieties and fears and so on that drive me to act selfishly. So it's self-defeating.

I once was very close to someone who thought that a way to help me was to expose me to all the things that were bad about me, to really make me face them head-on. I believe this person was well-meaning, and certainly was an insightful individual in general. And I think that under some circumstances there could be some good that would come of this sort of approach. But unfortunately, for me it had just the opposite of the desired effect. I was already carrying around so much self-criticism and insecurity that anything that added to that became too much. I became overwhelmed. I felt very alone, and I felt like everything was falling out from under my feet. It was a panicky, perspectiveless time, and I disappointed myself and this person deeply.

Perhaps the point is, then, that whether with yourself or others, there has to be something else that comes with serious criticism--love, acceptance, a feeling that while things need to change, there is hope. And that is a tough thing. There's just an inherent tension between love, acceptance, and...change! (I remember this play I saw one time, called "I love you, you're perfect, now change.") Actual self-improvement does take a lot of honesty and straightforwardness, more than we can usually muster. Notwithstanding all my self-criticism and so on, I'm still surprisingly complacent. I need brutal honesty. But that alone, it seems, isn't enough: that alone leads to despair.

So you see, there's a tension.

So perhaps the point is, that I'm actually feeling somewhat pessimistic about the possibility of change. Maybe it can only happen very slowly, and with an incredible amount of acceptance and love to accompany it. And that's a tall order.

28th birthday. And maybe, something new.

The last 5 months or so have been incredibly low for me. More broadly (although not as intensely), the last several years have been incredibly low, as well.

I believe that this has been the case in large part because of my aggressive rejection (starting my last year of college) of the religion I was raised with. It all started when I became totally possessed by my anger at the close-minded, judgmental, patriarchal, legalistic view of God held by evangelical Christians.

Awash in my anger, I lost my moorings. I let myself be taken control of by my worst fears, ambitions, desires. I acted and thought selfishly, carelessly, thoughtlessly. I worked hard because I felt like I had to, not because I loved to. Although I struggled against it, I let myself be tempted to view people instrumentally (which Kant justly condemns as a profound flaw). Essentially, that is to say, I lost myself. I have been depressed, sad, lonely, fearful, and while in some ways functional, in other ways, lost--without a core.

I have been thinking about this for awhile now, for obvious reasons: I have been worried about what the hell I'm doing. Some of these thoughts came to a head last night as I was riding the subway.

I think I have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. In my haste to dispense with the doctrinal narrowness of evangelicals, I have failed to recall some of the profound goodness of spirituality.

I want to rediscover that profound goodness and power. (I will take advantage of a coincidence of the English language and call the source of this goodness and power not "God," but "the Good," in order to avoid some of the gendered, vengeful, or narrow associations that have unfortunately shaped many of our ideas of "God." There can't really be any difference, I don't think, between understanding "God" and understanding that which is Good. Goodness is as much as we humans can understand of whatever the meaning or purpose of life is; and this is as good as we are going to get, I think, to understanding "God.")

Not that I want to rediscover specific religious doctrines and start telling people how to live their lives or what to believe get to "heaven" or something. I have experienced firsthand how confusing, distorting, and destructive the strictures of doctrine are, in the course of human life.

But I do want to live with higher ideals governing me. I believe that life is (or should be) all about love, truth, and compassion; I want to start living in accordance with these beliefs (of course, very imperfectly--but as well as I can). I want to shun that which is evil, fearful, selfish, and pursue that which will bring peace and happiness.

I don't think it will be easy, and I am very humbled by how far off of this track I have wandered. But it feels like something of a spiritual awakening. (Maybe this all sounds cheesy. Maybe it is cheesy. All I know is that living with these ideals made me a much happier person in the past; and living the other way hasn't been doing that.)

Here are two quotes that I think are amazing, and express at least some of the ideals I want to pursue:

(1) “The flies seek filth, the bees seek honey. I will shun the habit of the flies and follow that of the bees. I will refrain from finding faults in others and look only for the good which is in them.”

(2) “Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked. If we meet someone who is happy in his way of life, we are inclined to envy him and be jealous of his success. We must learn to rejoice in it, as we take pleasure in the happiness of a friend. If someone is unhappy, we should feel sorry for him, instead of despising him or criticizing him for bringing misfortunes upon himself. The virtue of others is apt to irritate us, because we take it as a reflection upon our own shortcomings. We are tempted to sneer at it and suggest that it is only hypocrisy. On the contrary, we should delight in it and see it as an inspiration to do better. As for the wicked . . . ‘Be not overcome of evil.’ If someone harms us or hates us, our first instinct is to answer him or her with hatred and injury. We may succeed in injuring him or her, but we shall be injuring ourselves much more, and our hatred will throw our own minds into confusion.”

This is all of course oversimplified, particularly the parts as regards my own personal journey with regards to faith, family, etc. (after all, many hours on the couch go into all this, so there are a lot of ins and outs that are involved in the thinking), but sometimes things that are inherently complicated also have a very simple upshot. And maybe the upshot is all that matters on this one, at least for now.

(As the Big Lebowski would have it, "My thinking about this case had become very uptight....")

good advice...

over the weekend, a very wise person gave me some good advice.

it started when i read a paper that a friend at law school had written. the paper was great. it was well-footnoted, smoothly written, solidly researched, and interesting. now, the guy who wrote it is a good friend, and a smart and motivated guy. i like and admire him, and i was genuinely happy for him that he had written such a great piece.

so that was my first feeling.

my second feeling was: i'm such a schmuck! MY paper doesn't look near that good, and it's not likely to any time soon. i felt left behind, inferior, and stressed.

basically, the advice is simply, don't let that kind of thing get to you. be genuinely happy for the success of others, and nothing more. don't take that next step, comparing yourself to them. no good can come of that!

it's true. charlie spends too much time looking around himself nervously. he's at his best when he charges ahead into the next challenge, doing things he loves, learning, discussing, and so on.

talking on the phone--conversation and keeping track of yourself

when i was in 7th grade and starting talking to people on the phone for the first time, i used to make little lists of the things i wanted to talk to somebody about. i told myself it was because i wanted to make sure there weren't long, awkward pauses. (which of course concerned me greatly.)

in retrospect, i realize it was also that i really relied on the friendship: people i was talking to helped me keep track of myself. the conversations with her were where that happened, much more than conversations with my parents, since they, being parents, didn't really "get it" most of the time.

it was where i was sort of able to process my day, my thoughts, my feelings, with someone who cared about me.

Hilarious.

http://download10.rbn.com/airam/airam/pod/download/franken/hangonstevens.mp3

charlie's smarmy spirituality

i realized that i should go ahead and outright recommend my favorite "spiritual" book, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. you can find a copy of it online here. some people think it's over the top. and they might be right. but i like it.

book recommendation

a really short post to dull the blow of that huge one i just put up:

read the book Solaris by stanislaw lem. do it right away. it's an amazing, underrated book. and it was the occasion for a truly atrocious george clooney movie, but don't hold that against it.

Religion Part I (aka longest post ever)

i'm pasting a (modified) e-mail discussion of religion that i had with a friend recently, because religion is something i intend to blog about frequently.

my original e-mail came after i had commented that i basically believe that durkheim was essentially "right" about religion as he wrote about it in his Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.

my basic summary of durkheim:
his essential claim is that religion compels humans because it gives an outlet to our need to make sense of our otherwise confounding experience of "reality." reality is in quotation marks because he thinks that religion, like other similar constituent parts of our outlook on the world, is in fact the only way through which there IS any reality in any meaningful sense. sure, even without religion/reason/language we would have a physical experience of the world, but that experience would be so bewildering complex and diverse that we would have no structure for it, no way of making sense of it, no way of controlling it, no way of bringing any order to it. this would be a problem for a number of reasons (this part of the argument basically tracks Hume on causation), most fundamentally because we wouldn't be able to communicate with one another effectively, because the very notion of words attached to objects presumes some consistency among objects from one day to the next, as well as some ability to classify objects into certain related or unrelated groups based upon various similarities or differences. religion, reason, language -- which he views as essentially part of the same broad phenomenon, which we might call consciousness -- are in a way the operating system for our brain. he contrasts the way we humans organize and conceive our experience of the world with the way that animals do (so far as we can discern what it is). basically animals simply have a much more attenuated version of the same experience -- after all, animals do seem to have, for instance, some sense of causation, as in your hamster nosing up to the water canister when it is thirsty. anyway, all this is how he gets to the point where he can talk about the social life of humans, which is really, he thinks, the engine of compelling religious sentiments (and our other sentiments too). religious systems are social systems in the sense that they connect us to a larger whole that endures beyond ourselves. we are inspired by high religious ideals because they connect us with something eternal, something that extends our being beyond its limited/limiting physical dimensions. this is a good feeling. durkheim terms it "collective effervescence." experience, even with all of the constructs of reason and consciousness, remains bewildering. (take, for instance, the rule of non-contradiction, which is probably the central tenet of rationality: is it born out in your experience of the world? aren't there things that actually at least seem to violate it? can you prove that it's true, or is it just a postulate?) given this bewildering nature of experience, we continue seeking ways to explain things, and are forced to relate to each other to see order in our lives, to be able to construct narratives that make sense of things for us. e.g., you look at people of different ages to understand the structure of life in terms of its timeline; you look to other people of your gender to know how to make sense of your gender; you read religious narratives to affirm a sense of justice, order, meaning, in human civilization (maybe your religion teaches that it's cyclical; maybe it teaches that justice is karmic, on earth now or in future incarnations; maybe god will straighten everything out when we die: either way you get to put things in an order, to render them sensible).

Ok, i think that's quite enough of that.

my more personal views on it, e-mail 1:
what i believe (and durkheim more or less taught me this, or durkheim+foucault and maybe a couple of others) is that any "truth" that we can come to a knowledge of is deeply criticizable, because what we see is so dependent on what we set out to see, what we are conditioned to see, what we are looking for.

but that's not to say that there's nothing there, in the beyond. there must be an answer to the question where did it all come from; and there might even be an answer to why, although that's less certain. point being, i think you can leave in place a lot of mystery, a lot of room for spirituality. have you ever read the prophet by kahlil gibran? some people think it's cheesy, but i don't. i think it's very moving, very spiritual, and in a way that i can appreciate, in that it's non-propositional truth, rather a sort of intuitive, lived truth.

my friend's response (modified):
what you say about Durkheim makes sense to me. I wonder, though--it seems somewhat fatalistic. If the bit that you believe most firmly is that whatever you come to believe is truth will be essentially criticizable, then doesn't that undermine the search? Just knowing that there's mystery may be comforting but is it fulfilling? I'd think that looking for the answers would be the fun bit. (plus there's the problem of infinite regress. If any truth you come up with is subjective/criticizable, then the truth that any truth you come up with is subjective/criticizable is subjective/criticizable, etc.).

my response:
so your point was that my durkheimian presentation of things is "somewhat fatalistic" -- in the sense that once everything is deconstructed, that "undermines the search," undermines the "looking for answers" bit, which is where much of the pleasure, and the fulfillment, derives from. i took you to be saying a couple of things.

first, there's the objection that the fact that all truth-claims are criticizable/subjective leads to an infinite regression. but i'm not quite intending to argue that everything is subjective/criticizable. what i want to argue is that there is some imperfect consensus among human communities as to what truth is, and that is where meaning, truth, indeed resides: to the greatest extent it can reside among humans, and in this world. and this is truth, because beyond this...it doesn't exist. in its "being," the world is, obviously, just atoms and void. the "truth" is our (rather imaginative) description of the ways that these atoms and void happen to arrange themselves for some amount of time. you could say it this way: the truth is much more interesting, and indeed more meaningful, than the actuality.

and i'll thus argue that knowledge -- while it does not in any meaningful sense have an "objective" referent -- is gained or lost with relation to this consensus, which is not so much a substantive set of claims as it is a sort of set of rules for how you get to know things. the consensus is manifested, for instance, in the rules of reason: the rule of non-contradiction, transitive property, basic principles of deduction, and so on.

so i perhaps emphasized the wrong thing before. yes, truth-claims will be criticizable, at least in the way that popper said they are (which is pretty superficial -- i.e., you should continually be testing them, and you can never be TOTALLY SURE that they're true). but they're also, in a more deep way, constructs of society. foucault's way of saying it is that truth (in fact all statements or knowledge whatsoever) comes packaged in given "discourses" - it in fact only exists within discourse, because what is it outside discourse? how could we conceive of anything outside discourse? it's impossible. it's like thinking without thought. thought doesn't exist without a head to think it.

now, discourse doesn't just consist in what is said, but in the context in which each statement that is said (or thought that is thought, or object that is named, or scientific principle that is discovered, or person that is loved [more on that in a minute]) comes to have meaning -- i.e., with relation to everything around it. this is all a very roundabout way of saying that reality is socially constructed. and, i think, durkheim would be fine with that way of saying it. but it doesn't quite capture his real insight, which is that this doesn't totally eradicate the idea of meaning -- as apprehended in, e.g., religion.

this brings me to i think what is your second point, which is that it basically saps the life out of things to think of it as all constructed, as all "fake." how (one might ask) can i possibly worship god meaningfully if i suspect that, in my heart of hearts, it's all just a social construct!?

i think this is the most powerful practical criticism of my argument. in my personal life, i haven't solved the problem. but it strikes me that we do in fact deal with this kind of thing pretty regularly in other aspects of our life. (this is the part that occurred to me in a flash on the streets of brooklyn:). for instance, romantic relationships, and family relationships.

take romance first. evolutionary biologists tell us (convincingly, i think) that we are attracted to people for a number of reasons, some of them involving chemical cues (pheremones or whatever), and some of them involving visual/physical cues that suggest likely evolutionary/reproductive success. let's ignore the chemistry, and take the second kinds of cues. the possible examples are breasts in a woman, height in a man (or a low voice, or whatever, use yr imagination). obviously, the whole thing is complex -- not all men are attracted to a certain kind of woman, or women to a certain kind of man. but i think these are undeniable factors, even if it's clearly a complex picture that is still being filled in by scientists.

what does this fact do to our experience of love, though? is someone less attractive to you because you can "deconstruct" at least some of your reasons for being attracted to them? does romantic, physical contact of whatever sort feel any less satisfying because on some level you know it is being influenced by primordial evolutionary factors? i think the answer is no. similarly, when you think of what it would be like to have children, would it really matter, do you think, that you know that one reason that you feel so close to them, so protective of them and so on, is because you're biologically programmed to feel that way? again, i think the answer must be no. we know, on some level, that our emotions are not telling us the whole story. but that does not bar us from fully participating in the experience. (any more than, perhaps, knowing that some horrible poisonous snake is colored the way it is to make it a more effective predator does not make it any less beautiful)

maybe this is different from the religion thing, but i'm not so sure. i think, in both cases, we're talking about something very complex and multifaceted. if religion gives you the deep satisfaction it gives to a lot of people, i'm not sure that the insight that much of it is socially determined and intended to satisfy needs that are quite unrelated to needs of the "spirit," will make all that much of a difference. i do think that it might make you more suspicious of certain kinds of doctrines or whatever, but, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. it doesn't have to steal away the experience of "collective effervescence" that durkheim claimed was the heart of the religious experience.

so, back to the original question. is it "fulfilling"?

on some level, i don't know, and the answer is probably not. certainly if by "fulfilling" we mean giving you some profound, individual relationship with a life force that created the material world and oversees it closely and consciously, then no.

but is that the only thing that fulfilling means? what if "fulfilling" is: some intermingling of emotionally and physically gratifying experiences guided by an ethical framework derived from a desire to further a higher project called "humanity" or simply "the world" (or "family" or whatever). you may know your access to this project in all its dimensions is imperfect at best, and that it is coming to you through various socially-constructed "discourses," but it is a project in which you, nonetheless, are accorded an actual, individual role: access to things that you find beautiful, profound, stimulating, loving.

that doesn't strike me as unfulfilling.

OCD

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/health/21cons.html?_r=1&8hpib&oref=slogin

it is surely a sign of my burgeoning OCD that i found this article, which discusses the shoddy quality of some hand-sanitizers, incredibly disturbing. what if it's one of the brands i use? i'm going to be checking all of my bottles to make sure they're the requisite 60-90% concentration necessary for PROPER CLEANSING.

and no, i wasn't like this before i came to law school. but i think it has less to do with law school per se and more to do with new york city, and particularly with commutes in new york city, which are simply, and unavoidably, unsanitary. you get to class, and you want to somehow get that nasty-subway feeling off of you.

stuff

first, big welcome to ziggy stardust, commentator and blogger extraordinaire.

second, i'm just sitting here pondering how complicated fed courts is. basic shit totally escapes me. for instance, does the declaratory judgment act, 28 usc 2201, provide an independent cause of action, or do you have allege harm under something else and then the declaratory judgment is just your remedy? this is the kind of stuff that (literally) keeps me awake at night lately.

third, why can't my gym be open after 8pm on sundays? what's a hard-workin' boy to do? get flabby is, i suppose, the only answer.

attorneys and representation

the most interesting problem in fed cts so far is the problem of bad representation. in what ways can your atty's mistakes be chalked up to you? when should they be? if you're a judge (or a prosecutor) and you know damn well that the atty on the other side is hurting their client, or not doing as much good for their client as they could, what do you think? how can you consider that justice?

cases can be "valued" based on the percentage chance of victory and of the relief that will likely result. a good lawyer, presumably, will move your chances of winning up some not-insignificant percentage. (if you don't believe this, then you believe a lot of corporations are wasting a ton of money on representation.)

let's say it's a 15% bump, the good-lawyer bump. i think that's probably very conservative, particularly in light of how bad attys can be (self-policing doesn't work for at least this profession). so if you were a defendant and you had a 60% chance of getting off the hook with a great atty, and only a 45% chance with a bad atty, it's effectively the statistical difference between guilt and innocence.

conclusion being that justice can be bought. not in every single case, because there's always only a chance of winning or losing. a single verdict can't be guaranteed any more than a long life can be guaranteed. but in the same way that across enough people, chances of very good health can be bought, similarly, chances of very good verdicts can be bought.

Science and reality

from the NY times today, in an article about Quantum Physics being used to tell us what we want to hear:

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When it comes to physics, people seem to need to kid themselves. There is a presumption, Dr. Albert said, that if you look deeply enough you will find "some reaffirmation of your own centrality to the world, a reaffirmation of your ability to take control of your own destiny." We want to know that God loves us, that we are the pinnacle of evolution.

But one of the most valuable aspects of science, he said, is precisely the way it resists that temptation to find the answer we want. That is the test that quantum mysticism flunks, and on some level we all flunk.

I'd like to believe that like Galileo, I would have the courage to see the world clearly, in all its cruelty and beauty, "without hope or fear," as the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis put it. Take free will. Everything I know about physics and neuroscience tells me it's a myth. But I need that illusion to get out of bed in the morning. Of all the durable and necessary creations of atoms, the evolution of the illusion of the self and of free will are perhaps the most miraculous. That belief is necessary to my survival.

But I wouldn't call it good physics.

----------------

it makes me wonder about law, and the way that volition, among other things, works. how much is coincidence, how much can really be "culpable," where bad luck ends and negligence begins, and why we let ourselves get away with all these myths like compensation ("making the victim whole").

you can't live with it, you can't live without it.

i want to talk about anxiety.

first, a story. i was standing on the subway yesterday, and there was this guy reading an article. he was clearly a grad student. and he looked stressed! and i thought to myself, man, you shouldn't be stressed -- you've got years in which to write your dissertation, you've got tons of autonomy, you do very rewarding work....you're not facing, for instance, a ride on the law school's roller coaster.(The terrifying highs and lows of the Brutal Curve! Not for the faint-hearted!)

but of course, when i was a grad student, i stressed like that too. it now seems stupid to me that i was stressed -- that i beat myself up about not working when i felt like i "should," and all that. but while law school's lack of autonomy sucks, at least you know when work is over! total freedom, which is what grad students, writers, artists, etc, enjoy, comes with its own difficulties.

so while it seems ideal, in some ways it's really not. that kind of lifestyle may require MORE, not LESS, discipline -- if you're going to do it happily. (most people don't do it happily. they stress constantly, and use that stress to convince themselves to eke out some small portion of work. sound familiar?)

if you want to live happily with a freelance sort of life, you somehow have to motivate yourself for some limited period of time, and then let go, so that you can SAVOR all the extra time you have. this is so hard to do, though. is it possible? is it possible to be motivated for a brief time, and then to truly relax? is there any difference between motivation and anxiety? i have friends who are pretty much free from anxiety -- most of them live in the South. and friends who are constantly anxious -- most of them are in law school. very few strike that happy, productive balance...

charlie doesn't know if this balance is merely a dream. he himself exists somewhere in between anxiety and non-anxiety. perhaps we humans are indeed merely fated to be enslaved by our desires, our fears, our anxieties, our feelings -- always tossed hither and thither by the wind...