Matt's Metaphysics and More (as of Dec '17)

METAPHYSICS

Stuff and Space

There’s stuff and there’s space.

“Stuff” is anything that’s a thing. (I’m not thinking too deeply into this yet.)

“Space” is a little more complicated-- it’s anything that is not a thing, but rather, the absence of things, which in turn can actually serve as the medium in which things move/reside. So, Time is also a kind of Space.

Where did these two types come from; what created them?

Shut up, that’s what. It’s not within the capacity of the human mind to “see” “behind” this level of reality (read: Immanuel Kant; Ludwig Wittgenstein; Gordon Kaufman). Just because you can ask the question “Oh, gee, where did it all come from?” doesn’t mean that you get an answer, or even that it’s actually a coherent question.

Mereology

Stuff either connects with other stuff or doesn’t connect.

When it connects, higher-order stuff results. Sometimes the higher-order stuff is a more complex thing; other times it’s a relationship between things.

ATHEOLOGY

Not Theology

“Theology” is, unfortunately, too often conflated with theistic theology, in which the principle(s) of ultimacy is given a personality. Thus, “atheology” is the consideration of ultimate/concern without dredging up “god”ly forms of theology (idolatry).

Dualistic Atheology

This is a pretentious but accurate phrase for where my beliefs have landed.

Here’s another one: “existential mereology.”

There are two ultimate principles: encounter and emptiness.

Each principle can occur as the divine or the demonic.

The divine dimension of encounter: insight, wholeness, love....

The demonic dimension of encounter: misunderstanding, meanness, Moloch (systemic evil)...

(Neutral aspects would include: knowledge, creativity, power, personality, meaning/narrative…)

The divine dimension of emptiness: humility, freedom, possibility, rest...

The demonic dimension of emptiness: absurdity, loneliness, being swallowed by the abyss...

SECULAR SPIRITUALITY

This is an extensive intellectual/emotional (or simply “holistic”) consideration of one’s relationship with the phenomena/experiences of encounter and emptiness.

Regarding encounter, one must consider and adopt a caring stance towards what it means:

·        To be

·        To be capable of meaning-discovery/making

·        To be oneself

·        To be oneself with/among things

·        To be oneself with/among people

·        To be oneself in the world at this time

Regarding emptiness, one must consider and adopt a caring stance towards what it means:

·        To die

·        To live in a world that (probably) cannot be made whole

·        To live in a world heading towards heat death

·        That nothing of this means anything ultimately

Managing Dualism

This, for me, is the next major challenge in developing my secular spirituality:

           

Creating a coherent spirituality,

given the major tension between encounter and emptiness.

Myths, Motifs, and Meaninglessness

*This post was inspired by my recent reading of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, which overlapped with my college mentor Rabbi Neil Gillman’s death and memorial.

I

These are three different types of structure (or lack thereof) of the connection between person and world.

In myth, person fits into world as character in narrative, with a beginning provided and end assured.

In motif, person is of a kind within the world-- many narratives are available but no master-narrative. The person is simultaneously unique and connected, insofar as they are a (shifting) bundle of attributes shared (in part) by others in existence. The person’s origin and destiny are lost among the play of motifs; no long-term survival of self or stable context of meaning is assured.

In meaninglessness, person exists in world for a time. “Sound and fury,” etc. That’s about it.

II

My current self/world-view is motif. I see individual/collective life as the playing out of various existential-biological themes, such that each situation is simultaneously unique and yet resonates in the general play of life.

Myth and meaninglessness make claims as to the ultimate structure of meaning, while motif makes no such claim. The thing with motif, however, is that it could exist within the context of either myth or meaninglessness. Here’s what that looks like:

• Motif within myth - there is a master-narrative that’s hidden, but if you pay close enough attention to patterns, it can be discovered. Gillman compares the ability to find myth to the ability to discern a basketball team’s “passing game.” The motifs attain ultimate meaning by being placed within the larger myth.

• Motif within meaninglessness - yes, there are lots of echoes in the world, lots of themes, great. Cool. But, ultimately, there’s no order to it, no point, it all adds up to nothing. The motifs fail to achieve ultimate meaning because there just isn’t any.

III

I don’t feel assured enough to make a claim that myth or meaninglessness are the actual state of things. Is that ok? Is it ok to just focus on the motifs, despite their relativity to some ultimate-yet-undetermined state of things? Can relative meaning be enough to get by, enough to avoid the despair of meaninglessness as well as the *problematic structures of myth?

*I recognize that this last phrase, critiquing myth, needs elaboration.

Dual “Divine” Options in Atheism

Skip this paragraph unless you need me to defend my use of the word “divine”

As I’ve established a few times in this blog, I’m not so much an atheist as I am someone who finds the word “God” super-problematic, mostly because it function grammatically as a Proper Name, leading people to speak about the divine as if it was some kind of being. This is why I really prefer the phrase “the divine,” because it’s easier to use to speak about a property of (our experience of) reality-- “the divine” being a way to point towards the mystery, the transcendent, the surplus, and occasionally the blessing we encounter in reality. “We encounter the divine” sounds like it’s describing a quality of a special experience; “We encounter God” sounds like it’s describing a meeting of beings, one of which is a God.

Dual Identities: Negative Theology and Humanism

This post is inspired by a talk given at Shabbat services yesterday by Rabbi Ari Saks, in which he invited the congregation to consider different ways to handle bowing during the Torah processional before the Torah reading. Should the person holding the Torah:

• Bow (along with the rest of the congregation) towards the empty ark?
• Bow towards the congregation as the congregation bows towards them?
• Stand straight up while everyone else bows towards the Torah?

The idea behind this fantastic question was to illuminate how choreography expresses different theological positions/preferences. Given my position (see links in first paragraph), I felt torn between the first and second options, and this called attention to my split priorities when it comes to the divine. As a negative theologian, I like how the first option locates divinity in the empty space. As a humanist, I like how the second option locates divinity as something that resides/appears within/among the congregation.

I want to explore briefly how these two locations of divinity play out and interact.

The Abyss as the Divine (or demonic)

This is a position promoted by Lurianic Kabbalah and Rubenstein’s post-Holocaust theology, reflecting the fecundity of space, the absoluteness of the abyss, the sacred in the silence.

At the same time, the abyss is very often not a blessing, especially given that it ultimately will swallow us all, leaving no trace.

Between-ness as the Divine (or demonic)

This is a position promoted by Buber, Levinas, and Raphael’s post-Holocaust theology, and certainly accessible through Reconstructionism and Humanism, all of which call attention to the ‘divine’ power of human love, care, attention, labor, etc.

And at the same time, so much of what occurs between us humans is not divine, but rather mean, messy, and/or misled.

Relation and Tension between the Abyss and the Between-ness

I’ve already gone over this once-- the abyss appears to be the source/place of all that goes on between us, but it’s also the destroyer of all of that too. To focus on humanity is, most often, to forget/ignore the abyss. To focus on the abyss-- you get the idea.

But! I believe both are very important! And both have clearly captured my imagination in terms of what seems special about existence, despite the lack of a more classical God. So, is there some way to honor both together, to represent and relate to both together?

At the very least, it seems like I’m working myself into some kind of dualistic theology-- one faced (the human face, face of the other, etc) and the other faceless. I wonder, then, if the next step is to look into the ways that Dualistic theologies (even though mine is an atheology) function.

So, here’s where I’ve arrived for the moment: a Dualistic Atheology, which aims to identify the understandings and best practices towards engaging with the abyss, and with between-ness.