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My given name is Rachel. I was named after my mother's mother. For the first fifty years of my life, I was called by another name, Naomi, which is my middle name. When I was in my middle forties, my mother, who was at that time almost eighty-five, elected to have coronary bypass surgery. The surgery was extremely difficult and only partly successful. For days my mother lay with two dozen others in the coronary intensive care unit of one of our major hospitals. For the first week she was unconscious, peering over the edge of life, breathed by a ventilator. I was awed at the brutality of this surgery and the capacity of the body, even in great age, to endure such a major intervention.
When she finally regained consciousness she was profoundly disoriented and often did not know who I, her only child, was. The nurses were reassuring. We see this sort of thing often, they told me. They called it Intensive Care Psychosis and explained that in this environment of beeping machines and constant artificial light, elderly people with no familiar cues often go adrift. Nonetheless I was concerned. Not only did Mom not know me but she was hallucinating, seeing things crawling on her bed and feeling water run down her back.
Although she did not seem to know my name, she spoke to me often and at length, mostly of the past, about her own mother who died before I was born and who was regarded as a saint by all who knew her. She spoke of the many acts of kindness which her mother had done without even realizing she was being kind. "Che-sed," said my mother, using a Hebrew word which roughly translates as "loving kindness." The shelter offered to those who had none, the encouragement and financial support which helped others, often strangers, to win their dreams. She spoke of her mother's humility and great learning and of the poverty and difficulty of life in Russia which she remembered as a child. She recalled the abuses and hatreds the family experienced to which many others had responded with anger and her mother only with compassion.
Days went by and my mother slowly improved physically although her mental state continued to be uncertain. The nurses began correcting her when she mistook them for people from her past, insisting that the birds she saw flying and singing in the room were not there. They encouraged me to correct her as well, telling me this was the only way she might return to what was real.
I remember one visit shortly before she left the intensive care unit. I greeted her asking if she knew who I was. "Yes," she said with warmth. "You are my beloved child." Comforted, I turned to sit on the only chair in her room but she stopped me. "Don't sit there." Doubtfully I looked at the chair again. "But why not?"
"Rachel is sitting there," she said. I turned back to my mother. It was obvious that she saw quite clearly something I could not see.
Despite the frown of the special nurse who was adjusting my mother's IV, I went into the hall, brought back another chair, and sat down on it. My mother looked at me and the empty chair next to me with great tenderness. Calling me by my given name for the first time, she introduced me to her visitor: "Rachel," she said. "This is Rachel."
My mother began to tell her mother Rachel about my childhood and her pride in the person I had become. Her experience of Rachel's presence was so convincing that I found myself wondering why I could not see her. It was more than a little unnerving. And very moving. Periodically she would appear to listen and then she would tell me of my grandmother's reactions to what she had told her. They spoke of people I had never met in the familiar way of gossip: my great-grandfather David and his brothers, my great-granduncles, who were handsome men and great horsemen. "Devils," said my mother, laughing and nodding her head to the empty chair. She explained to her mother why she had given me her name, her hope for my kindness of heart, and apologized for my father who had insisted on calling me by my middle name, which had come from his side of our family.
Exhausted by all this conversation, my mother lay back on her pillows and closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, she smiled at me and the empty chair. "I'm so glad you are both here now," she said. "One of you will take me home." Then she closed her eyes again and drifted off to sleep. It was my grandmother who took her home.
This experience, disturbing as it was for me at the time, seemed deeply comforting to my mother and became something I revisited again and again after she died. I had survived many years of chronic illness and physical limitation. I had been one of the few women in my class at medical school in the fifties, one of the few women on the faculty at the Standford medical school in the sixties. I was expert at dealing with limitations and challenges of various sorts. I had not succeeded through loving kindness. Over a period of time I came to realize that despite my successes I had perhaps lost something of importance. When I turned fifty, I began asking people to call me Rachel, my real name.
["Seeing Around the Corner," in Part IX, "Mystery and Awe"]
Friday, June 6, 2008
Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom
For the last ten years of his life, Tim's father had Alzheimer's disease. Despite the devoted care of Tim's mother, he had slowly deteriorated until he had become a sort of walking vegetable. He was unable to speak and was fed, clothed, and cared for as if he were a very young child. As Tim and his brother grew older, they would stay with their father for brief periods of time while their mother took care of the needs of the household. One Sunday, while she was out doing the shopping, the boys, then fifteen and seventeen, watched football as their father sat nearby in a chair. Suddenly, he slumped forward and fell to the floor. Both sons realized immediately that something was terribly wrong. His color was gray and his breath uneven and rasping. Frightened, Tim's older brother told him to call 911. Before he could respond, a voice he had not heard in ten years, a voice he could barely remember, interrupted, "Don't call 911, son. Tell your mother that I love her. Tell her that I am all right." And Tim's father died.
Tim, a cardiologist, looked around the room at the group of doctors mesmerized by this story. "Because he died unexpectedly at home, the law required that we have an autopsy," he told us quietly. "My father's brain was almost entirely destroyed by this disease. For many years, I have asked myself, 'Who spoke?' I have never found even the slightest help from any medical textbook. I am no closer to knowing this now than I was then, but carrying this question with me reminds me of something important, something I do not want to forget. Much of life can never be explained but only witnessed."
["The Question," in Part IX, "Mystery and Awe"]
Tim, a cardiologist, looked around the room at the group of doctors mesmerized by this story. "Because he died unexpectedly at home, the law required that we have an autopsy," he told us quietly. "My father's brain was almost entirely destroyed by this disease. For many years, I have asked myself, 'Who spoke?' I have never found even the slightest help from any medical textbook. I am no closer to knowing this now than I was then, but carrying this question with me reminds me of something important, something I do not want to forget. Much of life can never be explained but only witnessed."
["The Question," in Part IX, "Mystery and Awe"]
Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom
The most important questions don't seem to have ready answers. But the questions themselves have a healing power when they are shared. An answer is an invitation to stop thinking about something, to stop wondering. Life has no such stopping places, life is a process whose every event is connected to the moment that just went by. An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road.
[. . .]
In some fairy tales there is a magic word which has the power to undo the spell that has imprisoned someone and free them. When I was small, I would wait anxiously until the prince or the princess stumbled on the formula and said the healing words that would release them into life. Usually the words were some sort of nonsense like "Shazam." My magic words have turned out to be "I don't know."
[Part IX, "Mystery and Awe"
[. . .]
In some fairy tales there is a magic word which has the power to undo the spell that has imprisoned someone and free them. When I was small, I would wait anxiously until the prince or the princess stumbled on the formula and said the healing words that would release them into life. Usually the words were some sort of nonsense like "Shazam." My magic words have turned out to be "I don't know."
[Part IX, "Mystery and Awe"
Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom
Whenever anything went wrong for the family my father would shake his head and say, "The luck of the Remens." He applied the phrase liberally and even-handedly to such things as losing a parking space as well as the larger things in life such as his bankruptcy and the chronic illness of his only daughter. The luck of the Remens was certainly not good luck. My father, who believed in nothing beyond a human agency in this world, felt life to be a random and dangerous enterprise and he felt overwhelmed by it. The luck of the Remens was invoked often. For many years I believed that we were unlucky people.
In 1971, my father won a prize in the New York State lottery. It was not a huge amount of money by lottery standards, but it was more money than my dad had ever seen in his life in one place. It was a windfall for him. It was a windfall for me, too, not because of the money but because of what happened next.
My father was in the hospital when he won the lottery, recovering from the removal of a tumor which turned out to be benign. He taped the winning ticket to his chest, saying that no one could be trusted to redeem it, not any of the family or any of his friends, not even my mother. He was convinced that someone would keep the ticket or it would be stolen from them or the people at the lottery office would not record it honestly once it was handed over. For a long time he could not be persuaded to turn the ticket in. As the deadline to redeem it got closer, he swore my mother and me to secrecy, telling us that people would try to take advantage of us in some way if they knew. Eventually he did redeem the ticket himself, but he never did spend the money because he was afraid that others would then know he had it.
Gradually, a very familiar anxiety settled around us. And then I got my windfall. I saw that the luck of the Remens was homemade. There was no way that my father could be lucky in this world. He could even turn winning fifty thousand dollars into a misfortune, a source of grief, anxiety, and stress. Until then, I had believed that we were really unlucky. Something gray that had hung over me all my life lifted. I have lived off my windfall from that lottery ticket ever since.
["A Good Fortune," in Part III, "Traps"]
In 1971, my father won a prize in the New York State lottery. It was not a huge amount of money by lottery standards, but it was more money than my dad had ever seen in his life in one place. It was a windfall for him. It was a windfall for me, too, not because of the money but because of what happened next.
My father was in the hospital when he won the lottery, recovering from the removal of a tumor which turned out to be benign. He taped the winning ticket to his chest, saying that no one could be trusted to redeem it, not any of the family or any of his friends, not even my mother. He was convinced that someone would keep the ticket or it would be stolen from them or the people at the lottery office would not record it honestly once it was handed over. For a long time he could not be persuaded to turn the ticket in. As the deadline to redeem it got closer, he swore my mother and me to secrecy, telling us that people would try to take advantage of us in some way if they knew. Eventually he did redeem the ticket himself, but he never did spend the money because he was afraid that others would then know he had it.
Gradually, a very familiar anxiety settled around us. And then I got my windfall. I saw that the luck of the Remens was homemade. There was no way that my father could be lucky in this world. He could even turn winning fifty thousand dollars into a misfortune, a source of grief, anxiety, and stress. Until then, I had believed that we were really unlucky. Something gray that had hung over me all my life lifted. I have lived off my windfall from that lottery ticket ever since.
["A Good Fortune," in Part III, "Traps"]
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The form of the Crucified invalidates all thinking oriented toward success, for it is a denial of judgment. Neither the triumph of the successful nor the bitter hatred that those who have failed harbor against the successful will ever really get the better of the world. Jesus is certainly no advocate of the successful in history, but neither does he lead the rebellion of failed existences against the successful. He is concerned not with success or failure, but with his willing acceptance of God's judgment. . . . In the cross of Christ, God shows the successful person the consecration of pain, of lowliness, of failure, of poverty, of loneliness, of despair. Not because all this might possess some inherent worth, but because it receives its sanctification through God's love, which takes all this upon itself as judgment. God's yes to the cross is judgment upon the successful. The unsuccessful, however, must realize that it is not their lack of success, not their status as pariahs as such, but alone the acceptance of the judgment of divine love that allows them to stand before God.
[From "Ethics as Formation Power," in Ethics (1940), reprinted in Meditations on the Cross (Manfred Weber ed., Douglas W. Stott transl.)]
[From "Ethics as Formation Power," in Ethics (1940), reprinted in Meditations on the Cross (Manfred Weber ed., Douglas W. Stott transl.)]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's incarnation alone makes it possible to know real human beings and not to despise them. Real human beings are permitted to live before God, and we are permitted to let them live alongside us before God without either despising or deifying them. Not because of some value that might be inherent in real human beings but only because God loved and was incarnate in the real human being. The ground of God's love for human beings resides in God, not in human beings. And the ground permitting us to live as real human beings and to let real human beings live alongside us is likewise found only in God's incarnation, in God's unfathomable love for human beings.
[From "Ethics as Formation Power," in Ethics (1940), reprinted in Meditations on the Cross (Manfred Weber ed., Douglas W. Stott transl.)]
[From "Ethics as Formation Power," in Ethics (1940), reprinted in Meditations on the Cross (Manfred Weber ed., Douglas W. Stott transl.)]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
While we distinguish between the pious and the godless, between the good and the evil, the noble and the common, God loves real human beings without discriminating against any. God will not tolerate us dividing the world and human beings according to our own standards, and setting ourselves up as their judges. God leads us ad absurdum by becoming a real human being, by becoming a companion of sinners, and by thus forcing us to become God's judges. God takes the side of real human beings and of the real world against all their accusers. God accepts being accused along with human beings, along with the world, and in this way makes God's judges into the accused.
[From "Ethics as Formation Power," in Ethics (1940), reprinted in Meditations on the Cross (Manfred Weber ed., Douglas W. Stott transl.)]
[From "Ethics as Formation Power," in Ethics (1940), reprinted in Meditations on the Cross (Manfred Weber ed., Douglas W. Stott transl.)]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Whether we really have found God's peace will be shown by how we deal with the sufferings that will come upon us. There are many Christians who do indeed kneel before the cross of Jesus Christ, and yet reject and struggle against every tribulation in their own lives. They believe they love the cross of Christ, and yet they hate that cross in their own lives. And so in truth they hate the cross of Jesus Christ as well, and in truth despise that cross and try by any means possible to escape it. Those who acknowledge that they view suffering and tribulation in their own lives only as something hostile and evil can see from this very fact that they have not at all found peace with God. They have basically merely sought peace with the world, believing possibly that by means of the cross of Jesus Christ they might best come to terms with themselves and with all their questions, and thus find inner peace of the soul. They have used the cross, but not loved it. They have sought peace for their own sake. But when tribulation comes, that peace quickly flees them. It was not peace with God, for they hated the tribulation God sends.
Thus those who merely hate tribulation, renunciation, distress, defamation, imprisonment in their own lives, no matter how grandiosely they may otherwise speak about the cross, these people in reality hate the cross of Jesus and have not found peace with God. But those who love the cross of Jesus Christ, those who have genuinely found peace in it, now begin to lvoe even the tribulations in their lives, and ultimately will be able to say with scripture: "We also boast in our sufferings."
[. . . ]
"Tribulation produces patience, and patience produces experience, and experience produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us." But all this only for those who have found and who keep God's peace in Jesus Christ, and of whom our text now says: "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." Only those who are loved by God and who for that reason love God alone and above all else, those alone are permitted to speak thus. No, the gradation from tribulation to hope is no self-evident earthly truth. Luther said that one could very well put it quite differently, namely, that suffering produces impatience, and impatience produces obstinacy, and obstinacy produces despair, and despair disappoints us completely. Indeed, thus must it be if we lose God's peace, when we prefer an earthly peace with the world to peace with God, when we love the security of our lives more than we love God. Then must tribulation become our ruin.
[Sermon at evening worship, March 9, 1938, reprinted in "Meditations on the Cross" (Manfred Weber, ed.; Douglas W. Stott transl.)]
Thus those who merely hate tribulation, renunciation, distress, defamation, imprisonment in their own lives, no matter how grandiosely they may otherwise speak about the cross, these people in reality hate the cross of Jesus and have not found peace with God. But those who love the cross of Jesus Christ, those who have genuinely found peace in it, now begin to lvoe even the tribulations in their lives, and ultimately will be able to say with scripture: "We also boast in our sufferings."
[. . . ]
"Tribulation produces patience, and patience produces experience, and experience produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us." But all this only for those who have found and who keep God's peace in Jesus Christ, and of whom our text now says: "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." Only those who are loved by God and who for that reason love God alone and above all else, those alone are permitted to speak thus. No, the gradation from tribulation to hope is no self-evident earthly truth. Luther said that one could very well put it quite differently, namely, that suffering produces impatience, and impatience produces obstinacy, and obstinacy produces despair, and despair disappoints us completely. Indeed, thus must it be if we lose God's peace, when we prefer an earthly peace with the world to peace with God, when we love the security of our lives more than we love God. Then must tribulation become our ruin.
[Sermon at evening worship, March 9, 1938, reprinted in "Meditations on the Cross" (Manfred Weber, ed.; Douglas W. Stott transl.)]
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
[Yossarian:] "Can't you ground someone who's crazy?"
[Doc Daneeka:] "Oh, sure. I have to. There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy."
"Then why don't you ground me? I'm crazy. Ask Clevinger"
"Clevinger? Where is Clevinger? You find Clevinger and I'll ask him."
"Then ask any of the others. They'll tell you how crazy I am."
"They're crazy."
"Then why don't you ground them?"
"Why don't they ask me to ground them?"
"Because they're crazy, that's why."
"Of course they're crazy," Doc Daneeka replied. "I just told you they're crazy, didn't I? And you can't let crazy people decide whether you're crazy or not, can you?"
Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
[Chapter V, "Chief White Halfoat"]
[Doc Daneeka:] "Oh, sure. I have to. There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy."
"Then why don't you ground me? I'm crazy. Ask Clevinger"
"Clevinger? Where is Clevinger? You find Clevinger and I'll ask him."
"Then ask any of the others. They'll tell you how crazy I am."
"They're crazy."
"Then why don't you ground them?"
"Why don't they ask me to ground them?"
"Because they're crazy, that's why."
"Of course they're crazy," Doc Daneeka replied. "I just told you they're crazy, didn't I? And you can't let crazy people decide whether you're crazy or not, can you?"
Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
[Chapter V, "Chief White Halfoat"]
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"The fence you have been straddling for two hours -- while hearing my words and seeking to escape them -- is the coward's formula contained in the sentence: 'But we don't have to go to extremes!' The extreme you have always struggled to avoid is the recognition that reality is final, that A is A and that the truth is true. A moral code impossible to practice, a code that demands imperfection or death, has taught you to dissolve all ideas in fog, to permit no firm definitions, to regard any concept as approximate and any rule of conduct as elastic, to hedge on any principle, to compromise on any value, to take the middle of any road. By extorting your acceptance of supernatural absolutes, it has forced you to reject the absolute of nature. By making moral judgments impossible, it has made you incapable of rational judgment A code that forbids you to cast the first stone, has forbidden you to admit the identity of stones and to
know when or if you're being stoned.
"The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute."
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for the truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube."
[From John Galt's speech to the nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "The is John Galt Speaking"]
know when or if you're being stoned.
"The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute."
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for the truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube."
[From John Galt's speech to the nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "The is John Galt Speaking"]
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"Under a morality of sacrifice, the first value you sacrifice is morality; the next is self-esteem. When need is the standard, every man is both victim and parasite. As a victim, he must labor to fill the needs of others, leaving himself in the position of a parasite whose needs must be filled by others. He cannot approach his fellow men except in one of the two disgraceful roles: he is both a beggar and a sucker.
"You fear the man who has a dollar less than you, that dollar is rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder. You hate the man who has a dollar more than you , that dollar is rightfully yours, he makes you feel that you are morally defrauded. The man below is a source of your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration. You do not know what to surrender or demand, when to give and when to grab, what pleasure in life is rightfully yours and what debt is still unpaid to others -- you struggle to evade, as 'theory,' the knowledge that by the moral standard you've accepted you are guilty every moment of your life, there is no mouthful of food you swallow that is not needed by someone somewhere on earth -- and you give up the problem in blind resentment, you conclude that moral perfections is not to be achieved or desired, that you will muddle through by snatching as snatch can and by avoiding the eyes of the young, of those who look at you as if self-esteem were possible and they expected you to have it. Guilt is all that you retain within your soul -- and so does every other man, as he goes past, avoiding your eyes. Do you wonder why your morality has not acheived brotherhood on earth or the good will of man to man?
[John Galt's speech to the nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking"]
"You fear the man who has a dollar less than you, that dollar is rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder. You hate the man who has a dollar more than you , that dollar is rightfully yours, he makes you feel that you are morally defrauded. The man below is a source of your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration. You do not know what to surrender or demand, when to give and when to grab, what pleasure in life is rightfully yours and what debt is still unpaid to others -- you struggle to evade, as 'theory,' the knowledge that by the moral standard you've accepted you are guilty every moment of your life, there is no mouthful of food you swallow that is not needed by someone somewhere on earth -- and you give up the problem in blind resentment, you conclude that moral perfections is not to be achieved or desired, that you will muddle through by snatching as snatch can and by avoiding the eyes of the young, of those who look at you as if self-esteem were possible and they expected you to have it. Guilt is all that you retain within your soul -- and so does every other man, as he goes past, avoiding your eyes. Do you wonder why your morality has not acheived brotherhood on earth or the good will of man to man?
[John Galt's speech to the nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking"]
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness -- non-existence -- as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw -- the zero. "
[John Galt's speech to the Nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking"]
[John Galt's speech to the Nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking"]
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island -- it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today -- and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
"If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. Teh moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
"My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists -- and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason -- Purpose -- Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge -- Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve -- Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is wrothy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honor, justice, productiveness, pride.
[John Galt's address to the nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking"]
"If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. Teh moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
"My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists -- and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason -- Purpose -- Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge -- Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve -- Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is wrothy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honor, justice, productiveness, pride.
[John Galt's address to the nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking"]
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
"Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think -- not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment -- on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict 'It is.' Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say 'It is,' you are refusing to say 'I am.' By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: 'Who am I to know?' -- he is declaring: 'Who am I to live?'
"This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.
"To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death."
[John Galt's address to the nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking"]
"Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think -- not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment -- on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict 'It is.' Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say 'It is,' you are refusing to say 'I am.' By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: 'Who am I to know?' -- he is declaring: 'Who am I to live?'
"This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.
"To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death."
[John Galt's address to the nation, Part III, Chapter VII, "This is John Galt Speaking"]
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas
That "God looked on all things and saw that they were good" contains a subtlety which the popular pessimist cannot follow, or is too hasty to notice. It is the thesis that there are no bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad things but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions. Only Calvinists can really believe that hell is paved with good intentions. That is exactly the one thing it cannot be paved with. But it is possible to have bad intentions about good things; and good things, like the world and the flesh have been twisted by a bad intention called the devil. But he cannot make things bad; they remain as on the first day of creation. The work of heaven alone was material; the making of a material world. The work of hell is entirely spiritual.
[Chapter IV, "A Meditation on the Manichees"]
[Chapter IV, "A Meditation on the Manichees"]
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas
At the top of his fury, Thomas Aquinas understands, what so many defenders of orthodoxy will not understand. It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist; or to charge a denier of immortality with the infamy of denying it; or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong, by proving that he is wrong on somebody else's principles, but not on his own. After the great example of St. Thomas, the principle stands, or ought always to have stood established; that we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours.
[Chapter III, "The Aristotelian Revolution"]
[Chapter III, "The Aristotelian Revolution"]
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas was willing to allow the one truth to be approached by two paths, precisely because he was sure there was only one truth. Because the Faith was the one truth, nothing discovered in nature could ultimately contradict the Faith. Because the Faith was the one truth, nothing really deduced from the Faith could ultimately contradict the facts. It was in truth a curiously daring confidence in the reality of his religion; and though some may linger to dispute it, it has been justified.
[Chapter III, "The Aristotelian Revolution"]
[Chapter III, "The Aristotelian Revolution"]
G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi
Even [as a boy] I did not quite understand, and even now I do not quite understand, on what principle one is to pick and choose in the chronicles of the past which seem to be all of a piece. All our knowledge of certain historical periods, and notably of the whole medieval period, rest on certain connected chronicles written by people who are some of them nameless and all of them dead, who cannot in any case be cross-examined and cannot in some cases be corroborated. I have never been quite clear about the nature of the right by which historians accepted masses of detail from them as definitely true, and suddenly denied their truthfulness when one detail was preternatural. I do not complain of their being sceptics; I am puzzled about why the sceptics are not more sceptical. I can understand their saying that these details would never have been included in a chronicle except by lunatics or liars; but in that case the only inference is that the chronicle was written by liars or lunatics. They will write for instance: "Monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the report that miracles were already being worked at the tomb of Thomas Becket." Why should they not say equally well, "Monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the slander that four knights from King Henry's court had assassinated Thomas Becket in the cathedral"? They would write something like this: "The credulity of the age readily believed that Joan of Arc had been inspired to point out the Dauphin although he was in disguise." Why should they not write on the same principle: "The credulity of the age was such as to suppose that an obscure peasant girl could get an audience at the court of the Dauphin"? And so, in the present case, when they tell us there is a wild story that St. Francis flung himself into the fire and emerged scathless, upon what precise principle are they forbidden to tell us of a wild story that St. Francis flung himself into the camp of the ferocious Moslems and returned safe. I only ask for information; for I do not see the rationale of the thing myself. I will undertake to say that there was not a word written of St. Francis by any contemporary who was himself incapable of believing and telling a miraculous story. Perhaps it is all monkish fables and there never was any St. Francis or any St. Thomas Becket or any Joan of Arc. This is undoubtedly a reductio ad absurdum; but it is a reductio ad absurdum of the view which thought all miracles absurd.
And in abstract logic this method of selection would lead to the wildest absurdities. An intrinsically incredible story could only mean that the authority was unworthy of credit. It could not mean that other parts of his story must be received with complete credulity. If somebody said he had met a man in yellow trousers, who proceeded to jump down his own throat, we should not exactly take our Bible oath or be burned at the stake for the statement that he wore yellow trousers. If somebody claimed to have gone up in a blue balloon and found that the moon was made of green cheese, we should not exactly take an affidavit that the balloon was blue any more than the moon was green.
[Chapter IX, "Miracles and Death"]
And in abstract logic this method of selection would lead to the wildest absurdities. An intrinsically incredible story could only mean that the authority was unworthy of credit. It could not mean that other parts of his story must be received with complete credulity. If somebody said he had met a man in yellow trousers, who proceeded to jump down his own throat, we should not exactly take our Bible oath or be burned at the stake for the statement that he wore yellow trousers. If somebody claimed to have gone up in a blue balloon and found that the moon was made of green cheese, we should not exactly take an affidavit that the balloon was blue any more than the moon was green.
[Chapter IX, "Miracles and Death"]
G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi
There is a bias in man like the bias in the bowl; and Christianity was the discovery of how to correct the bias and therefore hit the mark. There are many who will smile at the saying; but it is profoundly true to say that the glad good news brought by the Gospel was the news of original sin.
[Chapter II, "The World St. Francis Found"]
[Chapter II, "The World St. Francis Found"]
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