"Finnegan's" Mendacity
The "Fairhope Lady" suggested I ought to read the blog written by a clinical psychologist that calls itself, "One Cosmos." I did, read it with interest. The recent entries struck me as having been written by a relatively educated and erudite individual, but one who on some matters regards himself as a "seeker." (On others, he pretends to be a "having founder," but I'll save that for another day.) He speaks of the many different views of God that have been recorded by many different people, the early and modern Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, and (I suppose if I read all the way through) all the other people who have at one time or another "seen" God as this or that apparition.
Interestingly, he also declares an affinity for James Joyce's "masterpiece" Finnegan's Wake, an experimental novel Joyce intended as a death-knell for exactly the sort of exploring "One Cosmos" gets into. Finnegan's Wake cannot be comprehended unless the reader possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of all the mythologies of nearly all the races of man, a working knowledge of all the actual (real) neighborhoods in which Joyce once lived, the people who dwelt there, and of the ideas that occur only in Joyce's mind as he meshes those components (and countless others) together into a simulation of the way human consciousness streams itself together. Most readers of the book miss the point. Joyce is saying that all minds work exactly that way, and that for anyone to make absolute sense of the way life unfolds as individual activities, would require exactly the kind of knowledge Joyce possessed of his material -- a virtual impossibility. There are, after all, six-billion-plus minds, all operating out of different experiential material. Consequently, when we engage in an exercise designed ostensibly to find the key that unlocks all the doors to all the world's religions, we're in effect wasting our precious time. The answer, in an absolute sense, is unobtainable because it would involve us in an understanding of minds long since dead-and-buried, and which would, in any case, have been just as complex as the minds Joyce depicted in his book. And Joyce was talking about consciousness. Who knows what lurks in the unconscious.
Okay. "One Cosmos" is only a clinical psychologist, not an anthropologist. (But then, the Mouse is neither.) And again, maybe he's not really interested in finding the absolute truth. He may be, as he implies, only enjoying the struggle. But that doesn't seem all that likely either. He speaks off and on of his preference for the "vertical" as opposed to the "horizontal" life. He means by "vertical" a looking upward in our mind's eye, searching as it were for Godness, as opposed to looking around horizontally in the world. My criticism of his method traces essentially to the horizontality of his vertical look. By delving into the fuzziness of the ancient religions, and apparently trying to jibe them with his own in a detailed sort of way, he adds unnecessary complexity to his struggle. I would rather simply say, "Those people were looking for God," and then move on to a search focused more on the here-and-now. That's what the Mouse did years ago and wound up with Spinoza's God, an absolutely simple concept of the divine. God is all there is and that's the end of that. Thus "the more we know of things, the more we know of God," and the vertical search becomes horizontal. Know the world, know God.
"Truth is beauty and beauty is truth, that's all we know and all we need to know..." or someting like that.
But I envy the guy his felicity with words. He makes a lot of God-awful wonderful puns.
Interestingly, he also declares an affinity for James Joyce's "masterpiece" Finnegan's Wake, an experimental novel Joyce intended as a death-knell for exactly the sort of exploring "One Cosmos" gets into. Finnegan's Wake cannot be comprehended unless the reader possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of all the mythologies of nearly all the races of man, a working knowledge of all the actual (real) neighborhoods in which Joyce once lived, the people who dwelt there, and of the ideas that occur only in Joyce's mind as he meshes those components (and countless others) together into a simulation of the way human consciousness streams itself together. Most readers of the book miss the point. Joyce is saying that all minds work exactly that way, and that for anyone to make absolute sense of the way life unfolds as individual activities, would require exactly the kind of knowledge Joyce possessed of his material -- a virtual impossibility. There are, after all, six-billion-plus minds, all operating out of different experiential material. Consequently, when we engage in an exercise designed ostensibly to find the key that unlocks all the doors to all the world's religions, we're in effect wasting our precious time. The answer, in an absolute sense, is unobtainable because it would involve us in an understanding of minds long since dead-and-buried, and which would, in any case, have been just as complex as the minds Joyce depicted in his book. And Joyce was talking about consciousness. Who knows what lurks in the unconscious.
Okay. "One Cosmos" is only a clinical psychologist, not an anthropologist. (But then, the Mouse is neither.) And again, maybe he's not really interested in finding the absolute truth. He may be, as he implies, only enjoying the struggle. But that doesn't seem all that likely either. He speaks off and on of his preference for the "vertical" as opposed to the "horizontal" life. He means by "vertical" a looking upward in our mind's eye, searching as it were for Godness, as opposed to looking around horizontally in the world. My criticism of his method traces essentially to the horizontality of his vertical look. By delving into the fuzziness of the ancient religions, and apparently trying to jibe them with his own in a detailed sort of way, he adds unnecessary complexity to his struggle. I would rather simply say, "Those people were looking for God," and then move on to a search focused more on the here-and-now. That's what the Mouse did years ago and wound up with Spinoza's God, an absolutely simple concept of the divine. God is all there is and that's the end of that. Thus "the more we know of things, the more we know of God," and the vertical search becomes horizontal. Know the world, know God.
"Truth is beauty and beauty is truth, that's all we know and all we need to know..." or someting like that.
But I envy the guy his felicity with words. He makes a lot of God-awful wonderful puns.
posted by Benedict S. at 12:25 PM
3 Comments:
I think the logic in your essay only works if we depend entirely on our own understanding to find God, your words seem to leave God and His pursuit of each of us out of the equation. This is an important piece missing from the puzzle, without it it is understandable how one could misunderstand the belief in an absolute truth.It seems to me , quite logical, that "All That Is" would be fully capable of making Himself known to anyone who cared to find Him.
You're right, anon. I left God's search out of the equation. His search ended somewhere between nothingness and beingness. If "his search" were extant today, God being God, he would have found us without a second glance.
Incidentally, I think my view of it squares with Jesus's teaching (or better, St. John's). "Whosoever believes . . . " seems to place responsibility on the believer where it belongs. By your view, we could conscientiously blame God for making the task of finding him so difficult.
Your last sentence seems to contradict your first thought, and to move in my direction. I agree. God, if he is God, is fully capable of making himself known. Those who care to find him always do, in one form or another, but it is they who find him, and not the vice of versa.
I don't think we can or should blame God for anything, I think we should balme ourselves for ignoring Him when He is revealing Himself to us. The problem is that most do not care to find Him, what they are looking for is something of themselves in a deity that will fit thier lifestyle, or, for that matter, they may chuck the whole idea of a god and just go off looking for themselves.Those who care to find Him will find Him to be consistent in the way He acts, and reacts, in Who He is- in much the same way that we can rely on the mouse to respond from his own personality- God operates out of His own Personality, and His personality is quite capable of bridging any language or cultural barrier in a way that reveals that He is Who He is.
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