fragilekeys

Prayer in three short takes:

Yes, at times there is intentional prayer: when one supplicates God to align reality with one’s needs or desires. One could say this is self-serving and thus ‘dead on arrival’, since God is not in the business of wish fulfillment. But still it often happens that one prays this way, for example when under great stress or pain or fear. In this case it might be true that prayer simply serves a psychological function of conjuring in us a feeling of strength or perseverance, or of not being alone. It is easy to attribute that to a supernatural actor but it could just be self-suggestion. Without deciding on that question here, it does seem like ‘monotheism’ means to subtract itself from the sphere of gods who are influenced as humans are.

Then there is the prayer of acceptance: when one asks to align one’s will to God’s will. The Letter of James asks: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain’; whereas really you do not know about tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’” [4:13]. And earlier: “You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend on your passions.” One can observe two logics of desire here: one that asks for itself (its own needs/desires) and one that asks for what is (and so desires whatever is given, even unto death). The controversy here is that then prayer seems to mean acceptance of the given ‘as is’; and that, consequently, it assumes God’s will and ‘what is’ are in accord, or tending toward accordance. That assumption can lead to some cruel perspectives if one takes it all the way (e.g., justification of present injustice). So, for this to work, one has to say that “God’s will” cannot simply be read off of what is. One would have to constantly recall that the will of God is radically Unknown, that God’s will is not known to us, that it ‘exists’ in a transitional space, in a movement into which one might better enter. One prays to recall the Eschaton toward which ‘what is’ drives: then prayer is not acceptance of ‘what is’ so much as a reorientation of the ‘mists of life’ toward the End, within the cosmic transition. “Faith” steps in at this point, as perseverance in this unknowing.

But there is another manifestation of prayer which is even more mysterious. I will call it prayer of receptivity. This is when the intention of God seems to flood in from the other side. Its markers are most akin to self-dissolution leading to self-giving transcendence. A shiver in the body is sometimes its signal: a moment of (seemingly un-willed) inward recollection that comes from ‘nowhere’, perhaps in the oddest places or at the oddest times. A feeling of confidence totally at odds with one’s given circumstances may arise. Or perhaps when one is weeping, one feels cleansed or forgiven far beyond one’s own capacities or dreams. A feeling like something is praying in us. There need be no words, no discourse in the mind, no supplication. Perhaps not even any reflection; or if there is, the mirror is decidedly other, reflecting back ‘nothing’. If anything, there is dissolution, accompanied by what seems to be the (unspeakable, unknowable) ‘discovery’ of a sort of invisible ground. But there is no ‘chasing’ after this state, no retaining it or claiming it. I would even be reluctant to call it an ‘experience’, if experience implies a separation from the experiencer and the object of experience, since in this mode of receptivity a sense of oneness prevails. So, if it is an experience, it’s certainly not one that can be possessed or reproduced at will through spiritual exercise; the latter can at best make one permeable, accessible to, prepared for, such a state, but it cannot will it into existence by force or demand. One can only request: ‘Spirit come’. But the essence of the reception is that God has sought you and found you – though in the moment, even such ‘clarity’ is not present or necessary, this ‘saying’ being deduced after the fact. In the moment there is neither leading nor leading astray: the growth is of the timeless, of rest in the invisible ground. And while it is a moment that is certainly filled with thanks, the intention to be thankful is only echo, consequence or response, and thus intuition received. Ego-satisfaction is ruled out on principle. Perhaps, then, one is ‘sucked’ into Eschaton: a loss of the All that gives it all back. No knowledge of God, no clarity from one’s purpose, necessarily comes from this. It is more like a revelation of the tenderness of being, or of its invincible fragility–its preciousness. From such an invisible ground, it is probably impossible not to love.

Language as a ‘code’, behavior as ‘programming’, ideas as ‘downloadable’—these are all metaphors drawn from a cybernetic and technoscientific paradigm. However, predominant as these metaphors are in guiding the norms of our society, is not guaranteed, nor is it likely, that their explanatory power extends to cover all aspects of semiological activity—whether natural language use, economic behavior, or exchanging ideas is concerned.

A code is something that is really only virtually present: all that matters is that it be received and decoded at the target end so that the desired and expected action is performed. The code ‘disappears’ in or underneath the communication. Once the message or packet of information is received and processed, the means can be disposed of. I send a signal for a document to print; once it’s printed, the computer can comfortably forget the signal and ready itself for another. Likewise, all instances of reception are functionally identical, no difference or mutation enters in. When I download a PDF, my computer receives the exact same file your computer would. Obviously, the details of the code will depend on the platform, the OS, the printer, and so on; but no matter these details, whenever the desired acted is successfully performed, the code disappears.

In other words, with ‘codes’, interpretation is lacking. This is essential to its purpose: if the dots and dashes of Morse code allowed for interpretation, it would be a nightmare to send a consistent message. A code cannot function without a clear set of references that are regularized and repeatable. Computers function on 1’s and 0’s and nothing in between. But even word-based sign-systems, like crossword puzzles, can lack this dimension of interpretation and operate like a code. All that matters in the puzzle is to fill in the blanks with the right letters; once this is finished, there’s nothing left to do. And while thought is involved in finding the right answers, there’s no option about what they can be. It is retrieval from memory and highly associative, but in the end, the activity of decoding the code— by whatever strategy, along whatever detour— is all that takes place. To interpret a clue differently from what’s expected just means you’re making a mistake. It is also an activity that aims at disposing its means, the crossword itself, upon completion. That is why ‘cheating’ is both silly (because why play if it’s just copy and paste from an answer key) and irresistible (because cheating may be the only way to get it over with). Finally, once more all instances of solution are identical. The only variety comes in how one reaches that identical goal, but again, by puzzle’s end all trace of that process is invisible and irrelevant (unless, perhaps, you’re being graded on your crossword skills!). The ‘means’ vanish into the message, the proper arrangement of letters on a grid, which itself is meaningless once the task is finished, the challenge met and some leisurely pleasure produced.

By contrast, if each of us read Plato’s Phaderus, every instance of reception is going to be different, spark different associations, lead to different intellectual conclusions and existential choices. There will be ambiguity at points and dispute at others. Certain meanings will be clear and agreed upon, others will remain hidden, obscure, perhaps even unreachable. At no point will the text become disposable or lead to an identical result. Although Plato has been interpreted by nearly every philosopher since, none would be so foolish as to suggest that their interpretation could substitute for reading the text itself. So, there’s difference and supplementarity all along the line of transmission of this text: readings that differ from each other and supplement each other without replacing each other or the original; an original that itself appears different with the passage of time and the history of interpretations. Indeed, after multiple readings of it, the same reader’s interpretations will evolve, deepen, perhaps contradict. And this is without even mentioning the importance of translation and how, if we could read it in ancient Greek, the entire text would look different and raise other questions. But the primary point is that it calls for interpretation and cannot be treated like a code.

In short: interpretation comes in the moment we have to ask “What does it mean?” and the answer is not only *not* transparent but demands we exert ourselves to read— not only to make sense of what it says, but to reflect upon ourselves and examine our own ideas in the process. The Socratic method could even be viewed as a type of deprogramming: right where you thought it was simple as filling in the right answer, according to views you already hold but never investigated, instead you’re asked to think. Furthermore, there is no ‘message’ of the text that interpretation only has to reach. Reading is not deciphering but thinking-along-with. This spills over, in Plato’s case, from examined text to examined life. This is where interpretation shows its true color as something world-embedded, as a process of weaving understanding from all the texts and textures encountered there.

To return, code-based metaphors only get us so far. They may even lead in the wrong direction, if too broadly applied. For my part, I would say it’s a great danger to view communication and the acquisition of knowledge according to this paradigm. The question of a tradition (‘handing-over’) of knowledge is something different from the decoding of a code: it is a creative project and the outcome cannot be predicted in advance. It is this unpredictability of result—the un-programmable nature of any genuine inheritance from the history of thought, which involves decision, risk, faith…— it is this unpredictability that everything from big data mining to an education system based in standardized testing seeks to eliminate from the process of understanding the world, in all likelihood, to dull our power to critique it.

No one can deny the pervasiveness and dominance of codes and programming, but the consequences of accepting it as defining of knowledge are severe and further reaching than we may initially believe. Doing so turns society into a calculation of ‘social codes’, with most outcomes effectively prescribed according to manufactured views and norms. It is a manner of treating each of us like terminals, like machines merely selecting from options defined in advance. Worse, the ‘messangers’ for these codes, humans, ultimately become disposal too–a model that draws strength from evolutionary theory when it treats the individual as the vessel for passing on the species DNA code—only now, the code is caste and capitalist accumulation, maintenance of a status quo of inequality passing itself off as the ‘programming’ necessary for the ‘act’ of society to succeed. A code is good for computers, but the idea of a code comes from military and religion culture. So, it is no accident that codes so efficiently accomplish tasks, stabilize references, circumscribe fields of reference, and make sure all the letters are in the right place in the grid.

What is the code we are normally unwittingly consigned to transmit, and which takes us out of play for the sake of the ‘message’? What does resistance to the paradigm of total encoding and information transmission look like? What is interpretation?

Psychological tendencies we dislike and critique, that irritate and get on our nerves, can over time get rooted in us, as much out of repulsion as attraction.

One becomes so troubled by what one observes in others, or in general social norms and trends of ‘thought’, that one is compelled to amplify its importance, its negative impact, and so one sets out to set things right.

One crafts various ‘charms’ to keep the unpleasant influences away, but this often just brings them closer in less obvious ways. Not infrequently, even when I think I’m speaking on my own behalf, I’m just foolishly trying to account for and make up for the lack of thinking I perceive, or rather project, in others. The narcissism implied in the attitude is obvious. This easily becomes occasion to make a fool of myself, in displays of seriousness that convey more than anything my own frustration and anger at not feeling I fit in or can relate. The other side of this coin is dissimilation, withdrawal, multifarious pity.

One acts as if the grief and fury funneled into a musing might propitiate the entire assemblage of confusions that seemed to have made it necessary, including one’s own beguilement at having anything more to do with it – as is often the case with ‘political tirades’ that are as vehement as they are self-consciously impotent.

Some part of ourselves rises up to have its voice heard, as it supposes to bring clarity to chaos, but often it is only a release of tension, a performance meant to reassert a prowess, superiority, or self-respect. It is a way to gain distance from a conflict by announcing it and putting oneself in conflict with it. An act of intellectual war.

Followed, often enough, by a bad hangover consisting in futility, regret, embarrassment, powerlessness—isolations inevitably accompanying a mind that ‘betrays too much’ of its own inner workings, often enough just to demonstrate to itself it still ‘works’.

The beautiful soul fails to recognize that he not only contributes to, but in a way produces from within himself, the intellectual disorder he perceives as bearing down on him from the outside world.