the piractical perspective
Friday, November 27, 2009
♥ Friday, November 27, 2009
"Captains of our fate", my brother quotes. Lets take it further. If we are captains, what we also are guilty of, is an unending web of piracy.
Our ships cross paths in the high seas of coincidences. And the ships that are directed in our path are diverse. And hostile. There are those who attract and those who repel us. Those who make us intimidated and the others whom we terrify. Whether its trepidation or admiration, they act unisonly and singlemindendly- to conquer. Some of us are just nicer- we steal instead. We steal the corners of what makes others who they are, by injecting them a dose with our worldview. A view they neither asked nor welcomed. But no matter, because it is inescapable.
Now, this is what happens when two ships collide. We attempt to avoid a titanic fate. So we try to change the language of our problem. We are no longer faced with the end as long we are each other's means. What happens is the conspiring of other ships to create a floating wreck that CS lewis reminds us not to make "a floating hell" out of. Just as well then, live in the peace of staying afloat. With the undeniabiltiy that what was once ten different glorious vessels, is now just a chunk of moving metal.
But every now and then there is an anomaly. A mutiny arises and the captain is thrown abroad. A new one takes his place. He finds that there is now a need not to avoid collision but a desire to embrace it. In his mind, that is the only way he gets around being incommunicado. And the only way to create something out of nothing, is to have a big bang. To throw not just heat and sound, but light! To render the intangible intelligible. The only way that is going to happen, is not then to convince the other to form a wreck- that is too highly controversial. He instead creates one.
And after the subjugation he sings a different tune. Instead of the crude language of means and ends, he invokes the romantic notion of a friend- the most providential gift of grace that he could only praise the heavens for. What the old captain calls a wreck, the new calls an island. We now speak in the collective. Its "ours".
The UN convention on the law of the sea calls piracy any act of violence committed for private ends by the crew of a private ship on the high seas against another ship. No wonder its universally accepted.
a deeper sense of being human
Thursday, November 12, 2009
♥ Thursday, November 12, 2009
So whilst Unger argues for the full human flourishing in the freedom of men to smash their context, he to that extent places freedom above the current morality embedded in the existing institutional materials. The sense of freedom is placed at the core of what it means to be human. Mill says how can you impose your morality on someone's freedom, Devlin says sorry we've got to, and Hart says we're just doing what a dad would- would you let your kid play with fire?
The catholic on the other hand, argues not a freedom from but a freedom to- Finnis and Aquinas being two of them. My conception of freedom is built on Unger's but yet departs from his at this significant point- whilst freedom for him is to be free to re-imagine the context, freedom in the sense i am talking about, is a movement towards a reality that makes sense of all that is human, that no longer rejects but appreciates the context. To that extent, yes it is an emotional one.
Are we free to disagree? Of course we are. In all circumstances? Of course not. Our very agreement to disagree derives from our understanding that we are both unique human beings with vastly different experiences. But that also sets the lowest floor. This lowest floor that we cannot and must not cross is that we are being humans. So what is an affront to human dignity, what goes against human logic or rationality, we must disassociate ourselves from. We seek to do what is right, and that is a responsiblity accorded to all of us precisely because "we are made in the image of God". The freedom discourse here only looks towards a unique appreciation of differences after a fundamental and irreducible agreement is met.
But we face a fundamental contradiction. The fundamental contradiction the Crits talk about is this- on one hand we look to belong, as part of a community. On another, that very community subverts and threatens our need to be separate individuals. The freedom in the sense i am proposing seeks to reconcile the two because whilst men's boundaries should not be annexed, neither should he be an island. And this can be achieved if one looks beyond himself. There, freedom is attained because the individual looks towards the common good, whilst in achieving that good asserts more of his individuality. So both the community and the individual are means and ends for each other. The community is built on the reliance that its interests are that of the individual, and the individual adopts that in furtherance of becoming more human. We get a win-win.
I think the movement of each individual lies with the first choice of being human. Men wont be able to conceive of being divine before they can start choosing to be human. When Pontious Pilate said "it is custom to release a prisoner every year" men chose to have barrabas. The choice to be human therefore must also include a freedom to make mistakes. That does not come as an easy message in today's totalitarian culture of efficiency. But that is the price we must pay for full human flourishing. It requires a gentle yet assertive embracing of each individual to be confident enough to make mistakes so that he would be confident enough to admit them. The virtue of honesty and responsiblity definitely compensates for the economic disbenefits.
What i have strived to do is to provide a context by which freedom could be used as a means to make sense of what goes on around. In this I have put forth three angles by which one could consider both for society and the participant in society; for the church and the church goer; for the community and the member.
