Most old literature we still read or even fairy tales that Disney makes into movies still command an audience because they have a resonance that transcends the surface of the story. In a literature class, this might be referred to as a theme a sub text or perhaps a sub plot. Interestingly, the same is true of histories and biographies (a sub type of history). This latter bit makes sense because as we live out our lives we in effect author our own autobiography.
The Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story, while pure fiction has a great deal of relevant (i.e. to real life) subtext. It's one of the things, along with the happy ending, that has caused it to remain popular. The Mirror On The Wall is one of the more fascinating images in the story. You will recall that the evil witch consults the mirror for guidance on the subject of the witch's beauty relative to everyone else.
When the witch looks in the mirror, she sees herself as "the fairest in the land." This report is one part objective description, one part vanity. It contains both the report of the mirror as well as the reflection of the witch. All this is working swimmingly well for the witch. Her vanity aligns nicely with objective reality. Until, as is wont to happen in both real life and fairy tales, objective reality intrudes on the status quo. In this case, the happy relationship the witch has with her face.
The witch subsequently sets out on what will ultimately become a tragic and evil quest to force reality into the image she has of reality. I don't think I'll give much away to say that this path leads to death.
By way of both challenge and contrast, here's verse from Hebrews (11:1 specifically). I think the KJV offers by far the best rendering of this verse, both technically and esthetically, so here it is: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Contrasting this with the mirror and all we've found it to be, there's no appeal here to self or vanity. Everything is "out there," that is, objective. The rest of Hebrews 11 catalogs a number of bible biographies of people who looked only outside themselves, never in the mirror, and found God. These are references to stories co-authored by God and man, with first forms written in flesh and blood.
And here's the deal, faith is not about wishing no matter how good or bad the wish. Faith is not about our projections and reflections of vanity or of having the world the way we want it. Faith is allowing ourselves to be led and being deliberate and consistent about following the leading. In this way, "substance" and "evidence" are realized and even made manifest in the flesh and blood stories of our lives. And in turn, it is this story that over time defines the respective cores of our souls.
Sometimes the result of faith is fun and easy to accept. Sometimes it involves great sacrifice and suffering. The fact of these highs and lows is incidental to the target. And the target can't be found in the mirror. The target is "out there." The target is, has been and always will be, life, relationship and love with Christ.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
The Fear of Perfect Love
1Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
The bible often gets reduced to a kind of Hallmark card world view. The ideas this approach produces are usually pretty and pastel...like Hallmark cards. I'm looking out my window right now. It's raining. There are many colors including blacks, grays and browns and because I live in Santa Cruz there is a lot of green. There's not one pastel. Pastels are favored by impressionists. That is, those who paint "impressions" of how things look rather than trying to truthfully render the thing itself. (In example, Van Gogh was an impressionist. J. J. Audubon was not.)
The verse above often falls prey to this sort of theological impressionism. "Perfect love casts out fear" is an often quoted phrase. The excerpt though, although both true and good, is a good bit deeper than the artificially extracted phrase would suggest.
The word "perfect" in that verse is interesting. It means "perfect" in the sense of completion in a way such that it cannot be made more complete. The word fear is interesting too. It means fear...pure and simple. And that's what makes it interesting.
I think most people reading this and me as I write it don't have an immediate apprehension of the fear that we all live with. This fear was birthed in our earliest memories. It came from things that we expected and trusted in our world that disappointed or even hurt us. It might have been our parents in part, it might have been siblings. It might have shaped by finance or health issues beyond our parent's ability to control. It might even have been partly about that nasty, mostly tame squirrel that when offered a nut in kindness, bites your thumb and takes the nut too. (I'll write about bitterness some other time...unless you count that last sentence.)
If you're experiencing a tough situation right now, you might have a more focused flavor of fear. Sometimes this sort of thing manifests as a persistent worry. Whether it's the potential loss of a person or a circumstance, the possibility of pain or other issue, the fear takes a form. I think it was always there though. Really, it was just looking for the opportunity to clothe itself in a specific circumstance. That is, a circumstance that looks a bit like and subliminally reminds us of a parental rejection, failed hope or maybe even a scheming squirrel.
The reflexes of caution, restraint and withdrawal we cultivate as responses to shock and adversity are born in this type of deep seated fear. The promise John gives us of life in Christ is that this sort of fear will be displaced by love as Christ carries us over time closer and closer to him.
Given all this, you'd think fear is something we'd want to get away from, to put behind us. However, fear has a couple features that we've learned to embrace enthusiastically. One of these is that its all ours. The other is that we've learned to imagine that we control it.
The fact that this fear's all ours means that we don't have depend on others or even God to enable or complete anything. We can imagine ourselves to be an island unto ourselves. It's like asserting a right. "No one can tell me what to think." "No one can tell me I'm wrong." That sort of idea is the home address of this sort of fear.
We imagine that we control our fear and that this in turn allows us to control the people and situations around us. This comes from responses we've learned to make in reaction to our fears. When someone threatens our self image, our situation or threatens to withhold themselves or withdraw from us, the responses we've learned in response to our fears get exercised. "You don't understand me," or "You don't care" or any host of responses that invalidate the offending proposition are immediately and reflexively at hand for response. All because of the help of our good friend Fear.
It's true that others may make statements to us that are extraordinarily hurtful, pointed or even mean. However, why should we not search even those comments for possible insight into ourselves? There are other personal hurts as well, not necessarily from personal attack. But really, what help is provided by any reflex response to this sort of pain?
When John says that the perfect love ushered in by Christ destroys our fear, I think we become afraid to accept the banishment of our long time friend. After all, we imagine that we control him and he is uniquely ours.
This is of course, a lie. Fear limits us to the sum of our learned, reflexive responses. When we're defined by our learned responses to our innermost fears, growth becomes impossible. When growth is impossible, death is only the ratification of the cessation of existence.
Further, fear will only be controlled in contexts already learned. New stuff coming our way means new fears must be encountered and mastered...mastered that is until the next one comes along. And eventually, something will show up that is simply too overpowering to be integrated. This is where break downs are born.
In the end, we have to let love banish our false friend. We were made for love. Not for the false, broken imitation that is the soul of our deepest fears.
The bible often gets reduced to a kind of Hallmark card world view. The ideas this approach produces are usually pretty and pastel...like Hallmark cards. I'm looking out my window right now. It's raining. There are many colors including blacks, grays and browns and because I live in Santa Cruz there is a lot of green. There's not one pastel. Pastels are favored by impressionists. That is, those who paint "impressions" of how things look rather than trying to truthfully render the thing itself. (In example, Van Gogh was an impressionist. J. J. Audubon was not.)
The verse above often falls prey to this sort of theological impressionism. "Perfect love casts out fear" is an often quoted phrase. The excerpt though, although both true and good, is a good bit deeper than the artificially extracted phrase would suggest.
The word "perfect" in that verse is interesting. It means "perfect" in the sense of completion in a way such that it cannot be made more complete. The word fear is interesting too. It means fear...pure and simple. And that's what makes it interesting.
I think most people reading this and me as I write it don't have an immediate apprehension of the fear that we all live with. This fear was birthed in our earliest memories. It came from things that we expected and trusted in our world that disappointed or even hurt us. It might have been our parents in part, it might have been siblings. It might have shaped by finance or health issues beyond our parent's ability to control. It might even have been partly about that nasty, mostly tame squirrel that when offered a nut in kindness, bites your thumb and takes the nut too. (I'll write about bitterness some other time...unless you count that last sentence.)
If you're experiencing a tough situation right now, you might have a more focused flavor of fear. Sometimes this sort of thing manifests as a persistent worry. Whether it's the potential loss of a person or a circumstance, the possibility of pain or other issue, the fear takes a form. I think it was always there though. Really, it was just looking for the opportunity to clothe itself in a specific circumstance. That is, a circumstance that looks a bit like and subliminally reminds us of a parental rejection, failed hope or maybe even a scheming squirrel.
The reflexes of caution, restraint and withdrawal we cultivate as responses to shock and adversity are born in this type of deep seated fear. The promise John gives us of life in Christ is that this sort of fear will be displaced by love as Christ carries us over time closer and closer to him.
Given all this, you'd think fear is something we'd want to get away from, to put behind us. However, fear has a couple features that we've learned to embrace enthusiastically. One of these is that its all ours. The other is that we've learned to imagine that we control it.
The fact that this fear's all ours means that we don't have depend on others or even God to enable or complete anything. We can imagine ourselves to be an island unto ourselves. It's like asserting a right. "No one can tell me what to think." "No one can tell me I'm wrong." That sort of idea is the home address of this sort of fear.
We imagine that we control our fear and that this in turn allows us to control the people and situations around us. This comes from responses we've learned to make in reaction to our fears. When someone threatens our self image, our situation or threatens to withhold themselves or withdraw from us, the responses we've learned in response to our fears get exercised. "You don't understand me," or "You don't care" or any host of responses that invalidate the offending proposition are immediately and reflexively at hand for response. All because of the help of our good friend Fear.
It's true that others may make statements to us that are extraordinarily hurtful, pointed or even mean. However, why should we not search even those comments for possible insight into ourselves? There are other personal hurts as well, not necessarily from personal attack. But really, what help is provided by any reflex response to this sort of pain?
When John says that the perfect love ushered in by Christ destroys our fear, I think we become afraid to accept the banishment of our long time friend. After all, we imagine that we control him and he is uniquely ours.
This is of course, a lie. Fear limits us to the sum of our learned, reflexive responses. When we're defined by our learned responses to our innermost fears, growth becomes impossible. When growth is impossible, death is only the ratification of the cessation of existence.
Further, fear will only be controlled in contexts already learned. New stuff coming our way means new fears must be encountered and mastered...mastered that is until the next one comes along. And eventually, something will show up that is simply too overpowering to be integrated. This is where break downs are born.
In the end, we have to let love banish our false friend. We were made for love. Not for the false, broken imitation that is the soul of our deepest fears.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
"If You Go Over the Falls, You Will Die"
A good many years ago now, we were camping with Christy's sister's family in Yosemite. A day or two before we were to leave, our brother in law Greg suggested that he and I "run" up Half Dome. Due to schedules and and a complete lack of planning, only one day would be available. In addition, since this was around the end of September/first of October, the cable rails on the backside of the Dome were down, hanging loose down the massif's back side. In this scenario, you climb hand over hand. Many people do this every year but yes, it is dangerous.
As an example of our flexibility-as-substitute-for-planning approach, we didn't have gloves but we did have socks, so we gave ourselves extra socks to use as gloves in order to help avoid getting steel cuts from any cable fray. And fortunately, we did have enough water bottles to support the effort.
We set off well before dawn. Again, due to a truly insane lack of planning, we wound up starting about 2 miles from the trail head...because 16 miles and about 4000 vertical feet (8000 if you count up and down) apparently just wasn't enough work for a day.
As is often the case, once we got on the trail everything seemed pretty reasonable. We were taking what's commonly referred to as The Mist Trail. It starts from the valley floor and climbs the right hand side (facing) of Vernal and Nevada Falls.
At the base of Nevada Falls, I discovered a sign that literally burned itself in my mind. The sign showed a stick figure being swept off the top of water fall. The only words on the sign (albeit in half a dozen or more languages) were these: "If you go over the falls, you will die." I can't think of ever experiencing a more immediate and direct communication.
In recent years, talking to Yosemite employees I've discovered that there is a Yosemite Book of Death. It is informally maintained by both Park Service and concession employees. It chronicles accidental deaths in the park. New entries are made, literally every year. They include everything from lightning strikes, to exposure to drowning to, presumably, being swept over waterfalls. You can read an example of this latter sort of tragedy here.
After passing the sign, Greg and I passed Vernal falls and eventually began to plan a break at the top of Nevada. At the top of Nevada falls, you cross a foot bridge probably about 20 feet back from the edge of the face.
There are many pictures of this on the web. All of them that I've seen show the Merced river in full flow. Since we were there in early fall after a fairly dry summer, the top of the falls was defined by a completely clear pool that exited over the cliff through a keyhole of granite. Due mostly to it's clarity, the pool looked dead still, but every now and then a stick would float by on it's way to the valley floor at surprising speed.
Greg and I discovered a spot on the other side of the bridge, on a cliff with a bench and a fence that loomed out over the valley, that gave a view back toward the falls. As we sat there sucking air, gulping water and shoveling down cookies, a father/daughter backpack team came down the trail, presumably after having spent the night in Little Yosemite Valley. They crossed the bridge. Even at ebb flow, the water made it impossible to hear their conversation but apparently the little girl wanted to go closer to the water. Her dad stood at the top of the pool while she inched downward toward the water.
The small family I grew up in spent most of our leisure time in the mountains. I hiked, learned trail craft, learned to navigate and take care of myself and somewhere along the way learned the difference between fearing the wilderness and respecting it. In the moment I saw that little girl, and to this day when I think of it, I knew fear as I've only known one other time in the outdoors (the subject of a future post no doubt). The steep granite slope down to the pool was completely coated with glacial polish. Short version: Glacial polish is usually granite that's been polished smooth with a combination of glaciation (the crucial component) and water erosion. If you add an amount of water approximately equal to what you can hold in one hand, it acts exactly like ice.
As I watched that little girl edge toward the clear, fast moving water, I became physically ill and had to look away. I couldn't be heard over the river and even if I could have been, yelling could have quite possibly scared that little girl into the slight loss of balance that would have taken her life.
She eventually had her fill of whatever she was seeking and backed slowly off the slope. No one died there that day. However this is true: If she'd have slipped even the least bit, she'd have been beyond hope. If you go over those falls you will die.
We encounter thresholds like this in our lives from time to time. Sometimes we recognize them and sometimes, either through ignorance or intentional blindness we can't recognize the dangerous ground on which we stand. Often the only thing that saves us is that grace abounds even when it's not requested.
I have learned to look for thresholds and at the nature of the ground under my feet. I have learned that there are lines that if transgressed, will bring death either immediate or lingering. In the face of this reality I try to walk thoughtfully, openly and open to the possibility of my own ignorance and error.
As an example of our flexibility-as-substitute-for-planning approach, we didn't have gloves but we did have socks, so we gave ourselves extra socks to use as gloves in order to help avoid getting steel cuts from any cable fray. And fortunately, we did have enough water bottles to support the effort.
We set off well before dawn. Again, due to a truly insane lack of planning, we wound up starting about 2 miles from the trail head...because 16 miles and about 4000 vertical feet (8000 if you count up and down) apparently just wasn't enough work for a day.
As is often the case, once we got on the trail everything seemed pretty reasonable. We were taking what's commonly referred to as The Mist Trail. It starts from the valley floor and climbs the right hand side (facing) of Vernal and Nevada Falls.
At the base of Nevada Falls, I discovered a sign that literally burned itself in my mind. The sign showed a stick figure being swept off the top of water fall. The only words on the sign (albeit in half a dozen or more languages) were these: "If you go over the falls, you will die." I can't think of ever experiencing a more immediate and direct communication.
In recent years, talking to Yosemite employees I've discovered that there is a Yosemite Book of Death. It is informally maintained by both Park Service and concession employees. It chronicles accidental deaths in the park. New entries are made, literally every year. They include everything from lightning strikes, to exposure to drowning to, presumably, being swept over waterfalls. You can read an example of this latter sort of tragedy here.
After passing the sign, Greg and I passed Vernal falls and eventually began to plan a break at the top of Nevada. At the top of Nevada falls, you cross a foot bridge probably about 20 feet back from the edge of the face.
There are many pictures of this on the web. All of them that I've seen show the Merced river in full flow. Since we were there in early fall after a fairly dry summer, the top of the falls was defined by a completely clear pool that exited over the cliff through a keyhole of granite. Due mostly to it's clarity, the pool looked dead still, but every now and then a stick would float by on it's way to the valley floor at surprising speed.
Greg and I discovered a spot on the other side of the bridge, on a cliff with a bench and a fence that loomed out over the valley, that gave a view back toward the falls. As we sat there sucking air, gulping water and shoveling down cookies, a father/daughter backpack team came down the trail, presumably after having spent the night in Little Yosemite Valley. They crossed the bridge. Even at ebb flow, the water made it impossible to hear their conversation but apparently the little girl wanted to go closer to the water. Her dad stood at the top of the pool while she inched downward toward the water.
The small family I grew up in spent most of our leisure time in the mountains. I hiked, learned trail craft, learned to navigate and take care of myself and somewhere along the way learned the difference between fearing the wilderness and respecting it. In the moment I saw that little girl, and to this day when I think of it, I knew fear as I've only known one other time in the outdoors (the subject of a future post no doubt). The steep granite slope down to the pool was completely coated with glacial polish. Short version: Glacial polish is usually granite that's been polished smooth with a combination of glaciation (the crucial component) and water erosion. If you add an amount of water approximately equal to what you can hold in one hand, it acts exactly like ice.
As I watched that little girl edge toward the clear, fast moving water, I became physically ill and had to look away. I couldn't be heard over the river and even if I could have been, yelling could have quite possibly scared that little girl into the slight loss of balance that would have taken her life.
She eventually had her fill of whatever she was seeking and backed slowly off the slope. No one died there that day. However this is true: If she'd have slipped even the least bit, she'd have been beyond hope. If you go over those falls you will die.
We encounter thresholds like this in our lives from time to time. Sometimes we recognize them and sometimes, either through ignorance or intentional blindness we can't recognize the dangerous ground on which we stand. Often the only thing that saves us is that grace abounds even when it's not requested.
I have learned to look for thresholds and at the nature of the ground under my feet. I have learned that there are lines that if transgressed, will bring death either immediate or lingering. In the face of this reality I try to walk thoughtfully, openly and open to the possibility of my own ignorance and error.
Friday, July 8, 2011
To Boldly go Where?
As a child living in Los Angeles, I remember my mother waking me up repeatedly while it was still dark, to watch a dim, 19" black and white T.V. This didn't happen every day. In retrospect though, it did happen every day there was a man sitting on top of an Atlas rocket in a Mercury capsule. This happened a great many times because although there were only a few Mercury launches, there were many many scrubbed launches...and really, I just wanted to go back to bed.
My in-laws have a Webster's Second International Dictionary from 1894. The word "airplane" isn't in it. One hundred years later, more than a dozen men had walked on the moon.
My wife's grandmother was alive at the time of the Wright Brother's flight off Kill Devil's Hill, near Kitty Hawk. She also watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. This she did with people all over the world, including both China and the Soviet Union.
It's simply not possible to exaggerate the accomplishment. Similarly, it's not possible to exaggerate the contribution the space program has made to our lives in everything from computers to medicine to solar cell technology to semi-conductors to vacuum pumps to hand held calculators (come and gone now) and yea verily, even Velcro. Some of these were inventions in response to the mission while others achieved practicality only due to the extreme challenges space requires of all things human.
In my opinion, John Kennedy's legacy is usually overstated...and I'm being restrained in my criticism of his acolytes here. However, as pertains to everything to do with the space program, from it's creation in civilian form to the framing of it's mission, he hit the ball a long long way out of the park, approximately 238,857 miles (the average distance to the moon) to name a number.
The importance of what he did is not found or limited by what he imagined the space program to be. In fact, at the time, it was undertaken as a response to Soviet initiatives that were in play. Regardless of original intent however, what he provided was a lightning rod that became the focus of both dreams and aspirations of people all over the world. At some point in the mission, it ceased being yet another response to the Cold War and achieved an animating vision of it's own; the United States became the standard bearer and servant of the dreams of mankind. Again, the triumph was not in the dominance of space. It was instead in the risk, service and sacrifice of what we were eventually able to provide for the human family. And this is why on July 21st, 1969 we all held our breath for Neil Armstrong...and then yelled with joy.
Today's final shuttle flight isn't sad because it's the last mission for a vehicle of it's kind. It's sad because it ratifies a loss of vision, inspiration and goals as pertains to the last frontier that has been gaining entropy for some time. Somehow, private space ships will carry something to an orbiting platform that will do things that...well...will do things. Then in a few years, we'll have a new rocket that will strain to match the performance of the decades old Saturn V (7,823,000 lbs of takeoff thrust) for getting men into space to...well...maybe they'll go to an asteroid. I'm reminded of Proverbs 28:19 - "Where there is no vision, the people perish." That is not hyperbole.
Not because we need to map vision to the practical but rather because we can: It's vision that won WWII, eradicated Small Pox, invented electric light, conceived and built the atom bomb (note the connection to the first entry here) and...put men on the moon. Really, it never was about a "space program" at all.
My wife and I are fortunate and occasionally "challenged" by a salient fact in our decades old relationship. Namely, it's very nearly impossible for us to have a trivial conversation. We virtually always speak in meaningful depth about family, friends and probably most common, our spirituality. The other night, she challenged me that I needed to dream more and then, to actively move in the direction of my dreams. I resisted for any number of practical reasons. I'm afraid, this is yet another occasion where she was right and I was wrong.
We all need the vision that is inspired by aspiration. We need it individually and we need it corporately. We simply will not survive without it. I hope and pray that vision will return to our corporate exploration of the unknown. And I hope that each one of us in turn will form and pursue individual visionary goals, so that we eventually can all take turns at the sacrifice and risk of stepping off into an unexplored reality. Everyone will be watching, and holding their breath.
My in-laws have a Webster's Second International Dictionary from 1894. The word "airplane" isn't in it. One hundred years later, more than a dozen men had walked on the moon.
My wife's grandmother was alive at the time of the Wright Brother's flight off Kill Devil's Hill, near Kitty Hawk. She also watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. This she did with people all over the world, including both China and the Soviet Union.
It's simply not possible to exaggerate the accomplishment. Similarly, it's not possible to exaggerate the contribution the space program has made to our lives in everything from computers to medicine to solar cell technology to semi-conductors to vacuum pumps to hand held calculators (come and gone now) and yea verily, even Velcro. Some of these were inventions in response to the mission while others achieved practicality only due to the extreme challenges space requires of all things human.
In my opinion, John Kennedy's legacy is usually overstated...and I'm being restrained in my criticism of his acolytes here. However, as pertains to everything to do with the space program, from it's creation in civilian form to the framing of it's mission, he hit the ball a long long way out of the park, approximately 238,857 miles (the average distance to the moon) to name a number.
The importance of what he did is not found or limited by what he imagined the space program to be. In fact, at the time, it was undertaken as a response to Soviet initiatives that were in play. Regardless of original intent however, what he provided was a lightning rod that became the focus of both dreams and aspirations of people all over the world. At some point in the mission, it ceased being yet another response to the Cold War and achieved an animating vision of it's own; the United States became the standard bearer and servant of the dreams of mankind. Again, the triumph was not in the dominance of space. It was instead in the risk, service and sacrifice of what we were eventually able to provide for the human family. And this is why on July 21st, 1969 we all held our breath for Neil Armstrong...and then yelled with joy.
Today's final shuttle flight isn't sad because it's the last mission for a vehicle of it's kind. It's sad because it ratifies a loss of vision, inspiration and goals as pertains to the last frontier that has been gaining entropy for some time. Somehow, private space ships will carry something to an orbiting platform that will do things that...well...will do things. Then in a few years, we'll have a new rocket that will strain to match the performance of the decades old Saturn V (7,823,000 lbs of takeoff thrust) for getting men into space to...well...maybe they'll go to an asteroid. I'm reminded of Proverbs 28:19 - "Where there is no vision, the people perish." That is not hyperbole.
Not because we need to map vision to the practical but rather because we can: It's vision that won WWII, eradicated Small Pox, invented electric light, conceived and built the atom bomb (note the connection to the first entry here) and...put men on the moon. Really, it never was about a "space program" at all.
My wife and I are fortunate and occasionally "challenged" by a salient fact in our decades old relationship. Namely, it's very nearly impossible for us to have a trivial conversation. We virtually always speak in meaningful depth about family, friends and probably most common, our spirituality. The other night, she challenged me that I needed to dream more and then, to actively move in the direction of my dreams. I resisted for any number of practical reasons. I'm afraid, this is yet another occasion where she was right and I was wrong.
We all need the vision that is inspired by aspiration. We need it individually and we need it corporately. We simply will not survive without it. I hope and pray that vision will return to our corporate exploration of the unknown. And I hope that each one of us in turn will form and pursue individual visionary goals, so that we eventually can all take turns at the sacrifice and risk of stepping off into an unexplored reality. Everyone will be watching, and holding their breath.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
"I'm the Most Open Minded Person You'll Ever Meet"
That's an assertion that just makes me shudder. It almost certainly will precede a statement that will be delivered with doctrine-like authority. The corollary is equally unpleasant. And that is that any opinion or argument offered on point of fact that is in opposition will be derided as close minded. I love irony. This however is the construct that defines the limits of my love in this area.
I first started noticing this phenomenon in college. Professors that defined themselves as open minded, I found to be universally of the opposite temper. What they meant by open minded was that people shouldn't be close minded by holding firm opinions that were contrary to their enlightened ones. They should instead shed those and have opinions like theirs. They held this as the true definition of open minded.
The truly open minded people I've met have never, and I use that word with intention, defined themselves as open minded. Back to college again, I did have one open minded professor that I can identify as such. In class I challenged him on a point of fact. I even remember the fact: the authorship of dialectic materialism. He asserted Hegel. I asserted Plekhanov. He informed me that he'd look it up that evening. I had no expectation whatsoever that he'd actually do what he said. (I was an upperclassman at this point and my cynicism of all things professorial was in full swing.) He asked me for my source. I gave it to him (The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Turns out he did look it up and he was wrong and I was right. Not only did he look it up however, he also apologized to me in front of the class for insisting he was right...up to the point of offering me a formal apology...did I mention in front of everybody? I accepted, once I could restart my heart and resume breathing.
It's interesting to me that I remember so much detail of this event. I've read a couple multi-volume histories and encyclopedias of Western Thought. Most of it now is a bit of blur, only coming into focus when a specific issue presents itself and then usually only enough to send me off to the internet to flesh out to some small degree what I used to command in great detail.
That story contains the unspoken, indivisible and essential ingredient of what I, in a close minded way, hold to be the key to true open mindedness. That key is this: humility. Specifically, the kind of humility that allows you to entertain the possibility that you might be wrong.
Note that it does not follow that someone striving after humility might very much believe that they are right. That's OK, as long as it does not remove them from allowing for the possibility of their own error.
There are a lot of things that masquerade as open mindedness. Here's a few picked at random in no particular order of irritation:
I first started noticing this phenomenon in college. Professors that defined themselves as open minded, I found to be universally of the opposite temper. What they meant by open minded was that people shouldn't be close minded by holding firm opinions that were contrary to their enlightened ones. They should instead shed those and have opinions like theirs. They held this as the true definition of open minded.
The truly open minded people I've met have never, and I use that word with intention, defined themselves as open minded. Back to college again, I did have one open minded professor that I can identify as such. In class I challenged him on a point of fact. I even remember the fact: the authorship of dialectic materialism. He asserted Hegel. I asserted Plekhanov. He informed me that he'd look it up that evening. I had no expectation whatsoever that he'd actually do what he said. (I was an upperclassman at this point and my cynicism of all things professorial was in full swing.) He asked me for my source. I gave it to him (The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Turns out he did look it up and he was wrong and I was right. Not only did he look it up however, he also apologized to me in front of the class for insisting he was right...up to the point of offering me a formal apology...did I mention in front of everybody? I accepted, once I could restart my heart and resume breathing.
It's interesting to me that I remember so much detail of this event. I've read a couple multi-volume histories and encyclopedias of Western Thought. Most of it now is a bit of blur, only coming into focus when a specific issue presents itself and then usually only enough to send me off to the internet to flesh out to some small degree what I used to command in great detail.
That story contains the unspoken, indivisible and essential ingredient of what I, in a close minded way, hold to be the key to true open mindedness. That key is this: humility. Specifically, the kind of humility that allows you to entertain the possibility that you might be wrong.
Note that it does not follow that someone striving after humility might very much believe that they are right. That's OK, as long as it does not remove them from allowing for the possibility of their own error.
There are a lot of things that masquerade as open mindedness. Here's a few picked at random in no particular order of irritation:
- Changing your mind. Changing from one opinion to a different one, even an opposite one, does not make you open minded. It merely changes the polarity of your close mindedness.
- Steadfastly holding different opinions than your parents. This is very similar to 1. The main difference is that in this case the initial position was formed by someone else. Other that that, no difference.
- Embracing social norms. The keyword here is "embrace." It's fine and proper to include things from the canon of social norm in your belief and value set. However, I think that the individual tenet in question should stand on its own merit without appeal to the approval of Everyman. Going with the crowd only promises that you'll get where the crowd is going and that's not necessarily where you want to be.
- Contrary is not the same thing as open minded. It's reflexively argumentative and ego driven but it's not open minded...and it's so easy to identify as a caricature of what it aspires to be that it's painful to watch.
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