Red Cedar

Health care fun times.

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Megan

It probably doesn’t get more existential crisis-ey than reading Kierkegaard while listening to Max Richter while sitting in the waiting room of a decrepit hospital while waiting to find out about possible cancer results. But there I found myself yesterday, at St. Paul’s, in a cramped waiting area with 25 other stressed out people, waiting to see a surgeon about some interpretation of a thyroid biopsy I had done at the beginning of January.

And like any good crises of the heart and mind – the results are still inconclusive. Cancer isn’t likely at this point, but then again the Doctor doesn’t really know, so more tests. Another ultrasound, another needle biopsy (which in case you don’t know, involves needles in the throat) to be scheduled in a month or so.

What’s struck me about the whole process is how incredibly efficient the system can be when there is an actual health crisis afoot. I mean, you want it to be efficient, but at the same time it’s a bit frightening how you can be having your annual physical one month, and within weeks be in an entirely different examination room talking to a surgeon about the possibility of getting a major part of the body’s hormonal system removed.

In any case, it’s not much of a worry except that there are some atypical cells going on, but with no visual malignancy of any kind – so there’s a good chance these are just nodules that need to be monitored. But it’s still a big drag for someone like me who has never had a health scare in my life. I suppose it’s practice for being reflective when I get older. Or just practice for being a better human? I’m not sure but I certain it’s not a “gift” or “fate” either. It just is.

Individual suffering for the common (but not lowest common denominator) good.

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Megan

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I have included the above video in these presentation notes for my class because I think that Zizek is advancing a Kierkegaardian argument about abstraction in “The Present Age” but with different conclusions. What follows is a discussion presentation I am giving on Wednesday. I have to admit that I found this reading difficult, and that attempting to characterize Soren Kierkegaard in simple terms is nearly impossible – so dense, complex and complete are his personal, philosophical and theological writings. Still and all I think I made a bit of a breakthrough in my own understanding by undergoing some reflection on this work, and ultimately am satisfied that at least in some small part I “get it” though I am not convinced this means anything for understanding more of Kierkegaard generally.

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Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher who lived from 1813 until 1855, and is often referred to as the Grandfather of Existentialism.

I think it’s safe to say he was a complex personality who courted a certain kind of solitary and pious lifestyle throughout most of his existence. Although he came from a well-to-do family, I have always thought of Kierkegaard as an ascetic – though materially he lived like others of his class and social position – he was certainly an emotional ascetic. Not only did he break with his father (with whom he was very close and thus crushed when he discovered the hypocrisy of the premarital sex which begat Soren), he maintained few intimate friendships in his life. His one love affair – with Regine Olsen – resulted in a broken engagement which Kierkegaard was loathe to explain, even in his private journals. While he writes that he believed his “melancholy” made him unfit to be a husband, one wonders if he was motivated more by the belief that living a contemplative life required an unencumbered and uninterrupted home. Personally, I think that Regine really dodged a bullet on that one, as I doubt life with old Soren would have been much fun.

A frequent critic of his society, the church and with other idealist philosophers of his own day, Kierkegaard was a prolific writer who published under several pseudonyms in a dialectical relationship to one another. Some of his chosen names were ridiculous (Johannes de silent, Constantin Constantius, Hilarius Bookbinder, Anti-Climacus) which makes one suspect that he did not choose them in order to masquerade against his own authorship, but as various aspects of his own intellectual currents, to be set beside and against one another in public discourse.

Kierkegaard was mainly concerned with the question of existence, and specifically the ability to live an individual life of meaning drawn from experience. This individual experience extended into his theological work which explored the difference between objective and subjective arguments for Christianity, including the individual’s relationship to Jesus Christ and to God which could come only through faith. An incredibly pious individual, some of the most powerful writings I have read by Kierkegaard include his spiritual writings on faith – and I have to admit being shaped in my perspective on faith (even as a non-believer) by his writing.

Kierkegaard rejected the theological rationalism of Hegel which posited that one could know God through human reason, and explored the concept of the “leap” into faith which must be made in order to accept the paradoxes inherent in Christianity. It is through this leap that we can know the loving God, and accept the suffering the comes along with our human experience.

And with Kierkegaard, suffering is not only to be borne, but seen as an essential link between the individual and his ability to know God fully. To strive with God, as he puts it in his lament to Job in his work Repetition:

“Why were you silent for seven days and nights? What went on in your soul? When all existence collapsed upon you and lay like broken pottery around you, did you immediately have this superhuman self-possession, did you immediately have this interpretation of love, this cheerful boldness of trust and faith? Is your door then shut to the grief-stricken person, can he hope for no other relief from you than what miserable worldly wisdom poorly affords, lecturing on the perfection of life? Do you know nothing more to say than that? Do you dare to say no more than what professional comforters, measure out to the individual, what professional comforters, like formal masters of ceremonies, lay down for the individual, that in the hour of need it is appropriate to say: “The Lord gave, and the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord-no more, no less, just as they say “God bless you” when one sneezes! No, you who in your prime were the sword of the oppressed, the stave of the old, and the staff of the brokenhearted, you did not disappoint men when everything went to pieces-then you became the voice of the suffering, the cry of the grief-stricken, the shriek of the terrified, and a relief to all who bore their torment in silence, a faithful witness to all the affliction and laceration there can be in a heart, an unfailing spokesman who dared to lament “in bitterness of soul” and to strive with God.”

I include this here as a link to our earlier discussion on Job as I think it illuminates a certain kind of existential questioning in the Bible, not to mention picking up on the individualism which Kierkegaard priorizes in our work for this week (The Present Age). Here we see a condemnation of society pitted against the individual (“professional comforters, measure out to the individual”), and that individual becoming emblematic of the greater torment of human kind.

It is no wonder that elsewhere Kierkegaard wrote:

“If I had not Job! It is impossible to describe and to nuancer what significance he has for me, and how manifold his significance is. I do not read him as one reads another book with the eye, but I read this book as it were with my heart, with the eye of the heart I read it, understanding as in a state of clairvoyance every particular passage in the most various ways…. Every word of his is food and gladness to my ailing soul. Now one word rouses me from my lethargy, so that I awaken to new disquietude; now it quiets the fruitless fury within me and puts an end to the horrible feeling of mute nausea produced by passion. You surely have read Job? Read him, read him over and over again.”

Now, to our reading this week – The Present Age (1846) – which seems to start off as a very non-theological work, one concerned mainly with society. As mentioned in Kaufmann’s introduction, this was originally part of a longer essay which comprised a critique of the book Two Ages. The two ages being the French Revolution and Kierkegaard’s present.

I have to admit that I found this work, as brief as it is, quite challenging – both to my conception of Kierkegaard’s theological perspectives, as well as to my own assumptions about the self in relation to society.

The work characterizes the two ages thusly:

The Revolutionary Age: Action-oriented, individually satisfying, priorizing the individual, great leaders, experiential, concerned with emotion, decisive

The Present Age: Passionless, levelling (lowest common denominator), focused on reflection, leadership by committee, nihilistic, concerned with reason over experience, illusory ethics, full of abstraction (money, consumerism).

Essentially, although Kierkegaard acknowledges that his present age is one in which more knowledge is held than ever before – he says that the abstraction of it (intellectualism, money, etc) impedes us from acting in any decisive way. And thus we wallow in indecision and are imprisoned by the levelling effect of misdirected attempts at social equality. This is characterized in the particular image of skating on thin ice:

“If the jewel which every one desired to possess lay far out on a frozen lake where the ice was very thin, watched over by the danger of death, while, closer in, the ice was perfectly safe, then in a passionate age the crowds would applaud the courage of the man who ventured out, they would tremble for him and with him in the danger of his decisive action, they would grieve over him if he were drowned, they would make a god of him if he secured the prize. But in an age without passion, in a reflective age, it would be otherwise. People would think each other clever in agreeing that it was unreasonable and not even worth while to venture so far out. And in this way they would transform daring and enthusiasm into a feat of skill, so as to do something, for after all ‘something must be done.'”

Ultimately this fear of falling through the ice holds us back and prevents us from living in a fully-realized individual state and instead we are tempted into the abstractions of purchase – even to the degree that we “bargain buy” our salvation through a misunderstanding of what the individual sacrifice of Jesus Christ means and are thus impeded from discovering the notion of true suffering through experience.

What I think is important to recognize in this discussion is that while many of us (in this class and in our society generally) can agree with much of Kierkegaard’s assessment of his present age (and by extension our own present age) which amount to the following:

only through suffering can the individual be reawakened to a passionate awareness of his own existence
radical individualism is socially beneficial because the refusal of assistance to others helps them achieve their highest destiny
we need to return to the authority of leaders, those who are individually and exceptionally living their destiny to drive society forward. Ultimately this means God.

I think if we return briefly to the Book of Job we can see that these conclusions in The Present Age fit with the experience of Job in his suffering. Not only is Job awakened to his life through the terrible events which befall him, but he is maligned by his society while passing through his most tragic hours. Ultimately it is his faith in the authority of his God which restores him – and he is able to move away from the questioning of existence back into the activity of living.

Kierkegaard closes off with the following statement: “In our times, when so little is done, an extraordinary number of prophecies, apocalypses, glances at and studies of the future appear, and there is nothing to do but join in and be one with the rest. Yet I have the advantage over the many who bear a heavy responsibility when they prophesy and give warnings, because I can be perfectly certain that no one would think of believing me.” Which I think is a lovely nod to not taking oneself too seriously (though it seems that SK was a pretty serious guy), and certainly not pretending to prophecy God’s future.

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“Reflection is and remains the hardest creditor in existence; hitherto it has cunningly bought up all the possible views of life, but it cannot buy the essentially religious and eternal view of life; on the other hand, it can tempt people astray with its dazzling brilliance, and dishearten them by reminding them of all the past. But by leaping into the depths, one learns to help oneself, learns to love others as much as oneself, even though one is accused of arrogance and pride — because one will not accept help — or of selfishness, because one will not cunningly deceive people by helping them; ie by helping them to escape their highest destiny.” (32)

This is an interesting trick that Kierkegaard pulls here in essentially making a social argument for individualism. That is, to be individually concerned is to allow each person to achieve their destiny and thus live in a society of true equals – rather than one which is levelled (brought down to the lowest common denominator.

Design Notebook: Not my favourite dress…..

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Megan

The monster in us.

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Megan

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The last time I read Frankenstein was in high school and I don’t quite remember it being as wonderful as it is. In fact, I think I must have skimmed most of the book in an attempt to get through it as the narrative was barely familiar to me on this re-read. Such is the seventeen-year-old’s attention span.

What struck me upon this reading was the depth of the work. Although written quickly, in a sporting challenge with lover Percy Shelley and friend Lord Byron – Mary Shelley creates a work touching on many of life’s most fundamental, (if you will – existential) questions. In particular I am intrigued with the inquiry about what it means to be human, versus simply being possessed of life, or in contrast to the life of nature – questions which are obviously explored through the tortured existence of Frankenstein’s monster.

For Shelley creates a very “human” monster, but in whom the physical and emotional characteristics are magnified to the degree of becoming grotesque. This is a monster with whom we can sympathize – his desires and needs are familiar to us – while at the same time recoiling from their excesses. Everything about this monster is out of proportion, and yet whose fault is this? The creator in his lack of foresight and his incredible hubris, is more to blame than the created forced to roam the earth without companionship.

First of all – we have the physical countenance of the creature – which although Frankestein claims he had “selected his features as beautiful”, he acknowleges that “I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then….” Of course he couldn’t have know that “when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived….” and yet still one wonders at the lack of foresight with which Frankenstein animated this pastiche atrocity?

From this we derive our “larger-than-life” not-quite-human figure who features “…yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.” Not mentioned in Frankenstein’s narrative, but referenced at the start of the book is that the monster is also physically very large – “a being which had the shape of man, but apparently of gigantic stature” – and so the reader is brought to understand that not only is the creature ugly, but of a threatening size to his human cousin and creator.

Rather than taking responsibility for the horror, Frankenstein immediately departs the room and leaves his accomodation for the outside courtyard, passing the night there. When he returns to his rooms the next afternoon, he is “relieved” that the monster is gone rather than concerned for its wellbeing (or worried about the ramification of an animate but inhuman creature roaming the streets), and the onset of his subsequent psychic/physic illness renders him incapable of taking any further responsibility for his creation.

Of course, this is not the end of the story and the creature later returns to murder those loved by his creator, thus attempting to render Frankenstein as alone in the world as his creation. We are invited into the monster’s story when he confronts his creator in the mountains and tells his side of what has happened – and here we realize that not only is he physically large, but he also possesses an enlarged capacity for both intellect and emotion – for the monster is the most verbally eloquent character in the tale as well as the most ruthless when it comes to avenging his orphaned state. In this scene, articulates his struggles at making connections in a hostlie world and advances rational argument for the creation of a female counterpart, so as to solve his burden of solitude. While Frankenstein is emotionall moved by the plea of his creation, he is equally revulsed, and refuses to take any responsibility for the plight of his experiment and its outcomes.

It is clear that Frankenstein, doesn’t hold a candle to his creation on any front which is why he ultimately can’t contain what he has unleashed into the world. He carries not the intellect or the passion to truly see through killing the monster, no matter how many of Frankenstein’s loved ones perish (for the record this includes his brother, a family-friend and serving girl, his best friend, his wife on their wedding night). The monster manages to outwit his creator at every turn (Frankenstein misses even the most obvious clues), which demonstrates the superiority of the creation right into the end of the tale.

But as much as the creation is “greater-than-human” in many respects, his grotesque appearance keeps him from being able to bond with others. Not even Frankenstein will take him in as a friend, for that would require admitting to his own family of his mistaken arrogance (and connection to the muder of his young brother William). What the monster is thus denied in these rejections, is the ability to become fully human through society with others. While he is able to learn to speak, read, and about family relations through watching a poor cottage family over a one year period (thus attaining some knowledge of the world and notion of socialization), the fact that he is ultimately denied community is what turns the monster towards the murder of William (and revenge on his creator). Not only solitude, but the knowledge it will be never-ending, drive the creature to a madness in which his emotional responses are enlarged to encompass even acts he knows to be hideous (the killing of a child).

I believe that this need for companionship is in some part a need for a witness to his life – something reinforced by the structure of a narrative inside a narrative inside a narrative which Shelley employes in her tale. The story is told to Walton by Frankenstein, and the monster’s story is told to Frankstein who tells it to Walton, leaving the reader as the final witness in a chain of witnessing. This is what the monster is after – to be seen! For he can live alongside humans while concealing himself quite easily, but this is only half a life. To fully live, one must engage with others and must be seen to have lived.(As if to underscore this lack of identification, the monster is never even given a name).

Some other themes I think are worth exploring through Shelley’s Frankenstein (and would if I didn’t feel so poorly at the moment) include:

Frankenstein as a birth narrative (Mary Shelley’s birth killed her own mother)
The relationship between created and creator
Class relations in emergent industrial society
The monster as sympathetic (of us)
The essence of creation – what is natural? what is not natural? where do we draw the line in a world where the “creation of life” is a possibility?