Reflections

Every month the educational office in our district (Uijeongbu) has something they call the "English Café." It's an opportunity for native English teachers in the area to get together with Korean teachers in a Korean cultural experience. I usually don't go, but this month's event was called "Extreme Taegwondo Musical."

They requested that we write a reflective essay afterward. I wasn't sure what that meant, but it sounded kind of like an assignment from the PCM class at MBI. In case there's any confusion, my somewhat garbled analogy is a complaint about the names-from-a-hat buddy system they enforced at the beginning of the event. Some of the Korean teachers didn't want to speak English so it made that situation a little uncomfortable. I don't think anyone else will read it so I'm posting it here. This is what I wrote:

Flashing lights, blaring sounds and extreme entertainment all tempered by a prelude of warm conversation and delicious food – these were the panorama of delights which awaited us upon attending the year’s final English Café.

I knew not what to expect, for I’d not forayed on previous adventures of the said company. Yet even had I an inkling of what was to come, my mind would not have been able to encompass the scope and vision of what would ensue with the evening’s activities. It may be an overstatement to cite the scriptures – “Eye has not seen nor has ear heard” – yet in my mind the similitude is not to be overlooked. Because no one can know quite what to expect of a situation before it is upon him.

Certain aspects of the English Café I enjoyed overwhelmingly, and any negativity conveyed in the proceeding thoughts should not preclude that no matter how slightly. To have enjoyed pleasant camaraderie with countrymen and diverse bearers of my mother tongue is a privilege I should be loathe to despise. Nonetheless, there were elements of the aforementioned nocturnal expedition, namely the mandatory and seemingly perfunctory social couplings, which did nothing to increase the joyfulness of our shindig but in fact were somewhat to the detriment. Invoking the medium of analogy, I imagine each member of the party as words in a sentence from a mid-nineteenth century Gothic novel. In no way would I want myself understood as obdurate towards those with whom I share a dissimilitude in etymology – for we are all but entries in a dictionary of common making and these deviations enliven our sultry prose in every way. Yet it cannot be overlooked that some words find themselves uncomfortable with their preordained literary citizenship (which is why we have such a detestable plethora of kitsch lining our bookshelves, newspaper stands and magazine racks). It is in no way the fault of the words themselves. Rather it is a result of an author's discombobulated thoughts or some vacuum of scribal proficiency. Let sentences be written naturally and freely, infusing a variety of words and ideas of their own accord and not from a misguided sense of necessity. That is my only contention, and I thought it bore mention as a constructive adjunct to the rest of my accolades.

But enough dull talk of prose. What of the free verse that followed; the fine flowing lines of thought and body merged with the voice and soul of music? Mellifluous? Yes! Obtuse? Perhaps somewhat! Campy? By all means, yes and yes. And one of right mind would not have had it any other way. For with such things there is no other way. I offer my thanks for the opportunity. In all sincerity I hope the oversight of these outings brought you much joy and blessing.

Nietzsche and Passivity

Nietzsche was really into proactivity –assertive, individual morality determined by an inner strength of will – as opposed to reactivity –a passive morality which only responds but never directs of its own volition. Honestly, it's refreshing to read The Geneology of Morals for a change of pace. Say what you will about Nietzsche, he picks apart the flaws of Christians with relentless precision. Note, I'm not saying the flaws of Christianity itself. But he gets to the heart of moral passivity (decadence), which is the refusal to exercise one's will.

In a nutshell, “turning the other cheek” is ultimate passivity, the clearest exhibition of “sin” in Nietzsche's estimation. Well he can't be right there, because Jesus told us to turn the other cheek. Fair enough, we'll concede that Nietzsche's reading of the gospel's was flawed at best. But all truth is God's truth, so let's not give up on Nietzsche yet, if for no other reason than he's pretty fun to read.

Jonathan Edward's famously rearcticulated (and improved upon) Augustine and Luther's “bound will” arguments. He said people are free to choose what they want the most. Out of sheer laziness, I'll quote John Gerstner summarizing Edwards' position instead of doing it myself:

“Your choices as a rational person are always based on various considerations or motives that are before you at the time. Those motives have a certain weight with you, and the motives for and against reading a book, for example, are weighed in the balance of your mind; the motives that outweigh all others are what you, indeed, choose to follow.”

I'm not sure who would feel more awkward by this comparison, Edwards or Nietzsche, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say they're not all that different. Sorry guys, I know it makes you squirm. And seriously? Wasn't Edwards all into compatibilistic determinism, and Nietzsche all into human autonomy? Yes, yes, I know. And I'm not saying they're identical –they're conclusions are entirely opposite. But I'll take a chance and assert their underlying motivation is basically the same.

Nietzsche's theme was the pure assertion of will, and general rocking-awesomeness. “Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.” The will is truth. Unapologetic. Fearless. His beef with Christianity (apart from a general dislike of anything good) was the absurdity of willing against oneself. Christianity's “take up your cross” message was weakness. The passivity of choosing against one's own existence undermines the will to live. What kind of twisted motivation is this? That Jesus would allow himself to be killed, even choose it, indicated to Nietzsche an offensive decadence beyond comparison. How weak God must be to choose death at the hands of his creation. How is that a good thing? For Nietzsche's underlying motive was his own self-interest. In Christianity he saw a deep-seated fear of one's own self-interest. Christianity promotes shame, guilt, remorse, and a lack of self-confidence. Christianity fails to see or understand self-interest, and in doing so gives birth to nihilism.

Where Edwards and Nietzsche ring harmoniously is this: man is motivated by self-interest. Here's where their discord is blatant: the only independent and unbound self-interest is God's, and Nietzsche foolishly refuses to accept this. Nietzsche figured God must be otherworldly, detached and disassociated from the world – basically useless. That Christianity's God-man was killed only confirmed this for him. I don't think Nietzsche ever came across Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Maybe he would have thought differently if he'd pictured the flames of hell licking at his heels. Maybe he'd have reconsidered his indictment of Christian morality had he been aware that the unsuppressed will of Übermensch was vividly personified in the wrathful God he'd spent his life mocking. Probably not, but who knows?

I'm not at all offended by Nietzsche's caricature of sissy-man Christians. I agree with him in a lot of respects, and don't think it's “good” or “equitable” to live in passivity and weakness. Perhaps he wasn't far off in criticizing the ascetics and mystics for their lily-livered version of God-fearing. Or maybe he didn't quite understand their motivation or the tenuous circumstances of his own existence.

So what about this turning the other cheek thing? Weak, right? Sure, on one hand it's easy to see his point about passive existence. “Turning the other cheek” could be a rejection of self-interest, a “decadent” passivity that eats away at the soul. This could be no more true than if it were the ultimate force of will, God himself, rejecting his own existence. And it would be true of Christ on the cross had he only been executed. If he'd been arrested because of poor choices or bad timing, or (worse) weakness, Nietzsche would be right. But Christ did not passively submit himself to the wills of lesser men. He actively submitted, and submitted himself most fully to the ultimate objective of his own will.

Nietzsche's will is a will unto itself – a will that's propelled only by itself and directed only by itself. Nietzsche famously said “To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.” But if his purpose is only to exercise his own self-interest, how can he be certain he's doing this? What if what his will comes into conflict with his own self interest? For example, if God does exist, Nietzsche's little “will to power” thing would be completely out of line with his self interest. And if this is the case, wouldn't choosing his own active will be choosing against himself?

Because I'm getting myself in a logical knot, I'm going to do what I always do in these situations: I'm whipping out Soren Kierkegaard and plunking him willy-nilly into the center of my argument. Nietzsche never got around to reading Kierkegaard (according to Wikipedia). If he had, he might have learned a thing or two from The Sickness Unto Death. Here the venerable Kierkegaard isn't dealing with the will, but he has the same basic concerns as his existential thought-brother. Kierkegaard cuts to the quick of human despair, the problem of existence. Despair is the natural condition of humanity, not merely a symptom of Christian morality. It permeates our selves, because our selves must relate to themselves and we cannot relate to ourselves perfectly. There's internal disconnect. The only freedom from despair, he says, is to see the self in relation to itself transparently against an absolute self, that is, God.

Here we can change out a few words, and hopefully it will make sense. Nietzsche saw despair only in the failure to exercise the will. Kierkegaard was more perceptive and more realistic. Despair persists in even the fullest exercise of the human will, because the will cannot exercise itself in perfect harmony with itself. The will is internally disconnected from itself – it's unable to will for itself because it is bound in opposition to itself. Edwards would say this is depravity, and I'm right on board with him.

That was my point in regards to purpose being undermined by willing only itself. Edwards and Nietzsche both agree that the will can will whatever it wants. But Edwards also stipulated the will cannot choose what it wants it will. Another way of putting it: you can choose to do what you want, but you can't to choose to want to do something other than what you want to do... Even if that thing is in conflict with your best interest.

Nietzsche was fine with this shortcoming. He figured that by doing his own will he was following the path truest to himself, the most independent exertion of his existence. But it wasn't. Because he embraced his depraved will, he also embraced despair and destruction. There's nothing active about his morality. Nietzsche's so-called “will to power” is just the path of least resistance. Wide is the gate and easy is the way leading to destruction. He's gravity's whipping boy. No, the will can only exercise itself perfectly by submitting to an absolute will. God's.

Nietzsche tried to storm the gates of heaven with his tower of free will. He tried usurp God's morality with his own. Of course he didn't quite make it. Nietzsche was strangled in the twisted circle of his own free will unto itself. He accounted only for a weak God, a passive Platonic God that could only exist within his imagination.

Nietzsche hated Platonism, and next to Christianity his most leering jabs are directed at this school of thought. Christian morality does have the danger becoming Platonic, or worse, Neo-Platonic. The idea there would be “God's will is the ultimate will, and our wills participate in ascending levels of will through contemplation of his will” or something along those lines. That's the sort of thing that Nietzsche was opposed to. He thought it was stupid to try to participate in some higher being from another world. Nietzsche's philosophy was interested in immanence. And I like that. Platonic influence is bad: the floaty, flaky stuff, the wishy-washy moralism of “ideals.” It's surreal, it's weak, it's dissatisfying.

This is where Nietzsche is valuable to us, and where a generous reading of Genealogy of Morals deconstructs a lot of Platonic synchrotism within Christianity. God's morality is not merely a morality of ideals. It is very real, and very immanent. God's will isn't detached from his creation – it's not otherworldly. It powers the world. The driving force of God's will moves the world. The world itself is singed around the corners by his wrath. We're dangling from a thread, we are, and God's indomitable will is the only power that can save us.

Christianity isn't passivity. It's an exercise of will in submission to God. The Christian actively submits the will, and aligns it with Absolute Will. It's not an abstract, mystical ideal of will either. It's real. It drives the world around. Christian morality doesn't choose weakness when taking up the cross. Far from it. The Christian chooses truly enlightened self-interest. The Christian wills to live, beyond the weakness of depravity and despair, in the immanent will of God. This is real pro-activity, real freedom.

Winter Riders

Today's thermometer reading peaked at -2 degrees. Meteorologists are all gawking solemnly and everyone else has assumed martyr-ish expressions. I consider myself able enough to handle sub-zero temperatures and I laugh at you, blob of winter apparel with unbending arms and legs. I laugh at you people who wish you'd assumed the blob form before leaving your houses – your shoulders are going to hurt from scrunching.

I do feel superior to the winter laity but there's a class of beings with heads held high above the rest of us, blobs and pseudo-blobs alike. It's a group of tempered warriors with grit-lined backbone and fire-enforced bloodlines, a round table of knights, a sacred priesthood of the heroes. I refer, of course, to the Winter Riders. Oh, we've seen the fair weather hipsters with their thin legs and tight pants. We've seen them pedal scornfully through congested summer traffic on fixed gears and European frames. And we see them now, driving Passats, slouched in shame behind fogged windows.

The Winter Riders are a different breed. They rode unnoticed in summer heat, in spring rains, in autumn leaves and in the light snow of early December. Their wide tires didn't win them any races or social leverage. Now they are gods among us.

Today I saw one near the southern edge of Wicker Park. He rode like a Cossack on the Steppes. He was girded head to toe in GORE-tex, his was face grim and blazed with frost-bite. His eyes were like ice-picks. Wind blew, and cold as I was I knew he felt it more intensely than I could imagine. There were icicles in his beard and tears frozen to his blistered cheeks. He went on his way, and soon after I saw a female of similar composure. Red-faced but unflinching, she pedaled steadily past cars embalmed in snowbanks and shuffling blobs on the sidewalk. Her cracked lips voiced no complaint. This was no burka-wearing subservient of winter; she was a queen. I'm amazed by these people, these forces of will, superbeings, whatever they are.

If you are one of them, welcome to my pantheon of idols. I wish I could join you, but I don't see myself shoveling out the old cruiser that's frozen to my patio. I don't see myself trying to thaw the U-lock with a hair-dryer or a heated key either. I especially don't see myself facing down an Arctic headwind whilst maintaining balance on a street that's covered in ice and pot-holes. Winter Riders, I bow to your superiority. I still laugh at you blobs.