The Significance of Ritual

Since I ceased attending mass and being an at least nominal member of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, I've thought now and then of joining a Unitarian Universalist Congregation.  That association has had many distinguished and even admirable members.  The Church has had its share of those as well, of course, but there always seems to be something peculiar about them, like Cardinal Newman and his belief that the "visible world" is unreal.  No commitment to a disturbingly human kind of God is required.  I find it increasingly difficult to worship a God that has human characteristics.  Unitarians are actively involved in good works, which is to their credit.

Perhaps I should say "revere" instead of "worship" when referring to God.  If worship requires praying to or petitioning or placating, or participating in set practices which are expressive of devotion, I stopped worshipping even before I stopped attending mass.  I would stand up, kneel and sit down when others did so, true, but wouldn't sing the largely silly songs that made up the liturgy and avoided as much as possible giving to others "the sign of peace," which for reasons unclear to me is done by shaking hands.

As best as I can recall, Jesus is not said to have gone about shaking hands with his apostles or with anyone else for that matter.  So, we don't shake hands as we do other things in memory of him.  The Gospels state he said "peace be with you" at least once, however, and suppose we may say it as well in his memory.  Shaking hands in imitation of Christ doesn't seem right, though.  The sign of peace must be the creation of some inspired liturgist, then.

Based on what little reading I've done, it seems Unitarians don't worship (as I define it) when they gather.  This should serve to attract me, but does not.  They have readings, it seems, though not necessarily from the Bible or from anything else.  Unfortunately it seems they also sing.  I find myself wondering why.

The simple truth is I have no desire to go somewhere on a Sunday and listen to people read and sing.  It doesn't matter to me what they choose to read or to sing; I don't want to watch or hear them do either or, worse yet, be called upon to read and sing myself and be suspect if I do not.  It would make sense to do so if failing to do so constituted a mortal sin assuring an eternity in hell, of course, but absent such a penalty there is no point as far as I'm concerned.  If one isn't worshipping, though, there is presumably something about gathering, reading and singing which serves some other purpose.  But not it appears for me.

But still, I find myself thinking now and then that something should be done, if not on a Sunday then on some other day, expressing a reverence for the divine, and that it should be done in a group of people.  It's possible I feel this because of the years I spent genuflecting, kneeling, standing, sitting, even singing, in a Catholic Church.  Or it may be the case that we humans have a need to acknowledge the divine with and before others and to do so in a special, prescribed way, which seems to us to have acquired divine sanction.

I'm inclined to think that ritual has and always will play a part in our affairs.  Certainly ancient peoples engaged in ritual, and felt that ritual had always to be performed in a certain way.  In Graeco-Roman religion any departure from the form of the ritual required that the participants begin it again and again until they got it right.  Even those who disdained traditional religious rituals sought to create their own--think of the Freemasons with their convoluted and contrived ceremonies, for example, or the preposterous forms dreamt up by leaders of the French Revolution to celebrate the Supreme Being.

When it comes to ritual, the High Latin Mass was quite a spectacle.  I'm not aware of any modern ritual which can compare with it.  Perhaps my assessment of the significance of ritual is a kind of nostalgia.  It seems clear the Unitarians have nothing similar.  It seems clear the Catholic Church has nothing similar, now.

If we're creatures of ritual, the absence of ritual must disturb us mightily.  Are we seeking some substitute for it?  If so I think the rituals of the future will be garish and barbaric.  The drab nature of what rituals we still have leaves us unsatisfied and we hunt for something which will be colorful and tinged with mysticism.  The Old Church understood the need for ritual quite well.  What person or institution or religion will grasp and exploit this need in the future?

Regarding Senescence

Both Cicero and Seneca, and no doubt other wise and good people, wrote of old age.  They did so to extol it; to tell those of us who are not as wise as they were that our disaffection with it is unwise and unneeded.  As I race (or so it seems) into my twilight years (well, late afternoon years, perhaps) I'm inclined to wonder just how much of such reflection is wisdom and how much of it is wishful thinking.

I don't doubt their sincerity.  Perhaps I do doubt Seneca's sincerity, though, at least a bit.  Regardless, I ask myself if they were trying to persuade themselves if not others that the evidence of aging--which can't be spoken or written away and which is disturbing sometimes, at least--is also evidence of something else, something less apparently bad and even good.  This is not necessarily an easy task. 

It's not necessarily a Stoic task either.  Pierre Hadot and others have claimed that the ancients engaged in spiritual exercises and have made that case convincingly.  Marcus Aurelius' notes to himself are such; Epictetus' recommendations, called "negative visualization" in this latest resurgence of Stoicism, are others.  Imagine the worst and what is the case or will be the case may be tolerated with equanimity (the anxious have always been Stoics, perhaps--something of a surprise).  But extolling age, if that is a practice, is of a different kind.  Were these two sages engaged in "positive thinking"?

The fact is that aging is a kind of progressive failure of the body and its little helper, or guiding spirit, or prisoner depending on your point of view, the mind.  There isn't much in that to celebrate when you think of it, unless you have a soul inclined to clap its wings and sing and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress as I think Yeats' poem says.  That singing presumes a life after death which somehow turns out to be much better than the one that ends in death, and many think that improbable.  I'm not certain what I think, and not for the first time.

As I contemplate with a sense of resignation if not delight the degradation of what physical and mental powers I possess, I think of Warren Zevon's song invitingly titled My Shit's Fucked Up.  The singer goes to a doctor as he's feeling kind of rough and is told that his shit's fucked up.  He tells the doctor he doesn't see how, and the doctor replies that the shit that used to work won't work now.  It's a kind of anthem of the aging sung in a mournful tune that is unmistakably Zevonesque. 

And as I noted, this is certainly true.  Wherefore then is old age the crown of life as Cicero called it?  An increasingly heavy crown, it seems.

Continuing with the popular music theme, which has somehow replaced that which was evoked by the mention of Cicero and Seneca, another view of old age or at least older age is given by Steely Dan in the song Janey Runaway.  In that song an older, well-heeled man, tells of the new lease on life he experiences taking up with a young woman who ran away from home.  It's a kind of anthem to lechery, the fantasy of an older man.  But alas, although the libido doesn't seem to decrease for us aging males the opportunities to indulge it sadly do, at least if one is not rich and living Gramercy Park.

Fantasies and mourning aside, how does a Stoic pass this time as time so indifferently passes him by?  By realistically acknowledging it and accepting it, I think, neither bemoaning it nor extolling it.  It's one of the many things beyond our control (for now, at least; perhaps soon we'll find a way to control it).  As such, it shouldn't disturb us or worry us.  It's simply life and we do the best we can with what we have and take the rest as it happens.

Orwell's Foresight

Eric Arthur Blair, a/k/a George Orwell, has been much on my mind during these fearful times.  We've all read Animal Farm and 1984, of course; most of us had to read them.  Sometimes, the American system of public education requires that good and interesting books be read.  Other times, it might require that Goodbye, Mr. Chips be perused by young scholars.  But I speak of what was read in my youth, and can't speak to what is read now.

But I prefer Orwell's essays and nonfiction, for the precision of their style and their insights into many people and things.  He's said to have been something of a prophet regarding the politics of the future.  I was inclined to agree with this assessment in certain respects, and being an American thought his gift of prophecy was limited or directed to Soviet Communism.  But the profound nature of his foresight is most striking in an essay he wrote regarding W.B. Yeats which I read just recently, and it seems to me that in criticizing Yeats he intuited a world to come.

He treats the poet (one I admire) rather roughly in the essay, not as to his poetry necessarily, but the political, social and cultural views which are reflected in his poetry.  He portrays Yeats as a frustrated aristocrat, essentially conservative, contemptuous of the modern world and its people, drawn to the occult and inclined towards Fascism.  This infatuation seems to have been a characteristic of certain artists and intellectuals of the West of that time--Ezra Pound is the usual example--or at least those of them who were not similarly infatuated with Communism.  According to Orwell, Yeats longs for the chaos of the times to produce an authoritarian civilization ruled by a cultured elite, but fails to see that civilization will not be aristocratic.  As Orwell sees it:  "It will not be ruled by noblemen with Van Dyck faces, but by anonymous millionaires, shiny-bottomed bureaucrats and murdering gangsters."

The cynics among us might say that is a very striking description not just of western civilization, but of our global civilization today (we must of course substitute "billionaires" for "millionaires").  The wise jurists sitting on our Supreme Court were wrong to hold that money is speech, as I've noted before, but it is most certainly power, and those who possess that power become an increasingly small and insulated group.  They are served by a host of lackeys who do their bidding and assure that all others will do so as well.  Those who do not or cannot turn increasingly to violence as a means to acquire money and power themselves.

This is a simplification of course, but it seems nonetheless to have a certain ring of truth to it, does it not?  How did Orwell manage to foresee this state of affairs and describe it so well, so succinctly?

It requires a great knowledge of human nature and history, I would say, as well as art.  But also required is a kind of pitiless, almost ruthless, perception.  Orwell seems to have no illusions of any kind, or dreams of any kind.  He assesses but doesn't admire.  His is a grim task; to review, analyze, criticize, and to in most if not all cases to find fault and lay it bare.

This may be a pose, of course.  I imagine a critic is inclined to ferret out defects to begin with, and skillful critics necessarily do so most efficiently.  One at least seems most efficient when detached.  Is this the kind of literary criticism one hears of spoken together with philosophy (philosophy being naught but a kind of literary criticism, I mean)?  Philosophy may be said to consist at least in part of the rigorous criticism of language in its use by others.  Taken in that way, it may be said that philosophy is literary criticism and intend by it a sort of compliment.  But I fear that's not the case, or perhaps I should say not the narrative, there being nothing that is the case that is not part of a narrative, it seems.

Not so much a pose in Orwell's case, I think.  It seems to be more of a way of thinking, and thinking ahead to anticipate the future without the benefit of hope or faith in humanity or God.  And Orwell may have chosen such an approach deliberately, as he writes that it is to be expected given the decline of Christianity that we will face the future hopeless and faithless, at least as those states were conceived in the past we've abandoned.

Perhaps such cold appraisal is required for one to be an oracle.  The priestess of the Delphic oracle was named after the Python, the great cold-blooded serpent slain by Apollo when he established the oracle.  Those who consulted the oracle would claim they could still hear the serpent, hissing.

The 7th Circuit Decision on Gay Marriage

There has been much comment regarding the decision of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals holding that laws adopted by the great states of Indiana and Wisconsin banning gay marriage are unconstitutional.  It's not clear to me that there should be, however.  I'm not quite that enthusiastic about it, though I have no problem with Judge Posner's decision.

It may be that it is receiving what I think is excessive praise merely because Judge Posner wrote the decision.  He is something of a star, even outside legal circles; perhaps this is why he is a star.  This is in part because he has commented on the philosophy of law, which used to be referred to as jurisprudence.  He is, I believe, a proponent of what has been called legal pragmatism.

Or it may be that the decision delights the more liberal of the media commentators because it was penned by a Court of Appeals judge nominated by Ronald Reagan, who a mere nine days before the issuance of the decision had treated the attorneys for the states in question rather roughly during oral argument.  Certainly Posner's ironic reference to a dissenting opinion by Justice Scalia delighted them, at the least.

The decision is well written, and as I said I don't object to it.  And there's no question that Judge Posner scored several hits during oral argument and in the decision itself.  I don't consider it a masterpiece, frankly, simply because the arguments of the states in support of their laws were from the purely legal standpoint clearly weak, and it was difficult to take them seriously, as Judge Posner noted several times in his opinion.  Even an accomplished writer like the Judge would find it hard to reach the heights of legal reasoning and eloquence when confronted with such arguments.

I think, however, the court's position that marriage imparts an element of respectability to a sexual relationship, and this is a benefit gay couples would be deprived of if not allowed to marry, is not very strong itself.  That may be the case in the future, but I doubt those who feel homosexuality is bad in itself would think it more respectable if those engaging in it were married, and to many others the idea of gay marriage would be so novel and unfamiliar that it will take them time to accord it the same respect as heterosexual marriage (if indeed heterosexual marriage is accorded such respect).

I think it's appropriate to address the decision and the arguments from a "purely legal standpoint" because that is the only standpoint from which they should be considered.  Judicial decisions should not be based on politics or religion, and should relate to morality only to the extent morals are evidently a part of the law itself.  Political and religious considerations may influence the adoption of laws, but once the laws are adopted they become part of the vast system of law and its administration and enforcement.  From the purely legal standpoint, the arguments made in support of the law had no substantive basis in law or in fact.  I wonder whether such arguments were the best that could be made for such bans.   If so, I think there's very little to argue about, and I feel sorry for those lawyers who had to make the argument nonetheless.

The simple fact is that tradition, morality and religious values don't factor strongly in the enforcement, administration and interpretation of the law.  They may play a role in the adoption of laws, but those laws once enacted are governed by the same systemic rules applicable to any other law.

Thus, political, religious and moral objections to gay marriage or arguments against it are, in a way, doomed to failure from the start as far as the law is concerned.  For good or ill, the law treats heterosexual marriage as essentially a partnership, not as a sacred institution, and is unable to discriminate against "gay partnerships" and favor "straight partnerships."

Religious institutions, however, are allowed to discriminate in many ways, and so may not allow gay marriage now or in the future.  Opponents of gay marriage must, I believe, be satisfied with that.

O tempora, o mores! Part V

Cicero used this phrase twice, first in one of his orations against Verres, governor of Sicily, and second in an oration against Cataline.  These orations deplored the conduct of certain Romans and mourned the depravity of the times, and customs, which sanctioned such conduct.  Today our times and some of our customs or morals, at least, are troubling as well, but that trouble is global in its effect and implications, for reasons which would have astonished Cicero, astute politician of what was then an Empire in fact if not in name though he was.

It's most unclear what can be done about these troubles, however, by our Great Union or by others.  The barbarity of ISIS (I wonder if they know their name is that of pagan goddess), the intransigence and imperial ambitions of Russia, militant Islamic fundamentalism, North Korean absurdist cruelty,  the extraordinary Ebola outbreak--this is all we hear of through the good offices of our relentlessly intrusive media.  Of course those who represent or seek to represent us, intent on being elected if not intent on anything else, exploit such issues for their benefit.

One pities our unfortunate President.  In fairness, which is of course of little concern in politics, there may in fact be very little he can do that he isn't doing.  But he manages to give the appearance of being at a loss and doing nothing, and appearance is overwhelmingly significant when there is no substantive action to take.  It's doubtful there would be any real public support for sending troops to Ukraine, Iraq, Syria or Somalia.  We know, or should by now know given the results of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, that this would make no lasting difference in the last three cases, and taking on Russia on its front doorstep would be foolish and may be practically impossible.  If such action isn't likely or practical, what more is to be done?  More air strikes, more punitive economic measures?  If there are ISIS targets which can be attacked, and have not been, then it would seem appropriate to strike them.  If there none, though, what then?

In these all too interesting times, it seems we must accept uncertainty.  We must resign ourselves to the fact that our world is an unstable one.  I fear that if we don't do so we will seek certainty wherever and however we can, and will do so recklessly and without regard to the consequences.  Both certainty and uncertainty, both stability and instability, may be fostered now with great celerity by our communication technology, which may be used by anyone and for any purpose.  We can instantly terrorize others or arouse them to fury or fear, and many of us are willing to do so.

Acceptance of uncertainty doesn't require that we do nothing about the troubles of the world, but may assure that we won't try to do too much, or despair, or resort to efforts which will further limit what freedom we yet have.  Perhaps a Stoic approach to these troubles is best and the most thoughtful way of assessing our options and taking action.  We would do the best we can with what we have and take the rest as it comes, to paraphrase Epictetus.  We would avoid being overwhelmed and being inclined to take mindless action.

Can Stoicism be applied on a grand scale, or is its usefulness limited to individual thought, feeling and action?  It has been applied to a significant degree in the law, in the West at least.  But will it be applied to world affairs? 

Eventually, and voluntarily or involuntarily, we will learn if we have not yet learned that there is a limit to what we can usefully do, and cannot make all the evils in the world our problem or concern.  This would seem to be the first step towards practical wisdom in these very practical matters.  But Stoicism doesn't mandate detachment from world affairs, as Buddhism might, and indeed promotes service to the public good.  We would do the best we can with what we have, and not react irrationally to what happens.

Intelligent action is required, in other words.