Most of us have had occasion to feel that deceased ancestors remain behind us, with us, or otherwise present in our lives. This conviction can visit at serendipitous moments or one can carry it for the remainder of their life.
Microbiology offers a cogent lens on inheritance. Living things carry within them unique codes that express both their singularity and their affinity with members of the same species. DNA has been studied robustly and is if anything underutilized in sociology.
Where DNA theory falls short, I believe, is as an authoritative explanation of who we are. The example above (which now continues in anecdote) means to illustrate this.
A geneticist well-versed and immersed in gene-based work could explain his feeling that his saintly, God-fearing mother lingered in watching over him. Striking, as it did, as he emerged from the shower one cold, lonely morning, this emotional protuberance practically demanded explanation. Even before he could continue his ordinary routines of shaving and the like. For, if his most cherished relationship persisted in some way, how ought he to rightly act in the next moment? Reaching the seemingly insightful conclusion that his mother lived on as expressed in his DNA served to sustain everything but the character of the sentiment itself. The routines could continue. His self-subscribing identity as an intelligent professional could persist. ‘How fascinating it is to think that the superstitions of old approximated the biochemistry replicating throughout every somatic cell in the body,’ his body, and that he knew the precise structure of the amines by which all this was effected. His authority as an agent in the modern world remained unmolested.
But scientific theory isn't really an adequate vessel for that epiphany at all, is it? Whether as experienced--as an overflowing emotional contact with an identity that has passed from the world--or as motivated--purportedly by genes (or hormones or neurons) but really by the person themselves and whatever it was that made them that. The flaw I encounter in my own thinking is that a given theory fundamentally explains reality, when in fact it only explains one aspect of available worldly experience.
You will note that I am not denying the validity of genetic theory. Instead, I intend to remark that I (and people I know) ascribe scientific utility both more broadly and more narrowly than is proper. This is perhaps true of any theory, but it is probably more true of newer theories than old.
A friend who worked in big tech recently assuaged my performance anxiety by relating to me: "people are not businesses." Whether the push comes from self-help programs, corporate motivational campaigns, or investing influencers, the millennial generation seems driven to optimize their productivity and output, he said. We seek out 'life hacks' and burn the midnight oil in pursuit of an elusive contemporary definition of success. His canny comment diverted me from a self-imposed (for a time at least) feedback loop of conceptual goal-setting, insufficiency, and ordained imperative to grind harder. My Sisyphisian quest to corporatize my existence could cease.
My friend had Named the problem. And there were many reasons that I felt comfortable and ready to move away from the framework I had semi-consciously been applying to my life. The most cogent and liberating, however, was that the theory was inconsistent with its own objectives. His statement made this plain. "People are not businesses." I am a person, so I cannot achieve the form of success that inheres to successful corporations any more than a lion could succeed as a fish. More importantly, why would I want to?
Whenever the remains of our civilization are discovered, we should not expect future people to make any more sense of it than we have of the Egyptians, Mayans, Mesopotamians, early 'natives', or other peoples for which we have no name. If news headlines about cave and ancient tablet discoveries are any guide, the educated world is perennially impressed that former civilizations knew more than they had previously assumed. It seems inter alia Egyptians built pyramids in ways we still cannot replicate today and other early peoples built in exact alignment with magnetic poles and certain astronomical bodies as we understand them today. Notably, we reach these conclusions through ancient buildings, which comprised some small fraction of these peoples' lives and just about all that remains. Most iPhones still won't charge with a USB-C, so if the world "ended" tomorrow, it seems unlikely future people would have servers and semiconductors to interpret a digital record of what came before.
What I mean to indicate by all this is that the phenomena people can name shifts over time. It's unlikely the Egyptians or Native Americans understood DNA as we do. They may, however, have possessed accounts of lineage or ancestors that overlap with what we experience today. The moment the hypothetical geneticist 'contacted' his deceased mother in the midst of his morning routine would likely have found a more felicitous vehicle in the theoretical technology of the ancients. The object here is not to say people then understand better or were better than our contemporaries or vice-versa. Nor can the object be to fully recover the Named resources of past times, for times have changed.
Language itself is teleological, and the technological resources--by which I mean contemporary theories put to consistent practice--of ancient peoples have been thoroughly Unnamed. This is in part because of physiological decline, in part because of entropy in narratives passed down over time, but importantly because people today strive for different things.
Technological resources with a social focus, or, theories consistently applied to social practice for some period, that our own civilization has developed and instituted have shifted into unnamed territory. It is easy to transgress theories that are unnamed, and it is almost as easy to observe the consequences of these transgressions. More difficult is ascribing the consequences to the particular transgression because the signs and boundaries of unnamed theories have faded.
For instance, some say abortion transgresses the law of the United States. Arguably, such advocates are really articulating the conviction that abortion violates some other law, but the parameters of that authority are vague; the costs and benefits of allowing or proscribing abortion require much squinting and are difficult to make out even then. It's a technological resource whose excellence has yet to be fully rectified with our social priorities, in large part because the social technologies that interpreted and evaluated pregnancy and child-rearing have lost their names.
I could not give a complete account of my life to someone and expect them to comprehensively understand. Not to anyone, it is likely. Each moment brings new experience, and no code could capture the vicissitudes in its significance and relation to all others. I am relatively certain I could not either explain the entirety of my life to myself, even if I remembered every moment. Unfortunately, it's not for lack of trying. The signs of our lives are in constant motion, even—somehow—keeping constant the fellows and companions who accompany us and the warp and woof of their meaning to us and how they receive us as people. Assuming human lives have meaning, collective meaning (and the semiotic efficiencies it presupposes; OK, economists?) is the only obvious vehicle for progressivism. Only: nobody agrees on anything, especially now.
Aristotle gamely sought to order and prioritize this mess. His taxonomy encouraged excellence in the particular art (e.g., music) and a transcendent excellence in ordering the respective practice. A number of people have found his theories availing, but most of them supervise 18-22 year olds (not young enough to be children but not old enough to be people) for a living, take the summers off, and write about Aristotle for Elsevier. In short, the art they have chosen is writing about Aristotle. The psychological plight of a layperson trying to apply Aristotle visits quickly indeed.
One video that has stayed with me for over a decade depicts a violinist in a subway station. The violinist is, in fact, one of the foremost musicians in the world, and he is playing a Stradavarius. By any measure, this person is excellent in the art of music. With shock, I realized as a young adult, no one cared! People went about their boarding and disembarking in black peacoats and wool jackets. A handful over hours dropped bills in the open violin case such that one of the world's foremost violinists approached a minimum wage for that effort.
Now I am reading Alasdair MacIntyre, a self-described "neo-Aristotelian" who emphasizes that transcendent excellence depends in great measure on what others who surround us are doing and care about. It's a familiar plight for Millenials, if I may use that brushstroke. The workaday excellence that propelled Boomers towards economic and social success appears (and perhaps more often than not, actually is) futile. That's an article for a more gifted economist who can expound social principles from the tea leaves (increasing career changes, increasing costs of household goods, student loans, the pandemic, the financial crisis, etc). What remains is a visceral dilemma that is practically quotidien for even the most entitled of our generation. What art, if pursued and honed to excellence, delivers lasting success? What sustains a commitment like the one we knew when we were children who worked hard in school because we could "be whatever we want to be"?
I don't know.
What strikes me this morning is that the account can never be complete. The art in which we engage probably will not live up to our personal expectations of reward. The success we achieve in a profession will not comprise the success we initially imagined. Yes, children will always marvel that their parents care about what they care about at work. Family is instrumental in all this. The notion that we come from a particular people, with particular proclivities, and particular achievements to be proud of, that we are fundamentally related to this group. Related in who we are and how we act and the arts in which we are ordained to succeed. Work, I have come to suspect, is defined as such in relation to the social remoteness of the object. (There is no question that clearing brush is work or mechanical maintenance, perhaps because these are utterly impervious to social wiles; vicariously taking on the pursuits of a technology company is work; motherhood is somehow not "work" as such; a priest's pastoral duties are less susceptible to definition as work, etc.) A lot of components can add to the conviction or lack of conviction that a given pursuit is worthwhile. Working your ass off at the latest startup may or may not be futile, and if that fact were knowable it wouldn't be the point. Gather as must grist as you like for the argument that getting into Yale will change your life or alternately for the argument that capitalist society is a pernicious farce. Whether it is so or not does not deliver trascendent excellence or durable success.
What is clear is that people who are able to accept commitment and pursue it unflaggingly merit respect in some fundamental way. They appeal to me. I want to want what they have.
In the circumstances some would say quandary that I have described above, faith seems highly rational, even if, in my case, it is all too rarely practiced. If not faith, I am not sure what can make up the deficiency between what we want to achieve as human beings and what it is possible for us to understand in totality or know at any given moment. First, there's the impossibility of knowing what pursuit and whether a pursuit will ultimately be worthwhile. Next, is the observation that much of what nourishes us as people today found its root in the nameless pursuits of others who came before. Last is the conviction, borne of experience, that deep contentment can be achieved and some among us at least approach it. All to say, whatever experience we are living can never be fully apprehended, but goodness abides here. To the indigent atheists, Marcus Aurelius would say, "if there be no Gods [if I am a fool for believing in them] then what does it matter anyway?" In other words, if there is no authoritative good, we're no worse off for seeking it.
This Lent, I am giving up a few things. I also hope to practice the faith that worldly good is available. I cannot command this of myself, but I can listen for a God calling me. The reading today asked, if God gave up his own Son for us, what would he withhold? Put another way, who am I to demand more signs than have already been given? If all were as I would have it, how many prophets would I demand God send my way? And this how I typically conceptualize my life! as though I were the beleaguered maestro of assorted relationships and skills and property. No, the art is unnamed, but it's akin to listening. As though distant figures in an entirely dark cave were beckoning and I can sense the air fluttering off in their direction.
That and giving up games on my phone.
Microbiology offers a cogent lens on inheritance. Living things carry within them unique codes that express both their singularity and their affinity with members of the same species. DNA has been studied robustly and is if anything underutilized in sociology.
Where DNA theory falls short, I believe, is as an authoritative explanation of who we are. The example above (which now continues in anecdote) means to illustrate this.
A geneticist well-versed and immersed in gene-based work could explain his feeling that his saintly, God-fearing mother lingered in watching over him. Striking, as it did, as he emerged from the shower one cold, lonely morning, this emotional protuberance practically demanded explanation. Even before he could continue his ordinary routines of shaving and the like. For, if his most cherished relationship persisted in some way, how ought he to rightly act in the next moment? Reaching the seemingly insightful conclusion that his mother lived on as expressed in his DNA served to sustain everything but the character of the sentiment itself. The routines could continue. His self-subscribing identity as an intelligent professional could persist. ‘How fascinating it is to think that the superstitions of old approximated the biochemistry replicating throughout every somatic cell in the body,’ his body, and that he knew the precise structure of the amines by which all this was effected. His authority as an agent in the modern world remained unmolested.
But scientific theory isn't really an adequate vessel for that epiphany at all, is it? Whether as experienced--as an overflowing emotional contact with an identity that has passed from the world--or as motivated--purportedly by genes (or hormones or neurons) but really by the person themselves and whatever it was that made them that. The flaw I encounter in my own thinking is that a given theory fundamentally explains reality, when in fact it only explains one aspect of available worldly experience.
You will note that I am not denying the validity of genetic theory. Instead, I intend to remark that I (and people I know) ascribe scientific utility both more broadly and more narrowly than is proper. This is perhaps true of any theory, but it is probably more true of newer theories than old.
A friend who worked in big tech recently assuaged my performance anxiety by relating to me: "people are not businesses." Whether the push comes from self-help programs, corporate motivational campaigns, or investing influencers, the millennial generation seems driven to optimize their productivity and output, he said. We seek out 'life hacks' and burn the midnight oil in pursuit of an elusive contemporary definition of success. His canny comment diverted me from a self-imposed (for a time at least) feedback loop of conceptual goal-setting, insufficiency, and ordained imperative to grind harder. My Sisyphisian quest to corporatize my existence could cease.
My friend had Named the problem. And there were many reasons that I felt comfortable and ready to move away from the framework I had semi-consciously been applying to my life. The most cogent and liberating, however, was that the theory was inconsistent with its own objectives. His statement made this plain. "People are not businesses." I am a person, so I cannot achieve the form of success that inheres to successful corporations any more than a lion could succeed as a fish. More importantly, why would I want to?
Whenever the remains of our civilization are discovered, we should not expect future people to make any more sense of it than we have of the Egyptians, Mayans, Mesopotamians, early 'natives', or other peoples for which we have no name. If news headlines about cave and ancient tablet discoveries are any guide, the educated world is perennially impressed that former civilizations knew more than they had previously assumed. It seems inter alia Egyptians built pyramids in ways we still cannot replicate today and other early peoples built in exact alignment with magnetic poles and certain astronomical bodies as we understand them today. Notably, we reach these conclusions through ancient buildings, which comprised some small fraction of these peoples' lives and just about all that remains. Most iPhones still won't charge with a USB-C, so if the world "ended" tomorrow, it seems unlikely future people would have servers and semiconductors to interpret a digital record of what came before.
What I mean to indicate by all this is that the phenomena people can name shifts over time. It's unlikely the Egyptians or Native Americans understood DNA as we do. They may, however, have possessed accounts of lineage or ancestors that overlap with what we experience today. The moment the hypothetical geneticist 'contacted' his deceased mother in the midst of his morning routine would likely have found a more felicitous vehicle in the theoretical technology of the ancients. The object here is not to say people then understand better or were better than our contemporaries or vice-versa. Nor can the object be to fully recover the Named resources of past times, for times have changed.
Language itself is teleological, and the technological resources--by which I mean contemporary theories put to consistent practice--of ancient peoples have been thoroughly Unnamed. This is in part because of physiological decline, in part because of entropy in narratives passed down over time, but importantly because people today strive for different things.
Technological resources with a social focus, or, theories consistently applied to social practice for some period, that our own civilization has developed and instituted have shifted into unnamed territory. It is easy to transgress theories that are unnamed, and it is almost as easy to observe the consequences of these transgressions. More difficult is ascribing the consequences to the particular transgression because the signs and boundaries of unnamed theories have faded.
For instance, some say abortion transgresses the law of the United States. Arguably, such advocates are really articulating the conviction that abortion violates some other law, but the parameters of that authority are vague; the costs and benefits of allowing or proscribing abortion require much squinting and are difficult to make out even then. It's a technological resource whose excellence has yet to be fully rectified with our social priorities, in large part because the social technologies that interpreted and evaluated pregnancy and child-rearing have lost their names.
I could not give a complete account of my life to someone and expect them to comprehensively understand. Not to anyone, it is likely. Each moment brings new experience, and no code could capture the vicissitudes in its significance and relation to all others. I am relatively certain I could not either explain the entirety of my life to myself, even if I remembered every moment. Unfortunately, it's not for lack of trying. The signs of our lives are in constant motion, even—somehow—keeping constant the fellows and companions who accompany us and the warp and woof of their meaning to us and how they receive us as people. Assuming human lives have meaning, collective meaning (and the semiotic efficiencies it presupposes; OK, economists?) is the only obvious vehicle for progressivism. Only: nobody agrees on anything, especially now.
Aristotle gamely sought to order and prioritize this mess. His taxonomy encouraged excellence in the particular art (e.g., music) and a transcendent excellence in ordering the respective practice. A number of people have found his theories availing, but most of them supervise 18-22 year olds (not young enough to be children but not old enough to be people) for a living, take the summers off, and write about Aristotle for Elsevier. In short, the art they have chosen is writing about Aristotle. The psychological plight of a layperson trying to apply Aristotle visits quickly indeed.
One video that has stayed with me for over a decade depicts a violinist in a subway station. The violinist is, in fact, one of the foremost musicians in the world, and he is playing a Stradavarius. By any measure, this person is excellent in the art of music. With shock, I realized as a young adult, no one cared! People went about their boarding and disembarking in black peacoats and wool jackets. A handful over hours dropped bills in the open violin case such that one of the world's foremost violinists approached a minimum wage for that effort.
Now I am reading Alasdair MacIntyre, a self-described "neo-Aristotelian" who emphasizes that transcendent excellence depends in great measure on what others who surround us are doing and care about. It's a familiar plight for Millenials, if I may use that brushstroke. The workaday excellence that propelled Boomers towards economic and social success appears (and perhaps more often than not, actually is) futile. That's an article for a more gifted economist who can expound social principles from the tea leaves (increasing career changes, increasing costs of household goods, student loans, the pandemic, the financial crisis, etc). What remains is a visceral dilemma that is practically quotidien for even the most entitled of our generation. What art, if pursued and honed to excellence, delivers lasting success? What sustains a commitment like the one we knew when we were children who worked hard in school because we could "be whatever we want to be"?
I don't know.
What strikes me this morning is that the account can never be complete. The art in which we engage probably will not live up to our personal expectations of reward. The success we achieve in a profession will not comprise the success we initially imagined. Yes, children will always marvel that their parents care about what they care about at work. Family is instrumental in all this. The notion that we come from a particular people, with particular proclivities, and particular achievements to be proud of, that we are fundamentally related to this group. Related in who we are and how we act and the arts in which we are ordained to succeed. Work, I have come to suspect, is defined as such in relation to the social remoteness of the object. (There is no question that clearing brush is work or mechanical maintenance, perhaps because these are utterly impervious to social wiles; vicariously taking on the pursuits of a technology company is work; motherhood is somehow not "work" as such; a priest's pastoral duties are less susceptible to definition as work, etc.) A lot of components can add to the conviction or lack of conviction that a given pursuit is worthwhile. Working your ass off at the latest startup may or may not be futile, and if that fact were knowable it wouldn't be the point. Gather as must grist as you like for the argument that getting into Yale will change your life or alternately for the argument that capitalist society is a pernicious farce. Whether it is so or not does not deliver trascendent excellence or durable success.
What is clear is that people who are able to accept commitment and pursue it unflaggingly merit respect in some fundamental way. They appeal to me. I want to want what they have.
In the circumstances some would say quandary that I have described above, faith seems highly rational, even if, in my case, it is all too rarely practiced. If not faith, I am not sure what can make up the deficiency between what we want to achieve as human beings and what it is possible for us to understand in totality or know at any given moment. First, there's the impossibility of knowing what pursuit and whether a pursuit will ultimately be worthwhile. Next, is the observation that much of what nourishes us as people today found its root in the nameless pursuits of others who came before. Last is the conviction, borne of experience, that deep contentment can be achieved and some among us at least approach it. All to say, whatever experience we are living can never be fully apprehended, but goodness abides here. To the indigent atheists, Marcus Aurelius would say, "if there be no Gods [if I am a fool for believing in them] then what does it matter anyway?" In other words, if there is no authoritative good, we're no worse off for seeking it.
This Lent, I am giving up a few things. I also hope to practice the faith that worldly good is available. I cannot command this of myself, but I can listen for a God calling me. The reading today asked, if God gave up his own Son for us, what would he withhold? Put another way, who am I to demand more signs than have already been given? If all were as I would have it, how many prophets would I demand God send my way? And this how I typically conceptualize my life! as though I were the beleaguered maestro of assorted relationships and skills and property. No, the art is unnamed, but it's akin to listening. As though distant figures in an entirely dark cave were beckoning and I can sense the air fluttering off in their direction.
That and giving up games on my phone.