June 26, 2003
A blaze of glory
So the showers at the embassy have two knobs. Presumably, one is for hot water and the other is for cold. However, both are labeled with the letter 'D.' I don't know if there are any languages where the words for both hot and cold start with the letter D, but I know that neither English nor Portuguese work that way. Then again, the labeling would be incorrect even if D did stand for hot and cold. The left D knob opens a rain of luke-cold water, while the right D knob unleashes the coldest water on the continent. Now, while I'm discussing embassy plumbing, some of you might wonder if this south of the equator US Embassy really employs a device to correct the Coriolois force and ensure that our American embassy toilets "swirl the correct American way." Well the answer is no.
I spent the bulk of my afternoon reading a lecture called The Will to Believe by William James. It's a thick chunk of reading and it took up a lot of my time, but it offers a careful examination of a foolish phenomenon that is sometimes created by intellectualism. To explain it, I'll describe my own experience.
Some time ago, I realized that I didn't know as much about God and eternity as I had claimed to know. I had felt comfortable telling people all about my firm knowledge of truth and doctrines, but suddenly I was confronted by the fact that I really didn't know anything and that I apparently was never going to be able to know anything. So, instead of pretending to know, I decided that I never would and gave up even trying. Some applauded me. Part of me felt like I was being more honest with myself, but this all wore thin fairly quickly.
I found that I still identified very strongly with my religion, with my faith, and with the ideals that accompany them. I also found myself identifying very strongly with the ideals and principles that my country stands for. Now, I'm edumacated enough to realize that I was raised to believe these things and that it would be difficult for me to divorce myself entirely from them. However, I could do it if I really wanted to. And there's the rub. I didn't want to.
As the title of the essay suggests, a desire/will is necessary to believe. I suppose I reached a point in my life where I had the opportunity to decide what I would believe. I had to decide if I would remain a part of my community or separate myself from it. Any anthropologist will tell you that community is one of the central elements of the human experience, but I will tell you that without my people I am nothing. I'm just some guy. And the point is that deciding not to believe in something requires a great deal of faith as well. James articulates this quite well.
In concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider. When I look at the religious question as it really puts itself to concrete men, and when I think of all the possibilities which both practically and theoretically it involves, then this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, and courage, and wait -- acting of course meanwhile more or less as if religion were not true -- till doomsday, or till such time as our intellect and senses working together may have raked in evidence enough--this command, I say, seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave. Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse. If we had an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it exclusively, in not waiting for its releasing word. But if we are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell. Indeed we may wait if we will -- I hope you do not think that I am denying that, -- but if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we believed. In either case we act, taking our life in our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things.
-William James (emphasis mine)
Got that? Give it some time, or email me if you want to talk about it.
My dining room
Water aerobics and a great ride home. Great ride. I listened to the first four tracks of Black Dice's Beaches and Canyons on the way in to work, and I saved the last track for the ride home. It sounds like volcanoes and A-bombs. Awesome! My trusty iPod knew what I needed next and it randomly lined up a blissful Yume Bitsu song to ease my nerves after the Black Dice assault. Wow! Yume Bitsu is a psychedelic 'shoegazer' band that was introduced to me by a friend. It's just what I needed last night: blissed-out, reverb-heavy, delay-laden, dreamy music. It was great. I got home, but went straight to a friend's house to watch Cidade de Deus without subtitles. Phew! I've got to work on my comprehension skills.
best songs listened to while writing: The Beta Band's "It's Not Too Beautiful" and Aphex Twin w/ Squarepusher's "Freeman Hardy & Willis Acid"