Gospel & Universe ❤️ Three Little Words

Critical Distance

Je Sais Pas - Colaba (Mumbai) - Non Capisco Più Niente - Doors

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Je Sais Pas

For some, it’s the hardest three words they’ll ever have to say. For others, it’s the simplest thing in the world to admit: I don’t know. These three little words are similar to three other famous words, Que sais-je?, or What know I?, the motto of the 16th century French skeptic Michel de Montaigne.

For the agnostic, I don’t know can start almost any statement about religion or the meaning of life. I don’t know if I have a soul. I don’t know if the universe is infinite. I don’t know if there’s a God. I don’t know if there’s a Heaven or Hell. I don’t know if the soul is reincarnated after the body dies. I don’t know if we can reach a state of grace, or become one with God.

I don’t know if we can flow with Nature, or if life’s just a never-ending struggle to survive, forever fighting against the current. I don’t know if Marcus Aurelius is right when he says, “What stands in the way becomes the way.” Perhaps each person has their own way. Or perhaps there’s a Universal Way that subsumes all other ways. All I can say is that I don’t know the meaning of existence.

Perhaps we’ll find out the meaning some day. Or perhaps we’ll never know.

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In this chapter I’ll explore the benefits of admitting I don’t know. After this brief introduction, I argue (in Locke’s Double Key) that because we’re products of our own free-ranging senses, we operate best in a free society. We also operate best if we don’t deny the material world, however much we might dream of other worlds, such as the Christian Heaven or the Hindu Goloka Vrindavan (Locked Into This World). I then look at how various thinkers detach themselves from fixed ideas and systems of thought (Que Sais-je?, Montaigne’s Balance, Pyrrho’s Equilibrium & Zhuangzi’s Pivot, and Hegel’s Dialectic). I note that Montaigne’s suspension of belief derives from the Greek skeptics and has affinities in Zhuangzi, and that Hegel’s notion of a progressive dialectic differs from the polylectics of Whitman and the English Romantics (Whitman’s Cosmos, Byron’s Doubt, and Keats’ Negative Capability). I then link Romantic and Transcendentalist modes of thinking to Tennyson and finally to Henry Huxley, who gives to agnosticism its definitive form (Tennyson’s Ulysses, On Warnings, and The Problem with Explanations). The chapter ends on a fictional note: in The English Garden of Sense Claudia ponders the empiricism of David Hume, who pushes Locke’s theory of sense impressions into a skepticism so radical that it questions everything.

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One of the most fundamental aspects of agnosticism is the ability to distance yourself from your previous ideas. This particular skill is often referred to as critical thinking. The Wikipedia entry on critical thinking notes that the term comes from the Greek word critic, which is identified with discernment and judgment. Critical thinking can be traced “to the teaching practice and vision of Socrates 2,500 years ago. [Socrates] discovered by a method of probing questioning that people could not rationally justify their confident claims to knowledge.” The entry also notes that critical thinking “is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities as well as a commitment to overcome native egocentrism and sociocentrism.”

Critical distance can also encourage the mind — with all its interconnected emotion, reason, sense, and memory — to find a degree of detachment from life’s conundrums and clashing dichotomies. It allows us to suspend our judgment, to detach ourselves from the restrictions and demands of belief systems, and to enter refreshed and curious into new realms of thought and experience. Critical thinking might be seen as a levering device, a psychological mechanism that changes the way we see things. It fuses old perceptions with new ones, the neurons diverging and converging at the same time.

This isn’t to say that getting critical distance is always easy or enjoyable. Sometimes it can be scary, since it launches us into the unknown. Yet given that reality is always larger than we can possibly conceive, launching ourselves into it is better than being unprepared for it, and then have it smack us in the face just when we were getting comfortable. By doing the launching ourselves, we’re more able to integrate what we know with what we don’t know. Bit by bit, we come to terms with the fact of our overwhelming and inevitable ignorance. This may be disturbing, but it’s like travelling: we see things that we’re able to incorporate into our understanding, and, if we’re lucky, we see things that make us question the limits of our understanding. It’s at this point that we can start to appreciate the awesome, unnerving vastness of life.

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Colaba (Mumbai)

I walk along the potholes of a cratered moon, down the dark alley where sleepers crouch among the garbage, and where the debris of stories up is thrown down.

Often, returning late at night like this, I’ve seen rats scurry from the corner of my heart. I’ve seen their hunchback figures blur into the dark crevices which are their doorways.

But this evening I see the familiar shape stock still, in the middle of the lane. Under the bright moon I match its stance, and watch it move slowly, so unlike the other nights. As in a trance, with tentative steps, and sniffs of unknown emotions, I watch it, stepping gingerly onto the flattened body of my shadow.

I turn, slip under the partially closed grill, and follow the grimy metal of the circular road, as the moonlight becomes dimmer, each creak I step, each crack a tale, each thought a squeak, each gleam a blinding light.

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Non Capisco Più Niente  

When I was young and first began to travel, I thought that one day, if I kept travelling I'd become a world citizen. But now, forty years later, surrounded by the beauties of Campo de' Fiori, I find that I'm not. I thought that if I travelled widely I'd encompass the world; that its riches and its deepest secrets would be unfurled before my staggered eyes. But now, forty countries later, I just look at the girls.

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Doors

Agnosticism is the step you take toward atheism, toward existentialism and Sartre, until Camus stays your gait, and steers you toward something that might be something else.

Some might call agnosticism the doorway drug to atheism and decadence, to loss of belief and purpose out of sight. Yet if people want those things, there are doors like that on every street and on every corner.

Among doors, agnosticism is the trickiest, for no sooner are you through it than you realize it’s revolving. Walking through it has brought you back to that world you thought you left behind, yet with different eyes. 

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Next: ❤️ Locke’s Double Key

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