Stone Life

I have spent the better part of the last 4 hours reading Nietzsche, so much so that my eyes can hardly focus on the screen right now. Being able to do this in the middle of the week is a rare occurrence, but it worked out that I had to give several tests in a row today, and so I am taking advantage by trying to catch up on my studies for Thursday night’s aptly named “Nietzsche”-class.

As for philosophy, I really, really enjoy reading Nietzsche, which I think he would approve of, so long as my motives in studying were pure (if such a thing is even possible), but there were some particularly prophetic and moving passages that I came across today that I thought I would share with the blog-world at large.

In his essay “Schopenhauer as educator” in Untimely Mediations, he bemoans the current (italics used, because his use of the word is referring to the late 1800’s) state of education on Europe, Germany in particular, but I find that it has only become more exaggerated in contemporary (now…2006) America. It is a 100 page essay filled with good stuff, but here is a taste

He announces the end of education: geniuses. The problem, he says, is that the modern advancement of culture, the product of education, is not designed to produce these geniuses.

For there exists a species of misemployed and appropriated culture – you have only to look around you! And precisely those forces at present most actively engaged in promoting culture do so for reasons they reserve to themselves and not out of pure disinterestedness. (Untimely, 164)

Among the culprits, he lists the money-makers. These people view education simply as a means to a capital-end, a quick-fix on the way to riches. He writes,

What is demanded here is that the individual must be able, with the aid of this general education, exactly to assess himself with regard to what he has a right to demand of life…that there exists a natural and necessary connection between ‘intelligence and property’, between ‘wealth and culture’, more, that this connection is a moral necessity.

….namely, a speedy education so that one may quickly become a money-earning being, yet at the same time an education sufficiently thorough to enable one to earn a very great deal of money. (165)

He hits the proverbial nail-on-the-head, pointing out that more serious, and thereby longer and more tedious forms of education are looked at as “refined egoism” and “immoral cultural Epicureanism”. Intellectual engagement of the highest order, apart from the goal of material gain, becomes a sort of cerebral-masturbation, gratifying only to oneself, shameful, selfish.

I appreciate the comment Poet, but I have to respectfully disagree. In the spirit of lively academic discourse, allow me to reply.

The basic premise, that a great work of literature is no more sanctifying than a bad day might be true, but does this invalidate it. Are we not saying the same thing in different forms? You say that it is only good for pushing us to rely on our saviour, but I say the same thing sans only. Great literature is transformative by nature. Whether or not one attributes it to a deity or to the inner man (Plato, Thoreau), it causes one to become more profoundly related to that force which grows and/or sustains them. An atheist can experience catharsis (Aristotle) through art, and this is in some way connected with the Christian experience by the very nature of truth. Is truth not truth in any form that it is wrapped in (Augustine)? Whereas the atheist experiences a healing catharsis, a Christian grows in a deeper understanding and potential reliance upon his/her saviour. It is a matter of attribution, is it not? The Christian gives glory to God for the truth that is written and transformative, whereas the atheist does not.

It is not an issue of salvation. I would never replace literature and philosophy with the Bible, though it seems to dabble in both, and the requirements for salvation seem clearly stated, but the poet may be an avenue to spiritual growth and maturity. Surely one could argue that morality can make one a better believer; not save them, but lead them to a great Christian existence?

Because of the perseverance of truth, regardless of the particular manifestation of it, whether Thoreau, Plato or Tarantino, I need not concern myself with the author’s intent. Perhaps Thoreau was writing a transcendentalist’s novel, touting the virtues of self-sufficiency and isolationist ideals, but he nonetheless gives by all accounts a clear exposition on at least one of the explicitly Christ-stated pillars of the faith: denial of worldliness and its trappings. Christ presents the maxims in different fashion, “birds have holes, foxes….”, “whoever would come after me must…”, and Christ even gives parables that explain his statement axioms, but these particulars are no more than 1-2 pages in length. Thoreau, regardless of his intent, gives several hundred pages of explanation that a Christian should weight as a potential handmaid to his faith.

Authorial intent is certainly important in the study of literature. One who will teach and understand a work must not mistake one’s own interpretations as that of the author’s, and so a careful study of the original intent is vital, but this is a modern notion that can be carried to far. To read a piece, judge its beauty and effectiveness based on a scientific formula of positivistic checklists is to castrate it, guaranteeing it will bear no more fruit.

Perhaps there is a second dimension to reading, something akin to digestion. One can certainly be fed intravenously, receiving the proper nutrients through absorption into the bloodstream, but is that eating? Is not eating the taking in of food into one’s mouth, chewing it fully, allowing the flavors to permeate the taste buds, eliciting enjoyment with each bite, and finally to be swallowed and transformed into something that sustains life. So too should a book be chewed, digested, and transformative. If one is left unchanged by the partaking of great literature, it is nothing more than science, factual and flat.

I realize that this will only serve to anger many of you, but I am in the midst of a day off today (deal with it), which is a double blessing, because I have more to study than a week-off could facilitate. First on my list was to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau for class tonight. I had previously read much of it, but I started over this weekend and have really enjoyed it (I still have about 30 pages, but I needed a break).

I have a question: why are churches not heralding this as modern day prophecy? Thoreau, though I am unsure about his religious affiliation, and do not care enough to research it, is spouting something so blatantly Christian that it should be held up as truth regardless of the messenger’s faith. He preaches against worldliness, running the gamut from vanity to debt, and he espouses the virtues of the inner man, yet I have never heard him so much as mentioned in Christian circles.

Perhaps we, as believers chaffing under the bonds of convention, should boldly venture outside the confines of our cookie-cutter faith, a faith that is hardly more than a game of follow-the-leader, and begin to incorporate great works of, dare I say it, non-Christian literature into our teaching and studying. Would it be too offensive to have a “quiet-time” sans Bible? Might the truths of God imbedded within us not be nurtured and grown to maturity through Thoreau’s 300-page exposition on Christian virtues, perhaps even better than Paul’s snippets of letters? After all, is the truth of Christ given in Scripture limited merely to that one book?

Such limitations are being placed before, behind, and around God in such cases as the dogmatic sola scripturacist. Might Saint Augustine have been absolutely correct when he claimed all of Christianity absent the incarnation in Plato? – but the proverbial baby was thrown out with the bathwater because Plato left out something he was not yet privy to.

Weep for the Dark Age of modern Christianity, and pray for a speedy Renaissance – though history shows that the first go-round required great bloodshed and a wasting of several generations in deplorable ignorance before change was affected.

it is a dark night here at Stone Manor. I am currently hiding under the bed in utter shame; shameful, shame-filled shame.

Julie and I have been attending Inglewood Baptist Church in Grand Prairie for the last few weeks, because they have asked me to play guitar with them for their two services on Sunday morning. I normally have something akin to an allergic reaction when I step foot inside of a Baptist church, but this place has been different. They are genuine people, and the staff is great. Everyone is young, and the majority are athletes. This last fact is important, because, after spending the last few Sundays with them, I was invited to play in a city softball league with some of the staff and members. I was thrilled at the prospect, and so tonight was my debut.

Let me preface the night be telling you that I have had a pretty good sports-run going for the last several months. I have developed a reputation among the group that I play football with as a decent cornerback and possession-receiver, my basketball skills have improved to the point that when I play with a new group I generally guard one of the best opposing players, and I scored my first soccer goal ever last Friday night. All in all, it has been a good run…..and it ended tonight.

I just met the coach this evening, and so I started the game on the bench, but within a couple of innings he took my word for it that I was fast enough to cover the outfield (a very busy position in beer-league softball), and so he put me in for the remainder of the double-header. I tried to go in with some confidence, even though I have not even touched a baseball glove in 3-4 years, and I certainly have not swung a bat in that long. I immediately ran up on a ground ball, holding a runner from making a double, and I felt pretty comfortable. I flied out at my first at-bat, but it was a close one, and so went the first few innings of play, nothing spectacular, but solid. I was so close to not being found out as a fraud that I could just about taste it…..and then it happened.

Let me further preface this revelation by saying that I accomplished something that I am no sure I have EVER seen in slow-pitch softball………I struck out!!!!

Go ahead, laugh….I would. There is no explanation for it, no rhyme or reason, I just wiffed twice…..and I wanted to take my fraudulent glove, my poser hat, and my faker cleats and hit the showers. I finished the game, had a nice diving grab among a few other decent plays, but I am haunted now.

Thought you might like to revel in my humiliation. Enjoy.

Signed,

I Suck

Three cheers for the least-liked teacher at St. Alban’s!!!

From Saturday night…..but I have been too lazy to post it until now:

It has been quite a week, and I am glad that it is over. Progress reports came out this week, and it could not have been any more uncomfortable to have the name Mr. Stone. The sad-sight along the football sidelines last night should give you an indication of what I am talking about. We have a six-man football team of only 16 players, but 7 of them were wearing jeans and jerseys, cheering their team on to victory. You see, Mr. Stone is mean, unfair, too hard, uncaring…etc, etc, etc, and he failed 7 football players, to go along with a host of other non-athletes in his 5 classes.

The good news is that I have had nothing but support from everyone, including parents of these students. In fact, the head football coach gave his usual rah-rah speech at the pep-rally, but it had an interesting twist. He ended by giving a 2 minute explanation about why only 9 people would be suiting out, and about the fact that sports are a privelage earned through hard work, not a right. I found out that the day before he ran them into the ground, too.

Coincidentally, the Athletic Director/Basketball coach noticed that there were not many basketball players failing my classes, which excited him for the upcoming season. I told one of the football coaches later that if they had asked me to coach football they might not be having this problem either.

I do not have the time to be quite as long-winded as usual, but I wanted to give a little bit of a postscript to the “Scarlet Letter” post from a few days ago. Last night was my American Literature, and we discussed the book in detail. As is the case in most graduate classes, it was mostly argument and defense on the part of my fellow students and I. What is funny is that the makeup of this class is so very different from any class that I have taken at UD in the last couple of years.

University of Dallas is a Catholic university, and the people that I have come into contact with certainly do not lean towards the conservative side of the aisle. This class is the exception to that rule. The professor is an older gentlemen (to put it kindly), and he seems as far from a Catholic as anyone I have ever met. Perhaps he draws a certain kind of student, because the entire conversation last night was so tainted with conservative Christianity that it was hard to take seriously.

In short, Hester was a whore, Pearl was Satan’s-spawn, Dimmesdale was a scoundrel, and Chillingsworth was evil through and through. The class followed the story as if it were the Bible itself, and they did it all under the guise of serious literary study. Here’s the problem for those of you who have not studied it. Hawthorne was writing of a colonial town in the 1600′s, but he did not write it until the 1800′s. He was making obvious criticisms of the customs and mores of the puritanical-villages of yesteryear, but we skipped over this fact entirely. The class refused to see it as anything more than a proclamation of exactly what Hawthorne seemed to be exposing. We read it as Puritans, and perhaps we missed the entire message of the novel.

Check out Julie’s latest post

; well worth your time.

It has been far too long a blogless drought for my taste, and so, though I think it unwise to engage in a third activity, the first two being 1.) watching the Texas vs. Ohio St. game and 2.) trying to read and understand a stack of Nietzsche and Diderot, I am going to engage in this exercise in vanity, blogging.

This semester has the potential to be the most academically exciting of any in my short scholastic career, and I hope to share a bit of this with my friends via blog, but I won’t throw you yet into the ‘deep end’ of Nietzsche or 18th century literature and philosophy, and so let us discuss Hawthorne’s “A Scarlet Letter”

Sadly, and, yes, I know I am calling myself an English teacher fully aware of the forthcoming deficiency, I had never read the “Letter” before this week. First of all, I must say that the reputation of Hawthorne that had been relayed to me, that of being dry and hard to understand (at least language-wise) is grossly exaggerated. The reading itself was as pleasureable as any piece of American lit. that I have recently encountered, but literature must be more than that or run the risk of being soon forgotten (see: DaVinci Code). I believe Hawthorne is thus far standing the short test of time that has been allotted to him, and I, for my part, see why.

How can one not see all of themselves in the work? We have elements of Hester, wearing bits of our shame on our sleaves. These shames only serve to make us stronger, though. The nature of shame, like the nature of the “A” worn on Hester’s breast, should weigh us down with a burden of guilt, but it does just the opposite in the end. We either dress it up, embroidered with a sort of camoflouge of acceptance, or we swallow it and “take our medicine” like men. Either way, it eventually fades into the background of our existence, becoming nothing more than a part of our attire, unnoticed by most.

The greater pain comes in the Dimmesdale that lives ‘inside’ of us. When one does not allow oneself to be seen for what he/she is, choosing to hide oneself within oneself, attempting to avoid the shame of wearing their “A”, their internal torment is only heightened. Hawthorne is something of an prophet, in the sense of one who makes a proclamation of truth, in unmasking the mask wearer. He shows that one can only wear a mask for so long before even he cannot distinguish between the truth of himself and the image that has been created. Only in removing the mask, taking the shame that is rightfully ours, can we truly become free. Dimmesdale suffered physically, ravaged by his bodily infirmity, but at the moment of his confession he is released from the clutches of his body and allowed to die in peace.

We are Pearl, the children of shame-changed parents, parents who can neither explain the situation that we will inherit nor keep us from the pain that is rightfully ours as those who will earn our own “A’s” in due time. We know not the particulars of our future wearing of the “A”, but we are nontheless sure it is coming, sure because we see it in those that have come before us.

Finally, we are the throng. We look with scorn towards those who are no different than ourselves, Our “A” is deserved no less than those who wear theirs on their breast, but we do not, and so we stare and mock, we whisper and point, and we hide behind the shutters of our comfortable houses at night, safe from accusation and responsibility. We walk past the scaffold that others have been displayed upon, never even acknowledging the fact that we should be there too, for all to see.

May we choose to recognize which we are and which we might wish to become.