Vigilance: Meditating on Icarus Fallen by Chantal Delsol
Who amongst us is comfortable in our present moment, as our culture heaves beneath us and the certainties of our every-day splinter from the weight of chaos? I do not see true certainty. I do not see reliability. And who claims too? The American religious preach the appearance of God, beneath our sky-turned eyes. But what trust would our contemporary put in their message? God has been dead since Nietzsche; our ability to believe in God, as a man floating in the sky, personally invested in our lives, has withered. And Christians sense this, clinging more desperately to the Bible as a law, as a certitude handed down from the divine; propositional, apologetic stance not just preaching, but exercising logorrheic; spurting their desperation across their audience. Full of, I-know-the-answers and don’t-listen-to-your-objections. No. Certainty cannot be found in American religion.
Where are we to find our foundation? Where does equality come from, how can we justify it, if not by referring to our equal value under God? Was it not the divine spirit in every individual, equal in value, which produced our equality? The rest, the emergence of civil rights, was a means of actualizing this supposition. Yet God, his equal value and the eternal soul, are dead. Equality, we sense, and philosopher Chantal Delsol argues, has been relegated to the secular world, resting atop the carcass of heaven. We demand that our politics usurp our ethics, and provide equality for every person, because we recognize that individuals have differences. We are different, and those differences, in the secular mind, constitute differences in value across different domains. One may be tall, and helpful for one sport or another. Thus, they are more valuable to the sport. And this logic plays out in every endeavor. If one does not have intrinsic equal value, then they have extrinsic unequal value. This concerns us. Modern arguments for the differences in values of persons led to the holocaust and the gulag. “We cannot go down that road!” we cry. Being unable to appeal to the intrinsic value of humanity, nor able to accept the differences in values between individuals, we demand politics inflate our value by making us all equal; in denial we cover our eyes, and suggest that if the law says it's true, it will be true. If our propaganda says we are equal, that our secular differences are not real, then equal we will truly be. Yet, the common sense baring person, recognizes these arguments as denying reality, as denying what is obvious on the face. And we hear their pleas for political intervention, the same way we hear the fanatic religious - as the ravings of an ideologue, certain of their superstitious delusions. No. Certainty cannot be found in American politics.
We are disillusioned with progress. God had a promised land. America, a manifest destiny. Rationality, political utopia, and nothing now remains for us to put faith in. No path leads away from ruin. We have lost faith in faith itself; we no longer believe in belief. Thus, no action can be taken, no value upheld, as values, a form of belief, and actions, the consequence of values, only lead to tragedy. Nearly 60 years ago, Viktor Franlk recognized this “existential vacuum,” and we still have not left it. Complacency then. Better to sit around and suck the pleasure from the bones of life than to wander erroneously into holocaust. Pleasure then! Pleasure! Let attention, pornography, food and drink, vanity and decadence, consume us. Better, in our boredom, to splurp satisfaction from every dopamine drip. When any meaning is denied by “rationality” and nihilism, we’ll settle for insipid, succulent satisfaction.
However, the walls of the city weren’t built by those satisfied. They were built by the vigilant. By those that recognized that human experience is confined by our limitations, and our limitations generate uncertainty, suffering, and the limit-situation, wherein no solution, only sacrifices, can be found. Our society was built from prehistory up, where no man had a priori certainties to rely on - only their consciousness, their being in the world could be utilized for the creation of the good. Delsol: “All traditions having been rejected, all certainties revoked, we no longer know anything in advance. Our situation resembles that of the first astonished minds of our history: the pre-Socratics. We are waking up under an ancient Greek sky. Still, our memory is encumbered by everything we no longer wish to see (p. 238).” We are not the first to fall into this labyrinth, nor the first cartographers.
There is no certainty, that is the trick. Recognizing that chaos is part of the fabric of reality, especially for the limited subject. We must also recognize that what order we generate, via our philosophies, ethics, politics, and institutions, will need constant renovation. The patches and cracks in the wall will need to be cleaned, filled and repaired. The enemy at the gate, and saboteur of well being will need to be watched for - not least within ourselves; where else does evil generate if not, inconveniently, within our own hearts? For it is always a person who is evil, and we are persons. In our great literature and art we must ask: What are the signs of my own misgivings, the springboards for resentment, that I may avoid them in my soul? Humanity, especially Western humanity, currently struggling from disillusionment, with a lack of certainty to rely on, firm foundations to build from, must return to the vigilance of the Greeks; soldiers on the wall.
We build up not from axiomatic propositions, rules we deem to be infallible, but from experience. We search for the good in our own lives, asking with keen eyes, where we went wrong, and where we felt right. Then we follow what is right, where our conscience, that small pang in our chests, warning us of our failures and calling us to something more, leads us. Then, by living in attention, we will come to see a good that is emergent, and not defined by the dead expectations of ideologies.
When chaos then greets us, the minotaur in the labyrinth, Leviathan from the deep, that snapping monster in the dark, we will not shrink away, we will not turn to stone. Instead, Medusa will be rendered inept by our own sharp eyes, her reflection in our iris, her reflection in ourselves, monstrous and capable, will frighten her away, leaving us to live another day. To uncertainty: Bring it on! To chaos: Bring it on! To the dangers inherent in life, the risks we undertake in the limit-situation, the potentialities and realities of tragedy: Bring it on! Better to live the adventure of our lives, than to wither away in solitude.
References:
Icarus Fallen by Chantal Delsol. ISI Books, 2003.
Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected papers on Logotherapy by Viktor Frankl. Washington Square Press, 1967.