Here in the Eastern Time Zone, it's three hours before midnight, and I'm counting the minutes until the end of 2009 and this entire decade (yes, I know; technically the decade doesn't end until next New Year's Day, but why fight the almost unanimous delusion?). The last ten years have been simply calamitous both on a personal and on a global level, and I for one am eager to bid this span of years adieu. As a sort of New Year's Eve catharsis, then, I am going to rehearse the reasons, both personal and general, that I am glad to see the end of the "Noughties" and 2009. Then I'm going to turn my face forward and move into the next ten years of my life and dwell on the past no longer.
First, why the US and the world would like to forget the first ten years of the young millenium:
9-11, Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the great earthquakes in Pakistan, Gujarat (India), and Bam (Iran), the Burmese cyclone, the Tonga/Samoa tsunami, countless earthquakes and other seismic events in Indonesia, the Iraq War, the Afghan War, mega-terrorist attacks in Bali, Madrid, London, Beslan, and Mumbai, the anthrax attacks, swine flu hysteria, the Patriot Act, the end of the dot-com bubble, the end of the housing bubble, the financial panic of fall 2008, the Great Recession, the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush and Obama bailouts of mega-corporations, double-digit unemployment, the Virginia Tech massacre, the Amish schoolgirl massacre, so-called "health care reform," Lady Gaga, Paris Hilton, and the inexplicable popularity of torture movies like Saw.
Second, why I would like to rewind to January 2000 and have another go at things: All of the above, plus a failed marriage that died a long, slow death, a lawsuit and calumnies from an individual (and fellow church member) I had once counted as a friend, a career that wasn't, years of unending penury, the death of my one remaining (and favorite) grandparent (my "Pop-pop"), my father's spinal tumors, the unexpected death of my favorite student last spring, and my struggle, over the last couple of trying years, to perceive a clear sense of purpose in my life.
All these things (and many others besides) I hereby leave in the past.
There have been positives, however. I finished my PhD in 2004, and my blessed daughter arrived the following year. I spent part of 2000 and 2001 in Sri Lanka, and had a magical time. Ditto for last summer's three-week India junket. I also did a 5 week summer road trip to Alaska back in 2007 with my brother, and have been to Mexico and Honduras besides.
The other evening, I switched on NPR on the way back from Altoona, and Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony was playing. It reminded me of a time, before this decade was ever born, when I was a rank sentimentalist and an incurable romantic. Events of recent years and months have, alas, all but extinguished those traits, but, come New Year's Eve, I hum a few bars of Auld Lang Syne, and both sentiments come rushing back. As the hours roll inexorably toward midnight, I can summon a parade of faces of friends and loved ones past who are gone, remember the bright hopes and optimism of my gaudy youth, and wonder anew at the capacity of this vale of tears to temper our rash designs and desires, to quench youthful enthusiasm, and to burst the illusions of the naive. So it often seems.
Yet I look forward now, not backward. In the coming year I see my little daughter continuing to grow and mature, the pain of her parents' divorce ever diminishing. I see continued progress in the one project (aside from my daughter) that seems destined to give me some kind of legacy, my slow but steady progress toward decipherment of the Indus Valley script. I look forward to a May trip to Costa Rica with my best friend, whom I have not seen in several years. I see continued inprovement in my aikido and jujitsu and in my physical conditioning. I see the possibility of beginning to actually save money once again, once the voracious taxman has had his claim. I see a life consecrated to academic pursuits, since another romantic relationship does not appear to be in the cards. I see making time to get back in the woods now and again. I see progress in spirituality, personal organization, and productivity.
I hope that, in 365 days, I will be able to reread this post and see that it has been fulfilled every whit. Happy New Year 2010!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Per Speculum in Aenigmate
Another year is winding to a close, provoking the usual musings on The Meaning of It All. From my current vantage point atop the 2009 holiday season, it is hard to discern a purposeful trajectory in my life. I have had an academically very successful year, yet my prospects for promotion seem distant as ever. I have worked hard to extricate myself from debt incurred by unavoidable circumstances, all the while paying my tithing faithfully, yet my circumstances are straitened as ever.
With this in mind, I commented at fast and testimony meeting this month that my testimony (an LDS term for a heartfelt witness or spiritual knowledge of the truth of the restored Gospel) depends as much on what I do not know as on what I do know. For the uninitiated, we LDS hold special meetings on the first Sunday of almost every month, in which we stand and bear testimony, generally of things we "know" to be true, like the veracity of Joseph Smith's visions of God, Jesus Christ, and angels, and of the book of scripture that gives our religion its nickname -- the Book of Mormon. We typically assert that we "know" God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the living president of our church -- Thomas S. Monson as I write these words -- is his prophet.
But how can we "know" any of these things? If, as Paul asserted, we see "through a glass darkly," is it not the height of impudence to claim knowledge of things that are perforce the domain of belief and faith?
Knowledge, of course, was one of the inducements of Lucifer in the Garden of Eden; we might suppose that a presumption of knowledge of things spiritual is contrary to God's requirement that we walk by faith.
There is no bright-line distinction between knowledge and belief, at least as we experience them in mortality. Faith is defined as the "substance (or assurance) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." But sight alone is not a requisite for knowledge; many things (of a secular nature) we profess to know, without having seen them, or even an image of them.
Knowledge itself is of a mediate, and not immediate character, as C. S. Peirce demonstrated long ago. That is to say, all cognition is mediate, or apprehended through signs, which are always prior cognitions. As Peirce pointed out in his "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," there is no evidence that such things as pure intuitions (that is, cognitions not determined by previous cognitions or signs) exist at all, and every reason to suppose, at least as far as this mortal coil is concerned, that they do not. We do not seem to be intuitively self aware, for instance; little children are capable of cognition long before they ever frame a hypothesis of self (and they do become self-aware because of the need to posit a self in which inhere reactions to sensory stimuli originating with the Other). It is likewise wrong to suppose that we have any (intuitive) power of introspection; Our knowledge of the external world, says Peirce, "is derived from the observation of external facts." Finally, we cannot think without signs. All of these axioms and several others besides, are proved in Peirce's so-called "Cognition Series" of three essays, which I recommend to anyone interested in the nature of thought and consciousness.
All of which is to say that we live in a universe, both internal and external, of signs. We perceive nothing except through the mediation of signs. This, I suppose (though this is of course my own opinion), is as true of modes of cognition associated with what we Latter-Day Saints call "personal revelation" as it is with all other perception -- except that the semiosis of revelation is much more vivid than, say, mere contemplation. In fact, for Latter-Day Saints, revelation may be said to be the goal of all cognition, a sort of crowning sign -- reinforced, perhaps, by the light of true inspiration -- to which any enlightened series of cognitions ultimately tends.
For every thought is a symbol (actually, a composite symbol, the makeup of which is beyond the scope of this posting to go into), and the nature of all symbols is to grow, to evolve. Hence one thought/cognition/mental symbol gives rise to another (or, we may say, is predicated on another) ad infinitum. The goal is "pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul, without hypocrisy and without guile" -- knowledge of godliness which is ultimately available only through the Holy Priesthood (LDS readers -- recall that the higher priesthood holds the keys both of the mysteries of God and of the knowledge of God).
The knowledge of godliness, which is not possible without what we now call the Melchizedek Priesthood, but was formerly styled the "Holy Priesthood after the order of the Son of God," is the ultimate desideratum. We receive such sacred knowledge in direct proportion to righteous conduct, for it is only thus that our bodies can become filled with light and comprehend all things, as Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants explains so perfectly.
This is why we say we "know" that such and such is true; it is, whether we care to think about it or not, a testimony to the operation of priesthood power upon our understanding. And all knowledge is ultimately semiotic in character.
But what of those things we do not know? In my case, I struggle to understand the terrible trials I have been called upon to endure in recent years. I cannot perceive with any clarity the Lord's plan for me, though I have been reading my patriarchal blessing (a sort of personal LDS revelatory lodestar) daily for months. I grope in the darkness, but instead of finding a door handle, encounter only bare and unyielding walls of stone, or so it seems.
The times that try men's souls are times not of knowledge but of faith, where action in the absence of understanding is required. And they are necessary because not only right knowledge, but also right conduct, are necessary for eternal progression. The pangs I haved endured have often reduced me to tears, but in my extremity, as happened just the other day, I still must confess to myself that the Gospel I embraced thirty years ago is the true and right path. And I know this as much for the fact that, despite a train of disapointments and disillusionments and severe trials with no perceptible purpose, I still cling to the iron rod and enjoy "the peace that surpasseth all understanding," as for the additive reinforcements to my testimony that I have been vouchsafed.
All this said, I still wish for greater clarity, that the symbols that are working themselves out in my own particular mortal path would become a little clearer!
With this in mind, I commented at fast and testimony meeting this month that my testimony (an LDS term for a heartfelt witness or spiritual knowledge of the truth of the restored Gospel) depends as much on what I do not know as on what I do know. For the uninitiated, we LDS hold special meetings on the first Sunday of almost every month, in which we stand and bear testimony, generally of things we "know" to be true, like the veracity of Joseph Smith's visions of God, Jesus Christ, and angels, and of the book of scripture that gives our religion its nickname -- the Book of Mormon. We typically assert that we "know" God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the living president of our church -- Thomas S. Monson as I write these words -- is his prophet.
But how can we "know" any of these things? If, as Paul asserted, we see "through a glass darkly," is it not the height of impudence to claim knowledge of things that are perforce the domain of belief and faith?
Knowledge, of course, was one of the inducements of Lucifer in the Garden of Eden; we might suppose that a presumption of knowledge of things spiritual is contrary to God's requirement that we walk by faith.
There is no bright-line distinction between knowledge and belief, at least as we experience them in mortality. Faith is defined as the "substance (or assurance) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." But sight alone is not a requisite for knowledge; many things (of a secular nature) we profess to know, without having seen them, or even an image of them.
Knowledge itself is of a mediate, and not immediate character, as C. S. Peirce demonstrated long ago. That is to say, all cognition is mediate, or apprehended through signs, which are always prior cognitions. As Peirce pointed out in his "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," there is no evidence that such things as pure intuitions (that is, cognitions not determined by previous cognitions or signs) exist at all, and every reason to suppose, at least as far as this mortal coil is concerned, that they do not. We do not seem to be intuitively self aware, for instance; little children are capable of cognition long before they ever frame a hypothesis of self (and they do become self-aware because of the need to posit a self in which inhere reactions to sensory stimuli originating with the Other). It is likewise wrong to suppose that we have any (intuitive) power of introspection; Our knowledge of the external world, says Peirce, "is derived from the observation of external facts." Finally, we cannot think without signs. All of these axioms and several others besides, are proved in Peirce's so-called "Cognition Series" of three essays, which I recommend to anyone interested in the nature of thought and consciousness.
All of which is to say that we live in a universe, both internal and external, of signs. We perceive nothing except through the mediation of signs. This, I suppose (though this is of course my own opinion), is as true of modes of cognition associated with what we Latter-Day Saints call "personal revelation" as it is with all other perception -- except that the semiosis of revelation is much more vivid than, say, mere contemplation. In fact, for Latter-Day Saints, revelation may be said to be the goal of all cognition, a sort of crowning sign -- reinforced, perhaps, by the light of true inspiration -- to which any enlightened series of cognitions ultimately tends.
For every thought is a symbol (actually, a composite symbol, the makeup of which is beyond the scope of this posting to go into), and the nature of all symbols is to grow, to evolve. Hence one thought/cognition/mental symbol gives rise to another (or, we may say, is predicated on another) ad infinitum. The goal is "pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul, without hypocrisy and without guile" -- knowledge of godliness which is ultimately available only through the Holy Priesthood (LDS readers -- recall that the higher priesthood holds the keys both of the mysteries of God and of the knowledge of God).
The knowledge of godliness, which is not possible without what we now call the Melchizedek Priesthood, but was formerly styled the "Holy Priesthood after the order of the Son of God," is the ultimate desideratum. We receive such sacred knowledge in direct proportion to righteous conduct, for it is only thus that our bodies can become filled with light and comprehend all things, as Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants explains so perfectly.
This is why we say we "know" that such and such is true; it is, whether we care to think about it or not, a testimony to the operation of priesthood power upon our understanding. And all knowledge is ultimately semiotic in character.
But what of those things we do not know? In my case, I struggle to understand the terrible trials I have been called upon to endure in recent years. I cannot perceive with any clarity the Lord's plan for me, though I have been reading my patriarchal blessing (a sort of personal LDS revelatory lodestar) daily for months. I grope in the darkness, but instead of finding a door handle, encounter only bare and unyielding walls of stone, or so it seems.
The times that try men's souls are times not of knowledge but of faith, where action in the absence of understanding is required. And they are necessary because not only right knowledge, but also right conduct, are necessary for eternal progression. The pangs I haved endured have often reduced me to tears, but in my extremity, as happened just the other day, I still must confess to myself that the Gospel I embraced thirty years ago is the true and right path. And I know this as much for the fact that, despite a train of disapointments and disillusionments and severe trials with no perceptible purpose, I still cling to the iron rod and enjoy "the peace that surpasseth all understanding," as for the additive reinforcements to my testimony that I have been vouchsafed.
All this said, I still wish for greater clarity, that the symbols that are working themselves out in my own particular mortal path would become a little clearer!
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